Continued…..when-secular-law-and-religious-law-collide-endnotes2

Lois Whitmore  2003

Burlington, Vermont, Farmers Market.

You may have to forgive me, but this is where you’ll find me many Saturdays. The Burlington Farmers Market is a place with lots of activity and, of course, good, fresh food.

Three years ago I had the opportunity to visit the Mahane Yehuda public market in Jerusalem (see photos below). It’s also a place with lots of activity and, of course, good, fresh food. But there’s one unfortunate difference, a difference far removed from us here in Vermont.

Markets are amazing places. Full of food, spices, sweets, people … they should be places where we never have to look over our shoulder, pass through a checkpoint, or have concerns for our safety. I wish this were true for our brothers and sisters in Jerusalem.

posted by Wayne Senville

The 1928 Report of  the Commission on  Social Justice was the product of  a predominantly European sensibility  which idealized America –the religious freedom it  saw in America: the separation of church and state as the promise of a better life for Jews. The signers of that document  conceived of America as a homogeneous  and abstract, and it was against that almost mythic setting that they defined  a certain kind of future social policy as an ethical imperative based on prophetic Judaism. Theirs was not the America of the Gold rush, the Wild West, the Revolutionary War, or the America of  the farmers of the Connecticut valley, or the merchants of  the coal towns of Appalachia, or New Orleans, or  the South.  However, many policy makers who were either new or first generation Americans either were unaware of or unwilling to  take into account the actual  complex and diverse historical experience of Jews and non-Jews whose tenure  in different parts of the country exceeded theirs.   This particular group of educated religious professionals  determined and shaped  a subsequent course of  policy and  action for both  rabbis, congregations, and individuals  which, while it did significantly change the American social landscape, contributed to trauma and division within the Reform  and American Jewish community.  The difference between how Southern Reform Jews and Northern Reform Jews reacted to the Civil Rights Movement  should really be understood  in the light of how regionalism and acculturation shaped Jewish identity as much as a flawed conception of America, and the abstract ideas of social justice of its early policy makers.  

Article continues: reform-jewish-rabbis-in-the-american-south-and-the-civil-rights-movement-intersecting-realities-intersecting-myths1

            Yet  it is  not possible to account for  the  array of religious  pluralism Gui despised, or comprehend the  scope of  medieval ferment ( social, intellectual, political, and spiritual ) which characterized Provence and Languedoc during Gui’s lifetime, as well as before and after,  in his work alone or from any single source.  Gui’s labels tell little about  what issues were significant to the heretics themselves, the diversity of thought of members of each group, their spiritual realities and the simultaneous  the political, social, geographic,   and economic  realities which governed their lives. He is interested in their theologies and practices only to the degree that such knowledge will enable the Church to entrap them.  While heretics and believers  coexisted  with each other in the same towns, villages , and cities,  their awareness and ideas about each other theologically varied, as did their ways of dealing with the political and religious establishment and what they themselves considered most important.

             What observations can yet another twenty-first century perspective add?  What can be known from historical evidence about the lives and works of heretics and believers is fulsome in some cases, scanty in others; there  are many historical  documents which represent a single aspect of life in Languedoc ….but few scholars  address worlds in tandem. Talmudists and troubadours and bishops and Beguines are rarely, if ever, on the same page of the same history book.   A contrapuntal  examination of documentary and other historical  material, following Gui’s methodology,  vivifies  the  thirteenth  and fourteenth century in Southern France.  Like the dangerous excitement of a medieval fair –theological  and political jousting, random violence, exotic and homely sights, human passion, longing and pleasure are in evidence.    Let us see what emerges  through their juxtaposition and   decontextualization.   Decontextualization, in this case, means examining  the most local of  histories —the immediate cultural context –in  a cross-cultural and broader historical context.

Languedoc: regional themes, character, and history

            What is now the south of France, was, during most of the  medieval period, more culturally  and politically aligned and identified with   Spain than  northern France.  It was an area discrete in its language, its openness to diverse cultural and international influences such as urbanization, trade, secular, and religious ideas,   and in its predominantly tolerant and casual attitude to religious pluralism. Over the course of several centuries, its interior political boundaries were a dynamic patchwork– drawn and redrawn as church and feudal lords vied for control, only to be ultimately preempted by royalty.  In such   medieval cities of  Nîmes, Montpellier, Béziers, Narbonne, ( formerly Roman cities),  Carcassone, and the great Toulouse, “surpassed in size only by Rome and Venice in ….1200″ ( O’Shea 2000: 18), and places like Albi, Lunel, Posquières, Lyon, Montségur, Jews and Christians  and heretics worshipped, wrote, sang, studied, traveled, traded, argued, fought, and died, or were massacred or expelled.  “In the twelfth century, there were synagogues in Béziers,  Lodève, Lunel, Mende, Montpellier, Nîmes, Pamiers, Pèzenas, Posquières, Toulouse and  St-Gilles, and Narbonne had some three hundred Jewish families in the second half of the century, suggesting a population of 1200-1500 people.”^[iii]   There were an equal number of   Cathar leaders  in Languedoc and maybe  ten times that of believers, the leading  population of  Christian reformers-heretics.  (Costen  1997: 74). The bishoprics of Narbonne and Toulouse dated to the third century.  (Costen 18). There were over 160 Cluniac monasteries by this time  (Costen  21) and nineteen Cistercian monasteries had existed before 1150 (Costen 40). The courts of Foix, Comminges, Béziers, Toulouse and Narbonne  ere patrons of the troubadors^[iv], who  sang of their ladies’ love, unfullfilled, but thrilling,  while the populace  of the nearly eighty towns were entertained by the great fairs at St. Gilles, Moissac, and Carcassone and  Nimes.  There, Italian merchants came to exchange spices, alum, dyestuffs, silk, carpets and perfumes for cloth. (Costen 37).  If it was a time of deep piety, it was also one of controversy — rational (Aristotelian) and mystical thought challenged traditional religious conceptualization and interpretation for Jews as well as Christians.

            In many respects, it was as difficult to separate local from global issues as cause from effect.  For example, the Crusades, the Diaspora, the rise of an urban middle class, the growth of cities, the demise of feudalism and its attendant consequences, ecclesiastical and political reorganization, weather and climate, methods of agriculture and trade,  developments in the Islamic Empire, changing roles of women,  and,  later, the Black Death  overlay the particular and local experience of all the inhabitants.  Those common  actors would be experienced differently by each  religious persuasion; each  group’s cultural behavior would be differentially influenced by them. The domination of each group’s society by religion  was another of the shared characteristics;  heresy/ religious purity  was a concern common to each community. 

            In the thirteenth century, the following   widely  known   historical events   constituted the backdrop against which  less familiar  events in  Languedoc unfolded :   the Fourth Crusade  in 1202-1204, the Children’s Crusade in 1202,  the three years of the Fifth Crusade in 1218, the short-lived  Sixth Crusade, the Seventh Crusade around the middle of the century, the defeat of the Moors in Spain by the Christian armies, the embrace of   the south of France by the  crown, expansion and building of cathedrals and cities,  the lives and influence  of  Thomas Aquinas,  the expanding influence of Sts. Francis, Dominic,  Maimonides,  and the Kabbala, the commercial revolution and the question of ursury^[v];  the transition of anti-Jewish sentiment into anti-Semitic practice; the publication of the Zohar and the burning of the Talmud;  the creation of the Inquisition; the early career of Bernard Gui.  Less widely known, (except by those more directly  affected)  but also characteristic of the period, are the massacres for heresy in France,  such as the Albigensian Crusade, and those in  Germany,  ( the Blood libel of Troyes,  the Rindfleisch persecutions) and in  England, (the ritual murder charge at Lincoln) (Seltzer 1980: 316)., the expulsions, dispersions and migrations of the Jews , the proceedings of the Fourth Lateran Council and its effects, the  controversial / heretical/ mystical thought of  Meister Eckhart^[vi].

