PERSECUTION, POLEMIC,

AND DIALOGUE
Essays in Jewish-Christian Relations
 JUDAISM AND JEWISH LIFE

EDITORIAL BOARD
Geoffrey Alderman (University of Buckingham, Great Britain)
Herbert Basser (Queens University, Canada)
Donatella Ester Di Cesare (Università “La Sapienza,” Italy)
Simcha Fishbane (Touro College, New York), Series Editor
Meir Bar Ilan (Bar Ilan University, Israel)
Andreas Nachama (Touro College, Berlin)
Ira Robinson (Concordia University, Montreal)
Nissan Rubin (Bar Ilan University, Israel)
Susan Starr Sered (Suffolk University, Boston)
Reeva Spector Simon (Yeshiva University, New York)
Essays in Jewish-Christian Relations

DAV I D BERGER

Boston
2010
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Berger, David, 1943-

Persecution, polemic, and dialogue : essays in Jewish-Christian relations.
p. cm.—(Judaism and Jewish life)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-934843-76-5 (hardback)
1. Judaism—Relations—Christianity. 2. Christianity and other
religions—Judaism. 3. Christianity and antisemitism—History.
4. Antisemitism—History. I. Title.
BM535.B4655 2010
296.3’96—dc22
2010017685

Copyright © 2010 Academic Studies Press

All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-934843-76-5 (hardback)

Book design by Ivan Grave

Published by Academic Studies Press in 2010

28 Montfern Avenue
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For Pearl
 CONTENTS

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Spanning the Centuries

Anti-Semitism: An Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

The Middle Ages

From Crusades to Blood Libels to Expulsions:
Some New Approaches to Medieval Anti-Semitism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
A Generation of Scholarship on Jewish-Christian Interaction
in the Medieval World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Jacob Katz on Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Introduction to The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages:
A Critical Edition of the Nizzahon Vetus with an Introduction,
Translation, and Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
On the Image and Destiny of Gentiles in Ashkenazic Polemical Literature 109
On the Uses of History in Medieval Jewish Polemic against Christianity:
The Quest for the Historical Jesus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Christians, Gentiles, and the Talmud: A Fourteenth-Century
Jewish Response to the Attack on Rabbinic Judaism . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Mission to the Jews and Jewish-Christian Contacts in the Polemical
Literature of the High Middle Ages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
The Barcelona Disputation: Review Essay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Christian Heresy and Jewish Polemic in the Twelfth
and Thirteenth Centuries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

— vii —
 Contents

Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille, and Jacob Ben Reuben:

A Study in the Transmission of Medieval Polemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
The Attitude of St. Bernard of Clairvaux toward the Jews . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
St. Peter Damian: His Attitude toward the Jews and the Old Testament 261

Modern and Contemporary Times

Religion, Nationalism, and Historiography:
Yehezkel Kaufmann’s Account of Jesus and Early Christianity . . . . . 291
The “Jewish Contribution” to Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
Jewish-Christian Relations: A Jewish Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Reflections on Conversion and Proselytizing
in Judaism and Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
On Dominus Iesus and the Jews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
Revisiting “Confrontation” After Forty Years:
A Response to Rabbi Eugene Korn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
Dabru Emet: Some Reservations about a Jewish Statement
on Christians and Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
Jews, Christians, and The Passion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399

Index of Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420

— viii —
 INTRODUCTION

Like Jewish identity itself, which is rooted in a complex, tangled skein of

religion and peoplehood, Jewish-Christian relations as a field of inquiry
resists easy definition. On the one hand, its focus is narrower than the
totality of the Jewish experience in Christian lands; on the other, its reach
extends beyond the examination of quintessentially religious interactions.
The studies in this volume, while remaining well within the parameters
of any reasonable definition of the field, range from religious polemic to
images of the Other to the waxing and waning of anti-Semitism, often
seen through the prism of ever-changing historiographical perceptions.
My interest in this subject emerged out of a religious matrix. As
I noted in the review essay of Robert Chazan’s Barcelona and Beyond
reprinted in this collection, I was especially fascinated by Nahmanides’
account of his 1263 disputation when I read it as a high school student
drawn to a text defending Judaism against a Christian critique. As
a senior in Yeshiva College, I attended a class in medieval history taught
by Norman Cantor, who supplemented his work at Columbia University
with a course at Yeshiva. Since I had majored in classical languages,
I chose a paper topic that would enable me to use Latin—and, I suppose,
to show off my ability to do so. Because of a stray line in Cantor’s
Medieval History to which I made a brief allusion in that paper, I decided
to write about the attitude of St. Peter Damian (with whom I was of
course entirely unfamiliar before that year) toward the Jews. The paper
questioned the validity of Cantor’s remark, and his single comment
was both gratifying and sobering: “A+. Merits publication. Still, I think
you miss the point.” To a significant degree, this undergraduate study,

— ix —
 Persecution, Polemic, and Dialogue

which revealed a key source of Damian’s polemic against the Jews and
was published a year later in the journal of an Orthodox Jewish student
organization, served as the underpinning of my subsequent work in this
field. The readers of this collection will have more than enough data to
determine whether or not I continue to miss the point.
Since Cantor served on the admissions and fellowship committee
of Columbia University’s graduate History Department, to which I was
admitted during that academic year, the course that I took with him no
doubt had another, even more crucial effect on my subsequent career.
As a graduate student at Columbia working with the guidance of Gerson
Cohen, I wrote a Master’s thesis on Nahmanides that had nothing to do
with his disputation. But in a course with the semi-retired Salo Baron,
I wrote a paper on St. Bernard of Clairvaux and the Jews modeled in
part on the article about Damian; years later, it became my first scholarly
publication after the completion of my doctorate. As I faced the daunting
task of choosing a doctoral dissertation topic, a college classmate named
Sidney Hook gave me a soft cover volume recently published for teaching
purposes at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. It consisted of a photo-
offset of a medieval polemic against Christianity entitled Sefer Nizzahon
Yashan, or Nizzahon Vetus, taken from Johann Christoph Wagenseil’s
1681 collection Tela Ignea Satanae. The Nizzahon Vetus, with its intriguing
amalgam of Scriptural polemic, attacks on the New Testament and
Christian doctrine, critique of Christian morality, and uninhibited
(or almost uninhibited) vituperation, captured my attention and
imagination. The edition, translation and commentary that emerged not
only led to a PhD but launched me on a lifelong study of Jewish-Christian
interaction along the widest thematic and chronological spectrum.

As I indicated in an essay providing personal reflections on the

value of academic Jewish Studies,1 scholarly inquiry into medieval
relations between Christians and Jews grew into engagement with
contemporary issues of remarkable weight and controversy. One of

1 “Identity, Ideology, and Faith: Some Personal Reflections on the Social, Cultural and
Spiritual Value of the Academic Study of Judaism.” In Study and Knowledge in Jewish Thought,
ed. by Howard Kreisel (Beer Sheva, 2006), pp. 11–29. That essay, scheduled to reappear
in a companion volume published by Academic Studies Press, provides an account of the
trajectory of my scholarly interests that supplements and elaborates the brief remarks in
this Preface.

— x—
 Introduction

these issues, despite a novel formulation and setting, was a reprise of

the polemics of old. Pursuant to a request from a Jewish organization,
Michael Wyschogrod and I wrote a booklet responding to the arguments
of “Jews for Jesus” and similar missionary organizations.2 The tone and
approach of this work are more respectful, sensitive, and polite than
the typical tracts of the past, but there is no avoiding the fact that
many of the issues would have been familiar to participants in medieval
disputations. Nonetheless, as the title of the present volume implies,
a dramatic and welcome transformation has moved the center of gravity
of Jewish-Christian interaction from persecution and polemic to often
friendly dialogue, although the burdens of the past and the challenges
of the present render the new relationship complex, challenging, and
strewn with minefields. Some of my forays into this arena appear in the
latter section of this book, but I have also been compelled to engage
significant challenges that have not made their way into print.
To take just the most recent example, the United States Conference
of Catholic Bishops issued a statement in July 2009 objecting to
a remark in a 2002 Catholic document entitled Reflections on Covenant
and Mission. Reflections, in a passage that its authors surely regarded as
entirely uncontroversial, had affirmed that “Catholics participating in
inter-religious dialogue, a mutually enriching sharing of gifts devoid
of any intention whatsoever to invite the dialogue partner to baptism,
are nonetheless witnessing to their own faith in the kingdom of God
embodied in Christ. This is a form of evangelization, a way of encouraging
the Church’s mission.” The 2009 statement found fault with this position:
“Reflections on Covenant and Mission proposes inter-religious dialogue as
a form of evangelization that is ‘devoid of any intention whatsoever to
invite the dialogue partner to baptism.’ Though Christian participation in
inter-religious dialogue would not normally include an explicit invitation
to baptism and entrance into the Church, the Christian dialogue partner
is always giving witness to the following of Christ to which all are
implicitly invited.”
Jews involved in dialogue with Christians were taken aback, even
stunned, by what appeared to be a redefinition of the objective of

2 Jews and “Jewish Christianity” (New York, 1978). Russian translation by Mikhail Ryzhik
(New York, 1991). Reprinted as Jews and “Jewish Christianity”: A Jewish Response to the
Missionary Challenge (Jews for Judaism: Toronto, 2002).

— xi —
 Persecution, Polemic, and Dialogue

interfaith dialogue so that it now affirmed a Catholic intention to issue

an implicit invitation that their Jewish partners embrace Christianity.
As a member of a delegation of the Rabbinical Council of America and
the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America that holds
regular discussions with representatives of the USCCB, I formulated
a friendly, respectful, but vigorous letter asserting that we could not
continue business as usual as long as these two sentences remained.3
Shortly thereafter, I was the primary author of a briefer letter sent to
the USCCB by five Jewish organizations making a similar point.4 It is
an understatement to say that I was pleasantly surprised when the
bishops, after weeks of deliberation and several unpublicized interchanges,
removed the problematic sentences from the official document. This affair
illustrates the continuing tensions in even the most amicable sphere of
Jewish-Christian relations, but it also demonstrates an unprecedented
level of sensitivity to Jewish concerns.
On a lighter note, Sister Mary Boys, who is both an academic
and an ecumenical leader, told a memorable story many years ago in
her response to a talk that I was invited to deliver at Boston College
on the history of Jewish-Christian relations. She was present, she
reported, at an ecumenical Passover Seder (perhaps a few days before
the holiday itself). It is worth remembering that several hundred years
ago participation in a Seder would have subjected a Christian to a charge
of Judaizing and in the case of a converso could have been grounds for
burning at the stake. When the time came for the first of the four required
cups of wine, several Catholic participants asked Sister Boys a question.
The Seder was being held during Lent, and the questioners had taken it
upon themselves to abstain from alcoholic beverages during that season.
Must they consequently refrain from drinking the wine? She thought
for a moment and responded, “Tell me. St. Patrick’s Day also falls during
Lent. Do you drink on St. Patrick’s Day?” The answer was affirmative. If
so, ruled Sister Boys, the Passover Seder may be granted the same status
as St. Patrick’s Day. After her presentation, I told her that it was worth
coming to Boston to hear this story, although I would have ruined it
by suggesting that they drink grape juice. Amusing as this wonderful
3 The letter is available on the websites of both organizations. See http://www.rabbis.org/
news/article.cfm?id=105461 and http://www.ou.org/public_affairs/article/orthodox_
response_to_catholic_bishops_statement_on_mission_dialogue/.
4 This letter is available at http://www.adl.org/Interfaith/usccb_letter.asp.

— xii —
 Introduction

story is, it provides a striking, very serious illustration of the dawning

of an age that—for all its abiding conflicts and sometimes profound
difficulties—would seem as strange to medieval Jews and Christians as
Alice’s Wonderland.
Though this collection includes the lion’s share of what I have
written about this topic, I have not incorporated everything. Relatively
short book reviews, even if they make substantive points beyond the
assessment of the book itself, have been omitted.5 So has an article that,
while not written as a review, is focused on a specific mistranslation and
its implications for the interpretation of a key historical document.6
Articles in newspapers and a non-academic journal commenting on
Catholic-Jewish relations, the legacy of John Paul II regarding Jews,
and the controversy over the text of the Tridentine mass have also been
excluded.7
Then there are three substantial articles that I have left out after
some inner struggle. The first is an overview of the history of the Jewish-
Christian debate omitted because it seemed inappropriate to include
an encyclopedia article and because much, though by no means all, of
its content is represented elsewhere in the book.8 The other two are
directed largely to an Orthodox audience, although they decidedly have
wider implications. One of these is a review essay of a work by one of the
most important ecumenical thinkers in the Jewish community, where
I express both considerable admiration and profound disagreement.9
Finally, at a meeting of The Orthodox Forum, which takes place annually

5 These include reviews of Daniel J. Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics Against Christianity
in the Middle Ages, Association for Jewish Studies Newsletter 22 (March, 1978): 16–17,
19; Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews, American Historical Review 88 (1983): 93;
Hyam Maccoby, Judaism on Trial: Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages, Jewish
Quarterly Review 76 (1986): 253–257; Gavin Langmuir, History, Religion and Antisemitism,
American Historical Review 96 (1991): 1498–99; B. Netanyahu, The Origins of the Inquisition
in Fifteenth-Century Spain, Commentary 100:4 (October, 1995): 55–57.
6 “Cum Nimis Absurdum and the Conversion of the Jews,” Jewish Quarterly Review 70
(1979): 41–49.
7 “The Holocaust, the State of Israel, and the Catholic Church: Reflections on Jewish–Catholic
Relations at the Outset of the Twenty-First Century” (in Hebrew), Hadoar 82:2 (January,
2003): 51–55; “A Remarkable Legacy,” Jerusalem Post, March 11, 2005; “Let’s Clarify the
Purpose of Interfaith Dialogue,” Jerusalem Post, Feb. 16, 2008.
8 “Jewish-Christian Polemics,” The Encyclopedia of Religion 11: 389–395.
9 “Covenants, Messiahs, and Religious Boundaries,” a review essay of Irving Greenberg,
For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter between Judaism and Christianity,
Tradition 39:2 (2005): 66–78.

— xiii —
 Persecution, Polemic, and Dialogue

under the auspices of Yeshiva University, I wrestled with texts about

non-Jews in classical Jewish sources that pose ethical problems for the
sensibilities of many contemporary believers. The article that emerged
from that effort is simultaneously scholarly, religious, and deeply
personal. Readers are invited to peruse it, but I did not think that it
belonged in this volume.10
I am grateful to Simcha Fishbane for inviting me to publish this
collection of essays and to Meira Mintz, whose preparation of the index
served as a salutary reminder of the thoughtfulness and creativity
demanded by a task that casual observers often misperceive as routine
and mechanical. Menachem Butler was good enough to produce PDF files
of the original articles that served as the basis for the production of the
volume. I can only hope that the final product is not entirely unworthy
of their efforts as well as those of the efficient, helpful leadership and
staff of Academic Studies Press among whom I must single out Kira
Nemirovsky for her diligent and meticulous care in overseeing the
production of the final version.
I am also grateful to the original publishers of these essays for
granting permission to reprint them in this volume.
Finally, when publishing a book that represents work done over the
course of a lifetime, an author’s expression of gratitude to wife and family
embraces far more than the period needed to write a single volume.
Without Pearl, whose human qualities and intellectual and practical
talents beggar description, whatever I might have achieved would have
been set in a life largely bereft of meaning. And then there are Miriam
and Elie—and Shai, Aryeh and Sarah; Yitzhak and Ditza—and Racheli,
Sara, Tehilla, Baruch Meir, Breindy, Tova, and Batsheva; Gedalyah and
Miriam—and Shoshana, Racheli, Sheindl, and Baruch Meir. Each of these
names evokes emotions for which I am immeasurably grateful and which
I cannot even begin to express.

10 “Jews, Gentiles, and the Modern Egalitarian Ethos: Some Tentative Thoughts.” In Formulating
Responses in an Egalitarian Age, ed. by Marc Stern (Lanham, 2005), pp. 83–108.

— xiv —
 ANTISEMITISM
An Overview

From: History and Hate: The Dimensions of Anti-Semitism (Jewish Publication

Society of America: Philadelphia, 1986), pp. 3–14.

We shall never fully understand anti-Semitism. Deep-rooted, complex,

endlessly persistent, constantly changing yet remaining the same, it
is a phenomenon that stands at the intersection of history, sociology,
economics, political science, religion, and psychology. But it is often
the most elusive phenomena that are the most intriguing, and here
fascination and profound historical significance merge to make this
subject a central challenge to Jewish historians.
Despite its nineteenth-century context and its often inappropriate
racial implications, the term anti-Semitism has become so deeply entren-
ched that resistance to its use is probably futile. The impropriety of the
term, however, makes it all the more important to clarify as fully as possible
the range of meanings that can legitimately be assigned to it. Essentially,
anti-Semitism means either of the following: (1) hostility toward Jews
as a group which results from no legitimate cause or greatly exceeds any
reasonable, ethical response to genuine provocation; or (2) a pejorative
perception of Jewish physical or moral traits which is either utterly
groundless or a result of irrational generalization and exaggeration.
These definitions can place an atypical and sometimes unwelcome
burden on historians, who must consequently make ethical judgments
a central part of historical analysis. When is a cause legitimate or
a provocation genuine? At what point does a generalization become
irrational or a response exceedingly unethical? Most anti-Semites have
unfortunately made such evaluations very simple, but, as Shaye Cohen
indicates in his contribution to this volume, these questions become
particularly acute when one deals with anti-Semitism in antiquity.

— 3—
 Spanning the Centuries

The earliest references to Jews in the Hellenistic world are positive

ones, and the attraction of Judaism for many pagans continued well into
the Christian era. When anti-Jewish sentiment arises, it can usually be
explained by causative factors of a straightforward sort: Jewish refusal
to worship local gods, missionizing, revolutionary activity, dietary
separatism, and marital exclusivity. Some of these, at least, can be
perceived as “legitimate” grievances, although a number of the pagan
reactions so violate the requirements of proportionality that they cross
the threshold into anti-Semitism. In any event, we have no reason to
believe that we are dealing in this case with a phenomenon that resists
ordinary historical explanation. If one were to insist on defining anti-
Semitism as a pathology, then its existence in the ancient world has yet
to be demonstrated.
As pagan antiquity gives way to the Christian Middle Ages, we
confront the first crucial transition in the history of anti-Semitism.
Much has been written about the question of continuity and disjunction
at this point: Did Christianity, for all its original contributions to the
theory of Jew-hatred, essentially continue a pre-existing strand in
classical thought and society, or did it create virtually de novo a virulent
strain that bears but a superficial resemblance to the anti-Semitism of
old? Despite the sharpness of the formulation, the alternatives posed
in this question are not, in fact, mutually exclusive. It would violate
common sense to deny that classical anti-Semitism provided fertile soil
for the growth of the medieval variety, and despite the demise of the
ancient gods and the waning of Jewish missionizing and rebelliousness,
some of the older grievances retained their force. Nevertheless, if ancient
paganism had been replaced by a religion or ideology without an internal
anti-Jewish dynamic, it is likely that the anti-Semitism of the classical
world would have gradually faded. Instead, it was reinforced. The old,
pedestrian causes of anti-Jewish animus were replaced by a new, powerful
myth of extraordinary force and vitality.
Medieval Christian theology expresses a profound love-hate
relationship with Judaism. Of all religions in the world, only Judaism
may be tolerated under the cross, for Jews serve as unwilling, unwitting
witnesses of Christian truth. This testimony arises from Jewish
authentication of the Hebrew Scriptures, which in turn authenticate
Christianity, but it also arises from Jewish suffering, whose severity
and duration can be explained only as divine retribution for the sin of

— 4—
 Anti-Semitism

the crucifixion. Hence, the same theology that accorded Jews a unique
toleration required them to undergo unique persecution.
In the early Middle Ages, it was the tolerant element in this position
that predominated. With the great exception of seventh-century Visigothic
Spain, persecution of Jews in pre-Crusade Europe was sporadic and
desultory; the regions north and west of Italy had no indigenous anti-
Semitic tradition, and Christianity had not yet struck deep enough roots
in mass psychology to generate the emotional force necessary for the
wreaking of vengeance on the agents of the crucifixion. Early medieval
Europeans worshipped Jesus, but it is not clear that they loved him enough.
This is not to say that the course of medieval anti-Semitism is to
be charted by reference to religious developments alone, although
religion is almost surely the crucial guide. The deterioration of
Jewish security in the high Middle Ages and beyond corresponds to
transformations in economic, political, and intellectual history as well;
indeed, the fact that a variety of changes that may well have affected
anti-Semitism unfolded in rough synchronism makes it difficult to
untangle the causal skeins but at the same time provides a richer and
more satisfying explanatory network.
Christian piety widened and deepened, and the spectacular outbreaks
of Jew-hatred during the Crusades were surely nourished by pietistic
excess. As mercantile and administrative experience spread through
an increasingly literate and urbanized Christian bourgeoisie, the
economic need for Jews declined precipitously; it is no accident that in
the later Middle Ages Jews were welcome primarily in less-developed
regions like thirteenth-century Spain and, even later, Bohemia, Austria,
and Poland. To make matters worse, the remaining economic activity
in which Jews came to be concentrated was a natural spawning-ground
for intense hostility: Moneylending may be a necessity, but it does not
generate affection. In the political sphere, the high Middle Ages saw the
beginnings of a sense of national unity at least in France and England;
although this fell short of genuine nationalism in the modem sense, it
sharpened the perception of the Jew as the quintessential alien. Finally,
despite the centrifugal effects of individual nationalisms, the concept
of a monochromatic European Christendom also grew, and with it came
heightened intolerance toward any form of deviation.
At a time of growing friction with ordinary Christians, Jews were
obliged to look for protection to kings and churchmen. Since riots

— 5—
 Spanning the Centuries

against Jews violated the law and undermined public order, appeals for
royal protection were sometimes heeded. Of equal importance, kings
had begun to look upon Jewish holdings—and even upon the Jews
themselves—as property of the royal treasury, with the ironic result that
protection might well be forthcoming to safeguard the financial interests
of the king. Alternatively, however, the process of fiscal exploitation and
confiscation could just as easily culminate in outright expulsion.
Appeals to the clergy produced similarly mixed results. The theoretical
position of canon law concerning Jewish toleration was no longer a self-
evident assumption governing the status of the Jews in a relatively
tolerant society; it required constant reaffirmation in a Europe where it
had frequently become not only the last line of Jewish defense but also
the first. It was for this reason alone that St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who
had little affection for Jews, intervened to save Jewish lives during the
second crusade, and it is symptomatic of the new circumstances that
a Jewish chronicler considers it noteworthy that he took no money for
this intervention. Moreover, fissures were developing in the theory of
toleration itself. The Talmud was investigated in Paris and burned at the
behest of the Church; on occasion, even expulsions came to be regarded
as not altogether inconsistent with a policy of toleration, since they
fell short of the shedding of blood. Only the innate conservatism
characteristic of any system of religious law protected the core of the
position from concerted attack, so that Jews could continue to hope—
ever more wistfully—for the protection of an increasingly hostile
Church.
As the Middle Ages drew to a close, a new specter began haunting the
Jews of Europe—the specter of demonology. The growing importance
of the devil and his minions in late medieval Europe far transcends the
Jewish question. Nevertheless, plague, war, and depression created
an atmosphere, especially in northern lands, in which the explanation
for terror and tragedy was sought in the alliance between the Jewish
adversary and the Adversary himself. Jews, it was said, perpetrated
ritual murder, consuming the blood—and sometimes the hearts—of
their victims; Jews poisoned wells and Jewish doctors poisoned patients;
consecrated hosts were stolen, pierced, and beaten; the Jewish stench
and other unique illnesses and deformities underscored the alienness
and dubious humanity of the lecherous vicars of Satan. It was not only
the folk imagination that could depict a Jewish woman who gives birth

— 6—
 Anti-Semitism

to swine; fifteenth-century intellectuals from Spain to Bohemia could

speak of Jews as the offspring of a liaison between Adam and demons
or as the product not of the patriarchs’ seed but of their excrement. The
vulgar fulminations in the late works of Luther did not arise ex nihilo.
The perception of Jews as forces of darkness in the most fearsome
and tangible sense was especially conducive to the expulsions and
brutalities that mark late medieval Jewish history, but the belief that
Jewish alienness transcends religious differences was important in
another context as well. When Jews converted to Christianity singly or
in tiny groups, it was relatively easy to accept them unreservedly with
the full measure of Christian love. In fourteenth- and fifteenth-century
Spain, however, Christians had to deal with the new phenomenon of
mass conversion. This, of course, created economic tensions that are
not generated by individual conversions, but it must also have produced
a psychological dilemma: It is extraordinarily difficult for a society to
transform its attitude toward an entire group virtually overnight. There
were, it is true, plausible arguments that the religious sincerity of these
new Christians left something to be desired; nevertheless, the reluctance
to accord them a full welcome into the Christian fold went beyond such
considerations. Despite the absence of a prominent demonic motif,
the Marranos faced at least an embryonic manifestation of racial anti-
Semitism, which served as a refuge for a hostile impulse that could no
longer point to palpable distinctions.
This figure of the hated new Christian adumbrates the hated accul-
turated Jew of later centuries and points the way toward the crucial
transition to modern times. Like the passing of pagan antiquity and
the emergence of Christian dominance, the waning of the Middle Ages
was marked by fundamental ideological change. By the eighteenth
century, Christianity began to lose its hold on important elements of
the intellectual elite, and once again there seemed to be potential for
the eradication or radical weakening of anti-Semitism. The transition
of the eighteenth century, however, was far more complex than that of
the fourth.
First of all, the old ideology did not disappear. There were areas of
Europe, most notably in the east, where the commitment to traditional
forms of Christianity retained its full force into the nineteenth
century and beyond. Even in the west, large sectors of the early modern
population remained immune to the impact of Enlightenment and

— 7—
 Spanning the Centuries

secularization, so that old-style hostility to Jews could continue to

flourish. A second complicating factor is that this time there are periods
and places in which anti-Semitism did wane, and analysis of its modern
manifestations must balance explanations for persistence against reasons
for decline. Finally, the stated reasons for modern Jew-hatred are more
varied and mutable than their medieval equivalents. In the Middle
Ages, whatever the role of economic and political factors, the religious
basis for anti-Semitism was a constant throughout the period, forming
a permanent foundation that served as both underlying reason and stated
rationale. In the modern era, on the other hand, we are presented with
a shifting, dizzying kaleidoscope of often contradictory explanations:
The Jews are Rothschilds and paupers, capitalists and communists,
nationalists and deracinated cosmopolitans, religious separatists and
dangerous free thinkers, evil geniuses and the possessors of superficial,
third-rate minds.
We must beware of easy psychological reductionism, which excuses
the historian from a careful examination of the complexities of modem
anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, this list of grievances against Jews
suggests that by the modem period anti-Semitism had reached the
level of a deeply rooted pathology. It is precisely because Jews were the
only significant minority in medieval Christian Europe that the fear and
hatred of the alien became fixed upon them; a fixation that develops
over a millennium is not uprooted merely by the slow weakening of
its major cause. Hence, the arguments proposed by modern anti-
Semites—and by historians who try to understand them—reflect
a complex interweaving of reason and rationalization, of genuine cause
and shifting, often elusive excuse.
With the passing of Christian dominance, anti-Semitism in the
modern West came to be associated with other ideological issues that in
large measure replaced Christianity as the focus of European concerns.
The first of these was nationalism. At first glance, the egalitarian
spirit of the French Revolution appears utterly incompatible with the
persistence of Jewish disabilities, and the emancipation of the Jews was,
in fact, achieved. But the increasing power of the national state—and
its increasing demands—provided ammunition for a new, exceptionally
powerful argument against such emancipation. The eighteenth-century
state demanded not only its residents’ toil and sweat but also their hearts
and souls: full loyalty, total identification, fervent patriotism. Moreover,

— 8—
 Anti-Semitism

the breakdown of the old regime’s corporate structure required the

citizen to engage in an unmediated relationship with the centralized
state. Jews, it was said, failed these tests. In descent and behavior, in
communal structure and emotional ties, Jews were an alien nation,
a state within a state, no more deserving of citizenship than Frenchmen
in Germany or Germans in France. Since the nature of the state had
changed so much that retention of medieval status was hardly a realistic
option, this analysis posed no small threat to Jewish security.
The only viable response, it seemed, was the denial of Jewish
nationhood. So Jews denied it—and they denied it sincerely. There is at
least faint irony in Jews’ declaring that they are not a nation while anti-
Semites vigorously affirm that they are, but the gradual spread of Jewish
emancipation through much of nineteenth-century Europe awakened
feelings of genuine, profound patriotism that led to the defining of
Judaism in the narrowest confessional terms. Until late in the century,
this sacrifice—which most western Jews considered no sacrifice at all—
appeared to have achieved its goal. Barriers crumbled, discrimination
eased, redemption-in-exile appeared at hand.
Nevertheless, like so many earlier, more traditional instances of
messianic aspirations, this one too was doomed to disappointment.
The more Jews behaved like Christians, the stranger it seemed that
they would not become Christians, and even in a more secularized age,
conversion remained the symbol and sine qua non of full entry into
Gentile society. On occasion, an act of acculturation and rapprochement
would paradoxically lead to increased tensions. Reform Judaism, for
example, de-emphasized ritual while stressing ethics, much as liberal
Protestantism had elevated ethics and downgraded dogma. However, in
the absence of conversion of Reform Jews, this agreement on content led
to an acrimonious dispute as to which religion had the legitimate claim
to the ethical message preached by both sides, and Christian denigration
of Jewish ethics became a theme that bordered on anti-Semitism. In
a broader context, even Christian supporters of Jewish emancipation
had generally expected it to bring about the gradual disappearance of the
Jews, and the failure of most Jews to cooperate left a sense of disquiet
and frustration. Additionally, as Todd Endelman stresses in this volume,
the resurgence of anti-Semitism in the late nineteenth century was part
of a general rebellion against the liberalism and modernity that were
responsible for emancipating the Jews.

— 9—
 Spanning the Centuries

In a world of acculturated Jews, how was this new anti-Semitism

to be expressed? Many of the anti-Semitic political parties pressed
economic and religious grievances of a quite traditional sort, but there
were difficulties in arguing that the Jews of France and Germany were so
different from Christians that they posed a genuine, alien threat. There
was, however, a more promising approach—explosive, sinister, closer to
the psychic wellsprings of popular anti-Semitism, and immune to the
argument that Jews were, after all, “improving.” Racial categories were
prominent and universal in nineteenth-century European thought; to
some degree they had been used against Jews from the earliest days of
emancipation, and Jews themselves evinced no hesitation in assigning
special characteristics—sometimes even physical ones—to the Jewish
“race.” For anti-Semites—and it is in this context that the term was
coined—the “polluted” racial character of the Jews served, as it had in
the Marrano period, as a basis for hating people whose distinctiveness
could not readily be discerned. The unacculturated Jew was a visible
enemy; the acculturated one—despite caricatures of Jewish physical
traits—was insidious, camouflaged, coiled to strike at European society
from within. Jewish acculturation was no longer a promise; it was
a threat.
It is no accident that the worst manifestation of Jew-hatred in
history was built upon this foundation. Nazi anti-Semitism achieved
such virulent, unrestrained consequences precisely because it stripped
away the semi-civilized rationales that had been given in the past
for persecuting Jews and liberated the deepest psychic impulses that
had been partly nurtured but partly suppressed by those rationales.
Although the Nazis used the standard political, economic, and sometimes
even religious arguments for persecution, their central message was
that Jews were alien, demonic creatures, subhuman and superhuman
at the same time, who threatened “Aryans” with racial corruption and
with profound, almost inexpressible terror. Such feelings were probably
a part of the anti-Semitic psyche for centuries, and I have already
argued that the deeply rooted fear and hatred of the alien had become
fixed upon the Jews; nevertheless, these feelings had not been given
free reign. The persecution of political enemies, economic exploiters,
and religious deviants must still be governed by a modicum of civilized
restraint; although this restraint must have seemed invisible to the
victims of the Crusades, it reappears, however dimly, when seen through

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 Anti-Semitism

the prism of the Holocaust. On the other hand, malevolent demons,

racial aliens, and malignant vermin can be extirpated with single-
minded, ruthless ferocity.1
One of the most significant reactions to the new anti-Semitism
was the rise of Jewish nationalism. To many observers—including
many Jews—this was an abrogation of the original, unwritten contract
granting Jews emancipation; nevertheless, the Zionist movement did
not play a major role in the upsurge of European anti-Semitism in the
decades before the Holocaust. Its impact on anti-Semitism came in
different, quite unexpected ways: in the grafting of western Jew-hatred
onto the traditional patterns of discrimination in the Muslim world, and
in providing a new outlet and a new camouflage for the anti-Semitic
impulse.
Pre-modern Jews had flourished and suffered under Islam, but
anti-Jewish sentiment rarely reached the heights that it attained in
the Christian world. This was partly because Jews were never the only
minority in the Muslim orbit, but it was also because Judaism did not
play the crucial role in Islam that it did in Christianity. The frequent
Christian obsession with Jews was nourished in large measure by
resentment toward a parent with whom intimate contact could not be
avoided; Islam’s relationship with Judaism lacked that intimacy and
hence failed to generate the sort of tensions that explode into violence.
Persecutions of Jews in the Muslim world should not be minimized, but
they are not of the same order of magnitude as anti-Jewish outbreaks
in the Christian West.
However persuasive the claim of the Jewish people may be to
its ancestral homeland, the failure of Arabs to embrace the Zionist
immigrants was hardly unexpected and is not in itself grounds for
a charge of anti-Semitism. But offended nationalist sentiments and old-
style denigration of Jews combined to make the Arab world receptive
to anti-Semitic propaganda ranging from Mein Kampf to The Protocols of
the Elders of Zion. (The assertion that Arabs, as Semites, cannot be anti-
Semitic is, of course, an overliteral and usually disingenuous argument.)
Moreover, extreme forms of anti-Zionism outside the Arab world serve
as a vehicle for anti-Semitic sentiments that are no longer respectable

1 Much of the language in this paragraph is borrowed from my “Jewish-Christian Relations:

A Jewish Perspective,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 20 (1983): 23.

— 11 —
 Spanning the Centuries

in their unalloyed, naked form. Here again there are genuine problems
of definition, but “anti-Zionist” literature in the Soviet Union and
the widespread application to Israel of an egregious double standard
make it difficult to deny that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are not
infrequently synonymous. The positions of the emancipation period
have been reversed: Jews now lay claim to a nationhood that their
enemies deny.

Anti-Semitism is no longer an acknowledged pillar of western thought

and society. The distinguished medievalist R. W. Southern, in evaluating
the normalcy or eccentricity of a major medieval churchman, correctly
classified his “deep hostility toward the Jews” among the arguments for
normalcy; had the subject of his evaluation been a contemporary western
figure, such a classification would have been more than dubious. Despite
the unspeakable agonies of twentieth-century European Jewry, anti-
Semitism has not been wholly intractable.
At the same time, the nineteenth-century mixture of hope and
expectation that Jew-hatred would fade away has proved to be a fantasy,
and few indeed continue to indulge such dreams—surely not the Jew at
a recent conference who confided his fears of the aftermath of nuclear
war. He does not fear radiation, or climatic change, or wounds crying
vainly for treatment; he worries instead that the war will be blamed on
Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Teller.
Macabre Jewish humor, no doubt, or simple paranoia.
And yet . . .

— 12 —
 FROM CRUSADES TO BLOOD LIBELS
TO EXPULSIONS
Some New Approaches to Medieval Anti-Semitism

The Second Victor J. Selmanowitz Memorial Lecture. Touro College

Graduate School of Jewish Studies (New York, 1997).

Despite ubiquitous, ritualized gestures of obeisance toward Salo

Baron’s rejection of the “lachrymose conception” of Jewish history,
most historians of medieval Jewry continue to employ a periodization
structured by patterns of toleration and persecution. On the whole, the
Jewish condition in the early Middle Ages emerges as relatively stable
and secure, while the later period is marked by a growing hostility which
finally erupts into libels, pogroms and expulsions.
Sweeping generalizations are, of course, always vulnerable to attack,
and this one more than most. Even if limited, as it is, to Christian Europe,
it characterizes the treatment of a dispersed group across a thousand
years and a multitude of political and cultural boundaries. Thus, all
observers make an exception for the persecution of Jews in seventh-
century Visigothic Spain. Beyond this instance, some historians have
raised more general questions about what they see as a rose-colored
perception of the early period. Kenneth Stow, for example, challenges
the view that Jews were treated so well in the early Middle Ages that one
can justly speak of an alliance with Christian rulers or even of Jewish
political power.1 Although his rejection of this position unquestionably
has concrete ramifications for our perception of early medieval Jewry,
what he substitutes for a political alliance which ultimately breaks down
is a legal status which ultimately becomes anomalous. The fundamental
periodization remains intact.

1 Kenneth R. Stow, Alienated Minority: The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe (Cambridge,
Mass., 1992), pp. 3–4.

— 15 —
 The Middle Ages

Within this general framework, the effort to locate more precise

transitions immediately raises the specter of the crusade of 1096,
an event which looms large in the Jewish popular imagination as well as
in the works of historians. In his important studies of the catastrophe
which befell the Jews of the Rhineland, Robert Chazan has argued against
the position that it was a watershed, primarily on the grounds that
Northern European Jewry in the following century achieved economic
growth and extraordinary cultural creativity in an environment of
relative toleration.2 The transforming significance of the first crusade can
also be challenged from the other direction—by underscoring evidence
of significant persecution in Northern Europe beginning with the early
years of the eleventh century.
One item of such evidence is the series of attacks around the year
1010 to which we shall presently return. No less significant are the
indications of routine violence against eleventh-century Jews, but here
we face a methodological question of great interest and wide application.
In a brief passage marked by his typical erudition and care, Avraham
Grossman has noted a number of sources in which Jews report looting of
Jewish homes, roads so dangerous that “no Jew comes or goes,” and fear
that a city-wide tragedy would generate attacks on the Jewish community.3
The problem here is to distinguish the generic unrest of an extremely
violent society from “bias crimes” directed specifically against Jews.
Grossman is not insensitive to this point. On one occasion, for example,
he argues that a reference to the looting of “the houses of all the Jews”
makes it clear that the violence was targeted. While he may well be
correct in this case, the argument is not decisive, and the reference to
dangerous roads is even less compelling. Members of a minority group
with a powerful self-consciousness of their subordinate position tend to
perceive attacks in personal terms even if the identity of the victim was
irrelevant or marginal in the eyes of the perpetrator; sometimes, they
may make specific reference to Jews simply because that is the universe
of discourse of both the writer and his audience.

2 Robert Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London,
1987), pp. 197–210; Chazan, In the Year 1096: The First Crusade and the Jews (Philadelphia
and Jerusalem, 1996), pp. 127–132. In a forthcoming article on the fast of 20 Sivan,
David Wachtel has made some valuable observations on the deep impact that must
nonetheless be attributed to these events.
3 Avraham Grossman, Hakhmei Ashkenaz ha-Rishonim (Jerusalem, 1981), pp. 12–13.

— 16 —
 From Crusades to Blood Libels to Expulsions

In his very recent Communities of Violence, an excellent work

concentrating on the later Middle Ages in the South of Europe, David
Nirenberg has noted the problem of classifying violent crimes on the
basis of unproven religious motivations. He presents the issue extremely
well but puts it aside on the grounds that the medievals’ legal perception
of violence across religious boundaries, at least in the Crown of Aragon,
saw it through the prism of those boundaries.4 This does not resolve the
question if we are interested, as we are here, in the motivation of attackers
who were neither lawyers nor theologians. As contemporary authorities
have discovered while struggling to determine whether a particular
mugging should be classified as a bias crime, it is no easy task to decide
whether even the racist who shouted, “Nigger!” as he relieved his victim
of his wallet was motivated primarily by greed, primarily by bigotry, or
by an equal measure of each. It is a foregone conclusion that the victim
in that case would see himself as the object of a racially inspired attack,
and such feelings may exist—at times justly, at times not—even when
no epithet was heard. Standing alone, sporadic Jewish testimony to anti-
Jewish violence must be utilized with care.
Nirenberg also raises a much larger question which stands as
a challenge to the fundamental enterprise addressed in this lecture.
The overarching patterns limned by “teleological, longue durée” history
tend to disappear, he says, when one looks closely at individual events.
The point is of central importance provided that we apply it with due
moderation. Longue durée history should indeed not allow us to forget
that Jews could live in relative security well beyond a “turning point,”
and that a horrific event can be followed by a return to normalcy. Eleazar
Gutwirth, for example, has recently argued that the Jewish community
of Spain remained creative and even optimistic well after the “watershed”
pogroms of 1391.5 Local conditions, which depend on a multitude of
factors, will often be decisive for a particular community, and even in
the midst of a massive wave of persecutions such as those spawned
in Franconia from 1298 to 1300 by the host desecration charge, “the
universal narrative was always told and unfolded within the immediate
context of power and politics of a town and its region.”6
4 Communities of Violence (Princeton, 1996), pp. 30–32.
5 E. Gutwirth, “Towards Expulsion: 1391–1492,” in Spain and the Jews: The Sephardi
Experience, 1492 and After, ed. by Elie Kedourie (London, 1992), pp. 51–73.
6 Miri Rubin, “Desecration of the Host: The Birth of an Accusation,” in Christianity and
Judaism, ed. by Diana Wood (Oxford, 1992), p. 184.

— 17 —
 The Middle Ages

The same caveat applies on the wider canvas of national rather

than local politics. In 1992, I organized a session at the conference
of the Association for Jewish Studies on medieval expulsions of Jews
in comparative perspective. Robert C. Stacey and William C. Jordan
discussed the expulsions from England and France respectively.
Despite the fact that these events took place in neighboring countries
less than two decades apart and both analyses focused on relations
between the king and the local aristocracy, the explanations proposed
were so disparate that one could easily have come away with the sense
that the proximity of both geography and chronology was entirely
coincidental.7
This was of course not the case, as both participants took pains to
note, and their feeling of unease at such a perception illustrates the
dangers of too dismissive an approach to longue durée history. We cannot
allow the trees, or even the groves, to persuade us that there is no forest.
In the final paragraph of his book, Nirenberg concedes that cataclysmic
events like those of 1391 can “indelibly alter the world in which they
occurred, refiguring the field of meaning in their ritual lexicon.”8 Changes
of perception, whether they result from cataclysm or more gradual
developments, fundamentally transform the psychology of a society,
so that courses of action that would never have been entertained as
anything but a fantasy or an intellectual exercise become real, even
seductive options. To take a narrow example, an unhappy marriage
in a society in which divorce, though legal, is almost unthinkable
is far more likely to last than the same marriage in an environment
where relationships are routinely dissolved. The same local or national
conditions can engender very different results; an environment in which
massacres or expulsions are seen as realistic possibilities is far more
likely to produce them.
The second half of the Middle Ages, then, generated physical attacks,
conversionary efforts, economic restrictions, the badge, campaigns
against the Talmud, the three major accusations of ritual murder, host
desecration, and well poisoning, and widespread expulsions. This is
a real shift, and it legitimately calls for large scale explanatory efforts,
7 Stacey’s analysis has now appeared in a Hebrew version. See his “Yahadut Angliah ba-
Me’ah ha-Yod-Gimmel u-Be‘ayat ha-Gerush” in Gerush ve-Shivah: Yehudei Angliah be-Hillufei
ha-Zemannim, ed. by David Katz and Yosef Kaplan (Jerusalem, c. 1993), pp. 9–25.
8 Communities of Violence, p. 249.

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 From Crusades to Blood Libels to Expulsions

always disciplined by the considerations of which Nirenberg so effectively

reminds us.
It is far from clear that the primary explanation for such shifts
lies in the specifics of the relationship between the dominant society
and the particular minority group. Most contemporary Jews recoil at
the suggestion that objectionable Jewish behavior produces, let alone
justifies, anti-Semitism, though the instinct which generated movements
for moral self-improvement as a weapon against hostility has not faded
into total oblivion. But if it is not offensive Jewish behavior which
engenders hatred, we need not assume that any concrete Jewish action
or characteristic, or even a historical event involving Jews, is the key to
understanding the transformation that we confront.
We might profitably pursue this point through a passing glance at
a recent, benign development in the relationship between Christians
and Jews. The received wisdom informs us that the Second Vatican
Council’s declaration in Nostra Aetate no. 4 that contemporary Jews
bear no responsibility for the crucifixion and that Judaism retains
spiritual value resulted from introspection which was occasioned by
the Holocaust and encouraged by Jewish ecumenicists. While these
factors were surely real, I believe that they were decidedly secondary.
Vatican II was convened in a post-colonial age marked by a new regard
for self-determination and a new respect for cultural diversity—including
religious diversity—as well as minority rights. Exclusivist claims did
not sit well in this environment, and harsh punishment, even divine
punishment, for religious dissent surely did not. A telling expression
of the inner struggle triggered by the clash of this liberal, humanistic
sensibility with a narrower, more forbidding tradition was formulated
by a playwright hostile to Catholicism whose bitter work, Sister Mary
Ignatius Explains It All To You, nonetheless has its very funny moments.
Sister Mary, an old-fashioned nun teaching in the aftermath of Vatican
II, defines “limbo” for her classroom/audience. If I remember correctly,
she displays a picture of a baby trapped behind the bars of a crib and
declares, “Limbo is the place where unbaptized infants went before the
Ecumenical Council.”
The historical and theological precision of this statement may leave
something to be desired, but it brilliantly captures a central feature of
the ideological atmosphere of the Council, which had nothing to do with
Jews and next to nothing to do with the Holocaust. It was this spirit

— 19 —
 The Middle Ages

that animated the adoption of a more positive attitude toward Islam and
the religions of the East, the assertion that salvation is possible outside
the Church—and Nostra Aetate no. 4. One who locates the fundamental
impetus of the historic declaration on the Jews in the specifics of the
Jewish-Catholic relationship loses sight of the larger process and misses
the key point.

 II 
For medieval Europe, the most important recent effort to subsume the
transformation of attitudes toward Jews under the rubric of a much
broader change is R. I. Moore’s The Formation of a Persecuting Society.9
Moore’s essential argument proposes that economic, political, and
cultural developments in the eleventh and twelfth centuries produced
a new class or group of classes which needed to consolidate power in
the face of elements which posed a threat to the evolving order. Thus,
heretics, Jews, even lepers, began to face exclusion and persecution at
approximately the same time; somewhat later, male homosexuals and
witches faced a new level of hostility for similar reasons. As we shall
see, even Moore cannot refrain altogether from an analysis of certain
characteristics of medieval Jewry, if only to establish the plausibility of
a Jewish threat, but the thrust of his argument points away from the
particularities of Christian attitudes toward Judaism and Jews.
Though Nirenberg dislikes Moore’s approach as an example of the
suspect longue durée mode of historiography, his own analysis, for all its
specificity, also marginalizes the particularities of the Jewish-Christian
relationship. Through a comparative examination of the treatment of
Jews and Muslims in Aragon, he reminds us, to take a single example,
that not only the former were accused of poisoning wells. Thus, we can
see Jews as a vulnerable group whose specific Jewishness is almost
irrelevant.
In very recent years, we have witnessed the revival of a long-rejected
interpretation of eleventh-century Europe which also sees Jews as
one of several groups victimized by a larger transformation. Richard
Landes’ Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History,10 which has been

9 Oxford, 1987.
10 Cambridge, Mass., 1995.

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 From Crusades to Blood Libels to Expulsions

described as probably “the best of a number of recent studies forcing

reassessment of the central Middle Ages,”11 maintains that eschatological
expectations surrounding the millennium gripped the imagination of
the European populace, generating a wide variety of religious and social
movements. In an article specifically addressing the persecution of Jews,
Landes has now argued for harmonizing Jewish and Christian accounts
of persecutions which he dates in 1010 to produce a picture of sustained
violence whose aetiology he locates in apocalyptic frenzy.12
Landes’ stimulating presentation merits careful attention, though
I remain more skeptical than he about the dating and reliability of
the major Jewish source describing these events.13 It is a virtual
certainty that noteworthy attacks against the Jews of Northern
Europe took place in approximately 1010; that these resulted from
millennial eschatology is a possibility that has been restored to the
historiographic map but continues to strike me as highly speculative.
Should we embrace this possibility, we would then face a second,
larger challenge which applies to Moore’s position as well. Do these
interpretations purport to explain only the genesis of anti-Jewish
violence by identifying the spark which kindled a conflagration but
which, like the God of the Deists, did its deed and—in the words
of a caustic observer—then went to Florida? Or is it possible that
apocalyptic tension and a Jewish threat to the position of Christian
elites persisted beyond the period of their initial appearance and
provided an ongoing impetus to medieval Judeophobia?

11 The American Historical Review 102 (1997): 433.

12 Richard Landes, “The Massacres of 1010: On the Origins of Popular Violence in Western
Europe,” in From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism in Medieval Christian Thought,
ed. by Jeremy Cohen (Wiesbaden, 1996), pp. 79–112. Landes credits two earlier studies,
which have in his view been unjustly ignored, with looking at these developments from
the proper perspective. See Hans Liebeschütz, Synagoga und Ecclesia (Heidelberg, 1938,
2nd ed., 1983), and L. Dasberg, Untersuchungen über die Entwertung des Judenstatus in 11.
Jahrhundert (Paris, 1965).
13 The most hostile treatment of the reliability of that source is Kenneth Stow, The “1007
Anonymous” and Papal Sovereignty: Jewish Perceptions of the Papacy and Papal Policy in the
High Middle Ages (Cincinnati, 1984). I have reservations about important aspects of
Stow’s argument, which he strengthens in one instance by unjustifiably conflating two
disparate quotations in his source; see Robert Chazan’s review in Speculum 62 (1987):
728–731. At the same time, I am largely persuaded by his uneasiness at finding a strong
and sophisticated Jewish presentation of the doctrine of papal sovereignty in an allegedly
eleventh-century text.

— 21 —
 The Middle Ages

Landes himself describes a “millennial generation” lasting in

acute form until 1033, which is the thousandth anniversary of the
Passion, and sees close links between this atmosphere and that of the
late-eleventh-century crusade. This is self-evidently an important
historiographic contention, but we cannot plausibly extend such
a factor indefinitely, though it can surely make further appearances.14
Later medieval anti-Semitism will have to seek other sources of
nourishment.
In Moore’s case, the process by which a new, literate elite established
itself extends over a longer period of time than a millennial generation,
but here too the explanation must lose its force after a decent interval.
And once again, the initial contention itself bears scrutiny: Moore
sees the Jewish threat to this elite as both economic/professional and
intellectual/religious. Jews, he says, had a tradition of literacy and
economic experience which stood in the way of aspiring Christian
merchants and bureaucrats, and they had a developed understanding
of Scripture which raised questions about the theological and exegetical
enterprise which Christians were beginning to pursue with renewed
sophistication.
With respect to the first point, it is difficult to agree that the tiny
Jewish population of Northern Europe, however overrepresented
it might have been in commerce, constituted the sort of obstacle to
Christian entrepreneurs or government functionaries that would produce
widespread persecution. The second assertion is particularly difficult
to test. I have argued elsewhere that European Jews, especially in the
North, did challenge Christian beliefs with surprising aggressiveness,15
but references to the challenge posed by Judaism do not appear with
sufficient frequency in Christian literature to persuade me that it was
a factor so compelling that it played a major role in the formation

14 See, for example, Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-
Judaism (Ithaca and London, 1982), pp. 246–247, for references to Joachite eschatology
as a possible secondary factor in the development of anti-Jewish attitudes in the
thirteenth century. For the sixteenth century, see Heiko A. Oberman, The Roots of Anti-
Semitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation (Philadelphia, 1984; German original,
1981), pp. 118–122; Kenneth Stow, Catholic Thought and Papal Jewry Policy 1555–1593
(New York, 1977).
15 David Berger, “Mission to the Jews and Jewish-Christian Contacts in the Polemical
Literature of the High Middle Ages,” The American Historical Review 91 (1986):
576–591.

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 From Crusades to Blood Libels to Expulsions

of a persecuting society. Ironically, Moore’s deemphasis of Jewish

particularity in the development of medieval anti-Semitism requires
him to attribute enormous importance to their role in European society
so that they may fit into his larger explanatory scheme.

 III 
Other approaches to our problem appeal to factors which began in the
eleventh or twelfth century but persisted through the end of the Middle
Ages. There is nothing new about the view that increased piety at all
levels of society played a critical role in the rise of hostility toward Jews.
In an essay in which I shamelessly attempted to interpret the entire
history of anti-Semitism in twelve pages, I noted this point by observing
that before the eleventh century “Christianity had not yet struck deep
enough roots in mass psychology to generate the emotional force
necessary for the wreaking of vengeance on the agents of the crucifixion.
Early medieval Europeans worshipped Jesus, but it is not clear that they
loved him enough.”16
Jeremy Cohen, in a major study which has deservedly become
central to the discussion of medieval anti-Semitism, emphasized the
role of Christian belief but shifted the focus from the piety of the
masses to the theology of the elite. The Friars and the Jews17 argues
that the very foundations of toleration were undermined by growing
Christian familiarity with the Talmud. Through the efforts of Nicholas
Donin, a thirteenth-century French Jewish convert to Christianity,
Christians came to realize that (to borrow the sharp formulation of
an acquaintance of mine) the Jews are the people of the book—but the
book is not the Bible. Though Donin and others attacked the Talmud
for blasphemy and hostility to Christians, Cohen sees the primary
thrust as the argument that the Talmud was “another law.” Since one
of the cornerstones of the theology granting Jews toleration was the
assumption that they preserve the law of the Hebrew Bible not only in
their libraries but in their behavior, this argument was fraught with the
most dire consequences.

16 See my “Anti-Semitism: An Overview,” in History and Hate: The Dimensions of Anti-

Semitism, ed. by David Berger (Philadelphia, 1986), pp. 3–14 (quotation on p. 5).
17 See note 14.

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 The Middle Ages

Key aspects of Cohen’s argument convince me, while others do

not. I believe that Donin really was intent upon reversing the Church’s
fundamental policy of toleration and that the “other law” argument
was his most important weapon. I also believe that this effort, in the
long run, was not wholly ineffective; later medieval friars were greatly
tempted by the blandishments of the argument, and by the end of the
Middle Ages, some Christian scholars were saying things about forcible
conversion that would have been inadmissible in earlier centuries.18
At the same time, the analysis does not place sufficient emphasis
on the impact of Donin’s other arguments, and, far more important, it
does not accord appropriate consideration to the profound conservatism
that marks all law, and particularly religious law. Later attacks on the
Talmud, including arguments for rescinding toleration of Jews be-
cause of it, drew primarily upon allegations of hostility toward Gentiles
(which, to the extent that it is embedded in Talmudic Law, could not
easily be removed by censorship), secondarily upon assertions of
blasphemy against Jesus (which could be more readily deleted), and
only marginally if at all upon the contention that Jews are adherents of
“another law.”19
The deeper problem is that toleration of Jews was a matter of settled
doctrine in medieval canon law. It was hard to avoid the impression
that Donin was arguing that Church authorities from Augustine through
a long line of Popes were simply mistaken about a key issue. In the
thirteenth century, at least, the inadmissibility of such a conclusion was
so clear that it was in the Jewish interest to argue that banning the
Talmud was tantamount to banning Judaism, and this point appears
to have carried considerable weight in the ultimate decision to permit
the pursuit of Talmudic study. In a very recent article which addresses
the question of why Jews, who were widely associated with witchcraft,
were hardly ever prosecuted for their sorcery, Anna Foa alludes to this
point. It may be, she suggests, that the Church avoided prosecuting
Jews for the “heresy of witchcraft” for the same reason that the “new
law” argument was abandoned: either step would have resulted in the

18 See, for example, R. Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation
Germany (New Haven, 1988), pp. 111–131.
19 See my “Christians, Gentiles, and the Talmud: a Fourteenth-Century Jewish Response
to the Attack on Rabbinic Judaism,” in Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter, ed. by Bernard
Lewis and Friedrich Niewöhner (Wiesbaden, 1992), pp. 115–130.

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 From Crusades to Blood Libels to Expulsions

classification of “all the Jews, qua Jews,” as heretics, thus breaking

down the fundamental conceptual barriers that made the traditional
toleration of Jews possible.20
As time passed, however, the force of the doctrine of toleration
eroded even as it was ritualistically affirmed. The tepid reaction of the
Church to anti-Jewish massacres and the evolving sense that expulsions
do not violate accepted doctrine are cases in point. A striking illustration
of the gaping inconsistencies that arose out of the tension between
a tolerant doctrine and an intolerant society—not excluding the clergy
themselves—leaps out at the reader of R. Po-Chia Hsia’s account of the
report of a papal commission on the trial of Jews for the ritual murder
of Simon of Trent. Here the protective doctrine is not the overarching
Augustinian argument for tolerating Jews but the Church’s determination
that the blood accusation is a libel.
On June 20, 1478, a papal bull was published pursuant to the
commission’s report.
[Pope] Sixtus IV cleared Hinderbach [the prince-bishop involved in the
case who was urging approval for the cult of Simon] of all suspicions;
the commission of cardinals, who had diligently examined all pertinent
records, concluded that the [torture-ridden] trial had been conducted
in conformity with legal procedure. Sixtus praised the bishop’s zeal but
admonished Hinderbach, on his conscience, not to permit anything
contrary to the 1247 Decretum of Innocent IV (which prohibited ritual
murder trials) in promoting devotion to Simon nor to disobey the Holy See
or canonical prescriptions. Moreover, Sixtus forbade any Christian, on this
or any other occasion, without papal judgment, to kill or mutilate Jews, or
extort money from them, or to prevent them from practicing their rites as
permitted by law.21

In other words, Jews do not commit ritual murder, ritual murder trials
are illegal, this ritual murder trial was conducted in accordance with

20 Anna Foa, “The Witch and the Jew: Two Alikes that Were Not the Same,” in From
Witness to Witchcraft, pp. 373–374. On “the persistence of traditional behavior,”
see also Stow, Alienated Minority, pp. 242–247. Alexander Patschowsky has reacted
to Cohen’s thesis by pointing to the fourteenth-century suggestion at high levels of
the Church that killers of Jews be prosecuted as heretics; see his “Der ‘Talmudjude’:
mittelalterlichen Ursprung eines neuzeitlichen Themas,” in Juden in der christlichen
Umwelt während des späten Mittelalters, ed. by Alfred Haverkampf and Franz-Josef
Ziwes (Berlin, 1992), p. 22.
21 R. Po-Chia Hsia, Trent, 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial (New Haven, 1992), p. 127.

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 The Middle Ages

legal procedures, and one may promote devotion to Simon of Trent,

whose only claim to devotion is that he was martyred in a ritual murder,
provided that one does not affirm the reality of ritual murder.
Thus far, I have presented Cohen’s thesis in terms that are narrowly
focused on Christian familiarity with a Jewish text, but there is a broader
dimension as well. Decades ago, Salo Baron proposed a relationship
between national unification and medieval anti-Semitism, arguing
that “single nationality states,” driven both by incipient feelings of
nationalism and the intolerance of a monolithic society toward outsiders,
were far more likely to be hostile to their Jews. Since such states tended
to develop in the central and late Middle Ages, it was in that period that
anti-Semitism peaked.22 Though Baron’s thesis may help us understand
national differences in the treatment of Jews, its arguably anachronistic
appeal to nationalism and its failure to address the degree to which the
transformation cut across national boundaries has marginalized it as
a major explanatory strategy.
Cohen invokes a different sort of unity—the unity of Christendom
as a whole. Thus, his emphasis on the Talmud is complemented by the
argument that the friars’ inclination to exclude the Jews was nourished
by the growing sense that all of society is an organic Christian body.
When the primacy of the Church as a unifying force began to decline,
this inclination was not undermined; on the contrary, “the defensiveness
characteristic of declining empires” reinforced the predisposition “to
scrutinize the substance of contemporary Judaism and develop the theory
of Jewish heresy.”23 I am somewhat uneasy about adopting a speculative
argument which draws the same conclusion from an ascendant Church
as from a declining one, particularly since at least some of the friars
were severe critics rather than defenders of Rome. In any case, there is
no intrinsic connection between the larger picture drawn by Cohen and
the more specific argument which is the core of his extremely valuable
study. Though both factors could of course be significant, the bulk of the
work creates the impression that familiarity with the Talmud was the
driving force behind the reevaluation of Jewish status. The concluding

22 Salo W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 2nd ed., vol 11 (New York,
London, and Philadelphia, 1967), pp. 192–201. This section of Baron’s magnum opus
summarizes a thesis that he had first proposed much earlier.
23 The Friars and the Jews, pp. 248–264 (quotation on p. 255).

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 From Crusades to Blood Libels to Expulsions

chapter appears to suggest that it was primarily Christian unity which

inspired the impulse to exclude Jews, and the Talmud was the available
means to do so.

 IV 
If only because of the prominence of the Jewish moneylender in popular
images of the Jew, economic explanations of medieval anti-Semitism
have always enjoyed considerable prominence. The central Middle Ages
witnessed the development of a profit economy. To the extent that
Jews had owned significant lands—and it is very difficult to assess
the dimensions of such ownership—they tended to become urbanized
and eventually engaged in moneylending to a degree considerably
disproportionate to their numbers. Despite the unquestionable value of
Joseph Shatzmiller’s revisionist Shylock Reconsidered, which documents
friendly relations between a beleaguered Jewish moneylender and his
Christian customers, there is no doubt that this profession was not
conducive to feelings of warmth and amity.24
Moreover, the transformation of the economic landscape was
accompanied by the growth of a literate class. We have already
encountered Moore’s emphasis on the competition that this development
engendered with the established literate class of the Jews. Even if we
hesitate to speak of fierce competition, we can certainly recognize the
impact of this change on the society’s economic or administrative need
for an increasingly marginalized minority. To the extent that even the
undeveloped economy of the early Middle Ages had some need for
an educated class—and it did—that need was partially met by Jews;
the profit economy required a greater number of educated people, but it
generated a sufficient supply from within the Christian community itself.
This consideration may well loom large in explaining the welcome granted
late medieval Jews in the economically and culturally undeveloped lands
of central and Eastern Europe in the late Middle Ages, well after they
had worn out their welcome in the developed countries of the West.

24 J. Shatzmiller, Shylock Reconsidered: Jews, Moneylending, and Medieval Society (Berkeley,

Los Angeles and London, 1990). Cf. William C. Jordan’s beautifully formulated
reservations in an essentially appreciative review: see The Jewish Quarterly Review 82
(1991): 221–223.

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 The Middle Ages

In his Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe,25

Lester K. Little has attempted to weave a psychological explanation of
anti-Semitism into the fabric of economic change. Christians, he says,
experienced wrenching moral conflicts in confronting the profit economy.
Guilt over usury, pawnbroking, even the sale of religious objects and
outright theft was projected on to the Jews, who became “scapegoat[s]
for Christian failure to adapt successfully to the profit economy.” Jews
were limited “to occupations thought by Christian moralists to be sinful
and then harass[ed] . . . for doing their jobs.”26 It is unfair to ask for
hard evidence for this sort of psychological assertion, and historiography
would be a far less interesting, fecund, and instructive enterprise if we
systematically refrained from such speculations. Still, in the absence of
evidence one can react to this suggestion only by putting the question
to one’s informed intuitions. Since the Christian masses did not engage
in the economic “sins” of which the Jews were accused, my own instincts
do not permit me more than a whispered “perhaps.”27

V
The most widely discussed theory of medieval anti-Semitism in the last
few years is undoubtedly the one presented by Gavin Langmuir in his
very impressive twin volumes, History, Religion, and Anti-Semitism, and
Toward A Definition of Anti-Semitism.28 Here too we find a psychological
explanation, but it is rooted in much different considerations involving
a redefinition of anti-Semitism itself and careful but creative speculation
about the reaction of Christians to new developments in their own religion.
To Langmuir, hostility toward Jews before the twelfth century was
an unremarkable version of ordinary xenophobia. Like all forms of
bigotry, it exaggerated, distorted, and generalized real characteristics
of the hated group. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, however,
something frighteningly special occurred: Jews came to be subjected to
accusations of a wholly chimerical sort. The entire group was stigmatized

25 Ithaca, New York, 1978.

26 Religious Poverty, pp. 54–56.
27 It is true that Little (p. 54) also speaks of the projection of guilt feelings for violence,
which the masses did perpetrate, but violence predates the central Middle Ages, and
an appeal to specifically anti-Jewish violence raises the specter of circularity.
28 Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1990.

