Jewish Life in the Middle Ages

CHAPTER I. THE CENTRE OF SOCIAL LIFE

JEWISH LIFE IN THE MIDDLE AGES CHAPTER I THE CENTRE OF SOCIAL LIFE THE medieval life of the Jews had for its centre the synagogue. The concentration of the Jewish populations into separate quarters of Christian and Moslem towns was initially an accident of Jewish communal life. The Jewish quarter seems to have grown up round the synagogue , which was thus the centre of Jewish life, locally as well as religiously. This concentration round the synagogue may be noted in the social as well as in the material life of the middle ages. The synagogue tended, with ever-increasing rapidity, to absorb and to develop the social life of the community, both when Jews enjoyed free intercourse with their neighbours of other faiths, and when this intercourse was restricted to the narrowest possible bounds. It was the political emancipation, which the dose of the eighteenth century witnessed, that first loosened the hold of the synagogue on Jewish life. Emancipation so changed the complexion of that life that the Jewish middle ages cannot 2 TIll' Centre of Sorial Life btt considered to have ended until the French Revolution was well in sight. But throughout the miodle ages proper the synagogue held undisputed sway in all the concerns of Jews. Nor was this absorption a new phenomenon. Already in Judea the Temple had assumed some social functions. The tendency first revcals itse1f amid the cnthusiasm of the Maccabcan revival, when the Jews felt drawn to the house of prayer for social as well as for religious communion. The Temple itself became the scene of some fcstal gatheriIigs which were only in a secondary sense religious in character.l Political meetings were held within its precincts.2 Its courts resounded on occasion with cries for the redress of grievances.3 King and Rabbi alike addressetl the assembled Israelites under the Colonnade, which was joined to the Temple by a bridge.4 The synagogue in the middle ages filled a place at once larger and smaller than the Temple. In the middle ages politics only rarely invaded the synagogue. Bad government , in the Jewish view, was incompatible with the kingdom of God,!' but the Jews learned from bitter experience that they must often render unto Cacsar the things that were God's. The Jews of the middle ages may have been alive to the current corruption, but they readily administered the public trusts which were somctimes committed to their care. Though thl!y doubtless used their power at times to the advantage of their coreligionists , the Jewish holders of financial offices enjoyed a high, if rather «unpopular,' reputation for fidelity to 1 ]QSepltus, IYars. V. s. , IVars,1. 20. S IV"rs, II. I. • lViII'S, 1I. 16. oSee S. Schechter, 7noisn Quarterly RroiniJ, vii. p. 209. Politics itz the S}J1UlgogUt! 3 their royal employers. Their honesty, as well as their amenability to kingly pressure, may be inferred from the frequency which they were entrusted with confidential posts in Spain and Italy. But the despotic government of the middle ages entailed an insecurity of political status which prevented Jews from participating much in the dis· cussion of public affairs. The Jews gained nothing and lost much by their courageous partisanship of Don Pedro of Castile against his half-brother Henry de Trastamara (I350~1369).1 Santob de Carrion, a Jewish troubadour of that age, compiled moral and political maxims for the king, but such an incident could hardly be paralleled. The Jews, on the other hand, frequently joined the general population in patriotic movements; but beyond the regular recita" tion of a prayer for the sovereign,2 politics were excluded from the liturgy. Occasionally, prayers were inserted which involved a partisan attitude on questions of the day. Thus in I 188 the Jews of Canterbury for the monks as against the archbishop in a local At a much later date, the Jews of Rome erected a trophy in front of one of their synagogues in honour of the temporary establishment of a republican government.4 Such instanc(;s of political partisanship finding expression in the synagogue were rare in the middle ages, for even under the most favourable circumstances the Jews were subjeet to sudden and sweeping in their relations to the government. But it would be an error to suppose that this fact carried with it as a corollary the exclusion I See (;raetz, /IiJ/(JJY "/the :Jrws (Eng:. Trans...