Brothers from Afar

Rabbinic Approaches to Apostasy and Reversion in Medieval Europe

Ephraim Kanarfogel

• Publisher: Wayne State University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780814340295
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

In Brothers from Afar: Rabbinic Approaches to Apostasy and Reversion in Medieval Europe, Ephraim Kanarfogel challenges a long-held view that those who had apostatized and later returned to the Jewish community in northern medieval Europe were encouraged to resume their places without the need for special ceremony or act that verified their reversion. Kanarfogel's evidence suggests that from the late twelfth century onward, leading rabbinic authorities held that returning apostates had to undergo ritual immersion and other rites of contrition. He also argues that the shift in rabbinic positions during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was fundamentally a response to changing Christian perceptions of Jews and was not simply an internal halakhic or rabbinic development. Brothers from Afar is divided into seven chapters. Kanarfogel begins the book with Rashi (1040–1105), the pre-eminent European rabbinic authority, who favored an approach which sought to smooth the return of penitent apostates. He then goes on to explain that although Jacob Katz, a leading Jewish social historian, maintains that this more lenient approach held sway in Ashkenazic society, a series of manuscript passages indicate that Rashi's view was challenged in several significant ways by northern French Tosafists in the mid-twelfth century. German Tosafists mandated immersion for a returning apostate as a means of atonement, akin to the procedure required of a new convert. In addition, several prominent tosafists sought to downgrade the status of apostates from Judaisim who did not return, in both marital and economic issues, well beyond the place assigned to them by Rashi and others who supported his approach. Although these mandates were formulated along textual and juridical lines, considerations of how to protect the Jewish communities from the inroads of increased anti-Judaism and the outright hatred expressed for the Jews as unrivaled enemies of Christianity, played a large role. Indeed, medieval Christian sources that describe how Jews dealt with those who relapsed from Christianity to Judaism are based not only on popular practices and culture but also reflect concepts and practices that had the approbation of the rabbinic elite in northern Europe. Brothers from Afar belongs in the library of every scholar of Jewish and medieval studies.

1

Assessing the Ashkenazic Context

In his pioneering study of Rashi’s posture toward a Jew who had apostatized (a meshummad) either willingly or under duress, Jacob Katz argues that Rashi’s interpretive shift of the talmudic principle “[Yisra’el] ’af ‘al pi she-ḥata Yisra’el hu” (“A Jew, even though he has sinned [grievously], remains a Jew”), from a broad aggadic formulation to one that has halakhic valence for the individual apostate, had a decisive impact on subsequent halakhic policy in medieval Ashkenaz. According to Katz, this talmudic principle, as it was applied by Rashi, became the dominant policy with respect to the status of the apostate in medieval Ashkenazic society.

Jews who succumbed under duress and were forcibly converted to Christianity during times of persecution, or had converted so that their lives would be spared, or had willfully abandoned Judaism could return (or revert) to the Jewish community at any time. Moreover, a returning apostate could once again participate in prayer services and in other aspects of religious and communal life without any additional requirements or representations beyond a personal commitment to repent and to be a loyal and law-abiding member of the Jewish religious community once again. Indeed, Katz asserts that Rashi’s underlying intent was to delineate that conversion to Christianity via the baptismal font did not diminish in any way the apostate’s ability to return, swiftly and completely, to full participation in Jewish life.1

Thus Rashi rules that it is forbidden to take interest from a meshummad, except in extreme situations where the apostate had resorted to trickery to hurt the Jewish lender. Similarly, Rashi ruled (as his predecessor Rabbenu Gershom of Mainz did, and against what appears to be the regnant geonic view) that a kohen who had accepted Christianity but later recanted and returned to the Jewish community could resume pronouncing the priestly blessing. In addition, Rashi held that an apostate must in every instance (where he is the only brother available), and regardless of when he had apostatized, perform ḥaliẓah to free his deceased brother’s childless wife from the potential marital bond (ziqah) between them, since he is still considered to be a Jew.2

During the time an apostate lived outside the Jewish community as a Christian, the members of the Jewish community in good standing were not to consider an apostate (or relate to him) in either personal or economic matters as a non-Jew, although limitations were placed on certain forms of fraternization, such as partaking from the food of an apostate. Thus, in addition to the prohibition against lending to an apostate (or borrowing from him) at interest, the apostate’s betrothal of a Jewish woman (assuming her acquiescence) was fully effective. At the same time, once an apostate made the decision to return to the practice of Judaism and to the Jewish community, and his commitment to repent became known, other Jews were permitted to “consume his bread and drink his wine.” There was no need for a waiting or probation period to confirm that his return was undertaken in good faith.3

Rashi’s rulings in instances such as these were not always novel,4 but he had two overarching aims in offering them. First, he wished to dispel the notion that apostasy to Christianity constituted an irrevocable dislocation of the individual from Judaism and the Jewish community. Baptism did not vitiate the individual’s halakhic status as a Jew, even in instances where the apostate had accepted Christianity willingly. Second, Rashi understood that Jewish converts to Christianity during this period often vacillated in their new religious commitment. In accordance with the status of the mumar in talmudic parlance—whose rejection of Judaism or Jewish law was perhaps only partial or temporary, and whose return to observance was deemed possible if not imminent—Rashi, and those leading halakhists in Ashkenaz during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries who embraced his view, wished to encourage and ease the way for the apostate’s return.5