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 From Crusades to Blood Libels to Expulsions

as ritual murderers, consumers of human flesh and blood, desecrators of

hosts, and poisoners of wells despite the fact that not one Jew had ever
been observed in the act of committing a single one of these crimes. Such
accusations—and only such accusations—deserve the unique appellation
“anti-Semitism.”
What could have caused this new departure? Langmuir believes
that Christians in the High Middle Ages, faced with profoundly difficult
doctrines like transubstantiation, began to entertain grave doubts about
the irrational demands made upon them by their evolving faith. One
solution was to deflect these doubts by attributing irrational beliefs and
behavior to Jews, whose very presence was a disturbing challenge to the
dogmas with which Christians were struggling. It was not Christians,
then, but Jews who came to embody irrationality par excellence.
There can be little question that some Christians were deeply troubled
by the doctrine that the object which looked, felt, and tasted like bread
was in fact the body of Jesus, and there is much plausibility in the
suggestion that the host desecration charge, which in some cases implied
that Jews themselves recognize the numinous character of this bread,
could help to allay such doubts. As Miri Rubin put it in a study of this
accusation, “The tale’s force derived from the rich world of eucharistic
knowledge and myth which was being imparted at the very heart of the
religious culture, and it was bolstered by an ongoing tension between the
eucharistic claims and the realities or appearances which most people
apprehended in and around it.”29
Langmuir, however, goes much further by placing the “chimerical”
accusations in a separate category and connecting all of them to the
inner doubts of Christians. Several scholars have noted that the sharp
distinction between normal xenophobia and accusations without a shred
of empirical basis is highly problematic. In lengthy reviews of Langmuir’s
book, Robert Stacey argued persuasively that by medieval criteria, the
evidence that Jews commit ritual murder was not without rational
foundation, and Marc Saperstein made the even stronger point that
we cannot be certain even today that no Jew ever desecrated a host.30

29 “Desecration of the Host,” p. 184.

30 Robert C. Stacey, “History, Religion, and Medieval Anti-Semitism: A Response to Gavin
Langmuir,” Religious Studies Review 20 (1994): 95–101; Marc Saperstein, “Medieval
Christians and Jews: A Review Essay,” Shofar 8:4 (Summer, 1990): 1–10. See also Chazan,
In the Year 1096, pp. 143–146.

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 The Middle Ages

Indeed, although obtaining a consecrated host was no simple matter and

there is no reason to believe that any medieval Jew bothered to take the
risk, I have little doubt that if such a Jew had found himself in possession
of this idolatrous object symbolizing the faith of his oppressors, it would
not have fared very well in his hands.31 Any definition whose validity
is entirely dependent on the assumption that a particular act never
happened even once is likely to find itself in a precarious position.
Moreover, as I noted in a much briefer review, even if we attribute
antisemitic accusations to psychic insecurity—and the evidence for
this is quite thin—that insecurity need not take the form of religious
uncertainty. The turbulent world of late medieval Europe was not
incapable of producing other forms of emotional dislocation. “Indeed,
[Langmuir’s] parallel discussion of modern times inevitably refers to
inner tensions involving self-esteem and the role of the individual in
society rather than traditional religious doubts.”32 Most recently, Anna
Sapir Abulafia, without rejecting Langmuir’s thesis for some Christians,
argues that others were genuinely persuaded that the proper use of
reason demonstrates the truth of Christianity so clearly that the Jews’
failure to see this calls their very humanity into question. She sees no
real evidence to regard this position as a result of “irrationality caused
by suppressed doubts,” and I think that she is right.33
Finally, let me emphasize that whatever my reservations about
Langmuir’s analysis, I do not reject on principle the position that the
doctrine of transubstantiation may have had a significant effect on
Jewish insecurity beyond the host desecration charge itself. Indeed, I am
31 In “Mission to the Jews,” p. 589, I alluded to the story in Joseph Official’s Sefer Yosef ha-
Meqanne, ed. by Judah Rosenthal (Jerusalem, 1970), p. 14, which describes a Jew who was
seen urinating on a cross and proceeded to produce a clever justification. See also Joseph
Shatzmiller, “Mi-Gilluyeha shel ha-Antishemiyyut bi-Yemei ha-Beinayim: Ha’ashamat
ha-Yehudim be-Hillul ha-Zelav”, in Mehqarim be-Toledot Am Yisrael ve-Erez Yisrael, vol. 5
(Haifa, 1980), pp. 159–173, and the observations on the relationship between host
desecration charges and other accusations of Jewish acts of desecration in Friedrich Lotter,
“Hostienfrevelvorwurf und Blutwunderfälschung bei den Judenverfolgungen von 1298
(‘Rindfleisch’) und 1336–1338 (‘Armleder’),” in Fälschungen im Mittelalter, vol. 5 (Hannover,
1988), pp. 543–548. Yisrael Yuval, “Ha-Naqam ve-ha-Qelalah, ha-Dam ve-ha-‘Alilah,” Zion
58 (1992/93): 52, n. 77, properly endorses Lotter’s position that not every accusation
that Jews desecrated Christian sancta should automatically be rejected as unfounded.
32 The American Historical Review 96 (1991): 1498–1499.
33 Anna Sapir Abulafia, “Twelfth-Century Renaissance Theology and the Jews,” in From
Witness to Witchcraft, pp. 128–132. In general, see her Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-
Century Renaissance (London and New York, 1995).

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 From Crusades to Blood Libels to Expulsions

inclined to think that the belief that the body of Jesus was regularly
sacrificed in Christian ritual greatly increased Christian receptivity to
the assertion that Jews sacrificed his surrogates in their own perverted
fashion. Where the belief in the “real presence” waned, the blood libel
found considerably less fertile soil.

 VI 
If Langmuir’s thesis has generated the broadest discussion of our issue
in the last few years, a more narrowly focused article about the ritual
murder charge has produced the most explosive one. About five years
ago, Yisrael Yuval published a lengthy Hebrew essay with the intriguing
title, “The Vengeance and the Curse, the Blood and the Libel.”34 What he
had to say generated fascination, controversy, even anger, to the point
where the journal in which the study appeared devoted a double issue to
multifaceted responses followed by the author’s rejoinder.35
In ruthlessly compressed form, Yuval’s thesis makes the following
argument:
1. The vengeance: A great divide separated Ashkenazic and Sephardic
perceptions of the fate of Gentiles at the end of days. The former
anticipated a vengeful redemption, the latter a proselytizing one. While
Sephardim envisioned a world in which all nations will recognize the
God of Israel, Ashkenazim elaborated a tradition attested in midrashic
and liturgical texts which described how the blood of Jewish martyrs
splatters and stains the royal cloak of the Lord until the time when He
will avenge that blood in a campaign of devastation and annihilation
against the Gentile world which had shed it. Despite the dearth of typical
Messianic movements among Ashkenazim, they looked forward to this
event with acute eschatological anticipation.
2. The curse: On the Day of Atonement and during the Passover Seder,
the Ashkenazic liturgy was marked by curses against the Gentiles. This
too is a manifestation of the specifically Ashkenazic vision of redemption
and should probably be seen as a quasi-magical effort to hasten the much-
awaited moment of divine vengeance. Northern European Jewry was not
without its unique form of Messianic activism.

34 “Ha-Naqam ve-ha-Qelalah, Ha-Dam ve-ha-‘Alilah,” Zion 58 (1992/93): 33–90.

35 Zion 59: 2–3 (1994).

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 The Middle Ages

3. The blood: During the first crusade, some Rhineland Jews killed
their own children. While the motive of preventing forced apostasy is
self-evident, one chronicle approvingly recounts the story of a Jew who
killed both himself and his children after the crusading army had already
left as an act of atonement for his conversion during the earlier attack.
To the chronicler, personal atonement is only part of the story. A key
element in the narratives of such killings is the capacity of the victims’
blood to arouse divine vengeance and hence hasten the redemption. In
the later discourse, if not in the events themselves, the martyrs’ death
“was intended (no‘ad) not merely to sanctify God’s name but to arouse
Him to revenge.”36
4. The libel: No satisfactory explanation exists for the genesis
of the ritual murder accusation. The widely held perception that it
was born in England with the death of William of Norwich in 1144 is
erroneous. A careful examination reveals that it originated in Würzburg
in 1147 or even in Worms in 1096, that is, in Germany during the first
or second crusade, while the earliest suggestion that William was killed
by Jews did not emerge until 1149. There is good reason to speculate that
a major impetus for this false accusation was the real behavior of Jews
in killing their own children. Christians were probably aware of some
aspects of points 1, 2, and 3, and they transformed the Jewish belief
in divine eschatological vengeance and the “blood sacrifice” designed to
arouse the Lord to carry out that vengeance into a libel in which the
hostility of known child killers is directed toward more logical victims,
namely, the children of the hated Christians themselves. The accusation
of ritual murder, utterly false as it is, was extrapolated from genuine
Jewish behavior.
This is a provocative thesis provocatively formulated. “The [Christian]
narrative,” writes Yuval, “sets forth Jewish murderousness and desire
for revenge. These two motifs are not fabrications ex nihilo; rather, they
follow from a distorted interpretation of Jewish behavior during the
persecutions in 1096 and of the ritual of vengeance which was part of
the Jews’ eschatological conception. “This lie,” he concludes, playing on
a Rabbinic aphorism, “had legs.”37 It is hardly surprising that the article
evoked a sharp response.

36 “Ha-Naqam,” p. 70.
37 “Ha-Naqam,” p. 86.

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 From Crusades to Blood Libels to Expulsions

Let me react, once again with ruthless brevity, to the four elements
of Yuval’s thesis.
1. The vengeance: As Yuval’s critics pointed out, and as he himself
conceded in a clarification, even Ashkenazic Jews did not envision
the complete liquidation of non-Jews at the end of days. In my view,
the subject is more complex and more interesting than either Yuval
or his critics have indicated, and I have elaborated in some detail in
a forthcoming Hebrew article.38 At the end of the day, however, the motif
of eschatological vengeance is more than strong enough to sustain the
initial step of the first element in Yuval’s argument.
Nonetheless, significant obstacles stand in the way of his use even
of this first element. To begin with, there is no concrete evidence that
twelfth-century Christians, who never mention a Jewish belief about
the eschatological destruction of Gentiles, knew anything about it.39
Moreover, the real Ashkenazic doctrine, as Yuval concedes and even
insists, was entirely passive; vengeance is the Lord’s. Yuval’s point
is that this shift from the passive expectation of divine vengeance to
active, eschatologically motivated revenge is precisely the Christian
distortion. This is surely not impossible, but a speculative connection in
the absence of any evidence that Christians even knew of the belief in
question would be considerably more plausible if the hypothesized link
were straightforward. The more distant the real conception is from its
use by Christians, the less convincing the speculation becomes.
Yuval does point to one early Christian text which indeed connects
Jewish murderousness with redemption, and it is none other than
Thomas of Monmouth’s account of the alleged ritual murder in Norwich.
Here we are told that it is recorded in ancient Jewish writings that
“without the shedding of blood the Jews can neither obtain their liberty
nor ever return to their ancestral land.” Standing alone, this sentence

38 “‘Al Tadmitam ve-Goralam shel ha-Goyim be-Sifrut ha-Pulmus ha-Ashkenazit,” in Yehudim

mul ha-Zelav: Gezerot Tatnu Ba-Halakhah, Ba-Historiah, u-ba-Historiographiah, ed. by Yom
Tov Assis et al. (Jerusalem, 2000). [An English translation appears in this volume.]
39 Let me make it clear that a request for evidence to support this and related hypotheses
is not predicated on the antiquated assumption that the culture of Ashkenazic Jews and
that of their Christian neighbors were sealed off from one another. I have discussed this
interaction with references to recent scholarship in Gerald J. Blidstein, David Berger,
Shnayer Z. Leiman, and Aharon Lichtenstein, Judaism’s Encounter with Other Cultures:
Rejection or Integration?, ed. by Jacob J. Schacter (Northvale, New Jersey and Jerusalem,
1997), pp. 117–125.

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 The Middle Ages

must surely capture the attention of a reader who has been introduced to
the “vengeful redemption,” though even at this point there is a sense of
profound dissonance since God’s eschatological destruction of Gentiles
is not a condition of redemption but a part of the final scenario.
Whatever connection may nonetheless be entertained is profoundly
shaken by the continuation of Thomas’s account:
Hence it was decided by them in antiquity that every year they will sacrifice
a Christian in some part of the world to the most high God to the scorn and
disgrace of Christ, so that in this fashion they will avenge their suffering on
him whose death is the reason why they are excluded from their homeland
and are exiled as slaves in foreign lands.40

By this point, we realize that the text knows nothing of a Jewish belief
that Gentiles will be killed en masse at the end of days. Though Yuval cites
Thomas’s report as a reflection of the vengeful redemption, he might
have been better advised to see it primarily as a distortion of the belief
that the death of Jewish martyrs arouses divine wrath against Gentiles,
though here too only the first sentence is even of potential value. By the
end of the passage, it becomes evident that we have no indication that
Christians knew anything of this belief.
To utilize this text, then, Yuval must assume multiple distortions:
With respect to the vengeful redemption, killing by God becomes killing
by Jews, eschatological killing becomes contemporary killing, mass killing
becomes the annual killing of one person; with respect to “the blood
ritual,” Jewish children become Christian children, and killing to arouse
divine wrath becomes killing to counteract the effect of Jesus’ death.
Again—all this is possible, but the larger the magnitude and quantity
of the distortions, the weaker the argument. It requires a monumental
stretch to maintain that even this text is evidence of Christian familiarity
with either of the Jewish beliefs in question.
2. The curse: As Yuval indicates, the earliest evidence that Christians
knew of the liturgical curses dates from 1248, a full century after the
beginning of the ritual murder accusation. It is not even clear, especially
in light of Yuval’s response to one of his critics, that in the final analysis
he even argues that this component of the “ritual of vengeance” played
40 The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich, ed. by A. Jessop and M. R. James,
(Cambridge, 1896), Book 2, pp. 93–94. (I have made some modifications in Jessop and
James’s translation.) Yuval discusses the passage in “Ha-Naqam,” p. 82.

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 From Crusades to Blood Libels to Expulsions

a role in creating the accusation;41 in any event, it is the least important

element in his argument.
3. The blood: Christians certainly knew that some crusade-era Jews
had killed their own children. The force of Yuval’s argument, however,
depends on considerably more than this, namely, that the Jewish
chroniclers understood these killings as part of an effort to arouse divine
wrath against Christians and thus hasten their eschatological annihilation
and that at least some vague awareness of this interpretation penetrated
Christian society.
The key issue is that of intent, and there is something of a slippery
nature to Yuval’s presentation of this issue. If all he means is that the
chroniclers believed that the effect of the killings would or might be that
divine wrath would be aroused, he is on firm ground—but his larger
argument is dramatically weakened. We would again have to assume
a major distortion—in this case a quantum leap—in the Christian
perception of a Jewish belief: Although in fact no Jew ever suggested
that martyrs killed children so that God would take revenge against those
who indirectly precipitated, but did not carry out, the killings, Christians
mistakenly assumed that this peculiar logic is what drove the Jews’
behavior and then took the next crucial step by making Christians the
direct victims.
In fact, Yuval almost surely aims to make the stronger argument
by maintaining that the chroniclers did see the killings as designed to
arouse divine vengeance, that is, that Jews killed their own children—in
at least one instance when there was no real need to do so—so that God
should get angry at Christians. He writes that the belief in a connection
between the blood of Jewish martyrs and such vengeance “makes it
possible to hasten [the redemption].”42 We have already encountered his
assertion that the death of martyrs “was intended . . . to arouse [God]
to revenge.”43 And he speaks about “such intentions” attributed to the
martyrs by the chroniclers.44
Both Ezra Fleisher and, even more clearly, Mordechai Breuer
pointed out the absence of any evidence that the chroniclers assigned

41 See his remarks in Zion 59 (1994): 399–400.

42 “Ha-Naqam,” pp. 65–66.
43 “Ha-Naqam,” p. 70. No‘ad can just possibly have the softer meaning of “was destined,”
but this does not appear to be the sense of the passage.
44 “Ha-Naqam,” p. 68.

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 The Middle Ages

this motivation to the martyrs. In his responses, Yuval appears to miss

the crucial distinction between the motivation of martyrdom and its
eschatological effect, so that he believes that he has refuted the criticism
by pointing to the motif of the stained robe which arouses God to action.45
Although the chroniclers call upon God to avenge the blood of his people,
there is not the slightest indication that they believed that Jews killed
their children for the purpose of eliciting this vengeance, nor does any
Christian source ever hint at such a motive.
4. The libel: Though Yuval does point to some Christian sources that
draw a connection between the Jewish belief in eschatological vengeance
and the blood libel, these are extremely late. Once the accusation
existed, Christians attempted to buttress it using whatever means were
available to them; as early as the thirteenth century we find citations of
biblical “proof texts” which no one would seriously identify as factors
in generating the libel.46 Yuval’s argument for shifting the locus of the
earliest ritual murder accusation to Germany is suggestive but far from
compelling. As for the early Christian reactions to the killing of Jewish
children, some were unrelievedly hostile, but some were remarkably
understanding.47
In sum, early Christian sources make no reference to the Jewish belief
in eschatological vengeance, a belief which in any event did not involve
Jewish activism. There is no evidence that twelfth-century Christians
knew of the curse, which is in any case the least significant element in
Yuval’s thesis. There is no evidence that they knew that Jews kill their

45 Zion 59 (1994): 383–384, 398.

46 See the Nizzahon Vetus in my edition, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages
(Philadelphia, 1979; softcover ed., Northvale, New Jersey, 1996), #16, Hebrew section,
pp. 14–15, English section, p. 54, and Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, pp. 53–54.
47 A survey of the Christian material was presented by Mary Minty, “Qiddush Hashem
be-‘einei Nozrim be-Germaniah bi-Yemei ha-Beinayim,” Zion 59 (1994): 209–266.
The most insightful Christian remark appears in a fourteenth-century text, but its force
was somewhat obscured by a mistranslation in the article. The Cronica Rheinhardsbrunnensis
(MGHS 30/31, Hannover, 1896, p. 642) reads as follows: “Dicitur eciam, quod dum Iudei
viderent non posse evadere manus occisorum, quod pro quadam sanctitate secundum
legem ipsorum, ne traderentur in manibus incircumsorum, se mutuo interfecerunt.”
Minty (p. 216) translates: “It is also said that once the Jews saw that they could not save
themselves from their killers, they voluntarily killed one another for a certain sanctity
rather than fall into the hands of the uncircumcised.” The word “voluntarily” is not in
the Latin. What the text says is that “they killed one another for a certain sanctity in
accordance with their own law,” an absolutely accurate presentation of the martyrs’ view
that they were dying to fulfill the halakhic requirement of sanctifying the name of God.

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 From Crusades to Blood Libels to Expulsions

children to hasten the vengeful redemption (or that Jewish chroniclers

believe this), and there is good reason for them not to know this since it is
not true. They do know that Jews killed their children in order to prevent
their conversion to Christianity. And that is all. Is this enough to allow
a historian to speculate that such knowledge could have contributed to
producing the accusation of ritual murder? Yes. But it is a speculation
that could have been—and was—offered before Yuval’s argument,48 and
it is a far weaker speculation than the article attempts to present.
While I remain unpersuaded by the central thesis of this essay
and recoil from some of its rhetoric, I would be ungrateful if I did not
acknowledge how much I learned from it. Rarely has an article generated
as much stimulating discussion—some of it sterile, but some of it
fructifying—of a crucial subject in the history of medieval Jewry.

 VII 
Finally, we need to look at a large question which cuts across the
boundaries of the varying interpretations that we have examined. Did
the upsurge in anti-Semitism in the latter half of the Middle Ages move
from the top down or from the bottom up? Part of the problem arises
from the difficulty of defining “top” and “bottom.” Relevant components
of medieval society include popes and kings, canon lawyers and upper
clergy, mendicant friars and parish priests, knights and bureaucrats,
merchants, serfs, and the urban poor. Cohen’s emphasis on theology
clearly points to the upper, educated end of the spectrum, while Landes
makes a point of stressing the popular nature of the eleventh-century
hostility.49 Moore has been particularly sharp in his denunciation of the
view that anti-Semitism was “popular” in origin, but because he sees
knights and lower clergy as distinct from the “populus,” his denial that
the masses played a key role in the development of Judeophobia does
not necessarily become an emphasis on society’s elite. The distinction
between the highest echelons of the Church and the lower clergy
is well illustrated by their respective attitudes to the charge of ritual
murder; the official Church resisted it, but the accusation in Norwich
as well as the first genuine blood libel, which occurred in Fulda in 1235,
48 See his gracious comment (Zion 59 [1994]: 392) acknowledging a tentative suggestion by
Ivan Marcus in Jewish History 1 (1986).
49 “The Massacres of 1010,” pp. 93–96.

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 The Middle Ages

resulted in large measure from the initiatives of clerics.50 As to the

“populus,” the association between the Devil and the Jews, complete
with physical deformities and Jewish stench, gives off the odor of mass
superstition.51
It is especially important to recognize that once a belief has entered
society, it takes on a life of its own. It spawns new beliefs. It may be
an effect, but it becomes a cause. Self-evident as this may be, failure
to respect this point has led to historiographic anomalies of the most
serious sort, not least of which was the refusal of classical Marxism to
recognize non-economic causes in history. Even if certain ideologies
were spawned by class interests, it violates common sense to argue that
children brought up with a set of beliefs cannot be motivated by them.
In our own area of concern, it seems to me that Langmuir’s theoretical
discussion in History, Religion, and Anti-Semitism is marred by a refusal
to recognize this possibility. Thus, he argues on principle that it is
inherently problematic to appeal to religious belief—rather than “normal
empirical explanation”—to account for historical developments such as
anti-Semitism, as if such beliefs, even if initially generated by “normal,
empirical” causes, cannot produce further effects.52
Moore correctly observes that “once a pattern of persecution has
been established and its victims identified,” it is easy to understand why
popular sentiment would demand appropriate action.53 Similarly, Stacey
pointed out in his lecture on the expulsion from England that people
who believed that Jews regularly kidnapped and murdered Christian
50 On Fulda, Yuval (Zion 59 [1994]: 397, 399) points to the study by B. Diestelkampf, “Der
Vorwurf des Ritualmordes gegen Juden vor dem Hofgericht Kaiser Friedrichs II. in Jahre
1236,” in Religiöse Devianz, ed. by D. Simon (Frankfurt/M, 1990).
51 In the absence of new interpretations of the Jewish association with Satan, I have not
addressed the subject here. This does not mean that I do not consider it highly significant;
see my brief remarks in History and Hate, pp. 7–8, 11–12. For my reaction to B. Netanyahu’s
recent work on anti-Semitism in late medieval Spain (The Origins of the Inquisition [New
York, 1995]), see my review in Commentary 100:4 (October: 1995): 55–57.
Two important, recent books which address Christian anti-Semitism in the Middle
Ages did not fit into the parameters of this lecture, but I would be remiss if I did not
acknowledge them. Mark Cohen’s Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages
(Princeton, 1994) draws upon its author’s great expertise in the Islamic world to place our
subject in a comparative context, and the first volume of Steven T. Katz’s The Holocaust in
Historical Context (New York, 1994) contains a book-length treatment of medieval anti-
Semitism which is balanced, comprehensive, and remarkably erudite.
52 See History, Religion, and Anti-Semitism, p. 9, and esp. pp. 42–46.
53 Formation of a Persecuting Society, p. 108.

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 From Crusades to Blood Libels to Expulsions

children clearly had every reason to want those Jews as far removed from
their families as possible. We readily recognize that by modern times,
Jew-hatred had become so deeply ingrained that for many people, the
evaporation of old “causes” required the substitution of new ones. In
the Middle Ages as well, new resentments would naturally be directed
at familiar enemies, and these resentments would reinforce the enmity.
Precisely because causes produce effects which produce further effects,
we may be able to speak of a primary cause for an eleventh or twelfth
or thirteenth century transformation, but we cannot speak of the cause,
perhaps not even the primary cause, of the increased hostility to Jews
in a period as extensive as the late Middle Ages.
An intensification of popular piety, a changing economic reality,
political, social and economic struggle among nobility, kings, and
popular movements, Christian familiarity with post-biblical Jewish
texts, the growing prominence of the Devil and his minions, naked fear,
millenarian expectations and a triumphalist Christian mission, perhaps
the exclusiveness produced by national or Church-centered unity and
the anxiety engendered by the doctrine of transubstantiation—all
these contributed to the erosion of the security of the Jews. Of course
we need to evaluate the relative significance of one or another factor in
specific environments, whether chronological, geographic or personal,
and sometimes we may conclude that a particular proposal is simply
wrong. But embracing all those that we deem relevant is not a counsel
of despair or a failure of nerve. Not only does history resist controlled
experiments in which we can isolate one factor to see if it works; large
historical developments are rarely moved by isolated factors to begin
with. We would do well to remember Burke’s analogy—proposed for quite
different purposes—between the complexity of society and that of the
human organism. A candid look at the tangled web of our own psyches is
a salutary reminder of the humility with which we need to approach the
explanation of so durable, so protean, and so daunting a phenomenon
as anti-Semitism in medieval Christian Europe.

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 A GENERATION OF SCHOLARSHIP
ON JEWISHCHRISTIAN INTERACTION
IN THE MEDIEVAL WORLD 1

From: Tradition 38:2 (Summer, 2004): 4–14.

To what extent has research in the past three decades changed our
understanding of Jewish-Christian interaction in the pre-modern period?
To what degree has the assumption that Jewish-Christian relations
were dominated by the facts of irreconcilable theological differences, legal
discrimination, and outbreaks of violence obscured the complexities of these
relations?
How have insights from other disciplines shed new light on Jewish-
Christian interactions? In particular, how has the scholarly awareness of
differences between “high” and “low” culture contributed to interpretation of
these relations?
How have the Holocaust, on the one hand, and the founding of the State
of Israel, on the other, affected modern historiography of Jewish-Christian
relations?
Which aspects of Jewish-Christian relations remain least understood?

This assignment has been a salutary and humbling experience. We all

pay lip service to the recognition that history is rewritten in every
generation, but if we did not believe that something of our own
contributions would endure, we would, I think, lose much of the drive
that impels us to do our work. The study of medieval Jewish-Christian
relations is after all a relatively small field, and yet a hard look at the

1 At the conference of the Association for Jewish Studies in December, 2001, I was one
of three historians of medieval Jewish-Christian relations asked to address a series of
questions about the state of the field. It is a pleasure to present a written, annotated
version of my remarks as a tribute to Rabbi Emanuel Feldman, whose learning,
commitment and stylistic flair have preserved and enhanced the tradition of this
distinguished journal.

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 A Generation of Scholarship on Jewish-Christian Interaction in the Medieval World

state of that field three decades ago reveals a dramatically different, often
thoroughly alien landscape.
This is especially true of Northern Europe in the Middle Ages. Truly
great scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—
people whose command of classical Jewish and Christian sources
renders us all ammei ha-aretz by comparison—had begun to examine the
relationship through a historical lens: Heinrich Graetz, Avraham Berliner,
David Kaufmann, Samuel Krauss, Adolf and Samuel Posnanski, and more.
By 1970, which happens to be the year I received my doctorate, Yitzhak
Baer’s work on Hasidei Ashkenaz and Northern France,2 Judah Rosenthal’s
editions and studies of polemical works,3 Solomon Grayzel’s volume
on papal documents,4 Bernhard Blumenkranz’s collection and analysis
of pre-crusade Christian materials,5 several chapters of Salo Baron’s
History, the early studies of Frank E. Talmage,6 and Jacob Katz’s seminal,
remarkably insightful, though largely impressionistic Exclusiveness and
Tolerance had begun to set a new agenda. Nonetheless, I think it is fair
to say that the prevailing impression of Northern European Jewry in the
High Middle Ages continued to be one of an insular community, hostile
to and ignorant of the society that surrounded it.
Both new information and new methodologies have produced
a significant reassessment. In the last generation, arguments have been
presented for a variety of theses that would have seemed implausible
thirty years ago: that Northern European Jews discussed biblical texts
with Christians in non-polemical contexts,7 that Jewish exegesis was

2 “Ha-Megammah ha-Datit-Hevratit shel Sefer Hasidim,” Zion 3 (1938): 1–50; “Rashi ve-
ha-Meziut ha-Historit shel Zemanno,” Tarbiz 20 (1949): 320–332, and more.
3 Jacob ben Reuben, Milhamot Hashem (Jerusalem, 1963); Joseph Official, Sefer Yosef ha-
Meqanne (Jerusalem, 1970); the studies collected in Rosenthal, Mehqarim u-Meqorot
(Jerusalem, 1967), and more.
4 The Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century (Philadelphia, 1933). See now the expanded
version edited by Kenneth Stow (New York, 1989).
5 Les Auteurs Chrétiens Latins du Moyen Age sur les Juifs et le Judaisme (Paris, La Haye, 1963);
Juifs et Chrétiens dans le Monde Occidental, 430–1096 (Paris, 1960).
6 “Rabbi David Kimhi as Polemicist,” Hebrew Union College Annual 38 (1967): 213–235; “An
Hebrew Polemical Treatise, Anti-Cathar and anti-Orthodox,” Harvard Theological Review
60 (1967): 323–348. These and some of his later studies have now been collected in Frank
Ephraim Talmage, Apples of Gold in Settings of Silver: Studies in Medieval Jewish Exegesis
and Polemics, ed. by Barry Dov Walfish (Toronto, 1999).
7 Aryeh Grabois, “The Hebraica Veritas and Jewish-Christian Intellectual Relations in the
Twelfth Century,” Speculum 50 (1975): 613–634.

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 The Middle Ages

profoundly influenced by both the Jewish-Christian confrontation and

the intellectual atmosphere of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance,8 that
sharp polemical exchanges, sometimes initiated by Jews, took place
on the streets and even in homes,9 that Jews were sorely tempted by
Christianity and converted more often than we imagined,10 that Jewish
religious ceremonies arose and developed in conscious and subconscious
interaction with Christian rituals,11 that martyrdom itself reflects
a religious environment shared with the dominant culture and even
an awareness of its evolving theology,12 that the crusades were not
a significant turning point,13 and that images of self and other were
formed through constant, shifting interaction.14
This incomplete list concentrates on the North and refers almost
exclusively to Jewish reactions to Christian society. If we expand our
purview to Spain and to Christian perceptions and policies, a different
set of suggestive, largely new questions emerges. Were the conversos
really crypto-Jews?15 How did Jews utilize their growing historical

8 A mini-literature has grown up around this theme. See the overall argument presented
in Elazar Touitou, “Shitato ha-Parshanit shel ha-Rashbam al Reqa ha-Mezi’ut ha-Historit
shel Zemanno,” in Iyyunim be-Sifrut Hazal ba-Mikra u-be-Toledot Yisrael: Muqdash li-Prof.
E. Z. Melamed, ed. by Y. D. Gilat et al. (Ramat Gan, 1982), pp. 48–74. For a particularly
good discussion containing some important methodological observations, see Avraham
Grossman, “Ha-Pulmus ha-Yehudi ha-Nozri ve-ha-Parshanut ha-Yehudit la-Miqra be-
Zarfat ba-Meah ha-Yod-Bet,” Zion 91 (1986): 29–60.
9 See my “Mission to the Jews and Jewish-Christian Contacts in the Polemical Literature
of the High Middle Ages,” American Historical Review 91 (1986): 576–591.
10 Avraham Grossman, Hakhmei Zarfat ha-Rishonim (Jerusalem, 1995), pp. 502–503.
11 Ivan G. Marcus, Rituals of Childhood (New Haven, 1996); Yisrael Yuval, Shenei Goyim
be-Bitnekh: Yehudim ve-Nozrim—Dimmuyim Hadadiyyim (Tel Aviv, 2000), pp. 219–266.
12 See most recently Shmuel Shepkaru, “To Die for God: Martyrs’ Heaven in Hebrew and
Latin Crusade Narratives,” Speculum 77 (2002): 311–341.
13 Robert Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade (Berkeley, 1987), pp. 197–222.
14 See my “Al Tadmitam ve-Goralam shel ha-Goyim be-Sifrut ha-Pulmus ha-Ashkenazit,”
in Yehudim mul ha-Tselav: Gezerot Tatn’u ba-Historiah u-ba-Historiographiah, ed. by Yom
Tov Assis et al. (Jerusalem, 2000), pp. 74–91. Cf. Robert Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes and
Modern Antisemitism (Berkeley, 1997). On this and related matters, see now Ivan Marcus,
“A Jewish-Christian Symbiosis: The Culture of Early Ashkenaz,” in Cultures of the Jews:
A New History, ed. by David Biale (New York, 2002), pp. 449–518.
15 This question has produced a significant body of historiography since the late 1960’s,
especially in the wake of B. Netanyahu’s The Marranos of Spain from the Late XIVth to
the Early XVIth Century According to Contemporary Hebrew Sources (New York, 1966). For
a brief statement of my own perspective, see my review of Netanyahu’s The Origins of the
Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain (New York, 1995) in Commentary 100:4 (October,
1995): 55–57.

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 A Generation of Scholarship on Jewish-Christian Interaction in the Medieval World

sophistication, developed in significant measure through exposure to

Christian thought, in responding to Christianity?16 Can we still speak of
fifteenth-century Spanish Jewry as a community suffering decline and
demoralization?17 Does Christian familiarity with the Talmud explain
policies of intolerance?18 Does the charge of ritual murder emerge
out of a Christian interpretation of real Jewish behavior?19 Must our
understanding of the treatment of Jews be rethought in light of attitudes
toward other “others”: Muslims, witches, lepers, heretics, homosexuals,
even a non-other other—women?20 Is there a deep difference between
Crusade-era hostility toward Jews and the arguably irrational sort
manifested in charges of ritual murder, host desecration, and well
poisoning?21 Does the close examination of specific histories require us to
jettison our perception of an overarching pattern in which the condition
of Jews deteriorates from the early to the late Middle Ages?22
All these questions and contentions were first framed—or framed
in significantly new forms—during the last three decades. I cannot, of
course, address them all in the purview of this presentation, and so let

16 Ram Bar Shalom, Dimmuy ha-Tarbut ha-Nozrit ba-Toda‘ah ha-Historit shel Yehudei Sefarad
u-Provence (Ha-Me’ah ha-Shtem-Esreh ad ha-Hamesh-Esreh), Ph. D dissertation (Tel Aviv
University, 1996). See too my “On the Uses of History in Medieval Jewish Polemic against
Christianity: The Search for the Historical Jesus,” in Jewish History and Jewish Memory:
Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, ed. by E. Carlebach, J. M. Efron, and D. N. Myers
(Hanover and London, 1998), pp. 25–39. On Jewish-Christian interaction in Spain, see
now Benjamin Gampel, “The Transformation of Sephardic Culture in Christian Iberia,”
in Cultures of the Jews (above, n. 13), pp. 389–447.
17 Eleazar Gutwirth, “Towards Expulsion: 1391–1492,” in Elie Kedourie, ed., Spain and the
Jews (London, 1992), pp. 51–73.
18 Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews (Ithaca and London, 1982). Cf. my review in
American Historical Review 88 (1983): 93.
19 Yisrael Yuval, “Ha-Naqam ve-ha-Qelalah, ha-Dam ve-ha-Alilah,” Zion 58 (1992/93): 33–
90, and the reactions in Zion 59:2–3 (1994).
20 R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society (Oxford, 1987).
21 Gavin Langmuir, History, Religion and Antisemitism and Toward a Definition of Antisemitism
(Berkeley, 1990). For reactions to this thesis, see Robert C. Stacey, “History, Religion
and Medieval Antisemitism: A Response to Gavin Langmuir,” Religious Studies Review
20 (1994): 95–101; Marc Saperstein, “Medieval Christians and Jews: A Review Essay,”
Shofar 8:4 (Summer, 1990): 1–10; Robert Chazan, In the Year 1096: The First Crusade
and the Jews (Philadelphia, 1996), pp. 143–146; David Berger, From Crusades to Blood
Libels to Expulsions: Some New Approaches to Medieval Antisemitism. The Second Victor
J. Selmanowitz Memorial Lecture, Touro College Graduate School of Jewish Studies
(1997), pp. 14–16.
22 David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence (Princeton, 1996).

— 43 —
 The Middle Ages

me concentrate on just a few central points regarding cultural interaction

that may be methodologically fruitful.
Influence is notoriously difficult to pin down. To return to Northern
European Jews, we can now take it for granted that they were acutely
aware of many Christian ceremonies and symbols. Festive religious pro-
cessions wended their way through the streets, and routine, everyday
activities brought Jews into contact with Christian discourse. Popular,
hostile euphemisms for Christian sancta—chalice (kelev), priest (gallah),
sermon (nibbu’ah), church (to‘evah), saints (kedeshim), the host (lehem
mego’al), baptismal water (mayim zedonim), the holy sepulcher (shuha), not
to speak of Peter (Peter Hamor), Jesus (ha-Taluy), and Mary (Haria)—testify
to the ubiquitous presence of these symbols in the daily life of Ashkenazic
Jews. The very hostility in these terms leads anyone attempting to assess
Christian influence on expressions of Jewish culture and thought into
a methodological thicket where psychology, halakha, and theology meet.
I do not believe that any medieval Jew, Ashkenazic or Sephardic,
would have explicitly said, even to him or herself, Kammah na’ah
avodah zarah zo: “How lovely is this quintessentially Christian religious
practice or idea; let us import it into our faith.” The refusal to do this
was rooted only secondarily in formal strictures prohibiting imitation
of Gentile statutes; it spoke to elemental instincts.23 Moreover, I am
not persuaded that Ashkenazic Jews—even those who specialized in
interfaith confrontations—actually read Christian literary works other
than the New Testament. They do not cite such works either explicitly
or by convincing implication, and this silence counts. Even the Southern
French case that I noted in the early 1970s—Jacob ben Reuben’s
familiarity with a polemical collection, including selections from Gilbert
Crispin—is exceptional and results from his having been handed the
collection by his Christian interlocutor.24 The familiarity with Christian
works in the writings of R. Elhanan b. Yaqar of London is so atypical that
it is nothing less than stunning.25

23 On the importance of instincts in this discourse see my “Jacob Katz on Jews and
Christians in the Middle Ages,” in The Pride of Jacob: Essays on Jacob Katz and his Work,
ed. by Jay M. Harris (Cambridge, Mass., 2002), pp. 41–63.
24 See my “Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille, and Jacob ben Reuben: A Study in the Transmission
of Medieval Polemic,” Speculum 49 (1974): 34–47.
25 G. Vajda, “De quelques infiltrations chrétiennes dans l’oeuvre d’un auteur anglo-juif du
XIIIe siècle,” Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Age 28 (1961): 15–34.

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 A Generation of Scholarship on Jewish-Christian Interaction in the Medieval World

Thus, we must be cognizant of a complex of questions when we

approach the issue at hand: Is the practice or belief or symbol or
exegetical approach likely to have been known to Jews? How evident
was it to an outsider? How clear would its religious, i.e., its specifically
Christian, character be? In this particular instance, can we plausibly
posit unconscious influence? Would this practice be expected to trigger
reflexive Jewish aversion if its Christian character were understood?
If the religious character of the practice is evident, do classic Jewish texts
nonetheless provide enough basis for adopting it that a Jew attracted
by it could persuade himself and others that it is really Jewish after all?
Perhaps a Jewish text weighs so powerfully in favor of this practice or
belief that Jews really affirmed it for internal reasons—not through
Christian influence but despite full awareness of its Christian resonance.
Does a Jewish practice change the Christian original sufficiently that
intentional religious competition or symbolic inversion can plausibly be
proposed? Since Jews and Christians examined history, studied sacred
texts, and molded their religious lives in the context of a common biblical
tradition and essentially monotheistic theology, can the phenomenon
under discussion be reasonably understood as a result of independent
development?
Much more rarely, such questions can even be relevant where our
focus is on Christian behaviors or beliefs. Thus, the assertion that
Christians developed their views about Jewish ritual murder in response
to Jewish actions during the Crusades and even to Jewish prayers and
eschatological conceptions requires a prior assessment of the likelihood
that Christians were aware of these conceptions at the relevant time. If
such awareness seems implausible, so do conclusions drawn from it.26
To some degree, these criteria generate a question that might be
described as an analytical chicken and egg. Even if I have no independent
knowledge that Jews knew a Christian doctrine, and even if I would
consider such knowledge intrinsically implausible, I may still be persuaded
by connections that seem so striking that I will posit such knowledge.
Still, in such a case the burden of argument (there are few “proofs” in
this discourse) is heavily on the advocate of the hypothesis of influence
or reaction. It must be acknowledged, of course, that if I am indeed

26 See my observations on Yuval’s “Ha-Naqam ve-ha-Qelalah” in From Crusades to Blood

Libels to Expulsions, pp. 16–22.

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 The Middle Ages

persuaded by striking connections in more than a few instances, I would

have to reassess the threshold of probable influence when examining
new questions.
So far, all this has been highly abstract, and I have to provide some
concrete examples to flesh out these principles, though to dwell on any
of them is beyond the scope of this presentation.
With respect to Hasidei Ashkenaz: The movement itself is now seen as
a manifestation of a largely internal Jewish dynamic.27 Penances, however,
are a different matter. Christian self-mortification was almost certainly
known to Jews, its Christian character was clear enough to raise warning
flags, there were enough Jewish sources to make the argument for the
Jewishness of the practice but not enough for this to be an internal,
immanent development, and it could serve subconsciously and perhaps
even consciously as an affirmation of superior Jewish religious devotion
in the face of Christian piety. Weighing all this, I am inclined to think
that influence, or response, is highly likely.28
With respect to biblical exegesis: Both Jews and Christians were
sufficiently familiar with the approaches of the other for influence—
in both directions—to be plausible. Religiously neutral aspects of the
twelfth-century Christian cultural efflorescence have sufficient affinities
to certain predilections of pashtanim (e.g., interpreting according to derekh
eretz) to have inspired them without their seeing these predilections as
deriving from a specifically Christian environment. I am convinced that
polemical encounters were considerably more common, even among
ordinary people, than we used to think, and Jews may well have so
internalized their polemical insistence on straightforward interpretation
that they applied this approach ruthlessly even in works directed at their
own coreligionists.
In matters of exegetical detail, polemical motives are occasionally
obvious, occasionally likely, and occasionally asserted implausibly. When
a Jewish commentary is alleged to counter a Christian interpretation
never (or hardly ever) cited by Jewish polemicists, and not prominent

27 Haym Soloveitchik, “Three Themes in the Sefer Hasidim,” AJS Review 1 (1976): 311–57.
See too Ivan Marcus, Piety and Society (Leiden, 1981).
28 See Talya Fishman, “The Penitential System of Hasidei Ashkenaz and the Problem of
Cultural Boundaries,” The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 8 (1999): 201–229. Cf.
my remarks in The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1979),
p. 27, and in “Al Tadmitam ve-Goralam shel ha-Goyim” (above, n. 13), pp. 78–79.

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 A Generation of Scholarship on Jewish-Christian Interaction in the Medieval World

in Christian exegesis of the period, we would do well to be wary. Here

is an example proposed in the scholarly literature that strikes me as
a close call: Did Rashbam’s assertion that Moses dropped rather that
threw down the tablets result from his desire to counter the view that
the first tablets represent the Old Law, which is to be superseded? The
Christian interpretation is not particularly prominent; it is not, however,
altogether obscure either, and Rashbam’s comment does say “darsheni.”
To take another concrete example, this time from a passage where
polemical sensibilities are obvious, I do not accept the widespread view
that Rashi adopted a vicarious atonement reading of Isaiah 53 as a result
of historical considerations relating to the first Crusade.29 Here, vicarious
atonement is adopted despite its evident Christological valence because
of internal exegetical considerations reinforced by sufficient rabbinic
precedent to justify the doctrine itself.
With respect to the Tosafists: The similarity between the dialectical
methods they used and those of more or less contemporary Christian
theologians and canon lawyers are striking indeed, but significant
Christian familiarity with talmudic discourse or substantial Jewish
knowledge of scholastic discussions and the concordance of discordant
canons appears very low. If one were to be persuaded of influence, this
would be a case of being swept away by a parallelism that is difficult to
attribute to coincidence. Conflicting, very powerful considerations leave
us in limbo.
With respect to popular practices and rituals: My inclination, for
reasons already noted, is to privilege immanent development, but
here too I take very seriously the possibility of influence and response
where the Christian parallel, as in the case of certain “rituals of
childhood,”30 was not glaringly evident to the medieval Jew. Here “high”
and “low” culture intersect, but the essential methodology does not,
I think, change fundamentally even though one’s verdict in a specific case
must consider the knowledge and sensibilities of the presumed objects
of influence.
I have already alluded to the complex interaction between attraction
and hostility. Here as elsewhere I am inclined to think that the most

29 Joel Rembaum, “The Development of a Jewish Exegetical Tradition Regarding Isaiah 53,”
Harvard Theological Review 75 (1982):289–311.
30 Marcus (above, n. 10).

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 The Middle Ages

relevant discipline outside history is psychology, where an understanding

of the dynamics of fascination and hate, of self and other, is central to
illuminating our concerns. Since both history and psychology are among
the most imperialistic of disciplines—there really are no humanistic
or social scientific pursuits that are not part of the historian’s craft, and
no study of human activity is alien to psychology—this assertion may
be a truism. But whatever disciplinary labels we assign—cultural studies,
anthropology, social history—we are considerably more sensitive to
the crucial insight that in certain circumstances subcultures can interact
and influence one another despite a sense of existential difference, even
of mutual hatred.
With respect to Christian attitudes to Jews, I will be much more brief,
relying on my essay on new approaches to medieval anti-Semitism.31
Still, it is self-evident that psychological assertions play a central role
in this discourse as well. A case in point is the distinction put forth in
the last decade between irrational and other forms of medieval anti-
Semitism.32 Even if we can satisfy ourselves that late medieval Christians
were insecure in their beliefs, a proposition that seems plausible with
respect to transubstantiation but much less well established on a larger
scale, the assertion that they coped with the perceived irrationality
of their own faith by attributing irrational behavior to Jews does not
follow ineluctably. I do not know whether such coping mechanisms can
be firmly established through psychological research, but the possibility
of such investigation—even though it would not be wholly determinative
for our purposes—is intriguing.
With respect to anti-Jewish attitudes and policies, the question of
high and low culture has played a particularly significant role. Approaches
that privilege—or blame—the former include the assertion that Christian
intellectuals reacted to a perceived Jewish challenge,33 the emphasis
on the Christian discovery of the Talmud,34 and concentration on the
evolution of Church law regarding Jews.35 Low culture takes center stage
in analyses emphasizing economic grievances, satanic fantasies, and,

31 From Crusades to Blood Libels to Expulsions (above, n. 20).

32 Langmuir (above, n. 20).
33 Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society (above, n. 19).
34 Cohen, The Friars (above, n. 17).
35 This is a significant motif in Kenneth Stow’s Alienated Minority: The Jews of Medieval Latin
Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 1992) and in many of his other studies.

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 A Generation of Scholarship on Jewish-Christian Interaction in the Medieval World

more ambiguously, millennial upheavals36 and enhanced piety. Since high

and low culture constantly interact, and in the case of the very important
lower clergy cannot even be clearly distinguished, I am inclined to see
a sharp division between these categories as misleading.
Then there is the question of longue durée patterns in the treatment
of Jews. Despite important work calling traditional periodization into
question,37 I continue to believe that a pattern of decline from early
to late Middle Ages remains a reality. Sometimes increasing historical
sophistication along with additional information can blur differences
between communities and periods so that things that “everyone knew”
about continuities and discontinuities now appear questionable. Usually,
however, if everyone knows something is true, it is true, or at least
more or less true. This is a point that concerns me in many areas and
periods, some well out of my field of specialized expertise. At the risk
of revealing my own lack of sophistication, here is a partial list of old-
fashioned views that I think deserve some defense against revisionist
critiques that have in some instances become the new orthodoxies:
Despite everything, Ashkenazic culture was more insular than that of
Spanish Jewry; sixteenth-century Jewish messianism and historiography
are noteworthy; rabbinic Judaism in the early Christian centuries was
a more direct continuation of Second Temple Judaism in all its forms
than Christianity; Orthodox Judaism in modern times is a more direct
continuation of medieval Judaism than Reform Judaism; the eastern
Haskalah did begin later than that of the West; and the condition of late
medieval Jewry under Christendom was more precarious than that of the
Jews of the earlier Middle Ages.
A final word on the question about Zionism: The impact of Zionism
on twentieth-century Jewish historiography is beyond question, and
beyond the scope of this presentation. At this moment in history, I do
not think that the relevant fault lines, to the extent that they exist, are
along Israel-Diaspora lines. If they do exist, they may reflect religious
commitments, so that historians with traditionalist sympathies or
beliefs may be less inclined, for example, to endorse connections
between Jewish behavior during the Crusades—behavior lionized in
36 Richard Landes, “The Massacres of 1010: On the Origins of Popular Violence in Western
Europe,” in From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism in Medieval Christian Thought,
ed. by Jeremy Cohen (Wiesbaden, 1996), pp. 79–112.
37 Nirenberg, Communities of Violence (above, n. 21).

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 The Middle Ages

the liturgy—and stories of ritual murder. Both Israeli and diaspora

historians live in societies where anti-Semitism in its medieval form has
receded, and this liberates everyone from some of the constraints of the
past, notwithstanding the virulent resurgence of attacks against both
the Jewish people and its State in the last several years. I must confess
to having experienced some uneasiness when translating the Nitzahon
Yashan’s anti-Christian invective into English and listing a medieval
Christian’s bill of particulars against the Talmud in an English article,38
but, for better or worse, I overcame that uneasiness. That queasy feeling,
however, has its own historiographic benefits. It enables us better to
understand the often wrenching struggles of Jews from R. Yehiel of Paris
to the participants in the Napoleonic Sanhedrin to balance candor and
self-interest in presenting the teachings of their classical texts. I do not
react well when people speak with bemused condescension about the
quaint notes in old editions of selihot affirming that the gentiles of the
poet are the Visigoths or the heathens of old. There is not a scintilla of
doubt that the condescending critic would have done the same thing had
he or she been put in the same position.
I end where I began. The chastening effect of considering the
monumental changes that have been effected during the last three
decades in the historiography of medieval Jewish-Christian relations
makes me loath to draw up a list of areas requiring further study, though
it is not difficult to list such areas: interaction in the economic sphere,
in folk beliefs, in perceptions of the role of women,39 and much more.
The greatest changes, I am afraid, may well come in areas that I think I
understand best.

38 “Christians, Gentiles, and the Talmud: A Fourteenth-Century Jewish Response to the

Attack on Rabbinic Judaism,” in Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter, ed. by Bernard Lewis
and Friedrich Niewöhner (Wiesbaden, 1992}, pp. 115–130.
39 See now Avraham Grossman, Hasidot u-Mordot: Nashim Yehudiyyot be-Eropah bi-Yemei ha-
Beinayim (Jerusalem, 2001); Elisheva Baumgarten, Mothers and Children: Jewish Family
Life in Medieval Europe (Princeton, N.J., 2004).

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 JACOB KATZ ON JEWS AND CHRISTIANS
IN THE MIDDLE AGES

From: The Pride of Jacob: Essays on Jacob Katz and his Work,
ed. by Jay M. Harris (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass., 2002),
pp. 41–63.

Few scholars indeed have produced seminal works of abiding value in

areas outside their primary field of expertise. Jacob Katz’s Exclusiveness
and Tolerance, which is precisely such a work, is remarkable testimony to
the power of wide learning, penetrating insight, and exceptional instincts
to overcome significant lacunae in the author’s command of relevant
material.1 Katz was not a medievalist; he was not deeply conversant
with Christian sources; and he did not study the full range of Jewish
texts relevant to the relationship between medieval Christians and Jews.
Thus, Christian works play virtually no role in any facet of his analysis.
His discussion of the motivation of Christian converts to Judaism, for
example, makes no reference to the one memoir by such a convert that
addresses this question explicitly, and his assertion that the doctrine
of Jewish toleration was not fully worked out until Aquinas provides
a somewhat misleading impression that probably results from lack of
familiarity with earlier texts by churchmen of lesser renown. Apart from
the famous Paris disputation, to which he devotes an important chapter,
he makes virtually no use of Jewish polemical literature, so that we find
precisely one reference to Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, the central polemical
text in thirteenth-century France, and no reference at all to the Nizzahon

1 The English version was published by Oxford University Press in 1961. The Hebrew, Bein
Yehudim le-Goyim (Jerusalem, 1960), appeared earlier but, according to the preface, was
written later and hence, says Katz, takes precedence. In a number of quite important
instances, the Hebrew is superior not because of revisions but because at that point Katz’s
command of written English was not fully adequate to the task and whoever assisted him
did not always capture the necessary nuances.

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 The Middle Ages

Vetus, a major compilation of anti-Christian arguments in medieval

Ashkenaz, which is the sphere of culture standing at the center of his
work.2 Yet this little volume described by Katz himself as a collection of
essays rather than a sustained study, has deservedly become the starting
point for all serious discussion of Jewish approaches to Christianity in
medieval Europe.
When a scholar writes a book about a subject that he is not fully
trained to address, the question of motivation arises in more acute
fashion than usual. I strongly suspect that Katz was drawn to this theme
as a result of a religious concern that he acknowledges and an ethical
one that he downplays. His autobiography describes the inner struggles
of Orthodox Jewish university students in interwar Germany. “The
dilemma for most of my fellow students seemed to be rooted in a sense
of contradiction between the Jewish tradition by which they lived and
the scientific concepts and universal values encountered during their
academic studies. The apologetic efforts of Orthodox Judaism . . . were
aimed at creating an ideology to bridge this abyss.”3 He maintains,
however, that he himself was not bothered by the discrepancy between
traditional Judaism and an “external system of concepts and values”;
his concern was with evidence for historical development within
a purportedly closed, unitary tradition whose authority seemed to rest
on its imperviousness to change.
Although I do not doubt that Katz was disturbed by the latter tension,
I doubt very much that he was unconcerned about the former. It cannot
be unalloyed coincidence that the theme of Exclusiveness and Tolerance
unites both issues by examining the development of Jewish law with
respect to the standing of Gentiles, perhaps the quintessential area in
which Judaism was accused of violating the requirements of universal
values. Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann, the leading German rabbi in the
late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was impelled to write
an apologetic work on Jewish attitudes toward believers in other faiths.4
2 Although Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne had not yet been published in its entirety, much of the
work was available in print. See Judah Rosenthal’s summary of the publication history in
his edition (Jerusalem, 1970), Introduction, p. 32. The Nizzahon Vetus had been published
by Johann Christoph Wagenseil, Tela Ignea Satanac, vol. 2 (Altdorf, 1681), pp. 1–260.
3 Jacob Katz, With My Own Eyes: The Autobiography of a Historian (Hanover and London,
1995), p. 82.
4 Der Slulchan-Aruch und die Rabbinen über das Verhältnis der Juden zu Andersgläubigen
(Berlin, 1894).

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 Jacob Katz on Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages

We now know that Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, the distinguished leader
of the Berlin Rabbinical Seminary at the very time that Katz studied in
Frankfurt, was profoundly troubled by this problem.5
Moreover, Katz himself provides us with several indications of his
own sensitivities and sympathies. He argues that a historian has the
right to use the term “shortcoming” as an expression of moral judgment
with respect to earlier societies without violating the principle that later
values alien to those societies should not be imposed in the process
of historical assessment. His justification for this position rests on
the argument that even the medievals had some sense of a universal
humanitarian standard, although they would regularly suspend it in
the face of what they perceived to be the demands of their religion; it
is precisely their awareness of such a standard that allows a historian
to render judgment as to the degree of their fealty to it. One cannot
help but wonder if Katz would really have avoided all moral judgment
if he were studying a society that he considered bereft of any universal
humanitarian concern. He appears to be straining to find an academically
plausible argument allowing for the infiltration of an explicitly ethical
prism into his historical analysis, thereby satisfying both his moral and
his historical conscience.
In the last few lines of the preface to the Hebrew version, he allows
us a fleeting glimpse into his hope and conviction that the book is not
irrelevant to the issues of the day.

The roots of contemporary problems extend to the far reaches of the past,
and Jewish-Gentile relations even today cannot be understood without
knowing their earlier history. A historian is permitted to believe that when
he distances the reader from the present, he does not sever him from it;
rather, he provides him with a vantage point from which he can more
readily encompass even the place where we now stand.6

In Exclusiveness and Tolerance as well as his other essays on our theme,

Katz saw himself as a rebel against dubious apologetics. He does not
hesitate to state flatly that a key contention of Hoffmann’s work arguing
that medieval Jews had declared their Christian contemporaries free of

5 See Marc B. Shapiro, Between the Yeshiva World and Modem Orthodoxy: The Life and
Works of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg 1884–1966 (London and Portland, Oregon, 1909),
pp. 182–183.
6 Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, p. 8.

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 The Middle Ages

idolatry is misleading.7 In the wake of Katz’s analysis, it is difficult for

us to recapture an environment in which excellent scholars affirmed
that Ashkenazic Jews of the Middle Ages had utterly excluded Christianity
from the category of avodah zarah, the technical term imprecisely
translated as idolatry. Katz reminds us that such assertions were made
not only in explicitly apologetic works; Hanokh Albeck, for example, in
a major study of the Mishnah, asserted that the views of medieval Jewish
authorities are encompassed in the position of R. Menahem ha-Meiri,
which is, in fact, striking in its atypical liberalism.8 At the same time
I do not doubt that Katz was impelled to study ha-Meiri’s posture, which
he describes as “undoubtedly a great achievement,”9 precisely because
it afforded him the opportunity to highlight Jewish tolerance without
sacrificing scholarly integrity.
Whatever Katz’s motivations, it is time to turn to the substance of
his work. I would like to examine the scope of his interest in medieval
Jewish-Christian relations, his methodology, his contribution to the
state of the question when he wrote, the validity of his arguments in
and of themselves, and the degree to which they stand up in light of later
scholarship and the sources he failed to examine.
One of the hallmarks of Katz’s approach, which has little if any
precedent in earlier historiography, is the great significance that he
assigns to instinct. Visceral reactions, he argues, can weigh more heavily
than texts. Thus, Jewish revulsion at Christian rituals and symbols is no
less important than formal halakhah in determining that Christianity
is avodah zarah and inspiring the decision of martyrs.10 Katz ascribes
this emotional reaction to Ashkenazic Jews—correctly, in my view—
despite his awareness that pawnbroking put them into contact with
Christian sancta and produced serious temptations to relax taboos
against benefiting from such presumably idolatrous objects.
Sensitivity to a different sort of popular instinct plays a major role
in a later work in which Katz examined the evolution of legal approaches
7 “Sheloshah Mishpatim Apologetiyyim be-Gilguleihem,” reprinted in Jacob Katz, Halakhah
ve-Qabbalah (Jerusalem, 1984), p. 285. “Misleading” is an accurate but not quite adequate
translation of the stronger original (eino ella mat‘eh).
8 On this point Katz notes that even Hoffmann recognized the uniqueness of ha-Meiri’s
approach. See Katz, “Sovlanut Datit be-Shitato shel R. Menahem ha-Me’iri ba-Halakhah
u-be-Pilosofiah,” in Halakhah ve-Kabbalah, p. 191, n. 1.
9 Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, p. 128 (my translation); Exclusiveness and Tolerance, p. 128.
10 Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, p. 34; Exclusiveness and Tolerance, p. 23.

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 Jacob Katz on Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages

to the use of Gentiles for work on the Sabbath. Here again, he argues
that texts can occasionally be subordinated to “ritual instinct,” so that
ordinary Jews will ask for permission to violate serious prohibitions
that do not repel them while refraining from seeking dispensation
to engage in behavior that is less objectionable to the legal mind but
unthinkable in light of deeply entrenched emotions.
Standards tor evaluating assertions about instinct can be elusive.
Thus, I will sometimes be discussing my instinct about Katz’s instinct
about the instinct of medieval Jews. Evidence, of course, is not irrelevant
to this enterprise, nor was it irrelevant in medieval discourse. One of
Katz’s great strengths is that he recognizes this. For all his emphasis
on the primacy of emotions, instinct, and a sense of social identity, he
is not carried away by his insight. It is only on the rarest of occasions
that he loses sight of the interplay of these factors with more disciplined
intellectual pursuits, whether theological or halakhic. Except in those
rare moments, his work is a model of balance, as a supple and subtle mind
reconstructs the delicately poised interweaving of unexamined, primal
reactions, economic and social needs, and the reasoned examination of
authoritative texts.
Even Katz’s marginal, poorly informed discussion of polemic reveals
this strength. Thus, he appreciates the significance of the intellectual
dimension of what many observers have seen as static and uninteresting
ritual combat and he points to the internalizing of anti-Christian exegesis
as evidence of the deep Jewish sensitivity to Christian arguments. Thus,
he says, both R. Joseph Bekhor Shor and R. Isaac Or Zarua assert that
Deuteronomy 6:4 affirms not merely that the Lord is God but that He is our
God, thereby proclaiming that no other nation can claim Him as its own.11
Still, Katz does not regard intellectual arguments as the Jews’ primary
line of defense. They were decidedly secondary to the emotions of group
identification and the attraction of Judaism’s entrenched symbols.12
Katz underscores this approach in his more detailed discussion of
martyrdom. Ordinary Jews, he says, martyred themselves not because
of familiarity with the niceties of their halakhic obligations but because
they had been reared on stories of heroic self-sacrifice.13 Despite these

11 Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, p. 30. The English version (Exclusiveness and Tolerance, p. 19) is so
truncated that the point is almost completely lost.
12 Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, p. 32; Exclusiveness and Tolerance, p. 21.
13 Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, p. 91; Exclusiveness and Tolerance, pp. 84–85.

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 The Middle Ages

observations, historians debating the roots of Ashkenazic martyrdom—

and other instances of extreme behavior—are not as sensitive to this
point as they should be. To take an example outside the purview of
medieval Ashkenaz, a Christian writer tells the story of Moses of Crete,
a fifth-century Messianic pretender, who persuaded all the Jews to jump
into the Mediterranean with the assurance that the sea would split to
facilitate their journey to the Promised Land. Historians have retold the
story with a sense of amazement at such mass credulity or skepticism as
to the historicity of the account.14 Although I am by no means prepared
to assert confidently that these events occurred, the plausibility of the
narrative increases dramatically once we appreciate the impact of stories
about heroic faith absorbed from childhood.
A well-known rabbinic legend relates that the Red Sea split only
after Nahshon ben Aminadav of the tribe of Judah demonstrated his
unquestioning faith by leaping into the roiling sea.15 Today, every school
child receiving a traditional Jewish education is familiar with this story.
We cannot know if this was the case in fifth-century Crete, but if it was,
the probability that Jews could have been capable of such behavior is
enhanced exponentially. In the safety of a classroom, there is no price
to pay for expressions of smug disdain for the lack of faith displayed
by pusillanimous skeptics standing at the edge of the sea. But as the
Jews of Crete looked out at the Mediterranean facing a potentially
deadly choice, the natural resistance to irrational action would be sorely

14 Salo Baron expressed both reactions, the first in a general discussion of messianic figures
and the second in a more detailed account of Moses. The reasons for skepticism, he says,
are the Christian author’s emphasis on Jewish credulity and his assertion that those
saved by Christian fishermen accepted baptism. See A Social and Religious History of the
Jews (New York, London, and Philadelphia, 1960), vol. 3, p. 16, and vol. 5, pp. 366–367.
Gerson Cohen, who excluded messianic movements attested only in Christian sources
from his analysis of the messianic stances of medieval Jewish communities, remarked
during a Columbia University colloquium in the mid-1960s that his own skepticism about
the historicity of this account is rooted in the fact that the Jews’ credulousness regarding
false messiahs combined with their rejection of the true one is a standard, polemically
useful Christian topos. Cohen’s policy of excluding messianic accounts by non-Jews has
recently come under attack. See his “Messianic Postures of Ashkenazim and Sephardim,”
in Studies of the Leo Baeck Institute, ed. by Max Kreutzberger (New York, 1967), p. 123, n.
11, and Elisheva Carlebach, Between History and Hope: Jewish Messianism in Ashkenaz and
Sepharad. Third Annual Lecture of the Victor J. Selmanowitz Chair of Jewish History (New
York: Touro College, 1998), pp. 12–13.
15 See the references in Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia, 1928), vol. 6,
pp. 75–79 (n. 388).