            The Church, whose evolution was a product of a rural society, lacked tools to address social problems in an urban terrain and among a rising middle class.  The promiscuous and worldly practices of many clerics impressed the laity with the failure of  Church morality more than an example of  the Church’s moral authority.     During the late medieval period, both Christian populace and Church increasingly felt the need for reform of the Church, but the Church, adamant about retaining  and expanding its power,  did not intend lay reformers as agents of change.  It focused its reforming zeal on their elimination.  In addition to a rethinking of a theological stance towards the Jews, economic and political considerations combined with the spiritual to channel the Church’s anti-Jewish activity into a new direction.

            The Church’s thought and authority was not, in fact, monolithic: Pope, bishops, and mendicant friars did not operate in a hierarchical, consistent, or coordinated  manner. For example, in the north, despite papal fiats of protection for ” their”  Jews,  bishops allowed  church sanctuaries to be overrun and Jews massacred.

            Innocent III, whose Legate in Languedoc, Peter of Castelnau, would be  murdered in 1208 in an attempt to purge the region of heresy,  became Pope on January 8, 1198^[vii].  The new pope was invested  with  policy along with  his new office.   Innocent had inherited an anti-Cathar program from earlier times; Pope Calistus II preached against the Cathars in 1119 in Toulouse, and Bernard of Clairvaux was rudely rebuffed for his efforts by townfolk.  The church would occasionally be  joined in its anti-heretic movement by secular lords.  For example,” in 1249 Count Raymond VII of Toulouse…”would cause “…eighty confessed heretics to be burnt in his presence (newadvent.org).  Church councils had proclaimed against the Cathar heresy in Lombiers in 1161, in Tours in 1163, and at the Lateran council in 1169, anathema was pronounced against it and all Cathar believers.^[viii]

            The innovative expanding authority of the mendicant orders was frequently shaped by the personality and religious zeal of its leaders such as Dominic Guzman, later St. Dominic, rather than the papacy.  As a young priest, he had been dispatched by Innocent III to preach in the south of France, to counter the growing influence of the Cathars, though the attempt proved  unsuccessful.  A decade later, at the end of the Albigensian crusade, he organized the world-wide and influential order of preachers.  St. Thomas Acquinas was a   Dominican; so was Bernard Gui.  The Dominicans were also noted for confiscating and burning  Maimonides Guide to the Perplexe in 1232.^[ix]

            Lay preaching and vows of poverty were common characteristics of both mendicant friars and  some Christian reformers.  But that was the end of the similarity.  Heresy was conceived by the church to mean deviation from revealed truth as taught by itself.  But “revealed truth” to heretics such as Cathars, Beguines, Waldensians, and Jews ^[x]  was text based, not church based.  And, apparently, many inhabitants of the region  had  inhaled , to varying degrees, the  atmosphere of mysticism which hovered over the shores of the  Mediterranean before moving  inland and had understood revelation in its own way.

                        In 1179, ten years after the Cathars had been anathemized, Peter Waldo (Valdes, in French) would approach Pope Alexander III to approve his vow of poverty and confession of faith.  But as his message took hold, he shared the Cathars’  fate;  the Archbishop of Lyons condemned him and,  in 1184,  the papal bull of  Lucius III excommunicated him and his followers, the Waldensians.  “From surviving Waldensian literature, a ‘theology of the two ways’ can be discerned.  Life… will be marked as good or evil, ruled by sin or gra the idea of purgatory, transubstantiation, prayers for the dead, and submission to the Pope and prelates, believing instead in the priesthood of all believers; they were pacifists, and refused to take oaths.  The importance of oaths at that time did not lie in establishing the credibility of the individual so much as  obedience and consonance with a hierarchical system; to refuse to swear and oath was to reject law.   Waldensians  believed in the Bible  alone as the ultimate authority, as an object of study and meditation for everyone which Valdes had arranged to have translated into the vernacular ( to democratize access to it.)   Gui says, “…in order to give their words greater weight among their listeners when they preach from the Gospels, the Epistles, and the exempla and sentences of the saints, they say by way of proof, ‘That is found in the Gospel, or the Epistle of St. Peter……also they tell and teach their believers that true penance and purgatory for sin come only in this life, not in another…”( Wakefield 397). They were pacificistic, accepted women as preachers, and in the early days, placed an emphasis on good works, poverty, and celibacy. The movement originated ” in Lyons, where there was also a strong Jewish community.” Rebecca Anderson notes^[xi]  that places that accepted Jews were also tolerant of Waldensians. “It is known that later Waldensians were able Hebraicists; quite possibly earlier members of the sect learned Hebrew from Jewish teachers as well….like the Jews, they were strongly opposed to the creation and worship of icons and images.  There is evidence that in the region of Provence,  Jews and Waldensians lived peacefully side by side for many years.” (Ibid.)  The persecution of other heretics adversely affected Waldensians in France–seven were put to death in 1214 at Maurillac.^[xii]

            A second mendicant order, the Franciscans, took shape following the death of St. Francis in  1226.  The order   experienced a split with the  less materialistic branch breaking away to form the Spiritual Franciscans based in Provence. The correlation between this group and  the Beghards, and the Beguines, (primarily a Christian women’s movement active   in the low countries)  is dependent upon the  scholar  who is analyzing it, but all agree that in the thirteenth century,  followers whose ideas originated with the Francisans were  classified  as heretics.   as such, they were  prosecuted, especially at Montpellier, one of the handful of  cities  of  Languedoc where multiple faiths were centered.  A group of Spiritual Franciscans would defy Pope John  XXII, and in 1318 be tried by the Inquisition at Marseilles; twenty five would be burnt alive.^[xiii]  The Inquisition records the confession  of  (Na)Prous Boneta, imprisoned at Carcassone, on August 6, 1325.  Her words reflect her knowledge and awareness of  the pluralistic environment.  She held  the authority of the Dominicans and Franciscans to be more authentic than authority exercised by the Pope speaking for  the Church.  While her words don’t necessarily indicate particular knowledge of specific Jewish beliefs and practices, they do reflect a disgust with the Church’s persecution of the Jews. “Again this pope matches the evil of Herod, for Herod killed the innocents and in a similar way this pope kills many innocents….” She included people of all religions  in her prayer,  ” Lord, may you have mercy on all the sins of the Jews, the Saracens, and all the peoples of the world..” and  elsewhere in her confession stresses repentance, not coercion as the key to God’s mercy.    “Just as Abraham’s sons by the free woman had twelve sons who were patriarchs, so this new order of Preachers, if it  observes its discipline as before, will have twelve sons by this spirit and these are called the twelve gates in holy scripture and God will rehabilitate the Jewish people through this order….” and “Again she says that all men and women, whether Christian or Jew, Saracen or anything else, who believe in the work of the Holy Spirit will be saved…”^[xiv] While she shared the  general view that Jews crucified  the body of Christ,  she indicts the church for crucifying the spirit of Christ.

            The Waldensians and the Beguines were operating in an essentially conventional Christian frame of reference, and  for that reason, their attempts at reformation  could evolve and did.  In the following example, from A Profession of Faith by Waldes of Lyon  in 1180^[xv],  italics represent Waldes’ addition to the standard formula.

