Pietists and Kibbitzers

Edward Fram's article in this issue, "German Pietism and Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century Polish Rabbinic Culture," shows that German pietism as a radical religious and social movement was no more influential in Poland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than it was in medieval Western Europe. In retrospect, it appears that it could hardly have been otherwise. The standard Sefer Hasidim (henceforth SH) first published, as noted by Fram, in Bologna in 1538 and quickly republished in Basel (1580) and Cracow (1581), is a compound work, opening with the conventional pietism of the first 152 sections and continuing on with the radical one of the German pietists. For every passage of radical pietism there is a counterpassage of the conventional sort, the result being that no one could infer from that work any coherent religious position. In such a state, it was, as Dr. Fram puts it, "pick and choose." One would find there the position that one sought, and the selections would reflect more the writer's religious sensibilities rather than the influence of either of the two conflicting movements embodied in that work. And, as Fram points out, Polish ethicists and thinkers were singularly uninclined to the distinctive doctrines of German pietism and never reproduced those passages that expressed the idiosyncratic agenda of Hasidei Ashkenaz.

His conclusions simply extend my conclusions about the Middle Ages to Eastern Europe in the Early Modern period. I argued in my essay "Piety, Pietism and German Pietism: Sefer Hasidim I and the Influence of Hasidei Ashkenaz"¹ that German pietism as radical religious and social movement was wholly without influence in France and Spain, and even in Germany itself. Although the conventional pietistic impulses expressed by the Sefer ha-yir'ah and in the first 152 sections of SH, which I entitled SH I,² found an answering echo of assent in some medieval hearts, the extreme, idiosyncratic doctrines of German pietism fell on deaf ears. I added an appendix in which I challenged Eric Zimmer's recent contention that certain medieval religious practices continued on in Poland as a result of the influence of German pietism. I was addressing the specific arguments of Zimmer, not expressing an opinion about Poland generally, a subject about which I have no expertise. Unfortunately, I did not clearly mark off the appendix as dealing with halakhic matters only and with Zimmer's claims specifically, even though that was its exclusive content.³ As the rest of the article dealt with the impact of German pietism on the spirituality of medieval Jewry, it was only natural for reader to assume that the appendix addressed this issue in Poland, and my sweeping introductory two sentences in the appendix only added to the confusion.⁴

Fram points out that the notion that children's deeds affect the status of the parents in the other world is a recurrent theme in Polish Jewish literature and that it is contrary to the ideas expressed in SH I. Indeed it is. However, this notion has little or nothing to do with pietism. This, in turn, leads to an allied consideration and to a major criticism that has been leveled at my article, namely, that I did not reckon with the SH published by M. Hershler⁵ and the sundry sections of SH that were copied and incorporated in various manuscripts and that these omissions significantly alter the manuscript count that I provided in the conclusion of part 1 of my essay.⁶

I wrote the essay because I felt that there was need to distinguish between "pietists" and the simply "pious" and an equal need to differentiate between "pietists" and "German pietists." I had not realized that it was necessary to distinguish between "pietist" and "guidance counselors." I warned that use of numerology did not a German pietist make, even if Hasidei Ashkenaz contributed greatly to the legitimacy of gematriyot.⁷ I similarly cautioned that accepting the esoteric lore (torat ha-sod) of the Kalonymides and the German pietists did not entail any assent to the radical doctrines of Hasidei Ashkenaz.⁸ I should have added that...