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 Jacob Katz on Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages

challenged by a lesson ingrained from the inception of their religious

consciousness.16
Let us now return to the martyrs of Ashkenaz. A vexed question
central to recent historical debate asks if the justification for suicide and
the killing of others emerged out of almost routine analysis of texts or
if it was molded by emotional considerations and the need to justify the
actions of sainted ancestors. This is not the occasion to survey the state
of this question in its fullness. Nonetheless, there remains much to be
said both for Katz’s general approach and for his specific observations.
He noted, for example, a highly unusual formulation in Tosafot that
persuasively underscores the impact of martyrdom’s extraordinary
emotional resonance on halakhic discourse. The tosafists remark that the
ordinary processes of halakhic reasoning appear to yield the conclusion
that it is permissible to commit idolatry under threat of death provided
that the act does not take place in the presence of ten Jews. Tosafot does
not merely reject this position. Rather, we are witness, at least initially,
to what Katz properly describes as an extraordinary phenomenon—a cri
de coeur instead of an argument. “God forbid that we should rule in a case
of idolatry that one should transgress rather than die.”17
In the current debate, Avraham Grossman and Yisrael Ta-Shma have
taken issue with Haym Soloveitchik’s position that the willingness of
Ashkenazic authorities to justify suicide and even the killing of children in
the face of enforced idolatry cannot have emerged from a straightforward
application of legal reasoning but rather from the need to justify the
16 Lest I be accused of equating Moses son of Amram with Moses of Crete and ignoring the
earlier miraculous events that presumably justified Nahshon’s decision, let me put these
obvious distinctions on the record. They do not, in my view, undermine the essential
psychological observation.
17 Tosafot Avodah Zarah 54a, s. v. ha be-zin‘a. See Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, pp. 90–91;
Exclusiveness and Tolerance, pp. 83–84. I have a personal stake in this argument. Without
any conscious memory of the passage in Katz’s book, I was struck by precisely the same
formula while studying that tosafot for reasons unrelated to history, and I presented his
point as my own when writing the introduction to The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High
Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1979) in the mid-1970s. While the book was in press, I re-read
Katz and discovered to my combined pleasure and disappointment that my “discovery”
had already been made. The printed version (pp. 25–26), therefore, contains a footnote
attributing the point to Bein Yehudim le-Goyim with the observation that the English
version is so bland that “the emotional force of the argument is virtually lost.” (It renders
has ve-shalom, which I have translated “God forbid,” as “Far be it from us.”) When I related
the story to Katz years later, he told me how pleased he had been with this insight when
it had originally struck him.

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 The Middle Ages

behavior of the martyrs. Soloveitchik’s argument rests in part on the

resort of these authorities to aggadic sources; his critics, however, assert
that Ashkenazic Jews drew no material distinction between halakhah
and aggadah, so that their arguments from texts that Soloveitchik would
place out of bounds are entirely consistent with their own worldview.18
I think it is fair to say that even in medieval Ashkenaz, the first
resort of rabbinic decisors would be to texts that we would describe as
halakhic. At the same time, I do not believe that they would dismiss
evidence from an aggadah by saying, “I do not recognize this genre as
authoritative in a legal discussion.” Thus, when mainstream authorities
issue a problematic ruling based entirely on aggadic material, we are
justified in asking pointed questions about motivation, as long as we do
not insist that the resort to aggadah demonstrates in and of itself that
highly unusual processes must be at work. In short, our antennas should
be raised, though we may ultimately decide that nothing extraordinary
is happening.
With respect to our issue, I am not even certain that it is appropriate
to characterize all the sources adduced in the medieval discussion as
aggadic;19 nonetheless, I am strongly inclined to think that a deeply
emotional need to validate the heroism of the martyrs did play
an important role in Ashkenazic decision-making. Katz’s tosafot is highly
relevant here, but an even more significant text has not, in my view,
been given its due by either side in this controversy, even though all the
parties know it very well.
Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, the great thirteenth-century decisor,
was asked whether atonement is necessary tor a man who had killed
his wife and children (with their consent) to prevent their capture
by a mob demanding conversion to Christianity. He responded that
suicide can be defended in such a case, but it is much more difficult
to find a justification for the killing of others. Nonetheless, he rose to

18 See Haym Soloveitchik, “Religious Law and Change: The Medieval Ashkenazic Example,”
AJS Review 12 (1987): 205–221; Avraham Grossman, “Shorashav shel Qiddush ha-Shem
be-Ashkenaz ha-Qedumah,” in Qedushat ha-Hayyim ve-Heruf ha-Nefesh: Kovetz Ma’amarim
le-Zikhro shel Amir Yekutiel, ed. by Isaiah Gafni and Aviezer Ravitzky (Jerusalem, 1993),
pp. 99–130; Israel Ta Shma, “Hit’abbedut ve-Rezah ha-Zulat al Qiddush ha-Shem: Li-
She’elat Meqomah shel ha-Aggadah be-Masoret ha-Pesiqah ha-Ashkenazit,” in Yehudim
mul ha-Zelav: Gezerot Tatn’u ba-Historiah u-ba-Historiographiah, ed. by Yom Tov Assis et
al. (Jerusalem, 2000), pp. 150–156.
19 See the following note.

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 Jacob Katz on Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages

the challenge by proposing an original extension of a rabbinic midrash

on a biblical text. Defenders of martyrdom by suicide had long cited
the assertion in Bereshit Rabbah 34:19 that the word “but” (akh) in
Genesis 9:5 limits the scope of the prohibition against suicide that
immediately follows.20 R. Meir suggested that this word, and hence
this limitation, also governs the remainder of the verse, which prohibits
murder. It follows that killing others may be permitted under the same
circumstances that justify suicide. He prefaced this suggestion with the
observation that “the position that this is permissible has spread widely,
for we have seen and found many great men who slaughtered their sons
and daughters,” and he followed it with the powerful assertion that
“anyone who requires atonement tor this is besmirching the name of
the pious men of old.”
Though large questions of this sort cannot be settled definitively by
a single source, this responsum, it seems to me, is as close to a smoking
gun as we could ever expect. An Ashkenazic rabbi of the first rank tells
us that (1) it is a challenge to find grounds for permitting the killing
of others; (2) the reason for seeking such grounds is the fact that the
practice has been widespread among great rabbis; (3) one can permit
this by an [unattested, innovative] expansion of a rabbinic midrash on
a biblical verse [a very rare procedure in thirteenth-century halakhic
discourse];21 and (4) anyone who disagrees with this original proposal
to accomplish an admittedly problematic task is besmirching the name
of the pious men of old.
Soloveitchik himself cites this responsum only to underscore its
tragic character and to note that R. Meir “was hard put to find a reply”
to the question. He goes on to assert that “for the murder of children few
could find a defense, and almost all passed that over in audible silence.”
The lengthy footnote to this sentence makes no reference to R. Meir, and

20 Even though Bereshit Rabbah is an aggadic text, this passage has the sound and feel
of halakhah, so that Soloveitchik’s argument that suicides were justified by aggadah
pure and simple probably requires qualification. It would be going very far indeed to
expect Ashkenazic Jews to shrink from relying upon an explicitly legal formulation solely
because it appears in a non-halakhic midrash.
21 In my “Heqer Rabbanut Ashkenaz ha-Qedumah,” Tarbiz 33 (1984): 484, n. 6, I made the
point that R. Meir’s determining a halakhah on the basis of a partially original midrash
on a biblical verse is highly unusual among medieval authorities. In private conversations,
two learned scholars insisted that they do not consider such a practice strikingly atypical,
but I am not persuaded.

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 The Middle Ages

readers are given no indication of the main point of his responsum.22

Even though he never wrote the words, “This is permitted,” it is beyond
question that this is the thrust of R. Meir’s ruling. The greatest decisor in
thirteenth-century Germany composed an emotion-laden responsum that
provides powerful evidence for Soloveitchik’s—and Katz’s—position.
Despite R. Meir’s initial reluctance to extend the permission to
commit suicide to include the killing of others, the unhesitating readiness
of some Ashkenazic Jews to do so is not, I think, an impenetrable
mystery. Once again, I am inclined to assign pride of place to instinctive
and emotional considerations. But let me begin by proposing a formal
argument that may well have been taken for granted though it is
unattested in the medieval sources and has not been noted in the current
debates. A much-cited passage in Da‘at Zeqenim mi-Ba‘alei ha-Tosafot to
Genesis 9:5 indicates that unnamed Ashkenazic Jews had clearly and
apparently unself-consciously applied the passage in Bereshit Rabbah not
only to suicide but to the killing of children as well. If we turn to that
midrashic passage, we find that it points to the death of Saul as one of
the paradigmatic exceptions to the prohibition against suicide. But Saul
initially asked a servant to kill him; it was only after the servant refused
that the king killed himself. (I leave aside the more complicated issue of
the subsequent story in II Samuel 1 where an Amalekite tells David that
Saul’s suicide attempt was not wholly successful and that he acceded
to a royal request to complete the task.) The reader of the midrash has
every right to assume that the exception made for Saul includes his initial
request as well as his final action.23
At the same time, I do not believe that such arguments went through
the minds of Jews preparing to commit suicide in the blood-stained
arenas of Mainz and Worms. Let us imagine the scene. A large group of

22 “Religious Law and Change,” pp. 209–10.

23 Cf. Radak’s commentary to I Samuel 31:4, which states—citing our midrash—that Saul
did not sin, without proffering the slightest hint that the initial request, reported in the
very same verse, was improper.
Shortly after I submitted this article to the editor, Prof. Ephraim Kanarfogel called my
attention to his discussion in a forthcoming article of Rabbenu Tam’s position on the fear
of succumbing to torture as a halakhic justification for suicide. See Kanarfogel’s “Halakhah
and Meziut (Realia) in Medieval Ashkenaz: Surveying the Parameters and Defining the
Limits,” scheduled to appear in Jewish Law Annual 14 (2001), where he analyzes the
relevance of the talmudic assertion (Ketubbot 33b) that Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah
would have bowed to the statue made by Nebuchadnezzar had they been beaten. I thank
Prof. Kanarfogel for affording me the opportunity to read the typescript.

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 Jacob Katz on Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages

Jews is facing the certainty of death or conversion. To save themselves

from slaughter at the hands of the crusading hordes—or from the
prospect of descending into the maelstrom of idolatry in the face of
torture—they decide to take their lives. They know that they will be
instantaneously transported to a world of eternal light at the side of
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Rabbi Akiva. Do they take their children
with them to eternal bliss or do they leave them to wander among the
bloody corpses of their parents until they are found and raised to live
a life of idolatry? I am tempted to say that the choice is clear. In fact, it is
not. The choice to slaughter your children is never clear, and the agonies
of that choice are evident in the chilling chronicles of those terrible
events. Nonetheless, the choice was made, and I think it far more likely
that it was made on the basis of an instinctive reaction than on the
basis of textual analysis. Once it was made, subsequent Jews, at least
for the most part, had little emotional choice but to react like R. Meir of
Rothenburg, though he agonized over the question far more than most,
and his transparent struggle has much to teach us about the interaction
between heart and mind.
One element in Katz’s own formulation of the martyrological
psychology of Ashkenazic Jews may even be too weak. He poses the
medievals’ question as to the permissibility of suicide or the killing of
children “to avoid religious compulsion and the temptation to apostasy.”
He goes on to say that “the answer of Ashkenazic rabbis was inclined
toward stringency from the outset . . . , and it is clear that they were
not concerned that this stringency fell into the category of a decree that
the masses are unprepared to withstand.”24 In other words, not only the
rabbis but even the masses were inclined toward such a response. If so,
we may well ask ourselves about the propriety of the term “stringency”
here. The question posed was whether suicides and killings were
permissible, and the answer was in the affirmative. In any other context,
an affirmative answer to a question beginning, “Is it permissible?” would
be characterized as lenient, not stringent. For all his deep understanding
of the psyche of medieval Ashkenazic Jews, Katz could not avoid the
unconscious imposition of his (and our) instincts upon theirs by
transforming a qulla into a humra, a leniency into a stringency. Difficult

24 Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, p. 91. The English version (Exclusiveness and Tolerance, p. 84) does
not quite convey the point.

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 The Middle Ages

as it is for us to fathom, these medieval Jews wanted the answer to be,

“It is permissible.”
Many years ago, my interest in the centrality of martyrdom for
the Ashkenazic psyche was piqued by a passage in the Nizzahon Vetus,
which impelled me to draw attention to both Katz’s tosafot and R. Meir
of Rothenburg’s responsum. That passage, which would surely have
caught Katz’s sharp eye had he read the text, transmutes the story made
famous by Judah Halevi’s Kuzari into a celebration of the willingness
to be martyred as the hallmark of the true faith. As in the Kuzari, the
soon-to-be-converted ruler is impressed by the fact that Judaism is
the second choice of both Muslim and Christian, but he is even more
impressed when the Jew is prepared to sacrifice his life where the others
are not.25
Finally, Katz makes the telling observation that the talmudic
concept of parhesia describing a public act underwent an illuminating
transformation in the Middle Ages. For the talmudic sages, an act fell
into the category of parhesia if it was done in the presence of ten Jews.
In the formal, legal sense, this did not change, but when medieval Jews
described the death of martyrs in a public setting, they usually referred
to the intent to sanctify God’s name by projecting devotion to the non-
Jewish world. It was this confrontation that gave the act of martyrdom
its critical context and its transcendent purpose.
In citing concrete evidence for this important and penetrating
insight, Katz can, nonetheless, overreach. The Hebrew version contains
a footnote asserting that the intent of the martyrs to have Christians
recognize the truth of Judaism is made explicit (nitparesh) in a comment
by R. Solomon b. Shimshon.26 The comment cited certainly expresses
the Jews’ fervent expectation that Christians will recognize that truth,
but the instrument of this recognition is not Jewish martyrdom but
the Lord’s eschatological vengeance against Christendom. Because of
this divine punishment, Christians will perceive the outrageous injustice
that they had perpetrated by spilling the blood of Jewish babies in the
name of a false belief.
Both the Ashkenazic variant of the Kuzari story and the hope for
eschatological Christian enlightenment bring us to Katz’s discussion

25 The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages, pp. 26–27, 216–218.
26 Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, p. 97, n. 41.

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 Jacob Katz on Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages

of converts. Once again, his instincts guide him very well even in the
absence of an extensive evidentiary base. He understands, of course,
the full spectrum of motivations tor Jewish conversion to Christianity,
from pragmatic interests to genuine conviction. His tendency, however,
predictably inclines toward social explanation: in a profoundly religious
age, Jews attracted by the values of Christian society would express
this attraction by embracing the religious form in which those values
expressed themselves.27 Though I would assign somewhat more force
than did Katz to the attraction of Christian arguments, I am, nonethe-
less, inclined to think that his emphasis is correct. He intuits this
psychological process despite the fact that his entire discussion of the
motivations of Jewish apostates takes place with virtually no reference
to Christian sources, which appear in one footnote containing a refe-
rence to a few pages in two secondary works.28 I have already alluded
to the fact that our one detailed personal memoir of the conversion
experience by a Jewish convert to Christianity, Herman of Cologne’s
Opuscula de Conversione Sua, is entirely absent from the analysis—an
inconceivable omission for anyone with real familiarity with Latin
materials. And yet, Herman’s account strikingly reinforces Katz’s
point, subordinating, though not ignoring, intellectual arguments, and
emphasizing an attraction to the values of simple piety.29
Similarly, Katz argues with no concrete evidence that the reason why
medieval Ashkenazic Jews persisted in converting Christians despite

27 Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, p. 83; Exclusiveness and Tolerance, p. 76.

28 Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, p. 83, n. 46; Exclusiveness and Tolerance, p. 75, n. 6.
29 Gerlinde Niemeyer, ed., Hermannus quondam Judaeus opusculum de conversione sua,
Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Quellen zur Geistgeschichte des Mittelalters, vol. 4 (Weimar,
1963), esp. p. 108. (The text had been published twice before Niemeyer’s edition.) See
Jeremy Cohen, “The Mentality of the Medieval Jewish Apostate: Peter Alfonsi, Hermann
of Cologne, and Pablo Christiani,” in Jewish Apostasy in the Modern World, ed. by Todd
Endelman and Jeffrey Gurock (New York, 1987), pp. 20–47; and Karl F. Morrison,
Conversion and Text: The Cases of Augustine of Hippo, Herman-Judah, and Constantine-
Tsatsos (Charlottesville and London, 1992), which also contains an English translation.
Well after Katz wrote his book, Avrom Saltman argued that the Opusculum is, in fact,
a fictitious work by a born Christian; see his “Hermann’s Opusculum de Conversione Sua:
Truth or Fiction?,” Revue des Etudes Juives 47 (1988): 31–56. The most recent discussion
of this question is Jean-Claude Schmitt, Die autobiographische Fiktion: Hermann des Juden
Bekehrung (Kleine Schriften des Arye-Maimon Instituts 3: Trier, 2000). Since no one had
doubted the authenticity of this work when Katz wrote, I have referred to it as Hermann’s
in my discussion. As Schmitt argues, many relevant insights can be gleaned from it even
if it is essentially fiction.

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 The Middle Ages

the obvious difficulties is that they saw every instance of conversion to

Judaism as a proof and declaration of the truth of the Jewish religion
to the outside world.30 The Nizzahon Vetus strikingly confirms this
intuition—not only in the story of the Emperor that we have already
encountered but also in a passage dealing frontally with the implications
of conversion writ large.

With regard to their questioning us as to whether there are proselytes

among us, they ask this question to their shame and to the shame of their
faith. After all, one should not be surprised at the bad deeds of an evil
Jew who becomes an apostate, because his motives are to enable himself
to eat all that his heart desires, to give pleasure to his flesh with wine and
fornication, to remove from himself the yoke of the kingdom of heaven so
that he should fear nothing, to free himself from all the commandments,
cleave to sin, and concern himself with worldly pleasures. But the situation
is different with regard to proselytes who converted to Judaism and thus
went of their own free will from freedom to slavery, from light to darkness.
If the proselyte is a man, then he knows that he must wound himself by
removing his foreskin through circumcision, that he must exile himself
from place to place, that he must deprive himself of worldly good and fear
for his life from the external threat of being killed by the uncircumcised,
and that he will lack many things that his heart desires; similarly, a woman
proselyte also separates herself from all pleasures. And despite all this,
they come to take refuge under the wing of the divine presence. It is
evident that they would not do this unless they knew for certain that their
faith is without foundation and that it is all a lie, vanity, and emptiness.
Consequently, you should be ashamed when you mention the matter of
proselytes.31

Katz’s related argument that the generally positive attitude toward

converts in the Middle Ages reflects an active quest for Jewish triumph32
is less than compelling in and of itself, but is in my view confirmed by
the pervasive tone of Jewish polemic and considerable evidence from
Christian sources, none of which played any role in forming Katz’s
conclusion. Although I do not believe that we should go so far as to
speak of a medieval Jewish mission, there is strong reason to believe
that Jews confronted Christians on the streets of Europe to pose
30 Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, p. 85. The English version (Exclusiveness and Tolerance, p. 77) is
considerably less forceful.
31 The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages, # 211. English section, pp. 206–207.
32 Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, p. 88; Exclusiveness and Tolerance, p. 81.

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 Jacob Katz on Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages

religious arguments and took great satisfaction in producing a sense of

discomfiture or defeat in the mind of their interlocutor.33
That Jews reviled apostates is self-evident, and yet they insisted that
such converts retain the legal status of Jews. Katz devoted an article to
the application of the talmudic formula “even though he sinned he is
an Israelite” to the abiding Jewishness of the apostate.34 He proved the
validity of an earlier suggestion that Rashi was responsible for the use
of this expression to establish the standing of apostates as Jews; then he
proceeded to examine the larger social context of the new understanding
and wide popularity of this formula. The explanation, he says, is neither
halakhic logic in itself nor Rashi’s personal predilections but the real
struggle carried on by the Jewish community against conversion and
forced apostasy.35
On the one hand, there are legal and psychological advantages in
seeing the apostate as non-Jewish. He does not generate a levirate
relationship, so that his widowed, childless sister-in-law can marry
without asking him for a release; you can lend him money at interest;
you can indulge your utter rejection of him. In this connection, Katz
makes another acute observation about the transformation of a talmudic
term. For the Sages, one who habitually violated a particular injunction
was a mumar with respect to that injunction (mumar le-x); for medieval
Jews, mumar le- became simply mumar—an apostate whose very essence
is the transgression of the Torah.
But there were countervailing concerns of considerable, ulti-
mately decisive emotional and pragmatic impact. Jews wanted to
demonstrate that baptism has no force, that it could not effect a trans-
formation of identity, and they also wanted to encourage converts
to return to Judaism.36 To these considerations I would add a third:
Jews wanted to see all the sins of apostates as sins. To be sure, the
conversion itself, barring future repentance, sealed their fate.
Nonetheless, as long as they remain Jews, every desecration of the
Sabbath, every taste of forbidden food increases the temperature of the
hellfire prepared for them.

33 See my “Mission to the Jews and Jewish-Christian Contacts in the Polemical Literature
of the High Middle Ages,” American Historical Review 91 (1986): 576–591.
34 “Af al Pi she-Hata Yisrael Hu,” in Halakhah ve-Qabbalah, pp. 255–269.
35 “Af al Pi she-Hata Yisrael Hu,” p. 262.
36 “Af al Pi she-Hata Yisrael Hu,” pp. 262–265.

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 The Middle Ages

Katz’s instincts about Jewish attitudes toward Christianity can

sometimes not be tested at all. He asserts, for example, that Ashkenazic
Jews were sincere both when they prayed for the peace of the government
and when they prayed for its ultimate destruction.37 I am inclined to
believe that he is right, but I cannot think of an easy way to prove it.
The complex interaction of attraction and revulsion toward the Christian
world is particularly difficult to pin down. Citing the work of Yitzhak
Baer, Katz affirmed that we now know that religious phenomena in
both communities emerged out of a common trend, but the medievals
themselves, he argued, did not know this. For them, these very religious
impulses strengthened the instinct to recoil from the other religion.38
With all the substantial progress that has been made since Exclusiveness
and Tolerance to enhance our understanding of both the openness and
the hostility of Ashkenazic Jewry to its Christian environment,39 Katz’s
assessment has, in the main, withstood the test of time.
Katz places great emphasis on the Jewish instinct that Christianity
is avodah zarah, asserting that any economically motivated change in
this perception would appear to stand in absolute contradiction to the

37 Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, p. 60; Exclusiveness and Tolerance, p. 51. The difference between the
Hebrew and English versions of this passage is so striking that for all Katz’s insistence
that he spurned apologetics, it is difficult to avoid the impression that he or his English
stylist softened the formulation for a non-Jewish audience. The Hebrew reads, “The vision
of the end of days signifies the overturning of the current order, when the dispersed and
humiliated people will see its revenge from its tormentors. The hope for a day of revenge
and the prayer for the arrival of that day may be considered as conflicting with a profession
of loyalty to the government . . . ” Here is the English: “A reversal of the existing order was
envisaged in the messianic age, when the dispersed and humiliated Jewish people was to
come into its own. The entertaining of such hopes, and the prayer for their fulfillment,
might well be considered as conflicting with a profession of loyalty . . . ”
On the much debated question of whether Ashkenazic Jews looked forward to Christian
conversion or annihilation at the end of days, see my “Al Tadmitam ve-Goralam shel
ha-Goyim be-Sifrut ha-Pulmus ha-Ashkenazit,” in Yehudim mul ha-Zelav (above, n. 18),
pp. 74–91.
38 Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, pp. 98–99; Exclusiveness and Tolerance, pp. 93–94.
39 See my discussion and references in Gerald J. Blidstein, David Berger, Shnayer
Z. Leiman, and Aharon Lichtenstein, Judaism’s Encounter with Other Cultures: Rejection
or Integration?, ed. by Jacob J. Schacter, pp. 117–125, as well as in “Al Tadmitam ve-
Goralam shel ha-Goyim” (above, n. 37). See also Ivan Marcus, Rituals of Childhood: Jewish
Acculturation in Medieval Europe (New Haven and London, 1996); Israel J. Yuval, Shenei
Goyim be-Bitnekh (Tel Aviv, 2000); and much relevant discussion in Avraham Grossman’s
Hakhmei Ashkenaz ha-Rishonim (Jerusalem, 1981) and Hakhmei Zarfat ha-Rishonim
(Jerusalem, 1995) and in Ephraim Kanarfogel, Jewish Education and Society in the High
Middle Ages (Detroit, 1992).

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 Jacob Katz on Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages

classic perception that the world is unconditionally divided between

Israel and the nations.40 A bit later he argues that retaining this perception
was necessary to safeguard the community against absorption and
conversion.41 There is certainly much truth in this, but to test it one would
have to introduce at least some comparative dimension. How did Jews
under Islam handle this problem? They surely regarded Muslims as part
of “the nations,” and with sufficient effort it was possible to classify them
as idolaters;42 nonetheless, neither Maimonides nor the great majority
of rabbinic authorities took this step. Though Katz makes no reference
to Islam in this context, he does allude to the small size of Ashkenazic
communities and the intense missionary efforts exerted by Christians as
factors that increased the Jewish need for self-defense. I do not believe
that this is enough to explain the different reactions under Christendom
and Islam, particularly since the intensity of missionary efforts in
Northern Europe through the twelfth century is very much in question.43
Katz acknowledged that the theological chasm separating Judaism from
Christianity played some role here, and in this instance I think that the
actual content of Jewish and Christian beliefs deserves pride of place. We
shall soon encounter the emphasis by R. Menahem ha-Meiri on the deep
and genuine divide between Christianity and paganism, but in the final
analysis it is a daunting task to argue that worship of Jesus of Nazareth
as God is not avodah zarah by the standards of Jewish law.
In his final work, Katz did utilize medieval Jewish-Muslim relations
as a tool for evaluating the causes of the tense relationship between
Jews and Christians in the same period.44 Here he endorsed the position
that tensions were much greater in the latter case because the truth of
one religion depended on the falsehood of the other only in the Jewish-
Christian relationship. This stray remark requires elaboration. As I wrote
on another occasion with respect to polemical literature,45 the Jewish-

40 Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, p. 36; Exclusiveness and Tolerance, p. 25. The formulation in the
English version is not as sharp.
41 Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, p. 46; Exclusiveness and Tolerance, p. 37.
42 So the anonymous rabbi attacked by Maimonides in his Epistle on Martyrdom; see Abraham
Halkin and David Hartman, Epistles of Maimonides: Crisis and Leadership (Philadelphia,
1993), pp. 16, 21. Cf. also Hiddushei ha-Ran to Sanhedrin 61b. (The author is not Rabbi
Nissim Gerondi but a somewhat earlier Spanish talmudist.)
43 See my “Mission to the Jews” (above, n. 33).
44 Et Lahqor ve-Et Lehitbonen (Jerusalem: 1999), p. 54.
45 “Jewish-Christian Polemics,” The Encyclopedia of Religion 11: 389.

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 The Middle Ages

Christian encounter was more stressful because of both its greater intimacy
and its greater difference. Since the Hebrew Bible played a considerably
less important role in Islam than it did in Christianity, arguments
over its meaning, including, of course, the identity of True Israel, were
incomparably more significant in the Jewish-Christian interaction. With
regard to theology, it was the greater gap between Jews and Christians
that was decisive in exacerbating tensions. “Islamic monotheism left no
room for the creative rancor that produced the philosophical dimension
of Jewish-Christian discussions, which addressed such issues as trinity
and incarnation.”46 In our context, sharper terminology may be in order.
Christianity was avodah zarah; Islam was not.
A comparative dimension might also have been useful in testing one
aspect of Katz’s controversial hypothesis about the difference between
medieval Ashkenazim and their sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
counterparts. Katz asserts that by the seventeenth century, Ashkenazic
Jews had spiritualized the ideal of martyrdom and were far less aggressive
in confronting Christianity. These changes, he says, resulted from greater
insularity. Christianity had become less of a psychological reality, and the
sense of spiritual threat or temptation had diminished.47
This is not the forum to address the controversy over this thesis
in detail. I think that Katz was wrong about spiritualization and right
about aggressiveness, but his reason for the decline in aggressiveness
is highly speculative. We would do well to ask why medieval Provencal,
Italian, and Spanish Jews were less aggressive than those of Northern
Europe in their anti-Christian works. Were those Jews less tempted by
Christianity? Was it less of a psychological reality for them? In these
societies, it is likely that differences in cultural attitudes and norms of
expression were at work. But then, as the Middle Ages wore on, there was
fear. This is certainly evident in late medieval Spain, where the Tortosa
disputation took place in a profoundly different atmosphere from the
one that had prevailed in Barcelona a century and a half earlier, but
there were similar transformations in Ashkenaz as well. Rabbi Yehiel
of Paris did not dare to address Nicholas Donin in the manner that his
contemporary Ashkenazic coreligionists wrote or even, I am inclined to
think, still spoke to Christians on the street. Later—but still well before

46 “Jewish-Christian Polemics,” 389.

47 “Bein Tatn’u le-Ta’h Ta’t,” in Halakhah ve-Qabbalah, pp. 311–330 .

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 Jacob Katz on Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages

the period identified by Katz—Yom Tov Lipmann Muehlhausen was

much less caustic than Joseph Official, and he found it necessary to deny
the obvious meaning of pejorative Jewish terms applied to Christian
sancta.48 The public aggressiveness of Ashkenazic Jewry changed because
it had to change.
Katz’s social explanations for the stance of medieval Jews on legal
issues in the Jewish-Christian relationship always make intuitive sense,
but on rare occasions his formulation is problematic or the evidence is
pushed too hard. Thus, he points to an assertion in Sefer Hasidim that
penance is needed for a Jew who desecrated the Sabbath to save a gentile
and contrasts it to the injunctions in the same work to fight a Jew who
is attempting to kill an innocent gentile and to take up arms in support
of Christian allies who fulfill their obligations to their Jewish partners.
The contrast in these positions certainly requires explanation, and
Katz suggests two distinctions that somehow appear to merge. There
is a difference, he says, between reflective and spontaneous reactions
and between the response to an individual Christian and the approach
to Christians as a stereotyped group. The reflective reaction requires
penance; the spontaneous one requires you to help. The individual is
entitled to your assistance; the representative of the group is not.49
In this instance however, these are problematic distinctions. It is
hard to see why saving someone on the Sabbath involves less of a direct,
spontaneous emotion than saving him from a Jewish murderer, or why
the former is a stereotypical Christian while the latter is an individual.
I think that Katz is correct in his further assertion that the imperative
to help the gentile may well emerge from a direct human reaction that
transcends self-interest, but I cannot prove this. Even if this is so, the
distinction between the cases can result from the conviction, or even
instinct, that indifference to the life of a gentile may—and should—be
overridden far more readily than the prohibition against violating the
Sabbath.
In another instance, I believe that Katz’s intuition is correct, but he
presses the evidence to the point of misrepresentation. Medieval Jews
had a powerful incentive to permit the deriving of benefit from gentile
wine; at the same time, they did not drink it and in most cases did not

48 Sefer Nizzahon (Altdorf, 1644), p. 194.

49 Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, p. 105; Exclusiveness and Tolerance, pp. 100–101.

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 The Middle Ages

want to drink it. As Katz presents it, Rabbenu Tam permitted benefit on
the basis of an argument that should logically have permitted drinking
as well. When Ri objected by pointing to this implication, Rabbenu Tam
withdrew his argument and produced a different one that would not
lead to the unwanted conclusion. Katz points out that the Talmud itself
makes no distinction between benefit and drinking, so that only the
extra-halakhic concern prevented Ri and Rabbenu Tam from endorsing
a consistent position.50
In a footnote found only in the Hebrew version, Katz concedes that
R. Tam’s statement “can be interpreted to mean that his ruling was
reported inaccurately, but even if this is so one can still wonder why Ri
would have been upset by the conclusion that Rabbenu Tarn reached
in the form it was reported to him.”51 First of all, R. Tam’s statement
cannot just be interpreted to mean that his position was misreported;
that is the only thing it can mean. Second, although the Talmud does
not generally distinguish between deriving benefit from Gentile wine
and drinking it, in a critically relevant line in this discussion it does.
Ri objected to a permissive ruling that was both unprecedented and
contrary to accepted practice. What is really striking is R. Tam’s reaction,
“God forbid,” to Ri’s assertion in his name, a reaction that powerfully
supports Katz’s fundamental thesis about the depth of the instinct at
work here. We have already seen an instance in which Katz was acutely
sensitive to the significance of this formula. In this case he did not pick
it up, apparently because he was committed to the position that R. Tam
had changed his mind. The deep aversion of Ashkenazic authorities to
permitting the drinking of gentile wine really does emerge here, but Katz
has constructed a misleading scenario regarding both the unfolding of
R. Tam’s position and its presumed inconsistency.52

50 Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, pp. 55–56; Exclusiveness and Tolerance, pp. 46–47.
51 Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, p. 56, n. 36.
52 After writing this, I had the benefit of reading the typescript of Haym Soloveitchik’s study,
“Sahar bi-Stam Yeinam be-Ashkenaz—Pereq be-Toledot ha-Halakhah ve-ha-Kalkalah
ha-Yehudit bi-Yemei ha-Beinayim,” which will have appeared before the publication of
this article. I am grateful to Prof. Soloveitchik for providing me with this typescript,
which contains an important analysis of the exchange between Ri and Rabbenu Tam and
argues persuasively for the existence of a deeply ingrained instinctive revulsion among
Ashkenazic Jews at the prospect of drinking gentile wine.
Katz’s report of a tosafist position in another case also requires correction, but the
misleading formulation is only slightly off the mark. He tells us that Ri permitted taking

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 Jacob Katz on Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages

In his analysis of the perception of Christianity as avodah zarah,

Katz frequently reiterates what he presents as a fundamental
characteristic of halakhic literature: the limited, local application of
a principle mobilized to deal with a particular problem. The point is
that formulations implying that medieval Christians are not idolaters
were not generalized beyond the narrow context that produced them.
I do not doubt that this characteristic of halakhic literature, which
Haym Soloveitchik has called “halakhic federalism,”53 is real, and Katz
uses it convincingly to refute scholars who equated the tosafists with
the Meiri by attributing to them a principled denial that medieval
Christians worship avodah zarah. But on a matter so fundamental to
the self-perception of Ashkenazic Jewry and its relationship with its
environment, we are entitled to ask whether the overwhelming instinct
that Christianity is avodah zarah should inform our understanding of
the local contexts themselves. Did medieval Ashkenazic halakhists ever
mean to say—even in narrow applications—that Christianity is not
avodah zarah?
The answer to this question may very well be no. In some of those
cases, Katz appears willing to interpret the relevant statements so
narrowly that they do not make any assertion about the Christian
religion itself. Thus, the declaration that the gentiles among us (or
“in this time”) are not worshippers of avodah zarah means only that
they are not particularly devout.54 The most important example
of this issue, Tosafot’s assertion that “association” (shittuf) is not
forbidden to non-Jews, elicits a more ambiguous treatment. Katz’s
own presentation in an earlier article, as well as in his book, indicates
that he understands the term to refer to worship of God along with
something else. Thus, Christianity would not be avodah zarah for
gentiles. This principle, however, was applied only in the narrow context
in which it arose, to wit, accepting an oath from a Christian in a business

interest from gentiles beyond the requirements of bare sustenance, because Jews were
now a minority among the gentiles (Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, p. 40; Exclusiveness and
Tolerance, p. 30). This is a category Katz uses to explain a larger pattern of halakhic
adjustment. So he mobilizes it here, when in fact Ri grounded his permissive ruling
not on the numerical status of the Jews but on the related fact that they are subject to
economic persecution.
53 Halakhah, Kalkalah, ve-Dimmuy Azmi (Jerusalem: 1985), pp. 79–81.
54 “Sheloshah Mishpatim Apologetiyyim be-Gilguleihem,” in Halakhah ve-Qabbalah,
p. 284.

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 The Middle Ages

dispute.55 In the article, however, he proceeds to discuss “meticulous

jurists” (baalei halakhah dayqanim) who understood the tosafists to mean
only that gentiles may take an oath in God’s name while also thinking of
another entity; they never meant to suggest that gentiles may associate
God with something else in worship. Nonetheless, Katz does not retract
his earlier interpretation, and in the Hebrew version of the book he
reiterates it without going on to discuss the meticulous jurists. If, as
is very likely, tosafot never meant to say that Christian worship is not
avodah zarah for gentiles, there is no example of narrow application here.
There was never any principle that could have been generalized.56
One of the weaknesses of halakhic federalism is that it cannot easily
survive scrutiny. When exposed to the light, it withers. And so we come
to ha-Meiri, where one of Katz’s points is precisely that federalism
withers, to be replaced by an all-embracing principle excluding Christians
from the category of idolaters. Many of Katz’s best characteristics
emerge in this analysis: sensitivity to language, to pitch, to tone—not
just ha-Meiri’s new formula describing Christians and Muslims as
nations bound by the ways of religions, but the celebratory language
and the elimination of other arguments as unnecessary. We find once
again a remarkable instinct that cuts to the core of a phenomenon even
where hard evidence is thin: in this case, the instinct that philosophy
is somehow at work here even though the evidence Katz adduces for
this is not utterly compelling and the position to be explained is the
opposite of that of Maimonides. In other instances we have seen Katz’s
intuitions confirmed by polemical works; in this case, Moshe Halbertal
has demonstrated the essential correctness of Katz’s instincts by
reference to philosophical and other texts.57
55 “Sheloshah Mishpatim” p. 279. Cf. Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, p. 163. The English version,
Exclusiveness and Tolerance, p. 163, omits the reference to worship. As we shall see, this
may well be a better understanding of Tosafot, but in light of the two Hebrew discussions,
I doubt that it represents Katz’s true intent at this point in his analysis.
56 There is an additional interpretive option that was proposed to understand this tosafot
that Katz does not address in the article or in the Hebrew version of the book, but it
makes an appearance in the English. Shittuf may mean nothing more than the inclusion
of references to God and something else—in this case the saints—in the same oath.
Christian worship remains avodah zarah even for gentiles. I have discussed the various
interpretations of this tosafot in Appendix III of The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal
of Orthodox Indifference (London and Portland, Oregon, 2001).
57 Moshe Halbertal, Bein Torah le-Hokhmah: Rabbi Menahem ha-Meiri u-Ba‘alei ha-Halakhah
ha-Maimunim bi-Provence (Jerusalem, 2000), pp. 80–108. Katz laid special emphasis

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 Jacob Katz on Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages

Finally, the question of Christianity as avodah zarah is intimately

connected to the question of the damnation or salvation of Christians.
On two occasions, Katz noted a passage in the Hebrew account of the
1240 Paris disputation where R. Yehiel indicated that Christians can be
saved if they observe the seven Noahide laws.58 Katz does not directly
address the transparent problem that avodah zarah is one of those
commandments. Nonetheless, his discussion of this passage and of the
disputation as a whole is extremely perceptive, and his insight that the
need to respond to Christian attacks on the Talmud could lead to the
growth of genuine tolerance has significance beyond the geographical
and chronological arena that concerns him in this chapter.59

Let us conclude, then, by returning to Katz’s introductory comment

about the contemporary relevance of his work. Within the medieval
universe of discourse, we can unhesitatingly speak of both tolerance
and intolerance when discussing the dominant religions. When you have
the power to kill or expel—and these options are realistic within your
universe of discourse—you exhibit tolerance if you refrain from exercising
that power. When you kill or expel one group but not another, you have
shown tolerance toward the group that remains. The more tolerant the
society, the higher the standard an individual or subcommunity must
meet to be considered tolerant.
For a relatively powerless minority, the situation is quite different.
We can speak of theoretical tolerance and intolerance, but because the
group in question has no authority to enforce its norms, we sometimes
slip into a usage in which intolerance becomes synonymous with
hostility. This equation, however, blurs important distinctions. Bernard
of Clairvaux, for example, was hostile to Jews, even very hostile, but he

on ha-Meiri’s remarkable assertion that a Jewish convert to Christianity is entitled

to the rights accorded to civilized believers, whereas an unconverted heretic is not
(Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, pp. 124–125; Exclusiveness and Tolerance, pp. 123–124). On
a similar assertion by Moses ha-Kohen of Tordesillas, see my “Christians, Gentiles,
and the Talmud: A Fourteenth-Century Jewish Response to the Attack on Rabbinic
Judaism,” in Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter, ed. by Bernard Lewis and Friedrich
Niewoehner (Wiesbaden, 1992), p. 126. Note, too, Yom Tov Lippman Muehlhausen,
Sefer Nizzahon, p. 193.
58 “Sheloshah Mishpatim,” p. 273; Bein Yehudim le-Goyim, p. 115; Exclusiveness and Tolerance
p. 113. See my discussion of this passage in “Al Tadmitam ve-Goralam shel ha-Goyim,”
pp. 80–81.
59 See my observations in “Christians, Gentiles, and the Talmud,” p. 130.

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 The Middle Ages

was simultaneously tolerant, even—by medieval Christian standards—

very tolerant.60 No medieval Jew can be judged by this standard, because
no Jew was confronted with the temptations or restraints of power.
Powerlessness confers freedom to express hostility without the
need for a real confrontation with the consequences. One can curse
one’s enemies, condemn them to hellfire, list the innumerable offenses
for which they should be executed and the many obligations that they
must be compelled to discharge—and then go to bed. Power brings
responsibility and subjects its bearers to the discipline of governing.61
Powerlessness provides the luxury of both untested tolerance and
untested zealotry. Neither the tolerance nor the zealotry may survive
the transition to power.
Whether we frame the issue as hostility versus cordiality or tole-
rance versus intolerance, Katz’s studies reveal how medieval Jews
confronting a Christian society dealt with the normative texts that
they had inherited. Though their strategies often carried significant
practical consequences, the effects were limited by the reality of exile.
Katz, on the other hand, wrote in an age of restored Jewish sovereignty.
He certainly welcomed this, but he also saw the dangers and no doubt
hoped that his work, free of the unhistorical apologetics of an earlier
generation, would provide guidance as well as understanding. This
dimension of his achievement is difficult to assess. But within the four
ells of scholarly endeavor, the impact of his oeuvre is beyond cavil. Every
scholar of the Jewish experience is indebted to Jacob Katz for setting
a standard of erudition, insight, and clarity that we can only strive to
approach.

60 See my “The Attitude of St. Bernard of Clairvaux toward the Jews,” Proceedings of the
American Academy for Jewish Research 40 (1972): 89–108.
61 Note the discussion of some of these sometimes surprising complexities in Kenneth
R. Stow, “Papal and Royal Attitudes toward Jewish Lending in the Thirteenth Century,”
AJS Review 6 (1981): 161–184.

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 INTRODUCTION TO THE JEWISHCHRISTIAN
DEBATE IN THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES
A Critical Edition of the Nizzahon Vetus with
an Introduction, Translation, and Commentary

(Jewish Publication Society of America: Philadelphia, 1979)

I. ON JEWISHCHRISTIAN POLEMIC

Polemical literature is one of the liveliest manifestations of Jewish-

Christian relations in the Middle Ages. At times calm and almost
dispassionate, at other times angry and bitter, religious polemic
is a reflection of the mood and character not only of the disputants
themselves but of the age in which they wrote and spoke. While the
tone of the Jewish-Christian debate ranges from somber to sarcastic
to playfully humorous, the underlying issues were as serious to the
participants as life itself. Failure on the part of the Christian polemicist
could encourage Jews in their mockery of all that was sacred and
might engender doubts in Christian minds; failure by the Jew could
lead to apostasy and, on some occasions, severe persecution and even
martyrdom. Religious arguments could be stimulating and enjoyable,
but the stakes involved were monumental.
The Nizzahon Vetus, or Old Book of Polemic, is a striking example of
Jewish disputation in its most aggressive mode. The anonymous author
collected an encyclopedic array of anti-Christian arguments current
among late thirteenth-century Franco-German Jews. Refutations of
christological exegesis, attacks on the rationality of Christian doctrine,
a critique of the Gospels and Church ritual, denunciations of Christian
morality—all these and more are presented in an exceptionally vigorous
style that is not especially scrupulous about overstepping the bounds
of civility. Although both the style and comprehensiveness of the book
are not altogether typical of Jewish polemic, they make the Nizzahon

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 The Middle Ages

Vetus an excellent and unusually interesting vehicle for the study of

this crucial and intriguing dimension of medieval Jewish-Christian
relations.
Jewish-Christian polemic begins at the very dawn of Christianity.
The reasons for this are built into the essence of the Christian faith, for
a religion that was born out of Judaism had to justify the rejection of
its parent. Indeed, theological and exegetical approaches which can be
labeled polemic can also be seen as the elementary building blocks of
the developing faith, since certain early doctrines grew naturally out of
a reading of the Hebrew Bible. Isaiah 53, which could easily be read as
a reference to the vicarious atonement of a “servant of the Lord,” served
as an almost inevitable explanation of the paradox of the Messiah’s
crucifixion. Whether or not Jesus applied such an understanding of this
passage to his own career (and he probably did not),1 this is a case in
which a crux of later polemic was read christologically for fundamental,
internal reasons.
Some doctrines, of course, did not develop out of the Hebrew
Scriptures. Nevertheless, Christian acceptance of the divine origin of
those Scriptures, together with an espousal of central beliefs that did
not seem to be there, generated a need to explain this omission. Thus,
even if Jews had not pressed their opposition to statements concerning
the divinity of the Messiah, the virgin birth, or the abrogation of the
Law, almost any serious Christian would have tried to find biblical
justification for these doctrines. It is, in fact, often difficult to tell when
a given Christian argument is directed against Jews and when it is
an attempt to deal with a problem raised by the writer’s own study of
the Bible. This uncertainty applies even to some works ostensibly aimed
against the Jews, because the number of such works through the ages
seems disproportionate to the threat that Judaism could have posed.2

1 See M. D. Hooker Jesus and the Servant (London, 1959); Y. Kaufmann, Golah ve-Nekhar
(Tel Aviv, 1929/30), 1: 381–389.
2 The major anti-Jewish polemics through the twelfth century were summarized by
A. L. Williams, Adversus Judaeos (Cambridge, 1935). See also B. Blumenkranz, Les Auteurs
Chrétiens Latins du Moyen Age sur les Juifs et le Judaisme (Paris, La Haye, 1963). J. Pelikan
has remarked that as Judaism became less of a threat to Christianity, Christian writers
tended “to take their opponents less and less seriously” (The Christian Tradition, vol. 1,
The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition [100–600] [Chicago and London, 1971], p. 21).
There is some validity to this observation, but precisely this fact leads one to ask why
Christians continue to write books refuting people that they do not take seriously.

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 Introduction to The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages

Were Jewish questions, then, the primary factor behind the search
for biblical testimonies to Christian truth? Was it, as one scholar
has suggested, because of Jewish arguments that Christians became
concerned with the conflict between the genealogies of Jesus in
Matthew and Luke?3 Did the incredulous inquiries of Jews inspire the
various rationales concerning the need for the incarnation, up to and
including Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo?4 The extent of Jewish influence is
difficult to determine, but it is clear that such issues would not have
been ignored in the absence of Jewish disputants. It is surely evident
that when Isidore of Seville, in a work on Leviticus, has a Jew ask why
Christians fail to bring sacrifices or observe the sabbatical year, he is
raising problems suggested by his own reading of the Bible, and yet Peter
Damian transferred these passages without change into a polemical
work against the Jews.5 Christians undoubtedly wrote books against
Judaism in response to a challenge actually raised by Jews, but they
were also motivated by the internal need to deal with issues that were
both crucial and profoundly disturbing.
One approach to the puzzling conflict between the Hebrew Bible
and Christian beliefs was a frontal attack. Marcion and other Christian
heretics rejected the Jewish Scriptures and subjected them to a wide-
ranging critique. In one respect this was a simple and straightforward
solution since the problem vanishes entirely; there was no longer any
need to engage in point by point exegesis of individual passages. On
the other hand, this radical solution of one problem created another
even more intractable difficulty. The Gospels, after all, clearly recognized
the divine origin of the Hebrew Bible; indeed, many of the biblical
testimonies central to later polemic are found in the New Testament.
The suggestion that offending New Testament passages be emended
was hardly palatable to most Christians, and mainstream Christianity
rejected the one approach that would have sharply limited the scope of
the Jewish-Christian debate.
3 See A. B. Hulen, “The Dialogue with the Jews as Source for the Early Jewish Argument
against Christianity,” Journal of Biblical Literature 51 (1932): 61.
4 On the polemical implications of Cur Deus Homo? see A. Funkenstein, “Ha-Temurot be-
Vikkuah ha-Dat she-bein Yehudim le-Nozerim ba-Me’ah ha-Yod-Bet,” Zion 33 (1968):
129–132.
5 See my “St. Peter Damian: His Attitude toward the Jews and the Old Testament,”
Yavneh Review 4 (1965): 102–104. The issue of Christian sacrifices in the Middle Ages
is raised in N. V. (pp. 207–209), but only in response to a Christian argument.

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 The Middle Ages

It seems a bit strange to assert that the vigorous anti-Jewish position

of the heretics would have minimized polemical activity, but this is
indeed the case. Absolute rejection of the Hebrew Bible by Christians
would have eliminated much of the wrangling over the meaning of verses
which plays such a prominent role in medieval polemic. Moreover, the
heretics’ reading of the Bible was, in an ironic way, closer to that of the
Jews than to that of orthodox Christians, because, like the Jews, they
understood it literally. Total rejection eliminated the need for allegory
entirely.6
In one area, however, such heretics enriched the Jewish-Christian
argument. One of the central heretical methods of defending their
pejorative evaluation of the Hebrew Bible was to show that it is replete
with absurdities and contradictions. In discussions with heretics,
orthodox Christians tended to shrink from such arguments, but in
debates with Jews they changed their tune. Of course, the arguments
were rechanneled; they were no longer proof of the absurdity of the
Hebrew Bible, only of the absurdity of literal interpretation. In effect,
therefore, Jews found themselves defending their Bible against both
heretical barbs and orthodox allegory.7
One of the sharpest points of contention in the early confrontation
between Jews and Christians—one in which the Christian position was
formed by both internal and external factors—was the famous assertion
that Christians are the true (verus) Israel. Here again, acceptance of the
Hebrew Bible led naturally to the need to transform it into a Christian
document, and the process through which Israel came to refer to
Christians was almost inevitable. In this case, however, powerful forces
from the outside combined to make this an argument of extraordinary
significance. The pagan accusation that Christianity was an innovation
had to be answered because it could affect the very legitimacy of the new
faith, and the only effective response was to don the mantle of antiquity
through the identification of Christendom with Israel.
Jews could hardly have been expected to suffer such a claim with
equanimity. The most succinct summary of the instinctive Jewish
reaction to this assertion is the Greek quotation from the Dialogue
6 For a summary of Marcion’s attitude towards the Hebrew Bible and his manipulation of
the New Testament text, see E. C. Blackman, Marcion and His Influence (London, 1948),
pp. 42–60, 113–124. Cf. also Pelikan, p. 77.
7 See appendix 3.

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 Introduction to The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages

with Trypho which Marcel Simon placed on the cover of his Verus Israel.
“What?!” said Trypho. “You are Israel?!”8 After the initial shock wore
off, Jews realized that this was a direct assault against the fundamental
underpinnings of Judaism, an effort to abscond with the Bible. They
pointed with outrage to the arbitrariness of applying all favorable biblical
statements about Israel to the church and all pejorative ones to the Jews,
and by the high Middle Ages they had assembled passages from the
Bible in which favorable and unfavorable references were inextricably
intertwined. The same Israel would be exiled and redeemed, and since
the church would not suffer the former fate it could hardly lay claim to
the latter reward.9 Whatever the Jewish response, the issue was critical,
because it appeared that Christianity could lay claim to legitimacy only
by denying it to Judaism. There was no room (at least according to the
dominant view) for two spiritual Israels.
The corpus of early Christian works directed against Judaism is,
as we have already noted, rather extensive. Anti-Christian works by
Jews, on the other hand, are virtually nonexistent before the twelfth
century. One reason for this disparity is that Jews had no internal
motivation for writing polemics against Christians; in times or places
where Christianity was not a threat, we cannot expect Jews to be con-
cerned with a refutation of its claims. Moreover, during much of the
so-called Dark Ages, Jews in Christian lands produced no literature
that has survived. Consequently, aside from some largely philosophical
material in Arabic, our sources for the Jewish side of the discussion
consist of scattered references in rabbinic literature,10 the collections
of folk polemic that go by the name Toledot Yeshu11 and quotations in
Christian works.12 The last group of sources is by far the richest, but
8 Ti oun, phesin ho Tryphon, hymeis Israel este?! Dialogue with Trypho, ch. 123.
9 On the subject of verus Israel, see pp. 169–171, and the notes to p. 126. On the typology
of Jacob and Esau, see G. D. Cohen, “Esau as Symbol in Early Medieval Thought,” in
Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. by A. Altmann, pp. 19–48, and cf. the notes
to p. 55.
10 A list of such references appears in H. H. Ben Sasson’s “Disputations and Polemics,”
Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1971), 6: cols. 81–82.
11 See S. Krauss, Das Leben Jesu nach Jüdischen Quellen (Berlin, 1902).
12 See B. Blumenkranz’s “Die Jüdischen Beweisgründe im Religionsgespräch mit den
Christen,” Theologische Zeitschrift 4 (1948): 119–147, and his Juifs et Chrétiens dans
le Monde Occidental, 430–1096 (Paris, 1960), pp. 213–289. It is likely that the brief
Sefer Nestor ha-Komer (Altona, 1875) also predates the high Middle Ages. For a short
summary of some sporadic references to other early Jewish polemics, see J. Rosenthal,

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 The Middle Ages

determining the authenticity of Jewish arguments cited in some of the

purely literary Christian dialogues is a risky procedure. The genuineness
of such arguments can usually be tested by their appearance in later
Jewish polemic or by their inherent plausibility, and despite the
usefulness of these criteria it hardly needs to be said that they are far
from foolproof. It is therefore not until the second half of the twelfth
century that we can begin to speak with confidence about the details of
the Jewish argument against Christianity.
An examination of Jewish-Christian polemic in the high Middle
Ages reveals an arena in which most of the battles take place along
well-charted lines but where certain new approaches are beginning to
make themselves heard. The Christian side is usually on the offensive
with respect to biblical verses, although, as I have indicated, there is
a fundamentally defensive element in the entire enterprise of searching
for biblical testimonies. Indeed, we find Jews arguing that Christianity
is so inherently implausible that only the clearest biblical evidence
could suffice to establish its validity.13 Nevertheless, the structure of
the Jewish-Christian debate was such that the initiative was taken by
Christians in the area of scriptural evidence. On the other hand, Jews
usually initiated the discussion of doctrinal questions because they felt
that the irrationality of Christianity could be established through such
an approach. In each area, however, the initiative could shift; Jews did
not refrain from citing specific verses to refute Christian beliefs and
Christians did not hesitate to attack Jewish doctrines on philosophical
or moral grounds.
The bulk of polemical discussions continued to center around the
time-honored issue of christological verses in the Hebrew Bible. Before
such discussions could take place, ground rules had to be set up. What is
the scope of the Hebrew Bible, and what text can legitimately be cited?
Particularly in the early centuries, Christians would have liked very
much to include the apocrypha in their arsenal, and they were even

“Haganah ve-Hatqafah be-Sifrut ha-Vikkuah shel Yemei ha-Beinayim,” Proceedings of

the Fifth World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem, 1969) 2: 354–355. On the degree
to which early disputations reflect real encounters, see the summary in A. P. Hayman,
The Disputation of Sergius the Stylite against a Jew, vol. 2 (Louvain, 1973), Intro.,
pp. 64*–70*.
13 See J. Rosenthal’s introduction to his edition of Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne (Jerusalem, 1970),
p. 27.

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 Introduction to The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages

more anxious to quote certain Septuagint readings. The very nature of

this issue, however, forced a resolution in favor of the Jews. It can be
very frustrating and unprofitable to argue with someone who simply
denies the legitimacy of your quotations, and it was nearly impossible
to prove that the apocrypha should be canonical or that Septuagint
variants are superior to the Masoretic text (especially when some of
those variants were a result of the corruption of the Septuagint text
itself). Jerome’s respect for the Hebrew text accelerated the resolution of
this matter in favor of the Jewish position, and despite the persistence
of a handful of apocryphal quotations and a few Septuagint variants,
Christians settled down to the task of demonstrating the christological
nature of the biblical text accepted by Jews.14
This task was pursued on two levels, and it would be useful to
draw a distinction between genuine polemic and what could be called
exegetical polemic. Genuine polemic involved those verses whose
christological interpretation provided a genuine challenge to a Jew.
If ‘almah meant virgin, then Isaiah 7:14 really seemed to speak of
a virgin birth. Jeremiah 31:31 really spoke of a new covenant that
God would make with the house of Israel. What did that mean? Isaiah
53 really did refer to a servant of the Lord who would suffer, despite
his innocence, as a result of the sins of others. Who was that servant,
and how was such suffering to be explained? If shiloh somehow
meant Messiah (and many Jews conceded that it did), then Genesis
49:10 could reasonably be taken to mean that Jewish kingship would
last until the messianic age and then cease. If the Messiah had not
yet come, why was there no Jewish king? Specific rejoinders were
necessary to blunt the force of such arguments, and it is no accident
that the verses which fall into this category constitute the loci classici
of polemical literature.
Nevertheless, a great deal of that literature is devoted to a discussion
of passages of such weak polemical force that specific refutation was
hardly even necessary. Such passages multiplied as a result of Christian
exegesis of the Bible, and their christological interpretation was
probably not even intended to persuade the nonbeliever. As time passed,
however, this type of material began to make its way into polemical
works, and the refutation of such “exegetical polemic” became a major

14 See the notes to p. 132.

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 The Middle Ages

concern of some Jewish writers. Although they used many of the

same techniques that were applied to more serious arguments, Jewish
polemicists confronted a situation in which the most straightforward
response was the observation that there was simply no evidence for the
christological assertion. Why should Cyrus in Isaiah 45 be Jesus? On
what basis are the heavens in Psalm 19 identified with the apostles?
Who says that David in Psalm 17 is Jesus, and why should we assume
that the speaker in Psalm 13 is the church?15 The inclusion of such
material blurred the already fuzzy line between polemic and exegesis,
and biblical commentaries become a particularly important source of
polemical material.
This is true not only of Christian commentaries, which are obviously
a major source of exegetical polemic, but of Jewish commentaries
as well. When a Jewish exegete reached a passage that was a crux
of Christian polemic, he would frequently make an effort, whether
implicitly or explicitly, to undermine the christological interpretation.16
One exegetical tendency that was greatly encouraged by such polemical
goals was the denial of the messianic nature of certain biblical
passages and the assertion that they referred instead to historical
figures. Such a tendency appears in nonpolemical contexts as well,
and some scholars have argued that the polemical motivation has
been overstated; it is, nevertheless, beyond question that the desire to
refute Christian interpretation played some role in the development of
this type of exegesis. This is especially clear when surprising historical
interpretations appear in overtly polemical works. In the Nizzahon
Vetus, the most striking use of such exegesis appears in the discussion of
Isaiah 11. While the author himself apparently understood that chapter
messianically, he made use of a long-standing but clearly radical Jewish
interpretation by maintaining that it could be referred to Hezekiah and
Sennacherib. This view eliminates any christological reference, but it

15 Naturally there are many scriptural arguments that resist neat classification, and not
every weak argument should be labeled “exegetical.” Nevertheless, these examples are
illustrative of Christological interpretations that hardly made any pretense of being
demonstrably true. (Isaiah 45 was in a different category during the early stages of its
polemical history; see the notes to p. 111.)
16 Some examples can be found in E. I. J. Rosenthal, “Anti-Christian Polemic in Medieval
Bible Commentaries,” JJS 11 (1960): 115–135. Jewish commentaries, of course, deal
primarily with what I have called genuine polemic.

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 Introduction to The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages

also does away with one of the central messianic passages in the Bible.
Polemic, then, was at least a factor in stimulating and legitimizing
an important development in medieval Jewish exegesis.17
Christians were genuinely puzzled at the Jewish failure to accept
the overwhelming array of scriptural arguments which they had
marshaled. Every major Christian doctrine could be supported by
several verses in the Hebrew Bible, and some of these appeared
utterly irrefutable. Indeed, a few verses seemed so impressive that the
persuasive force of anyone of them should in itself have caused Jews
to abandon their faith.18 Only preternatural blindness or a conscious
refusal to accept the truth could account for Jewish resistance, and both
of these explanations played a major role in the medieval conception of
the Jew.19
Jewish refutations of Christian interpretations of the Bible had
to proceed on a verse-by-verse basis. There are, nevertheless, certain
general principles that were applied time and again, and the most
important of these was the argument from context. Jews argued that
christological explanations of individual verses could rarely withstand
scrutiny from the wider perspective of the passage as a whole, and
they constantly cited adjoining verses to demonstrate this point.
Perhaps the most important use of this argument was its application
to the virgin birth explanation of Isaiah 7:14. This verse was by far
the most significant evidence for the virgin birth in the Hebrew Bible,
and its importance was enhanced by the fact that it was cited for
this purpose in Matthew. Nevertheless, it was only with the greatest
difficulty that Christians could respond to the Jewish argument that
the birth was clearly expected to take place very shortly after Isaiah’s
announcement.20 While the argument from context was not always
as effective as it was here, it was the stock-in-trade of any medieval
Jewish polemicist.

17 On Isaiah 11, see the notes to p. 108; cf. also p. 125 and the notes there. For a general
treatment of medieval Ashkenazic exegesis, see S. Poznanski, Mavo la-Perush ‘al Yehezqel
u-Terei ‘Asar le-Rabbi Eliezer mi-Balgenzi (Warsaw, 1913; reprinted Jerusalem, 1965).
18 So Peter the Venerable with respect to Proverbs 30:4; see his Tractatus adversus Judaeorum
Inveteratam Duritiem, PL 189: 519.
19 On blindness, see p. 68 and the notes there. For a possible Jewish reversal of the argument
that Jews reject what they know to be the truth, see the notes to pp. 216 and 219.
20 See the notes to p. 101.

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The Jewish posture with respect to the citation of biblical verses

was not always defensive. Indeed, the very essence of the Jewish
position rested upon certain monumental assertions built upon the
straightforward reading of the Hebrew Bible as a whole; It is precisely
because of this that Jews were less concerned with the citation of
specific controversial verses. A reading of the Bible as a whole leaves the
unmistakable impression that the Messiah would bring peace, that he
would be a human being, that God is one, and that the ritual law means
what it says. The burden of proof that any of these impressions should
be modified, elaborated, or rejected was upon the Christians; this was
recognized to some degree by the Christian side, and it was one of the
fundamental assumptions of Jewish writers. Nevertheless, some Jewish
polemicists did compile lists of verses to demonstrate the validity of
certain basic Jewish beliefs.21
There was another Jewish approach that involved the citation of
specific verses, but it is difficult to decide how seriously to take it. The
Nizzahon Vetus, the earlier Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, and some other
Jewish polemics cite a series of verses which, they say, are aimed
directly at Christianity. Several of these constitute clever responses to
Christian assertions and are surely not to be taken seriously (e.g., the
copper serpent does indeed represent Jesus and that is why Moses was
commanded to hang it). I am inclined to think, however, that Jews were
entirely serious about some of these quotations. One polemicist, in fact,
cited such a verse immediately after a Christian question asking how the
Torah could have omitted all reference to Jesus. Thus, the Bible explicitly
warned against trusting in a man (Jer. 17:5; Ps. 146:3); it told Jews
to punish a man who would claim to have a mother but not a father
(Deut. 13:7); and it spoke of the humbling of anyone who pretended
to be divine (Isa. 2:11). Such citations were hardly central to Jewish
polemic, but they represent an effort by Jews to turn the tables on their
opponents by finding “christological” verses of their own.22

21 The clearest instance of such an approach in pre-fourteenth-century Jewish polemic is

Solomon de’ Rossi’s ‘Edut Hashem Ne’emanah, ed. by J. Rosenthal, Mehqarim u-Meqorot
(Jerusalem, 1967), 1: 373–430. Jewish arguments based on the non-fulfillment of
messianic prophecies of peace were very common; see the notes to p. 107.
22 See pp. 46 and 147 and the notes there. The problem of determining how serious Jews
were in their citations of such verses was pointed out briefly by Judah Rosenthal in
connection with a sixteenth-century polemic; see his introduction to Ya’ir ben Shabbetai

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With respect to doctrinal issues, it was the Jewish side that usually
took the offensive. Jews were convinced that some of the central articles
of faith professed by Christians were not only devoid of scriptural
foundation but were without logical justification as well; to use Christian
terminology, they lacked both ratio and auctoritas.
The trinity, which was an obvious target for logical questions,
posed a peculiar problem for Jewish polemicists; they considered it so
irrational that they had trouble in coming to grips with it. Although
no Jewish writer formulates his difficulties in precisely this fashion,
it seems clear that Jews, in effect, asked themselves the following
questions: “What do they mean when they talk about a triune God?
They say that there are three, and then they say that the three are one.
But this is patent nonsense. What, then, do they really believe? Which
of these contradictory assertions am I to take seriously and which
shall I dismiss as meaningless double-talk? Since they talk about the
separate incarnation of one of the three persons, it is apparently the
assertion of multiplicity that they really mean. In that case, I shall have
to demonstrate to them that there is only one God.”
It is only some such line of reasoning that can explain the persistent
Jewish efforts to persuade Christians to accept monotheism on both
logical and scriptural grounds. Jacob ben Reuben cites philosophical
evidence that the world was created by no more than one God. The
author of the Nizzahon Vetus wants to know what will happen if one
person of the trinity makes a decision and another person reverses
it. Solomon de’ Rossi compiles a list of biblical verses which say that
there is one God. Writer after writer reminds Christians that God
proclaimed, “I, I am he, and there is no God beside me” (Deut. 32:39).
To the Christian polemicist, of course, such arguments were virtually
inexplicable and missed the point entirely. Christians, he would reply,
believe in monotheism as much as Jews; the question is only the nature

da Correggio’s Herev Pifiyyot (Jerusalem, 1958), p. 9. Cf. also his citation of several
relevant verses in his “Haganah ve-Hatqafah . . . ,” pp. 348–349. There is a non-polemical
source which may contribute to the impression that there was some degree of seriousness
in this enterprise. R. Jacob Tam, we are told, requested divine guidance in a dream to
determine whether or not Jesus and Mary are alluded to in Scripture; see A. J. Heschel,
“’Al Ruah ha-Qodesh bi-Yemei ha-Beinayim,” Alexander Marx Jubilee Volume, New York,
1950, Heb. vol., p. 182, n. 27. See also Talmage’s note in “Ha-Pulmus ha-Anti-Nozeri ba-
Hibbur Leqet Qazar,” Michael 4 (1976): 71.