“We believe that the devil was made evil not by nature but by his will….  We believe in heart and confess in words the resurrection of this flesh which we bear and no other.  We firmly believe and affirm that judgment is still to come and that each person will receive either reward or punishment for those things committed in this flesh. We do not doubt that alms, and the mass and other good works can be of benefit to the faithful who have died.  And since according to James the Apostle, ‘faith without works is dead’  we have renounced the world; whatever we had we have given to the poor …….We wholeheartedly confess and believe that persons remaining in the world, owning their own goods, giving alms and doing other good works out of their own and oberving the commandments of the Lord , may be saved.. .” (Wakefield 1969:208).

The essential Christian credo is maintained, amplified, and qualified.( usually in terms of addressing clergy power.) 

            However, the essence  of  their heresy  was dissimilar to that of the Cathar and Jews.  The soul  of those groups’  doctrine was irreconcilable with the Church’s.  The dualist basis of Cathar belief — and  its subsequent reinvention of Christianity– and the Jewish insistence on traditional monotheism and an unfulfilled  messianic promise (thus rejecting Christianity in its entirety ) doomed both groups.  Inquistor Gui’s notebook was intended to record and evaluate  societal dissonance from his(the Church’s )   religious point of view.   Heresy, as the   obverse of extreme piety ,  always coexists with   it,  in the opinion of some historians, says  Wakefield.^[xvi]   He  offers a couple of  additional  popular interpretations of that phenomenon.  Certainly times were hard and times were changing; to attribute such ferment as a protest against material conditions, or a class struggle seems as rational as any other explanation.

            These particular populations  active in  Languedoc  during this period  catalyzed responses from the church which would persist  far into the future and  far beyond  Southern France.  One   Languedocian  group was predominantly indigenous and  changed only its religious practices and beliefs without changing other cultural aspects of its life;  the other, predominantly immigrant,      (even if their settlements dated to Roman times), together with  its alien beliefs, arrived simultaneously.  Yet the guiding  principles  of both  groups were  not new.  Cathar dualism could have been an innovation, but  its dualist thought  could also  have derived from Zoroastrian teaching, Hellenistic thought, especially Neo-Platonism, even Gnosticism, the dualism of Marcionite and Manichean communities,  or the comparatively recent  relative Bogomilian dualism. (Wakefield 1969: 16-19). Jewish monotheism predated Christianity.  It was conceiving of  human responsibility,  good and evil , ( especially the origin and nature of evil, ) differently from Gui’s peers and progenitors  which  hurtled Jews and Cathars into collision with the Church.  It is in the cities themselves where opponents    confront each other, both as communities and as individuals. What is remarkable is that though history books generally give the impression that these confrontations  were continual (sieges notwithstanding)  or sharply demarcated  comprehensive events,   primary source material contradicts that reality.  To use the popular  medieval image of a joust, the encounters, though fierce,  were pulsed, sometimes ritualized– and in between, the adversaries waged war on other fronts, dallied in romances, toiled over  scholarly works, traveled, told stories, wrote poetry and songs,  and taught.

The Cities

            To the list of the previously mentioned cities, it is important to footnote Albi which is universally most centrally identified with the  twenty  year  long  Albigensian Crusade, (having  given its a baptismal name,) and St. Gilles,   in respect to the lesser known Jewish Synod of 1216, which had  impact only on a local level. The synod was convened  in response to the Fourth Lateran Council; representatives from Marseille and Narbonne hoped to  prevent implementation of some of its draconian  provisions.^[xvii]

            Since  the sixteenth century, it has been  possible to visit, by traversing canals, practically all of the cities which are living monuments to medieval persecution  in the South of France. The  details of the horrible massacres carried out by the Church –torture, bloodletting, destruction- are currently gleefully  sanitized and poly-wrapped for the economic cause of historical tourism today, in which religion is just another  marketing angle.  Within a day or two of each other by barge are places  which were also  on Benjamin of Tudela’s  itinerary, recorded in  parasangs.^[xviii]   

            Southern France  was notable for   other aspects of culture. ” From distant Cairo, Maimonides singled out Provence as one of the greatest centers of study in a period of general eclipse.”(Twersky: 1961: 24). Take, for example,  Béziers.  Béziers, a major center of Languedoc, on the river Orb, had been a bourgh since  1100, and  its synagogue dated to the same time. Romans planted the first vineyards here and it had been a wine center since.  For Jews, Béziers was a center  for Talmudic scholarship, part of a “network of flourishing schools and academies…”(Twersky 24) The relationship between Jews and Christians were complex.  The viscounties of Béziers, Carcassonne, and Nîmes^[xix]  belonged to the house of Trencavel (Ibid. 36).  Attacks against Jews were a regular ritual; during Holy Week, Jews were traditionally stoned on Palm Sunday at the bishop’s urging. (Twersky  1961:21).,  Under Raymond Trencavel, in the twelfth century, they were allowed to pay Easter fines instead of  face the usual beating and  humiliation. (For  this, and for his tolerance of support of heretics, Raymond was later excommunicated.) And later, as Jews  had not taken part in a plot against Raymond, the feudal lord, they were exempted from a massacres of the inhabitants in 1169 when his son, Roger Trencavel, Viscount of Bézier-Carcassone,  recaptured the city.  Roger also elevated Jews to influential administrative and notarial positions.  ” …Nathan, another Jew, was one of Roger’s stewards.”( ibid.) However, Roger’s Jews were required to pay a special tax.(Costen 38).

            Twersky’s  analysis indicates a large prevalence of “intensely pietistic, partially ascetic tendencies among the learned ” in  the academies of  the Languedoc cities as well as a certain independence of thought.  Two Bézier scholars are singled out in the  in the rhymed dedication of the Sefer ha-Shem of Abraham ibn Ezra, and are  identified with those  contemporary trends in Jewish mysticism– two hasidim, Abraham b. Hayyim and Isaac b. Judah.  Also, a   group of scholars at Béziers were recipients of a rebuke from Rabad, Rabbi Abraham ben David, for “questioning and rejecting his decisions” (Twersky 38); apparently they sided with the majority  of Provencal Talmudic scholars  in how they regarded Maimonides.

            By the end of the twelfth century,  Catharism, also, was well established in Languedoc among the general public and the nobility as well, with even its own church organization.  By 1177, new Cathar bishoprics were established at Toulouse^[xx] and Carcassone, in addition to  the previous one at Albi.  (Costen  61). Contemporary commentators (Costen  70) could confirm the spread and nature of its followers. “Guilhem de Puylaurens remarked that ‘even the nobles, scorning authority and of their own accord and without any opposition, followed one or other of the heretics’ (Duvernoy 1967g:25)  Pierre de Vaux-de-Cernay “…..said  ‘the lords of the Languedoc almost all protected and harboured the heretics, showing them an excessive love and defending them against God and the Church (Guébin et Maisonneuve 1951:5) “(Costen 70)  Costen describes some of the Cathars among the nobility:  “vassels of the Trencavel lords of Carcassone and B’ziers…Blanca, wife of Sicard II, he daughter Mabila, who became a perfecta,” ….  another, Geralda,  wife of the lord of Lavaur and killed in  Simon de Montfort’s   attack, a third, Esclarmonde, wife of the lord of Niort, who, with her children, was condemned for heresy. (Costen 70)..” The count of Foix attended the …consoling^[xxi] of his sister in 1204 and appointed his wife as head of a Cathar convent he founded at Dun and his sister, leader of his convent at Pamiers.” (Costen 70).

