Who Knew?
Page 9
Realizing that Reuchlin would not participate in their scheme, Pfeffercorn wrote a scurrilous pamphlet called “Handspeigel” (Mirror) impugning Reuchlin’s integrity and scholarship. Reuchlin countered with a writing of his own, the “Augenspeigel” (Eyeglasses). As the controversy continued, the emperor commissioned Reuchlin to examine the writings in question and report to him whether or not they should be consigned to the flames.
Reuchlin’s report was that the books were not as the Dominicans and Pfeffercorn had claimed and, therefore, should not be burned. This did not end the matter. Among the conspirators was a heretic hunter named Hoogstraten, who had the authority to bring Reuchlin and the “Augenspeigel” to trial on charges of heresy, insulting the Church, and favoring the Jews. Reuchlin was about to be condemned and burned, when Archbishop Uriel of Cologne put a stop to the proceedings allowing one month to sort out the problems.
Reuchlin, knowing that he was still in grave danger, wrote a Hebrew letter to the Jewish personal physician of Pope Leo X to intercede on his behalf in obtaining a change of venue. The pope granted it, the trial was held before the bishop of Speyer, and Reuchlin was acquitted.
All of this was going on at the time that the Protestant Reformation was on the rise in Germany. Because of Reuchlin’s prominence, the case had become a national issue. The scandalous behavior of the Dominicans caused great damage to the Catholic Church, and many historians feel that Reuchlin’s intervention on behalf of the Talmud hastened the spread of the Reformation.1
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1. Jacob R. Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World: A Source Book, 315–1791 (New York: Atheneum, 1938), 157–64.
...burghers of Cracow posted a bond against violence toward Jews
King Sigismund of Poland was a rare kind of ruler. To allay the fears of the Jews in Cracow against the possibility of riots, Sigismund in 1530 ordered the burghers (townspeople) of Cracow to post a bond of “ten thousand gulden...as security for the maintenance of peace and safety in the city.” The king proclaimed that anyone who had a quarrel with the Jews “should proceed in a legal manner, and not by violence...”1
While this measure was successful in its own right, the Polish officials managed to pass anti-Jewish statutes in 1538 in a “constitution” with an entire section devoted to limiting the activities of Jews. Nevertheless, this was classed as a period of prosperity for the Jews of Poland and Lithuania. The king even forbade the merchants from holding a market day on the Sabbath so that Jews could trade.2
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1. Simon M. Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1916), 76.
2. Ibid., 84–85.
...a “bobe mayse” is not an old wives’ tale
Generations of people have become familiar with the term bobe mayse, meaning a tall tale, a white lie, a likely story – anything but a truthful utterance to be taken seriously. This was not always so.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries there was a book circulating in Western Europe about a fictional action hero named Buovo, the Italian form of the Anglo-Norman Bevys. He was a type of hero patterned after Robin Hood and Sir Lancelot.
The book was quite popular and was translated into a number of languages. Finally, in 1507–1508, it was translated into Yiddish by Isaac Levita and published in 1541.1 It was the first non-religious book printed in Yiddish.2 The story in its Yiddish form deals with Bove’s adventures in avenging his father’s murder, seeking his stolen patrimony, and resisting the efforts of would-be proselytizers to induce him to leave his faith.
The Bove Buch, as it was called, was a great success and remained in print for almost five-hundred years. In the late 1700s, modernized versions began to appear under the title Bove Mayse. The last popular edition appeared in 1900–1910, still titled Bove Mayse.3
Interest in the type of hero exemplified by Bove eventually began to wane, and people even forgot who he was. However, the unbelievable tales of Bove were transformed, over a period of more than one hundred years, into tall tales told by your grandmother...4 hence bobe mayses.
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1. Currently available in a version by Jerry C. Smith, Elia Levita Bachur’s Bovo-Buch: A Translation of the Old Yiddish Edition of 1541 (Tucson, AZ: Fenestra Books, 2003).
2. Michael Wex, Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods (New York: St. Martin’s, 2005), 32.
3. Ibid., 34.
4. Ibid., 35–36.
...A Jewish graduate has to pay for uninvited guests
In fifteenth-century Italy, Jews seeking higher education frequently ran into laws meant to exclude them from university training.1 If, however, a Jewish scholar reached the point where he was to be awarded a degree, he found himself with an added problem. In Padua, for example, the Jewish graduate had to provide “an open table with food and drink for all who cared to come.”2 After a while, every Jew, on his graduation, had to provide to an official of the university a quantity of “sweetmeats for the academic attendants, and for each of the many ‘nations’ into which the student body was divided.”3 It was estimated that it cost twice as much for a Jew to graduate as for a non-Jew.4
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1. Cecil Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1959), 37.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., 37–38.
...copyright infringers on Jewish books faced snakes, not lawyers
In 1600 three Jewish editors in Venice put out a new edition of Sefer Bedek Habayit, a commentary on rabbinic law, by Joseph Caro. In order to protect themselves against copyright infringement, the men secured a writ ordering excommunication, ban, and anathema for any who would dare to make unauthorized copies of the book. The order was then published in every synagogue in Venice.