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of that one God. On this issue, Jews and Christians were operating on
different wavelengths, and the essence of the problem was the rationality
of the Christian belief.23
Christians attempted to defend the plausibility of the trinitarian
faith by analogies with physical phenomena or by the identification
of the three persons of the trinity with major attributes of God.
Such arguments raised complex philosophical questions about divine
attributes which transcended the boundaries of the Jewish-Christian
debate but did play a role in some of the more sophisticated polemical
works. Some Jews tried to undermine this type of explanation by
arguing that it could not coexist comfortably with the doctrine of the
incarnation which implied the sort of separability among the persons
of the trinity that could not be attributed to divine power, wisdom,
and will.24
The incarnation itself was subjected to a Jewish critique that
ranged from the questioning of its necessity to the contention that it is
impossible even for an omnipotent God.25 Christian works quote several
Jewish polemicists who became so carried away with the tendency to
maintain the impossibility of Christian dogmas that they made such
an assertion even with respect to the virgin birth. Here they were on
very shaky ground; Christians presented effective rebuttals, and the
extant Jewish polemics which discuss the matter concede that God
could theoretically have caused a virgin to conceive.26
One Christian doctrine that Jews attacked on moral rather than
philosophical grounds was the belief in the universal damnation which
came in the wake of original sin. They argued that such treatment is
clearly unfair and inconsistent with the mercy of God, and at least one
Jewish writer made the same argument with respect to the damnation

23 See the notes to pp. 42 (line 12) and 75. The most sophisticated Jewish discussion of the
trinity during our period is in Moses of Salerno’s Ta‘anot, and not all Jewish polemicists
based their arguments on the undefended assumption that Trinitarianism is simply
a polytheism of three. There was, nevertheless, a pervasive Jewish feeling that this is
the case. On this topic in general, see D. Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics against
Christianity in the Middle Ages (New York, 1977), pp. 48–104. (Lasker’s important study
appeared too late to be utilized systematically in this book; for an assessment, see my
review in the Association for Jewish Studies Newsletter 22 [March 1978]: 16–17, 19.)
24 See Appendix 5 for a detailed discussion.
25 See Appendix 2.
26 See p. 103 and the notes there.

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 Introduction to The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages

of the unbaptized, especially unbaptized infants.27 The terrible

consequences of a failure to accept Christianity seemed particularly
unjust in light of what Jews considered the unimpressive nature of the
miracles associated with Jesus’ career.28 Moreover, some of the central
assertions of the Christian faith appeared not only implausible but
demeaning to God, and it did not seem right that someone who refused
to believe such doctrines should be punished so severely.29
For their part, Christians were more than willing to engage in
arguments appealing to reason, morality, or fairness. The ritual law, they
said, was demonstrably unreasonable. Even where it did not contradict
itself, no plausible reasons could be discovered for many of its precepts,
and the contention that no reasons need to be given for the divine will is
the refuge of desperate, unintelligent men.30 The very fate of the Jewish
people constitutes a rational argument against the validity of Judaism.31
As for moral arguments, Jews believed that God revealed himself only
to them,32 they apparently thought that only they would be saved,33 and
they possessed a harsh and carnal Law.34
Each side, then, was well fortified with arguments from both
Scripture and reason, and polemical activity in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries reached new heights. Among Christians, the outpouring of
anti-Jewish polemic began in the late eleventh century and reached
a crescendo in the twelfth. Peter Damian, Gilbert Crispin, Petrus Alfonsi,
Rupert of Deutz, Peter the Venerable, “William of Champeaux,” Peter of
Blois, Walter of Châtillon, Alan of Lille—these and others made their
contributions to the refutation of Judaism. Among Jews, the writing

27 See the notes to p. 218.

28 See especially the notes to p. 146.
29 See the notes to p. 222.
30 See Appendix 3.
31 See the notes to p. 89.
32 See Tertullian, Adversus Judaeos, PL 2: 599 = Tränkle, p. 4. On Jewish selfishness, cf. also
the citations from Bernard in my study, “The Attitude of St. Bernard of Clairvaux toward
the Jews,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 40 (1972): 100.
33 So a priest of Étampes quoted by Joseph Official; see the notes to p. 89 for the full
quotation and reference. There is, of course, a well-known Talmudic view that righteous
Gentiles are admitted into the world to come (Tosefta Sanhedrin, ch. 13; B. Sanhedrin
105a), but the definition of righteousness was subject to several ambiguities. Moreover,
this priest can hardly be faulted in light of comments made by Joseph Official’s own
father; see below, p. 68.
34 On the carnality of the Law, see p. 80 and the notes there.

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of polemic began m the late twelfth century and reached a peak (at
least in France and Germany) in the thirteenth. Joseph Kimhi, Jacob
ben Reuben, the author of the Vikkuah le-ha-Radaq, Meir of Narbonne,
Joseph Official (Yosef ha-Meqanne) and his father Nathan, Moses of
Salerno, Mordecai of Avignon, Nahmanides, Jacob of Venice, Solomon
de’ Rossi and, finally, the anonymous author of the Nizzahon Vetus
were the representatives of a concerted Jewish effort to present the
case against Christianity. The renaissance of Christian polemic was as
much a result of a general intellectual revival as of a new concern with
Jews; the Jewish response, though somewhat delayed, was inevitable,
and in two important instances, it was imposed in the form of forced
disputations. Confrontations between Jews and Christians were on the
increase, and their frequency, their tone, and even their content were
being deeply influenced by the political, social, and economic changes
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

II. POLEMIC AND HISTORICAL REALITY

The Nizzahon Vetus, as we shall see, is a virtual anthology of Ashkenazic

polemic in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and these centuries
constitute a pivotal period in the history of the Jews of France and
Germany. In France a major factor in the inexorable decline of the status
of the Jews was the growing centralization of power in the hands of
an unfriendly monarchy. The growing national unification, together
with the increase in mass piety that had been stimulated as early as the
eleventh century by the Gregorian reform and the Crusades, sharpened
the awareness of the alien character of the Jew both nationally and
religiously. The Christian piety of some of the French monarchs,
particularly Louis IX, resulted in a major effort to bring about large-
scale Jewish conversion, and considerable sums were expended for
this purpose.35 An investigation of the Talmud was pursued in 1240
by means of a Jewish-Christian debate that was really a trial, and the
eventual burning of the Talmud shortly thereafter was a devastating
psychological and cultural blow to French Jewry.36 One Jewish source

35 See S. W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews (New York, 1965), 3: 60.
36 See Ch. Merchavia, Ha-Talmud bi-Re’i HaNazrut (Jerusalem, 1970), pp. 227–248.

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 Introduction to The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages

reports that the king of France encouraged the arrangement of public

disputations in 1272–73 by a Jewish convert to Christianity who
promised to show the Jews that they were without faith and that, like
heretics, they deserved to be burned.37 Thus, for at least some Jews in
thirteenth-century France, religious polemic was simply unavoidable.
Religious motives, however, were not the only factors which un-
dermined the position of the Jews. The French monarchy saw its
Jewish subjects as a convenient target for fiscal exploitation, and
the economic security of the Jews grew more and more precarious.38
A feeling of economic insecurity had, in fact, been developing for some
time and had even made its way into legal discussions by the twelfth
century. The Talmud had recorded a view limiting the amount of interest
that a Jew might collect from a Gentile to whatever the Jew needed
for bare sustenance. In discussing this passage, some French Jewish
commentators argued that such a ruling was of no practical effect under
prevailing conditions; since “we do not know how much tax the king will
demand,” any sum must be regarded as bare sustenance.39
Similar evidence of such insecurity can be found in the application
of another talmudic law. A Jew who was owed money by a Gentile was
not supposed to collect the debt on a pagan holiday unless it was an oral
debt; in the latter case, he could collect at any time because he had no
assurance that he would be able to collect later. Here again Ashkenazic
jurists maintained that under the conditions prevailing in medieval
Europe, a debt for which the Jew had written proof (or even a pledge)
could be collected on a Christian holiday because there was never any real
assurance that even such a debt could be collected at a later date.40

37 See A. Neubauer, “Literary Gleanings, IX” JQR, o.s. 5 (1893): 713–714; cf. Baron, op. cit.,
10: 63–64. See also R. Chazan, Medieval Jewry in Northern France (Baltimore and London,
1973), pp. 149–153, for indications that this convert was Pablo C(h)ristia(ni) and that
the events may have taken place in 1269.
38 See Baron, op. cit., 10: 57 ff. On the economic and political decline of French Jewry in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries see esp. Chazan, op. cit., pp. 39–40, 63–96, 100–124,
133–141, 148, 154–186.
39 See S. Albeck, “Yahaso shel Rabbenu Tam li-Be‘ayot Zemanno” (Hebrew), Zion 19 (1954):
107–108; cf. Tosafot Bava Mezi‘a, 70b, s. v. tashikh.
40 Tosafot Avodah Zarah, 2a, s. v. velifroa‘ mehen. On Christian efforts to minimize the effec-
tiveness of documents held by Jews which proved Christian indebtedness, see S. Grayzel,
The Church and the Jews in the Thirteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1933), p. 57, note 78,
and pp. 106–107, note 3. The Jewish feeling of economic insecurity is also reflected in
the texts in B. Dinur, Yisrael ba-Golah II. 1 (Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, 1965), pp. 157–168.

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It would, of course, be easy to argue that these rulings were

rationalizations to justify widespread violations of the relevant
talmudic regulations and that they do not therefore reflect genuine
insecurity. The tosafists, however, did not manipulate talmudic law
in quite so facile a manner. Whatever their motivations, they were
convinced that they were describing their status accurately. It is clear,
then, that considerable economic uncertainty was a genuine element in
the Jewish psyche as early as the twelfth century, and in the thirteenth
such uncertainty must have become more disturbing than ever. Legal
attacks against Jewish moneylending were made by both Louis IX and
Philip the Bold, while Philip the Fair resorted to outright extortion
and eventual banishment in 1306. Even during those periods in the
fourteenth century when the Jews were invited back, their security
was tenuous. They were subjected to the indirect pressure of the
Inquisition, they were vulnerable to the depredations of mobs like the
Pastoureaux in 1320, and they were constantly aware of the possibility
of another sudden expulsion.41
The status of German Jewry in the late thirteenth and early
fourteenth centuries was also undergoing a precipitous decline. The
most important change involved a new application of the old conception
of Jewish servitude. As a theological concept, this doctrine goes back to
the early Christian centuries, and it even gave rise to certain practical
conclusions. Jews, for example, were not supposed to hold positions
that would give them control over Christians, since that would
constitute a violation of the biblical injunction (Gen. 25:23) that the
older (i.e., the synagogue) must serve the younger (i.e., the church);42
although honored more in the breach than the observance this rule was
not entirely without practical effect. Even the contention that Jews
somehow belong to the royal treasury appears much earlier than the
thirteenth century. Nevertheless, it was in that century that the fateful
phrase servi camerae (serfs of the chamber) first appeared, and it was
then that the potentially disastrous consequences of that phrase came
to be applied in earnest.

41 On the early fourteenth century, see Y. Yerushalmi “The Inquisition and the Jews of
France in the Time of Bernard Gui,” HTR 63 (1970): 317–377. See also R. Anchel, Les
Juifs de France (1946), pp. 79–91 and Chazan, op. cit. pp. 191–205.
42 See the notes to p. 55.

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 Introduction to The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages

Ironically the immediate origins of this expression probably lie in

a conflict that had no direct connection with the Jews and affected
them at first in the form of an offer of protection. The Jewish question
was a peripheral element in the struggle between pope and emperor
concerning papal “fullness of power,” and the assertion by Frederick
II that the Jews were the serfs of his chamber meant, at least initially,
that he was their legitimate protector.43 It did not take long, however,
for this doctrine to be transformed into an instrument of severe
economic exploitation that reflected an effort to deny to Jews the
status of free men.44 This development was aggravated by recurring
blood libels, anti-Jewish riots, local expulsions, and “feudal anarchy”;45
consequently, although German Jews were spared the agony of
a nationwide banishment, their legal and social status had sunk to
an almost intolerable level.
Polemical works in general and the Nizzahon Vetus in particular both
reflect and illuminate the historical epoch in which they appear. It is true
that many aspects of polemic remained relatively static throughout the
Middle Ages, particularly the various arguments and counterarguments
regarding the exegesis of specific biblical verses. Nevertheless, the
realia of any historical period quickly found expression in polemic,
and the impact of various political, philosophical, and religious
developments can be measured in part by the degree to which they are
reflected in this literature. Examples of this can be cited from virtually
every period in the development of polemic. The failure of the Bar-
Kokheba revolt was reflected almost immediately in Justin’s Dialogue
with Trypho; the problems of “Judaizers” in the church were discussed
in the diatribes of John Chrysostom; Agobard’s works reflected the
challenge of Jewish economic development and political influence;
the relatively calm tone of the polemics of Peter Damian and Gilbert
Crispin as compared with the vituperation in works of the later Middle
Ages mirrored basic differences in Jewish-Christian relations; various

43 See Baron, op. cit., 9: 141–147. For a recent discussion of the doctrine of fullness of power
see W. D. McCready, “Papal Plenitudo Potestatis and the Source of Temporal Authority in
Late Medieval Papal Hierocratic Theory,” Speculum 48 (1973): 654–674.
44 See especially G. Kisch, The Jews in Medieval Germany (Chicago, 1949), pp. 159–168, and
cf. Baron, op. cit., pp. 152 ff.
45 Baron, op. cit., pp. 193 ff.

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philosophical developments had a major impact on the discussions of

the trinity, incarnation, and virgin birth.46
In light of the deteriorating status of Ashkenazic Jewry described
above, it is particularly interesting that one of the most striking
characteristics of the Nizzahon Vetus and other Ashkenazic polemics of
this period is their aggressiveness, vigor, and vituperation. The Jewish
reader is instructed to press his arguments vigorously and not to permit
the Christian to change the subject.47 Christians are told that they will
be condemned to hellfire.48 A rabbi is said to have informed the king of
Germany that “if one were to load a donkey with vomit and filth and lead
him through the church, he would remain unharmed.”49 Sarcastic stories
are told of conversations between Jesus and God,50 while Jesus, Peter,
Mary, and the holy spirit are all referred to in an insulting manner.51
Some of these comments and witticisms are a reflection of what might
be called folk polemic, since such arguments and anecdotes must have
enjoyed wide circulation among Jews who were incapable of appreciating
more complex and abstract discussions.52
Aggressiveness and vituperation were by no means universal among
Jewish polemicists of this period and are characteristic primarily of
Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne and the Nizzahon Vetus, which were written in
northern France and Germany. Other writers were far more cautious
and restrained. Jacob ben Reuben, for example, prefixed his pioneering
critique of Matthew with a diffident, even fearful, introduction. He
wrote that Jews should really keep silent on such matters, that he
recorded only a few of the errors in Matthew, and that he did even this
much only at the insistence of his friends. Moreover, he asked that his

46 There is no really good survey of Jewish-Christian polemic as a whole until the fourteenth
century. A few studies, however, do give a picture of some of the areas of interaction
between polemic and historical realia. See Ver. Israel; Auteurs; Juifs et Chrét.; J. Parkes,
The Conflict of The Church and the Synagogue (London, 1934); I. Loeb, “La Controverse
Religieuse entre les Chrétiens et les Juifs au Moyen Age,” Revue d’histoire des Religions
17 (1888): 311–337; 18 (1888): 133–156 (also printed as a separate monograph); Baron,
op. cit. 9: 55–134, 266–307; Funkenstein, op, cit., pp. 125–144.
47 N. V., p. 169.
48 Ibid., p. 68.
49 Ibid., p. 69.
50 See pp. 43, 77.
51 See the notes to p. 152.
52 Nevertheless, Rosenthal (Jewish Social Studies 27 [1965]: 121) justly rejects H. J. Schoeps’s
contention that N. V. stems from “the completely uneducated circles of German Jewry.”

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 Introduction to The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages

name not be mentioned in connection with the critique for fear that
Christians would find out.53 Solomon de’ Rossi also counseled restraint
at the beginning of his ‘Edut Hashem Ne’emanah. Indeed, he suggested
that the Jewish polemicist avoid entirely such subjects as the trinity,
incarnation, host, saints, and priesthood—in short, anything that
might be offensive. Discussion should be limited to “the coming of the
Messiah, the signs of his time, the commandments of the Torah, and
the words of the prophets.” Moreover, Solomon’s advice on the tactics
of the Jewish polemicist provides a striking contrast with the above-
mentioned instructions given by the author of the Nizzahon Vetus.
“One who argues with them,” says our author, “should be strong willed
by asking questions and giving responses that deal with the specific
issue at hand and not permitting his antagonist to extricate himself
from that issue until it has been completed.”54 Solomon, on the other
hand, suggests that if the Jew sees that he is winning the argument, he
should not try to appear like the victor but should instead change the
subject.55
Our author’s practical advice to the Jewish polemicist is not the only
evidence indicating that the aggressiveness reflected in the Nizzahon
Vetus was at least partly expressed in actual debate. Agobard accused
Jews of blaspheming Jesus in the presence of Christians.56 In the
twelfth century, Jews were said to have challenged Christians to battle
in the manner of Goliath.57 Walter of Châtillon asserted that Jews not
only fail to accept the truth of Christianity but actively pose objections
to it.58 The oft-quoted remark of Louis IX that a Christian layman who

53 Mil. Hashem, p. 141. While Rosenthal is no doubt correct in suggesting that such factors
as the higher philosophical level of Mil. Hashem were largely responsible for its less
vituperative tone (introduction to Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, p. 28), this passage shows
that fear was also a factor. These observations by Rosenthal revise his earlier judgment
that Mil. Hashem was the sharpest polemic written by a medieval Jew (introduction
to Mil. Hashem, p. 19).
54 N. V., p. 169.
55 See Solomon de’ Rossi, ‘Edut Hashem Ne’emanah, Rosenthal’s Mehqarim, 1: 378–379. Cf.
also the citations in Rosenthal’s introduction to Yosef ha-Meqanne, p. 17. The contrast
between Solomon and N. V. was noted briefly by E. Urbach, “Études sur la littérature
polémique au moyen age,” REJ 100 (1935): 61.
56 PL 104: 71, quoted in Williams, p. 355.
57 The Tractatus in TNA 5: 1509 = PL 213: 749; cf. M. Guedemann, Ha-Torah ve-ha-Hayyim
bi-Yemei ha-Beinayim . . . (Tel Aviv, 1968; first printing, Warsaw, 1897), pp. 11–12.
58 Walter of Châtillon, Tractatus . . . , PL 209: 424.

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is confronted by a Jewish polemicist should refute his adversary by

stabbing him assumes that Jews were in the habit of initiating religious
discussions.59 Recent research has revealed that the unflattering
explanation of Christian confession proposed in the Nizzahon Vetus was
actually suggested to a Christian by a thirteenth-century French Jew;
the priest, it was said, uses confession to obtain a list of adulterous
women whom he can then seduce.60 In light of this evidence, it appears
that the assertiveness and self-confidence of Ashkenazic Jews were
remarkable, and the view that most of the sarcastic comments in Jewish
polemic were intended for internal consumption should probably be
modified though not entirely discarded.61
Whether or not vituperative polemical remarks were intended for
a Christian audience, such expressions of contempt toward the sancta of
Christianity became known to the Inquisition. Bernard Gui, who directed
the Inquisition in France in the early fourteenth century, referred to

59 See Anchel, op. cit., pp. 106–107. On “the Jewish mission” through the eleventh century,
see also Juifs et Chrét., pp. 159–211.
60 See J. Shatzmiller, Recherches sur la communauté juive de Manosque au moyen age (Paris,
La Haye, 1973), pp. 123–127; cf. below, p. 223. Although I find Shatzmiller’s analysis
quite persuasive, several cautionary remarks should be added. First of all, the text is
fragmentary, and Shatzmiller’s reconstruction is based in part on the existence of the
parallel in N. V. Secondly, the Jew was subjected to a formal accusation as a result of his
remarks, and this must obviously temper any conclusions to be drawn from this incident
concerning Jewish aggressiveness and freedom of speech. Finally, the Jew denied the
charges by presenting a significantly different version of what he had said, and this denial,
as Shatzmiller indicates, cannot be dismissed with absolute certainty.
61 See Urbach, op. cit., pp. 60 ff., for a discussion of this problem. I. Levi had pointed to
several sources which reflected Jewish initiation of vigorous religious debate, but he
considered this a pre-thirteenth-century phenomenon; see his “Controverse entre un
Juif et un Chrétien au XIe Siecle.” REJ 5 (1882): 238. The view that Provencal Jews
“took advantage of their freedom of speech” to a greater extent than other Jews was
expressed by Grayzel, The Church and The Jews in the Thirteenth Century, p. 29. Baron
has even suggested that outspoken polemical remarks may have been inspired by the
Official family, and they themselves may have spoken as they did because of their roots
in Narbonne, where Jews enjoyed exceptional privileges (op. cit., 9: 277). Many remarks
of this type, however, cannot be traced to the Officials, and quite a few are attributed to
earlier Ashkenazic figures. The truth probably lies in the most straightforward reading
of the evidence, which indicates that the Jews of northern France and Germany did not
shrink from outspoken polemic, at least in private conversation, even in the dark days of
the late thirteenth century. On the assertiveness that marked Ashkenazic Jewry in the
pre-Crusade period, see I. Agus, The Heroic Age of Franco-German Jewry (New York, 1969),
especially pp. 11–20. Despite certain exaggerations, the main thrust of Agus’s portrayal
of this characteristic is valid.

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a cematha (= shamta, or curse) proclaimed by the Jews on the Day of

Atonement which indicated through circumlocution that Jesus was the
illegitimate son of a prostitute and Mary a woman of voluptuousness.
In his study of Gui and the Jews of France, Y. Yerushalmi points to
a liturgical poem quoted in Endecktes Judenthum that reads: “The nations
link your holiness to the yoke of promiscuity, [but] your bethrothed revile
the relation to the promiscuous woman (yihus eshet ha-zimmah).”62
This sort of expression appears in the Nizzahon Vetus several
times, and Gui’s attack points up the danger inherent in the use of
such rhetoric even to a Jewish audience. Indeed, Gui was aware of
a substantial number of Jewish works and expressions that he felt were
directed against Christians or contained blasphemies. Among these
were the Alenu prayer, Rashi’s commentaries, Maimonides’ Mishneh
Torah, R. David Kimhi’s commentary on Psalms, and the Talmud itself.
Moreover, he was particularly sensitive to the Jewish practice of calling
Christians “heretics” (minim), a practice that goes back to the Talmud
and is reflected frequently in the Nizzahon Vetus.63 Finally, it might
be pointed out that a religious disputation actually became part of
an inquisitional proceeding in 1320; not surprisingly, the inquisitor
emerged victorious in a debate whose ground rules left something to
be desired.64
The increasing economic exploitation of Jews was reflected all too
clearly in the polemical work of Meir of Narbonne. Here the satirical
veneer that often concealed Jewish bitterness was dropped, and Meir
allowed himself an undisguised outburst which reveals how deeply
Jews were hurt by their growing insecurity. The unfair expropriation
of property on such a scale “is worse for a man than being murdered.
When a person is objected to shame and disgrace, he would rather be

62 Yerushalmi, op. cit., pp. 362–363. The phrase eshet ha-zimmah is taken from Ezekiel 23:44.
See also Merchavia, “Ha-Shamta be-Sifrut ha-Pulmus ha-Nozerit bi-Yemei ha-Beinayim,”
Tarbiz 41 (1971): 95–115; cf. especially pp. 97, 100, where he cites the reading yihum
rather than yihus.
63 See Yerushalmi, op. cit., pp. 350 ff. In the Talmud, minim probably referred primarily to
Jewish Christians. For the charge that Jews curse Christians in prayer, cf. also Jerome
and Agobard cited in Merchavia, Ha-Talmud bi-Re’i ha-Nazrut, pp. 82–83. Cf. also the list
of pejorative Jewish expressions about Christianity compiled by Christians in 1239 and
summarized by Merchavia, p. 278.
64 See S. Grayzel, “The Confessions of a Medieval Jewish Convert,” Historica Judaica 17
(1955): 89–120, and cf. Yerushalmi, op. cit., pp. 328–333.

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dead; moreover, when he loses his money and he and his family remain
‘in hunger, in nakedness, and in want of all things’ (Deut. 28:48), then
he will in fact die before his time.” The culmination of this cry of anguish
is Meir’s anticipation of the day when the Gentiles will have to repay
what they stole from the Jews.65
Many other aspects of the changing historical situation were also
reflected in Jewish polemic. The growing importance of moneylending,
for example, led to considerable discussion of its ethics and its biblical
justification. Christians not only cited various time honored verses to
prove that usury is a moral offense of universal relevance, but were
apparently willing to use Jewish typology to buttress their argument.
Several Jewish works of this period cite the Christian contention that
even if Christians are Edom (a Jewish stereotype), Jews should be
forbidden to take interest from them in light of the verses which refer
to Edom and Israel as brothers. Moreover, the Jewish response did not
restrict itself solely to legalistic refutations; Christian polemicists were
charged with hypocrisy on the grounds that Christians themselves were
involved in extensive usurious activities.66
The truth is that this last accusation is but one expression of the
more general contention that Christians behave immorally. Whatever
the historical validity of such remarks may be, they are significant for
what they reveal about the self-image of the Jews and the use of polemic
to strengthen that image. One of the beliefs which sustained medieval
Jewry through centuries of adversity was the firm conviction that Jews
were clearly superior to their Gentile persecutors. No medieval Jew felt
that he was subjected to other nations because they were morally, let
alone religiously, superior to him. On the contrary, Ashkenazic Jewry in
particular developed the theory that one reason for its suffering was that
it was chosen because of its unique qualities to sanctify the divine name
through martyrdom.67 Consequently, martyrdom itself became evidence
of the outstanding qualities of the Jews of France and Germany.
Indeed, Ashkenazic Jews were hardly able to discuss the issue of
martyrdom, even in a halakhic context, without a passionate, emotional

65 Mil. Mizvah, p. 23b. See also the quotation from Meir in Chazan, op. cit., p. 123.
66 See pp. 133–134 and the notes there. For discussion of the Christian accusations that
Jews engage in extensive usury, see Kisch, op. cit., pp. 327–329.
67 See H. H. Ben-Sasson, Peraqim be-Toledot ha-Yehudim bi-Yemei ha-Beinayim (Tel Aviv,
1958), pp. 174–184. Cf. N.V., p. 70, and the notes there.

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response. A remarkable tosafot, for example, points out that a certain

talmudic passage seems to require a normative legal decision that
a Jew is not obligated to resist to the death when forced to engage in
a private idolatrous act. But, say the tosafists, “this is difficult,” and
one expects that this standard formula will be followed by the ordinary
kind of legal or exegetical argumentation. Instead, we are confronted, at
least initially, by an emotional outburst. “This is difficult, for God forbid
that we should rule in a case of idolatry that one should transgress
rather than die.”68 A similar reaction appears in a responsum of R. Meir
of Rothenburg, who was asked whether atonement is necessary for
a man who had killed his wife and children (with their consent) to
prevent their capture by a mob demanding conversion to Christianity.
Although he concedes the difficulty of finding justification for such
an act in rabbinic sources, R. Meir will not even consider seriously
the possibility that such behavior is illegal. “This is a matter,” he says,
“whose permissibility has been widely accepted, for we have heard of
many great rabbis who slaughtered their sons and daughters . . . And
anyone who requires atonement for this is besmirching the name of the
pious men of old.”69
The Nizzahon Vetus supplies additional evidence of the centrality of
martyrdom in the thought of Franco-German Jewry in this period. It
contains a fascinating passage which illustrates how an Ashkenazic Jew
transformed a story that contained no reference to martyrdom into one
in which it emerges as the central theme; indeed, it becomes virtually
a criterion of religious truth. In Judah Halevi’s Kuzari a pagan king calls
in a philosopher, a Jew, a Muslim, and a Christian so that each can argue
the merits of his position. The king is eventually persuaded of the truth
of Judaism, partly because both the Muslim and the Christian grant it
a certain degree of authenticity. The Nizzahon Vetus, on the other hand,
tells an elaborate story in which a king threatens a Jew, a Christian, and
a Muslim with death unless each one will convert to one of the other
faiths. The Jew remains steadfast even at the very edge of the grave,

68 Tosafot Avodah Zarah 54a, s. v. ha-bezin‘a. See J. Katz, Bein Yehudim le-Goyim (Jerusalem,
1960), p. 90. (The equivalent passage in the English version [Exclusiveness and Tolerance
(New York, 1961), pp. 83–84] presents such a bland paraphrase of the Tosafot that the
emotional force of the argument is virtually lost.)
69 R. Meir of Rothenburg, Teshuvot, Pesaqim, u-Minhagim, ed. Y. Z. Kahane (Jerusalem,
1960), 2: 54.

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while the other two ultimately lose their resolve and succumb to the
king’s threats. Both, however, choose Judaism, and “when the emperor
heard that the Jew was willing to die for his Torah and would not move
from his faith one bit, while the priest and the Muslim both denied
their vain beliefs and accepted our faith, he himself chose our religion;
he, the priest, and the Muslim were all converted and became true and
genuine proselytes.” The modification of the Kuzari story to make the
willingness to die a proof of the truth of Judaism is a truly striking
indication of the role martyrdom had come to play in the psyche of the
medieval Ashkenazic Jew.70
The one aspect of medieval Christian life that challenged the
Jewish image of moral superiority was the monastic ideal. At least
some Christians, it appeared, were leading pure and ethical lives which
could be compared favorably with those of ordinary Jews and perhaps
even of rabbinic leaders. It is possible that it was the implicit challenge
of monasticism that provoked the vigorous attacks against both the
monastic ideal and its practical implementation which are found in
Jewish polemic. The author of the Nizzahon Vetus argues that at best
monks and nuns are overcome with lustful desires that cannot be
consummated, and at worst, “they wallow in licentiousness in secret.”
Only marriage can assure that a person will remain pious and God-
fearing. Moreover, monastic orders, some of which were expanding
vigorously in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, were accused of unfair
appropriation of land and portrayed as depraved and unethical. Thus,
the threat to the Jewish self-image was negated, and Jews were even
able to strengthen their conviction of ethical superiority by a partisan
examination of monasticism.71
It is significant that the relatively recent charge of ritual murder
appears in Ashkenazic polemic of the thirteenth century. Whatever the
roots of this accusation may be, official church doctrine never sanctioned

70 For further references, see the notes to pp. 216–218.

71 See pp. 69–70, 98–99, 223, and cf. the notes there. On the alleged immorality of priests,
see also Guedemann, op. cit., pp. 42–43, 67–68. My feeling that monasticism posed
a psychological threat to the Jewish self-image is almost impossible to substantiate
definitively because no medieval Jew would say this openly. There is, however, interesting
evidence that some Ashkenazic Jews in the early modern period felt insecure in the
presence of genuine priestly celibacy; see the curious legend in Shivhei ha-Besht about
the Baal Shem Tov’s conversation with a priest (D. Ben-Amos and J. Mintz, In Praise of
the Baal Shem Tov [Bloomington, 1970], p. 248).

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it. Indeed, at least the charge of ritual consumption of Christian blood

was vigorously condemned by the papacy, and it may even be appropriate
to speak of a thirteenth-century rivalry between pope and emperor
over the right to protect the Jews against this libel.72 It is consequently
a matter of particular interest to find Christians searching the Scriptures
to discover evidence, and rather complicated evidence at that, to prove
that Jews eat human beings and drink their blood.73 This is one of the
earliest concrete indications of an attempt at a reasoned defense of the
blood libel.
The spread of heresy was one of the most important social and
religious developments in this period and had particularly sensitive
implications with regard to Jewish-Christian relations. Christians had
traditionally labeled members of any schismatic group “Jews,” and had
occasionally attacked the latter as a means of getting at the former.74
Moreover, Jews were occasionally accused of harboring heretics,
encouraging them, and even of leading orthodox Christians into heresy.75
Nevertheless, despite considerable scholarly efforts, virtually no hard
evidence concerning significant contacts between Jews and medieval
heretics has been unearthed.76
Precisely such evidence, however, may be found in Jewish polemic.
I have argued elsewhere that the Nizzahon Vetus contains a refutation
of a heretical Christian doctrine, that a thirteenth-century French
polemicist makes explicit reference to Albigensians and Bogomils in
order to attack orthodox Christianity, and that Jacob ben Reuben’s
Milhamot Hashem may preserve evidence of an even more intriguing
nature. Jacob’s Christian disputant may have unwittingly quoted the
arguments of a friend which were ostensibly aimed at Judaism but were
72 Baron, op. cit., 9: 144–145.
73 See pp. 54, 229 and the notes there.
74 So Cassiodorus, PL 70: 74D (“Judaei vel Donatistae”); Hadrian I, PL 98: 1255–1256.
Cf. Juifs et Chrét. pp. xvi–xvii and note 11 there. See also Damian’s De Sacramentis per
Improbos Administratis, PL 145: 529, and his Liber Qui Dicitur Gratissimus, ch. 37, PL 145:
153, discussed in my “St. Peter Damian,” pp. 86–87, 89–90. Cf. Humbert, PL 143: 1093
C. On this practice in the Byzantine Empire, see Parkes, op. cit., pp. 300–303. Cf. also
Baron, op. cit., 9: 58–60.
75 Cf. Baron, op cit., pp. 59, 267–268.
76 See L. I. Newman, Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements (New York, 1925);
G. Scholem, Ursprung und Anfänge der Kabbala (Berlin, 1962), pp. 206–210; F. Talmage,
“An Hebrew Polemical Treatise: Anti-Cathar and Anti-Orthodox,” HTR 60 (1967):
335–337.

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really designed to undermine orthodox Christianity. Thus, Christian

heretics may have used anti-Jewish polemic as a cover for attacks against
the orthodox Christian faith.77
The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were also characterized by
the broadening of the horizons of Europe that took place in the wake
of the Crusades; indeed, the rise of heresy in Western Europe may
have been stimulated by the new contacts between East and West.78
These contacts with the Muslim world aided Jewish apologists in a very
old and critical area of polemic, namely, the Christian argument that
the success and wide diffusion of Christianity proved its superiority
over a religion with a small number of adherents who were growing
progressively weaker. Jews could now argue with genuine conviction and
greater effectiveness that even by the numerical test alone, Christianity
would not prevail; Muslims, they said, rule “half the world,” and God’s
promise to Abraham that all nations of the world would be blessed
in him and his seed was certainly not fulfilled through Christianity.
Jews even attempted to make Christians feel isolated by arguing that
the disgust at eating pork is really a consensus omnium with the sole
exception of Christians. In fact, even the existence of Christian heresy
could be cited as proof of the limited extent of orthodox Christianity.
Finally, the failure of the Crusades was cited to show that the alleged
success of Christianity was illusory; consequently, Christians would
have to admit that temporal success is unrelated to religious truth. Once
this admission was made, the old argument against Judaism would have
to be abandoned.79
One of the most striking characteristics of the polemic reflected
in the Nizzahon Vetus is the extensive use of the New Testament. The
first extant critique of the New Testament by a European Jew is in the
eleventh chapter of Jacob ben Reuben’s Milhamot Hashem (1170);80 this
work, however, deals only with Matthew. On the other hand, Sefer Yosef
ha-Meqanne, Milhemet Mizvah of Meir b. Simon of Narbonne, and the
77 See my “Christian Heresy and Jewish Polemic in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,”
HTR 68 (1975): 287–303. See also p. 153 below and the notes there.
78 On the causes of the rise of heresy, see J. Russell’s “Interpretations of the Origins of
Medieval Heresy,” Medieval Studies 25 (1963): 26–53, and his Dissent and Reform in the
Early Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1965).
79 See p. 89 and the notes there for specific references and a fuller discussion.
80 For a discussion of this date, see J. Rosenthal’s edition of Mil Hashem, introduction,
p. viii.

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Nizzahon Vetus reflect an intimate knowledge of all the Gospels and

some awareness of the other books of the New Testament.81
There are certain instructive similarities between Jewish use of the
New Testament in polemic and the Christian approach to the Talmud,
which became important in the thirteenth century. Both religions had
one sacred text—the Hebrew Scriptures—which they held in common,
and another sacred body of teaching about whose authority they differed.
Traditionally, polemical writings had largely restricted themselves to
different interpretations of the text whose authority and divine origin
both groups accepted. In our period, however, the usefulness of the New
Testament for Jewish polemicists and of the Talmud for Christians began to
become evident. There is, in fact, a clear parallelism between the approaches
developed by each group to the sacred literature of its adversaries. On
the one hand, that literature was subjected to a vigorous critique; on
the other, it was exploited to disprove the beliefs of its own adherents.
Thus, beginning in the twelfth century a series of Christian authors
attacked the Talmud as a work replete with absurdities, and in the 1230s
Nicholas Donin asserted that it contained blasphemies against Jesus
which made it a candidate for destruction. The Jewish defense presented
at the so-called disputation in Paris in 1240 did not succeed in thwarting
Donin’s wishes, and within a relatively short time a public burning of
the Talmud took place. A few decades later in Spain the Talmud was
again the focus of a disputation, but the approach was entirely different.
Here, Pablo C(h)ristia(ni) maintained that the dogmas of Christianity
could be demonstrated from the Talmud; the rabbis, for example, were
said to have indicated that the Messiah had already come and that he is
a preexistent being. Significant, though less spectacular, consequences
resulted from this disputation as well, and the use of the Talmud to
support Christianity became a central element of the Jewish-Christian
debate in the centuries to come. Some later Christians even combined

81 Cf. the reference to 1 Corinthians on p. 70. The impression of close familiarity with
the New Testament is marred by the frequent attribution of a quotation to the wrong
book of the Gospels. See, e.g., pp. 180, 183, 188. These inaccurate ascriptions may
offer a partial explanation tor the lack of a systematic order in the section of N. V. that
contains a critique of the Gospels. N. V. also contains some non-authentic quotations
from Christian literature (e.g., pp. 160, 203) which J. Wakius complained about in a late
seventeenth-century refutation. See his Teshuvat ha-Din al ha-Yehudim sive Recriminatio
Actionis in nuperos Christi Accusatores cujus pars prima agit contra . . . librum Nizzachon Vetus
(Jenae, 1699), pp. 20–21, 28–29.

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the two approaches, arguing that the Talmud contains both blasphemies
and evidence of Christian truths.82
The Jewish critique of the Gospels had a similar twofold nature.
Jews attacked the Christian Scriptures for their alleged absurdities
and contradictions, and at the same time they tried to prove that later
Christian dogmas are inconsistent with the Gospels themselves. It was,
of course, much easier to maintain both Jewish attitudes at the same
time than it was to do the same for both Christian arguments, and the
dual approach is used without hesitation throughout the latter section
of the Nizzahon Vetus.83
The knowledge of the New Testament displayed in Yosef ha-
Meqanne and the Nizzahon Vetus was at least partly firsthand since
there are a substantial number of Latin quotations in both works.84
Nevertheless, various citations of the opinions of proselytes leave no
room for doubt that some of the familiarity with Christian texts and
especially with Christian prayers, festivals, and rituals resulted from
contact with these converts; indeed, the Rome manuscript passages that
served as a source of the Nizzahon Vetus may well have been written by
a student of a proselyte’s son. Similarly, the Christian awareness of the

82 Both views were expressed in the Tortosa disputation in the early fifteenth century; cf.
the citations in Baron, op. cit., 9: 90, 91. Baron, however, does not note that two originally
disparate approaches are represented here. On medieval Christian use of the Talmud
through the Donin episode see Merchavia, Ha-Talmud bi-Re’i ha-Nazrut, passim. Pablo’s
approach was adopted by Raymond Martini in his classic Pugio Fidei (Leipzig, 1687),
which became a manual for Christian polemicists in late medieval Spain. For Donin’s
approach in thirteenth-century Italy, cf. C. Roth, History of the Jews of Italy (Philadelphia,
1946), pp. 99–100.
83 On the search for contradictions, see, for example, N. V., pp. 167–168 regarding the
contradictory genealogies in Matthew and Luke. The argument against Christian dogma
through Gospel citations is very common; see especially the notes to p. 183.
84 There is some discussion of Jacob ben Reuben’s Hebrew translations of Matthew in
Rosenthal’s “Targum shel ha-Besorah ‘al pi Matti le-Ya‘aqov ben Reuven,” Tarbiz 32
(1962): 48–66. On Jacob’s translation of selections from Gilbert Crispin’s Disputatio see
my “Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille, and Jacob ben Reuben: A Study in the Transmission of
Medieval Polemic,” Speculum 49 (1974): 34–47. On Jewish knowledge of Latin see also the
references in Merchavia, op. cit., p. 245. The author of the Dialogus attributed to William
of Champeaux refers to his supposed Jewish disputant as a man expert in Jewish law
and “not ignorant” of Christian literature (PL 163: 1045). Gilbert Crispin, after whose
work “William” modeled this passage, had used an even stronger expression; the Jew
“was well-versed (bene sciens) in our law and literature” (Disputatio, ed. by Blumenkranz,
p. 27). Solomon de’ Rossi lists such knowledge as one of the requirements for a Jewish
polemicist (‘Edut Hashem Ne’emanah, in Rosenthal’s Mehqarim, 1: 378).

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Talmud stemmed largely from information supplied by Jewish converts.

Petrus Alfonsi, for example, had proposed arguments against certain
talmudic passages as early as the beginning of the twelfth century,85
and both Nicholas Donin and Pablo C(h)ristia(ni) were recent converts
to Christianity when they began their polemical activities.86
Jewish polemic, then, reflects some of the most important social,
economic, and intellectual changes that were taking place in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries. Embittered relations, economic exploitation,
usury, the expansion of monasticism, martyrdom, the blood libel,
Christian heresy, the failure of the Crusades, wider familiarity with the
New Testament and the Talmud—all these played a role in the Jewish-
Christian debate, and polemical works can frequently supply insights
into the impact of some of these momentous developments. Relations
between Christians and Jews were indeed deteriorating, but the very
symptoms of that deterioration lent greater variety and renewed
interest to the vigorous religious discussions that persisted throughout
this tragic age in the history of medieval Jewry.

III. THE BOOK AND ITS AUTHOR

Finally, we come to the Nizzahon Vetus itself. Some of the basic information
concerning the work is either unknown or uncertain, and even the very
title has been subjected to varying translations. In this context, the word
nizzahon probably means polemic rather than victory;87 the reason that
this is the “old Nizzahon” is that a more famous polemic of the same name
was written by Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Mühlhausen at the beginning of
the fifteenth century, and the later work came to be the Sefer ha-Nizzahon
par excellence. Our Nizzahon was published in the seventeenth century
by a Christian scholar who hesitantly dated it in the twelfth century, be-
cause, he said, no one who lived after that time is mentioned in the book.88

85 See Merchavia, op. cit., pp. 93–127.

86 See below, note 91. On the role of converts, see Blumenkranz, “Jüdische und Christliche
Konvertiten im Jüdisch-Christlischen Religionsgespräche des Mittelalters,” in Paul
Wilpert’s Judentum im Mittelalter (Berlin, 1966), pp. 264–282, and cf. Guedemann,
op. cit., p. 11.
87 See the notes to p. 41.
88 Tela, 2: 1.

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We now know that at least one or two later figures are named and
that the book is probably dependent upon the thirteenth-century
Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne;89 consequently, the most plausible date for the
Nizzahon Vetus is the latter part of the thirteenth century, and this is
the date that has been accepted by most modern scholars.90 Urbach
dates the work in the fourteenth century, apparently because its two
major sources are from the second half of the thirteenth; this reasoning,
however, does not preclude a late thirteenth-century date.91 In the
absence of clearer evidence, therefore, a cautious approach is advisable,
and the book must be dated either in the late thirteenth or early
fourteenth century. As we shall see, however, the bulk of its material
stems from an earlier period.
Several writers have assumed that the seventeenth-century scholar
Wilhelm Schickard reported that the author of the Nizzahon Vetus was
named R. Mattityahu; moreover, this assertion by Schickard is supposed

89 This work was probably written in the mid-thirteenth century. See the discussion and
references in Rosenthal, Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, pp. 15 ff.
90 See L. Zunz, Zur Geschichte und Literatur (Berlin 1845), p. 85 (cited also in M. Stein-
schneider, Catalog der Hebräischen Handschriften in der Stadtbliothek zu Hamburg und
der sich anschliessenden in anderen Sprachen [Hamburg, 1878], p. 72); A. Posnanski,
Schiloh . . . (Leipzig, 1904), p. 148; J. Rosenthal, “Sifrut ha-Vikkuah ha-Anti-Nozerit,”
Areshet 2 (1960): 173; Baron, op. cit., 9: 294. Zunz dates the work a bit earlier than the
others. See especially Rosenthal’s introduction to Yosef ha-Meqanne, p. 15.
91 Urbach, op. cit., pp. 60, 76–77. The sources are Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne and the third part
of Hebrew manuscript no. 53 in the Vittorio Emanuele library in Rome.
In an unpublished dissertation written after this book was substantially completed (The
Sefer Nizzahon: A Thirteenth Century Defense of Judaism, New York University, October,
1974), A. Ehrman has argued tor a date between 1220 and 1229 (pp. 4–5) or 1220 and
1235 (p. 163), and in a forthcoming article he has extended the final terminus to 1242.
His most important arguments are the author’s failure to mention the disputation at
Paris in the short final paragraph on the Talmud and the fact that none of the few names
that we can identify with certainty belongs to anyone who flourished in the second half
of the century. Neither of these arguments strikes me as especially persuasive. That final
passage on the Talmud in itself suggests a terminus a quo of 1240 or even a bit later,
and since the events of 1240 were in France while N. V. is largely an anthology written
in Germany, prudence would appear to dictate our allowing a decent interval after that
date for its composition. Moreover, there is no internal evidence that Yosef ha-Meqanne is
an anthology as there is with respect to N. V. (see just below), but if we date N. V. before
Yosef ha-Meqanne, we would have to assume that much of the Gospel critique in the
Rome manuscript version of the latter work was copied from N. V. or its source while
the source of N. V. is lost. Finally, our anthology would have to be credited with a whole
series of polemical firsts probably originating in lost sources. None of this is impossible,
but it hardly seems like the course to choose in the absence of compelling evidence.

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to have been repeated by Wagenseil in the introduction to his edition

of the book. The very brief introduction to the Jerusalem reprint of the
Hebrew section of Tela Ignea Satanae attributes this view to Wagenseil,
and this attribution has been repeated by at least two other scholars.92
Judah Rosenthal also pointed to a book by Schickard that refers to
a Triumphator R. Matthias (which Rosenthal evidently identified with
the Nizzahon Vetus),93 and he went on to note Schickard’s unfinished
Nizzahon Beli Nezah sive Triumphator Vapulans (Tübingen, 1623), which
he described as a refutation of the Nizzahon Vetus that he was unable
to consult. Finally, he suggested that the attribution of the Nizzahon
Vetus to a R. Mattityahu may have resulted from a confusion with the
fifteenth-century author of Sefer Ahituv ve-Zalmon, which was also called
Nizzahon.94
It can now be asserted with full confidence that Rosenthal’s conjecture
is correct, but neither Schickard nor Wagenseil were guilty of confusing
the two books. The Nizzahon Beli Nezah, which is available from the
Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, does not deal with the Nizzahon Vetus at
all; the book Schickard had in fact was the later Sefer Ahituv ve-Zalmon,
and his only error was in dating it somewhat too early. It was to this
Triumphator that he referred in Jus Regium Hebraeorum, where he even
cited a poetic passage from Sefer Ahituv ve-Zalmon that is nowhere in the
Nizzahon Vetus. Moreover, a careful reading of Wagenseil’s introduction
shows that he never meant to say that Schickard had begun editing
the same Nizzahon that he was now publishing. Wagenseil was merely
reviewing the history of the publication of Jewish polemics called
Nizzahon, and he therefore mentioned both Schickard’s work and
T. Hackspanius’s edition of Mühlhausen’s polemic.
All references by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scholars
to a Nizzahon of R. Matthaeus are to the work utilized by Schickard.
Although there was some confusion about the various books called
Nizzahon, these writers generally knew that Schickard’s text was not the
same as the book edited by Wagenseil. Nevertheless, neither they nor
any subsequent scholar that I know recognized the fact that Schickard’s
Triumphator was the same as Sefer Ahituv ve-Zalmon, which some of them
92 J. Rosenthal, introduction to Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, p. 15, note 15; J. Shatzmiller, op. cit.,
p. 126.
93 See Schickard’s Jus Regium Hebraeorum (Leipzig, 1764), p. 449.
94 Rosenthal, loc. cit.

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 The Middle Ages

list separately.95 In any event, there is no tradition at all concerning

the author of the Nizzahon Vetus, and any search for the appropriate
“R. Mattityahu” would be futile.
Although the identity of the author himself is unknown, it is very
likely that he was a German Jew. The book contains a substantial
number of German words as well as a passage that says that the “main
body of the Gentiles is called Ashkenazim.”96 There is no evidence
for the assumption made by Loeb that the German words are later
interpolations;97 consequently, although there is a great deal (perhaps
even a preponderance) of French material in the work, the author
himself almost certainly lived in Germany.98
The Nizzahon Vetus is largely an anthology whose two major
identifiable sources were Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne (at least in the
section on the Gospels)99 and the third part of Hebrew manuscript
number 53 in the Vittorio Emanuele library in Rome.100 Its character as
an anthology is clear not only from the fact that we have some of its
sources but from the occasional repetition of similar material in the
same section of the work101 and from the scattered references to issues
that are not found in the book as matters discussed by the author.102
Nevertheless, the Nizzahon Vetus contains a great deal of material for
which we cannot identify precise parallels, let alone word-for-word
sources, and there is every reason to believe that the author added his
own material and revised that of others. Consequently, although he
followed the widespread medieval practice of making extensive, often

95 See T. Hackspanius, Liber Nizachon Rabbi Lipmanni (Nuremberg, 1644), pp. 218–219;
J. Buxtorf, Bibliotheca Rabbinica (Herborn, 1708), pp. 145–147; J. C. Wolf, Bibliotheca
Hebraeae, vol. 1 (Hamburg and Leipzig, 1715), pp. 738–741, and cf. vol. 2 (Hamburg,
1721), pp. 1051, 1052, 1259; G. B. de Rossi, Bibliotheca Judaica Antichristiana (Parma,
1800), pp. 63–64.
96 P. 156. Ashkenazim in this passage probably means specifically Germans: cf. the notes
there. See also Steinschneider, loc. cit.
97 Loeb, op. cit., p. 329.
98 So Zunz and Urbach, loc. cit. Posnanski, loc. cit., places the book in either northern
France or Germany.
99 Cf. below in the discussion of “The Text of the Nizzahon Vetus.”
100 Cf. note 91 and see the section on the text. Urbach (op. cit., p. 77) refers to N. V. as
“an anthology of all the [Ashkenazic] polemical literature of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries.”
101 See especially pp. 48–51; 100–104.
102 See, e.g., p. 65, and cf. the notes to p. 122.

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 Introduction to The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages

verbatim, use of his predecessors’ works, he deserves the title of author

and not merely compiler.103
The array of arguments in the Nizzahon Vetus is almost encyclopedic,
and the book is therefore an excellent vehicle for an analysis of virtually
all the central issues in the Jewish-Christian debate during the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries. In the Commentary I have tried to indicate
many of the parallels with earlier works,104 and these similarities leave no

103 On the order of the book, see p. 388.

104 Both Jewish and Christian parallels have been cited only through the thirteenth century
and have usually been arranged chronologically. I have tried to consult all Jewish polemics
and what I hope is a representative selection of Christian works. (In some respects,
Raymund Martini’s Pugio Fidei can be regarded as the inauguration of a new era of
Spanish polemic, and I have not cited it here even though its appearance toward the
end of the thirteenth century makes it technically eligible for inclusion.) Needless to
say, the citation of a parallel in the notes is not always intended to show that the author
of N. V. was influenced by that particular source.
There is one recurring reference which requires some clarification at this point. The
passage in Rome ms. 53, pp. 21a–21b, begins with a report that Pablo C(h)ristia(ni) arrived
in Montpellier in 1269 and continues with a summary of Nahmanides’ earlier disputation
with him; this summary is followed by an unrelated collection of miscellaneous arguments
(pp. 22a–25b), some of which are in the standard form of a debate between a “believer”
and a “heretic.” (A lengthy section of this collection [pp. 22b–23a] is a reworking of
a passage from Joseph Kimhi’s Sefer ha-Berit [Talmage’s edition, pp. 26–29].) Most of the
material from p. 21a through p. 25a, line 16, was transcribed (though never published) by
Adolph Posnanski and attributed by him to Mordecai b. Yehosafah of Avignon, apparently
because Mordecai is known to have had a dispute with Pablo. Recently, Judah Rosenthal
published this section of the manuscript (through p. 25b) as “Vikkuah Dati Bern Hakham
be-Shem Menahem u-bein ha-Mumar ve-ha-Nazir ha-Dominiqani Pablo Christiani,”
Hagut ‘Ivrit ba-Ameriqah, ed. by M. Zohori, A. Tartakover, and H. Ormian (Tel Aviv, 1974),
pp. 61–74. Rosenthal’s ascription of the work to a “Menahem” is based on the remark
that “these are the words of Menahem,” which appears twice in the final passage (on “true
Israel”); that passage, which begins on p. 25a, line 17, was omitted by Posnanski and
placed instead in his edition of N. V. (It is clear that Rosenthal was unaware of Posnanski’s
edition, which is generally superior to his.) There is really no firm basis for any decision
about the authorship at this collection (which also contains a note in a different hand that
“these are the words of Asher” [p. 22a]), and I have cited it by giving the page number of
the Rome ms. followed by references to both Posnanski’s “Mordecai of Avignon” ms. and
Rosenthal’s “Menahem.”
Finally—an apology. For a variety of not particularly good reasons, translations of
biblical verses are not consistently based on a single translation of the Bible (although
I have avoided inconsistent translations of any one verse). The enormous effort that
would have been necessary to correct this defect did not seem worth the trouble, and the
rabbinic observation that no two prophets prophesy in the same style no longer needs
to be restricted to the original Hebrew text. (When the author of N. V. misquotes a verse
or understands it in a peculiar fashion, I have, of course, deliberately “mistranslated” it
in order to reflect his text or interpretation.)

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 The Middle Ages

doubt about the existence of a Jewish polemical tradition. Whether or

not the author of the Nizzahon Vetus read such works as Kimhi’s Sefer
ha-Berit or Jacob ben Reuben’s Milhamot Hashem, their influence, or the
influence of the tradition upon which they drew, certainly reached him.
The argument that the christological interpretation of Isaiah 53:2–3 is
inconsistent with the christological interpretation of Psalms 45:2–3 is
not likely to have been made independently in Milhamot Hashem and the
Nizzahon Vetus.105 Our author’s discussion of signs in connection with
the Immanuel prophecy is clearly indebted to a tradition represented in
Sefer ha-Berit, in Meir of Narbonne’s Milhemet Mizvah, and in Moses of
Salerno.106 The fact that at least five Jewish polemicists cite the argument
from the limited diffusion of Christianity specifically in connection
with Psalms 72:11 is no coincidence.107 These examples can easily be
multiplied, and it is clear that both Christians and Jews had polemical
traditions that drew upon the past but which remained flexible enough
to accommodate, and sometimes even influence, new social, political,
religious, and philosophical realities.

105 See the notes to p. 115.

106 See the notes to p. 101. Note immediately that parallels between Mil. Mizvah and Moses
of Salerno’s Ta‘anot result from the fact that much of the nonphilosophical section of
the Ta‘anot consists of verbatim copying from Meir’s work. See page correlations in
Joel Rembaum, “The Influence of Sefer Nestor Hakomer on Medieval Jewish Polemics,”
Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 45 (1978): 167, note 54. (Those
correlations require two corrections: “41–55” should be “40–55,” and the material on
Isa. 7:14 in Mil. Mizvah, pp. 111a–112a, should be listed as appearing on pp. 33–34 of the
Posnanski ms. Although I had noted almost all the relevant parallels between these two
works, I had not realized the full extent of the copying before reading Rembaum’s article.)
Most of the remaining material in this section of the Ta‘anot is found in the Rome ms.
version of Yosef ha-Meqanne and in N.V.; see the notes to pp. 180, 192, 193 and 198.
107 See the notes to p. 159.

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 ON THE IMAGE AND DESTINY OF GENTILES
IN ASHKENAZIC POLEMICAL LITERATURE

From: Facing the Cross: The Persecutions of 1096 in History and Historiography,
ed. by Yom Tov Assis et al. (The Hebrew University Magnes Press: Jerusalem,
2000), pp. 74–91 (Hebrew). Translated by Gabriel Wasserman.

The hostile attitude toward Christian society found in medieval

Ashkenazic literature is quite well known, and hardly needs to be
demonstrated. Expressions of bitter animosity toward Christianity
and its adherents are found throughout this literature, most especially
in liturgical poetry, even before the catastrophe of the First Crusade
in 1096. Israel Yuval has recently argued that these expressions of
animosity are not merely reactions to medieval persecutions, but rather
are rooted in an ancient, more comprehensive worldview, associated
with apocalyptic ideas about the ultimate redemption.1 However, he
admits that the bloody incidents in 1096 certainly made this animosity
harsher, and strengthened the Jews’ desire for vengeance.2 The
unprecedented attacks and the martyrdom of thousands of Jews became
implanted in the collective, long term Ashkenazic consciousness, and
they reinforced the feelings of revulsion toward the murderous enemy
and his false religion.
The Hebrew chronicles that deal with these events are filled with
curses and expressions of reproach toward the Christian faith and its
founder. Such expressions are found not only during the emotionally
charged time of the catastrophe itself; in the years following 1096, too,
Ashkenazic literature contains many terms of extreme derision and

1 Y. Y. Yuval, “Ha-Naqam ve-ha-Qelalah, ha-Dam ve-ha-Alilah,” Zion 58 (1983): 37-44. See

also A. Grossman, Hakhmei Ashkenaz ha-Rishonim (Jerusalem, 1981), p. 99, n. 100.
2 Yuval, p. 41.

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 The Middle Ages

degradation for all that Christianity considers sacred. This phenomenon

is found most especially in polemical literature.3
This literature focuses primarily on the question of the true religion.
The personality, practices, and fate of the followers of false religions
occupy only a secondary place in these writings. However, from the
historian’s point of view, these topics deserve special attention, for they
shed light on a wide range of social contacts between the Jewish and
Christian communities, and sometimes even directly affect the very
heart of the polemical issue.
Our point of departure here will be Ashkenazic polemical literature,
as expressed in its three major representatives: Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne,
Sefer Nizzahon Yashan (Nizzahon Vetus), and the disputation of R. Yehiel
of Paris. However, our analysis will broaden from time to time, and we
will deal with polemical literature from other areas and later periods, and
other branches of medieval Jewish literature.

3 See D. Berger, The Jewish–Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition
of the Nizzahon Vetus with an Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Philadelphia,
1979), pp. 20–24, 302; A. Sapir Abulafia, “Invectives against Christianity in the Hebrew
Chronicles of the First Crusade,” in Crusade and Settlement, ed. by P. W. Edbury (Cardiff,
1985), pp. 66–72. A list of several of the Jewish derogatory terms for Christian concepts
can be found in an appendix to M. Breuer’s edition of Sefer Nizzahon Yashan (Ramat
Gan, 1978), p. 195. Amos Funkenstein incorrectly states that derogatory terms towards
Christianity, which must have been common in the daily spoken language, are rare in
polemical literature and are mainly attested in sources such as Tosafot. He seems to
have come to this erroneous conclusion by comparing the extremely bitter expressions
in Ashkenazic commentaries and halakhic works, on the one hand, to those found
in polemical writings from Spain and southern France, on the other. It would have
been far more fruitful for him to have compared the expressions found in Ashkenazic
commentaries and halakhic works to those found in Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne and Sefer
Nizzahon Yashan, and similar polemical works from northern Europe. See A. Funkenstein,
Perceptions of Jewish History (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford, 1993), p. 171.
The general lack of acquaintance with the standard Ashkenazic derogatory terms for
Christian concepts has led scholars to misunderstand a line in a qinah (elegy) for the
Ninth of Av about the 1096 massacres. The poet writes: nit‘orer goy az doresh shuhah—
a fierce nation arose, seeking a pit; or, according to a variant text, koreh shuhah—digging
a pit. See Seder ha-Qinot le-Tish‘ah be-Av, ed. by D. Goldschmidt (Jerusalem 1968), p. 84.
Goldschmidt and others prefer the smoother reading, “digging a pit,” an expression which
is also found in other liturgical poems. Apparently, these scholars found the reading
doresh shuhah (“seeking a pit”) so difficult that even the principle of lectio difficilior was
unable to rescue it. Nevertheless, it is clear that this is the correct reading, and in fact it
is not difficult at all. The term shuhah (pit) was the standard Ashkenazic expression for
the holy sepulcher. (See, for example, The Jewish–Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages,
Hebrew section, pp. 61 and 63: the Arabs came to Jerusalem and “defiled the shuhah.”)
The crusading armies were precisely “a fierce nation, seeking the shuhah.”

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 On the Image and Destiny of Gentiles in Ashkenazic Polemical Literature

THE IMAGE

There are many dimensions to the image of “the other,” but the first (often
neglected in scholarly literature) is the physical dimension. An oppressed
minority tends to adopt and internalize the values of the general culture
to a certain extent. The Jews of the Middle Ages attempted to resist
this tendency as far as religious and spiritual values were concerned—
but a strange, gripping passage from Yosef ha-Meqanne, which appears
in a different formulation in Sefer Nizzahon Yashan, shows that on the
aesthetic/physical plane, this process did affect the Jews:

“Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the
people” (Malachi 2:9). A certain apostate said to R. Nathan: “You Jews
are uglier than any people on the face of the earth, whereas we are very
beautiful.” He responded: “What is the color of the blossom of the shveske
which are called prunelles, which grow in the bushes?” The apostate
replied: “White.” The rabbi asked: “And what color is the blossom of the
apple tree?” The apostate replied: “Red.” The rabbi explained: “Thus, we
come from clean, white seed, so our faces are black; but you are from red
seed—from menstruants—and therefore your faces are yellow and ruddy.”
But the real reason is that we are in exile, as it says in the Song of Songs,
“Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun has gazed upon
me: my mother’s children were angry with me; they made me the keeper
of the vineyards; but my own vineyard have I not kept” (Song of Songs
1:6). However, when I used to keep my own vineyard, I was quite beautiful
indeed, as it is written, “And your renown went forth among the heathen
for your beauty” (Ezekiel 16:14).4

R. Nathan’s response is representative of the classic polemical approach

arguing that an apparent defect is actually an asset: physical inferiority
is a direct result of ethical superiority. However, the author himself
says that in fact, it is the exile that is truly responsible for the physical
unattractiveness of the Jews.5 Either way, the Jewish partner in the
debate is affirming the aesthetic judgment made by the gentiles. Since

4 Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, ed. by Y. Rosenthal (Jerusalem, 1970), p. 95.