            There may be  less known about Jewish women of Languedoc  than their Cathar counterparts.^[xxii]  Cathar women in medieval French society, who did not choose to live as married women found places in the Cathar convents, and girls as little as nine, from impoverished families, might be placed there. (Costen 74). Costen suggests that the Church’s controlling attitude on sex and marriage ( which benefited its coffers, as the number of property heirs diminished) might have been a force in the attractiveness of Catharism to the local inhabitants, who resented the Church’s mandates.  The  Cathars’ very indifference to marriage contributed to   a relaxation  of  marital consanguinity considerations.  However, Catharism appealed not just to the nobility, but to the pressured minor aristocracy and the new and insecure “urban proletariat” (Costen 76). Languedocs ‘s  large cloth industry employed many  weavers (a predominantly Cathar occupation) and  other industries produced  ancillary dry goods, with evolving trade associations among its workers.

            According to Wakefield, the Cathars, or Albigenses, the more common name, “regarded themselves as the  true Church of God…”(Wakefield 1969: 45).  The world, matter,  was not God’s handiwork, but the ” creation of the forces of darkness.” (OShea 10) God/Good ruled the invisible spiritual domain.  Human souls, therefore, could be released through baptism,   or by  rejection of  “the wicked world, [to]  do penance until  the death of the body and the final release of the spirit. Those who did not attain purification in one life might pass, by metempsychosis, from body to body, even through animals. .  At the final judgment day, the good would be separated from evil.” (Wakefield 47)The Old Testament was rejected  by some Cathars on the basis that it recorded the devil’s work; others accepted the wisdom of the prophets. Some Cathars believed  Jesus’ life took place in another world; others, that  Jesus had only been a spiritual being and human only embodied in Paul.  These beliefs were concretized by universally rejecting the Church, its hierarchy and sacraments, its authority,  as belonging to the realm of matter  and they  replaced its  tenets and leadership with its own.. (Ibid. 44-49). Cathars were divided into two groups, the Perfect, ^[xxiii] and believers, or credentes, who supported the Perfects, but lived  in the world without the extreme aceticism of the  spiritual leadership.  Like the Waldensians, they refused to take an oath. ^[xxiv]

            Pope Innocent III, whose passion lay in  reestablishing Christ’s dominion on earth, by Crusades in the Holy Land, or elsewhere, was frustrated by  his bishops’ inability to unify Christendom, i.e., ridding  Europe of heresy,( which entailed  excommunication and the confiscation of heretics’  property. ) First he attempted to reform the bishops.   The bishop at Béziers  who had been replaced by the papal legates, had been suspended, and was subsequently killed. ^[xxv] By the time of the murder of Peter of  Castelnau, the papal legate, in January of 1208, Innocent had conceived of a new, or rather old, solution- -another crusade.  Christian mercenaries would be hired, for the new Holy war in Languedoc, for the same two year remission of sins  offered to  knights headed for the Holy Land. The remaining legate, Arnald-Amaric was to organize and lead it.  Wrote Peter Venable, “…Well, who deserves to be attacked more by you or your people, the pagan who does not know God, or the Christian who acknowledges God with his words, but who fights against him with his deeds? (Houseley 1965:24).” (Costen 118) The  humiliated and, to all appearances humbled , anathemized Raimon V, the  Count of  Toulouse  reconciled with the Church and  along with a group of mercenaries, acquiesced to the persecution of heretics and Jews,  and attempted   to join the crusade entering the Trencavel lands of his nephew, and camping outside the walls of Béziers.  Forseeing disaster, Roger left for Carcassone, taking the whole Jewish community with him.

             On July 22, 1209, in the cathedral of St. Mary  Madelaine in  Béziers, the Pope’s legate arranged the slaughter of  “more than fifteen thousand  (Cathar and Catholic together) unarmed clerics,  women and children.”^[xxvi] ( some say 100,000; some say fewer– the numbers vary in both directions. ^[xxvii]) and  in the  rest of the town and church, looted, and burnt, and massacred the remaining inhabitants, in addition to confiscating the property of the Béziers’  Jews. It was the first conquest  of the Albigensian Crusade.  From there, the crusaders  moved on to Carcassone,  with the same intent, but under new leadership, Simon de Montfort, a Parisian upper-class soldier  who re-named himself the new Viscount of Béziers-Carcassone.  The Fourth Lateran would give  Simon de Montfort  control over all the heretics’ land, which he was to hold as vassal of the King of France,  (Costen 144 ) the same Fourth Lateran which would require Jews to wear a certain badge of identification a red and white circle on their chests; ( to eliminate sexual relations between Christians and Jews/Saracens) establish that  Jews were to be prevented from usury, had to pay tithes on any of property which had belonged to Christians,could no longer hold public office, and had to return interest on crusader’s debts.^[xxviii] Simon de Montfort’s elevation, and the Jews’ debasement  coincided with the devastating persecution  of the Cathars at Carcassone.  The three great Cathar forts were beseiged,  credentes spared,” but 140 Perfecti were burnt….the first of the mass executions …”(Costen 130). After  Carcassone, an attempt on Toulouse^[xxix], short-lived  encounters, but with devastating local effects. Then a new pope and a new crusade.  Many Cathars died, but heresy didn’t; in one form or another,  it spread.           

            Religious and philosophical ideas also faced off.  From Béziers, says Benjamin of Tudela,

“it is two days to Har Gaash which is called Montpellier^[xxx]….scholars of great eminence.  They have among them houses of learning devoted to the study of the Talmud.  Among the community are men both rich and charitable, who lend a helping hand to all that come to them…..From Montpellier, is is four parasangs to Lunel( approximately 24 km). Here lived Rabbenu Meshullam,(Rabad’s teacher along with Rambi of Narbonne^[xxxi])(Twersky(10)) the great rabbi…and his five sons…the students that come from distant lands to learn the Law are taugh, boarded, lodged,and clothed by the congregations, so long as they attend the hours of study…. and from there two parasangs to Posquieres..”^[xxxii]

Meshullam, says Twersky,  “helped the methodical transmission of the philosophic and scientific learning of Spanish Jewry to French Jewry.(Twersky 13.) A footnote comments that Abraham bar Hiyya, disparaged the French scholars’ ignorance of  geometry and algebra, there being no Hebrew books or translations, thus documenting  both the hunger for scientific knowledge, and  an elite monastic society whose inner life seems not to reflect the worldly chaos of the times. Posquieres appears on the Jewish medieval map of the world as the primary locus of  Rabad.

            Posquieres, says  Tudela, is the home of the rich and beneficent Rabbi R. Abraham, son of David, or Rabad, as he is identified  in scholarly studies, who teaches, and pays the expenses of his students who come from great distances to study with him. The twelfth century Talmudist,  is the subject of a comprehensive biography by Isadore Twersky^[xxxiii], which  incidentally is a spiritual and intellectual portrait of the life of Jewish men in those towns of Languedoc.  In the records of Rabad’s peregrinations and that of his students, we see that Jews moved with relative ease and frequency between these cities;  ideas traveled  with the wandering scholars, around the Mediterranean and to the North.  It is in such a  way that ideas of Kabbalah reached  Languedoc. In around 1200, the Sefir Yetsirah, (which arose from Maaseh Bereshith between the  third and sixth century)  began to appear in Provence and Spain.  Never intended for the public, the  secret knowledge was passed from master to disciple by mouth; Rabbad’s son, R. Isaac the Blind,  is more closely asociated with kabbalah,( though there is no writing from Rabbad on the subject) and he himself mentions that there are things learned from his father.( Twersky 287)^[xxxiv].