As an added deterrent to would-be pirates, the following curse and blessing were appended to the writ:
Upon any one who may transgress against this our decree of excommunication, ban, and anathema – may there come against him “serpents for whose bite there is no charm,” and may he be infected “with the bitter venom of asps”; may God not grant peace to him, etc.
But he that obeys – may he dwell in safety and peace like the green olive tree and rest at night under the shadow of the Almighty; may all that he attempts prosper; may the early rain shower with blessings his people and the sheep of his pasture.1
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1. Jacob R. Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World: A Source Book, 315–1791 (New York: Atheneum, 1938), 404–5.
...Jews voted themselves out of a job
The job of tax farmer (collector) was a lucrative position often assigned to Jews by their respective governments. In 1580 Polish law explicitly forbade Jews from holding this position. Instead of complaining about the discriminatory nature of the law, the representatives of the self-governing body of the Jews met to ratify this law affecting them. So fearful were they of arousing the ire of the Christian population that the Jews worded their statement in part saying that “certain people, thirsting for gain and wealth to be obtained from extensive leases, might thereby expose the community to great danger.”1 In this way the Jewish community officially distanced itself from the task of tax farming, should the opportunity present itself in the future.
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1. Simon M. Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1916), 109–10.
...missionaries were one book short of converting all the Jews
It was a long-held belief in some Christian circles that the Jews had expunged from their sacred Scriptures all the references that would prove conclusively to the world that Jesus was indeed the long-awaited Messiah whose second coming would usher in the Messianic Era. All that was needed was a pure and unedited text.1
In 1642, Jesuit missionary Alvarez Semmedo brought to the attention of his contemporaries
the existence of a Jewish sect in Kaifeng, China, who had absolutely no knowledge of Christianity. This would mean that any Torah in possession of these Jews would not have been altered. The rabbis would be exposed for having perpetrated a massive fraud, and the Christians would have all the proofs of the truth of Christianity. The Jews would no longer have any reason to continue to reject Christianity, and the entire Jewish community would convert.2
However, problems with this thesis soon became evident. The scrolls in possession of the Chinese Jews proved, upon inspection, to be substantially the same as the scrolls extant in Europe.3 Furthermore, Jewish defenders of the charge of falsifying the Torah scrolls pointed out that it would require widespread alteration of books belonging to thousands of people. Why were there no records of strong protests against the wholesale tampering with sacred Scriptures? How could so many people, in such widely dispersed areas, many of them not Jewish, simultaneously participate in wanton desecration of holy writ? What about the scrolls in possession of the earliest Christians? Would they have acquiesced in having such a blow dealt to their newfound faith?4
Interest in the Kaifeng Jewish community continued for centuries more, but the isolation of the congregation eventually caused it to be assimilated into the larger Chinese population.
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1. Michael Pollack, Mandarins, Jews, and Missionaries: The Jewish Experience in the Chinese Empire (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1980), 29.
2. Ibid., 29.
3. Ibid., 104, 105, 155.
4. Ibid., 29–30.
...government-fixed prices designed to hurt Jews actually helped
In 1643, the Warsaw Diet (parliament) embarked on a scheme to impair the livelihoods of Jewish merchants by a discriminatory system of regulating prices. It was designed to put Jewish merchants at a distinct disadvantage in a competitive market. A Polish Christian was limited to a 7-percent profit margin. A Christian foreigner was limited to a 5-percent profit margin. A Jew had to limit himself to a 3-percent profit margin. While this sometimes resulted in a lowering of the quality of the merchandise Jews had to offer for sale, it also meant that higher-quality merchandise sold by Jews could undersell the same products sold by Christians.1
When shoppers came to the market, they found that they could consistently buy the same product from the Jews for a lower price. At this point, Christian merchants could let all the business go to the Jews, or they could lower their prices. In either case, this system would invariably incur the displeasure of the Christian businessmen, but it was the law of the government that made it so.
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1. Simon M. Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1916), 99.
...Christian prophecy promoted a Jewish false Messiah
Some Christian mystics predicted that 1666 was to be “a year of wonders, of strange revolutions in the world, and particularly, of blessing to the Jews.”1 So desperate was their need for salvation that many Jews were guided by these Christian prophecies. When false Messiah Sabbatai Zevi proclaimed himself to be the Messiah in 1648, many Jews truly believed that they were at the dawn of the Messianic Era.
Not knowing exactly how to conduct themselves in such an apocalyptic time, some Jews made radical changes in their behavior. Some began to engage in prolonged fasting in order to hasten the coming of the Messianic Era. Others buried themselves in the earth with only their heads exposed, had melted wax dropped on their shoulders, rolled in the snow, bathed in icy waters, or had their bodies pricked with thorns followed by having themselves afflicted with thirty-nine lashes.2
Believing that their sustenance would be miraculously provided for in the Messianic Era, some Jews ceased all business activities and sold their personal and business assets, often at a fraction of their value.
