Articles & Reviews by Debra Kaplan
Debra Kaplan and Edward Fram, “The Four Species in Pre-Modern Europe: Views from East and West,” in Joshua Teplitsky, Sharon Liberman Mintz, and Warren Klein, eds., Be Fruitful!: The Etrog in Jewish Culture, Art, and History (Jerusalem: Mineged Press, 2022), 97-120 Fulfilling the Torah's command to take the four species on the festival of Sukkot is a relatively... more Fulfilling the Torah's command to take the four species on the festival of Sukkot is a relatively easy thing to do in the Land of Israel. There, an etrog, lulavim, hadasim, and aravot can be found in the various regions of the land in the late summer, early fall. For Jews living in premodern Poland, Lithuania, and the Holy Roman Empire, however, performing the mitzvah was not nearly so simple. Only one of the four species, the willow, was available locally, because the climate was inhospitable to the others, each of which preferred more temperate zones, such as the Italian lands and some regions of the Ottoman Empire. Importing these perishable items to northern Europe in late summer was a challenge in an age without refrigeration. Hadasim and lulavim proved so difficult to obtain in sixteenth-century Poland that communities typically saved them from one year to the next.* Availability of each of the three species was an old problem for Jews living in northern Europe. In the twelfth century. Rabbi Eliezer of Metz (d. 1175)
media revolution which dramatically reshaped how people exchanged ideas through newspapers, pamph... more media revolution which dramatically reshaped how people exchanged ideas through newspapers, pamphlets, and images. Lilti's exploration of the philosophes' political views likewise highlights the diversity of eighteenth-century perspectives that combined utopian, reformist, and critical elements. According to Lilti, while the eighteenthcentury thinkers did not agree on a particular program of reform, they shared a concern with the "efficacity of critique in public space" and a preoccupation with enlightening the public in the "service of collective emancipation" (261). He points to a central paradox between the philosophes' desire to have the people think for themselves and the suspicion regarding where such autonomous thought might lead. While figures like Diderot and Condorcet remained optimistic about the power of education to improve human nature, they were also concerned about the potential of public opinion being manipulated by charlatans and "cynical demagogues" (286). While this collection of essays would have benefited from greater coherence and a more innovative approach, Lilti makes an important contribution to recent debates about the complicated legacies of the Enlightenment. His redefinition of the Enlightenment with an emphasis on the diversity of perspectives offers a way out of a cul-de-sac of scholarly disputes about the supposedly real essence of eighteenth-century thought. He reminds us that the historian's task is not to build monuments to an idealized and oversimplified past but to reveal its complex and often contradictory nature. The most valuable legacy of the Enlightenment, Lilti concludes, rests in the "critical potential" of its selfreflexive attitude, which "serves not to justify modernity but to render it problematic" (384).
debra kapLan and eLisheva carLebach When early modern Jewish women bought meat, cheese, or fish t... more debra kapLan and eLisheva carLebach When early modern Jewish women bought meat, cheese, or fish to feed their families, used a particular bathhouse for ritual immersion, or invited other women to celebrate the birth of a new child, they acted within (or against) a web of regulations whose goal was control over many activities that had not been closely regulated by communal ordinances before the sixteenth century. One of our central arguments in this essay is that women became more visible in Jewish written records in the early modern period than they had been in the medieval period. The culture of writing had become more common since the late medieval period (beginning ca. 1450), particularly in times of greater mobility and rupture. 1 The early modern period witnessed the proliferation of a wealth of different kinds of documents, both in manuscript and in print. In this chapter we survey four intersections between Jewish written records and Jewish women's lives: regulations, literary expression, ritual, and economic activity. Our focus is on Ashkenazic women living in Central and Western Europe from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century. At the outset we should note that this survey is not meant to be an exhaustive treatment of women's lives or a comprehensive picture of all sources that might be mined to study them. Rather, these four areas exemplify the rich source material that scholars who are interested in the lives of early modern women have at their disposal. Written documents permit us to discern women's experiences; they also shaped women's lives during this period. Records and Regulations The wealth of records and documents in the early modern period show a general increase in detailed regulations of areas of life that had not been