             A contemporary of  Maimonides, Rabad was one of the first to try and follow a statement back to its original source, revealing the different layers of talmudic argument.(www. Jewish Gates) and  he was deeply involved in the implications of Maimonides’ scholarship. Previously, we have seen how others viewed the Jews; in  considering   Languedocian  Jewish scholarship, in how it speaks, not just what it speaks,  we observe instead  what was of significance to Jewish scholars and community leaders. In that respect, Rabad’s work and that of his contemporaries   is a good illustration of   the diversity of Jewish thinking.

            In the Jewish world “controversy ” frequently  means   different world views; in this case, the “Maimonidean Controversy” is a basically Askenaz (pietist, fundamentalist, isolated , Christian influenced, mystic, traumatized) in opposition to Sepharad (assimilationist, Greek and Muslim influenced) division.  It first began when the Maimonides’ Mishnah Torah got to France and Germany.  Rabad  attacked it on the basis of style –the Greek categorization instead of Jewish form of argumentation. He and the French scholars were outraged that Maimonides didn’t give halachic sources for all his decisions,  a lack which improperly diminished the importance of the rabbis in the eyes of his critics. So Rabbad  wrote a systematic critique of  the Mishnah Torah in the twelfth century. He included the customs and rituals as practiced in Provence.  About the same time Meir Abulafia, the most outstanding Spanish Talmudist of the times, who had written his own commentary,  felt there was both a philosophic and halachic gap– Rambam hadn’t included a belief in the resurrection of the body… these were minority opinions on Rambam though….most people were impressed by his scholarship. Abulafia  tried to swing the opinions of the French Jews in Lunel, unsuccessfully.
            When Samuel ibn Tibbon translated Tthe Guide for the Perplexed into Hebrew, this French group saw Greek thought plus Torah revelation was heresy. Solomon ben Abraham and his student Jonah ben Abraham Gerondi denounced  Aristotelianism. Allegory?  Outrageous. Interestingly, the viewers and views were divided according to class;  the upper classes in France, who  weren’t so observant,  were  supportive of Rambam. The  other northerners banned writings of Maimonides,  even banned some halachic works. Northern Jews  all thought Provence and Spain were lax because they responded to “foreign influence” i.e.,secular studies, science and philosophy.( who, of course,  thought the northerners were superstitious, insular and provincial.)There were attempts to compromise, to rationalize the divergence: David Kimchi in Provence and Christian  Spain, and his opponent, Judah ibn Alfakhar, who critiqued its basis and intention.  Nachmanides got into the fray but wasn’t any more successful in finding common ground.  The Church, which did not usually discriminate among Jews, stepped into the situation in a predictable way.  In 1232, Dominicans in France grabbed all the copies to the Guide and burned them, which horrified everybody–the pro’s accused the anti’s of informing on them to the Dominicans. 

            Rambam’s son compared the detracters to idol  worshippers, somebody desecrated his father’s  tomb in Tiberius. Then in 1242, ten years later , the French took Talmuds by the cartful for burning in exactly the same square where the Guide had been burnt. Controversy simmered quietly while northerners became kabbalists and fundamentalists….so by end of 13th c/ beginning of 14th  centuries, under Abbab Mari Astruc, Solomoben Abraham Adret, a student of Gerondi, they took up where they left off, and Jews in northern France banned secular studies-science, medicine, math and philophy. Jews in Provence said that especially  math and science provided a key to understanding the Talmud. so there was an impending split in the Jewish community if people didn’t follow Adret’s rulings.  With Asher ben Yechiel, he worked out a compromise. July 26, 1305, Adret banned anyone under the age of 25 from studying secular science or metaphysics, though medicine and Jewish philosophical works were allowed. Jews of northern France included scientific studies and the Guide within the ban and enforced the 25 year old limit.(Jewish Gates)^[xxxv]

            As a consequence of the battle against heresy, the Church  evolved a different kind of organizational structure.  Over the course of the twelfth century onwards,  the bishops’ courts had begun to rely on written evidence and witness statements under oath in trials for heresy.  Decisions had been  made through a judge, (the bishop) or someone he appointed, and the pronouncements of Popes had given  them new laws to enforce. Consequently,  heresy had received a legal definition, and penalties: “loss of property, physical punishment, and death. (Thouzellier 1968)”(Costen 164) The refinements of these structural mechanisms lay the groundwork for what would become standardized in the Inquisition. The order, which initially was so associated with the Cathars and other heretics, the Dominicans, was given the search and destroy mission. The Prior of the Dominicans in Provence was ” to choose brothers to carry on the work and told the newly appointed inquisitors to get on with their work with the aid of the civil authorities and without allowing any right of appeal.”( Costen 164) There was opposition to this, so rules were further modified and codified in written form. St. Dominic  hardly exemplified an attitude of  Christian love and forgiveness towards heretics. In his sermon in 1217 he said,  “….But , as the proverb says in my country, ‘where fine words don’t help, clubs prevail’. So we will call up against you the princes and the prelates.  They will gather nations and kingdoms together against [you]…”Costen 168) First inquisitors were placed in the seat of heresy, at  Albi and Toulouse^[xxxvi]. There was revolt and resistance in some towns, e.g., Narbonne, but,  inevitably, it was futile. The thought police, to use Costen’s expression, dominated the landscape of southern France.

            To say the Dominicans/the Church  was  successful does not account for the either the nature, character, tragedy of the human encounters, the depth of the societal upheaval, or the implications for the dynamics established in the tension between Church and state, or the foreshadowings of the persecutions of the next centuries.  Bernard Gui, who was introduced at the beginning of this paper, collected  seventeen years worth of  material from his own proceedings; they are clinical and cool, the writing of a coroner. Yet, his intelligence and dedication to the task set before him by Clement V are clear in the breadth and scope of his thought. His analyses and insights were much too profound  to be ignored. In his discussion of Jews, he divines, in the Hebrew  prayers he quotes,   an expectation that  God is invoked by Jews exclusively to destroy Christians, and deny Christ.  His interpretation is authoritative, and it endures. 

            The outcome of the Albigensian Crusade was multifold.  It yielded Languedoc into the kingdom of France, the Church retained its monopoly in liason with the French state, the Cathar  heresy was stamped out, the Jews were  even more visible as a target, and  the Church now had plenty of  live theological ammunition to deal with  the future, as the blueprint of the  Inquisition  had given way to a working model.

            In the following  words, Gui is acknowledging  the necessary diversity of thought and approaches   to catching  a heretic, but his methodology  could as be applied to the study of medieval religious  history,”..just as no one medicine is for all diseases, but rather different and specific medicines exist for particular diseases, so neither is the same method of questioning, investigation, and examination to be employed for all…..So the inquisitor, like a prudent physician of souls….should not impose or force all the following interrogatories upon everyone without distinction ….no single and infallible pattern can be set…” (Wakefield 378)

Afterword

            If an archaeologist finds shards, it is possible, if there are enough,  sometimes to reconstruct a vessel or at least sense significant aspects of the form-the curvature or the edges may indicate that there is only one possible position for that particular piece.  In the medieval  mosaic, there  are only information fragments, remnants of historical documents,  which can fit in lots of different places; each new configuration  and juxtaposition can present a different picture.  There isn’t room for all the pieces that exist.  Nor can space be left for missing fragments; only when they are found do we discover they had been missing.   In this retrospective exhibit  on medieval heresy, on display are the mechanisms of intolerance  which were initially incorporated into the religious body politic; it takes little imagination to construct  the history of the rationalization of persecution through a contemporary lens, even if the body politic is a secular  theocracy.