5 This explanation appears also in a manuscript which Rosenthal quotes in his note ad
loc.: “If a gentile should say to you, “We are beautiful, and you are not,” you should reply:
“Before our Temple was destroyed, we were more beautiful; . . . and when our Temple was
destroyed, our beauty was taken away from us . . . . In the future, God is going to give it
back to us.” Cf. Mishnah Nedarim 9:10.

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 The Middle Ages

the criteria for attractiveness are largely subjective, the Jews’ agreement
with the gentile assessment has deep psychological significance.
Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson already noted this point in connection with
the parallel passage in Sefer Nizzahon Yashan.6 However, there is a major
difference in that text:

The heretics [i.e., the Christians] ask: Why are most Gentiles fair-skinned
and handsome while most Jews are dark and ugly? Answer them that this
is similar to a fruit; when it begins to grow it is white but when it ripens it
becomes black, as is the case with sloes and plums. On the other hand, any
fruit which is red at the beginning becomes lighter as it ripens, as is the
case with apples and apricots. This, then, is testimony that Jews are pure
of menstrual blood so that there is no initial redness. Gentiles, however,
are not careful about menstruant women and have sexual relations during
menstruation; thus, there is redness at the outset, and so the fruit that
comes out, i.e., the children, are light. One can respond further by noting
that Gentiles are incontinent and have sexual relations during the day, at
a time when they see the faces on attractive pictures; therefore, they give
birth to children who look like those picture, as it is written, “And the sheep
conceived when they came to drink before the rods” [Gen. 30:38–39].7

Sefer Nizzahon Yashan retains the same aesthetic judgment as Yosef ha-
Meqanne; however, unlike Yosef ha-Meqanne, this author is unwilling to
forego the consolation of reversing the gentile’s argument even in his
second explanation. Thus, the exile disappears entirely, and the second
response provides a different version of the connection between physical
ugliness and ethical beauty. Sefer Nizahon Yashan is a very aggressive
work; in other passages, it argues that Jews are superior even on the
physical level: “This is the interpretation of the statement, ‘You have
saved us from evil and faithful diseases,’ in which we thank God for
saving us from being afflicted with impure issue, leprosy and skin disease,
as they are.”8 This comment only reinforces the impact of the passage

6 H. H. Ben-Sasson, Toledot Yisrael bi-Yemei ha-Beinayim (volume II of Toledot Am Yisrael)

(Tel-Aviv, 1969), p. 168.
7 The Jewish–Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages, p. 224.
8 The Jewish–Christian Debate, p. 211. As I note there (p. 340), this passage supports
S. Baron’s claim that the relative silence about lepers in medieval Jewish sources is
evidence that the Jews suffered from this ailment to a lesser degree than their Christian
neighbors. See S. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, volume IX (New York,
London, and Philadelphia, 1965), p. 338, n. 14. See also Isaac Polgar’s explicit statement
in ‘Ezer ha-Dat: “Anyone who examines our Torah will find . . . just and pure laws, such as

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 On the Image and Destiny of Gentiles in Ashkenazic Polemical Literature

regarding beauty. The fact that this author, who is prepared to formulate
surprisingly vigorous and aggressive arguments, sees Christian aesthetic
superiority as a self-evident truth lends all the more significance to this
phenomenon.
The same effort to turn a physical defect into a spiritual asset can
be seen clearly in a unique passage which Marc Saperstein published
from Isaac ben Yeda‘ya’s commentary to Midrash Rabbah. The author of
this passage, who clearly suffered from a sexual problem, attributed this
problem to all circumcised men. He writes as a general rule that circumcised
men are unable to satisfy their wives’ sexual needs; consequently, Jewish
women do not receive much benefit from their husbands’ presence and
are willing to let them go study Torah and wisdom. This is not the case,
however, with respect to the wives of the uncircumcised, whose husbands
possess highly impressive sexually potency. Consequently, these men
expend their time and energy in such activity and remain immersed in
the vanity of the physical world.9
These attempts to make the bitter sweet sound pathetic to the
modern reader, and they were probably not particularly convincing in the
Middle Ages either. Now, from the isolated example of Isaac ben Yeda‘ya,
which deals with very private matters, it is hard to argue that many
Jews considered themselves inferior to gentiles in their sexual ability.
However, the sources about physical beauty appear quite convincing. In
the consciousness of many Jews, ethical and spiritual superiority came
at a very high physical and psychological price.

the prohibition of sleeping with a woman during her menstrual period, which . . . is the
reason that we have been saved from the horrible ailment of leprosy, which is so common
in individuals of the nations surrounding us” (‘Ezer ha-Dat, ed. by J. Levinger [Tel-Aviv,
1984], Part 1, Section 2, p. 36.) These two pieces of evidence—the Nizzahon Yashan from
Ashkenaz, and Isaac Polgar from Spain—deserve our serious attention.
9 M. Saperstein, “The Earliest Commentary on the Midrash Rabbah,” in Studies in Medieval
Jewish History and Literature I, ed. by I. Twersky (Cambridge, Mass. and London 1979),
pp. 294–297; idem, Decoding the Rabbis: A Thirteenth-Century Commentary on the Aggadah
(Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1980), pp. 97–102. Saperstein (p. 100) tentatively
suggested that these words might be due to a personal problem of Isaac ben Yeda‘ya: “To
what extent do passages such as this reflect the personal experience of the author . . . ?
To what extent do they seem to be an elaborate rationalization meant to solve personal
problems which bothered him greatly?” I have no hesitation in changing Saperstein’s
tentative suggestion to a definite assertion. Any Jewish man who did not personally
suffer from this problem would never have been able to create or affirm the delusional
idea that every circumcised male suffers from it.

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 The Middle Ages

A famous passage in Isaac Polgar’s ‘Ezer ha-Dat reflects the same

problem and the same tendency. The topic of this passage is the cause
of the suffering of exile—a major, central issue that I shall not address
here. However, when Polgar writes that Jews suffer under the yoke of the
gentiles because they have forgotten the art of war due to their dedication
to the study of Torah and wisdom, the Temple service, and the cultiva-
tion of the quality of compassion, he is attempting to transform physical
weakness into an ethical-spiritual asset. He does this through a naturalistic
analysis whose method is essentially similar to the one which we find in
Yosef ha-Meqanne, in Nizzahon Yashan, and in Isaac ben Yeda‘ya’s writing,
with all the tortuous psychological complexity that this entails.10

10 “Because our perfect Torah has forbidden us from going in vain directions, and has
prevented us from succumbing to the evil tendency alluded to in general terms by the
commandment ‘You shall not covet,’ and more specifically by our other commandments,
this means that we will necessarily be those who are oppressed, and not those who
oppress, those who are humiliated and not those who humiliate others. But because
physical desires, including this tendency, are not forbidden to the other nations, they
are necessarily the oppressors and humiliators . . . When we were on our own land, we
were elevated and sanctified above all the other nations that surrounded us. We kept the
commandments of our glorious Torah, which forbids and prevents us from indulging
all sorts of physical desires, and we broke the yoke of the evil inclination from upon
our necks; thus, we refrained from acts of oppression. Moreover, we were commanded
to spend our time delving into the Torah and studying other forms of wisdom, all day
and all night, and this weakened us physically. Moreover, we had compassion and soft-
heartedness impressed upon us at all times. We occupied ourselves with offering sacrifices
in the Temple, and forgot how to engage in war . . . But the nations that surrounded us
had exactly the opposite attributes from us; their heart was tough and cruel . . . Their
way was to tear like wild beasts, bears or lions. They did not speak kindly to us, but
gnashed their teeth at us, and gathered together and destroyed our city and our Temple,
and took us captive, such that we were spread out all over the earth, with only a few of
us surviving in each place. However, because we are certain that we have the truth, and
that all physical desire for this world and its delights is vain, we are willing to bear this
difficulty on our shoulders, and we trust our God, our rescuer, and he looks down and
rescues us, so that we are able to live among our enemies and reside in the tents of those
who seek our harm” (‘Ezer ha-Dat [see above, n. 8], Part 1, Section 5, pp. 55–56.) Needless
to say, Polgar’s words raise a theological challenge that is not present in the words of
Yosef ha-Meqanne, Sefer Nizzahon Yashan, or Isaac ben Yeda‘ya. A naturalistic explanation
for the exile of the Jewish people is considerably more problematic than a naturalistic
explanation for unattractiveness or sexual dysfunction, and Polgar himself attempts to
blunt the radical sting of his words in the subsequent paragraph in ‘Ezer ha-Dat.
On Spinoza’s claim that Judaism has led to a “softening” of the Jews’ nature, see
S. Pines, “Histabberut ha-Tequmah me-Hadash shel Medinah Yehudit le-fi Yosef ibn
Kaspi u-le-fi Spinoza,” ‘Iyyun 14–15 (1963–4): 314–315; in the same article (p. 305),
Pines provides a citation to a somewhat similar argument in a letter from Maimonides

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 On the Image and Destiny of Gentiles in Ashkenazic Polemical Literature

Our examination of the physical depiction of the gentiles leads us

to an investigation of their ethical depiction. The authors of polemical
literature were primarily interested in identifying the true religion,
and such identification is not necessarily dependent on the ethical
behavior of the community that believes in that religion. Nevertheless,
polemicists in various regions and eras felt that there was a connection
between a religion of truth and people of truth, between ethical doctrine
and ethical praxis. R. Joseph Kimhi pointed to the ethical superiority
of the Jews, and his Christian opponent (according to the Jewish
record of the debate) was forced to admit that this was correct, but
he countered with the response that even such ethical behavior was
useless without the proper faith.11 A re-working of this passage appears
in an Ashkenazic manuscript from the fourteenth century, which also
includes considerable material from the school of Yosef ha-Meqanne
and from the traditions that were incorporated into Sefer Nizzahon
Yashan.12 These two polemical works, as well as Milhemet Mizvah by

to the rabbis of Marseilles; the difference is that Maimonides says that the Jews stopped
studying the art of war because they trusted in astrologically based fantasies. Pines
attempts to draw connections between the arguments of Maimonides, Polgar, and
Spinoza in another article: “Al Sugyot Ahadot ha-Kelulot be-Sefer Ezer ha-Dat le-Yitzhak
Polgar ve-Tiqbolot la-hen etzel Spinoza,” in J. Dan and J. Hacker (eds.), Studies in Jewish
Mysticism, Philosophy, and Ethical Literature (Jubilee Volume for Isaiah Tishby) (Jerusalem,
1986), pp. 423–443. The argument that the loss of the art of war among the Jews was
due to an entirely positive phenomenon is found only in Polgar. I believe that there
is a strong connection between Polgar’s argument and one of the theses that appears
repeatedly in Solomon ibn Verga’s Shevet Yehudah. Ibn Verga too is inclined to naturalistic
explanations of the suffering of the exile, and he too presents a description of Jews who
are unprepared to defend themselves from their enemies. For naturalistic explanations
of the suffering of the Jews, see Sefer Shevet Yehudah, ed. by A. Shochet and Y. Baer
(Jerusalem, 1947), pp. 40–44, 127–128; Ibn Verga discusses the Jews’ ignorance of
military affairs on p. 44, and their cowardice on p. 28. On the motif of Jewish cowardice,
see E. Gutwirth, “Gender, History and the Jewish–Christian Polemic,” ed. by O. Limor
and G. G. Stroumsa, Contra Judaeos (Tübingen, 1996), p. 265.
11 Sefer ha-Berit u-Vikkuhei Radaq im ha-Nazrut, ed. by A. Talmage, Jerusalem 1974, pp. 25–
28. On this passage, see B. Sh. Albert, “L’image du chrétien dans les sources juives du
Languedoc (XIIe–XIVe Siècle),” in Les Juifs à Montpellier et dans le Languedoc du Moyen Age
à nos jours, ed. by C. Iancu (Montpellier, 1988), pp. 118–119.
12 Y. Rosenthal, “Vikkuah Dati bein Hakham be-Shem Menahem u-bein ha-Mumar ve-
ha-Nazir ha-Dominiqani Pablo Christiani,” in Hagut Ivrit ba-America, ed. by M. Zohori,
A. Tartakower, and H. Ormian (Tel-Aviv, 1974), p. 67. Despite the title, the text
is not actually a debate between Pablo Christiani and a Jew named Menahem. See
the introduction to my book (above, note 3), p. 36, n. 104; and also J. E. Rembaum,
“A Reevaluation of a Medieval Polemical Manuscript,” AJS Review 5 (1980): 81–99.

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R. Meir of Narbonne, an Ashkenazic compilation attributed to R. Moses

of Salerno, the Tosafistic commentary Da‘at Zeqenim on the Pentateuch,
and Nahmanides’ Sefer ha-Ge’ullah all view the expression “a degenerate
nation” in Deuteronomy 32:21 as referring to the Christians. In the
words of Yosef ha-Meqanne: “If there were any nation more degenerate
than you, it would be the one to subjugate us.”13
It is specifically in Ashkenazic polemics that special emphasis is
placed on the sins of priests, monks, and nuns. As I have noted with great
brevity in my introduction to the Nizzazon Yashan, it seems to me that
this fierce attack flows from a feeling of Jewish discomfort in the face of
religious self-sacrifice by gentiles.14 Of course, abstention from sexual
life is problematic from the perspective of Jewish law and the Jewish
worldview, but the impressive phenomenon of the ability of Christians
to conquer their own natural drives in order to fulfill the will of their
creator must have weakened, if only slightly, the Jewish self-image of
absolute moral superiority to the degenerate gentile.
This understanding of the polemical sources cannot be proven
conclusively from the texts, for one could hardly expect medieval Jews
to express such a feeling explicitly and openly. Nevertheless, we find such
a psychological reaction expressly attested in other genres of literature,
or in later eras. A substantial exegetical tradition regarding the Book of
Jonah explained the prophet’s flight from God as being due to a concern
that the residents of Nineveh might repent, and thus cause disaster to
befall the Jews, who stubbornly refused to repent of their evil ways.15
In the book Shivhei ha-Besht (The Praises of the Baal Shem Tov), we find
a story in which the founder of Hasidism succeeds in implanting sinful
thoughts into the mind of an old Catholic priest, such that the priest,
who has never had such an experience before, has a seminal emission.
The Ba’al Shem Tov does this because he has been informed by heaven
that the prayers of the Jewish people on Yom Kippur would not be
accepted as long as there was still a priest in that area who remained
pure.16 Although no such passage is found in the polemical literature of

13 Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, p. 62; The Jewish-Christian Debate, English section, p. 75.
References to the other relevant sources can be found in my notes there, English section,
pp. 257, 262–263.
14 The Jewish-Christian Debate, Introduction, p. 27.
15 See, for example, Rashi’s commentary on Jonah 1:3.
16 Sefer Shivhei ha-Besht, ed. Sh. A. Horodezky (Tel-Aviv 1947), pp. 163–164.

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medieval Ashkenaz, the emphasis on the chasm between the disgusting

gentiles and the moral Jews appears quite often in this literature, and
leaves little room for doubt that it had great psychological significance
for the authors of these texts.17
The Jewish argument that the Christian world was engaged in immoral
behavior focused mainly on behavior that both Jews and Christians
viewed as improper; this is typical polemical method. However, it is
evident that Jewish condemnation of Christian immorality also rested
on an additional consideration, to wit, the persecution of the Jewish
people. And so—Christians believe in a false religion, defile themselves
through abominable sins, and persecute the chosen people. What then
will be their ultimate destiny?

THE DESTINY
Personal destiny
The question of destiny has two dimensions. On the one hand, there
is the personal destiny of each individual Christian after death; on the
other, there is the collective destiny of “the Kingdom of Edom” and its
inhabitants at the End of Days. In general, the Ashkenazic polemical
writers answered the question of the Christian’s personal destiny
very sharply indeed: a Christian is destined to hell. There is nothing
innovative or surprising about this, but we should note the reasoning
that is given for it: the Christian deserves this punishment not because
he hates the Jews, but because he believes in the Christian faith. In
certain periods, when the ideal of tolerance began to develop, some Jews
began to consider Christians to be “righteous gentiles,” who fulfill the
seven Noahide commandments; however, Talmudic tradition includes
the prohibition of idolatry among these seven, and in accordance with
a straightforward understanding of this prohibition, it is hard to escape
the conclusion that one who worships Jesus as a god commits idolatry.

17 See my observations in The Jewish-Christian Debate, English section, pp. 257–258. In

a Sephardic polemical work from the fifteenth century, we find a horrifying depiction of
Christian immoral behavior; see Hayyim ibn Musa, Magen va-Romah (Jerusalem, 1970),
pp. 82–83. This passage has recently been noted by Gutwirth (above, n. 10), p. 267.
See H. Graetz’s History in Sh. P. Rabbinowitz’s Hebrew translation, Divrei Yemei Yisrael
(Warsaw, 1906), p. 419.

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Sefer Nizzahon Yashan reports a conversation between R. Nathan

Official and a group of priests on the topic of the sin of the golden calf.
According to the sharp formulation in this report—the version in Yosef
ha-Meqanne is more moderate—R. Nathan emphasized that the generation
of Moses received a harsh punishment because they made the error of
believing that “the spirit of God” could enter as pure and clean a substance
as gold. Yet the Christians do not understand to what degree

they will be judged and entrapped in hell. Why, an a fortiori argument

applies here: They [the generation of Moses] erred in worshiping a clean
thing like gold, and yet their iniquity was marked before God, who said,
“When I make an accounting, I will bring them to account for their sins”
[Exod. 32:34] and refused to grant them complete forgiveness. Certainly,
then, you who err in saying that something holy entered into a woman
in that stinking place, . . . will certainly be consumed by “a fire not blown”
[Job 20:26] and descend to deepest hell.18

It is quite interesting that R. Nathan is not faithful to the Talmudic

principle of dayyo la-ba min ha-din lihyot ka-nidon (when making
an a fortiori argument, one can only argue that the consequences of the
severe case are as severe as those of the light case, not more severe); rather,
he jumps straight from the fact that God “refused complete forgiveness”
to the worshippers of the calf to the statement that the Christians will
“descend to deepest hell.” In any event, it is their theological error, or,
in other words, their violation of the prohibition of idolatry, that leads
the Christians to perdition.
In the Disputation of Paris, there is a discussion of this question that
constitutes an exception that proves the rule. Nicholas Donin quoted

18 The Jewish-Christian Debate, English section, p. 68. It must be emphasized that when
R. Nathan says that the worshippers of the calf believed that “the spirit of God”
entered it, he is not saying that they believed that the calf was a god. This distinction
is explicitly made in Yosef ha-Meqanne: “No one ever believed such a thing; they did not
err by saying that the calf was a god.” Nevertheless, he goes on, “See what happened to
them: ‘There fell of the people that day about three thousand men’ (Exod. 32:28), and it
is written, ‘In the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them’ ” (ibid., verse 34). And
it is written, ‘Therefore he said that he would destroy them, had not Moses his chosen
stood before him in the breach’ (Psalms 106:23) (Yosef ha-Meqanne, p. 50). This passage
in Yosef ha-Meqanne does not speak of hell, but the work does speak of hell elsewhere:
“What is your fate? [The answer is,] You shall ‘be for burning, for fuel of fire’ [Isaiah 9:4].
You shall all descend to hell” ( p. 76).

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a Talmudic statement condemning heretics (minim) to eternal hellfire.

When R. Yehiel responded that the passage in question refers not to
Christians but to people who deny the validity of the oral Torah, Donin
pointed to Rashi’s comment on the passage, which considers the disciples
of Jesus to be a classic example of “heretics.”19 R. Yehiel replied that there
is no need to accept Rashi’s comment as determinative, but even if we
do accept it, it is speaking of Jesus’ original disciples, who were Jewish,
and therefore obligated to observe the Torah’s commandments. Gentile
Christians, on the other hand, “will not suffer such a severe hell.”
The bishops went on to ask if Judaism believes that Christians could
be saved through their religion. “The rabbi responded: ‘Let me tell you
a way that you can be saved even through your faith. If you observe the
seven commandments that you have been commanded, you will be saved
through them.’ The bishops rejoiced, and responded: ‘Indeed, we have
ten!’20 The rabbi replied: ‘That is fine with me.’ ”21
We see that even when R. Yehiel was under severe pressure, he refused
to say explicitly that Christians have a share in the world to come. He
began by saying that the Christians may have a slightly cooler hell than
the actual followers of Jesus (who were apostate Jews), and then went
on to point out that observance of the seven Noahide commandments
are a medium through which gentiles can save their souls, but he avoided
an explicit statement as to whether or not a Christian violates one of
those commandments, to wit, the prohibition of idolatry, by virtue of his
Christianity; he leaves it to the bishops themselves to issue a ruling in
their favor. It is true that the expression “you can be saved even through
your faith,” which R. Yehiel pronounced as if the proverbial demon was
compelling him, does indicate that one can believe in Christianity while
still observing the seven Noahide commandments, but a careful reading
of the passage as a whole nonetheless reveals the deeply entrenched
belief of Ashkenazic Jewry that the Christian is condemned to hell.
R. Yehiel, then, avoids a direct engagement with the question of the
status of a gentile who believes in Jesus’ divinity yet still wants to be
counted among those who observe the seven Noahide Commandments.

19 B. Rosh Ha-shanah 17a, and Rashi ad loc. (See the variants in Diqduqei Soferim.)
20 MS Moscow (folio 96b) and MS Oxford (folio 10a) read: “Indeed, they have definitely been
commanded to us, and we observe (or will observe) them,” though each of these texts has
its own scribal error in its presentation of this variant.
21 Vikkuah Rabbenu Yehiel mi-Paris, ed. by R. Margoliyot (Lvov [1868]), pp. 22–23.

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However, Meir ben Simon of Narbonne was not deterred from

confronting the question directly and explicitly. In his book Milhemet
Mizvah, he reports that a Christian asked precisely the same question
that the bishops asked R. Yehiel. In this debate, the Jew responds to the
Christian that the gentiles are obligated to observe the seven Noahide
commandments, one of which is to believe

“that the universe has a creator, who is one, true, primeval, and without
beginning or end, and that he watches over all his creations, to repay the
actions of each one.” The Christian responded: “Yes—we, too, believe that.”
The Jew said: “And yet, if you were to ask one who believes this who this
creator is and he would say that he is a certain man, born of a woman, who
has undergone all bodily vicissitudes including death, such a believer would
be one who denies the creator of the universe if his assertion is untrue, and
he would be condemned to hell.”22

Collective destiny
The picture is much more complicated when we look at the question of
the collective destiny of the gentiles at the end of days. Yuval’s article
paints a sharp, almost polar contrast between the “avenging redemption”
in Ashkenazic eschatology versus the “conversionary redemption”
in Sephardic eschatology.23 The Jews of Ashkenaz looked forward to
a divine campaign by the Master of the Universe wrapped in his royal
robe drenched in the blood of generations of martyrs, a campaign that
would visit utter destruction upon all the nations. By contrast, Jews of

22 W. Herskowitz (ed.), Judeo-Christian Dialogue in Provence as Reflected in Milhemet Mizvah

of R. Meir ha-Meili, D.H.L. dissertation, Yeshiva University, 1974, p. 111. Herskowitz’s
text is based on MS Parma, 43b. The question of Christianity’s status as idolatry comes
up in a number of places in Jacob Katz’s book Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Studies in
Jewish-Gentile Relations in Medieval and Modern Times (New York, 1961). See also what
I have written in my articles, “Religion, Nationalism, and Historiography: Yehzkel
Kaufmann’s Account of Jesus and Early Christianity,” in Scholars and Scholarship: The
Interaction between Judaism and Other Cultures, ed. by L. Landman (New York, 1990),
pp. 150–153; and “Christians, Gentiles, and the Talmud: A Fourteenth-Century Jewish
Response to the Attack on Rabbinic Judaism,” in Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter, ed. by
B. Lewis and F. Niewöhner (Wiesbaden, 1992), pp. 124–127.
23 Yuval, pp. 34–50. For example, he regards as exceptional the assertion in an Askenazic
liturgical poem (by Rabbenu Gershom of Mainz) that “all inhabitants of the universe /
will say out loud together: Behold, there is no god in the world / other than that of Israel,
whose redeemer is strong” (p. 34).

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 On the Image and Destiny of Gentiles in Ashkenazic Polemical Literature

other regions looked forward to a mass conversion of all residents of

the world. In a critical response to Yuval’s position, Avraham Grossman
pointed to Ashkenazic sources that describe conversion at the end of
days; he concluded that Yuval’s article does identify a genuine, significant
contrast but characterizes it too sharply.24 In a response to Grossman’s
review, Yuval clarified his position. When all the dust settled—after the
initial article, the critique, and the rejoinder—there emerged a conclusion
apparently acceptable to both scholars: although the emphasis on
vengeance was much stronger in Ashkenaz, even there the avenging
redemption was considered only the first stage of the eschatological
process; the second stage is that of the conversionary redemption.
There is certainly a large degree of truth in this conception.
Nevertheless, I believe that with respect to a number of fundamental
points, it requires clarification, expansion, and qualification. If the
impression created by Yuval’s initial article was too strong, I think
that the position emerging from the subsequent exchange is too mild.
In the overwhelming majority of sources, there is no true universal
conversion that turns the gentiles at the end of days into “an inseparable
part of the Jewish people.”25 The remaining gentiles do adopt a belief
in one God, but they remain separate from and inferior to the Chosen
People, accept its authority, and serve it. Some sources even speak of the
total destruction of an entire sector of the human race, rather than just
the death of many gentiles.

C o n v e r s i o n:
We read in tractate Avodah Zarah:
It has been taught: R. Yosi says, “In the time to come, the nations of the
world will come and convert.” (But will we accept them?) Has it not been
taught: In the days of the Messiah proselytes will not be accepted, just as
they were not accepted in the days of David or Solomon?—Rather, they
will be self-made proselytes. [Rashi comments: they will convert of their
own volition, but we will not accept them, because they are converting only

24 A. Grossman, “‘Ha-Ge’ullah ha-Megayyeret’ be-Mishnatam shel Hakhmei Ashkenaz ha-

Rishonim,” Zion 59 (1994): 325–342. Two of Grossman’s proof-texts (the Aleinu prayer
and the liturgical poem Ve-Ye’etayu kol le-Avdekha) are cited also in Ezra Fleischer’s critical
review, “Yahasei Yehudim-Nozerim bi-Re’i Aqum” in the same volume of Zion, p. 291.
25 Grossman, p. 340.

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because they see the exalted position of the Jewish people]. They will place
tefillin on their foreheads, tefillin on their arms, zizit on their garments, and
a mezuzah on their doorways. When they see the battle of Gog and Magog,
they will be asked: “For what purpose have you come?” They will respond:
“Against the Lord, and against His anointed one.” As it is said: “Why do the
heathen rage, and the nations speak vainly?” (Psalms 2:1) At that moment,
each one of them will remove his religious object and leave, as it is said:
“Let us remove their chains” (Psalms 2:3). 26

It is true that not every messianic vision must be bound by this

Talmudic passage. Maimonides explicitly says: “The Sages did not have
an authoritative tradition regarding these matters; rather, they [tried to
determine the events of the end of days] from their own understanding of
scriptural verses, and they therefore disagreed with each other about these
matters.”27 Medieval Jews who envisioned the events of the end of days
generally conducted themselves in accordance with this approach, even if
they did not consciously embrace it. Nevertheless, the text affirming that
proselytes will not be accepted in the time of the Messiah is a halakhic
statement, which therefore had a normative status even among the
followers of Maimonides’ approach. There is one late medieval polemic
in which the question comes up explicitly. R. Solomon ben Simon Duran
reads certain scriptural verses as indicating that gentiles will convert in
the future, and he notices the contradiction between these verses and
the rabbinic ruling. He resolves the apparent contradiction by concluding
that the verses are speaking not of conversion to the status of ger zedeq
(one who becomes a full member of the Jewish people), but merely that
of ger toshav (one who accepts the seven Noahide commandments).28
It goes without saying that the halakhic lens is not sufficient to
provide a full understanding of the various perspectives on the process
of redemption. The citation of the rabbinic ruling in Solomon ben Simon
Duran’s polemic is exceptional; as we have noted, writers on eschatology
did not feel bound by the Talmudic tradition in all its details. Nevertheless,
we see from here that the word “proselyte” (ger) covers three different
categories (true proselyte, ger toshav, and “self-made proselyte”), and
the verb “to convert” (lehitgayyer) does not necessarily mean becoming
26 B. Avodah Zarah 3b; cf. also B. Yevamot 24b.
27 Hilkhot Melakhim 12:2.
28 Milhemet Mizvah, published with Keshet u-Magen le-R. Shim’on ben Zemah Duran
(Jerusalem, 1970), p. 37b.

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an integral part of the Jewish people. Moreover, the rabbinic ruling in

question does not play a significant role in messianic texts not only
because of the ideational flexibility that excused messianic visionaries
from confronting problems emerging from the Talmud; the majority of
these texts did not need to deal with the halakhic problem because it
never occurred to their authors that in the final stage of the redemption
all gentiles would become Jews in the full sense of the term.
In another Talmudic passage, we find the position that became the
predominant one among medieval Jews:

Ulla contrasted two scriptural verses: It is written, “He will swallow up

death forever; and the Lord will wipe away tears from off all faces” (Isaiah
25:8); yet it is also written: “For the child shall die a hundred years old”
(ibid. 65:20). . . . There is no contradiction—this verse [stating that people
will be immortal] refers to the Jewish people, and the other verse [stating
that people will die only at a ripe old age] refers to the nations of the world.
But why will the nations of the world be there? As it is written [or “This
refers to those of whom it is written”]: “And foreigners shall stand and
feed your flocks, and the sons of the alien shall be your plowmen and your
vinedressers” (ibid. 61:5).29

The first half of this passage is cited in the Disputation of Paris as

an example of contradictory verses in Scripture that force us to turn to
the Talmud for a resolution. The second half appears at that point in the
margin of the Hamburg manuscript, though with no explicit reference
to our question.30 In any event, this is a Talmudic passage that explicitly
poses the question of whether the gentiles will survive at the end of days,
and it answers that they—or some of them—will remain alive in order
to serve the Jewish people.
In Sefer Nizzahon Yashan, which serves, as we shall see, as a source
of the most extreme form of the idea of apocalyptic vengeance against
the gentiles, we find a sharp passage about the servitude of the gentiles.

29 B. Sanhedrin 61b. Cf. also B. Pesahim 68a, as well as the following passage: “All the gentiles
who are still on the earth at the time of the Messiah will go to the Land of Israel, and
bring grain and bread and sustenance into the houses of the Jewish people, and make
the Jews very wealthy” (Seder Eliyyahu Rabbah 20 [Ish-Shalom‘s edition, p. 113]).
30 Vikkuah Rabbenu Yehiel mi-Paris, p. 13; Hamburg ms., p. 73a. (In the manuscript, the
Talmudic passage is cited according to the variant, “This refers to those of whom it is
written,” rather than merely “It is written.” This may indicate that only a few gentiles are
expected to survive.)

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As a reflection of the self-image of Ashkenazic Jewry, this passage is

remarkable, for it describes a situation of Jewish social and economic
superiority at the present time, i.e., in thirteenth-century Ashkenaz, and
presents this “fact” as self evident. However, the passage does not limit
its discussion to the present; it clearly refers also to the future, when the
gentiles will continue (!) to serve the Jewish people. In the merit of their
servitude—and in this merit alone—they will have some “slight hope”:

They bark their assertion that it is improper for the uncircumcised and
impure to serve Jews. Tell them: On the contrary, if not for the fact that
they serve Jews they would have been condemned to destruction, for it
is written in Isaiah, “Arise, shine, for your light has come . . . . For the
nation and kingdom that will not serve you shall perish; yea, those nations
shall be utterly wasted” (Isa. 60:1, 12). On the other hand, as long as they
serve Israel they have some hope, as it is written, “And strangers shall
stand and tend your flock, and the sons of foreigners shall be your farmers
and vintners” (Isa. 61:5); consequently, they should serve us all the time,
so that they may fulfill the prophecy, “The elder shall serve the younger”
(Gen. 25:23). It was for this reason that the Torah said, “You shall not eat
anything that dies of itself; you shall give it to the stranger that is in your
gates, that he may eat it, or you may sell it to a gentile” (Deut. 14:21). The
Torah told us to sell such meat to gentiles because they will serve us, and
God does not withhold the reward of any creature. This, in fact, is what we
do; we give over to them the animals which are ritually unfit for our use,
and we sell them the hind portions of animals for this same reason.31

The hope that the gentiles would serve the Jews can be found outside
Ashkenaz as well. In Grossman’s above-mentioned article, he cites
a salient example from R. Saadya Gaon’s philosophical work, which
asserts explicitly that “those who correct their behavior by entering
into the Torah of Israel” will serve the Jews at the end of days “in their
homes . . . in city and village work, . . . in the fields and in the wilderness . . .
The rest will return to their own land, but under the dominion of the
Jewish people.”32
There are, it is true, a number of sources, mainly from outside of
Ashkenaz, that speak according to their straightforward meaning of
a massive conversion to Judaism at the end of days. It is not my wish

31 The Jewish-Christian Debate, p. 207.

32 Sefer ha-Emunot ve-he-De‘ot (Constantinople [1562]), folio 68b, cited in Grossman,
p. 339.

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to force all the numerous, varied texts that address the destiny of the
gentiles into a procrustean bed and to artificially impose ideological
agreement between them, but it is possible that even these sources are
not speaking of complete integration of the gentiles into the Jewish
people. Rav Hai Gaon, for example, writes, “The remaining nations will
convert, as it is said: ‘For then will I turn to the people a pure language,
that they may all call upon the name of the Lord’ (Zephaniah 3:9), and
it is said: ‘They will say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of
the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his
ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the
law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem’ (Isaiah 2:3). When they
come before the Messiah, he will order them to end all fighting and
wars.”33 However, Rav Hai was well aware of the Talmudic passage from
tractate Avodah Zarah (“In the time to come, the nations of the world
will come and convert . . . ; they will be self-made proselytes”), and it is
quite possible that the gentiles described here are expected to retain their
separate national identity.34
Even the interesting Ashkenazic sources presented by Grossman do
not seem to be examples of texts predicting a conversion so complete
that the gentiles become “an inseparable part of the Jewish people.”
In three places, Grossman himself points out formulations indicating
that the gentiles “will not reach the high level of the Jewish people”.35
If we briefly survey the other sources, we will see that the conclusions
emerging from them do not contradict this affirmation.

33 Yehuda ibn Shmuel, Midreshei Ge’ullah (Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv, 1954), pp. 139–140.
Part of this passage is quoted by Yuval, p. 45.
34 The first source that Yuval cites as an example of “conversionary redemption” is one
in which the gentiles accept the beliefs of the Jews, but it does not necessarily refer to
“conversion” in the full sense of the word. (“All the nations will accept our faith, and say
that they have inherited falsehood from their ancestors . . . for all the nations will turn
to belief in the glorious God, after having seen all the wonders that he performs when
he rescues us from this exile”—R. Simon of Narbonne, Milhemet Mizvah, Parma ms.,
pp.19b–20a; cited in Yuval, p. 34.) There is one passage in Derashot ha-Ran that seems
to say that the gentiles will become completely integrated into the Jewish people at the
end of days. Even here, I do not think that this understanding of the text is absolutely
unavoidable, but the truth is that anyone who wishes to escape this conclusion must
provide a forced interpretation. See Derashot ha-Ran, ed. by A. L. Feldman (Jerusalem,
1977), p. 121, and D. Schwartz, Ha-Ra‘ayon ha-Meshihi be-Hagut ha-Yehudit bi-Yemei ha-
Beinayim (Ramat-Gan, 1997), p. 182.
35 Grossman, p. 334 (regarding Rashi on Isaiah 42), and cf. p. 330 (regarding the liturgical
poem Eimat Nore’otekha) and p. 337 (regarding Rashi on Zechariah 9:1).

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Rashi’s commentary on Isaiah 14:1 does speak of true proselytes, but

it is clear that these individuals are not to be identified with the totality
of the gentiles who remain during the final phase of the redemption.
On the contrary, the following verse informs us that after the conversion
of these gentiles, the remaining nations will take the Jewish people
“to [the Jews’] own territory, and the Jewish people will take them as
an inheritance upon God’s land, as male and female slaves, and they will
plunder those who had plundered them, and dominate those who had
oppressed them.”
Rashi’s commentary on Isaiah 56, too, speaks of true proselytes,
but it refers to the individuals who convert before the final stage of the
redemption, and perhaps even over the course of the years of the exile.
This is clear from Rashi’s words in his commentary on verse 3: “Let not
the foreigner say: ‘Why should I convert? Will not God remove me from
his people when he pays them their reward?’” I believe that R. Joseph Qara’s
commentary on the chapter should be understood the same way.
Rashi’s commentary on Zechariah 13:8–9 does speak of true
proselytes, or rather of a group of Judaizing gentiles, a subset of which will
ultimately be accepted as true proselytes. However, the initial conversion
of these individuals is to take place before “the suffering associated with
the birth-pangs of the Messiah and the wars of Gog and Magog.” It is
precisely through these many tribulations that these converts will be
tested. The majority of them “will return to their straying ways, and join
with the forces of Gog, as we find in an aggadah,”36 but a minority will
survive the test, and become part of the Jewish people. This is hardly
a description of a massive conversion of the gentiles after the stage of
the avenging redemption.

I must emphasize that the question that I am raising is not the

central point in the articles by Yuval or Grossman. Yuval is interested
in the contrast between the sources that foresee the destruction of the
gentiles and those that foresee their acceptance of the faith of the Jews,
and Grossman is interested in proving that even the Ashkenazic vision of
the redemption does not affirm that the gentiles will be totally destroyed.
In neither case is the nature of the “conversion” the central point; indeed,

36 Rashi appears to be referring to the passage in B. Avodah Zarah 3b, which I have already
quoted above.

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 On the Image and Destiny of Gentiles in Ashkenazic Polemical Literature

from a narrow vantage point, it is not relevant at all to their concerns.

However, there is no doubt that this question is of great importance for
a deep understanding of the relationship between the Jews and their
neighbors, and a reader who has been following the scholarly exchange
sparked by Yuval’s initial article will be exposed to an inaccurate
impression that envisions the utter erasure of the boundaries between
Israel and the nations at the end of days. In fact, the Jews of the Middle
Ages felt at the deepest level of their consciousness that the uniqueness
of the Jewish people would remain even at the end of days.

P u n i s h m e n t:
According to the common conclusion that Yuval and Grossman have
reached at the current state of their exchange, even the Ashkenazim
did not hope for the total destruction of all gentiles. In Grossman’s
words: “The Jews did not believe that all of their gentile neighbors were
destined to be wiped out. There was a core of good people ensconced
among them, who would ultimately convert to Judaism, either personally
or through their descendants.”37
Here, too, I think that there are sources meriting renewed attention
that will not undermine this assertion entirely but will add a sharper and
more hostile perspective. Let us begin with a passage from the Tanna
de-Bei Eliyyahu:

I was once travelling from one town to another, and I found a certain
old man. He asked me: “Master, will there be gentiles at the time of the
Messiah?” I told him: “My son, all the nations and kingdoms that tormented
and oppressed the Jewish people will come and see the happiness of the
Jews, and turn to dust, and never return, as it is said: ‘The wicked shall see
it, and be grieved’ (Psalms 112:10); and it is said: ‘And you shall leave your
name for a curse unto my chosen’ (Isaiah 65:15). And all the kingdoms and
nations that have not tormented or oppressed the Jews will come and serve
as farmers and vineyard-keepers for the Jews, as it is said: ‘And strangers
shall stand and tend your flock, and the sons of foreigners shall be your
farmers and vintners . . . and you shall be called the Lord’s priests’ (Isaiah
61:5–6); and it is said: ‘For then will I turn to the people a pure language’
(Zephaniah 3:9); and it is said: ‘And he will call his servants by a different
name’ (Isaiah 65:15)—these verses refer to those gentiles worthy of living

37 Grossman, p. 340.

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in the time of the Messiah. You might think that because they are going to
remain alive in the time of the Messiah, they will also merit the World to
Come. You must, therefore, set aside the words I have just spoken and give
heed to the words of the Torah, which are more severe than the words that
I have just said. The Torah says: ‘No uncircumcised individual shall eat of
[the paschal sacrifice]’ (Exodus 12:48). If this is so of such a minor matter
as the paschal sacrifice, surely it should be so of the World to Come, which
is the holiest matter of all. No uncircumcised individual shall ever, ever
eat in it, nor ever, ever, dwell in it.”38

We see then that according to the first approach cited here, the more
“liberal” one, the nations that have oppressed the Jews will completely
perish; and according to the second, more severe approach, all of the
gentiles—or perhaps only all of the uncircumcised gentiles—will
disappear from the world.39
As an example of the avenging redemption, Yuval cites an abbreviated
version of a passage from Sefer Nizzahon Yashan that according to its
straightforward meaning describes the total destruction of all the
gentiles. Here is the full passage:

The heretics harass us by noting that God has delayed the end of this exile
longer than those of the others. But this is not surprising, for God does not
punish a nation until the measure of its sins has been filled, as it is written,
“In a measure, when it is sent forth you will contend with it” (Isa. 27:8).
Similarly, he told Abraham, “And the fourth generation shall return here,
for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete (Gen. 15:16), and I do
not wish to destroy the Amorites until their measure has been filled.”
That is why that exile lasted only four hundred years, for in that period
of time the measure of two nations—the Egyptians and the Amorites—
was filled, and they became deserving of destruction; it should be noted,
furthermore, that it took a long time for it to be filled since it dates back
to the generation when nations were separated. Now, until the generation
when the Babylonian exile ended there was no further destruction of any

38 Seder Eliyyahu Rabbah (22) 20 (Ish-Shalom’s edition, pp. 120–121). Cf. also above, n. 29.
39 Ish-Shalom (ad loc., note 13) expresses the view that the text is referring only to
uncircumcised gentiles. For another example of such a distinction, see Tosafot on Avodah
Zarah 10b, s.v. Vai lah le-ilfa. Cf. also Yosef ha-Meqanne, p. 17, on Ezekiel 32. In verse 29
there, Ezekiel informs us that Edom will descend into a pit full of uncircumcised men
(“There is Edom . . . and all its princes”), and the author of Yosef ha-Meqanne points out:
“The Jews, the circumcised nation, will not be there.” Here, the distinction is clearly
between the Jewish people and the gentiles, not between circumcised and uncircumcised
gentiles.

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nation, and that redemption was also not accomplished “with a high hand”;
indeed, that is why the exile lasted only seventy years. This redemption,
however, will involve the ruin, destruction, killing, and eradication of all
the nations, them, and the angels who watch over them, and their gods, as
it is written, “The Lord shall punish the heavenly host in heaven and the
kings of the earth on earth” (Isa. 24:21). Jeremiah too said, “Fear not, my
servant Jacob, said the Lord, for I am with you; for I will make a full end
of all the nations whither I have driven you, but with you I will not make
a full end” (Jer. 46:28).40

It is true that we have seen above that the author of Sefer Nizzahon
Yashan does speak of a “slight hope” for the gentiles who will serve the
Jewish people, but the book is largely an anthology of anti-Christian
arguments from various sources, and it is hard to escape the conclusion
that whoever wrote our passage looked forward to the total destruction
of all the gentiles. The author no doubt recited Ve-ye’etayu kol le-ovdekha
(see note 21) in the High Holiday service, but when he wrote these lines,
this element of the eschatological vision disappeared entirely from his
consciousness.41
Though the expectation that all the gentiles would be utterly
destroyed was rare even in Ashkenaz, the hope for the total destruction
of the Kingdom of Edom, i.e., Christendom, was undoubtedly quite
common—and not just in Ashkenaz.

40 The Jewish-Christian Debate, p. 227. It is possible that the use of the word kelayah
(“destruction”) with reference to the Egyptians, who were not completely destroyed, can
mitigate the impression created by this passage. However, the tone of the passage is so
strong that I hesitate to suggest a moderate interpretation.
41 In Rashi’s commentary on Sanhedrin 111a, s.v. amar Resh Laqish and s.v. la niha lehu,
he suggests two explanations of the Talmudic passage: one in the name of his teacher,
and one which he thinks is preferable. The first explanation raises the possibility that
all the gentiles will perish, and only (part of) the Jewish people will survive. We need to
be very careful about reaching any conclusions about the worldview of a commentator
from his remarks on a difficult passage that he is struggling to interpret. Nevertheless,
we may not completely ignore the fact that this commentary explicitly states that such
a total destruction is in the realm of possibility. (Even if Rashi is not the author of the
commentary on this chapter of Sanhedrin that is attributed to him, it was definitely
written in the Ashkenazic sphere of culture no later than the twelfth century.) See also
Yosef ha-Meqanne, p. 58: “A priest from Etampes once asked me, ‘Do you really believe that
the entire population of the world will perish, and you, the smallest nation, will merit life
in the World to Come?’ I replied, ‘Is it not written: “It was not because you were more in
number than any of the peoples that the Lord set his love on you or chose you, for you
were the fewest [of all peoples]” (Deut. 7:7)?’”

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We find the following in a passage in Sefer Nizzahon Yashan that is

partly parallel to the one we have just cited:

You have no shame in saying of him who spoke and the world came to be,
of him who lives forever, that he accepted death and suffering for you. Why,
Moses said in the name of God, “Lo, I raise my hand to heaven and say: As
I live forever . . .” (Deut. 32:40), and David, Elijah, and Daniel all swore by
the life of God. Moreover, it is written, “See then, that I, I am he; there is no
god beside me” (Deut. 32:39); yet you say that he has a partner, that there
are two, nay, three gods. Know clearly that God will exact revenge from you,
as it is written, “For the Lord will vindicate his people and take revenge
for his servants . . . O nations, acclaim his people! For he will avenge the
blood of his servants” (Deut. 32:36, 43). And Jeremiah said, “But fear not,
O my servant Jacob, and be not dismayed, O Israel . . . for I am with you;
for I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have driven you, but
I will not make a full end of you” (Jer. 46:27–28; 30:10–11). Furthermore,
he promised us, “But fear not, O my servant Jacob, and be not dismayed,
O Israel, for, behold, I will save you from afar off and your seed from the
land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return and be in rest and at ease,
and none shall make him afraid” (Jer. 46:27; 30:10), but none of the house
of Esau shall remain or escape (cf. Obadiah 1:18).42

Here, too, we find a description of total destruction, but this time it

is specifically directed toward the House of Esau. In this context, we
should pay attention to the full citation from Jeremiah: “all the nations
whither I have driven you.” It is difficult to conjecture what the author’s
attitude might have been regarding the fate of the inhabitants of the
Lands of Ishmael to which God had driven Jews—it is doubtful that the
question entered his mind when he wrote these words—but it is clear
that he did not believe that the gentiles in the far-off islands, where
no Jews lived, would be destroyed. To resort to a formulation in Ve-
ye’etayu kol le-ovdekha, those straying peoples who will learn wisdom at
the end of days “will tell of your righteousness in the islands”—but not
in Europe. In the Christian world, there will be total destruction. This
will occur for two reasons. The primary reason, according to this passage,
is Christian theology—God will not tolerate the embarrassment caused
to him by the people who declare that he has a partner, or that he has
undergone death and suffering. The line “God will exact revenge from

42 The Jewish-Christian Debate, pp. 75–76.

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 On the Image and Destiny of Gentiles in Ashkenazic Polemical Literature

you” at first seems to be referring to revenge for this embarrassment, but

the passage immediately quotes a scriptural verse about vengeance with
a different motive—avenging the “blood of His servants.” In another
passage, the author of Sefer Nizzahon Yashan says to the Christians: “ ‘The
Lord your God will place these curses upon your enemies and foes who
have persecuted you’ (Deut. 30:7)—you [Christians] are included among
these, and therefore we cannot become one people, for we are inscribed
for life, and you for death, for you are our enemies and persecutors.”43
Persecution of Israel and idolatrous audacity directed at God go hand in
hand to lead Christians to their ultimate destruction.
It seems to me that a passage from the Ashkenazic Treatise concerning
the Date of the Redemption quoted in Yuval’s article as an example of
the anticipation of “the destruction of all the nations” in fact reflects
a distinction between the nations in general and Edom in particular.
The passage does begin by speaking of vengeance against “the nations,”
but the continuation is revealing::

During those thirty-five years (1317–1352 CE), there will be a fulfillment

of the scriptural passage, “You will be raised up next to princes, and kings
will serve you as nurses” (cf. Isaiah 49:22–23)—for the kings of the nations
will see the vengeance that God has carried out against them for the sake of
the Jewish people, and they will see the ingathering of the exiles . . . . And
in that year . . . which is the year 5112 (1352 CE), this nation will entirely
disappear, and Jerusalem will be built.44

In this passage, God takes “vengeance” against the nations in general,

but brings total destruction to “this nation.”

43 Ibid., p. 127. Similarly, Yosef ha-Meqanne (p. 87) writes that the punishment of Edom,
mentioned at the end of the prophecy of Obadiah, will follow from “the afflictions and
persecutions that you impose on us in each generation.” Compare also the collection
of scriptural verses at the beginning of the book (pp. 15–25) promising consolation to
Israel and punishment to the gentiles. There is an Ashkenazic penitential poem for the
Eve of Rosh Hashanah that looks to the day when the people of Edom will be destroyed
as a consequence of both their idolatry and their persecution of the Jewish people: “May
haughty Edom and Moab be blotted out from the book of life, / for they bow before
a block of wood, and declare it divine. / Let the wicked oppressor receive no mercy; may
he be condemned to destruction, / for he has taunted the legions of the living God.” (In
D. Goldschmidt, Seder ha-Selihot ke-Minhag Lita u-Qehillot ha-Perushim be-Eretz Yisrael
[Jerusalem, 1965], p. 91.)
44 A. Marx, “Ma’amar al Shenat ha-Ge’ullah,” in Ha-Zofeh le-Hokhmat Yisrael 5 (1921): 197,
cited by Yuval, pp. 44–45.

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 The Middle Ages

This position appears explicitly in Sephardic sources from the

late Middle Ages. Simon ben Zemah Duran writes that the prophets
envisioned

the destruction of each of these religions [Christianity and Islam] . . . in

a manner commensurate with the degree that it has strayed from the truth.
For regarding the Christian nation, which pronounced blasphemies against
God, the verse says: “And the House of Jacob shall be a fire . . . and not
leave any remnant of the House of Esau” (Obadiah 1:18) . . . But we are
assured that the Muslim nation, which has humiliated our people and cast
truth to the ground, will be humiliated before us as its mother [Hagar] was
humiliated before our mother [Sarah].

He goes on to present a long list of scriptural verses reporting how the

nations will be abased before Israel at the end of days.45
A similar distinction between Edom and the other nations is made
in R. Isaac Abravanel’s Ma‘yenei ha-Yeshu‘ah; however, for exegetical
reasons, he includes Ishmael as well in the group that will be totally
destroyed. The main target of God’s wrath is Christianity: “The ultimate
decree against [the people of Rome, the Fourth Beast in Daniel’s vision]
will be not on account of their evil deeds, but on account of the strange

45 P. Murciano, Simon ben Zemah Duran, Keshet u-Magen: A Critical Edition, Ph.D. dissertation,
New York University, 1975, pp. 107–108. Yuval (p. 69) points out that “as far as we can
tell, the distinction between the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim becomes progressively
smaller toward the end of the thirteenth century.” On eschatological vengeance against the
gentiles in a fourteenth-century Sephardic polemic, see Y. Shamir, Rabbi Moses ha-Kohen
of Tordesillas and his Book Ezer Ha-Emunah: A Chapter in the History of the Judeo–Christian
Controversy II (Coconut Grove, Fla., 1972), pp. 83, 84, and cf. p. 86. All the essential
components—the decree that Edom will be destroyed, the humiliation of the nations, and
their recognition of the God of Israel—appear together in an Ashkenazic liturgical poem,
but they are less explicit there. In the poem Ototekha Ra’inu by R. Simon bar Isaac, we
read that the following will take place on the day of the redemption: “He will visit complete
destruction upon Edom . . . when he makes great, eternal joy [for the Jews] . . . . He will
remove the enemy, and humiliate it, / and pastor his flock in his shadow, / and fell the
mighty horns of the gentiles. / They will tell of his loftiness and his military might, / and
all will be united to serve him, / when the universe and its fullness will praise him.” (See
J. Fränkel, Mahzor Pesah (Jerusalem, 1993), pp. 504–505.) If we take the expression “He
will visit complete destruction upon Edom” literally, then the poem is speaking of the
total destruction of the Christian world. If so, the enemy who is merely humiliated must
be understood as the Muslim world or other gentile nations. However, there is room for
one who disagrees with this understanding to argue that the expression, “He will visit
complete destruction upon Edom” is poetic exaggeration that allows for some subjugated,
monotheistic Christians to appear in the continuation of the passage.

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and harsh words and beliefs that the small horn [in Daniel’s vision],
which refers to the Pope, and the sect of the priests of Jesus, pronounce
against God, may he be blessed.”46 Abravanel continues with a stunning
interpretation of Psalms 50:16–23, a passage which he understands
as being an admonition to Christian Edom: “Who are you to declare
my statutes, or express my covenant in your mouth, seeing that you
hate instruction, and cast my words behind you?” (verses 16–17). The
Christians will be punished for their perversions of the scriptures, for
casting the words of the prophets that refer to the future redemption
“behind them,” that is, for interpreting them as referring to the past (!).
A further punishment will befall them because “You speak against
your brother; you slander your mother’s son” (verse 20), i.e., they have
persecuted the Jewish people, which is called Edom’s brother. However,
Scripture continues, “These things you have done, and I kept silent. You
thought that I was altogether such a one as yourself: I will reprove you
and confront you with charges” (verse 21). The “great punishment” will
befall Edom on account of the second, “truly monumental sin—that they
have spoken against God by attributing humanity and corporeality to
him, as if he were one of us.”47
The first three beasts in Daniel’s vision are punished in careful
proportion and measure, but the fourth beast, Edom, is punished with
“utter extinction,” “to be destroyed to the very end.” “The Kingdom
of Rome—the nation of Edom and the nation of the Ishmaelites who
have entered under their governance—will all perish from the face of
the earth, and those nations will be totally destroyed.”48 Abravanel’s
analysis does not provide a sufficient religious-ethical explanation
for why the Ishmaelite nation should be destroyed. The Muslims are
completely innocent of the decisive sin that causes the destruction of
Edom. However, to their great misfortune, Abravanel is forced to include
them in “the Kingdom of Edom,” for Daniel’s vision includes only four
beasts, and not five. It is this exegetical difficulty that sends them to
their destruction.49

46 Ma‘yenei ha-Yeshu‘ah, Ma‘ayan #8, Tamar #8, in Abravanel, Perush al Nevi’im u-Ketuvim III
(Tel Aviv, 1960), pp. 346–347.
47 P. 348.
48 P. 347.
49 Abravanel gives a historico-exegetical justification for his inclusion of Ishmael in the
Edomite nation in Ma‘ayan #2, Tamar #3, p. 290.

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The presence of a vision of vengeance and destruction alongside

a vision of subjugation and recognition of the faith of Israel expresses
a tension between two types of prophecies, two traditions, and two
psychological needs. On the one hand, there is the desire for radical,
absolute, ultimate vengeance against the oppressor; on the other
hand, there is the desire to see one’s opponent admit his error not for
a passing moment but for untold generations. Apparently, the yearning
for vengeance occasionally became so powerful that it led to a willingness
to forego the desire for an ongoing admission of error entirely. The most
prevalent solution, which took varied forms, envisioned the destruction
of entire nations or many individuals of those nations, and the survival
of the rest in a more or less inferior status, after they recognize that
the Lord, God of Israel, is king, and his rule dominates all. Medieval
Christian theology viewed the Jews as unwilling witnesses to the
truth of Christianity, whereas the Jewish messianic vision viewed the
remaining gentiles of the end of days as willing witnesses to the truth
of Judaism.50
Over the course of this article, we have seen some small sampling
of the complex relations between the Jews and their neighbors in the
crucible of Christian Europe: images of superiority and inferiority mixed
together, visions of destruction on the one hand and of a united faith
on the other. We have focused here on hostile relations, but we should
not forget that there were also friendly relations in daily life that left
their mark even on Ashkenazic polemical literature, especially Sefer

50 This comparison of the Jewish eschatological vision to the Augustinian doctrine appears
in Yuval’s article in a slightly different form and is described as the position of the “non-
Ashkenazic world” alone. He explains that the survival of non-Jews is “necessary . . . in
order to prove the truth of Judaism.” If he means that it is logically necessary along
the lines of the Christian theory, it is hard to accept his statement, for in the days of
the Messiah, the truth will be completely clear without any need of external proofs.
However, if he means that it is psychologically necessary for the persecuted Jews—
whether Sephardic or Ashkenazic—I think that his statement has much truth in it.
See Yuval, p. 48. It is not impossible that the Christian position that the Jews must
be kept alive as living witnesses of the truth of Christianity sheds light on a stanza in
a penitential poem recited during the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur:
“We have fallen low, and cannot arise, . . . We sit like false witnesses, / unable to raise
our heads” (Goldschmidt [see above, n. 43], p. 179.) It is indeed possible that this is
a routine simile asserting that the Jews in exile are as embarrassed as a false witness who
has been found out. However, if we read the line in light of the Augustinian doctrine,
which an educated Jews would surely have known, the line becomes an impassioned cry,
full of pathos.

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Yosef ha-Meqanne, and certainly on other genres of literature.51 Jews and

Christians alike were delighted to discern the defects in the other group,
but they also, however unwillingly, saw the positive characteristics as
well. In the downtrodden Jewish community, both their self-image and
their image of the other were formed out of deep personal struggles,
and their visions of the ultimate fate of the gentiles reflected a range
of theological, exegetical, historical, and psychological considerations
that arose out of the depths of the soul of an exiled people. The ironclad
faith that the Jew would ultimate be victorious at the end of days made
it possible for an oppressed minority to maintain itself even in its
contemporary condition, and an examination of the various paths that
this faith took can help us understand the remarkable phenomenon that
manifests itself before our eyes—not the survival of the gentiles at the
end of days, but the survival of the Jews in medieval Europe.

ADDENDUM

About three years after the publication of this article, Reuven Kimelman’s
excellent study of the mystical meaning of the Lekhah Dodi prayer appeared
(Lekhah Dodi ve-Qabbalat Shabbat: ha-Mashma‘ut ha-Mistit [Jerusalem,
2003]). Kimelman, who had not seen my article, devoted a chapter to
the stanza beginning, “You shall burst forth to the right and to the
left,” arguing that it expresses the expectation that Esau and Ishmael
will convert to Judaism at the end of days. (All the references cited in
this addendum can be found in that chapter.) My first impression was
that the sources that he cites provide a body of evidence demonstrating
that the expectation of full conversion was more common than I had
thought. More careful examination, however, reveals that the dominant

51 For an excellent example from the Provençal community, see J. Shatzmiller, Shylock
Reconsidered (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford, 1970), pp. 104–122. In this context,
let me emphasize a particularly significant point that has emerged from the exchange
between Fleischer and Yuval: the vengeance that the Ashkenazim envisioned in their
apocalyptic predictions is not carried out by the Jews against their enemies; rather, it
plays itself out as an eschatological mission of the God of Israel, who avenges himself
and his people. For an evaluation of the central thesis of Yuval’s article, see my
discussion in From Crusades to Blood Libels to Expulsions: Some New Approaches to Medieval
Antisemitism (Second Annual Lecture of the V. J. Selmanowitz Chair of Jewish History,
Touro College Graduate School of Jewish Studies, New York, 1997).

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view in those sources is precisely that of the texts that I had analyzed:
the nations of the world will recognize the validity of Judaism without
full conversion and persist in a state of subordination to Jews.
One quotation in Kimelman’s chapter does appear to look forward
to full conversion. The late-thirteenth-century R. Moses of Burgos
writes, “All the nations will return to the worship of our Creator may
he be blessed and convert so that they will come under the wings of the
divine Presence, observing his Torah and serving him wholeheartedly as
one . . . for they will all convert for the sake of the Lord, the Eternal God.”
All the other sources, however, though often using the terms conversion
or union with Israel, tell a different story.
Thus, R. Bahya ben Asher in his commentary to Deuteronomy 30:7
asserts that Edom and Ishmael “are destined to join us by converting
and becoming one nation, and it is not even necessary to say that the
authority and the kingship will return to us.” Kimelman’s paraphrase
merely underscores the tension in this position. “All,” he writes, “will
convert, and Israel will rule.” Shem Tov ben Shem Tov appears to maintain
that only Ishmael will convert “because they are closer,” a position with
which we are of course familiar. Moses de Leon affirms that all nations—
indeed all existence—will become one, and yet he goes on to say that all
the nations will enter the holy covenant without losing their identity.
R. Shlomo Alkabetz writes that when God will subdue the “princes”
(i.e., the cosmic powers) in charge of the nations, those princes will not be
destroyed entirely. On the contrary, the nations (as Zechariah prophesies)
will come to celebrate the festival of Sukkot. They will be enveloped by
sanctity, “for the nations are branches and wings for Israel.”
The tension is even more explicit in Sefer ha-Peli’ah. “Not one of the
seventy princes will be uprooted or destroyed; rather, weakness and
dryness will develop in them, and the mistress will once again become
the mistress and the maidservant a maidservant. For if even one of the
seventy princes is uprooted, you have left no possibility for the survival
of the world. All the nations will return to bow to our God . . . after they
convert.” The nations convert—and remain maidservants. And here is ibn
Gikatilla: “Because of their great desire to cleave to the Lord may He be
blessed they will serve Israel,” and they will be united in the faith of Israel.
Thus, as in the some of the texts analyzed in my article, terms like
conversion and even union can coexist with servitude and separate
national identity.

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Finally, after citing Shem Tov’s expectation that it is specifically

Ishmael who will convert, Kimelman notes without elaboration
Abravanel’s Mashmia Yeshu‘ah (Perush al Nevi’im u-Ketuvim III, p. 566a).
This passage will repay more detailed analysis in light of the author’s
rather different position in his commentary to Daniel (Ma‘yenei ha-
Yeshu‘ah), with which we are already familiar. We recall that in the latter
work, Abravanel maintained that although logically Christians and
not Muslims should be destroyed at the end of days, the latter will be
destroyed as well because the Book of Daniel, as Abravanel understood it,
subsumes them under the fourth beast, which is doomed to annihilation.
The exegetical imperative overcame the appropriate ethical-religious
assessment and condemned Ishmael to destruction.
In Mashmia Yeshu‘ah, a work of messianic theory, Abravanel was
removed from the immediate impact of Daniel and was consequently
liberated to follow moral logic to its proper conclusion. Thus, he makes
a striking observation about the prophet’s famous assertion, “Then I will
make the nations pure of speech so that they all invoke the Lord by name
and serve him with one accord” (Zephaniah 3:9). The verse, he says, does
not say “all the nations.” The reason for this is that “the nation of Edom
is not included in this promise, for they are the enemies of God and his
Torah and will not see the [open manifestation] of God’s majesty. But the
other nations from the descendants of Ishmael who did not pervert the
fundamentals of the Torah as much—they will be granted the merit of
accepting the divine faith.” He makes clear, however, that they too will
not reach the level of the Jewish people.
Finally, it is of no small interest that Abravanel goes on to assert
that once the dead are resurrected, even the far-flung pagan nations will
recognize the true God and serve him. It is the monumental miracle of the
resurrection that will enable even those nations who knew nothing of the
Torah to take this otherwise inexplicable step. I suspect that Abravanel
had in mind Maimonides’ well-known affirmation at the end of his
Mishneh Torah that God brought about the rise and spread of Christianity
and Islam to familiarize the nations with the Torah so that they would
have the minimal preparation necessary to appreciate and internalize
the Messiah’s message when he comes. Without this preparation, even
eschatological acceptance of the true faith is a monumental challenge,
and it is only the witness of the resurrection that makes it possible.
Though the Maimonidean passage underlies Abravanel’s remarks, it is

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 The Middle Ages

noteworthy that the function assigned to Christianity in the Mishneh

Torah is marginalized or even neutralized entirely once one envisions the
eschatological destruction of all Christians.
What is particularly striking about Abravanel’s affirmation that
pagans will embrace the true faith is that his argument for the destruction
of Edom—expressed more fully in Ma‘yenei ha-Yeshu‘ah—was that
Christians reject pure monotheism in favor of an essentially idolatrous
belief. By this criterion, pagans too should suffer utter annihilation, and
yet they will not. “Innocent” idolatry is one thing; the idolatry of “the
enemies of God and his Torah” is quite another. Pagans never recognized
the God of Israel; Christians did—and turned him into a human being,
perverting Scripture along the way. Thus, even the vision of masses of
pagans acknowledging the true God cannot mitigate Abravanel’s vengeful
vision of the fate of Christians.
Despite this argument for the special sinfulness of the Christian
faith, it remains difficult to accept the proposition that a cold calculation
would have persuaded a medieval Jew that in purely theological terms,
the sin of Trinitarian Incarnationism is worse than that of full-fledged
polytheism, complete with all the abominations that Scripture associates
with it. In the deep recesses of Abravanel’s psyche, God’s reckoning
with Christendom at the end of days will almost surely be driven by
concern not only for his own honor but for that of the expelled and
persecuted people who suffered so long and so grievously at the hands
of the Kingdom of Edom.

