Jewish Life in the Middle Ages

CHAPTER XXI. MEDIEVAL PASTIMES AND INDOOR AMUSEMENTS

CHAPTER XXI MEDIEVAL PASTIMES AND INDOOR AMUSEMENTS A MERRY spirit smiled on Jewish life in the middle ages, joyousness forming, in the Jewish conception, the coping stone of piety. There can be no greater mistake than to imagine that the Jews allowed their sufferings to blacken their life or cramp their optimism. Few pastimes of the middle ages were excluded from the Jewish sphere. The Jew rarely invented a game. but he adopted a good thing when he saw it. The stern, restraining hand of religion only occasionally checked the mirth and light-heartedness with which the Jew yielded himself to all the various pleasures of which his life was capable. We have already seen that the day of rest was not a day of gloom. To walk abroad in the fresh air on the Sabbath was a favourite delight of the Jews in the middle ages. On the festivals they strolled by brooks and streams, and watched the fishes disporting themselves in the water. They carried food with them which they threw into the streams, and derived a simple pleasure from the pastime, even though it was not strictly in accordance with Jewish rituallaw.1 The service in synagogue was not lengthened 1 Maharil. '>"c.'1 Inn n""l'I. 373 374 Medieval Pastimes and lnr./Qqr Amusements beyond measure, so as to 'preserve the pleasure of the festival.' 1 Industrious as the Jewish women were, they had many holidays. On the new moon they did no work. but amused themselves in ways to be described below, while the men and women, besides their other home-games. spent part of Purim in light and pleasant reading, in making preparations for a forthcoming wedding. or in embroidering gay garments for future wear.2 Joyous wedding parties and bridal feasts were held even on the Sabbath. - the day of peace, bU,t not of repression, - singing and dancing occurred sometimes to the accompaniment of instrumental music, and, as we shall soon note. indoor amusements. such as chess and other tablegames , were permitted on the seventh day. The board was spread with the choicest viands that the husband's purse could buy. the wine flowed, and conversation tripped along. witty, religious. and cheery, interspersed with semireligious songs set to merry tunes. If the Jew visited his Rabbi, he heard many a humorous anecdote or quaint intellectual quip, told with a smile to a responsively smiling audience, who the more willingly applied the moral because they enjoyed the tale. The Jewish observance of the Sabbath was strict but not sombre; it was Judaic and not Puritanical- two terms far from identical in significance. Life was transfigured on the Sabbath day, and a tone of elevated joy was the prevailing note. Religion did. however, seriously affect the Jewish amusements in two significant particulars. These were the suppression of gambling and the interference with such 1 See e.g. the interesting statement to this effect in the MadlJ&or Rr)lliania (Constant. 1573), New Year, .30 a. ~ 1")7 1'''11 l'"1V ,::1, ~~ Kolbo, 46 b. Intellectual Games 375 recreations as involved free intercourse between the two sexes. These points, however, will best be approached in the process of a general treatment of the favourite Jewish recreations of the middle ages. Intellectual pastimes were far more common than physical as the middle ages advanced. But in the fourth century Jerome, when on a visit to Syria, saw' large, heavy stones which Jewish boys and youths handled and held aloft in the air to train their muscular strength.' 1 At the same period, the Palestinian Jews were wont to practise archery, probably as a form of recreation.· Considerably earlier Tacitus, a hostile witness, says that i the bodies of the Jews are sound and healthy, and hardy to bear burdens.' 8 Unhappily everything connected with the ancient gymnasia became distasteful to the Jews after the wars with Rome, and athletic exercises became a portion of i foreign culture' which was tabooed.' Jewish antipathy to another favourite sport - hunting was much deeper. Already in the Bible the figures introduced as devoted hunters - Nimrod and Esau - are by no means presented in a favourable light. Herod is the first person described in post-Biblical Jewish history as 'a most excellent hunter, in which sport he generally had great success owing to his skill in riding. for in one day he once killed forty wild beasts.'" Herod was also...