  Whether as specific as a reference to the Book of Genesis, or as a synonym for Paradise, the idea of the Garden of Eden abstracts perfection -perfect peace, perfect harmony, perfect health- and links it to divinity. In their entirety, or in the symbolism of their discrete components, the textual precursors of the garden of Eden furnish important conceptual elements for Jewish apocalyptic end time scenarios. Not all Jewish apocalypses draw on the same biblical, historical or mythic paradise, nor do they juxtapose or conflate elements in the same way; however, through their particular use of Edenic imagery, some Jewish apocalypses are thematically related both to each other and to their ancient origins. In this essay, I will explore how Eden reconfigured^[i] attempts to repair a perceived rupture in “the sacred canopy.”^[ii] Through comparative textual analysis and scholarly analysis, it should be possible to trace particular symbols from Eden which appear in blissful end times, and understand how and why they have been reconfigured, and what of their previous associations they have retained as they serve to illustrate a new vision.

          continued… paradise-found-jewish-apocalyptic

On a trip to the Middle East, many years ago, Gregory Massell visited a tiny synagogue in Syria. The lone elderly caretaker, upon finding out that they both hailed from Vilnius, Poland, entrusted this tray, three feet across, to him, having first wrapped it in rags for the border crossing. He said that the custom there was to carry brides on it at their wedding. The border official, spotting the Mogen David in the center, was derisive and dismissive, and thus the border crossing safely accomplished. For years the artifact hung on the wall. Eventually digital photographs enabled a start on decoding the mystery. A professor at Concordia University in Montreal translates the inscription:

Invocations using some of the names of God: O Guider, O Compeller, O
Preserver, O Giver, O Protector (not necessarily in this order)

Scholar Ariella Amar, from the Center for Jewish Art at Hebrew University in Jerusalem contributes more speculation:

“It is indeed a fine piece of art. Yet, I think it is not a piece of Jewish art, and was probably made for Muslims.

The size of three feet indicates that it was made before the end of the 19^th century, possibly in the beginning of the same century. Usually they were used as local tables: trays put on wooden legs.

I am enclosing an article I wrote about a similar but not identical tray. I think that the background and the technical information in this article would be useful for your tray.

The iconography is totally different. The central round part with the fish swimming around the center resembles the Islamic visual concept of the world. Yet some of the parts are missing. Just as an idea I am enclosing a title page from a Jewish Yemenite Bible, from the fifteenth century, which depicts the same visual concept. There are of course no direct connections between the two.”

However, questions remain. The strong central linear Mogen David is certainly untypical of Muslim Mamluk work, the style the platter most closely approximates in terms of the metallurgical techniques and overall design. The head-to-tail fishes, seen in the known Jewish Bible, may relate to the concept of abundance and fertility, as in Genesis 48:20, and it would seem as if the context of a wedding might be conceptually consonant.

Still, further theoretical and scholarly collaboration might shed some light on decoding this beautiful artifact.

LW

Marc Michael Epstein Penn State Press, 1997

Reviewed by Lois Whitmore

Marc Michael Epstein is a man who sees things. Especially medieval things. And he has been perceiving and accumulating pictures in his mind’s eye for a long time. As a child he memorized unicorns in the tapestries in the Cloisters museum, was intrigued by puzzles, seduced by mysteries. As a Director of the Hebrew Books and Manuscripts division of Sotheby’s Judaica department in the eighties, he added to his mental museum as the result of serving as consultant to various libraries, auction houses, museums and private collectors throughout the world. But there is something unusual about his mature vision as a scholar/teacher– he sees, (through the dual lenses of traditional Jewish textual study and art historical methodology,) anomalies, the unexpected, the discrepant, when looking at Jewish art. Epstein communicates that atypical vision through his teaching at Vassar in the Jewish Studies program, and through his publications, one of which, “Dreams of Subversion in Medieval Jewish Art and Literature” (Penn State Press, 1997,) will be discussed here. ” He is in the process of writing a new book for the University of California Press titled “Overthrowing the Idols: A Radical Reappraisal of Jewish Visual Culture,” which deals with topics ranging from rabbinic aesthetics to post-Hassidic kitsch.”^{<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[1]<!–[endif]–>}

The claim of subversive imagery in respect to animal iconography is both bold and novel, especially in light of the paucity of material within that category of Jewish medieval art and literature. But Epstein is a man who has looked carefully at many images over a long period of time. Dissatisfied with the cursory dismissal by art historians and medievalists, and able to translate textual symbolism to the visual, he has revisited every element of the medieval Hebrew page with the scholarly and aesthetic confidence that it contains significant and vital information about Jewish mind-set in the medieval period. His primary postulate is that there is a correlation between Medieval Hebrew visual and textual animal symbolism. His secondary postulate is that those manuscript illuminations can be read in such a way as to account for all the information on the page, including the conceptually unexpected, and the visually peculiar. He initiates his proof/interpretation by stating the obvious: not only are Jews a minority, but they are a persecuted minority. This fact certainly establishes a motive for the creation of intentionally ambiguous imagery which can address a wide audience. Manuscripts, which are in the hostile public eye, must hold up to scrutiny by Christian eyes. Yet those Christian eyes, he suggests, are ignorant and blind in a significant way; they cannot “see” symbolic content which references Jewish texts and tradition. That blindness, he says, was consciously exploited by medieval Jews through the use of subversive imagery which communicated in a coded language only other Jews could read. Their opacity to a contemporary audience, their lack of universality, lends credence to their importance as a medieval mirror. Epstein uses the word “archaeological” to describe his methodology of extracting imagery in terms of Jewish assimilation of Christian pictorial conventions. For him the crucial step in understanding the medieval Jewish mind is decoding “the transformation of mainstream motifs into minority symbols.”

In that respect he is more the subtle cryptologist than archeologist. The world of art history and historiography depends heavily on the concept of provenance. The documentation of the circumstances of production and the chain of ownership are considered essential is establishing authenticity and veracity in history and imagery. Yet such things are not only lacking in his theorizing, but they are irrelevant. That these symbols appear in a unique way only within Jewish medieval documents is overwhelmingly of more significant to him. Epstein asks the expected questions– such as what is intrinsically Jewish about this art— but poses unexpected answers. The artifact itself is evidence that a prior knowledge of Jewish texts was necessary ; otherwise, there would be no correlation of visual code with Hebrew text, imagery, and iconography. What is clear is that this medieval art is Jewish “not because it was produced by Jews because it was produced for [emphasis mine] Jews. “(p. 7) Whether Epstein’s interpretation of them is the true, or the only possible one, is less important than to realize that without his insight, we would not have “seen” these images at all.

Within the general question of Jewish imagery, he looks at the subset of animal imagery and symbolism. He sets this against the larger context of animal imagery characteristic of the medieval period, employing both a small scale statistical analysis of visual images and text references, including sacred text. Verbal animal imagery is preexistent in the Jewish fabulist tradition; the fables of the Talmud support this use of this genre as a central medium of political commentary. Eli Yassef, in his analysis of the Hebrew folk tale, makes the similar point. (Yassef 205)

In the body of his work, Epstein “present(s) the results of these labors, describing the origins, development, and contextual significance of four specific animal symbols, each of which addresses a major area of medieval Jewish mentalités: national self-image, the image of the Torah, God and the problem of evil, and Messianism and eschatology.” (xv)

The appearance of animals in most Christian medieval manuscripts, especially marginalia, is inextricably linked to Christian theology; natural science is, in a sense, the “landscape” of dogma. ^{<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[2]<!–[endif]–>} The theme of hunting in Jewish manuscript illustration is an anomaly, the incongruity, that first attracted his attention to the hare, with which he begins his discussion. The elephant, the second animal Epstein considers, is a more elusive beast, whose visual appearance in a Jewish context is rare. In contrast, its Christian use is more widespread. For example, it appears in “everlasting fighting” with dragons, according to Bartholomew^{<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[3]<!–[endif]–>} and is sometimes illustrated in creation scenarios such as the Aberdeen Bestiary. However, textual references to elephants by Jewish authors is not uncommon. A concluding discussion makes a historical case for the Jewish origins of both dragon and unicorn, which the study’s author feels were appropriated by Christians and are far more common in their art.