Katz contends, however, that at least some members of Ashkenazic society intuitively felt that one who had undergone baptism but now sought to return to the Jewish community should not be automatically readmitted. Thus, despite the smooth and immediate process of return advocated by Rashi and other rabbinic figures, Katz concludes that “the popular view did not, however . . . accept the view that baptism did not affect the Jew’s character qua Jew. Indeed, advocates of this view felt that the repentant apostate must undergo a ceremony of purification in the ritual bath in the same way as a proselyte, a practice that was not in vogue during the geonic period.”6 Katz maintains that this popular practice was occasionally reflected and even referred to in Ashkenazic rabbinic literature of the thirteenth century, by sources and authorities such as Sefer Ḥasidim and Meir of Rothenburg (d. 1293).7

Katz’s characterization of the origins and status of ritual immersion for the returning apostate was utilized by historians who encountered other kinds of evidence for an immersion ceremony in medieval Europe. Yosef Yerushalmi, in his study of the Church inquisition in France at the time of Bernard Gui (c. 1320),8 presents information on Jewish practices that Bernard obtained from the confessions of Jewish converts to Christianity who had subsequently lapsed (which may also have included those who lived at some point in Germany). In reporting “on the manner in which apostates were received back into the Jewish community,” Bernard transmits a description from those he had interrogated about the rituals employed to re-judaize them. The returning apostate was stripped of his garments and bathed in warm water. The Jews would energetically rub sand over his entire body but especially on his forehead, chest, and arms, which were the places that received the anointments of the chrism during baptism. The nails of his hands and feet would be cut until they bled, and his head was shaved. He was then immersed three times in the waters of a flowing stream, and a blessing over this immersion was recited.9

Yerushalmi searched for Jewish legal sources that mandated or could otherwise confirm these practices. He found no such requirement in “the standard medieval codes,” although he does point to the small number of rabbinic passages from the medieval period that seem to have acknowledged the practices noted by Katz.10 At the same time, however, Yerushalmi found that quite a few of the leading sixteenth- and seventeenth-century halakhists in Eastern Europe referred to and embraced the requirement that a returning apostate undergo immersion; these included Moses Isserles (Ramo, d. 1572), Solomon Luria (Maharshal, d. 1573), Yo’el Sirkes (Baḥ, d. 1640), and Shabbetai b. Meir ha-Kohen (Shakh, d. 1663). Yerushalmi concludes that, “from the sources available to us, we cannot prove with finality that the re-judaizing rite as described by Bernard Gui is authentic. We can assert, however, that most of the elements appear highly plausible. The custom of requiring a ritual bath of the penitent apostate definitely existed.”11

As did Katz, Yerushalmi regards this act of “un-baptism” (as some have referred to it, since this act might also have been considered a way to symbolically undo or reverse what had occurred at the baptismal font) as a popular custom that perhaps had a measure of rabbinic approbation during the medieval period, rather than as the more formal halakhic requirement that it seems to have become by the early modern period. Similarly, William Chester Jordan has succinctly characterized the situation in northern France during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as follows: “Whatever elitist rabbinic views might have been [especially since a ritual of un-baptism implied that the Christian ceremony of baptism was efficacious], an ‘un-baptizing’ ritual was being practiced.”12

Writing a decade after Yerushalmi, Joseph Shatzmiller returned to the question of whether an apostate from Judaism who had decided to abandon Christianity and return to Judaism was required to undergo immersion. Shatzmiller notes that two responsa found among those issued by an older contemporary of Bernard Gui, Solomon b. Abraham ibn Adret of Barcelona (Rashba, d. c. 1310), rule, in accordance with the geonic view, that such an immersion ceremony or ritual was not required, although according to these geonic sources, public admission of guilt along with words of admonition—and even lashes—might well be indicated.13

Shatzmiller also highlights a passage from the talmudic commentary to tractate Yevamot composed by Rashba’s student, Yom Tov b. Abraham Ishvilli (Ritva, d. c. 1325). Ritva asserts that while there is no requirement according to the letter of Torah law to undergo immersion, there is a rabbinic requirement to do so: “ve-’af ‘al pi khen, hu tovel mi-derabbanan mishum ma‘alah,” which Shatzmiller understands as “for the sake of perfection.” After citing an additional inquisitorial account of such an immersion, Shatzmiller concludes that the formulations associated with Rashba which dismiss the need for immersion are legal prescriptions that do not necessarily reflect what was actually being done in Spain in his day as a matter of practice. Indeed, even if this immersion was being imposed “for the sake of perfection” (as his younger contemporary Ritva put it), Rashba regards this rite as inappropriate, since it implies recognition of the efficacy of the Christian sacrament of baptism. By stating unequivocally that no such immersion was required or should be performed in practice, Rashba, who was also an effective communal leader of long standing, sought to stress that no recognition of baptism should be implied in any way, against what might well have been the current practice.14

In accordance with the studies of Yerushalmi and Shatzmiller, Elisheva Carlebach concludes that, despite the vigorous efforts of Meir of Rothenburg in the late thirteenth century—following those of Rabbenu Gershom and Rashi—to sustain and nurture the Jewish status of repentant apostates, “Jewish folk beliefs and traditions concerning the efficacy of baptism endured. Returning apostates or forced converts were required to undergo various purification rites in order to rejoin the Je...