This article explores early modern practices of cooking and hospitality, both in and out of homes... more This article explores early modern practices of cooking and hospitality, both in and out of homes, in the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt am Main. The focus is on Garküchen (eateries) and communal ovens, which were increasingly regulated by the community. Communal leaders employed creative strategies to find solutions for nourishing a growing local and visiting population in the limited space of the early modern Jewish ghetto. Their attempts to expand were propelled by concrete historical events, particularly by a series of fires, which shaped the physical spaces in which this process unfolded. Looking at these institutions allows for a reconsideration of the spatial boundaries of the Jewish ghetto. On Sunday evening, March 21, 1624, around the time of the spring fair, a deadly fight broke out in the Garküche run by Gütge, the wife of Isaac Römhild zum Fisch in Frankfurt am Main. 1 This food establishment was run in Gütge's house and contained two rooms: an upstairs and a downstairs. 2 An interrogation by the city magistrates who investigated the brawl reports that on that evening, she had been serving food downstairs to a table of six men. Her nephew Yeh. iel, who helped her during the busy fair season, had been serving three full tables upstairs. 3 The table of six, all of whom were Jews foreign to Frankfurt, seemed to have been celebrating a special occasion, as one of the We would like to thank the Israel Institute of Advanced Studies, the Israel Science Foundation Grant 1802/18, and the Marie Curie Actions, EC FP7, in the frame of the EURIAS Fellowship Program, for supporting our work. 1. Institut für Stadtgeschichte Frankfurt am Main (ISG), Criminalia 609 (1624), fols. 1r-3v. 2. On Gütge, see Shlomo Ettlinger, Ele toldot [Burial Records of the Jewish Community of Frankfurt am Main] 1241-1824, n.d., http://www.lbi.org/digibaeck/results/?qtype=pid&term=258967, 15.XII.1637. Based on a tax register that is no longer extant, Ettlinger dates Gütge's Garküche to at least 1598. 3. The Lent Fair (Fastenmesse) in Frankfurt lasted for about three weeks total, from Oculi Sunday until the Friday before Palm Sunday, with some flexibility regarding its end.
From courtship through postnuptial rites, marriages in early modern Europe were marked with vario... more From courtship through postnuptial rites, marriages in early modern Europe were marked with various rituals. Although much attention has been paid to the changes to marriage rites that came with the onset of Protestantism, the ceremonies celebrating marriages of Jews, Catholics, and Protestants in early modern Europe actually had much in common with one another. In each of the aforementioned religious communities, marriagerelated rituals publicly marked the couple's shift in status, and the exchange of kin and property, albeit with variations that reflected the different theological and communal understandings of marriage in each religious community. This chapter provides a crosscultural analysis of courtship and marriage rituals in Europe across these three religious communities, and points to both local variations in rites as well as the tensions between legal-theological and popular rituals of marriage. One spring Sunday sometime between 1650 and 1670, a young woman, the stepdaughter of Moses the watchman, was to get married in the Jewish community of Worms. In that community, which was located in the Holy Roman Empire adjacent to the Rhine River, it was customary that on the day preceding the wedding ceremony, the bride and groom celebrate with their unmarried friends, after which the groom sent gifts to the bride in her home. After these two rituals, the sexton of the community called out in Yiddish, "The bride is going to the bath," and the bride was accompanied to the bathhouse by several women in order to bathe before her upcoming wedding. The rabbi of Worms, Samson ben Samuel Bacharach, who had spent much of his life in Moravia, was opposed to holding the gift-giving and bathing ceremonies on the Sabbath, even if the wedding was scheduled for the following day. According to Jewish law, it was not customary to receive gifts on the Sabbath, nor was it technically permissible to prepare during the Sabbath for anything that was to transpire after the Sabbath, including a wedding. Nevertheless, after consulting with the elders of the community, who assured him that "it had been that way for eternity," even in the case of a wedding held on a Sunday, he relented and agreed to the local practice permitting both the giving of gifts and the procession to the bath on the Sabbath. 1 This anecdote illustrates how marriage rituals in the early modern period comprised legal and theological components on the one hand, and popular elements on the other. 2 This was not only true of Jewish weddings. Catholic and Protestant ceremonies similarly included both official confessional rites and popular practices (see also Cristellon and Plummer in this volume). The theological and legal frameworks of marriage differed among Jews, Catholics, and Protestants, and these differences were naturally reflected in the official marriage rituals of each faith. Yet as prior research on Catholic and Protestant marriage rituals have shown, the popular elements of these rituals were often quite similar. Many of these customs continued medieval practices symbolically enacting the transfer of property and acquisition of new kin. 3
This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the prevailing CC-BY-NC-ND License ... more This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the prevailing CC-BY-NC-ND License at the time of publication.
