The Jewish Community: Its History and Structure to the American Revolution, Vol. 1
Salo Wittmayer Baron
Language: English
Pages: 387
ISBN: 2:00330801
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Original year of publication: 1942
Preface
Jewish communal history throughout the millennia of diaspora life has long been the subject of considerable scholarly attention. The European community of the pre-Emancipation era, especially, has for decades attracted modern investigators by its numerous extraordinary features. Its remarkable combination of religious and secular authority, its almost “extraterritorial” status and “sovereign” political powers and its overwhelming control over its members have flattered the political ambitions of nationally minded modern Jews, but antagonized many reformers and anti-segregationists. Philo-Sémites and anti-Semites among the non-Jews, too, have often held definite opinions about the “ghetto” community. Like their Jewish confreres, however, they, too, have frequently substituted one or another bias for reliable information and sound reasoning. It is hoped that this first attempt at a comprehensive historical and sociological analysis of the entire communal evolution to the Emancipation era will help to promote clarity, if not unanimity of appraisal.
Apart from the usual embarrassment in defining the highly ambiguous term “community” — it is used here in the prevailing, organizational sense which is even narrower than that of the German Gemeinde — students of communal aspects of Jewish history are beset by two opposing difficulties: an extreme dearth of material for certain areas and periods and a plethora of extant information on other regions and epochs. Modern literature on the subject, too, is unevenly distributed and much repetition in one field is aggravated by nearly total silence in others. The present author has made an effort to maintain the relative proportions of the various phases of his ramified topic regardless of this quantitative disparity. In the use of the vast and significant literature of rabbinic responsa, for example, he has been guided principally by the importance of the countries or centuries of their provenance. Representative samples from diverse areas and periods were considered more promising than mere concentration on works of a few outstanding masters, however great an influence the latter may have wielded on the subsequent evolution of Jewish law.
The focus of this entire work is centered on the European community of the Middle Ages and early modern times, both because of the great richness and variety of its historic accomplishments and, genetically, because of its intimate linkage to Jewish community life throughout the world today. At the same time its deep moorings in the ancient and contemporaneous eastern communities have come to the fore ever more insistently. In fact, while trying to detect the hidden springs of this phenomenally tenacious evolution, the writer found himself delving deeper and deeper not only into the obscure realms of the First Exile and the Persian and Hellenistic dispersion, but also into the early manifestations of ancient Palestinian municipal life. Many rather unexpected relationships have laid bare some of the most autochthonous roots of the diaspora community securely ensconced in the ever fertile soil of ancient Israel. It has been found necessary, therefore, to devote the first two chapters to a general outline of both the modern foreground and the ancient background of the community in dispersion in its extraordinary historic career from the Babylonian Exile to the American and French Revolutions.
About the Author
Salo W. Baron, who was a rabbi, educator, and editor, was esteemed as a Jewish historian. A prolific writer, Baron was best known for his eighteen-volume work A Social and Religious History of the Jews. He was ordained a rabbi in 1920 and received doctoral degrees in philosophy, political science, and law from the University of Vienna. He later served as a professor of Jewish history and literature at Columbia University for thirty-three years. As a scholar, Baron is credited with broadening and modernizing the historic view of the Jewish experience. In addition, he provided testimony for the prosecution at the trial of Nazi official Adolf Eichmann. Baron also edited Jewish Social Studies and the series "A Documentary History of American Jews."
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Recognition, on the other hand, made communal organisms entirely optional, as in America. It may be true that about one half of American Jewry does not actively participate in any organized form of Jewish communal life, belonging neither to a synagogue nor to a charitable, fraternal, labor, defense or any other group. But those who do belong to an organization do so of choice, albeit, perhaps, a choice influenced by the examples of neighbors, by pressure of public opinion, or other external.
New settlers after the redistribution of land resulting from Israel’s conquest. It is possible, however, that at least pastures remained communal property. The prevalence of such communal holdings among various Semitic groups and the traditions of the patriarchal semi-nomadic cattle-raising economy based upon clan ownership and management, would seem to favor such an assumption. In the period of conquest such communal property could easily have been established on the estates of subdued city.
Far beyond the confines of the small Jewish homeland (the satrapy Abar Nahara included also Syria, Phoenicia and Cyprus). Through their efforts, Nehemiah was appointed governor of the entire province apparently from their own midst. A typical diplomatic memorandum, written in defense of Palestine Jewry and sent to the “King of Kings” by Tabeel and his associates, has been successfully reconstructed from the book of Ezra (4.7–6.15). Other such leaders must have been respon- SYNAGOGUE 65 sible.
Interprets each of them separately till eventide; and then when separate they depart, having gained some skill in the sacred laws, and having made great advances toward piety.18 90 THE JEWISH COMMUNITY It evidently was for the purpose of such public recitation that the Hebrew Bible was first transliterated and then translated into Greek, for the Hellenistic masses were rapidly losing their familiarity with the mother tongue. The Septuagint, work on which began within a century after the.
Jewish community’s relative independence of the house of worship, however, these chicaneries caused property losses rather than serious interruption in religious or communal life. 2. CENTRIFUGAL AND CENTRIPETAL FORCES Legal uncertainties, fostered by the absence of clearly defined and detailed privileges; the recognized power of local custom and chance precedent; the varying authority of individual Muslim jurists; and the sweeping principle of the ijma, the catholic consent, strengthened.