The "Identity" of Sephardim of Medieval Christian Iberia

Identity formation among national and ethnic groups is usually dated by European historians to the onset of modernity, when traditional social structures fashioned by nation, church, and socioeconomic class began to break down. Similarly, the beginning of modernity for students of Jewish history is linked with the downfall of the medieval corporate society and of the organized Jewish community that had characterized a Jew's identity from cradle to grave. With the entry of Jews as citizens into the civic life of the modern nation-state, Jews became free to create their own religious and national affiliations. Modern Jewish historians have been fascinated by this process of identity formation, chronicling how Jews began consciously to construct their own sense of identity from both Jewish and non-Jewish elements. They have further argued that modern Jewish identity is not uniform; a modern Jew has been able to fashion his or her own sense of Judaism and Jewish peoplehood from a mélange of ideas, practices, ideals, and social connections. ¹

This understanding of Jewish identity has also served to demarcate the periods of medieval and modern Jewish history. It is exactly their agency, the capacity of the Jews to be the authors of their own identity, it has been maintained, that gives modern Jewish culture its particular cast. Medieval Jews, however, having been born into their corporate status mandated by the governing institutions of the society, had no ability to choose. Their condition, it has been suggested, remained static and did not develop in any appreciable degree over time.

But are these distinctions between medieval and modern Jews as obvious and self-evident as we frequently like to assert? Is there always agency among modern Jews in the fashioning of their identity and none among their medieval coreligionists? Is it clear that the affiliations of modern Jews are not equally determined by the time and place of their birth? Similarly, is it so obvious that a Saragossan Jew born in the Middle Ages was essentially frozen in his Jewish identity and in his relationship with society (Jewish, Muslim, and Christian), and that a Jew born in the mid-twentieth century on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx was not equally predictable in his choices of Jewish, Christian, and other fellowship?

What did it mean to be a Jew in medieval Sepharad? Frankly, it is difficult to determine the religious beliefs and activities of the average Jew. We are, however, aware of the existence of the Jewish community, the kahal or aljama, of which the Jew was perforce a member. We do know that, in the public documentation of the Christian society, the Jew is almost always characterized by his or her religious affiliation. We can assert that the Jews of the various political kingdoms of Christian Iberia saw themselves as Jews and sometimes as Sephardim, part of a cultural or geographical group bearing that name. Additionally, these Jews viewed themselves as living within a particular city and within a particular kingdom. Understandably, all of these identifications helped to fashion who these Jews actually were. As would be expected, there were also differences in culture and associational patterns among Sephardic Jews themselves that reflected distinctions based on gender, wealth, Jewish learning, and the like.

When we investigate Jewish civilization in Iberia/Sepharad, we are of course aware that Jewish culture cannot (or, if you will, can never) be conceived of as separate from that of the society in which they lived. Jewish intellectual life in Sepharad, even in those areas that would seem immune to trends within Christian society (such as Kabbalah) was "influenced" by Christianity and Islam, even as those religious systems bear the marks of Judaism. In the sphere of political culture, those Jews who were courtiers serving the Christian Iberian monarchs and often representing the Jewish communities fashioned lives that naturally reflected elements of the constituencies among whose...