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 ON THE USES OF HISTORY IN MEDIEVAL
JEWISH POLEMIC AGAINST CHRISTIANITY
The Quest for the Historical Jesus

From: Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim
Yerushalmi, ed. by E. Carlebach, J.M. Efron, and D.N. Myers (New England
University Press: Hanover and London, 1998), pp. 25–39.

“History” is not a simple term, and the uses of “history” are even more
diverse than its meanings. Historical investigation can mean the critical
examination of sources, often with a measure of empathy, always with
a skeptical eye, to refine our image of the personalities and events of the
past. But it can also be a didactic enterprise, accepting of unscrutinized
data, highlighting heroes and villains, mobilizing past and present in the
service of an overarching end. It is a commonplace that the first approach
is most characteristic of post-Enlightenment historiography, while the
second was the hallmark of the medieval mind.
Like most commonplaces, this one is essentially true. At the same
time, the boundaries between the approaches are hardly impermeable.
We have long abandoned—perhaps too eagerly—the historicist fantasy
that contemporary historians work in a rarefied atmosphere of wholly
objective truth. With respect to the Middle Ages, we will indeed search
in vain for a systematic application of critical historical perspectives,
but some intellectual challenges produced insights foreshadowing the
historiographical orientation that became increasingly evident first
during the Renaissance and ultimately in modern times.
Within a Jewish context, critical comments by biblical exegetes,
debates about the antiquity of kabbalistic works, historical reasons
proposed for the commandments, and halakhic approaches to changing
conditions have sharpened our awareness of medieval sensitivity
to textual, theological, and social change. Jewish polemic against
Christianity is a particularly promising field for the pursuit of this inquiry.

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 The Middle Ages

Christianity emerged out of Judaism in historical times; its founder was

a Jew; its sacred text is largely a collection of purportedly historical
narratives about that Jew and his immediate successors; its fundamental
claim speaks of the end of one age and the birth of another; it pointed
to the historical condition of contemporary Jews as a confirmation of
that claim, while Jews pointed to the unfolding of history in a patently
unredeemed world as its most effective refutation. We usually identify
exegesis and philosophy as the core of the Jewish-Christian debate, but
the role of history was no less central.
This role took many forms. Historical context could help determine
the plausibility of a scriptural argument; historical analysis could shed
light on talmudic references to Jesus and to gentiles; the history of
the Jewish people in exile demanded explanation—often theological
but sometimes naturalistic; the larger pattern of history might reveal
the character of the age in which medieval Jews and Christians lived.
While I hope to examine all these issues and more in a fuller study, this
essay will concentrate on a basic concern of many Jewish polemicists,
which can be described without serious anachronism as the search for
the historical Jesus. From late antiquity through the early seventeenth
century this quest moved from hostile legends to unsystematic
criticism, both naive and penetrating, and finally produced flashes of
genuine historical reconstruction. In the course of their investigations,
Jews honed their sense of historical skepticism while remaining
checked by an invisible hand that prevented them from taking steps
that sometimes appear self-evident to the modern eye. An inquiry into
both the breakthroughs and the inhibitions of these polemicists can
provide a fascinating look at the historical mentalités of medieval and
Renaissance Jews.

Medieval Jewry was heir to two sets of internal sources about Jesus:
a handful of scattered remarks in rabbinic texts and the various versions
of the counter-Gospel known as Toledot Yeshu.1 There is little we can say
about the image of Jesus held by early medieval Jews, although there is
no reason to doubt that many of them accepted as simple truth Toledot
1 For a list of the rabbinic passages, see H. H. Ben Sasson, “Disputations and Polemics,”
Encyclopedia Judaica 6; cols. 81–82. The standard collection and discussion of Toledot
Yeshu material remains Samuel Krauss, Das Leben Jesu nach Jüdischen Quellen (Berlin,
1902).

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 On the Uses of History in Medieval Jewish Polemic against Christianity

Yeshu’s depiction of an idolatrous enticer and bastard sorcerer who was

hanged from a stalk of cabbage.2
By the twelfth century, when European Jews began to write polemical
works, they had far more information, which made their task easier in
some respects and more complex in others. Polemicists were familiar with
at least parts of the New Testament, and they were also in possession
of a short Jewish work written in Arabic by an unknown author and
translated into Hebrew as Sefer Nestor ha-Komer.3 Nestor already contains,
in however embryonic a form, some of the key points about Jesus that
Jewish polemicists were to make for the remainder of the Middle Ages
and into modern times.
The relationship of Jesus to Judaism is most critically defined by
two issues: his attitude toward the laws of the Torah and his own self-
perception. While Nestor, which is a work containing several redactional
layers, criticizes Jesus for violating the Law and asserting that he and
his Father are one, the most sustained passage argues for his loyalty
to the classic positions of Judaism with respect to both points. In his
programmatic declaration in Matthew (5:17–18), Jesus affirmed that the
Torah must be observed, and in several other passages he made it perfectly
clear that he did not consider himself God. Thus, he maintained that he
did not know the time of the resurrection because such knowledge is
confined to God alone (Mark 13:32), and he refused to be called righteous
because such a term is reserved for God (Mark 10:18). “Know,” continues
Nestor, “that you have deviated greatly by forsaking the deeds which he
performed: circumcision, Passover, the Sabbath, the great fast, the ten
commandments, indeed, all the commandments.”4

2 Later Jews quite familiar with the Gospels had no trouble accepting this information
at face value. See the Nizzahon Vetus (henceforth N. V.) in my The Jewish-Christian Debate
in the High Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1979; reprint, Northvale, N. J., 1996), sec. 202,
p. 202 (English) = 141 (Hebrew); sec. 205, pp. 203–204 (English) = 142 (Hebrew), and
my notes to both passages.
3 Daniel J. Lasker and Sarah Stroumsa, The Polemic of Nestor the Priest: Qissat Mujadalat
al-Usquf and Sefer Nestor Ha-Komer (Jerusalem, 1996). On the impact of this work, see
Joel Rembaum, “The Influence of Sefer Nestor ha-Komer on Medieval Jewish Polemics,”
Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 45 (1978): 155–185.
4 On violations of the Law, see Nestor, paragraphs 127, 135. On the identity of Jesus and his
Father, see paragraphs 68, 145, and cf. the assertion in paragraph 150 that he contradicted
himself on this point. On Jesus’ loyalty to the positions of Judaism, see paragraphs 35–
57, 63, 105. I have translated a version of paragraph 63 (on circumcision, Passover, etc.)
which appears only in the Hebrew section (p. 124) of Lasker and Stroumsa’s edition.

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 The Middle Ages

Despite this approach and its manifest polemical utility, Jews could
not readily embrace the simple proposition that Jesus was a perfectly
good Jew. First of all, Jewish tradition itself spoke of his sinfulness
and well-deserved execution. Second, both psychological and polemical
reasons impelled Jews to criticize Jesus rather than embrace him. Finally,
the New Testament material, with which Jews were increasingly familiar,
presented a bewildering array of conflicting evidence, particularly with
respect to the law but to some degree even with respect to the question
of divinity. Not only did this create genuine historical perplexity; it
presented an opportunity for criticizing the Christians’ sacred text no
less tempting than the chance to denounce its hero.
The polemicists of Northern Europe made no attempt to produce
a coherent portrait of Jesus but were satisfied with ad hoc criticisms. The
critique of the New Testament in the standard version of Joseph Official’s
thirteenth-century polemic consists of a series of snippets.5 The more ela-
borate discussions in the Nizzahon Vetus and an alternate version of Yosef
ha-Meqanne are far more interesting, not only because of the richness of
the argumentation but precisely because they confirm the narrow focus
and the absence of any effort to come away with a comprehensive picture.
In discussing the New Testament, the Nizzahon Vetus repeatedly
maintains that Jesus denied he was divine; in other sections of what is
admittedly an anthology, the author reiterates on several occasions that
Jesus made himself into a god.6 In one passage where the polemicist
points to Jesus’ use of the term “son of man,” his point is not primarily
that Jesus had no pretensions to divinity. It is, rather, that if Jesus were
God, it would have been wrong of him to use this term. In fact, the
passage continues, Jesus would be lying in his assertion (Luke 9:58) that
he has no place to lay his head, when the Psalmist testifies that “the earth
is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof” (Ps. 24:1), and Jesus himself said
elsewhere, “Dominion is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matt.

5 Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, ed. by Judah Rosenthal (Jerusalem, 1970), pp. 125–138.
6 N. V., sec. 194, p. 200 (English) = 138–139 (Hebrew); secs. 197–199, p. 201 (Eng.) =
140 (Heb.); sec. 207, pp. 204–205 (Eng.) = 143 (Heb.). Contrast with sec. 9, p. 46 (Eng.) =
7 (Heb.); sec. 50, p. 75 (Eng.) = 34–35 (Heb.); sec. 67, p. 86 (Eng.) = 44 (Heb.). On N. V.
as an anthology (at least in part), see my discussion, Jewish-Christian Debate, pp. 35–36.
For the alternate version of the Yosef ha-Meqanne critique of the New Testament, see
Judah Rosenthal, “Bikkoret Yehudit shel ha-Berit ha-Hadashah min ha-Meah ha-Yod-
gimel,” in Studies in Jewish Bibliography, History, and Literature in Honor of I. Edward Kiev,
ed. by Charles Berlin (New York, 1971). Heb. sec., pp. 123–139.

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 On the Uses of History in Medieval Jewish Polemic against Christianity

28:18).7 To the extent that this text, which also appears in modified
form in both versions of Yosef ha-Meqanne and in another Ashkenazic
collection,8 presents a straightforward argument, it is not that Jesus did
not consider himself divine but rather that, for someone who claimed to
be God, he made some peculiarly inappropriate remarks.
An even less clear but nonetheless similar impression emerges from
a different discussion in the standard text of Yosef ha-Meqanne, which
cites two New Testament verses in which Jesus appears to deny his
divinity: the above-cited statement in Mark that only God can be called
good and a verse in John (probably 12:49). The author’s formulation does
not address Jesus’ self-perception. Rather, he asks why Jesus would say
these things if he was God (not if he thought he was God), much as he
goes on to ask why he was hungry and thirsty if he was God.9
With respect to the law, the fullest array of Northern European
arguments appears in the Nizzahon Vetus. On the one hand, we are
repeatedly presented with the evidence of Matthew 5:17–18 that Jesus
declared his intention to complete (lehashlim) or to fulfill (leqayyem)
the law, not to destroy it. The author argues that the Christian
assertion that the new covenant of Jeremiah replaces the old Torah
contradicts the Gospel passage. Despite this, Christians maintain
that Jesus “caused the Torah of Moses to be truncated by abolishing
circumcision, observance of the Sabbath, and many commandments.”10

7 N. V., sec. 168, p. 181 (Eng.) = 119 (Heb).

8 Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, p. 132; Kiev Festschrift, p. 125 (without the reference to Matt.
28:18). By “another Ashkenazic collection,” I refer to the non-philosophical section of
Liqqutei R Mosheh ben Shlomoh mi-Salerno, unpublished edition by A. Posnanski, p. 35
(including the reference to Matt. 28:18). I am now convinced that this section of the
work, which differs dramatically from the philosophical material published by S. Simon
(Mose ben Salomo von Salerno und seine philosophischen Auseinandersetzung mit den Lehren
des Christentums [Breslau, 1932]), is a Northern European polemical mélange.
9 Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, p. 134. Cf. p. 54 for an indication that Jesus did claim divinity.
10 N. V., sec. 71, p. 89 (Eng.) = 47 (Heb.). The verse about not coming to destroy the law
was also cited by Meir of Narbonne, Parma ms., p. 4a, and “Moses of Salerno,” Posnanski
ms., p. 33. Peter Damian’s Dialogus inter Judaeum Requirentem et Christianum e Contrario
Respondentem (pt. 2 of his Antilogus-Dialogus) begins with a series of ten Jewish questions,
each of which is prefaced by the phrase, “If Christ did not come to destroy the law but
to fulfill it” (PL 145: 57–59). However, as I showed in detail in “St. Peter Damian: His
Attitude toward the Jews and the Old Testament,” Yavneh Review 4 (1965): 99–104, this
section of Damian’s polemic is borrowed from an essentially exegetical work by Isidore
of Seville (Quaestiones in Leviticum, PL 83: 336–339); it consequently proves nothing
about actual Jewish citations of this verse.

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 The Middle Ages

The same Matthean passage, reinforced by the author’s version of Luke

16:17 (“Even if heaven and earth shall pass, the words of Moses and
the other prophets shall not pass”), refutes the antinomian Christian
interpretation of Isaiah’s declaration that God hates the Jewish festi-
vals (Isa. 1:14); Jesus, after all, “accept[ed] the Jewish religion—
circumcision, the Sabbath, indeed, the entire religion—all the days of his
life.”11 Jesus’ circumcision along with his observance of the Sabbath and
festivals (“for he did observe all these commandments”), particularly in
light of his statement in Matthew, surely establishes a precedent that
Christians should follow.12
Elsewhere, however, the Nizzahon Vetus presents a rather different
picture. In discussing the assertion that baptism has replaced
circumcision, the author begins with his usual response that this would
contradict Matthew. He continues, “It would follow then (nimza), that
Jesus annulled the law of Moses and thereby gave the lie to his own
Torah where he wrote, ‘Not one thing will pass from the Law,’ for he
added and diminished from the law in several places” (emphasis added).13
This appears to go further than the earlier citation, which said only that
Christians attributed such deviations to him.
Other passages surely go further. In a discussion that also appears
in both versions of Yosef ha-Meqanne, the Nizzahon Vetus uses one of
the most clearly nomian passages in the Gospels as a foundation for
an attack on Jesus for his violations of the law. After curing a leper,
Jesus instructs him to bring a sacrifice of purification “as Moses has
commanded in the Torah” (Matt. 8:4). One expects a Jew to pounce on
this passage as further evidence of Christian failure to emulate Jesus’
devotion to the Torah. But the Northern European polemicists find
themselves in a particularly churlish frame of mind: “Now, I am surprised
at his commanding the leper to go to the priest and bring his sacrifice.
Once he was cured by Jesus why should he have to go to the priest?
Moreover, from the time of his birth we don’t see that he commanded
the observance of any other commandments in the Torah, such as those
regarding the Sabbath, circumcision, pork, and the mixing of species,
and several others which, in fact, he permitted people to transgress
11 N. V., sec. 79, p. 96 (Eng.) = 52 (Heb.).
12 N. V., sec. 158, p. 173 (Eng.) = 110 (Heb.), and see also sec. 104, p. 191 (Eng.) = 129 (Heb.),
and sec. 221, p. 215 (Eng.) = 150 (Heb.).
13 N. V., sec. 157, p. 172 (Eng.) = 109–110 (Heb.).

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 On the Uses of History in Medieval Jewish Polemic against Christianity

after his advent. Indeed, even this commandment was not observed from
that day on.”14
Shortly thereafter, the author criticizes Jesus for permitting work
on the Sabbath by justifying his disciples’ plucking of corn (Matt.
12:1–12) and asks how this squares with his instructions to the leper.15
Finally, along with one version of Yosef ha-Meqanne and the above-cited
Ashkenazic collection, he objects to Jesus’ instructing a man to carry
his bed on the Sabbath.16 Thus, as in the case of Jesus’ self-perception,
the polemical need, or even whim, of the moment appears to prevail.
Jesus is a loyal adherent of the law, a man awash in contradiction, or
a systematic, committed violator.
It is tempting to proffer the highly tentative suggestion that this is
precisely the sort of approach we should expect from Ashkenazic Jews in
the High Middle Ages. The genius of this culture did not lie in integrative
works. Its relative lack of interest in philosophy left its literature even
more focused on exegesis, whether biblical or talmudic, than that of other
Jewish centers. Even in works whose primary purpose was harmonization
of conflicting evidence drawn from a vast corpus, broad applications
were often avoided in the absence of a concrete motivation. The ad hoc
character of Ashkenazic pronouncements about Christianity has been
analyzed in Jacob Katz’s classic discussion, and this is only one example
of a wider phenomenon.17 In our context, the search for contradictions
that so characterized the initial step of the Tosafist approach to the
Talmud became the final step as well. There was no motive for Jews to
seek the concord of discordant passages in the New Testament even on

14 N. V., sec. 166, p. 178 (Eng.) = p. 116 (Heb.). See too Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, p. 131; Kiev
Festschrift, p. 129. Cf. Nestor ha-Komer, par. 127.
15 N. V., sec. 171, pp. 182–183 (Eng.) = 120 (Heb.). Cf. Meir of Narbonne’s citation of the leper
story as contradicting the Christian assertion that Jesus annulled the commandments
(Milhemet Mizvah, Parma ms., p. 97b).
16 N. V., sec. 169, p. 181 (Eng.) = 119 (Heb.); Kiev Festschrift, p. 125; “Moses of Salerno,”
Posnanski ms., p. 40.
17 See Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance (New York, 1961). Also see Haym Soloveitchik’s
comments in Halakhah Kalkalah ve-Dimmuy ‘Azmi (Jerusalem, 1985), p. 36, and for
a somewhat later period, the discussion on pp. 79–81, where he speaks of “Halakhic
federalism.” See also his possibly relevant observation in “Can Halakhic Texts Talk
History?” AJS Review 3 (1978): 155, n. 2. Though the sources analyzed there are primarily
Ashkenazic, the issue is the tendency of law, not just Ashkenazic halakhah, to “prefer
local definitions”; still, a culture trained primarily in law is more likely to reflect this
orientation in other contexts.

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 The Middle Ages

an ad hoc basis, and Northern European polemicists evince little interest

in penetrating the psyche of Jesus of Nazareth.
The concentration on specific texts coupled with the absence of
a wider perspective stands in sharp contrast to Maimonides’ approach to
the history of deviations from the true faith. In his account of Christianity
and Islam in The Epistle to Yemen and more strikingly in the history of
idolatry in his code, Maimonides is interested precisely in the large
picture, the critical deviations, and the underlying causes.18 It matters
little if he can point to specific evidence for his contentions; a verse here,
an aggadah there constitute sufficient building blocks for a structure that
rests upon ideology and theory far more than on texts and testimony.
Maimonides’ vistas are too broad; his historiographic weaknesses are
those of a philosopher. The vistas of the Northern European polemicists
are too narrow; their drawbacks are those of legists and exegetes.
The earliest European Jewish polemic, the Provencal Milhamot Hashem
by Jacob ben Reuben, also attempts no resolution of key contradictions,
but it does not fall prey to inconsistency in quite the same degree and
reflects a somewhat greater concern with understanding Jesus. From
a polemical perspective, it is difficult to decide which is better—to fault
Jesus himself for self-contradiction or to question the reliability of
Christian tradition and the basis of Christian practice by emphasizing
his devotion to the law. Jacob resolves the problem by doing both. Like
his successors in the North, who may well have borrowed the argument
from him, he criticizes Christians for saying that Jesus did not come to
add to the law or to change it and then citing Jeremiah’s prophecy of
a new covenant to defend precisely such a change. Elsewhere, he blames
Jesus for inconsistency, but he does not leave this as an ad hoc assertion
here and there. Rather, he views Jesus neither as an uncompromising
upholder of the law nor as an antinomian ideologue. Inconsistency is
precisely what characterizes him. In the very same sermon in which
he declared the law eternal and unchanging, he changed it, and such
vacillation is evident in other passages about the law as well as in his
changing position regarding the public revelation of his miracles. With
respect to the law, “he did not maintain a single stance but rather followed

18 Maimonides, Epistle to Yemen, in Abraham Halkin and David Hartman, Crisis and
Leadership: Epistles of Maimonides (Philadelphia, 1985), pp. 98–99: Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot
‘Avodah Zarah.

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 On the Uses of History in Medieval Jewish Polemic against Christianity

a variety of approaches,” and with respect to self-revelation, “no one can

determine his position because whatever he said on one occasion he
contradicted on another.”19
In the fourteenth century a work partially dependent upon Milhamot
Hashem reflects the persistence of this tension even as it reaffirms Jesus’
observance of the law. Moses ha-Kohen of Tordesillas also responded to
the Christian interpretation of Jeremiah’s “new covenant” by pointing to
Jesus’ exhortations affirming the eternity of the law, but he translated
“I have not come to destroy but to fulfill [plerosai; adimplere]” as “I have
not come to take away but to add [lehosif].” Thus, Jesus may have added
to the law by requiring baptism in addition to circumcision, but he never
abolished the earlier obligation. Moses’ comment that Jesus observed
“many” of the commandments of the Torah may also reflect some
reservations about his full commitment, although there is no question
that the fundamental thrust of the passage ascribes to him a deep loyalty
to the Torah.20
The breakthrough toward a Jewish picture of Jesus that attempted to
account for all the New Testament evidence in a coherent fashion came
at the end of the fourteenth century in Profiat Duran’s Kelimat ha-Goyim,
which reflects a maturity that owes much to the accumulation of polemical
experience, the cultural breadth and sophistication of Spanish Jewry, and
the stellar qualities of the author. For the first time, a Jewish polemic
reflects more than just extensive familiarity with Christian sources; it
handles those sources with a sense of confidence and command.21 With

19 Jacob ben Reuben, Milhamot Hashem, ed. by Judah Rosenthal (Jerusalem, 1963), pp. 81,
146, 148–149; cf. 151, 152–153. Joseph Kimhi’s Sefer ha-Berit was written at about the
same time as Milhamot Hashem and hence shares its distinction as a pioneering work.
20 ‘Ezer ha-Emunah, ed. by Yehuda Shamir (Rabbi Moses Ha-Kohen of Tordesillas and His
Book ‘Ezer ha-Emunah—A Chapter in the History of the Judeo-Christian Controversy, Part
II [Coconut Grove, Fla., 1972]), p. 93. Moses’ translation of adimplere is particularly
interesting in light of the fact that Jacob ben Reuben twice asserted that Jesus declared
that he had not come to add to the Torah of Moses (Milhamot Hashem, pp. 81, 148). There
are two readings of the Talmudic citation of this passage (B. Shabbat 116b): either “I have
not come to take away from the Torah of Moses or (ve-lo) to add to the Torah of Moses”
or “I have not come to take away from the Torah of Moses but (ella) to add to it.” The
first version, which corresponds to Jacob ben Reuben’s citation, is also quoted by Simon
Duran in his Keshet u-Magen (see n. 24, below), p. 4.
21 Kelimat ha-Goyim, in Kitvei Pulmus li-Profiat Duran, ed. by Frank Talmage (Jerusalem,
1981). Eleazar Gutwirth, in an article which makes the general point that polemic helped
produce a critical historical sense, discussed Kelimat ha-Goyim as his prime example;

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 The Middle Ages

respect to the law, Duran was not content to point to the well-worn
passage from the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus did not come to
destroy but to fulfill. (Duran, like Nestor ha-Komer and one passage in the
Nizzahon Vetus, translates adimplere as “to complete” (lehashlim), which
stands somewhere between “to fulfill” and Moses ha-Kohen’s “to add”).
He made a concerted, impressive effort to explain all contrary evidence
from the Gospels to accord with his portrait of a nomian Jesus. To take
a particularly difficult example, the assertion that what goes into the
mouth does not defile a man (Matt. 15:11) cannot mean that forbidden
foods are permitted, since we can prove that Jesus’ own disciples refrained
from eating such food (a historical argument of continuing relevance).
Rather, Jesus must have meant that the food is not intrinsically unclean;
it is only the divine command that renders it so.22
Profiat Duran’s proof texts that Jesus advocated observance of the
law include the verse in which he instructs his disciples to do what the
scribes and Pharisees say because they sit on the seat of Moses (Matt.
23:2–3); the passage, however, is not explicitly utilized to make the point
that Jesus has thereby endorsed the oral as well as the written law.23
Influenced by Kelimat ha-Goyim, R Simon Duran repeated the citation
in his Keshet u-Magen, again without drawing the explicit conclusion
about the oral law, although several lines later he argued that Jesus’
disciples were scrupulous even about rabbinic injunctions.24 Simon’s son
Solomon, however, took this development to its logical conclusion in
a highly charged context. His Milhemet Mizvah is devoted to a defense
of the Talmud against an increasingly dangerous Christian attack. Here
the citation from Matthew demonstrates that an attack on the Talmud
is an attack on Jesus himself, and Solomon proceeds with additional

see “History and Apologetics in XVth Century Hispano-Jewish Thought,” Helmantica

35 (1984): 231–242, which also contains several observations about Simon Duran. For
a discussion of the context that produced Duran’s approach, see Jeremy Cohen, “Profiat
Duran’s The Reproach of the Gentiles and the Development of Jewish anti-Christian
Polemic,” in Shlomoh Simonsohn Jubilee Volume (Tel Aviv, 1993), pp. 71–84. Cohen’s well-
argued thesis, which sees Duran’s approach as a response to Raymund Martini’s Pugio
Fidei, is, I think, partly correct, but I would formulate the polemical context somewhat
differently.
22 Kelimat ha-Goyim, pp. 24–25. (The discussion continues through p. 34.) Needless to say,
my encomium to Duran does not mean that I necessarily endorse his interpretation.
23 Ibid., p. 25.
24 Simon ben Zemah Duran, Keshet u-Magen: A Critical Edition, ed. by Prosper Murciano
(PhD. diss., New York University, 1975), pp. 3–4; cf. p. 45.

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 On the Uses of History in Medieval Jewish Polemic against Christianity

arguments that the oral law underlies several of Jesus’ legal dicta.25
The contradictory New Testament passages of Joseph Official and the
Nizzahon Vetus, the inconsistent Jesus of Milhamot Hashem, and the
partially nomian figure of Moses ha-Kohen have given way to a Jesus
thoroughly committed to the written and oral law so cavalierly rejected
by his putative medieval disciples.
To reinforce the contrast between contemporary Christians and the
founder—or presumed founder—of their faith, the later polemicists also
portrayed a strongly “Jewish” Jesus with respect to the question of his
self-perception. We have already seen the contradictory assertions of
some of the Ashkenazic authors on this issue. Here too, Profiat Duran
resolved the issue in favor of the option that is most compatible with
traditional Judaism, and he provided an overarching explanation to
account for any contrary evidence. Jesus, we know, used poetic language
and spoke in parables. Through a careful examination of specific texts,
Duran concluded that when Jesus said that he and his Father were one
or called himself Son of God, he meant to affirm nothing more than
a special relationship with God, not to describe himself as “the First
Cause and Creator of the world.”26
More subtle shifts in matters of detail also demonstrate Duran’s
changing emphasis. Jewish polemicists had regularly pointed to the
story of Jesus’ cursing the fig tree when he discovered it had no fruit as
evidence that he could not have been divine. The primary argument, of
course, was that God would have known from the outset that he would
find no fruit. Several polemicists added the rather amusing point that the
curse contradicts Jesus’ exhortation to love one’s enemies, and Meir of
Narbonne argued that instead of making the tree wither he should have
commanded it to produce fruit.27 Although one manuscript tradition
of Kelimat ha-Goyim contains the standard argument about Jesus’
ungodlike ignorance, Duran’s first (and perhaps only) use of this story
is to argue that the disciples’ amazement at the miraculous withering of
the tree demonstrates that they did not believe that Jesus was divine.28

25 Milhemet Mizvah, appended to Keshet u-Magen, Makor reprint (Jerusalem, 1970),

pp. 28b–29a.
26 Kelimat ha-Goyim, p. 7 (full discussion on pp. 4–10).
27 Milhamot Hashem, p. 151; Kiev Festschrift, p. 126; Meir’s Milhemet Mizvah, Parma ms.,
pp. 90b, 222a–b; N. V., sec. 181, pp. 188–189 (Eng.) = 126–127 (Heb).
28 Kelimat ha-Goyim, p. 5.

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 The Middle Ages

Duran was surely interested in showing that Jesus was not God, but he
was more interested in the historical assertion that neither he nor his
disciples thought he was.
Simon Duran cited the arguments from Jesus’ ignorance and the
disciples’ amazement in one breath,29 and his general treatment of Jesus
is more complex and more problematic than that of Kelimat ha-Goyim.
Simon attempted a fairly ambitious reconstruction of Jesus’ life and
ideas, utilizing rabbinic as well as Christian sources. The methodology
is essentially that rabbinic information is always correct, that in many
important matters the Jewish sources correspond to what we learn
from Christian works, and that instances of irreconcilable difference
reveal errors in Christian tradition. After all, he says, even the reports
of Jesus’ disciples in the Gospels “are not in agreement with respect to
all matters; there is contradiction and difference among them whether
as a result of forgetfulness or as a result of the desire to make matters
look more attractive.”30
Occasionally, this approach can yield flashes of very interesting
historical skepticism. Simon describes the connection that Christians
made between Micah 5:1 and Jesus’ presumed birth in Bethlehem, shows
that the verse cannot refer to this, and then argues that the rabbinic name
“Jesus of Nazareth” indicates that he was not born in Bethlehem at all. The
force of the rabbinic evidence here seems weak, and it appears that Simon
uses it as a peg on which to hang a skeptical look at the Gospel report. Later,
he argues that talmudic sources indicate that Jesus indeed went to Egypt
but not under the circumstances described in Matthew 2. Finally, Simon
expends considerable effort to reconstruct Jesus’ lineage and associations
utilizing the full array of sources at his disposal. In this discussion, the
primary purpose of New Testament citations is not to criticize them but to
use them constructively to buttress and clarify rabbinic sources. The result
has much in common with Christian efforts to harmonize the Gospels,
except that one set of sources is in the final analysis not authoritative.31
The effort to coordinate rabbinic and Gospel evidence in the context
of a “Jewish” portrayal of Jesus’ views raised the question of how to
assess his overall character and mission. Needless to say, the assertion
29 Keshet u-Magen, p. 24.
30 Ibid., p. 16.
31 Ibid., pp. 15–21. I hope to examine the mixture of skepticism and credulousness with
which Jews approached Christian sources on another occasion.

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 On the Uses of History in Medieval Jewish Polemic against Christianity

that he observed the commandments and did not consider himself God
was by no means sufficient to generate an enthusiastic evaluation, and it
was hardly feasible for medieval Jews—for reasons both emotional and
talmudic—to produce a literature of laudes Jesu.
For Jews like the Durans, one solution was to depict Jesus as
a pietistic fool (hasid shoteh). Jacob ben Reuben had already described him
as an ignoramus preaching to ignoramuses. Isaiah 30:20, which speaks of
a presumably great teacher, cannot, said Jacob, refer to Jesus, who taught
“rustics and fishermen because he was as devoid of understanding as
they.”32 To Profiat Duran, the ignorance of Jesus and his disciples is evident
from the many errors in their citations of the Bible as well as from Jesus’
apparent belief that reward and punishment in the afterlife are physical.33
The balance between a Jesus who did not affirm the key theological errors
of Christianity but was nonetheless very far from a role model appears
in particularly striking fashion in Duran’s analysis of a lengthy passage
in John (6:47–66) in which Jesus promises eternal life to whoever eats
his flesh and drinks his blood. “Although this statement points to his
foolishness and insanity, as the Jews indicated—and, in fact, many of his
students were taken aback by it—it does not necessarily follow from it that
the intention was that they actually eat his flesh and drink his blood.”34
Simon Duran repeated Profiat’s assessment, citing the same evidence
of errors in biblical citation, and described most of the Sermon on the
Mount as a quintessential example of pietistic foolishness.35 A century
and a half later, Yair ben Shabbetai da Correggio was prepared to regard
Jesus as a learned man who had studied with R. Yehoshua ben Perahiah
but continued to insist on the ignorance of his disciples: “If he taught
wisdom to his students, a negligible number actually absorbed it, because
they were not men of culture.”36
An ignorant, foolish, even insane Jesus may have satisfied the psychic
needs and resolved some of the historical questions of medieval Jews, but
a key problem remained unresolved. Ignorance, foolishness, and insanity
32 Milhamot Hashem, p. 96.
33 Kelimat ha-Goyim, pp. 49–59, 20–21, 24. See also p. 40 for the assertion that John the
Baptist, like Jesus, was a hasid shoteh. Gutwirth’s suggestion (“History and Apologetics,”
p. 237) that the term “may reflect an association with the historical sect of ‘Hasidim’
in Talmudic times” seems to me highly improbable.
34 Kelimat ha-Goyim, p. 39.
35 Keshet u-Magen, pp. 38–39, 56–61.
36 Yair ben Shabbetai, Herev Pifiyyot, ed. by Judah Rosenthal (Jerusalem, 1958), p. 65.

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 The Middle Ages

are not grounds for execution. Since the Talmud as well as the Gospels
assign responsibility for Jesus’ execution to his own people, Jews were
impelled not only to acknowledge responsibility but to argue that the
decision was justified. What did a man who observed the Torah and never
claimed to be divine do to deserve his fate? For the compartmentalizing
polemicists of thirteenth-century Ashkenaz, this was no problem. Not
only was Jesus a sorcerer; he also claimed to be God. In other contexts,
as we have seen, they said that he disclaimed divinity, but this was not
the place for that position. As it happens, however, it was precisely a Jew
from thirteenth-century France who opened the door to a different, if
highly problematic solution—and then refrained from walking through
that door with more than one foot.
It is well known that when R. Yehiel of Paris was confronted in 1240
with the argument that the Talmud should be banned partly because of
blasphemies against Jesus, he maintained that the Jesus of the Talmud
and the Jesus of the Christians are two different people. The actual
presentation, however, is far more complicated. R. Yehiel was initially
confronted with a talmudic passage about a “Yeshu” who is punished in
the afterlife with boiling excrement for mocking the words of the sages.
Because the passage does not say “Jesus of Nazareth” (Yeshu ha-Nozri)
and does not mention the latter’s more serious sins, R. Yehiel denies that
the two are one and the same. He then responds to a talmudic citation
about the execution of Jesus of Nazareth for sorcery and for leading
Jews into idolatry with a concession that this is the Christian Jesus.
However, in the discussion of yet a third passage he concludes, on the
basis of chronological considerations, that the Christian Jesus is never
mentioned in the Talmud at all. Now, if his argument that the Jesus of
the boiling excrement is not the Talmud’s Jesus of Nazareth still stands,
then R. Yehiel has not two Jesuses but three, two of whom came from
Nazareth, and this is in fact strongly implied in the Christian response
recorded in the Oxford manuscript of the Hebrew text and is explicitly
stated in the Moscow manuscript.37
This position would have made it possible to argue that the execution
of the Christian Jesus was primarily the responsibility of the Roman
authorities or that only a handful of Jews were involved; in short,
all the options of modern Jewish apologetics became available once

37 Vikkuah R. Yehiel mi-Paris, ed. by R. Margaliyyot (Lwow, n.d.), pp. 15–17.

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 On the Uses of History in Medieval Jewish Polemic against Christianity

rabbinic statements about Jesus’ villainy and execution had been made
to vanish into thin air. But R. Yehiel does nothing of the sort, and the
edited Hebrew version retains his initial statement about the Christian
Jesus as an inciter to idolatry. Whatever one thinks of the sincerity of
the multiple Jesus theory, R. Yehiel found a way to neutralize some
dangerous rabbinic statements, and yet the essential Ashkenazic
evaluation of Jesus remains even in the text of this disputation.
In the fourteenth century, Moses ha-Kohen of Tordesillas made much
stronger use of the theory of the two Jesuses in defending Judaism
and the Talmud against renewed attack. For Moses, the lack of identity
between the Talmud’s Jesus and the hero of the New Testament is
demonstrated not only by the chronological problem raised by R. Yehiel
but by an additional, striking point. The Jesus of the Talmud erected
a brick and bowed to it (B. Sanhedrin 107b), while the Jesus of the Gospels
was an uncompromising monotheist!38
And so we return to our original question. Why was an observant Jew
who made no claims of divinity executed by Jewish authorities?
Profiat Duran addressed this question only in passing as part of his
argument that Jesus did not annul the law. “If the crucifixion stories
about him are true, you will find that they condemned him to death not
for destroying the Torah but for saying that he is the son of God and the
Messiah.”39 Duran, who was not a halakhist, does not seem disturbed
by the fact that these accusations in themselves—given the assumption
that “son of God” was not meant literally—do not clearly generate
a death sentence according to Jewish law.40 It would be much too facile

38 ‘Ezer ha-Emunah, pp. 141–142. Cf. my “Christians, Gentiles, and the Talmud: A Fourteenth-
Century Jewish Response to the Attack on Rabbinic Judaism,” in Religionsgespräche im
Mittelalter, ed. by Bernard Lewis and Friedrich Niewöhner (Wiesbaden, 1992), p. 128.
39 Kelimat ha-Goyim, p. 25, a statement repeated by Simon Duran in Keshet u-Magen,
p. 4. (The reference is to the account in Matthew 26:63–66.) Elsewhere, Profiat Duran
maintained that Jesus considered himself superior even to Moses (p. 4). Again, cf. the
reiteration of this passage by Simon Duran, Keshet u-Magen, p. 25.
40 See my remarks in “Religion, Nationalism, and Historiography: Yehezkel Kaufmann’s
Account of Jesus and Early Christianity,” in Scholars and Scholarship: The Interaction
between Judaism and Other Cultures, ed. by Leo Landman (New York, 1990), p. 167:
Kaufmann argues that Jesus could properly have been executed as a false prophet,
even according to Mishnaic law, for refusing to provide a sign authenticating his
messianic claims. In fact, a person who refused to provide a sign might well forfeit
his right to be believed, but he would not forfeit his life. Only a prediction or
sign that did not materialize would be grounds for execution, and nothing in the

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 The Middle Ages

to solve this problem by suggesting that Duran’s declared methodology

of refuting Christianity from its own sources (ke-fi ma’amar ha-omer)
means that he really did not believe what he said about Jesus and that his
ultimate loyalty was to the talmudic reports about an inciter to idolatry.
His entire discussion of the historical development of Christianity, which
is beyond the purview of this essay, shows that he took New Testament
evidence seriously and that he regarded both idolatry and the rejection of
the law as later developments. In discussing when Jesus lived, he accords
rabbinic tradition great respect but does not appear unequivocally bound
by it. Thus, after examining Christian sources, he concludes that the
statement of the “true sages” (hakhmei ha-emet) that Jesus was a student
of R. Yehoshua ben Perahiah “appears [yera’eh] to be the truth.”41 I suppose
one could insist on a literal translation of yera’eh emet as “is seen to be the
truth,” but I doubt very much that this is correct. In the final analysis,
Profiat Duran’s Jesus is that of a critical reading of the Gospels, not of
a straightforward reading of the Talmud.
R. Simon Duran, who was a preeminent halakhist, could not avoid
the question of Jesus’ capital crime, nor could he marginalize talmudic
traditions, and the problem appears to have created a tension in his
image of Jesus almost reminiscent of earlier Ashkenazic contradictions.
In a lengthy passage borrowing many of Profiat Duran’s arguments,
Simon maintained that Jesus made no claim of divinity and that the
term “son of God” means the most exalted of men.42 In his general
reconstruction of Jesus’ biography, however, the emphasis differs. There,
the New Testament report that Jesus was executed for describing himself
as the son of God is connected with the talmudic assertions that he led
Israel astray (hesit ve-hiddiah, which is really a terminus technicus for
encouraging idolatry) and that he set up a brick to which he bowed. This
rabbinic report, which does not contend that Jesus claimed divinity for
himself, is the historical truth, while the Gospel assertion that he was
executed for claiming to be the son of God is a confused reflection of his

sources indicates that this had occurred. If Jesus claimed to be the Messiah but
refused to produce a sign, the only evidence strong enough to justify his execution
would be the fact that he died without redeeming the world. Jews presented that
evidence to the court of history, but it was too late to present it to a court of law.
41 Kelimat ha-Goyim, p. 63. This discussion makes it perfectly clear that Duran gave no
credence to a theory of two Jesuses.
42 Keshet u-Magen, pp. 22–25.

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 On the Uses of History in Medieval Jewish Polemic against Christianity

condemnation for incitement to idolatry.43 Through the miasma of New

Testament misunderstanding, one can nonetheless glimpse the kernel of
truth that reinforces talmudic tradition.
Thus, Profiat Duran’s assertion that “son of God” in the Gospels
does not denote divinity is a key element in the depiction of Jesus as a
monotheist who never condoned idolatry. Simon Duran, while accepting
his predecessor’s understanding of the Gospels’ “son of God,” sought what
was for him the best of both worlds: a Jesus who never endorsed the
Christian doctrine that he himself was God (a position confirmed by both
Talmud and Gospels) but who incited Jews to worship a different, old-
fashioned form of idolatry (the stone cult that the Talmud calls Merqulis)
and who worshipped it himself—all this while affirming the eternity
and inviolability of the Torah! In Simon Duran’s case it may be that the
assertions of Jesus’ devotion to the law are indeed a purely tactical use of
Christian evidence. (“We have cited their words verbatim to speak for us
against those who believe in him by demonstrating that they have been
untrue to Jesus’ intention.”)44 Nonetheless, it is hard to come away from
much of Keshet u-Magen, including the discussion of the apostles, without
assuming that Duran was serious about the argument that Jesus observed
the law, and this is a position that is very difficult to square with his
endorsement of the talmudic account of an inciter to idolatry.
As the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance and early modern
times, access to historical sources, interest in history, and a critical sense
of the past changed the face of at least some historical literature. It is
hardly necessary to say that among Jews, the quintessential example
of these developments is the sixteenth-century Italian scholar Azariah
de’ Rossi, and it should come as no surprise that the next level of
sophistication in the polemical reconstruction of the historical Jesus was
reached by an Italian Jew of the seventeenth century.
Leone da Modena’s Magen va-Herev reflects philosophical sophisti-
cation, thorough familiarity with Christian literature, and an unusual
degree of historical acumen. This last characteristic is manifest in Leone’s
analysis of the development of Christian doctrine, which cannot detain
us here, but it is also evident in a brief chapter that attempts to paint
a portrait of Jesus’ beliefs and the unfolding of his career. Like Simon

43 Ibid., pp. 13–15.

44 Ibid., p. 4.

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 The Middle Ages

Duran, Leone tells us that he will utilize Christian and Jewish sources
to produce his reconstruction, but the difference in both methodology
and conclusions illustrates strikingly the differences of time, place, and
author.
Leone begins with a vehement dismissal of an unnamed Jewish
version of Jesus’ career, which is surely Toledot Yeshu. “For various
reasons, it is a disgrace for any Jew to believe it.” He goes on to say
with great confidence that from perusing “our books and theirs,” he has
attained an understanding of Jesus “which I believe to be as firmly true
as if I had lived in his generation and sat with him.” Jesus observed the
Torah. If he had not done so, he would have had no credibility at all in
that society. Rather, he rejected a number of minor practices, one of the
first of which was the ritual washing of hands with a blessing, which
probably accounts for a talmudic statement that whoever is lax with
respect to this ritual is uprooted from the world (Sotah 4b).
We must remember, continues Leone, that this was a period of
sectarian diversity, which has been described in historical works
ranging from Josippon to Caroli Sigonii’s De Republica Hebraeorum.45
That Jesus himself identified with the Pharisees, who were the bearers
of the true tradition, is evident from his statement that they sit on the
seat of Moses. Despite this indication that he acknowledged both the
written and the oral law, his minor deviations alarmed the Sages, who
feared that Sadducees, Boethusians, Essenes, and others would soon
be joined by an additional sect. In response to their opposition, Jesus
strengthened himself by claiming the mantle of son of God. This is not
a claim of divinity but of a status higher than that of the prophets. Jesus
was no fool; he knew perfectly well that even the masses would have
stoned him had he made the preposterous assertion that a man who was
seen to eat, drink, sleep, and defecate was God. He certainly could not
have anticipated the incredible truth: that after his death people would
actually concoct arguments to affirm such absurdities.46
For all its spirited partisanship, this is serious history. It attempts
to account for all the evidence; it utilizes secondary as well as primary
historical literature; it dismisses contemptuously the fantasies of
Toledot Yeshu; it examines historical context; it speculates in sober,

45 Bologna, 1582.
46 Magen va-Herev, pp. 43–45.

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 On the Uses of History in Medieval Jewish Polemic against Christianity

informed fashion about the possible motivations, concerns, even the

personal development of the major protagonists. Leone really cares about
understanding the hero of the Gospels, so that his Jesus is not a stick
figure; he has a texture that even Profiat Duran’s Jesus lacks.
In light of Azariah de’ Rossi’s well-known skepticism about some
historical material in the Talmud, the role of rabbinic traditions in
Leone’s reconstruction is particularly intriguing. He declares that he
reached his conclusions on the basis of “our books and theirs,” but the
only Jewish material explicitly cited is Josippon and a single talmudic
reference to washing one’s hands. Even if we recognize the relevance of
other rabbinic sources to his portrait of sectarianism, the absence of any
reference to R. Yehoshua ben Perahiah’s idolatrous student or to the man
executed for sorcery and incitement to idolatry is striking. When Simon
Duran produced a portrait of Jesus on the basis of our books and theirs,
these talmudic passages took center stage. Unless we assume that Leone
endorsed the two-Jesus theory, which strikes me as improbable in the
extreme, he has silently rejected the historicity not only of Toledot Yeshu
but of the major rabbinic sources as well.47
Whatever one thinks of the number of Jesuses in antiquity, no one
can question the multiplicity of Jesuses in medieval Jewish polemic.
Many Jews with no interest at all in history were forced to confront
a historical/biographical question that continues to bedevil historians to
our own day. Once the issue was joined, it produced a series of analyses
that reflect profound differences among varying Jewish centers in
different periods, and it demonstrates a development in which Jews
who deal with history in grudging, limited fashion, as if compelled by
the proverbial demon, give way to polemicists who, within the limits of
their time, seem inspired by the historical Muse.

47 Because Profiat Duran’s work explicitly focused on Christian sources exclusively, his
ignoring of the crucial Talmudic assertions is considerably less striking than Leone’s.
I am not suggesting that dismissing rabbinic material is the mark of a good historian.
What is genuinely significant, however, is the transformation that allowed a rabbinic
figure to place all the sources, including those in the Talmud, into the crucible of critical
historical assessment.

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 CHRISTIANS, GENTILES, AND THE TALMUD
A Fourteenth-Century Jewish Response
to the Attack on Rabbinic Judaism1

From: Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter, ed. by Bernard Lewis and Friedrich

Niewöhner (Otto Harrassowitz: Wiesbaden, 1992), pp. 115–130.

The Jewish-Christian debate underwent a momentous transformation in

the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. From time immemorial, Jews
and Christians had argued about the alleged Christological meaning
of verses in the Hebrew Bible, and in the high middle ages Jews began
to exhibit growing sophistication in their philosophical critique of the
central dogmas of Christian faith. Since the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries mark the maturation of the philosophical debate, their
centrality to the history of polemic could well be defended on this basis
alone.2 Nonetheless, these centuries were also marked by the growth of
another, more innovative approach, which was fraught with acute danger
for medieval Jewry. Christian polemicists began to study the Talmud.

1 The writing of this article began and ended under dramatically different circumstances.
Most of the text was written when I was teaching, on two weeks notice, at the inaugural
semester [late February-early April, 1989] of the Moscow yeshiva founded by Rabbi
Adin Steinsaltz, which opened as the first officially recognized institution of higher
Jewish education in the Soviet Union (The Judaica Section of the Academy of World
Civilizations). The last few pages of text were written on the plane returning to New
York, slightly after the deadline for submission of the preliminary version before the
conference [in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, where it was presented]. The only relevant books
available to me were the Bible, the Talmud, and ‘Ezer ha-Emunah, although the inspiration
provided by the extraordinary devotion of the yeshiva’s students was more than sufficient
compensation.
The footnotes, on the other hand, were written in the fall semester of 1989, when
I was a fellow in the Eden-like environment of the Annenberg Research Institute in
Philadelphia. It is a pleasure to thank the administration and staff of the Institute and
of its library for providing the conditions for a rare and rewarding experience.
2 See Daniel J. Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics Against Christianity in the Middle Ages
(New York, 1977).

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 Christians, Gentiles, and the Talmud

Adumbrations of the Christian use of Rabbinic literature can be found

before the thirteenth century, but these are at best a faint, barely audible
accompaniment to the main themes of the debate, and in most polemics
they are nowhere to be found. In the 1230’s, however, Nicholas Donin
began to press a threefold assertion: The Talmud contains absurdities,
insults against Christians, and blasphemies against Jesus. His further
assertion that it is another law replacing that of the Bible had potential
consequences of the highest magnitude, but the real impact of that
argument appears to have been contained and is in any case peripheral
to our present concerns.3 Several decades later, Pablo Christiani refined
and popularized an array of arguments purporting to demonstrate the
truth of Christian dogmas from the Talmud itself. However disparate the
two approaches may appear, medieval Christians did not regard them
as contradictory: Rabbinic texts, despite their theological obtuseness
and hostility toward Christianity, preserved elements of the ancient,
pre-Talmudic traditions which, like the Hebrew Bible itself, affirmed the
validity of Christian beliefs.
In his confrontation with Donin, R. Yehiel of Paris denied the
identification of the Talmud’s Jesus with that of the Christians,
distinguished between the Gentiles of old and the Christians of today,
and even remarked briefly that the aggadah, or non-legal material in
Rabbinic literature, does not have the same binding force as Talmudic
law.4 The key points, however, were not fully developed, and it was left for
later Jews to pursue the argument against an increasingly sophisticated
Christian attack. The issue of aggadah was especially critical in dealing
with Pablo’s approach, and Nahmanides proffered the famous and
controversial classification of Rabbinic texts in which aggadot are merely
sermones that can be accepted or rejected at the discretion of the reader.5

3 See Ch. Merchavia, Ha-Talmud bi-Re’i ha-Nazrut (Jerusalem, 1970); Jeremy Cohen The
Friars and the Jews (Ithaca, 1982); Joel Rembaum, “The Talmud and the Popes; Reflections
on the Talmud Trials of the 1240’s,” Viator 13 (1982): 203–223; Robert Chazan, “The
Condemnation of the Talmud Reconsidered,” Proceedings of the American Academy for
Jewish Research 55 (1988): 11–30; cf. also my brief review of The Friars and the Jews in
the American Historical Review 88 (1983): 93.
4 Vikkuah Rabbenu Yehiel mi-Paris, ed. by S. Gruenbaum (Thorn, 1873). The point about
aggadah is on p. 2.
5 Kitvei Rabbenu Mosheh ben Nahman, ed. by C. D. Chavel (Jerusalem, 1963), I, p. 308;
Bernard Septimus, “Open Rebuke and Concealed Love’: Nahmanides and the Andalusian
Tradition,” in Rabbi Moses Nahmanides (Ramban): Explorations in his Religious and Literary

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 The Middle Ages

Nahmanides himself, though he clearly legitimated the simple rejection

of an aggadah, also spoke of deeper meanings, which often enabled the
Jewish polemicist to deflect a Christian argument without imputing
error to the Talmudic sages.
With respect to Donin’s attack, the crucial issue was the distinction
between ancient gentiles and medieval Christians, and this point
achieved its fullest development outside the context of polemic. In the
late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, R. Menahem ha-Meiri
of Perpignan built upon the scattered, ad hoc remarks of various earlier
halakhists and established a category which he called “nations bound
by religious mores”; the central thrust of this classification appears to
be that these nations behave in a civilized fashion, but ha-Meiri also
asserted that they are free of idolatry. In the case of Christians, he
explicitly maintained that although they have an erroneous conception
of the Deity, they are monotheists nonetheless. While ha-Meiri did not
extend the practical halakhic consequences of his distinction much
beyond established precedent, he spoke with a passionate conviction
which is absent from his sources and creates a powerful impression of
sincerity. Moreover, ha-Meiri appears concerned with more than the
unpleasant economic consequences that would result from applying
certain Talmudic regulations to medieval Christians; he was also
motivated by a sensitivity to the moral problem inherent in a legal
code that forbids the returning of a lost item to a gentile and permits
the retention of funds that came into one’s possession because of
miscalculation by a non-Jew. Such regulations, he argued, were never
intended to apply to civilized monotheists and are hence irrelevant in
contemporary practice.6

Virtuosity, ed. by Isadore Twersky (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), pp. 20–22; my review of
“Maccoby’s Judaism on Trial,” Jewish Quarterly Review 76 (1986): 253–257 (esp. 254–255);
Marvin Fox, “Nahmanides on the Status of Aggadot: Perspectives on the Disputation at
Barcelona, 1263,” Journal of Jewish Studies 40 (1989): 95–109. For a general discussion
of attitudes toward aggadah, see Marc Saperstein, Decoding the Rabbis (Cambridge, Mass.,
and London, 1980), pp. 1–20.
6 See Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance (London, 1961), pp. 114–128; Ephraim
E. Urbach, “Shitat ha-Sovlanut shel R. Menahem ha-Meiri—Meqorah u-Migbeloteha,”
in Peraqim be-Toledot ha-Hevrah ha-Yehudit bi-Yemei ha-Beinayim u-Va-‘et ha-Hadashah—
Muqdashim Li-Professor Y. Katz (Jerusalem, 1980), pp. 34–40; J. Katz, “Od al Sovlanuto
ha-Datit shel R. Menahem ha-Meiri,” Zion 46 (1981): 243–246; Yaaqov Blidstein, “Yahaso
shel R. Menahem ha-Meiri la-Nokhri—Bein Apologetiqah le-Hafnamah,” Zion 51 (1986):
153–166.

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 Christians, Gentiles, and the Talmud

In the 1370’s, a Spanish Jew named Moses ha-Kohen of Tordesillas

was confronted by the new Christian critique of the Talmud in all its
force. By this time, Christian polemicists had begun to absorb and apply
the arguments in Raymond Martini’s massive, late-thirteenth-century
Pugio Fidei, and the works of the learned Jewish convert Abner of Burgos
had become a major force in Jewish-Christian relations. Moses ha-Kohen
had participated in a disputation forced upon the Jewish community of
Avila, and subsequently wrote a polemical work entitled ‘Ezer ha-Emunah
(The Aid of Faith) which no doubt reflected some of the arguments in the
public disputation. The most important part of his work, however, bears
no relation to that disputation. He informs us that a Christian student
of Abner of Burgos approached him with a demand that he respond in
private to a series of criticisms of Talmudic Judaism. Should he refuse,
the Christian would preach a sermon that would be attended by both
Christians and Jews in which he would impute “to the Jews every evil
in the world in the presence of the Christian audience; he would list
all the objectionable aggadot in the Talmud, and indicate that we curse
them every day.” Moses, then, was presented with an “offer” he could
not refuse, and the final section of ‘Ezer ha-Emunah is the first large
scale example of a Jewish response to the mature Christian attack on
the Talmud.7
Though the primary context of this discussion is the threat to reveal
an intolerable level of hostility to Christians, Abner’s student utilized
the full range of Christian approaches to the Talmud, including the
discovery within its pages of support for Christian doctrine. Thus, we
find the midrashic passage already cited by Pablo that the Messiah was
born on the day of the Temple’s destruction (Lamentations Rabbah 1:16,
#51), a passage that presumably demonstrates that he must have already
come, reinforced by the Rabbinic statement, made so many centuries ago,
that he has been sitting in the gates of Rome (B. Sanhedrin 98a). Indeed,
says the Christian, the Talmud even has positive things to say about

7 The text was edited in part II of Yehudah Shamir’s dissertation, Rabbi Moses Ha-Kohen
of Tordesillas and his Book ‘Ezer Ha-Emunah—A Chapter in the History of the Judeo-
Christian Controversy (Coconut Grove, Florida), 1972 (henceforth E. H.). Part I, which
contains Shamir’s analysis, was later republished with the same title (Leiden, 1975); on
the marginal value of this analysis, see Daniel J. Lasker’s review, Association for Jewish
Studies Newsletter 20 (June, 1977): 22, 24. The threat by Abner’s student is described in
E. H., p. 127.

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 The Middle Ages

Jesus himself (Yer. ‘Avodah Zarah 40d).8 The contention that the Talmud
can be scrutinized for doctrinally useful assertions despite its essential
falsehood comes into bold relief when the Christian cites the famous
view of R. Hillel that “Israel has no Messiah, for he has already been
consumed in the days of Hezekiah” (B. Sanhedrin 99a). The second half
of the statement, we are told, is untrue, but the first half demonstrates
that Jews should abandon their vain hope that the Messiah is yet to
come.9 Moreover, the Christian cites several Messianic calculations in
the Talmud which point to a period nearly a millennium earlier than the
fourteenth century (B. Sanhedrin 97a–b).10
The most interesting argument that the Talmud undermines belief in
the future advent of the Messiah comes in the citation of two enigmatic
passages from Sanhedrin (98a and 97a). The first of these asserts that
“the son of David will not come until someone searching for a small fish
for a sick person will be unable to find one,” while the other says that
he will not come until pockets will have been emptied of their very last
penny.11 Moses’ adversary argues that neither of these conditions could
ever be met, and therefore the Talmudic passages must be hinting at
a message that differs from their superficial meaning: “Just as all this
cannot happen, so the Messiah cannot come.” Since the major Jewish
line of defense was to explain aggadot non-literally, it is striking to find
a Christian polemicist exploiting precisely such an approach, even if only
to a very limited degree.
Abner’s student goes on to cite Talmudic remarks that express what
he regards as objectionable beliefs or which reflect badly on the status of
Jews. Thus, the Rabbis assert that God encourages belief in idolatry so
that He might punish idolaters (B. ‘Avodah Zarah 55a), and they allegedly
understand the scapegoat in Leviticus 16 as a sacrifice to a power other
than God (Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer 46). One Talmudic sage said that from
the time the Temple was destroyed, an iron barrier has separated the
people of Israel from their Father in heaven (B. Berakhot 32b), and
another passage maintains that whoever persecutes Israel attains the
highest office (B. Gittin 56b and B. Sanhedrin 104b).12

8 E. H., pp. 153, 156, 154–155.

9 E. H., p. 131.
10 E. H., pp. 132–133.
11 E. H., p. 133.
12 E. H., pp. 146, 148, 157, 143.

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 Christians, Gentiles, and the Talmud

All these arguments, however, are secondary to the crucial assertion:

The Talmud is replete with passages that reflect such hostility toward
Christians that the toleration of Jews in a Christian society must be
called into the most serious question. Because of the important work
of Jeremy Cohen, we have become accustomed to regarding the “other
law” argument as the most dangerous to the fundamental toleration of
Jews; if Jews do not really observe the Hebrew Bible, one of the standard
rationales for tolerating them would be jeopardized. On the other hand,
the arguments from blasphemy and the like, however threatening they
may have been, could be dealt with in the final extremity through the
censorship of a handful of Talmudic texts. In fact, however, if Jewish
security was not seriously undermined by these attacks, the Jewish sense
of security certainly was. Of the various factors that may have motivated
the later Luther to advocate hair-raising forms of persecution against
Jews, I am persuaded that an important consideration was his reading
of Margaritha’s The Whole Jewish Faith, which detailed attacks against
Christianity in Jewish texts and ritual.13 In our case, Moses ha-Kohen’s
adversary explicitly and repeatedly raised the question of Christian
toleration of people who curse and deride the majority faith; the threat
raised at the outset of the discussion was never allowed to fade.
The list of the Talmud’s offenses included a variety of disturbing
allegations. While Christians actually pay a higher fine for assaulting
a Jew than for striking a fellow Christian, the Talmud says that a gentile
who hits a Jew is guilty of a capital offense (B. Sanhedrin 58b) while
a Jew who strikes a fellow Jew would clearly be treated less harshly. Such
discrimination also extends to liability for damage to property (M. Bava

13 The point is not merely that Luther used Margaritha but that the material in The Whole
Jewish Faith may have helped transform his attitude toward the Jews. For a survey of
the literature on Luther and the Jews, see Johannes Brosseder, Luthers Stellung zu den
Juden im Spiegel seiner Interpreten (Munich, 1972), and for a recent analysis see Mark
U. Edwards, Jr., Luther’s Last Battles: Politics and Polemics, 1531–1546 (Ithaca, 1986).
See also the studies of Heiko A. Oberman, which tend to emphasize the continuities
in Luther’s stance (The Roots of Anti-Semitism [Philadelphia, 1984], pp. 93–137; Luther:
Man Between God and the Devil [New Haven and London, 1989], pp. 292–297). For the
argument that Luther changed his position on the Jews primarily because of the impact
of new information, see Gerhard O. Forde, “Luther and the Jews: A Review and Some
Preliminary Reflections,” in Luther, Lutherans, and the Jewish People: A Study Resource, 1977,
prepared by the American Lutheran Church, pp. 6–20. Despite the apologetic context
of the publication (which does not mention Margaritha), and despite the undoubted
relevance of other considerations, the argument deserves to be taken seriously.

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 The Middle Ages

Qamma 4:3) and to the ruling that the obligation to return a lost item is
applicable only if the owner is a Jew (M. Makhshirin 2:8; cf. B. Bava Mezi’a
24a–b). The Rabbis maintain that the best of the gentiles deserves to be
killed (Yer. Qiddushin 66c). Jews dare to call Christian holidays “days of
catastrophe” (e. g., M. ‘Avodah Zarah 1:1) while living in Christian lands;
they curse Christians, their Churches, their governments, even their
cemeteries (B. Berakhot 58b). The blessing upon seeing a Jewish king is
“Blessed is He who has granted a portion of His glory to those who fear
Him”; for Gentile kings the final phrase becomes merely “to flesh and
blood” (B. Berakhot 58a). Jews are told not to rent homes to gentiles
(M. ‘Avodah Zarah 1:8) and not to sell arms to the very people who protect
them (Tos. ‘Avodah Zarah 2:4). They compare Gentiles to dogs (Mekhilta
Mishpatim 20) and assert that the contamination that the primeval
serpent inserted into Eve was eliminated from the Jews at Sinai but not
from other nations (B. ‘Avodah Zarah 22b and B. Yevamot 103b).14
It is evident from this summary that the Christian attack was based
upon both the legal and the non-legal material in the Talmud—upon the
halakhah as well as the aggadah. Hence, if the labeling of this section of
the book as “the debates concerning the aggadot” is the work of Moses
himself rather than of a copyist, it is particularly interesting. Although
Moses never denies the authoritativeness of Talmudic halakhah, he
would like to create the impression that the entire dispute revolves
around passages that do not stand at the center of the Talmudic corpus.
The question of the binding force of aggadah had been introduced into
the Barcelona disputation by Nahmanides in an effort to undermine
the fundamental thrust of Pablo’s argument. The issue, however, is
an extremely sensitive one, since the Jewish polemicist runs the risk
of vanquishing his Christian opponent only to discover that his Jewish
audience has lost respect for the Talmudic rabbis. Moses ha-Kohen’s
polemic is an early, revealing example of the delicate line that Jews had
to tread in confronting an extraordinarily complex challenge.
Moses begins with an affirmation of faith in all of Rabbinic literature
which becomes steadily more ambiguous as his discussion continues and
ultimately encompasses sharp disagreements with Rabbinic assertions.
“I believe,” he writes, “that all the words of the sages are true. Nonetheless,
the Talmud is not a homogeneous work.” The Rabbis said that one does

14 E. H., pp. 134, 154, 134–136, 144–145, 151, 144, 154.

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 Christians, Gentiles, and the Talmud

not refute aggadah, and the reason is that there is no point in disagreeing
with material that does not contain binding instruction.
Moses continues with an interesting typology of aggadot and an even
more interesting application of that typology. 1. Some aggadot result
from the teacher’s desire to lift his students’ spirits before teaching them.
2. In other cases, he needed to wake them up by making astonishing
remarks, as in the observation that a single Jewish woman during the
Egyptian bondage would give birth to six hundred thousand children
(Mekhilta Beshallah, Massekhta de-Shira 9). 3. A rabbi may have wished
to make a profound observation inappropriate for the masses, and so he
cloaked it in a parable that would be taken literally by the ignorant and
figuratively by the wise. For such a genre, no less a work than the Song
of Songs serves as a legitimating precedent. 4. A sage who had a dream
bordering on divine inspiration would sometimes recount the experience
as if he had been awake. 5. Finally, the Talmud contains extravagant
stories and assertions that may have a deeper meaning or may simply be
exaggerations along the lines of the Scriptural passage that speaks of the
cities of Canaan as “large and fortified to the heavens” (Deuteromy 1:28).15
This typology is followed by a carefully calibrated, almost exquisitely
poised formulation: “With respect to all these aggadot that I have
mentioned, if it is an aggadah that appears reasonable, I will believe
it as is; if, on the other hand, it is highly unreasonable, then if I wish
I will defend its wisdom by believing that its author intended a meaning
that eludes me, and if I wish I will not believe it, since the author may
have said it for one of the reasons that I have listed above.”16 The key
point here is that disbelief is not disbelief and error is not error. The
decision not to believe is specifically placed within the framework of
the author’s typology, and none of his categories include error or even
genuine falsehood. Neither exaggerations nor parables nor intentionally
astonishing statements are unqualifiedly false, and prophetic dreams are
among the highest forms of truth. The analogies to the Song of Songs
and the verse in Deuteronomy demonstrate even to Christians that the
word of God itself contains surface falsehoods; rejection of the literal
meaning of a text hardly undermines its standing and authority. At this
stage, Moses’ concession is no concession at all.