Epstein comments that the nature of these Jewish animal symbols is “time-bound,” (13) rightly pointing out that it is their ephemeral nature which makes them so significant in understanding Jews of the Middle Ages. “Medieval Jews inherited from the rabbis of the Talmudic Age a finely tuned sense of irony.” (14) Their subversive images use the dominant culture’s mode of expression: but their allegories affirm Torah, their pursuit and vilification by nations of the world, the consciousness of exile, and dreams of vindication and redemption. Were they an outlet for anger, a safety valve, a guarded act of bravery and defiance such as the Jewish resistance during the Holocaust? Epstein would say so.

There are many illustrations in his book, but Epstein reconstructs the images with words to focus the discussion on different conceptual levels. Almost a dozen Hebrew images are from thirteenth to fifteenth century Germany (with a majority from the fourteenth century); a half dozen Spanish examples, a couple from thirteenth century France, and a scattering from the Middle Europe in the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. He has also included a few sixth century examples as well. Nor does he neglect the text which accompanies these images, as it is the juxtaposition of images and text that offer clues to interpretation. Though it would be interesting to know if his examples are characteristic of work of this period or these places, possibly constituting a “statistical” sample, or whether they are curiosities in a body of surviving works, that issue is not really addressed by Epstein, perhaps because the symbolic meaning he considers its essence is unaffected by such categorization.^{<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[4]<!–[endif]–>}

In the first quarter of the fourteenth century, Castillian artists produced a beautiful haggadah, now in the British Library. (Like many of Epstein’s tantalizing descriptions, this one combines a lyrical narrative style of writing and a scientifically precise analysis.) Besides an illustration of a dressed- to- deceive Esau visiting Isaac, there is a shortened version of the text. Esau the hunter bears a hare over his shoulder. Thus we are introduced to “The Elusive Hare.” The hare “mentioned only twice in the Pentateuch, both times as part of a list of animals whose consumption is forbidden” (17) — this is to be an animal offered to a Patriarch? This blasphemous image certainly captures attention in the way that merely decorative marginalia does not. Perhaps this is an unusual image? No, this manuscript is not a unique example in that respect; on the contrary, a hare-hunt is recurrent haggadah motif in Franco-Germany also, from the medieval period onward. The subtitle of this chapter is “Constructing Identity;” if there was a single animal symbol contributed by Jews in the medieval period, says Epstein, the hare is it. The hare seems to have had “profound and pervasive allegorical significance in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.” (19) In Gabirol in the eleventh and HaLevi in the twelfth centuries, the hunt is an allegory for Israel’s pursuit by strong nations. Therefore, the juxtaposition of hare-hunt imagery with the traditional text celebrating the end of exile, freedom, and redemption must be a key to the text’s contemporary, meaning medieval, interpretation. While the hare’s literary appearance in a Jewish text is confined to a Karaite work of the twelfth century, ^{<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[5]<!–[endif]–>} its appearance for Christians was also a symbol, the epitome of the negative. It stood for homosexuals, and as Jews similarly were deviants, came to stand for Jews as well. The hare outrunning its hunters– its excellent survival skills: its perceptiveness and swift adaptability , i.e., living by its wits, (archetypal trickster) –the obverse of that image of degradation, was what was seized upon by medieval Jews. They brandished it as a symbol of ultimate triumph and redemption. In these hare/hound illustrations, we see anthropomorphic hares served by, and commanding, dogs. “The complete polemic allegory ….might read something like this: Christianity, in pursuing. …and attempting to destroy the physical essence of the Jewish people, …the most hare-like of nations …has forfeited …the blessing obtained by Jacob. …Israel is not entirely blameless, …yet Israel is destined to be redeemed by God” (35) Every hare, says Epstein of the haggadah imagery, will have his day.

If the hare is an unusual animal to find in a Jewish image, what about an elephant on a manuscript page? How does such an uncommon beast as an elephant become associated with the Law? The rarely represented elephant, unlike the hare, does not appear to be a symbol of subversion. Because there are so few visual representations of elephants in the medieval period, Epstein relies heavily on the written word in his symbol analysis. “In the thirteenth century, the hunt of the elephant appears in a rather odd ‘fable’ among those presented by Berechiah HaNakdan in his Mishlei Shuálim, Fox Fables. ” (43 ) Epstein contrasts that text with Yehudah Hadassi’s Eshkol HaKofer of 1184, in which he claims the capture of the elephant is an allegory for the Karaite-Rabbanite issue, without the moral after word which typically accompanies it. In Epstein’s decoding of the Hadassi text, the elephant, the Rabbanite Torah, cannot support itself burdened by the Oral Law, so it is outmaneuvered by the Karaites who use it to defeat them. The Hadassi is straightforward; the Berechiah, he claims, is not. The simple form of Berechiah’s fable itself raises a question– the narrative and its moral afterward, the epimythium, seem not to belong to each other. Simplicity of story is not characteristic of this thirteenth century writer. But if it is irony? The clue is found in Berechiah’s other writings, his self-described “hidden agenda.” (49) Epstein takes the Fox Fables hunt story and begins substituting elements such as “the Church”, “persecuted Jews,” riches kept by the Christians, the Written Law, etc., into the bestiary tale. In this matching of folklore and fable with lived reality, when all the corresponding elements are paired, the only remaining unaligned concept and symbol are “Torah” and “elephant,” giving Epstein his reading of equivalency.

Yassif thinks it likely that Berechiah would have been familiar with the Indian moral animal fables, “…the Kalila we-Dimnah, the fifth book of …. the Panchatantra, which had been translated into Hebrew in the tenth century as well as other international tales, fragments of which turned up in the Cairo genizah. (Yassif 265-266) Although Epstein comments on the rarity of elephants in European experience, it should be noted that the western reach of the Asian elephant’s range was Mesopotamia, and the beast is commonly depicted in an Islamic context in both image and texts of earlier periods.^{<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[6]<!–[endif]–>}

An early example of an elephant in a Jewish context is a mosaic floor in the synagogue of Ma’on at Nirin, Israel…” about 530 CE…” (Epstein 54) where the creature is “…featured among …familiar symbols from the natural world …Jewish ceremonial: a menorah, a shower, a lull and etrog ….lions, palm trees, birds free and in cages..[and elephants] .appear [enclosed in shapes] like medallions.”(54)”…domesticated, wearing saddles…”(55) In an eighteenth century, formerly Poland, now Lithuania, synagogue, and in a seventeenth century synagogue at Hordova, (Ukraine) elephants are paired relative to depictions of the Ark. The paired animal motif is common but usually features birds or lions. When elephant representations are so diverse and so few is it possible to come up with a single explanation? Epstein doesn’t even try. Rather, he engages the reader to join him in thoughtful speculation. If the conceptual context of an elephant is not natural, and not traditional, what about mystical considerations?