Word of the supposed Messiah reached Nehemiah Cohen, a Polish Jew who had predicted the imminent coming of the Messiah, but it was not to be through Sabbatai Zevi. Nevertheless, Zevi hastened to send for Cohen that they might meet. The meeting took place, and Cohen came away unconvinced that Zevi was the Messiah.
Cohen’s skepticism almost cost him his life from irate supporters of Zevi, but he escaped to Adrianople. There he posed as a Muslim and reported Sabbatai Zevi’s plan to take the sultan’s throne. Sabbatai was arrested, offered the choice of conversion or death, chose conversion, and his movement ceased to be a threat to Jews or Muslims. Nehemiah Cohen took off his turban, returned to Poland, and lived quietly without publicizing what he had done.3
Even after Sabbatai Zevi converted to Islam, many of his followers believed this was part of a grand plan and followed him into apostasy.4
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1. Jacob R. Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World: A Source Book, 315–1791 (New York; Atheneum, 1938), 261–62.
2. Ibid., 263–64.
3. Professor Heinrich Graetz, History of the Jews, vol. 5 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1895), 152–53.
4. Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World, 268.
...a Jewish woman claimed the ability to deflect bullets
During the Cossack and Tatar rebellion in Poland in 1648–1649, the rebels singled out Jews for annihilation, partly out of bigotry and partly because some Jews had acted as representatives of the ruling landowners in collecting taxes and crops. Whole villages of Jews were faced with the choice of baptism or death. Most chose death.
It sometimes happened that a Cossack would select a particularly attractive Jewess to be his bride. In one such case, while the procession was on the way to the church, the young Jewish woman engaged her prospective bridegroom in a strange conversation. She told the Cossak that she had the uncanny ability to cast a spell over bullets in order to divert them from their target. She convinced the gullible Cossack to permit her to display this ability by having him shoot at her. The Cossack did so and the young woman fell down mortally wounded.1 In this way, she chose death over apostasy as did so many of her coreligionists.
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1. Simon M. Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1916), 147.
...Lithuanian Jews had a national council just to redeem captives
For almost two millennia, Jewish communities dealt with the rescue of captives held for ransom. The Lithuanian National Jewish Council had a set of procedures for dealing with this problem. One of the considerations was not to pay excessively to redeem captives lest this encourage more capturing for strictly monetary purposes.
The following measures were adopted by the Lithuanian council.
Communities were enabled to spend up to ten gold pieces without any application or authorization to rescue a captive. For sums from ten to sixty gold pieces, the community had to apply to the nearest jurisdiction with sufficient rabbinical authority to approve the amount. For amounts exceeding sixty gold pieces, permission had to be granted by one of three higher-level designated jurisdictions.
When funds were being raised to redeem captives, each community was supposed to meet its assessed obligation and to do so within certain time constraints. In the event they failed to do so, the offending community was subject to sanctions imposed by the council.1
While most people were ready and willing to do their share, the involuntary characteristic of this fundraising showed the importance stressed by the Jewish community of looking after the welfare of each Jew, even it that person was a captive in a far-off land.
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1. Jacob R. Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World: A Source Book, 315–1791 (New York: Atheneum, 1938), 454–58.
...when Jews are expelled the economy suffers
In 1741 Czarina Elizabeth Petrovna, hoping for a mass conversion of Jews to Christianity, issued an edict expelling all the Jews from the cities of Great Russia and Little Russia. Her intentions were twofold. One possible consequence she expected was mass conversions of Jews to Chri
stianity. Secondly, she thought she was giving a commercial advantage to the Russian businessmen.1
Aside from the fact that not even one Jew accepted Christianity, severe damage to Russian commerce occurred. Complaints from Russian merchants and Greek contractors began to arrive in the Senate. The merchants were suffering because their affairs were so closely intertwined with the Jews. Revenues to the exchequer were also down. The Senate endorsed the petitions and sent them along to the czarina.2 The empress turned down the petitions, saying, “From the enemies of Christ I desire neither gain nor profit.”3
In 1764 Catherine II, the new czarina, received a petition from the nobles and elders requesting that the Jews be permitted to enter the kingdom for purposes of trade. Catherine, however, was afraid to make a beneficial gesture toward the Jews as her first major decision. She declined to intervene, the Jews remained expelled, and Russian commerce continued to suffer.4
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1. Simon M. Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1916), 255.
2. Ibid., 256–57.
3. Ibid., 257.
4. Ibid.
...coins and pogroms helped propel the Rothschild fortune
Meyer Amschel Rothschild was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in 1743. At a young age he entered the banking business. Through his interest in collecting old coins, Rothschild became friends with William the Landgrave.1 During their friendship, Rothschild became drawn into William’s brokerage business. After a while, William became the elector2 to the region of Hesse-Cassel, a district in Germany.