The Three Crowns: Structures of Communal Politics in Early Rabbinic Jewry (review)

Vol. 10, No.3 Spring 1992 157 of "security. considerations" largely determines judgments of the contemporary actors and evaluations of Morris' integrity. Chapter 7, on "Why Four Villages Remained," concludes that "the army's failure to uproot the communities" resulted from "local Jewish pressure and intercession" (p. 216), which rarely won out in other places. Those uprooted were never "absorbed" outside Israel to any great extent for a host of largely familiar reasons (Chapter 8). Morris quotes a prescient American's report of 1949 warning that the Palestinian refugees would be used "as a weapon against the Jewish state." If left in misery, "they would continue to demand repatriation, and would find support for this in the international community. Ifallowed back, they could destabilize the Jewish state. If not allowed back, their existence would eat at world support for Israel and would ignite an endless and violent irredenta, which would leave the Arabs and Israel in permanent conflict" (p. 255). Morris squarely and superbly confronts the origins and nuances ofthis wrenching dilemma. Although Benny Morris will probably continue to be dismissed or vilified by those opposed to his politics, all scholars concerned with the Israeli/Arab conflict should carefully examine 1948 and After, along with the author's earlier provocative work. Michael Berkowitz Department of History Ohio State University The Three Crowns: Structures ofCommunal Politics in Early Rabbinic Jewry, by Stuart A. Cohen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 294 pp. $49.50. This book is a bold and creative inquiry into the history of rabbinic Judaism. The author assumes that the rabbis of late antiquity served as power brokers within their communal structures. In this context Cohen seeks to ascertain how rabbis managed to supplant as leaders the Temple priests and other civic authorities in the Roman period. The book picks up on a fresh path of academic exploration into the sociopolitical world of the rabbis. That trail recently has been cleared most systematically by scholars such as A. J. Saldarini, L. I. Levine, and M. Goodman. The strengths of the present book lie in its thorough reliance on scholarship in the discipline and in its essential conception. The bibliogra. 158 SHOFAR phy of sources consulted shows no prejudices. The author cites American and Israeli essays and monographs. He draws for his insights on traditional and philological scholarship and on the more modern analytical schools of inquiry. Cohen is justified in looking for political motives within the evidence of early rabbinism. His credentials as a professor of more recent political studies at Bar Han University make him qualified to address issues of the power motives of varying groups in this kind of earlier communal setting. His formulation of the study in terms of the rabbinic metaphor of the three crowns does help at first to unify the investigation of many diverse historical mechanisms. However, these sources of the potency of this study are also the foundations of its vulnerability. Cohen compiled his bibliography and used widely varied scholarly materials as an outsider to the discipline. He selected liberally and without hesitation from diametrically opposed schools ofscholarship, such as the work ofNeusner and of Urbach, making little distinction between the most recent publications and those of fifty or more years ago. He admits he is a non-specialist but does not understand how much this curtails his vision. Perhaps he is like a guest at a family dinner who cannot perceive the concealed tensions of the gathering. Ukewise, Cohen does not fully recognize the deeper dynamics and the dramatic background ofcontemporary developments within the professional ranks of the discipline. The metaphor of the "three crowns" starts out as a helpful device. The crowns of the priests, of civil leadership, and of the Torah represent forces that interacted in the centuries of rabbinic ascendance. I found a similar distinction to be justifiable in my.own work on the development of early rabbinic liturgy in the first and second century. In my Studies in Jewish Prayer (Lanham, 1990), I argued that Rabbinic liturgy reflects numerous compromises among the interests of the priests, the patriarchs, and the scribes within the early rabbinic milieu. Although admitting he plans "merely a political re-interpretation of materials...