SOMETIME BEFORE 1 699 , two men referred to by the pseudonyms Reuben and Simon were about to trav... more SOMETIME BEFORE 1 699 , two men referred to by the pseudonyms Reuben and Simon were about to travel from Frankfurt am Main to Worms. A Jewish woman and her adult daughter who had been visiting Frankfurt and wished to return to Worms approached them. Neither woman had the necessary travel documentation. Seeking to avoid the fine of ten gulden that was imposed on travelers who lacked papers, the older woman suggested that she could pose as Reuben's wife, while her daughter would pose as Simon's daughter. 1 This deception was possible because both Reuben and Simon had safe conducts, the documentation required of early modern travelers who wished to cross from one region into another. In the Electoral Palatinate, the region through which these four individuals needed to pass, the safe conducts that were issued to Jewish men permitted them to travel with their wives and children. 2 Reuben and Simon agreed to the ruse. When the foursome reached Oppenheim, the guard at the checkpoint doubted the women's stated identities. Puzzled as to how a young man like Reuben had such an old wife, and how a young man like Simon could have an adult daughter, he demanded that the two men swear as to the identity of the women and to their relationship to the men. Short of that, the guard demanded that the men kiss the women full on the mouth. The men protested, explaining that both women were menstrually impure, which meant that kissing them was forbidden according to Jewish law. In any case, they explained, it was unseemly among Jews to kiss one's daughter. An exchange ensued, This article was supported by a grant from the Israel Science Foundation, for which I am very grateful. I also thank Elisheva Carlebach for her insights and suggestions. 1. Yair Hayyim Bacharach, Havot Yair (Frankfurt am Main, 1699), no. 182. 2. Bacharach's description corresponds to the safe conducts in the archives, discussed below. See figure 1.
It once happened at a wedding in a village that toward evening, one of the villagers came, and he... more It once happened at a wedding in a village that toward evening, one of the villagers came, and he was leading a cow with a rope. And when he arrived at the wedding hall, and heard the sounds of joy and sounds of happiness, he tied the cow to the iron bars of a window, and entered and celebrated with the [wedding party]. And one of the revelers exited [the party while] intoxicated. And he saw the tied cow, and he freed her and she went on her way, and no one knew what happened to her, for she was lost.' This narrative is recounted in the responsa of R. Yair Hayyim Bacharach, who shared the episode in order to weigh in on the question of whether anyone owed damages for the lost cow. Given that it was not uncommon for the Jews of the Empire to live in the countryside, it is hardly surprising that such vivid depictions of events that transpired in a rural settling can be found in contemporary rabbinic responsa. Bacharach, one of the major rabbinic figures in the Holy Roman Empire at this time, addressed a number of questions posed by Jews living in German villages in his collection of responsa, Havvot Yair. These responsa are invaluable for reconstructing the contours of rural Jewish life. In this article, I discuss specific examples from Bacharach's responsa to highlight three important benefits of using responsa as historical sources for the study of rural Jews.^ My focus here is methodological rather than comprehensive, and as such, any conclusions about Bacharach, the rabbinate more generally, and rural Jewry are preliminary.
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Articles & Reviews by Debra Kaplan