15 E. H., pp. 128–129.

16 E. H., p. 129.

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 The Middle Ages

Nevertheless, as the discussion progresses and becomes more specific,

the willingness to reject aggadot gradually grows until it reaches remarkable
proportions. A particularly striking aspect of Moses’ argument is that
he will oppose an aggadic statement to a biblical one and triumphantly
assert that the aggadic passage stands refuted. In the context of Christian
arguments about the absurdity of the aggadah, such an approach appears
self-defeating, but where Christians cite the Talmud to demonstrate
Christianity or refute Jewish beliefs, this is an argument of great, ironic
force. In the final analysis, do Christians prefer the Bible or the Talmud?
The first, relatively moderate example of this argument comes in
response to the Christian citation of a Talmudic passage describing the
names in Isaiah 9:5 as names of the Messiah. Since medieval Jewish
exegesis avoided a Messianic understanding of a verse that arguably
spoke of a child named “Mighty God” and “Eternal Father,” this passage
gave considerable aid and comfort to a Christian polemicist. Moses
refutes the argument in predictable fashion by pointing to an alternative
Rabbinic position and arguing that even the cited view does not require
belief in the Messiah’s divinity. But he also maintains that “even if the
aggadah were as you say, I should surely believe the prophecy of Isaiah
including the verses in that very same passage which indicate without
a doubt that this was said of Hezekiah rather than the aggadic statement
of a Talmudic sage.” Similarly, in response to Christian citations of
Talmudic statements suggesting that the Messiah must already have
come, Moses provides alternative interpretations, but he also suggests
that the citations are in any case irrelevant in light of biblical evidence
that the Messianic age is yet to be.17
Later in the work, Moses cites biblical verses to undermine the
Talmudic observation that the persecutors of Israel attain the highest
office even though that observation was itself buttressed by the citation
of Lamentations 1:5. In this case, however, the tactic was reinforced
by another clever but forced assertion. In B. Gittin 56b, the deceased
Titus, in the midst of his richly deserved suffering in the afterlife,
advises a questioner that despite Israel’s pre-eminence in the world to
come, joining the Jewish people is too difficult. The sensible course,
then, is to attain high station in this world by persecuting them. Moses
quotes a series of verses to demonstrate that oppressing Israel brings

17 E. H., pp. 130, 133.

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 Christians, Gentiles, and the Talmud

punishment even in this world, but he formulates this as a refutation not

of the Talmud but of Titus. “I should surely believe the prophets rather
than the wicked Titus, who was our enemy and destroyed our Temple and
our city.” The problem, as Moses is well aware, is that R. Yohanan and not
Titus made the identical remark in B. Sanhedrin 104b. In an aside to the
reader, Moses suggests that if a Christian should quote the latter passage,
he should be told that R. Yohanan was discussing the past rather than
the present or future. The persecutors of Israel “attained”—not “attain”
—the highest rank (kol ha-mezer le-Yisrael na’asah—not na’aseh—rosh).
This ploy was unavailable to Moses in dealing with the passage in Gittin
since Titus was currently giving advice on the basis of this verse; in
Sanhedrin, where the refuted party would have to have been R. Yohanan,
it was available, and Moses did not hesitate to use it.18
In this passage, then, Moses was not willing to reject the words of
a Talmudic sage on the basis of biblical evidence. Elsewhere, however,
he does—or almost does—precisely that in surprisingly sharp fashion.
In B. Berakhot 32b, R. Eleazar cites Ezekiel 4:3 to demonstrate that since
the destruction of the Temple an iron barrier has separated Israel from
its Father in heaven. Since the proof-text refers to a barrier outside
the city of Jerusalem and not to a partition between God and Israel,
“R. Eleazar,” says Moses, “could not legitimately adduce the slightest
evidence for his position from this verse, not even by way of an asmakhta
[i. e., a biblical citation utilized to support a point without reference to
the straightforward meaning of the verse].” He softens the blow slightly
as he continues, but only after reiterating his thorough, unequivocal
rejection of the Talmudic rabbi’s exegesis: “This verse, then, constitutes
no evidence whatsoever for R. Eleazar’s statement . . . ; but since I am
concerned with his words and with his honor, I will explain his statement,
but in a way that deviates from his own reason.” Thus, we do not quite
have the rejection of a Rabbinic statement on Scriptural grounds, but
we do have the rejection of a Rabbinic interpretation of the Bible on the
grounds that it cannot be sustained by a careful examination of the text.
And despite Moses’ effort to explain R. Eleazar’s essential statement, the
reader surely finishes the discussion with the unmistakable impression
that rejection of that statement is a viable, legitimate option.19

18 E. H., pp. 143–144.

19 E. H., pp. 157–158.

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 The Middle Ages

Finally and remarkably, Moses is prepared to utilize the Bible to reject

even the sort of aggadah that the Christian cites to demonstrate the
objectionable beliefs in the Talmud. As we have already seen, this appears
to be a self-defeating concession to the Christian argument. Apparently,
however, Moses regarded such an attack primarily as an effort to
attribute these beliefs to Judaism itself, and he was therefore prepared
to disassociate himself from them with a vigor that is almost heedless of
the impact upon the Talmud.
Moses’ Christian interlocutor had cited the Talmudic assertion that
God encourages idolaters in their folly so that He may destroy them.
Moses begins his reply with the standard remark that aggadot have no
legal consequences and often represent the opinion of a single scholar.
In this case, he continues, he does not believe this aggadah in accordance
with its plain meaning because it contradicts the Bible, “and I believe the
words of Jeremiah and David rather than the aggadah.” Again, “How can
I abandon belief in the words of a prophet of God and believe an aggadah
that says the opposite of the prophecies?” What follows is a telling
example of the inner turmoil caused by this issue. Moses had begun by
denying his belief in the “plain meaning” of the aggadah, and continued
with the very strong language contrasting the Talmudic statement and
the Bible. Under the impact of his argument, he then allows himself to
make the remarkable assertion that the Talmudic rabbi said “something
improper” (davar shelo ke-hogen). Immediately, however, he continues
with a partial defense of the “improper” statement; on various occasions,
after all, the Bible tells us that God helps the already wicked on their
road to disaster.20 Is the statement, then, improper? Is it true? Does it
have a deeper meaning? Does it contradict the Bible? At various points
in a very brief passage, Moses appears to give an affirmative answer
to all these questions. Clearly, he preferred transparent and logically
dubious tergiversations to the painful alternatives of a full defense or
a candid rejection of this aggadah. The strategy asserting that aggadot are
not binding while nonetheless attempting to explain each problematic
passage was sensible and often effective, but it did not always obscure the
tensions that beset Moses both as a polemicist and as a believing Jew.
Whatever the difficulties raised by Christian citations of Talmudic
passages to demonstrate either Christian truth or Rabbinic error, they

20 E. H., pp. 146–147.

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 Christians, Gentiles, and the Talmud

do not compare in their level of danger with allegations of extreme

hostility toward Gentiles (read: Christians) in classical Jewish texts. For
the most part, such passages were halakhic rather than aggadic and could
consequently not be dismissed as non-authoritative. The central Jewish
response, then, rested on the distinction between ancient pagans and
medieval Christians, and Moses utilized this approach in a consistent,
extreme, and intriguing fashion.
The terms “Gentile” (goy) and “Noahide,” he says, do not apply to
Christians, who are called Nozrim and not goyim.21 On one level, this is
simply a linguistic assertion, which gains credibility from the fact that
Christians occasionally used the term Gentile to mean a non-Christian.
Thus, when Moses transliterates the word gentiles into Hebrew as the
proper translation of goyim, he is, I think, consciously evoking this
Christian usage. The assertion that “Noahide,” whose plain meaning is
clearly inclusive, refers only to non-Christians is even more difficult to
defend. On one occasion, Moses makes it with no effort at a reasoned
argument; elsewhere, he notes the Rabbinic observation that the
Noahides violated their commandments, and he may be implying that
Christians observe these obligations and are hence excluded from the
Talmudic category.22 Nonetheless, even in that passage, the assertion
that Noahides are called gentiles (and hence non-Christians) is apparently
made independently of this implicit argument. If the Talmud meant
Nozrim, it would have said so.
Moses’ argument, however, goes well beyond language. One of
the central contexts in which halakhists had distinguished between
the gentiles of the Middle Ages and those of the Talmudic period
concerned the prohibition against doing business with non-Jews on
their holidays. Jacob Katz has argued persuasively that the permissive
rulings on this issue before the Meiri involve ad hoc assertions that
do not reflect a fundamental reevaluation of Christianity.23 Moses
ha-Kohen, however, did not read Katz’s work, and he responds to the
Christian complaint that Jews call Gentile holidays “days of catastrophe”
by reference to halakhic authorities who excluded medieval Christians
from this prohibition.

21 E. H., pp. 134–135.

22 E. H., pp. 134, 154.
23 Exclusiveness and Tolerance, pp. 33–36, 44–45.

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 The Middle Ages

He begins by pointing to a Talmudic remark that “gentiles outside

the land of Israel are not idolaters but merely follow the custom of
their ancestors” (B. Hullin 13b). In the standard text of the Talmud, the
word “gentiles” in this passage is nokhrim; Moses, however, quotes it as
goyim and explicitly refers it to Christians. The irony in this quotation
is therefore nothing less than excruciating. The linchpin of Moses’
fundamental approach has been that the term goyim necessarily excludes
Christians, while here he could not resist citing an extremely tempting
Talmudic passage where he must ignore, indeed contradict, the core of
his argument.24
Moreover, says Moses, Rashi explicitly asserted in this context
that Christians are not idolaters. Thus, the permissive halakhic ruling
becomes the basis for a theological reevaluation of Christianity on
the grounds that such a reevaluation must have been the basis of the
ruling. Moses then continues with an argument which, in a different
form, plays a key role in a famous ruling of the Tosafists. Christian
holidays, he says, are dedicated. to “the disciples of Jesus and those who
accepted suffering or death for his faith. You do not, however, render
them divine by believing in them; rather, you believe in God alone.”25
Until the last phrase, this argument is analogous to the Tosafist assertion
that a Jew needn’t be concerned about entering a business arrangement
that may lead a Christian to take an oath. Christians, after all, swear in
the name of saints to whom they ascribe no divinity.26 Tosafot, however,
raises the further question that Christians also swear in the name of
God while having Jesus of Nazareth in mind. Here the Tosafists provide
the dual reply that Jesus is not named explicitly and the intention is
in any case to the Creator of heaven and earth. The second part of the
answer cannot apparently stand on its own; had Jesus been mentioned
explicitly, Jews would have been forbidden to bring about such an oath.
Elsewhere, I have described this tension-laden position as the perception

24 E. H., pp. 35–36. One could imagine an assertion that if the goyim outside of the land of
Israel are not considered idolaters, this is true of Christians a fortiori. Moses, however,
would probably have been puzzled by the suggestion that genuine idolaters somehow
cease to be idolaters because of a change of location.
25 E. H., p. 136.
26 Tosafot Sanhedrin 63b, s. v. asur; Tosafot Bekhorot 2b, s. v. shemma. The best text of the
passage is in R. Yeruham b. Meshullam, Sefer Toledot Adam ve-Havvah (Venice, 1553),
17:5, p. 159b.

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 Christians, Gentiles, and the Talmud

of Christianity as idolatrous monotheism or monotheistic idolatry.27

Moses’ discussion certainly retains some of this tension. Though
Christians serve God alone, he considers it important to note that the
holidays are dedicated to saints rather than to Jesus. At the same time,
the phrase “You believe in God alone” is considerably stronger than
Tosafot’s “their intention is to the Creator of heaven and earth.” It is, in
fact, so strong that the reader is left wondering about the need to make
the point about the saints at all.
Elsewhere, Moses’ assertions of Christian monotheism are so
emphatic that they evoke the most extreme passages in ha-Meiri. The
Talmudic curse against pagan temples, he says, has no application to
Christian Churches because “you do not worship idolatry, as I have
already written. In your houses of worship, you pray to God alone, for
Jesus said . . . , ‘You may not bow down to another God,’ and he also said,
‘And Him shall you serve.’ And the truth is that you are careful about
idolatry.”28 It is a matter of no small interest that Jewish polemicists
who cited such remarks by Jesus generally did so to attack contemporary
Christianity for failing to heed the admonitions of its founder; here we
find precisely the reverse.
Moses then goes even further. Katz regards ha-Meiri’s insistence
that Jewish heretics are worse than Jewish converts to Christianity
as the most remarkable assertion that he makes, one with “no parallel
in the whole of medieval Hebrew literature.” In ‘Ezer ha-Emunah, the
same argument is made—at least implicitly—to deflect the allegation
that the curse against heretics in the Jewish liturgy is directed against
contemporary Christians. Moses’ antagonist first cites the text as
“Let there be no hope for the apostates (la-meshummadim), and let the
informers (malshinim) be destroyed in a moment”; he comments that
the first clause refers to Jewish converts to Christianity and the second
to Christians, whom Jews call heretics (minim) and enemies. Later,
Moses himself cites the second clause as “Let the minim be destroyed in
a moment,” which is almost certainly the correct reading in the earlier
citation of this passage as well. In his response, he argues that although

27 See my “Religion, Nationalism, and Historiography: Yehezkel Kaufmann’s Account of

Jesus and Early Christianity,” in Scholars and Scholarship: The Interaction Between Judaism
and Other Cultures, ed. by Leo Landman (New York, 1990), p. 152.
28 E. H., p. 137.

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 The Middle Ages

meshummadim indeed refers to converts in popular parlance, its proper

technical meaning is Jews who habitually commit certain transgressions,
as in the phrase, “a meshummad with respect to that transgression.” The
technical term for a convert is a memir. In other words, a habitual sinner
deserves to be cursed; a convert to Christianity does not.
As for the minim who should be destroyed in a moment, this
refers to those “who do not believe in the Creator, who deny reward
and punishment, hell and heaven, and who possess no Torah and
commandments. You, on the other hand, have a powerful faith in the
Creator; the difference is only that you believe in the trinity, which we
reject in favor of absolute unity. Moreover, you are the possessors of Torah
and commandments.” This is a passage that could have been (and may
have been) taken directly from ha-Meiri, who also spoke of Christianity
as a non-idolatrous religion which is flawed by a misunderstanding of
the precise nature of God.29 Ha-Meiri’s position remains more significant
because of its chronological priority, its distinguished provenance, and
its non-polemical context, but Moses’ work reflects the impact and
polemical utility of this approach. I am also inclined to think that despite
the implausible arguments that occasionally emerge in the discussion,
we are dealing with a position which Southern European Jews had begun
to internalize and which—at least in its fundamental outlines—Moses
sincerely believed.
In some contexts, Moses limits the definition of “gentile” even further
by referring it to the seven nations of ancient Canaan. The Talmud had
derived a prohibition against selling homes to gentiles in the land of
Israel from Deuteronomy 7:2, which indeed refers to the Canaanites, and
proceeded to add a Rabbinic prohibition against rentals as well. Moses’
interlocutor cites the passage without the limiting condition about the
land of Israel. Moses points out the condition, notes that the matter is
disputed in the Talmud itself, and then argues that the biblical context
requires us to restrict this law to pagans of the past. The reasons that the
Rabbis cite for this prohibition, says Moses, are that the gentile brings in
idols and that the home would then be without a mezuzah. Although the
first explanation would appear to apply to all idolaters and the second to
all non-Jews, Moses nonetheless quotes these reasons and immediately
asserts, “You have, then, clear evidence that all these matters were said

29 See E. H., pp. 136, 138; Exclusiveness and Tolerance, pp. 121–124.

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 Christians, Gentiles, and the Talmud

only about the seven idolatrous nations.” The biblical context and the
polemical need are more than sufficient to sweep aside all ambiguity.30
Moses proceeds to introduce the seven nations even into a context
where the supporting biblical argument is considerably less clear. The
Bible recommends that non-kosher meat be given to dogs or sold to
gentiles. Since the type of meat given to the former is regarded as superior
to the type sold to the latter, a Rabbinic text draws the apparently logical
conclusion. Moses’ outraged antagonist asks why the Jews do not delete
such a passage from their literature in order to save themselves from
acute danger. Here again Moses is not content to refer the remark to
ancient idolaters in general. Both the Bible and the Rabbis, he says,
were discussing the people who are called Cananeos. It is impossible not
to speculate that the sudden use of the Latin term may be intended to
underscore the relationship between Canaanites in particular and dogs
(canes). That the biblical Canaanites, who were marked for destruction,
were the intended recipients of this food is far from self-evident, but the
genre that we are examining is hardly disinterested biblical exegesis.31
Whatever the plausibility of Moses’ biblical argumentation, the
emphasis on the Bible which we saw in the discussion of aggadah persists
in these passages as well. It is his standard practice to demonstrate that
the rabbinic statements under attack are supported by proof-texts, and
all biblical proof-texts obviously predate Christianity.32 Since the Rabbis
must have referred to the same people that the biblical author had in
mind, Christians are consistently and conveniently excluded.
Finally, no list of Talmudic passages offensive to Christianity could
be complete without reference to the assertion in B. Gittin 57a that
Jesus is being punished in boiling excrement. Here, Moses’ response is

30 E. H., pp. 145–146. See B. ‘Avodah Zarah 20a, 20b–21a. Had Moses omitted the two
reasons that he cites and restricted himself to the concern that rentals might lead to
sales, his argument that the law is restricted to Canaanites would have been far more
plausible and effective.
31 E. H., pp. 151–152, footnoted passage. See Exodus 22:30 and the Mekhilta there; Deut.
14:21. Cf. the Nizzahon Vetus in my The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages
(Philadelphia, 1979), #212, Eng. sec., p. 207 = Heb. sec., p. 145, where the author applies
the biblical text to contemporary Christians with a sense of dismissive superiority
remarkable even for that work; see also the notes ad loc. (p. 329). For a humanitarian
explanation arguing that the non-kosher food given to dogs is unhealthful to human
beings, see Ibn Ezra’s citation (to Exodus 22:30) of an earlier Moses ha-Kohen.
32 See, for example, the two citations in E. H., p. 154, and cf. p. 140.

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 The Middle Ages

of extraordinary interest. First, he proffers the old argument of R. Yehiel

of Paris that the chronological context of the Talmudic discussion of
Jesus demonstrates that the Rabbis were not referring to the founder
of Christianity. Not only did this Jesus live too early; he was executed
in Lydda rather than Jerusalem. Moses then produces a response which
fits perfectly into his own extremely positive evaluation of the theology
of Christianity and of Jesus, but which is simply startling to the reader
of earlier Jewish polemic. The Jesus of the Talmud erected a brick and
bowed to it (B. Sanhedrin 107b [uncensored version]); the Jesus of
the Christians, as Moses has already noted, was an uncompromising
monotheist who insisted on the worship of God alone. Moses proceeds
to further attenuate the impact of the passage by assigning a symbolic
meaning to the medium of Jesus’ punishment. If Jesus is not Jesus and
boiling excrement is not boiling excrement, there is not much left for
Christians to criticize.33
The assertion that the Talmud attacks Christians in general and Jesus
in particular goes back, as we have seen, at least to Nicholas Donin. ‘Ezer
ha-Emunah testifies to the sharpening of this assertion by the addition of
the allegation that Christian kings are a particular object of attack. Yosef
Yerushalmi has pointed out the special role played by the royal image in
the consciousness of late medieval Iberian Jewry. Jews came to recognize
that their one source of protection in the face of an increasingly hostile
populace was a sympathetic king.34 In light of this development, the
danger of this new charge can scarcely be exaggerated.
Moses’ antagonist makes a special point of maintaining that the
curse against “the wicked kingdom” is aimed at Christian kings.35 He
distinguishes, as we have seen, between the blessings recited upon seeing
a gentile and a Jewish king.36 In the passage concerning gentiles and

33 E. H., pp. 140–143.

34 The Lisbon Massacre of 1506 and the Royal Image in the Shevet Yehudah (Cincinnati, 1976),
esp. pp. 35–66. Note too A. Gross’s observation that late medieval Iberian exegetes of
the Book of Esther tended to view Ahasuerus favorably in light of their general attitude
toward royalty. See his “Hishtaqqefut Gerushei Sefarad u-Portugal be-Perush Megillat
Ester,” Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies, 1986, sec. 2, vol. 1, p. 155.
A similar phenomenon was pointed out in a recent Master’s thesis by my student Hershel
Bessin on R. Joseph Hayyon’s commentary to Esther (Bernard Revel Graduate School,
Yeshiva University, 1989).
35 E. H., p. 134.
36 E. H., p. 144.

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 Christians, Gentiles, and the Talmud

dogs, he goes out of his way to say, “Thus, you have regarded us as dogs,
and this includes our king.”37 For his part, Moses not only responds to
such explicit charges; he too introduces references to the king where
there appears to be no compelling need to do so. The Christian use, or
misuse, of the Rabbinic statement that the best of the gentiles should
be killed can once again be traced to Donin, and Moses deals with it in
standard fashion. But his initial reaction—and one suspects that it is
based upon such a Christian understanding of the statement—is that
Jews are suspected of wanting to kill the king, who is the best of the
gentiles.38 He consequently asserts that it is inconceivable that Jews
should want to do this. Not only does the Mishnah instruct us to pray
for the welfare of the kingdom; without the protection of the king, we
are subject to slaughter and despoliation.
“God forbid,” Moses writes elsewhere, “that we should curse our king,
who serves as our shield, protector and savior from all adversity, for the
Jews have no salvation except from the Creator, may He be blessed, and
from the kings and princes. If we were in the hands of the masses who
would be without fear of the king and princes, we would not have the
slightest hope of survival or salvation.”39 Even though God has placed
a barrier between Himself and His people, he has inspired kings and
princes to feel compassion toward us.40 As for the blessings, here too
the Talmud is speaking about ancient pagan kings; indeed, since the
blessings for Jewish and gentile rulers were presumably introduced
simultaneously, the latter blessing must have been intended for gentiles
who ruled at a time when there were also Jewish kings.41 Did Moses really
recite the blessing, “Who has granted a portion of His glory to those who
fear Him” (rather than “to flesh and blood”) when seeing Christian kings?
Despite my inclination to regard his position as essentially sincere, that
would be scanned.

37 E. H., p. 151.
38 E. H., p. 134.
39 E. H., p. 136: cf. also p. 134. Note too the sentiments expressed by the Ashkenazic author
of the Nizzahon Vetus, who refused to admit that Jeremiah’s curse (17:5) against anyone
“who trusts in man” could refer to anything other than the attribution of divinity to
a human being. It is, after all, impossible not to place one’s reliance on kings and princes.
Despite the polemical usefulness of the argument, the underlying sentiment seems real
enough. See The Jewish-Christian Debate, #67, Eng. sec., p. 86 = Heb. sec., p. 44.
40 E. H., p. 158.
41 E. H., p. 144.

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 The Middle Ages

‘Ezer ha-Emunah is not a great polemical work, but it is an exceedingly

important one. Few books illustrate so well the transition from
an assertive, confident, sometimes almost celebratory Jewish polemical
literature to one of fear, defensiveness, and caution. Ashkenazic polemic
in particular had almost reveled in the sharp denunciation of Christians
and their faith, and the far more polite disputation of Nahmanides is
still marked by the boldness and serene confidence not only of a great
man but of an age which is just beginning to feel the cutting edge of
a new and deadly attack. In the fourteenth century, Iberian Jews were
faced with a massive paradox that they could not exploit. Hostile,
intolerant Christians attacked Jews for being hostile and intolerant. It
is not a pleasant sight to watch Moses ha-Kohen’s attempt to reevaluate
Talmudic material while conceding by his silence—and sometimes by more
than silence—the kindness and benevolence of late medieval Christian
society. And this paradox may be eclipsed by an even greater one. The
pressures of the new Christian attack may well have been instrumental
in broadening and deepening a sincere Jewish reinterpretation of sacred
texts in a direction that created a genuinely more positive attitude
toward the religion of the oppressor. The transition so painfully evident
in ‘Ezer ha-Emunah is a transition not only in the history of polemic
but in medieval Jewish history at large. Rarely has a polemical work so
captured the spirit of an age.

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 MISSION TO THE JEWS AND JEWISHCHRISTIAN
CONTACTS IN THE POLEMICAL LITERATURE
OF THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES

From: American Historical Review 91 (1986): 576–591.

Spreading the good news has been a principal objective of Christianity

since its infancy. Nevertheless, after the initial Jewish rejection of
the Christian message, the expansionism of the church was directed
mainly toward the pagan world, and it is by no means clear that even
those patristic works that were directed adversus Judaeos were marked
by realistic missionary objectives.1 Jews, moreover, were granted
unique toleration in Christian Europe on the theological grounds that
they served, however unwillingly, as living testimony to Christian truth
and that their conversion at the end of days was required by biblical
prophecy. At the same time, no one doubted that the acceptance of
Christianity by individual Jews was devoutly to be wished. Thus, at
its core, the fundamental theory governing Jewish status in early
medieval Europe was marked by tension and ambivalence—a result of
the contradiction between the theoretical goals of a universal Christian
mission and an argument for toleration that came close to discouraging
Jewish conversion.
Christian polemic against Jews is a crucial genre for the study of
missionary intentions, and the theoretical tension that I noted is
clearly reflected in the assessment of that literature in the standard
study of Jewish-Christian relations before the First Crusade. Bernhard
Blumenkranz devoted much of his Juifs et Chrétiens dans le monde
1 See David Rokeah, Jews, Pagans, and Christians in Conflict (Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 40–48.
Also see my brief discussion in David Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High
Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of the Nizzahon Vetus with an Introduction, Translation, and
Commentary (Philadelphia, 1979), pp. 4–5.

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 The Middle Ages

occidental, 430–1096, to the issues of polemic and mission.2 On the

one hand, he indicated that pre-crusade polemic against Jews was
intended for Christian disputants in a context that did not involve
a direct and immediate mission.3 On the other hand, he stressed the
persistence of the missionary ideal as a motive for polemical activity:
Christians were impelled by a natural desire to persuade others of the
truth, by the aspirations of believers in a majority faith to make that
faith the exclusive one, and by the great Christian expectation of seeing
all humanity “assembled under the scepter of Christ.” To a significant
degree, then, Blumenkranz perceived pre-crusade literary polemics as
the result of a missionary objective.4
If this assessment of the relatively sparse polemical literature written
before 1096 is sound, the much richer material from the following
century should reflect a similar motive. But, even if one remains skeptical
about a significant missionary impulse in the early period, a number
of considerations require a fresh and careful look at the possibility of
missionary objectives in the elusive twelfth century. First, the resurgence
of polemic, which produced almost twenty works from the late eleventh
through the twelfth century, suggests prima facie a more aggressive
Christian attitude toward conversion of Jews. Second, we know that
mission to the Jews had become an important goal of many Christians
by the mid-thirteenth century,5 and the suddenly numerous polemical
works of the previous century are a tempting and reasonable place to
look for the roots of this phenomenon. Third, the widely admired First
Crusade, with its bloody attempt at the forcible conversion of the Jewish
communities in the Rhineland, could have been responsible for placing
mission to the Jews on the agenda of a newly expansionist and assertive
Christendom, and the upsurge of anti-Jewish works could be understood
as a product of that expansionism. Finally, the crucial turning point in the
Christian attitude toward mission to Islam occurs in the twelfth century.

2 Blumenkranz, Juifs et Chrétiens dans le monde occidental, 430–1096 (Paris, 1960).

3 Ibid., p. 75. On Blumenkranz’s complex position, see, especially, note 72, below.
4 Ibid., pp. 67–68, 152, 216.
5 Although I have some reservations about Jeremy Cohen’s conclusions concerning
the shift from tolerance to intolerance of Jews in the thought of the thirteenth- and
fourteenth-century friars, his thorough description of their missionary objectives is
correct. See Cohen, The Friars and the Jews (Ithaca, N.Y., 1982). For my review, see
AHR 88 (1983): 93.

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 Mission to the Jews and Jewish-Christian Contacts

Benjamin Z. Kedar’s recent study of this question has pointed to an utter

indifference to converting Muslims during the early Middle Ages that
gave way by the mid-twelfth century to a strong feeling that they should
be made Christian. From that point on, there appears to have been little
question of the desirability of mission, and the controversy was confined
to the debate between advocates of force and of persuasion.6
This question is but one aspect of the broader challenge that the
twelfth century has posed for Jewish historians. The early Middle Ages,
with the exception of Visigothic Spain, were a period of relative peace
and opportunity for Europe’s Jews. Only in the eleventh century did
some distinct signs of deterioration in their status begin to emerge,
although questions remain about both the extent and the cause of that
decline.7 The century culminated, of course, in the crusade, and by the
late thirteenth century the Jews of Northern Europe were subject to
expulsions and persecution. Can a more or less straight line be drawn
from the First Crusade to the expulsions, or was it only in the thirteenth
century that relatively new forces emerged that moved the history of
medieval European Jewry toward its tragic denouement? In the twelfth
century, the Second Crusade swept through the Rhineland, the ritual
murder accusation was born, and yet the Jewish community continued
to function in a hostile but relatively stable environment. From a cultural
perspective, the period was one of dazzling achievement. Even the acute
contemporary observer would not have seen a people poised at the edge
of a precipice.8

6 Kedar, Crusade and Mission: European Approaches toward the Muslims (Princeton, N.J.,
1984), esp. pp. 57–74.
7 See Lena Dasberg, Untersuchungen über die Entwertung des judenstatus im 11. jahrhundert
(Paris, 1965). Compare the remarks of Amos Funkenstein, “Basic Types of Christian
Anti-Jewish Polemics in the Later Middle Ages,” Viator 2 (1971): 377. Also see Gavin
Langmuir, “From Ambrose of Milan to Emicho of Leiningen: The Transformation of
Hostility against Jews in Northern Christendom,” Gli Ebrei nell’Alto Medioevo, Settimane
di Studio, 26 (Spoleto, 1980), pp. 313–368; and Avraham Grossman, Hakhmei Ashkenaz ha-
Rishonim (Jerusalem, 1981), pp. 12–13, 163. Compare the remarks in my review, Tarbiz 53
(1984): 480. Also see Robert Chazan, “1007–1012: Initial Crisis for Northern European
Jewry,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 39 (1972): 101–118;
and Kenneth R. Stow, The “1007 Anonymous” and Papal Sovereignty: Jewish Perceptions of
the Papacy and Papal Policy in the High Middle Ages (Cincinnati, Ohio, 1984).
8 For a vigorous argument that 1096 was not a watershed in Jewish history, see Robert
Chazan’s European Jewry and the First Crusade (forthcoming [subsequently published,
Berkeley, c. 1987]).

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 The Middle Ages

With regard to the question of mission, the historiographical

problem posed by the twelfth century emerges in all of its tantalizing
ambiguity in an intentionally cautious and ambivalent formulation by
Salo Baron. “In the Roman and Byzantine empires, and even in western
Europe before the age of the Crusades, the numerous tracts ‘Against
the Jews’ primarily had Christian audiences in mind. Now, on the
contrary, the Church viewed the apologetic literature as but another
weapon in its march toward world domination. The new offensive,
seized particularly by the preaching orders, also infused new vigor and
introduced novel facets into the polemics which, together with the vastly
expanding missionary sermons and oral disputations, tried to persuade
the Jews of the ‘foolishness’ of their stubborn perseverance.”9 At first,
this passage suggests that a change in Christian attitude occurred at
the beginning of “the age of the Crusades,” but almost immediately the
emphasis shifts to “the preaching orders,” which belong to the thirteenth
century. Once again, the twelfth century is left in a sort of limbo. Was
it a watershed in the use of polemic as a weapon in the church’s “march
toward world domination,” or does this questionable distinction belong
to the age of the friars?10
I believe this question can be answered unequivocally. Despite the
proliferation of Christian polemics in the late eleventh and twelfth
centuries, the evidence is overwhelming that these works were not
rooted in a new or continuing missionary impulse. An examination of the
reasons that polemicists gave for writing their tracts reveals a remarkable
need to apologize for engaging in an activity considered improper on
ideological grounds, and, even when there is no apology, hesitation, or
refusal, the reasons given almost invariably do not include the idea that
Christians should attempt to proselytize Jews.
If this conclusion is correct, then two potential explanations for the
upsurge of Christian polemic remain. First, the primary impulse for this
literature may have come from outside the arena of Jewish-Christian
relations and resulted, instead, from the overall cultural renaissance of
the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. Since no Christian engaged in

9 Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews (2d edn., New York, 1965), vol. 9,
p. 101.
10 Amos Funkenstein did not take a clear position on this question in his studies of twelfth-
century Christian polemic. See “Ha-Temurot be-Vikkuah ha-Dat she-bein Yehudim le-
Nozrim ba-Meah ha-Yod-Bet,” Zion 33 (1968): 125–144, and “Basic Types,” 373–382.

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 Mission to the Jews and Jewish-Christian Contacts

a careful examination of the sacred texts and doctrines of Christianity

could have avoided a confrontation with Judaism, apologetic writings
could have been an inevitable consequence of an internal Christian
dynamic.11
On the other hand, the impetus for these works may lie in Jewish-
Christian interaction of the most vibrant sort. There is no longer
any question that some Jews in Northern Europe were involved in
discussions of biblical and other issues with Christian scholars.12 The
polemical literature contains considerable evidence that ordinary Jews
and Christians held lively, informal debates about sensitive religious
matters, and the authors of Christian polemics speak of the need for
a response to aggressive Jewish questions. Such debates no doubt
predated the High Middle Ages, but they may well have intensified as
a result of the growing intellectual sophistication engendered by the
cultural revolution that transformed both Jewish and Christian society in
this period. The renaissance of the High Middle Ages surely facilitated the
literary expression of these confrontations by both sides. The Christian
assertions that Jews posed provocative questions with frequency and
vehemence must be taken seriously. Christians were not confronting
Jewish missionaries, but they faced a genuine, vigorous challenge from
a proud and assertive Jewish community.13

Eleventh- and twelfth-century Christian intellectuals had profound

reservations about mission to the Jews. Perhaps the most striking
illustration of this position is the outright refusal of Adam of Perseigne
(d. 1203) to accede to a friend’s request that he write an anti-Jewish
polemic. First, it seemed to him that his friend was motivated more by
the desire to dispute than by zeal for the truth; second, Christians, he
believed, should not be contentious on general principles (2 Tim. 2:23–
24). Third—and for us most important—the Jews would remain blind and
hard-hearted “until the fulness of the nations will come in” (Rom. 11:25).

11 At one time, I regarded the influence of internal Christian developments as slightly more
central to the upsurge in polemic than I do now. See my brief remark in The Jewish-
Christian Debate, p. 16.
12 For an important summary of the evidence, see Aryeh Grabois, “The Hebraica veritas
and Jewish-Christian Intellectual Relations in the Twelfth Century,” Speculum 50 (1975):
613–634.
13 I discuss the state of this question later in this article.

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 The Middle Ages

The famous verse from Romans, then, predicts the futility of missionary
efforts and may even intend to discourage them; Jewish conversion is
reserved for the eschaton. Later, Adam added a further consideration:
Christians should not pollute themselves with discussions of falsehood
but should study Christian doctrines with pure heart and hands and
simple eyes.14 Since Adam could have written a brief compendium of
standard anti-Jewish arguments with little more effort than it took him
to write this letter, I doubt that he was concocting excuses for a refusal
motivated by laziness; this is a genuine, antimissionary ideology.
In one of the earliest polemics of the period, hesitation is followed by
acceptance of responsibility. Peter Damian (d. 1072) mentioned Jewish
conversion as a reason for writing polemic, but almost as an after-
thought following an exhortation to concentrate on more important
things than arguing with Jews. Damian was responding to a request
from a churchman named Honestus to provide material refuting Jewish
arguments, and he began by suggesting that, “if you wish to be a soldier
of Christ and fight for him courageously, then take up arms . . . against
the vices of the flesh, the contrivances of the devil—an enemy who
will clearly never die—rather than against the Jews, who will soon be
virtually destroyed from the face of the earth.” Nevertheless, he agreed
to provide the material because it was disgraceful (inhonestum) to remain
silent while Christianity was insulted, such silence could arouse doubts in
Christian minds, and, finally, Jews might be converted by well-presented
Christian arguments.15 A reluctant missionary indeed.
Peter of Blois (d. 1200) provided an even stronger prolegomenon
before finally acquiescing and writing his polemic. He addressed the
work to a Christian who complained that he was surrounded by Jews

14 Adam of Perseigne, Epistola ad amicum, Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne (hereafter, PL)
211: 653–659. It bears noting that Adam considered a bad Christian worse than a Jew,
who acted in ignorance; ibid., 657, 659. This reference should be added to Jeremy Cohen’s
valuable discussion of the question of Jewish ignorance and culpability in Christian
thought. See Cohen, “The Jews as the Killers of Christ in the Latin Tradition, from
Augustine to the Friars,” Traditio 39 (1983): 1–27.
15 Peter Damian, Antilogus contra judaeos, PL 145: 41. See my discussion in “St. Peter
Damian: His Attitude toward the Jews and the Old Testament,” Yavneh Review 4 (1965):
83–84. Blumenkranz’s references to this work illustrate his tendency to emphasize
missionary motivations. He first cited Damian’s hope for conversion, two pages later
he indicated the rather different need to assist Honestus, and considerably later he
referred to the Antilogus without qualification as a “missionary work;” Juifs et Chrétiens,
pp. 69, 71, 153.

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 Mission to the Jews and Jewish-Christian Contacts

and heretics and was unequipped to answer the tricky arguments raised
by the Jews in their disputations. It was unwise, Peter said, for someone
without good polemical aptitude to debate with a heretic or a Jew;
such disputes, in fact, tended to turn the inexperienced Christian into
a heretic himself. And it was surely absurd to debate a subject like the
Trinity. In effect, Peter argued that Christians need not worry about
educating the heretic or Jew: beasts were not permitted to touch Mount
Sinai, and pearls were not to be cast before swine.16 Moreover, if one
defeats an enemy of the cross in debate, he will in any event not convert
in his heart. As for the Jews, they cannot be converted because God has
set them an end that cannot be advanced. One might, it is true, make
an occasional convert, but the rest will persist in their stubbornness.17
Apparently, the missionary enterprise was not sufficiently justified by
the handful of souls that might be saved.
Peter, of course, did relent and write polemic, and suspicious
historians may be tempted to conclude that this introductory show of
reluctance is a disguise for missionary zeal. In determining twelfth-
century attitudes toward mission, however, what he wrote is decisive,
and underlying motives are of secondary significance as signposts of
future developments. In a sense, the point would even be strengthened,
since Peter was apparently embarrassed to be pursuing an objective that
any Christian would have been expected to applaud. It seems probable
that discouraging mission to the Jews was an ideology that arose as
a rationalization to explain centuries of relative indifference to Jewish
conversion or even as a direct reaction to protracted Jewish stubbornness.
Nevertheless, the reluctance to proselytize among Jews remains both
surprising and significant.
Peter relented, he said, because the request came from a person beset
(obsessum) by Jews and heretics. A similar defensive motive is proffered
in an anonymous twelfth-century polemic whose author maintained
that he wrote for simple people and in simple faith, not for the sake
of dialectical disputations. Jews, he said, should not be able to mock
Christian ignorance (imperitia)—those Jews “who taunt [insultant] us
all day and say with Goliath, ‘Choose someone from among you who will

16 In light of the context of this phrase in the Gospels, its use as an argument against
preaching to Jews is painfully ironic.
17 Peter of Blois, Contra perfidiam Judaeorum, PL 207: 825–827.

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 The Middle Ages

engage in a one-on-one battle with us.’”18 Similarly, Walter of Châtillon

introduced his polemic with the remark that the Jews “not only fail to
acquiesce in the truth of the new grace but even, like retrograde planets,
attempt to oppose the firmament of our faith and pose objections to
Christians from the authority of the Pentateuch. Hence, mindful of
their ignorance [again, imperitia, this time about the Jews], we decided
to write a book with arguments so compelling that even . . . [an] ass will
not be able to contradict them.”19 Once more a defensive motive appears.
Whether the conditions described by Peter, Walter, and the anonymous
author of the Tractatus reflect historical reality is an issue to which I shall
presently return, but the reiteration of such defensive claims underscores
the absence of explicit missionary goals.
Rupert of Deutz (d. 1135), like Adam and the two Peters, wrote in
response to a request. Rudolph of St. Trond, at that time abbot of St. Pan-
taleon in Cologne, is reported to have had frequent contact with Jews, and
he not only requested Rupert’s polemic but subsequently wrote a letter
asking for material that would demonstrate the triune God and the
incarnation and discuss the evidence from Gen. 49:10.20 Rudolph may have
been interested in mission, but Rupert, who did not accede to the request
immediately, would not have written polemic on his own initiative.21

18 Tractatus adversus Judaeum, PL 213: 749. The effectiveness of Jewish debaters is also
attested in Bartholomew of Exeter’s unpublished “Dialogus contra Judaeos” (early 1180s),
which warns against engaging in public controversies with them. At the same time,
Bartholomew remarked (if only in a subordinate clause) that “we hold discussions with
them for their own salvation.” There is, then, a missionary intention blunted by fear of the
consequences of disputation. For the relevant passage, see R. W. Hunt, “The Disputation
of Peter of Cornwall against Symon the Jew,” in Studies in Medieval History Presented to
Frederick Maurice Powicke, ed. by R. W. Hunt et al. (Oxford, 1948), pp. 147–148.
19 Walter of Châtillon, Tractatus sive dialogus contra Judaeos, PL 209: 424–425.
20 “Ein Briefes Chronisten Rudolph von St. Trond an Rupert von Deutz,” Neues Archiv 17
(1892): 617–618. This letter influenced the writing of De glorificatione Trinitatis and
perhaps part of De gloria et honore Filii hominis. See J. H. Van Engen, Rupert of Deutz
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983), pp. 246–247, 354–355; and Hermannus quondam
Judaeus opusculum de conversione sua, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Quellen zur
Geistgeschichte des Mittelalters, vol. 4, ed. by G. Niemeyer (Weimar, 1963), p. 5 n. 3, and
pp. 41–43. Rudolph’s letter sounds like the request of a man who had read Fulbert of
Chartres’s Tractatus contra Judaeos, which deals precisely with the topics specified, and
found it inadequate in real discussions with Jews.
21 Rupert of Deutz, Anulus sive dialogus inter Christianum et Judaeum, in M. L. Arduini,
Ruperto de Deutz e la controversia tra Cristiani ed Ebrei nel secolo XII (Rome, 1979),
esp. p. 184. The work is also in PL 170: 559–610.

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In addition to Peter Damian’s Antilogus, the other anti-Jewish

polemics written in the eleventh century also contain motives that
have little to do with mission. Fulbert of Chartres maintained that his
intention was to speak of the errors of nonbelievers in general; he began
with Jews because they agreed with Christians in their monotheistic faith
and disagreed with respect to several clearly defined issues: the Trinity,
the divinity of the Messiah, and whether or not he had come.22 Gilbert
Crispin introduced his enormously influential disputation by saying
that it reflected amicable discussions that he had had with a Jewish
acquaintance who came to him frequently on business and other matters,
at which times they conversed about the Scriptures and issues of faith.
He did note that a Jew present at such discussions converted and became
a monk, but he seemed to regard this as something of an unanticipated
bonus rather than the purpose of the conversation and gave no indication
that his book was to be used in any special effort to convert Jews.23
In the following century, an author once thought to be William of
Champeaux produced a sharper version of Crispin’s disputation and
introduced a reference to missionary intentions into his paraphrase of
Crispin’s introductory passage. “I was acquainted with a certain Jew
because of a business affair; as time passed, I was moved by love to urge
him frequently to abandon Judaism and become a Christian.”24 Although
this work does not, of course, reflect a real experience, the author’s
remark is not insignificant, but his assertion is limited to a specific
Jew whom he was allegedly motivated to convert because of personal
friendship. No interest in a broader mission is either stated or implied.
At the end of a work directed mainly at Christian heretics, Alan of Lille
appended a chapter on the Jews also derived largely from Crispin. In
this case, the structure as well as the content make it abundantly clear
that the author, who also added a chapter on Islam, did not write out of
a missionary zeal directed at Jews.25

22 Fulbert of Chartres, Tractatus contra Judaeos, PL 141: 308.

23 Gisleberti Crispini disputatio Judaei et Christiani, ed. by Bernhard Blumenkranz (Utrecht,
1956), pp. 27–28. The work is also in PL 159: 1005–1036.
24 Pseudo-William of Champeaux, Dialogus inter Christianum et Judaeum de fide Catholica,
PL 163: 1045. On the tone of this work, see Israel Levi, “Controverse entre un Juif et un
Chrétien au XIe Siècle,” Revue des Etudes Juives 5 (1882): 244.
25 De fide Catholica contra haereticos, PL 210: 305–430, bk. 3, PL 210: 399–422. See my
“Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille, and Jacob ben Reuben: A Study in the Transmission of
Medieval Polemic,” Speculum 49 (1974): 34–47; and M. H. Vicaire, “‘Contra Judaeos’

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Similar attitudes appear in two early twelfth-century polemics

concerning the incarnation. Odo of Cambrai addressed his work to
a monk who had been present at a lecture by Odo on the incarnation
and had urged him to put it in writing. Odo was finally persuaded to do
so, but, before he wrote his book, he had a discussion on the subject with
a Jew. Consequently, it seemed appropriate to Odo to record his remarks
in the form of a dialogue. “Now, then, I invoke the Holy Spirit so that
whatever inspiration it gave me for the purpose of convincing a Jew it
might give me once again for the instruction of a faithful monk.”26 Odo
then described how the Jew Leo visited him after his midday nap and
initiated the discussion that he recorded. Once again, the question of
historicity can be postponed; the immediate point is that Odo proffered no
missionary intention at all and explicitly directed his work to a Christian
audience motivated by a desire to understand the incarnation.
Guibert de Nogent’s Tractatus on the incarnation contra Judaeos was
actually directed against a count of Soissons who, Guibert said, cultivated
the views of Jews and heretics. To Guibert, it was tolerable when someone
who never accepted Christianity rejected it; the Jews, after all, grew up
with this attitude, implanted in them since their forefathers crucified
Jesus. What was intolerable was for people who called themselves
Christians to attack the faith. To make matters worse, the count dared
to proclaim nefarious ideas that Jews themselves were afraid to utter
aloud. The Jews, in fact, considered him insane, because he extolled their
sect while ostensibly following Christianity.27 Although Guibert said that
four years after writing the book he used it to strengthen the faith of
a Jewish convert, there are no missionary overtones whatever in the
reason he gave for its composition. The Jews, in fact, are used almost as
a foil for the real object of Guibert’s attack, and the implication is that he
would not have written to expose the longstanding errors of a tolerated
Jewish community.
Even the three polemics by pre-thirteenth-century converts to
Christianity do not reflect the systematic missionary zeal that we might

méridionaux au début du XIIIe siècle: Alain de Lille, Evrard de Béthune, Guillaume de

Bourges,” in M. H. Vicaire and B. Blumenkranz, eds., Juifs et judaïsme de Languedoc
(Toulouse, 1977), pp. 269–287.
26 Odo of Cambrai, Disputatio contra Judaeum, PL 160: 1103.
27 Guibert de Nogent, Tractatus de Incarnatione contra Judaeos, PL 156: 489–490; and De vita
sua, PL 156: 949–950.

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expect. The work by “Samuel of Morocco,” though it deals with some

broader issues, is couched as an explanation of the exile addressed to
a Jew named Isaac, and it is hard to decide whether the work is a polemic
with a limited missionary purpose or an apologia pro conversione sua.28
Petrus Alfonsi explicitly described the dialogue with his own former
Jewish persona as a reaction to attacks questioning the motives and
sincerity of his conversion,29 and the fascinating little book by Herman
of Cologne is an autobiographical account of his experiences on the road
to conversion rather than a true polemic.30
A final work that fits this pattern is essentially sui generis. Peter
Abelard wrote a dialogue involving a philosopher, a Christian, and a Jew
in which the relevant discussion takes place between the Jew and the
philosopher, not between the Jew and the Christian. The irenic tone
as well as the structure make it improbable that missionary zeal was
Abelard’s reason for writing.31
The overall impression gained from these works is not merely that
they fail to explicate a missionary intention. If the absence of proselytism
were the only common feature, one might assume that the motive to
convert was so integral to polemic that the authors took it for granted.
Instead, work after work presents ideological reservations about mission,
reluctance to engage in debate, defensive explanations for writing
polemical works, and justifications based on the need to combat heresy
and to instruct a Christian audience—all of which point to a striking
lack of interest in a missionary program. Either mission was a secondary
motive or not a motive at all or else these authors felt uncomfortable
asserting it. In either case, the ideology they expressed—at the very
minimum—attached little importance to conversion of Jews.
There are, however, three twelfth-century works that contain signs of
things to come. The first, emerging from the school of Abelard, is known

28 The work of “Samuel of Morocco” may well be a pseudepigraph of the fourteenth century.
See M. Marsmann, Die Epistel des Rabbi Samuel an Rabbi Isaak: Untersuchung und Edition
(Siegen, 1971). The epistle also appears in PL 149: 337–368.
29 Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogus Petri, cognomento Alphonsi, ex Judaeo Christiani, et Moysi Judaei,
PL 157: 535–672, esp. 538.
30 Niemeyer, Hermannus quondam Judaeus opusculum de conversione sua.
31 Peter Abelard, Dialogus inter philosophum, iudaeum, et christianum, ed. by Rudolf Thomas
(Stuttgart, 1970), pp. 44–85. Richard of St. Victor’s De Emmanuele was directed against
Andrew of St. Victor’s Judaizing commentary on Isa. 7:14 and is surely not a missionary
tract. See PL 196: 601–666.

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for its striking use of Hebrew as a tool in the debate with Jews, but,
in light of the objectives of earlier polemics, the motive it suggests for
disputation is at least equally interesting. Sometime between 1139 and
1148, an obscure cleric named Odo wrote the Ysagoge in theologiam. In
the introduction to the section on Jews, he made the following assertion:
“For if it is proper for us to exhort those who are fashioned in the faith
to live better, surely we should recall the Jews from their erroneous,
disbelieving sect.”32 If such an attitude were common, this would have
been an utterly routine sentence. The editor of the Ysagoge, for example,
wrote that “the conversion of the Jews was one of the great preoccupations
of Christian intellectuals in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,” and
Odo was a participant in this movement.33 In fact, a statement like this
before the middle of the twelfth century was not routine but sharply
polemical; it was a pointed a fortiori argument directed against the then-
dominant view of the upper clergy that efforts at conversion of Jews
were improper or unimportant.
The later attitude of aggressive mission to the Jews is adumbrated
with particular clarity by Peter the Venerable. The reader of the prologue
to his polemic finds himself in a different, unfamiliar world. No hesitation
here, and no apology. How can Jews, he wrote, alone in all the world,
deny Jesus? They are stiff-necked, without celestial or terrestrial glory,
but, if they convert, they, too, can be saved.34 Later in the work, Peter
expressed doubts about his prospects for success. With the arrogance
and belligerence typical of this polemic, he noted that his arguments
from both authority and reason would satisfy any human being, but he
was not so sure that Jews, whose reason appeared “extinct” and “buried,”
could be called human beings and not animals.35 Whatever the tactical
wisdom of his denunciatory tone, and whether or not Peter ever had
contact with his prospective converts, there is in his work at least some
expression of a hope of conversion.36

32 Ysagoge in theologiam, ed. Arthur M. Landgraf, Ecrits théologiques de l’école d’Abélard

(Louvain, 1934), pp. 126–127. Also see Avrom Saltman, “Ha-Ysagoge shel Odo—Shitah
Hadashah ba-Pulmus ha-anti-Yehudi,” Biqqoret u-Parshanut 13–14 (1979): 265–280.
33 Ecrits théologiques, xlvii.
34 Peter the Venerable, Tractatus adversus Judaeorum inveteratam duritiem, PL 189: 507–509.
35 Ibid., 602.
36 It may be more than coincidence that both Odo and Peter, who were interested in
genuine mission, used tools borrowed from the Jewish armory—in the first case
linguistic and in the second Talmudic.

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 Mission to the Jews and Jewish-Christian Contacts

Finally, later in the century, we come to an author whom we might

well expect to find in any list of exceptional figures: Joachim of Fiore.
Nevertheless, not all of his discourse is exceptional. Joachim began with
the familiar assertion that response to the Jews is necessary because
otherwise one gives occasion to the enemies of Christ to insult the faith
and confuse the simple believer. He went on, however, to a consideration
peculiar to his own well-known speculations about the imminence of
a new age. An additional reason for the work, he said, was his feeling
that the Jews would soon experience the divine mercy as the time of
their consolation and conversion arrived.37 At that time, all Jews would
convert. Joachim, however, wanted some to see the light just before the
period of general salvation, and he broke into prophetic exhortation:
“And now, O Jewish men, hear my voice this day, and do not persist in
hardening your heart.”38
These exceptions are few in number, and there is less to them
than meets the eye. The relevant section of the Ysagoge in theologiam
is a manifestly atypical work by an insignificant author, and Joachim
of Fiore is a profoundly idiosyncratic figure whose position on Jewish
conversion flows precisely from his most important idiosyncrasy. As
for Peter the Venerable, his bitter pessimism about the prospects of
persuading the Jews drastically tempers the impression of missionary
zeal that his remarks may create, and the Tractatus remains far more
a work of denunciation than of mission.
In the thirteenth century, sentiments for proselytism continued to
grow, and ultimately they prevailed. Peter of Cornwall’s disputation,
completed in 1208, describes at great length his successful effort to
convert a Jewish acquaintance, although, as in the reworking of Crispin’s
polemic, the object of this effort is a single individual.39 In the 1230s,
William of Bourges wrote that, shortly after his conversion to Christianity,

37 Joachim of Fiore, Adversus Judaeos di Gioacchino da Fiore, ed. by Arsenio Frugoni (Rome,
1957), p. 3.
38 Ibid., pp. 85–89. The points in this paragraph were made by Frugoni in the introduction
to his edition (pp. xxxii–xxxvii). I hesitate to include Hildebert of Lavardin’s short sermon
“Against the Jews Concerning the Incarnation” among these exceptional polemics, despite
its apostrophe to the Jews urging their conversion. The entire work is a few paragraphs
long, was delivered to a Christian audience, and merely lists a handful of the standard
verses on the incarnation with virtually no argumentation. See PL 171: 811–814.
39 The prologue to Peter’s Liber disputationum contra Symonem Iudeum was published by
Hunt; “Disputation of Peter of Cornwall,” 153–156.

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he was urged to use his knowledge of Hebrew to compose a work to refute

the Jews. After all, Jesus himself fought against both Sadducee heretics
and other Jews, and, if Christians truly love him, they should do battle
against his enemies. Ominously, William’s proof text is “Shall I not hate
those who hate you, O Lord?” (Ps. 139:21).40 Whether the motivation
was hate or love, by the mid-thirteenth century a Christian campaign
to convert the Jews was gathering momentum,41 and the theoretical
desirability of such a program was not again seriously questioned until
modern times.
The polemical works that I have examined do more than reveal
the absence of a missionary ideology; they also make assertions about
frequent discussions between Jews and Christians at and especially
below the level of the upper clergy. Such information, if authentic, is of
extraordinary historical value. Assessing authenticity is, of course, no
easy task. We are dealing in many of these instances with a literary genre
of fictitious debate, which led one scholar to regard virtually all of the
major polemics besides Crispin’s as possessing “no historical interest.”42
There are, however, ways of evaluating this evidence.
First, the requests for polemical material were genuine. It would
require a perverse level of skepticism to assume that Adam of Perseigne
invented a request so that he could explain why he turned it down. Peter
Damian’s entire personal history and psychology indicate that he was
sincere in asserting that one should concentrate on battling the vices of
the flesh and that his reluctant agreement to enter the lists against the
Jews resulted from a letter of request.43 In Rupert’s case, a somewhat
later request from his correspondent exists. One cannot be certain about
Peter of Blois, but the evidence in the other cases places the burden of
proof on the skeptic. It appears that the lower clergy, precisely because of
greater contact with the outside world, felt a need for works that would
assist them in the religious discussions that were apparently a common
feature of everyday life.
The evidence, moreover, does not allow the assumption that these
discussions were necessarily initiated by proselytizing Christians. The

40 Guillaume de Bourges, Livre des guerres du Seigneur, ed. by Gilbert Dahan (Paris, 1981),
pp. 66, 68.
41 Cohen, The Friars and the Jews.
42 Lévi, “Controverse,” 239.
43 See my discussion in “St. Peter Damian,” 83.

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 Mission to the Jews and Jewish-Christian Contacts

assertions of Jewish aggressiveness in the works of Peter of Blois and

Walter of Châtillon and in the anonymous Tractatus may be exaggerated,
but they would constitute silly, almost self-defeating bombast if they
did not have some basis in reality.44 Furthermore, the testimony in
these polemics is borne out to a striking extent by thirteenth-century
Jewish works. Whether Jews or Christians initiated these exchanges,
the indications are overwhelming that they were real and frequent. The
nature of some of the arguments as well as circumstantial evidence
support this conclusion.
The most detailed account of a Jewish-Christian debate in a Christian
work is that of Herman of Cologne. Here a Jewish youth in early twelfth-
century Germany listens to a Christian sermon that describes Jews
as animals who understand only the letter of the law, in contrast to
Christians, who are human beings who use reason to understand the
spirit of the law.45 He is directly exhorted to give up the heavy yoke of
the Mosaic law and take up instead the easy burden offered by Jesus
(Matt. 11:30),46 and at one point he initiates a conversation with no
less a figure than Rupert of Deutz himself.47 Local churchmen provide
him with books, and he maintains that he succeeded in teaching himself
Latin so that he could read them.48 Nevertheless, he insists that what
really clinched his decision to convert was his observation of the

44 The remarks by Peter and the author of the Tractatus were noted by Lévi, and many
historians have cited Louis IX’s comment that a Christian layman approached by a Jewish
polemicist should respond by stabbing him. See Lévi, “Controverse,” 238. Also see my
brief discussion in The Jewish-Christian Debate, pp. 22–23. Compare the somewhat weaker
impression given by Peter Damian that Honestus was confronted by a Jewish challenge,
and see Bartholomew of Exeter’s comments cited in note 18, above. Guibert’s remark that
the Jews hardly dared whisper what the count of Soissons said aloud does reflect some
Jewish caution, but it must also be read in light of Guibert’s strategy to use the Jews as
a foil for the heretical count.
45 Niemeyer, Hermannus quondam Judaeus opusculum de conversione sua, p. 74. This image
appears in the work of Walter of Châtillon and, more clearly, in the polemic of Peter
the Venerable. Also see my “The Attitude of St. Bernard of Clairvaux toward the Jews,”
Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 40 (1972): 103.
46 Niemeyer, Hermannus quondam Judaeus opusculum de conversione sua, p. 75. Such
an argument by Christian missionaries may have partially inspired and surely lent force
to the Jewish contention that conversion to Christianity proved nothing more than the
convert’s desire to experience the pleasures of the flesh; Nizzahon Vetus, in The Jewish-
Christian Debate, p. 206, and, in the Hebrew section, p. 144.
47 Niemeyer, Hermannus quondam Judaeus opusculum de conversione sua, pp. 77–83.
48 Ibid., p. 76.

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prayerful devotion of simple nuns.49 The strong impression that emerges

from his work is not that of an intellectual poring over sophisticated
tracts or even disputing with people like Rupert; rather, we see a Jew
who maintains regular, intimate contacts with ordinary Christians and
lower clergy and who is eventually won over to the dominant religion
by an accumulation of such experiences. Although Herman reported
that a Jew chastised him for excessive association with Christians,50 the
impression of frequent religious discussions between ordinary Jews and
Christians is by no means negated by the undeniable fact that Herman
went too far. The atmosphere of the memoir is compelling.
The reality of such contacts emerges from a number of other
Christian works as well. Rudolph of St. Trond, the abbot who requested
Rupert of Deutz to write his polemic, is reported to have “frequently held
mild discussions with Jews without disputation or reproach; rather, he
softened the hardness of their heart by stroking and massage . . . . For
this reason they loved him so much that even their women came to see
him and speak with him.”51 The general tone and content of Crispin’s
disputation has convinced most scholars of its essential authenticity as
a work arising out of friendly, informal meetings between the author
and a Jewish acquaintance.52 Odo of Cambrai’s assertion that he had
an unplanned discussion with a Jew is highly plausible because he has
another explicit motive for writing his work: the addressee, as we recall,
had requested that he record his lecture on the incarnation.
Moreover, Odo’s polemic ends with a fascinating sentence that
suggests not only the reality of such discussions but also their context.

49 Ibid., pp. 107–108.

50 Ibid., p. 93.
51 Gesta abbatum Trudonensium, quoted by Niemeyer, in his introduction to Hermannus
quondam Judaeus opusculum de conversione sua, p. 5 n. 3.
52 In composing such a work, an author naturally expands and “improves” the discussion;
hence, certain implausibilities in the exchange do not in themselves undermine the
likelihood of an encounter, and even R. J. Zvi Werblowsky, who expressed serious
reservations about the recorded disputation, did not doubt Crispin’s statement that he
held amicable discussions about religion with a Jewish acquaintance. See Werblowsky,
“Crispin’s Disputation,” Journal of Jewish Studies 11 (1960): 73. The reworking of Crispin
presents a fictitious exchange, and I would therefore treat it more cautiously than did
Aryeh Grabois, who said that the work “clearly attests” frequent, informal meetings
among intellectuals. Nevertheless, the author’s assertion that he had such discussions,
even though it too is borrowed from Crispin, presumably reflects a milieu in which such
a report would sound plausible. See Grabois, “The Hebraica veritas,” 634.

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“These . . . are the reasons that I gave the Jew concerning the coming
of Christ, having been forced to dispute all the more subtly by certain
Christians who took the part of the Jew.”53 Thus, as in Crispin’s case,
there was an audience, and here some Christians attending were
prepared to challenge the arguments of the Christian protagonist. Even
if these Christians were advocates of an explanation of the incarnation
that differed from Odo’s, such intervention would be inconceivable
in a debate whose serious goal was the conversion of the Jew. These
confrontations were ultimately very serious indeed, but the atmosphere
appears to have been one of a duel of wits—almost a form of intellectual
entertainment.
Guibert’s polemic, which does not reflect a real confrontation, ends
with a miracle story also pertinent to this discussion. He heard an account
of a disputation in a home (in quadam domo) in which a cleric was unable
to contest the perfidious bombast of a Jew, so the cleric offered to hold
the burning part of a firebrand in order to prove his position. The Jew
made no effort to dissuade him, and the cleric grabbed hold of the flame
and did not burn. The Jew marveled but was nonetheless not impelled
to convert.54 The miracle here is not especially miraculous, and the story
could be true. Even if it is not, however, it suggests that such discussions
were routine.
Finally, both Peter of Blois and the author of the anonymous
Tractatus proffered practical advice on pinning down the slippery and
elusive Jewish disputant, who was likely to change the subject whenever
he encountered difficulty.55 Once again, works that do not record actual
disputations suggest that Jews and Christians expected to confront one
another in the field of religious combat.
Thus far, I have examined only Christian works, but the impression
created by those works is confirmed by Jewish polemics as well. This
literature does not begin until the late twelfth century, and one of the
earliest works, authored by the southern French polemicist Jacob ben
Reuben, reports an encounter whose essential historicity has never

53 Odo of Cambrai, Disputatio contra Judaeum, PL 160: 1112.

54 Guibert de Nogent, Tractatus de Incarnatione contra judaeos, PL 156: 528. For an eleventh-
century proposal to prove Christianity through ordeal by fire to an audience of similarly
unimpressed Muslims, see Kedar, Crusade and Mission, p. 45.
55 Peter of Blois, Contra perfidiam Judaeorum, PL 207: 870; and Tractatus adversus Judaeum,
PL 213: 749.