The hexagram motif, now associated with Judaism as the Star of David was not a common Jewish symbol till the sixteenth century; however, it encloses a saddled elephant in the Duke of Sussex Pentateuch ( South Germany, fourteenth century.) The star was a magic symbol associated, according to Epstein’s reference to Gershon Scholem, with one of the names of the primary intermediaries between heaven and earth, the symbol of Taftafiyah, one of the names of Metatron^{<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[7]<!–[endif]–>} and this symbol was also written on the back of a mezuzah, which was symbolic of the whole Torah. (63) Interestingly, the elephant appears on the opening page of Deuteronomy “which had, since ancient times, been the symbol of the totality of the Torah itself …called the Mishneh HaTorah, the ‘repetition ( or encapsulation) of the Law’” (60). As the two elements, Torah and elephant each relate to the same third element, the star of David, it would not be farfetched to assume that they relate to each other; that is how Epstein approaches other manuscripts in which an elephant appears with an Ark.

The elephant again holds up the Law in the illuminated liturgical poem, “Adon Imani,” in which the Torah “tells” how she used to be God’s companion and so came to be entrusted to the people of the world. The elephant is in opposition to the dragon which is “..in the ‘sinister’ position; in the subsequent development of kabbalistic symbolism, this becomes the side of the forces of Din (Judgment or Fate), and the elephant, representing the Torah of mercy, appears on the right, the side ultimately associated with Hessed, or Lovingkindness ….(64) ..Elephants are “…used as a symbol of Torah, which is traditionally understood to be the font of divine wisdom.” (65) As religious symbols, elephants are extinct long before the twentieth century, though they appear in a decorative context.

A Hebrew dragon of the middle ages, unlike an elephant of the same period, does not have a consistent image-symbol to represent it. It is linguistically represented by the terms “nahash” ( primordial serpent) , “tanin” (dragons or great sea monsters, Moses’ staff), “t’li”, ( the celestial /astrological dragon) “HaLeviatan,”(giant curled fish) and by illustrations that range from a giant fish to a serpent- like, fire breathing creature, sometimes winged, sometimes having qualities of both birds and lizards. (like the copper dragon of Genesis) “The dragon is particularly interesting,” says Epstein, “because it often seems to serve as a metaphor for metaphysical things whose meaning is veiled. “(71) He quotes Judah HaLevi, in Sefer HaKuzari, “….The dragon is a symbol of the world of the intellect, because by this name are known those hidden things which are impossible to perceive with the senses.”(71) As symbols go, the concept of dragon is not unique to medieval Judaism, having both ancient and contemporary precursors and religious avatars. The mythic ancestors of of this Hebrew incarnation appeared in the stories of Perseus and Andromeda, Apollo and Python, Sigurd and Fafni , Beowulf and Grendel, Indra and Ahi

( Mithra and Ahriman). “Among the ancient Iranians the same myth prevailed, but was sublimated into a conflict between good and evil….”(Baring- Gould 53) The medieval St. George’s dragon is “that old serpent, the devil, who withholds or poisons the streams of grace,” (ibid 316) who contests with the power of God manifest in any baptized Christian. As “indigenous archetypes of evil and power,” (Epstein 72) dragons appear in the Talmud and in rabbinic literature, and are frequently depicted as they are being superseded and weakened. For example, the dragon of Eden is reduced to snake. (nahash)

The Leviathan, the celestial serpent, the “only inherently and explicitly Jewish dragon that appears in Jewish art,” (82) is depicted as doing eschatological battle with the Behemoth or as the ourabouros, head touching tail. (ibid.) Epstein examines the comments on the symbols of Leviathan and the taninim by Eleazar of Worms, one of the German Jewish pietists, the Hasidei Ashkenaz, of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries , ( 77 ) to rationalize the contradictions of free will and determinism. The motif of the Leviathan enclosing other elements, such as Jerusalem architecture, on challah covers or the synagogue ceilings, alludes to the coming of the Messiah, as peace spread over the world. (82)

In contrast, winged and sometimes intertwining dragons dominate Franco-German Mahzorim, where they encroach threateningly on images of the Torah, but cannot ultimately prevail against God. A second reading of the symbol is in attestation to the primacy of God’s order in the universe, where the intertwined dragons threaten faith. Epstein suggests a third association, recalling Rashi on Lamentations 4:3, “Even the tanin offers the breast” (93) which corresponds to the figure Melekh, (Fig 39, opp. 93) with hidden dragons, an image in a Mahzor of thirteenth century France, where the dragon symbolizes a figure of justice, and simultaneously, of parental mercy. He concludes his chapter on the theological harnessing of the mythos of the dragon by recapping the likeness of the demonic to the divine –Eve deceived, the copper serpent idolized, biblical dragons of such power that God’s dominance had to be asserted. That dominance was asserted, through text and illumination, through a multiplicity of dragon symbols.

It is hard to believe the unicorn is an indigenous Jewish symbol. It seems entirely alien. No other beast is more closely identified with the tale of Christian Salvation than the metaphor of the unicorn hunt. The Hebrew biblical beast associated with the unicorn is the empowered and redemptive re’em, or wild ox, (103) the tribal totem of Joseph, ( whose number of horns is unspecified. ) The other unicorn, the self-sacrificing tahash, existed only to provide its skin as a glorious covering for the Desert ark after which it disappeared. (JT Shabbat 2:3 in Epstein, notes 149) Unlike most biblical symbols, the unicorn is unpaired; its uniqueness parallels that of Israel– its horn, the symbol of “the pride or strength of the Messiah or of Israel herself.” (105) Frequently, the unicorn, like the hare, appears as the object of a hunt. A unicorn in a medieval Christian context, such as the Unicorn tapestries, represented the Passion of Jesus, and suffering at the hands of the Jews; it made a different kind of statement. In Hebrew images, the unicorn is never captured, its neck never encircled by a virgin’s arms. It is always shown eluding its captors. In the Brabant Pentateuch ( 1310 Hamburg Epstein opp. 107) illustrators of the manuscript drew on the iconographic tradition of Jewish oppressors, casting Israel as the unconquerable, “protected by a singular God.” (107)

However, there are few images of medieval animals, even fewer unicorns. The juxtaposition of animal symbols frequently compounds the difficulty of decoding their meaning. For example, what does it mean when a unicorn and a lion battle, as they do on the ceiling of the Hodorov synagogue? Lions have a long Jewish history, as a second messianic symbol of the world to come, as Judah, the leader of the tribes, as “a visual homonymic pun ” (109) equating with Torah? Of course for Christianity, the Lion represents Christ. Epstein looks to historical functions of lion as a negative symbol, as in God in his anger, enemies of the Jewish people. Bust historical textual interpretation is not enough; he also stresses the importance of context, the history and culture of place, of setting , in furnishing interpretive clues. Local history for the seventeenth century Jews who worshipped in the synagogue, saw this lion and unicorn on their ceiling , are pogroms and false Messiahs. Epstein imagines that they saw in these symbols a sacred promise–the end of their travails with a simultaneous redemption.

Epstein is at his best when he himself is the authority and he has plenty of visual material with which to work; his acute, insightful imagination focuses the reader’s attention and his textual references usually provide pertinent support. But faced with a paucity of manuscripts, he sometimes inundates his audience with scholarly literary data, which, though interesting of itself, nevertheless strands some of the images of medieval animals in a terra incognita.

For a finale, Epstein demonstrates for the first time the correlation between different animal symbols, their accompanying texts, and the liturgical calendar. He describes the relationship as a pattern of interlocking themes which characterize, reiterate and echo medieval Jews’ unassailable belief in God’s protection and ultimate redemptive power. Marc Michael Epstein enables us to perceive these larger patterns –to “read” between the familiar lines of Jewish texts and, in the speculative decoding of these animal symbols, glimpse, sense, and speculate on the identity and values of the Jews for whom these were “written.”