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been questioned.56 The tone is cordial, the arguments rigorous, and the
agenda—which includes a discussion of the book of Matthew—unusually
broad. In the thirteenth century, Meir of Narbonne recorded what
were surely genuine exchanges with influential Christians on sensitive
questions,57 and Moses of Salerno described philosophical discussions
of unusual sophistication with Italian churchmen.58 These were not
formal disputations of the sort that were held in Paris and Barcelona;
Jacob, Meir, and Moses described what were for the most part informal
discussions that took place in the course of everyday life.59
Finally, there is fascinating and somewhat problematical evidence
from northern Ashkenaz in Joseph Official’s Sefer Yosef HaMeqanne60
and the anonymous Nizzahon Vetus.61 On the one hand, the sharpness
of some of the exchanges in these works invites skepticism about
their authenticity. Once again, however, the atmosphere of constant
interaction is compelling, and it is almost inconceivable that these
accounts are not essentially authentic. Most of the arguments are
introduced by phrases like “a certain cordelier” or “a certain apostate
asked.” Specific priests are identified by their towns, and arguments are
placed in specific settings.
Moreover, the aggressiveness of the tone of both works makes
it difficult to reject Christian assertions that Jews often initiated
debate. It is true that one of the most distinguished students of this
literature has urged us to differentiate between “audacity in confronting

56 Milhamot Hashem, ed. by Judah Rosenthal (Jerusalem, 1963), esp. pp. xxii, 4–5.
57 Milhemet Mizvah, Biblioteca Palatina Parma, ms. 2749. A substantial part of the manuscript
was transcribed by William Herskowitz. See Herskowitz, “Judaeo-Christian Disputation
in Provence as Reflected in Milhemet Mitzva of R. Meir HaMeili” (D.H.L. dissertation,
Bernard Revel Graduate School, Yeshiva University, 1974). On Meir’s work, see Siegfried
Stein, Jewish-Christian Disputations in Thirteenth-Century Narbonne (London, 1969). Also
see the studies by Robert Chazan in Harvard Theological Review 67 (1974): 437–457;
Hebrew Union College Annual 45 (1974): 287–305; and Proceedings of the American Academy
for Jewish Research 41–42 (1973–74): 45–67.
58 Ta‘anot, in Stanislaus Simon, Mose ben Salomo von Salerno und seine philosophischen
Auseinandersetzung mit den Lehren des Christentums (Breslau, 1931).
59 It is worth noting that in the Barcelona disputation of 1263, Nahmanides commented
that “there is not a single priest or child” who does not ask the Jews about Ps. 110. See
Kitvei Ramban, ed. by C. Chavel (Jerusalem, 1963), vol. 1, p. 317.
60 Joseph Official, Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, ed. by Judah Rosenthal (Jerusalem, 1970).
61 See The Jewish-Christian Debate. The Nizzahon Vetus was also edited by Mordechai Breuer;
Sefer Nizzahon Yashan (Jerusalem, 1978).

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Christianity” and the initiation of disputation,62 and in some instances

this is a useful caveat. But the assertiveness of the Ashkenazic
polemics must undercut skepticism about the validity of Christian
reports concerning Jewish initiatives. Jews who urged their readers
to tell Christians that Jacob sat on a cross,63 who reported (falsely or
not) that a Jew urinated on a cross in the presence of a churchman
and then produced a clever justification,64 who clearly suggested to their
readers that they raise embarrassing questions with Christians65—
Jews who said such things and more cannot be assumed a priori to
have shrunk from initiating religious discussions with Christian
acquaintances. Even if the authors—despite the plain meaning of their
exhortations—expected discretion from their Jewish readers, not all
readers would have obliged. In short, the existence of such polemics
practically guarantees that Jews who took them literally would act on
their advice, and, while the worst excesses of these works may never
have been translated into practice, it is hard to deny that a number of
readers would have been impelled to challenge Christians to defend their
faith. There were, of course, cautious Jews,66 but bold, even reckless,
disputants, especially in northern France and Germany, appear to have
constituted far more than a lunatic fringe.
Even Jewish familiarity with Christian books often resulted from
these discussions since the access of Jews to such works normally
came through Christians who owned them. Herman of Cologne was
given Latin books, and Jacob ben Reuben said that his Christian friend
gave him a work that apparently was—at least in part—a polemical
anthology.67 Although sections of some Jewish polemics appear to have

62 Frank Talmage, Commentary, June 1975, p. 23.

63 This is a delicate paraphrase of the original. See Nizzahon Vetus, in The Jewish-Christian
Debate, p. 59, and, in the Hebrew section, p. 20.
64 Joseph Official, Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, p. 14. There is some ambiguity in the story as to
whether the Jew was aware that the Christian would see him.
65 See The Jewish-Christian Debate, sects. 156, 161, 188, 206, 210, 229.
66 The most striking example of a cautious polemicist is Solomon de’ Rossi. See Frank
Talmage, “Christianity and the Jewish People,” in his Disputation and Dialogue (New York,
1975), p. 240. Here Solomon’s position is presented as more or less typical. Also see The
Jewish-Christian Debate, pp. 21–22, and n. 55. In addition, it should be kept in mind that
the greatest figures of medieval Jewry, at least in the period with which we are concerned,
did not write polemical works. (Nahmanides’ coerced involvement in Barcelona is, of
course, not germane to the present discussion.)
67 See my discussion in Speculum 49 (1974): 36–37, 46–47.

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been composed to refute written Christian exegesis,68 most of the points

were debated in lively and frequent discussions.
It is difficult to characterize with precision the current state of
scholarship on this question. Some skepticism remains about Jewish
initiation of debate.69 But scholars who have concentrated on the northern
Ashkenazic polemics have found it difficult to discount an impression
of authenticity, whatever the degree of their reservations on matters
of detail,70 and this impression is consistent with the general picture
reflected in other Jewish sources from Northern Europe.71 Students of
Christian polemic in the High Middle Ages have remarked very briefly
on the existence of a genuine Jewish challenge,72 and here, too, the

68 When Jewish works, for example, refute Christological interpretations that are found
only in Christian commentaries and not in polemics, we have reason to suspect that the
Jewish authors got the information from a literary source, and a systematic investigation
along these lines may well prove rewarding. For a clear-cut passage of this sort, note
the probably interpolated section in the Munich manuscript of the Nizzahon Vetus on
Psalms, with its explicit references to Christian translations and to the glossa and its
concentration on exegesis that no sensible Christian polemicist would have emphasized.
See The Jewish-Christian Debate, sects. 131–141. The extent to which Jews could have
read Latin works depends, of course, on their knowledge of Latin, and, although almost
all of the authors of polemical works surely read Latin, we cannot be certain about other
Jewish intellectuals. For an argument that the Paris disputation of 1240 was conducted in
Latin, see Ch. Merchavia, Ha-Talmud bi-Re’i ha-Nazrut (Jerusalem, 1970), p. 245. Grabois’s
assertion that “Rashi attested that he studied Christian biblical exegesis” is much too
strong. Of the two authorities that Grabois noted, Y. Baer presented very little evidence
for his assertion that “we may assume that Rashi knew Latin and read widely in Christian
works,” and E. Shereshevsky explicitly conceded that there is no definitive evidence that
Rashi read Latin. See Grabois, “The Hebraica veritas,” 632; Baer, “Rashi ve-ha-Meziut ha-
Historit shel Zemanno,” Tarbiz 20 (1950): 326; and Shereshevsky, “Rashi and Christian
Interpretations,” Jewish Quarterly Review 61 (1970–71): 76–86.
69 Talmage, Disputation and Dialogue, p. 240; and Commentary, June 1975, p. 23.
70 Zadoc Kahn, “Le livre de Joseph le Zélateur,” Revue des Etudes Juives 1 (1880): 222–246;
and 3 (1881): 1–38, esp. 34; Ephraim Urbach, “Etudes sur la littérature polémique au
moyen âge,” Revue des Etudes Juives 100 (1935): 50–77, esp. 60–64; and Mordechai
Breuer, Sefer Nizzahon Yashan, pp. 20–21. Also see my discussion in The Jewish-Christian
Debate, pp. 20–23.
71 See, especially, Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance (New York, 1960), pp. 98–100.
Also see Grabois, “The Hebraica veritas.” For a vigorous argument, based primarily on
Jewish exegetical material, for Jewish-Christian intellectual contacts, see Elazar Touitou,
“Shitato ha-Parshanit shel ha-Rashbam al Reqa ha-Meziut ha-Historit shel Zemanno,”
in Iyyunim be-Sifrut Hazal ba-Miqra U-be-Toldot Yisrael: Muqdash Li-Prof. Ezra Zion
Melamed (Ramat Gan, 1982), ed. by Y. D. Gilat et al., pp. 48–74.
72 Peter Browe assessed the situation particularly well. See Browe, Die Judenmission im
Mittelalter und die Päpste (Rome, 1942), pp. 113, 60–64. Also see Hunt, “Disputation of

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 Mission to the Jews and Jewish-Christian Contacts

study of nonpolemical Christian sources confirms the impression of

significant interaction.73 My review of polemic—despite the limitations
and inevitably skewed emphasis of the genre—underscores that debate
was a central phenomenon in the social and intellectual life of medieval
Ashkenazic Jewry. While evidence of extensive debate decidedly does not
demonstrate that other developments in the cultural history of Ashkenazic
Jews were influenced by Jewish-Christian contacts (particularly since
the greatest rabbis were not polemicists), the instinctive resistance
that many historians still feel when such assertions are made should be
diminished.
One more important point. Jewish aggressiveness and even Jewish
initiative do not constitute a Jewish mission. There is no indication that
Jews engaged in religious discussions with Christians with the realistic
expectation of converting them. Both the Talmud and the status of
medieval Jewry militated against such a program, and the occasional
evidence of Christian converts to Judaism does not begin to demonstrate
a concerted Jewish effort to attract proselytes.74 Jews challenged
Christians as an expression of pride—to raise their own morale and to
discomfit their opponents. Joseph Official wrote “to reveal the shame”
of Jewish apostates.75 The author of the Nizzahon vetus completed his
advice to polemicists by promising that “then you will find the Gentile
thoroughly embarrassed; indeed, he will be found to have denied

Peter of Cornwall,” 147; and Dahan, Livre des guerres du Seigneur, pp. 33–34. Blumenkranz’s
discussion of “la mission juive” deals mainly with an earlier period; Juifs et Chrétiens,
pp. 159–211. As I noted, Blumenkranz ascribed a significant missionary motivation to
Christian polemic in his period. Elsewhere, however, he argued that the extent of what
he described as Christian defense literature demonstrates that Jews must have pursued
missionary activity; Juifs et Chrétiens, p. 209. In light of his position on the missionary
objectives of Christian polemic, this last argument is almost puzzling, and the book,
which remains of the first importance, tends to overstate the missionary intentions on
both sides.
73 See Grabois, “The Hebraica veritas.” Polemical sources are dealt with only in the two
concluding paragraphs, pp. 633–634, and on p. 624.
74 Wolfgang Giese’s vehement argument for “intensive Jewish propaganda and missionary
activity” is based solely on the existence of Christian converts to Judaism and the efforts
made in church councils to limit contacts between Jews and Christians because of the Jews’
corrupting influence. See his “In Iudaismum lapsus est: Jüdische Proselytenmacherei im
frühen und hohen Mittelalter (600–1300),” Historisches Jahrbuch, 88 (1968): 407–18. Also
see Baron’s remark that “medieval Jews had long given up any missionary aspirations”;
A Social and Religious History, p. 23.
75 Joseph Official, Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, p. 15. See Hosea 2:2.

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 The Middle Ages

[Christianity’s] central dogmas, while all Israel ‘will speak lovely words’
(Gen. 49:21).”76 A chastened Gentile with an enhanced respect for Jews
and Judaism—but a Gentile nonetheless.

The absence of a Christian missionary ideology and the presence

of frequent Jewish-Christian confrontations establish the likelihood
that eleventh- and twelfth-century Christians wrote polemics not out
of missionary objectives but largely in response to requests generated
by a genuine Jewish challenge. There is, however, a more profound
relationship between the disinterest of the upper clergy before the
thirteenth century in converting Jews and the existence of lively,
regular, often friendly debates between Jews and Christians, which were
sometimes begun by the Jewish participant. The tone of these informal
contacts and the Jewish willingness to initiate them were possible
precisely because the church was not yet deadly serious about the aim of
conversion. For Jews, the enjoyment was drained out of these contests
in the face of a concerted, formalized Christian mission, and it became
foolhardy and dangerous to seek confrontation. During the course of
the thirteenth century, the gradual transformation in the Christian
position was not immediately reflected in Jewish behavior, and, even
later, the spirit never completely departed from Jewish polemicists.
Nevertheless, by the late Middle Ages the tone is profoundly different;
one begins to see the defensiveness, nervousness, and demoralization of
a worried community. Jewish polemic was never the same again.77

76 The Jewish-Christian Debate, p. 169, and, in the Hebrew section, p. 108.

77 The changes in Jewish polemic do not, of course, result solely from increased Christian
proselytizing and persecution. Most late medieval Jewish polemic comes from Spanish
Jewry rather than from areas where Jewish aggressiveness is most clearly attested in the
earlier period. For the decline in polemic and the growing isolationism in the Ashkenazic
orbit in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, see Katz, Exclusiveness and
Tolerance, chaps. 11, 12. On Spain, see the striking personal testimony of an obscure
participant in the Tortosa disputation; Frank Talmage, “Trauma at Tortosa: The Testimony
of Abraham Rimoch,” Medieval Studies 47 (1985): 397. I am grateful to Moshe Idel for
bringing this last reference to my attention.

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 THE BARCELONA DISPUTATION
Review Essay

From: AJS Review: The Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies 20 (1995):
379–388.
Reviewed work: Robert Chazan. Barcelona and Beyond: The Disputation of
1263 and Its Aftermath. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992, x,
257 pp.

In many respects, Robert Chazan’s new book on the disputation of 1263

between Nahmanides and Friar Paul Christian is an excellent and very
important contribution to the century-old historiographical debate about
one of the most famous events in medieval Jewish history. The Barcelona
disputation, where Friar Paul unveiled a relatively new approach
appealing to talmudic sources as evidence for the truth of Christianity,
was manifestly a moment of high drama, so significant and so thoroughly
investigated that we might be pardoned a certain skepticism about the
ability of any scholar to say something new about it. To a significant
degree, Chazan has overcome this obstacle by providing an overview of
the event that forces us to look at the large picture fortified with a healthy
infusion of common sense. At the same time, part of the analysis seems
to me to stand in tension with itself, and I am inclined to utilize some
of the evidence that Chazan presents so lucidly to reach a conclusion
different from his.
The book begins with a vigorous and persuasive argument against the
widespread, natural inclination to seek clear winners and losers through
a close analysis of the partisan records of such disputations. The apt
analogy to presidential debates drives home the point that people who see
the same event will often perceive the results quite differently depending
upon their ideological orientation (p. 14).1 Even more important, Chazan

1 As Chazan notes (p. 7), the basic observation was made by Isidore Loeb in his classic
article, “La Controverse de 1263 à Barcelone entre Paulus Christiani et Moise ben
Nahman,” Revue des Études Juives 15 (1887): 2.

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 The Middle Ages

shows how most of the significant discrepancies between the Latin and
Hebrew versions of the disputation can be accounted for as different
perceptions of the same discussion rather than as purposeful distortions
or outright lies. While the argument here is not entirely new, Chazan’s
analysis is more systematic than that of his predecessors; he evinces
greater sympathy for the Latin account than Isidore Loeb or Yitzhak Baer
while at the same time reinforcing Loeb’s argument that this account
rarely makes factual assertions that flatly contradict Nahmanides’
narrative. In this crucial respect, the book makes a major contribution.
Despite his effort to understand both versions as essentially honest,
though highly tendentious works, Chazan cannot avoid a confrontation
with the issue of purposeful distortion or lying, and here he evinces
considerable discomfort. On the one hand, he writes that “the royal seal
[on the Latin document], . . . Nahmanides’ general stature, . . . and above
all else, the public nature of the event . . . make . . . out-and-out lying
unthinkable” (p. 14). On the following page, however, he affirms that the
matter is not so simple. The Latin version’s depiction of Nahmanides’
confusion and the latter’s description of his confident attacks on
Christianity are “embellishment and exaggeration” of a sort that “do not
seem to me to warrant the accusation of lying. If readers prefer that label
to embellishment and exaggeration, so be it.”
The problem here is not semantic alone. It goes to the heart of
Chazan’s vision of the disputation. He explicitly avoids the term “lie,”
partly because of the analytical difficulties that it would cause him, and
partly, I suspect, because he is such a quintessential gentleman. But the
brute fact is that Chazan maintains unequivocally that Nahmanides
lied about a truly fundamental aspect of the proceedings. At several
important moments in the Hebrew account, Nahmanides informs us
that he succeeded in presenting certain standard Jewish criticisms of
Christian belief, sometimes in sharp language. Chazan regards this as
virtually impossible for two reasons that we would do well to examine.
The first of these is the commonsense observation, already noted
to some degree by Baer, that it is highly implausible that Nahmanides
could have spoken in a public forum about the utter irrationality of
the incarnation, the militarism of the Spanish Christian state, the
Messiah’s future destruction of Rome, or the curses to befall Christians.
Nahmanides reports—and a Christian document confirms—that he was
granted freedom of speech, but he also reports that he gave assurances

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 The Barcelona Disputation

of his “good sense to speak properly.” No grant of free speech could have
extended this far (pp. 48–49, 94–97, 138).
The second reason goes to one of Chazan’s most important insights.
He argues quite correctly that the use of the Talmud to demonstrate the
truth of Christianity provided a structure to the debate between Jews
and Christians in which the Christian side could not lose. In an exchange
about an allegedly Christological verse in the Bible, a Jew might be able to
reverse the argument by showing that the revealed text in fact contradicts
Christianity; if, however, the text is talmudic, it has no authority for
Christians, so that the Jew can do nothing more than neutralize the
citation by showing that it does not support Christian doctrine. “To
have developed such a potent new technique and then let it be readily
contravened by the Jewish protagonist further strains credulity” (p. 50,
and cf. p. 138). Indeed, adds Chazan, evidence from the later Tortosa
disputation clearly demonstrates that Christians applying Friar Paul’s
approach prevented Jews from raising issues that could disturb this one-
sided structure (pp. 53–54). Chazan’s structural insight, then, impels
him to affirm the very strong position that even had Nahmanides spoken
with consummate politeness and extreme diffidence, he could not have
presented a substantial percentage of the arguments that he reports.
Neither of these points can be dismissed easily. Nonetheless, the
second strikes me as a case of anachronistically imposing the Tortosa
model on Barcelona, and both must confront a monumental problem
that Chazan touches lightly but fails to give its due.
As Chazan indicates, indeed emphasizes, the disputation at Barcelona
was a pioneering experiment. I have argued elsewhere that many
Jewish-Christian debates of an informal sort had taken place over the
generations in an atmosphere of relatively free repartee.2 It should not be
taken for granted that thirteenth-century friars could snap their fingers
and change the ground rules abruptly and with total, immediate success
to one of ironclad control over the Jewish participant. The ultimate
authority during the debate was not the clerics who had constructed
the new approach, but the king of Aragon. The king was obviously on
the Christian side; nonetheless he may have enjoyed the spectacle of
2 D. Berger, “Mission to the Jews and Jewish-Christian Contacts in the Polemical Literature
of the High Middle Ages,” American Historical Review 91 (1986): 576–591. To be sure, the
strongest evidence comes from Northern Europe, but there is enough from the South to
sustain the point.

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 The Middle Ages

intellectual jousting, which would have been ruined by the ruthlessly

consistent suppression of every new point that Nahmanides wanted
to raise. Not only is this scenario not unreasonable; it is, I think, more
plausible than Chazan’s alternative. Among many other things, Tortosa
was a result of lessons learned at Barcelona.
There is, of course, no doubt that Nahmanides worked under severe
restraints, and he informs us more than once of initiatives that were
thwarted by uneven ground rules. It is self-evident, however, that he
would have attempted to broaden the focus of the debate, and there is
little reason to believe that at this point in history every such foray was
doomed to abject failure. It seems to me that the picture he presents of
occasional tolerance and occasional repression is more than credible; it is
precisely what we should expect at this transitional point in the medieval
Jewish-Christian relationship.
We are left with the sharp formulations and moderately lengthy
excursuses that Nahmanides reports, and there is no question that these
must give us pause. At the same time, we must keep in mind that a remark
can look much sharper on paper than in an oral exchange, where its
impact can be mitigated by a disarming smile, a shrug, a softness in tone,
particularly if the parties have a cordial relationship, for which there is
some external evidence in the case of Nahmanides and the king. More
important, our instinctive skepticism must be set against a powerful
argument for at least the approximate accuracy of these assertions.
Nahmanides probably wrote his account after the dissemination of
the Latin summary. He certainly knew that it would be subjected to
microscopic scrutiny in an attempt to discredit it. He also knew that
James I would surely be informed of any false assertions that audacious
and arguably disrespectful statements had been articulated in the royal
presence and in two of the crucial instances (about militarism and the
incarnation) addressed directly to him. We are, in short, being told that
it is hard to imagine that Nahmanides could have said these things in
the heat of a debate because he had promised to speak properly and
because he knew he would be stopped, but it is perfectly imaginable that
he would have lied about saying them in a carefully composed document
that would surely be shown to the king.
The core of this point was made already by Loeb. “The friars,” he
wrote, “could have said and written whatever they wanted with impunity.
Nahmanides would have exposed himself to grave dangers had he

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 The Barcelona Disputation

inserted inexactitudes or lies into his account. He would not have dared
to do it.”3 In Baer’s critique of the disputation, he ignored this point
entirely.4 Chazan does raise the argument and replies as follows: “The
only answer I can supply is that Nahmanides was deeply convinced of
the need for such a work and retained some confidence in the capacity of
Jewish leverage to protect him, as it eventually did” (p. 98). He goes on
to say that the silence of those who heard Nahmanides’ alleged remarks
would be more problematic than this difficulty (p. 98, and cf. p. 138).
By “silence” he presumably means failure to cut off such statements
with ruthless efficiency, since the absence of a recorded objection at
a particular point in Nahmanides’ narrative does not necessarily mean
that there was none. Moreover, in a passage that Chazan does his best to
explain away at a different point in his analysis (pp. 75–77), Nahmanides
informs us that after a day which ended with one of his aggressive
comments, he began the next morning’s proceedings by asking that the
debate be ended because Jews were fearful and Christians, including one
whom he identifies by name, had told him that it was inappropriate for
him to speak against their faith in their presence.5
Chazan is clearly uncomfortable with his reply, and the force of the
question is even more powerful than he indicates. A royal document
of 1265 reveals that Nahmanides came under attack for “vituperation”
against the Catholic faith in what he said at the disputation as well as in
what he wrote. This assertion in itself creates intractable problems for
Chazan’s position, despite his plausible conclusion in light of a papal letter
that it was the written work “that set in motion the cycle of prosecution”
(p. 98). What is particularly telling is that Nahmanides defended himself

3 Loeb, “La Controverse,” p. 7.

4 Y. Baer, “Le-Bikkoret ha-Vikkuhim shel R. Yehiel mi-Paris ve-R. Mosheh ben Nahman,”
Tarbiz 2 (1930–31): 172–187.
5 Kitvei Ramban, ed. by C. D. Chavel (Jerusalem, 1963), p. 312. Elsewhere (p. 97),
Chazan argues that the failure of the Latin account to take Nahmanides to task for
his “blasphemies” would be “unthinkable” if he had really spoken as he says. I do not
find this silence troubling. The Latin version is very brief and interested primarily in
highlighting Nahmanides’ ineffectiveness; emphasizing his aggressiveness would have
been counterproductive. Moreover, the fact that the king had allowed these statements
would have made the charge of blasphemy extremely difficult to level from a political
standpoint. It was the publication of the book, which the king had never permitted,
that made the attack on Nahmanides politically feasible. It should also be kept in mind
that for all his sharp comments, Nahmanides never claims to have said a negative word
about Jesus.

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 The Middle Ages

by pointing to the freedom of speech granted him by the king at the

disputation, a defense that is clearly intended to apply to the written
work as well. If we accept the position that the “vituperative” statements
had never been made orally, this defense establishes a standard for
chutzpah that may even eclipse that of the proverbial parricide who
asked the judge for clemency as an orphan. “After all,” said Nahmanides
to the king, “you granted me freedom of expression at the disputation.
Since I ascribed my vituperative statements in the written work to the
oral disputation, the grant of free speech applies to them. The fact that
this ascription happens to be false is entirely irrelevant.”
And even this is not the end of it. No one has ever suggested that
the judge accepted the young murderer’s argument. In our case, James
I resisted the demands of the Church for draconian punishment and
proposed milder measures than the ecclesiastical authorities were willing
to accept. His reason? “We are certain that the said permission was given
to him at that time by us and by Friar R[aymund] of Penyafort” (“cum
nobis certum sit, dictam licentiam a nobis et fratre R. de Pennaforti sibi
tunc temporis fore datam”).6 Even if we recognize the role of larger policy
concerns in the king’s position, this scenario does more than strain
credulity; it skirts the edges of the inconceivable.7
There is some uncertainty as to whether or not the book mentioned
in this document, a book which was presented to the bishop of Gerona
and allegedly written at his request, is the same as our Hebrew narrative.
Chazan’s position appears to be that the book given to the bishop could
not have been the Hebrew disputation but that it was that disputation
which was under attack. I do not understand how this position can be
reconciled with the royal document, which asserts with absolute clarity
that the book containing the alleged vituperation was given to the
bishop; at the same time, it is easy to understand the dilemma which
forced Chazan into this uncomfortable stance. On his assumption that
Nahmanides could have said virtually nothing offensive at the disputation,
6 Heinrich Denifle, “Quellen zur Disputation Pablos Christiani mit Mose Nachmani zu
Barcelona 1263,” Historisches Jahrbuch des Görres-Gesellschaft 8 (1887): 239.
7 Even Martin Cohen’s theory of collusion between Nahmanides and the king would not
provide an adequate explanation. For this conspiracy theory, which Chazan rightly rejects,
see Cohen’s “Reflections on the Text and Context of the Disputation of Barcelona,” Hebrew
Union College Annual 35 (1964): 157–192. (Cohen’s close reading of the Hebrew version
as a sustained account of Nahmanides’ public humiliation at Barcelona is remarkable, if
unsettling, testimony to the awesome powers of human ingenuity.)

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 The Barcelona Disputation

the following conundrums arise: If the book represented the disputation

more or less faithfully, it would have been almost impossible to label it
vituperative with any credibility. If the Hebrew narrative existed in 1265
alongside such a faithful report, it is bizarre indeed that the latter rather
than the former should have been prosecuted. If the Hebrew narrative did
not exist at that time, how can we imagine that after a terrifying brush
with severe punishment for writing an accurate account, Nahmanides
would proceed to write a much different, far more aggressive, distorted
narrative? If, on the other hand, this book was anything like the Hebrew
work in our possession, Chazan cannot imagine that Nahmanides would
have given it to the bishop; moreover, the claim that the book was covered
by the grant of free speech would be quite incomprehensible.
I am inclined to regard this book as very close to the Hebrew
disputation though probably not quite identical with it.8 What remains
crystal clear is that Nahmanides wrote a book with arguably vituperative
statements against Christianity, that he defended it on the grounds that
these statements had been made at the disputation, where he had been
granted freedom of expression, and that James I endorsed this defense.
In general, Nahmanides’ account has been confirmed by Christian
documentation to a degree that we would hardly have had the right
to expect. The Latin version, complete with its royal seal, says that
Nahmanides ended the disputation by slipping out of town in the
king’s absence, while the Hebrew text speaks of a friendly leave-taking
at which the king gave the rabbi three hundred dinarim, a payment
which is mentioned in a later royal document. Records that predate
the disputation imply the existence of the sort of positive relationship
between the royal court and the rabbi of Gerona which emerges from
Nahmanides’ account. Perhaps most significant of all is the confirmation
of the grant of free speech. While reading Chazan’s analysis of the iron
control exercised by the Christian side and particularly his argument
about the implausibility of Nahmanides’ assertion that he played some
role in formulating the agenda, I began to imagine the scholarly reaction
to the rabbi’s claim to a grant of free expression had we not possessed
the confirming evidence.
8 This is more or less Baer’s formulation in Toledot ha-Yehudim bi-Sefarad ha-Nozerit (Tel
Aviv, 1959), p. 93. I assume, for example, that the very sharp introductory paragraph
of our Hebrew text, which does not represent anything that Nahmanides said at the
disputation, was omitted from the copy prepared for the bishop of Gerona.

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 The Middle Ages

Nahmanides, we would have been told, needed to establish a framework

in which his blatantly problematic assertions that he criticized Christian
beliefs so vigorously and publicly would appear credible. He consequently
constructed an exchange in which he extracted a promise that he would
be allowed to speak freely. Given the new technique introduced by Friar
Paul and his ecclesiastical retainers and surely enforced by their royal
sponsor, it is unthinkable that such a dangerous promise could actually
have been made. Besides, what leverage did Nahmanides have to elicit
such a guarantee? Could he have threatened to go home if the king did
not acquiesce? Despite its cleverness, then, this is a transparent ploy
which presents one of Nahmanides’ least credible claims.
Yet the claim is indisputably true.
None of this means that Nahmanides’ oral formulations might not
have been somewhat milder than his written version (or even that the
book referred to in the royal document might not have been a bit milder
than our Hebrew text); it means only that he could not have written
something at any stage that he could not have defended as a more or
less accurate depiction of what he had said. Needless to say, I am not
arguing that the Hebrew account is anything resembling a stenographic
record. On the contrary, Chazan is surely correct in his observation that
“even a cursory look at the text indicates that it cannot be viewed as
a thorough account of the confrontation. The narrative is far too short
for that; the reportage on the Christian thrusts is far too restricted; the
unfolding of events is far too neat. The Nahmanidean narrative is clearly
a carefully crafted record aimed at creating a certain set of impressions
in the minds of its readers” (pp. 102–103). It is indeed highly unlikely
that the unmediated impression made by the disputation itself even
upon Jews was the smashing, devastating victory that the reader of the
Hebrew account sees, but Nahmanides’ work creates its own impression
not by the invention of arguments but by emphasis, allocation of
space, rhetorical flourishes, partisan interpretation, and the inevitable
clarification, improvement, and elaboration that come with the written
formulation of an oral exchange by a highly interested participant.
Chazan devotes an entire chapter to the narrative art of Nahmanides’
account. I do not believe that his discussion of the work’s “verisimilitude”
grants sufficient recognition to the role that verity can play in producing
verisimilitude, and where Chazan sees invention I see skillful use of
emphasis, characterization, and narration. But I see this largely thanks to

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 The Barcelona Disputation

Chazan, and I feel very uncomfortable in leveling even a minor criticism

against this marvelous chapter. It is brimming with literary sensitivity,
and it enables us to understand the impact that this little work has
made upon its readers throughout the generations. One of my clearest
teenage memories is reading the Vikkuah ha-Ramban for the first time,
and I am grateful to Chazan for giving me a better understanding of
why I reacted as I did.
There is much more to be said about the issues raised in this book,
but this is not the forum to discuss them in detail. Chazan devotes
chapters to the authority of rabbinic aggadah, to Nahmanides’ brief
work on Isaiah 53, and to his more important book on the redemption,
Sefer ha-Ge’ullah. On the first issue, a careful study of Nahmanides’
treatment of aggadot throughout his oeuvre remains a desideratum.9
On Sefer ha-Ge’ullah, Chazan makes a number of valuable observations;
still, I would not fully endorse the assertion that “the same Nahmanides
who was so conservative and secretive with respect to kabbalistic
teachings was explosively original and open with respect to equally
dangerous messianic speculations” (p. 186). Sefer ha-Ge’ullah is indeed
an innovative, important work, but it presents a messianic date that is
safely in the future and reflects the author’s conservatism in other ways
as well. I think that Chazan is quite correct in emphasizing Nahmanides’
conviction that the times demanded such a work, and this conviction
itself tells us something important about the insecurities of Spanish
Jews at the time of Nahmanides’ impressive achievement at Barcelona.
And it was an impressive achievement. Near the beginning of his
study, Chazan points to the danger of Jewish or Christian partisanship
that can affect the study of the disputation and pledges his best efforts
to avoid it. I have already confessed to a teenage crush on Nahmanides’
narrative, and I write this review with full awareness that I could stand
accused of both bias and credulousness. I will confess further that my
regard for Nahmanides’ moral stature prevents me from lightly dismissing
his summary statement, which the structure of his work did not force
him to make: “This is the substance of all the debates. In my opinion,

9 Bernard Septimus’s very brief discussion, to which Chazan makes frequent reference,
is still the best treatment of this question; see his “Open Rebuke and Concealed Love’:
Nahmanides and the Andalusian Tradition,” in Rabbi Moses Nahmanides (Ramban):
Explorations in His Religious and Literary Virtuosity, ed. by Isadore Twersky (Cambridge,
Mass., 1983), pp. 20–22.

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 The Middle Ages

I have changed nothing in them.”10 Chazan himself, as we have seen,

does take account of “Nahmanides’ stature” in a related context, and this
is no less a legitimate historical consideration than the probabilities of
royal or ecclesiastical displeasure at a particular argument. The quest for
objectivity may sometimes compel us to brave the appearance of bias,
and the critical search for truth can occasionally drive us into the arms
of the credulous.
This is an admirable study—careful, learned, sensitive, and
insightful. Much of it I can unreservedly endorse. Even where I disagree
with a fundamental part of the thesis, one of Chazan’s arguments for
the position I reject turns out to be a significant contribution to our
understanding of the structural impact of Friar Paul’s use of the Talmud.
Nahmanides’ performance in Barcelona was far more forceful, wide-
ranging, and effective than this book is prepared to acknowledge, and yet
Chazan has provided us the tools for a more sophisticated appreciation
of that very achievement.

10 Kitvei Ramban, p. 319. A fair reading of this assertion is, I think, quite consistent with
the sorts of changes that I believe Nahmanides did make.

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 CHRISTIAN HERESY AND JEWISH POLEMIC
IN THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES

From: Harvard Theological Review 68 (1975): 287–303.

The suggestion that there was meaningful contact between Christian

heretics and Jews during the Middle Ages is entirely plausible, quite
significant, and generally unproved.1 That the existence of heresy had
some impact upon the status of medieval Jews is, of course, beyond
question. Inquisitorial proceedings aimed at heretics affected not only
crypto-Jews (whether real or alleged) but members of the established
Jewish community as well. Jews were accused of harboring heretics,
encouraging them, and even of leading orthodox Christians into
heresy. On several important occasions, procedures usually directed
against heretical works were turned against the Talmud, the works of
Maimonides, and certain sections of the Jewish liturgy. By the end of the
middle ages, Jews were very well aware of the Church’s lack of affection
for heretics.2

1 L. I. Newman’s Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements (New York: Columbia

University Press, 1925) is an important study, but it does not succeed in establishing
the thesis implied by the title. See the discussion by F. Talmage, “An Hebrew Polemical
Treatise,” HTR 60 (1967): 335–337. See also G. Scholem, Ursprung und Anfänge der
Kabbala (Berlin, 1962), pp. 206–210. Scholem has noted one clear reference by a Jewish
polemicist to Christian “heretics who believe in two gods, one good and one evil” (Meir
of Narbonne’s Milhemet Mizvah [1245], cited in Scholem’s “Te‘udah Hadashah le-Toledot
Reshit ha-Qabbalah,” Sefer Bialik [Tel Aviv, 1934], p. 152). On this reference, see note
36 below. On the possible relationship between Provencal Kabbalah and Catharism, see
also Sh. Shahar, “Ha-Qattarim ve-Reshit ha-Qabbalah be-Languedoc,” Tarbiz 40 (1971):
483–509.
2 For a discussion of the impact of inquisitorial procedures on the Jews in a fairly early period,
see Y. Yerushalmi, “The Inquisition and the Jews of France in the Time of Bernard Gui,”
HTR 63 (1970): 317–377. The investigation and burning of the Talmud in the thirteenth

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 The Middle Ages

Similarly, heretics were incessantly reminded of the Church’s attitude

toward the Jews. It was a long-standing practice for Christians to label
schismatic groups “Jews” even when the relationship of the particular
group to Judaism was tenuous or imaginary. This was the case during
several early controversies in the Byzantine Empire,3 and similar
tendencies can be documented in Western Europe throughout the middle
ages. Peter Damian, for example, reserved his most bitter anti-Jewish
invective for occasions when he was attacking not Jews, but Christian
heretics; these heretics, he asserted, are even worse than “the Jewish
perfidy itself.”4 St. Bernard, who defended Jewish lives with vigor and
courage during the second crusade, nonetheless used Jews as a pejorative
standard of comparison for various forms of heresy and sin.5
The established Church, then, used each group to attack the other;
heretics were Jews, while Jews were guilty of encouraging heresy and even
of producing heretical works. But did it ever occur to Jews or heretics to
use similar tactics? Did Jews ever cite heresy as a way of attacking the
Church, and did heretics ever use Judaism to accomplish the same end?
Since Jews and heretics were made acutely aware of one another by the

century has been discussed most recently by Ch. Merchavia, Ha-Talmud bi-Re’i ha-Nazrut
(Jerusalem, 1970), pp. 227–248. On the burning of the works of Maimonides in the
1230s, see A. Schochet, “Berurim be-Parshat ha-Pulmus ha-Rishon al Sifrei ha-Rambam,”
Zion 36 (1971): 27–60. It is especially noteworthy that a Hebrew manuscript alleges that
a Christian missionary in 1272–73 threatened to demonstrate that the Jews have no
faith and that, like the Bougres, they deserve to be burned; see A. Neubauer, “Literary
Gleanings, IX,” JQR, o.s., 5 (1893): 714. R. Chazan’s suggestion that one of the earliest
large-scale persecutions of Jews in the high middle ages was related to the beginnings
of heresy in the West is interesting although there is no concrete documentation to bear
it out; see his “1007–1012: Initial Crisis for Northern European Jewry,” Proceedings of
The American Academy for Jewish Research 38–39 (1970–71): 101–117. For the charge
of harboring heretics as well as a more general bibliographical discussion, see S. Baron,
A Social and Religious History of the Jews (2d ed.; New York, London, and Philadelphia,
1965), pp. 9, 59, 267–268.
3 See J. Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue (London, 1934; reprinted New
York, 1969) 300–303.
4 See his Liber Qui Dicitur Gratissimus, ch. 37, PL 145: 153, and his De Sacramentis per
Improbos Administratis, PL 145: 529, discussed in my “St. Peter Damian: His Attitude
toward the Jews and the Old Testament,” Yavneh Review 4 (1965): 86–87, 89–90.
5 See my study, “The Attitude of St. Bernard of Clairvaux toward the Jews,” Proceedings
of the American Academy for Jewish Research 40 (1972): 104–105. See also Cassiodorus,
PL 70: 74D (“Judaei vel Donatistae”); Hadrian I, PL 98: 1255–1256; Humbert, PL 143:
1093C. Cf. B. Blumenkranz, Juifs et Chrétiens dans le Monde Occidental 430–1096 (Paris,
1960), pp. xvi–xvii, and note 11 there, and see Baron, History, pp. 58–60.

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 Christian Heresy and Jewish Polemic in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

Church itself, such possibilities must at least be considered. Moreover,

if each group was familiar with the doctrines of the other, there may
be examples of direct attacks against heretical views by Jews or against
Jewish views by heretics without reference to the Orthodox Church.
Since very little heretical polemic survives, the place to look for possible
verification of these suggestions is the Jewish polemic of the high middle
ages. An examination of this literature yields some speculative but
intriguing conclusions.
Several years ago, Frank Talmage argued that a short Hebrew polemic
attributed to Rabbi David Kimhi (d. 1235) contains three arguments,
“apparently unique in Hebrew polemical literature,” directed against
Cathar or Bogomil doctrines.6 This position, though plausible and
stimulating, cannot, in my view, withstand careful scrutiny; nevertheless,
it is possible that one of the heretical beliefs to which Prof. Talmage
alludes is found in another, even less likely, Jewish polemic.
The first passage in the so-called Vikkuah le-ha-Radaq which is alleged
to be directed against Christian heresy reads as follows:
I, the insignificant one, have seen fit to write briefly concerning some of
the notions of those who err in saying that Mary conceived Jesus without
normal intercourse. They say too that the annunciating angel, Gabriel, said
to her, “Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, etc.” At that moment the
holy spirit of the Lord entered through her ear so that she conceived. Reply
to them that every intelligent person knows that the young of all creatures,
whether man, animal, fowl or beast, leaves the mother’s body from the
place where the semen entered. Therefore, Jesus should have left through
the ear through which the Holy Spirit entered her womb. Yet he did not
leave from there but from the place where all others [leave].7

Prof. Talmage notes that “the concept (of conception through the ear)
was employed in orthodox Christianity in the patristic period,”8 but he
adds that “the absolute dualists among the heretics carried this further to
prove the noncorporeal nature of Jesus himself.” These dualists, however,
believed in exit through the ear as well, and the author of the Vikkuah
6 “An Hebrew Polemical Treatise, Anti-Cathar and Anti-Orthodox,” HTR 60 (1967): 323–
348. The article contains a translation of the treatise; the Hebrew text appears in Milhemet
Hovah (Constantinople, 1710), pp. 13a–18b and in Talmage’s Sefer ha-Berit u-Vikkuhei
Radaq im ha-Nazrut (Jerusalem, 1974). In his introduction to the Hebrew text (15–16),
Talmage reiterates the central thesis of the article.
7 Talmage’s translation, 341.
8 He refers to C. Schmidt, Histoire et Doctrine des Cathares ou Albigeois 2. 41f.

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 The Middle Ages

le-ha-Radaq obviously did not know of that doctrine; hence, says Prof.
Talmage, he must have been arguing against “mitigated dualists.”9
First of all, it is difficult to see what the doctrine of aural entry as
opposed to aural exit has to do with dualism in any form. It was not
necessary to be a Docetist to believe that an incorporeal spirit had
entered Mary; only the doctrine of aural exit supported the Docetist
position. Without aural exit, aural entry seems logically irrelevant to any
heretical position.
Moreover, there is no question that the doctrine of conception
through the ear was widespread among orthodox Christians not only in
the patristic period but in the later Middle Ages as well. Many paintings
of the annunciation appear to reflect this belief rather clearly.10 More
important, there are unambiguous literary references to such a doctrine.
At least seven medieval hymns begin with the lines

Rejoice, O virgin, mother of Christ,

Who conceived through the ear
With Gabriel as messenger
(Gaude, virgo, mater Christi
Quae per aurem concepisti
Gabriele nuntio).11

It has been argued, in fact, that no less an authority than St. Bernard
refers to this belief,12 and even if symbolic interpretations can be read
into some of these remarks, it is clearly inadmissible to assume that
the Christian masses or the ordinary priest who heard such state-
ments would do anything other than take them literally.13 Consequently,

9 “An Hebrew Polemical Treatise,” p. 327.

10 See M. Meiss, “Light as Form and Symbol in Some Fifteenth Century Paintings,” The Art
Bulletin 27 (1945): 175–181. Cf. also the brief reference in D. M. Robb, “The Iconography
of the Annunciation in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” The Art Bulletin 18
(1936): 523.
11 Quoted in Y. Hirn, The Sacred Shrine (London, 1912), p. 297, and in E. Jones, “The
Madonna’s Conception Through the Ear,” Essays in Applied Psychoanalysis (London, 1923;
reprinted New York, 1964) 2. 269.
12 PL 183: 327, cited in Hirn, p. 298.
13 Cf. Hirn, p. 298. In the fifteenth century, a converso monk later suspected of Judaizing
asked about the channel through which Jesus was conceived, and one answer suggested
to him (apparently by an orthodox colleague) was “per la oreja;” see A. A. Sicroff, “Clan-
destine Judaism in the Hieronymite Monastery of Nuestra Senore de Guadalupe,” Studies
in Honor of M. J. Benardete, ed. by I. Langnas and B. Sholod (New York, 1965), pp. 105–106.

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 Christian Heresy and Jewish Polemic in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

there is no reason to believe that the reference to aural conception in the

Vikkuah le-ha-Radaq reflects contact with Cathars or any other Christian
heretics.
However, we are not yet finished with this rather interesting doctrine.
Joseph Official, a Jewish polemicist from northern France writing in
the third quarter of the thirteenth century, makes the following brief
comment with respect to the Christian assertion that the speaker in
Psalm 22 is Jesus:
“In thee our fathers put their trust; they trusted, and thou didst rescue
them” (Psalm 22:5). Now, did he have fathers? After all, they maintain that
he entered her through the center of the head.14

Here again, pictorial representations of the annunciation appear to

reflect such a view,15 and references to a belief of this sort in a northern
French polemic is interesting in itself. But another Jewish polemic goes
even further.
The Nizzahon Vetus (or Sefer Nizzahon Yashan) was written by a Ger-
man Jew in the late thirteenth or very early fourteenth century. It is
basically an anthology of Ashkenazic polemic against Christianity,
and it therefore contains a great deal of French material dating from
a somewhat earlier period.16 In discussing the same Psalm 22, the author
writes:
“I was cast upon thee from the womb; thou art my God from my mother’s
stomach” (Psalm 22:11); but not in the womb or in the stomach. Moreover,
if this were said about the hanged one, the problem would be their assertion

14 Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, ed. by J. Rosenthal (Jerusalem, 1970), p. 104. This section of
Joseph’s work had never been published before Rosenthal’s edition and was therefore
unavailable to Talmage. The belief that Jesus was conceived “through the brain” was also
reported by Yom Tov Lipmann Mühlhausen in his Sefer [ha-]Nizzahon (written at the very
beginning of the fifteenth century; Amsterdam, 1709) section 8, p. 15a. He goes on to
argue that Jesus should have emerged through the same passageway, and yet no one has
ever maintained that the site of his birth was different from that of other infants.
15 See Jacob Arlow, “The Madonna’s Conception through the Eyes,” The Psychoanalytic Study
of Society 3 (1965): 13–25, esp. 20 (pointed out by my colleague at Brooklyn College, Prof.
Elizabeth Brown).
16 The work was published with a Latin translation by J. Wagenseil, Tela Ignea Satanae
(Altdorf, 1681) 2. 1–260. On the date, see E. Urbach, “Études sur la littérature
polémique au moyen age,” Revue des Études Juives 100 (1935): 60, 76–77, and Rosenthal’s
introduction to Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, p. 15. See also the introduction to my forthcoming
critical edition, translation and commentary.

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 The Middle Ages

that he was born out of the forehead of a harlot, for the verse says that he
was born out of a woman like all children; thus, your books lie when they
say that the spirit entered Mary.17

This unusual passage contains two separate refutations of the contention

that Jesus is the speaker in this Psalm. First, the verse indicates that
the speaker recognized God only after he was born (“from my mother’s
stomach” but not in it); if he were divine from the moment of conception,
he would have recognized God even in the womb.18 Secondly, Christians
believe that Jesus was born through the forehead, while the verse says
that the speaker was born from the stomach.
Here we finally find a Jewish polemicist referring to an unusual
location for Jesus’ exit at birth. Several arguments can be posed to
mitigate the significance of this statement. The Hebrew text is a little
bit awkward, and it is not impossible that the key passage (“Moreover—
children”) is a gloss; nevertheless, even if this is true (and there is no
evidence that it is), it would mean that the glossator was aware of such
a doctrine. It could also be argued that the author read the above-
quoted remark by Joseph Official and merely assumed that Christians
would place the birth at the same site as the entry. This, however,
seems improbable, since there are several passages in the Nizzahon
Vetus which reflect awareness of the orthodox view of Jesus’ birth.19
It is one thing to attack a known alternate view; it is something else
entirely to invent a view which contradicts the only Christian belief you
have ever heard and then proceed to refute it. The passage in Joseph
Official’s work may well have reminded the author of an unorthodox
view of Jesus’ birth, but it is quite unlikely that he would have simply
made it up.

17 Tela Ignea Satanae, p. 167.

18 This argument is more elaborate and explicit with respect to the Christian identification
of Cyrus with Jesus in Isaiah 45. See Tela, p. 102: “It is written, ‘That you may know that
I, the Lord, who call you by your name, am the God of Israel’ (Isaiah 45:3). Thus, you say
that this Cyrus whom you identify with Jesus did not know God until the point when
all these things were done to him. In light of this, how can you say that the spirit of God
entered Mary and took on flesh? If that were true, he certainly should have known God
even before his birth.”
19 Cf. Tela, pp. 7, 210. See p. 201, where the author is apparently interested in proving from
Christian sources that Jesus was born from the stomach; this too may be directed against
the heretical view. His evidence consists of a quotation which is apparently an abridged
and distorted version of Luke 2:5–11.

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 Christian Heresy and Jewish Polemic in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

Exit through the forehead is, of course, not the same as exit through
the ear, and I am unaware of any heretical view which maintained the
former position. It is therefore highly probable that the passage in the
Nizzahon Vetus reflects a distorted awareness of the heretical doctrine of
aural exit. The distortion may be a result of Joseph Official’s reference to
entry through the forehead, or it may result from an uncontrollable urge
to use the insulting Biblical phrase “the forehead of a harlot” (Jeremiah
3:3) with respect to Mary; it is not even impossible that some heretics
could have distorted the doctrine themselves (influenced, perhaps, by the
myth of Athena’s birth) and that the Nizzahon Vetus, which is generally
quite reliable in its descriptions of Christian beliefs and ceremonies, may
be reporting such a heretical view accurately.
In any case, this passage indicates Jewish familiarity with a clearly
heretical doctrine. That such familiarity should be reflected in a late-
thirteenth-century work from Germany is somewhat surprising.
Nevertheless, heretics were to be found in northern France and Germany
in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries,20 and some of their
ideas could have become known to Jews. Otherwise, the argument may
have come north through the medium of Jewish polemic itself, but
whatever its source, it demonstrates some Jewish contact with Christian
heretics.
The second argument in the Vikkuah le-ha-Radaq which is supposed to
be directed against a heretical belief appears in the following passage:

It is well known to all, even to fools, that every woman from the age of
thirteen on undergoes menstruation, which is the period of the blood of
women in confinement which the woman experiences every month. When
she becomes pregnant, she does not have this blood, for the foetus is
nourished on this blood of confinement during the nine months he is in
the womb. Furthermore, when a woman gives birth, that menstrual blood
goes to the nipples of the woman several days later and turns into milk.
Therefore, when the child sucks the breasts of the mother, she does not
have this blood, since it went to the breasts, as we have said.
I shall make an additional point to you. Know that the menstrual blood
is a virtually fatal poison. Were a man to drink one cup of it, he would
die in a few days or succumb to leprosy, for it is blood which is foul and
impure. The wonders of the Lord are so great that the foetus is nourished

20 See A. Borst, Die Katharer (Stuttgart, 1953), pp. 103–104. Cf. also W. Wakefield and
A. Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages (New York, 1969), pp. 38–39.

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 The Middle Ages

on that blood for nine months without being harmed. However, it does
make the child somewhat weak, so that when he leaves the mother’s womb,
he does not have the strength to walk on his feet, since he was nourished
on that blood all those months he was in the womb. This is not the case
with the animals, for as soon as they leave their mother’s womb, they walk
on their feet. This is so because beasts and animals have no menstrual
blood and the foetus is nourished on the blood of the heart which is good,
healthy, clean blood. Therefore, when the [young of the animal] leaves
the womb of its mother, it walks on its feet immediately. If then Jesus’
mother conceived him by the holy spirit, so that he was not nourished in
his mother’s womb on that corrupt blood, he should have walked on his
feet the day he was born and he should have spoken and been as wise as
he was when he reached the age of thirty. Rather, he left [her body] from
the customary place, was small like other infants, and performed his needs
as do other children.21

The heretical doctrine at which this passage is allegedly aimed is the view
that Jesus did not partake of ordinary nourishment. Since this is so, he
would not have been nourished by menstrual blood and would therefore
have been born with the ability to walk and talk. Now, this interpretation
of the passage may be correct, but there exists an alternative explanation
which is at least equally reasonable that does not force us to assume any
knowledge of heretical beliefs.
The first crucial observation is that there is no intimation in this
passage that Jesus did not eat or drink after his birth. The author’s
reference to the transformation of menstrual blood into mother’s milk
is not intended to indicate that the milk is harmful or to show that Jesus’
failure to drink it (a heretical view) should have made him stronger than
the ordinary infant.22 The reason for that reference is quite different.
The author’s argument that the foetus is nourished by menstrual
blood depends upon the observation that menstruation stops during
pregnancy. He must therefore deal with the obvious objection that it
does not begin again immediately after childbirth, particularly when the
mother is nursing; his solution to this difficulty is the long-standing view
that the menstrual blood becomes milk, but there is no reason to believe
that it retains its harmful qualities after its transformation.
21 Talmage’s translation, pp. 341–342.
22 It is not quite clear to me whether Talmage understood the argument in this fashion. He
does express surprise (p. 328) that the author should consider mother’s milk harmful
when all other medieval writers praise its quality.

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 Christian Heresy and Jewish Polemic in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

The only belief that the author assumes explicitly is that Jesus was not
nourished in the ordinary fashion while in the womb, and this, I think, was
his own deduction rather than his report of a known Christian doctrine.
The important clauses read, “If then Jesus’ mother conceived him by the
holy spirit, so that he was not nourished in his mother’s womb on that
corrupt blood . . . ” The second clause, which contains the heretical view,
is a logical inference from the doctrine that Mary conceived by the holy
spirit.23 The basis of this inference is fairly clear. Jews frequently asked
Christians why Jesus had to eat or drink if he was divine. After all, Moses
had been sustained without food by the Holy Spirit for forty days and
nights, and if Jesus possessed the Holy Spirit constantly, he should have
had no need of any physical nourishment.24 The only answer that a Jew
might grudgingly accept would be that Jesus made every effort to behave
like an ordinary mortal, and so he ate even though he did not have to do
so.25 But this makes sense only after birth; while in the womb, Jesus had
no conceivable reason for engaging in a totally useless enterprise, and the
author simply takes it for granted that Christians would recognize this.26

23 Talmage’s translation of the vav which introduces the second clause as “so that” is precisely
to the point. This is a corollary of the first clause rather than a continuing exposition of
the straightforward Christian position.
24 See Meir ben Simon of Narbonne (thirteenth century), Milhemet Mizvah, Parma
manuscript, 26b–27a, 89a–b; Nizzahon Vetus, Tela Ignea Satanae, pp. 213–215, 217–218,
224–226. The point was raised in connection with Matthew 4:2 in Jacob ben Reuben’s
Milhamot Hashem, ed. by J. Rosenthal (Jerusalem, 1963), p. 144, and in the Nizzahon
Vetus, p. 200.
25 Such a Christian argument (although in a different context) is cited without direct
refutation in the Nizzahon Vetus, p. 173: “You may then argue that he prayed and cried
not because he wanted to be saved but because people normally pray when they are in
trouble; thus, he too prayed because he behaved like an ordinary mortal in every respect.”
Cf. Jerome, In Esaiam (Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina, 73A), p. 706.
26 For the argument that Jesus did not have to make pretenses in a private situation
involving only “himself and his Father,” see the Nizzahon Vetus, p. 60. The author there
is commenting on the Christian assertion that the addressee in Jeremiah 1 is Jesus (cf.
Cyprian’s Testimonia 15, PL 4: 691). If so, he argues, why does Jesus respond, “Ah, Lord
God, I cannot speak,” so that God must tell him, “Behold, I have put my words in your
mouth” (Jer. 1: 69)? “This implies,” he continues, “that up to that time he possessed no
such power of speech and certainly not divinity . . . Notice, then, their shame, for he was
supposed to have been divine from birth, yet Jeremiah says that the divine word was
granted him only now. If the Christian will respond by arguing that Jesus spoke this
way [reading amar ken with the Munich manuscript rather than amar lah ken] because of
his humility, refute him by asking why humility should be necessary in a conversation
between himself and his Father.”

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 The Middle Ages

There is therefore no compelling reason for regarding this as a response

to a known heretical position.
The third and final reference in the Vikkuah LehaRadaq which
could be related to heresy is the citation of a Christian view that
Adam was promised redemption after five and a half days, which equal
5,500 years. This may have been “an element of Bogomil theology,” but,
as Prof. Talmage himself points out, it is found in many early orthodox
writers.27 There is, moreover, nothing specifically “heretical” about it. Had
the first two indications of familiarity with heresy been convincing, the
probability that this concept was learned from heretical sources might
have been reasonably high; standing on its own, however, this example
cannot demonstrate Jewish contact with heretics.
The Vikkuah le-ha-Radaq, then, probably does not reflect Jewish
knowledge of heretical doctrines. Surprisingly, the Nizzahon Vetus
probably does, but the report in that work is bizarre and possibly
distorted. On the other hand, we can now turn to a passage in another,
unpublished Jewish polemic where the reference to heresy is crystal clear
and where the heretical doctrine is reported with complete accuracy.
Moreover, unlike the argument in the Nizzahon Vetus and the possible
arguments in the Vikkuah le-ha-Radaq, the purpose in this passage is to
attack the Orthodox Church itself.
One of the recurring issues in Jewish-Christian polemic was the
numerical superiority enjoyed by Christians. This was cited as evidence
of the validity of the Christian faith because it showed that the Jews
had been rejected and that various Biblical prophecies (such as Genesis
12:2–3; 15:5; Psalms 2:8; 72:11) had been fulfilled through Christianity.
Jews responded to this argument in a variety of ways which ranged from
the traditional assertion that they were being temporarily punished
for their sins to the claim that their degradation is itself proof of their
religious superiority.28 One of the more interesting Jewish approaches

27 “An Hebrew Polemical Treatise,” pp. 328–329. Cf. also H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of
the Church Fathers (2d ed.; Cambridge, Mass., 1964) 1. 364.
28 This last argument, based on Dan 8: 12 (“And it cast down the truth to the ground”),
was proposed by Meir of Narbonne, Milhemet Mizvah, Parma ms., 13b, 22b, 105b; cf.
also Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, p. 113. For Jewish explanations of the exile in polemic, see
the additions to Joseph Kimhi, Sefer ha-Berit, in Milhemet Hovah, p. 36a, the Jew in the
Dialogus of Rupert of Deutz, PL 170: 606, the Nizzahon Vetus, pp. 253–257, and Solomon
de’ Rossi, ‘Edut Hashem Ne’emanah, in J. Rosenthal, Mehqarim u-Meqorot (Jerusalem,
1967) 1. 395–400 (= Sura 3 [1948]: 260–264.

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 Christian Heresy and Jewish Polemic in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

to this problem was to reverse it by maintaining that Christians do

not constitute a majority of the world’s population and that they
themselves can be placed on the defensive through the use of a numerical
argument.29
Another issue in which numbers became relevant was the question
of God’s fairness in making his revelation known. The argument was
first raised by a Christian. Why, Tertullian asked, should we believe that
God, who rules the entire world, revealed his law to only one nation
and did not grant it to all?30 Well, said some Jewish polemicists (not
in direct response to this question), the alleged Christian revelation is
hardly a model of fairness either. The miracles associated with Jesus are
not particularly impressive, especially in light of the incredible sort of
thing we are supposed to believe about him and the terrible consequences
of a failure to believe.31 With respect to the Jews, Jesus caused more
suffering than he alleviated, because it was through him that they are
supposed to have committed a sin of unparalleled magnitude.32 Finally—
and here the numerical argument comes into play—if Jesus came to
redeem the world from damnation, he didn’t do a very good job, since
only a minority of the world’s inhabitants believes in him; he could have
found a way to cause all nations to have faith.33
A thirteenth-century polemicist from Avignon by the name of
Mordecai ben Joseph put this argument in the following form:

Moreover, how did he redeem the world by his advent? If you alone are
saved, a greater number than you have been damned (lit., lost), such as

29 This argument was applied to Ps 72: 11 by Jacob ben Reuben (Milhamot Hashem, p. 74),
Nahmanides (Vikkuah, in Ch. Chavel, Kitvei Ramban [Jerusalem, 1963] 1. 311), and the
author of the Nizzahon Vetus, p. 176. See also Meir of Narbonne, Milhemet Mizvah, Parma
ms., 13b, and Jacob ben Reuben, Milhamot Hashem, pp. 38–39, 114. Cf. especially the
Nizzahon Vetus, pp. 237–238.
30 “Cur etenim Deus, universitatis conditor, mundi totius gubernator . . . legem per Moysen
uni populo dedisse credatur, et non omnibus gentibus attribuisse dicatur?” Q. S. F. Tertu-
lliani Adversus Judaeos mit Einleitung und kritischem Kommentar, ed. by H. Tränkle
(Wiesbaden, 1964), p. 4 (= PL 2: 599).
31 That Christian miracles should have been more impressive was asserted in Meir of
Narbonne’s Milhemet Mizvah, Parma ms., 121a–b, in the Vikkuah le-ha-Radaq, Talmage’s
translation, pp. 345, 347, and in the Nizzahon Vetus, pp. 6, 90, 155, 159. The unfairness
of punishing someone who refused to believe in the divinity of Jesus was emphasized by
Joseph Kimhi, Sefer ha-Berit, Milhemet Hovah, p. 228.
32 Nizzahon Vetus, pp. 211, 234–235.
33 Ibid., p. 238.

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 The Middle Ages

Jews and Muslims who do not believe in him. Indeed, many have become
Albigensians (Albigois34) or Bogomils (Bougres), for (lit., and) they cannot
believe his shame, that he should disgrace himself by entering a woman
and having men prevail against him (lit., have power over him). The result
is that most of the world goes to hell through his advent.35

The heretical doctrines alluded to in this passage are the denial that God
entered a woman or that men prevailed against him. The pronouns are
ambiguous, and the sentence can even be read as a denial that Jesus
entered a woman or that men prevailed against him. I am quite convinced
that the first explanation is correct, but either one can yield an accurate
description of the beliefs of thirteenth-century occitanian heretics. The
Cathars believed that Jesus was not God but an angel; hence, God was
neither placed in a woman nor crucified. In a sense, these events were
not even applicable to Jesus, because his body was not real; consequently,
the crucifixion and even incarnation itself were illusions.36
Not only were these beliefs accurately perceived by Mordecai, they
are in fact at the center of heretical thought. A medieval writer could
easily have defended the statement that people became heretics because
of an unwillingness to accept demeaning doctrines about God, and here
this assertion is used against the Orthodox Church. Christians are not
only outnumbered by a combination of Jews and Muslims, but Christian
heretics must also be counted among the unredeemed. For a thirteenth-
century writer living in southern France, no argument could have been

34 This is the preferable form in thirteenth-century French (the Hebrew transliteration is

with a gimel); see Hatzfeld and Darmesteter, Dictionnaire Générale de la Langue Française,
s. v. Albigeois.
35 Liqqutim me-Hibburei R. Mordekhai ben Yosef me-Avignon, ed. by A. Posnanski, Hebrew
University manuscript, Shelf Mark Heb 8° 769), p. 26. On Posnanski’s unpublished
transcriptions of Hebrew polemical manuscripts, see D. Simonsen, “Eine Sammlung
polemischer und apologetischer Literatur,” Festschrift für Aron Freiman (Berlin: 1935),
pp. 114ff.
36 On these doctrines, see Borst, Die Katharer, pp. 162–67; J. Russell, Dissent and Reform in
the Early Middle Ages (Berkeley, Cal., 1965), p. 203; Wakefield and Evans, Heresies of the
High Middle Ages, pp. 8, 48. Mordecai’s reference to heretics is somewhat more significant
than that of Meir of Narbonne (see above, note 1). Mordecai employs the specific terms
Albigensians and Bogomils rather than the generic “heretics,” and the doctrines he cites
are less obvious to the casual observer than the dualism mentioned by Meir. Finally, it
is of considerable interest that while Meir contrasted heretics and orthodox Christians
to the detriment of the former (Jewish law, he tells his orthodox listener, is far more
favorably inclined toward orthodox Christians than it is toward dualists), Mordecai cites
heresy with some approval as part of an attack against the Christian mainstream.

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 Christian Heresy and Jewish Polemic in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

more natural, and the passage clearly reveals an awareness of heretical

beliefs as well as a willingness to cite them as part of an anti-orthodox
polemic.

We now turn to a passage in another Jewish polemic which may

shed new light on the tactics of medieval heretics. Jacob ben Reuben’s
Milhamot Hashem (The Wars of the Lord) was an epoch-making work.
Written in southern France in 1170, it is the first or second extant Jewish
polemic from western Europe, and it contains the first Jewish critique of
a portion of the New Testament (Matthew), the first Hebrew translation
of sizable selections from the Latin New Testament (again Matthew), and
what may be the first Hebrew translation of any section of a medieval
Latin work (Gilbert Crispin’s Disputatio).37 It is, moreover, the product of
a genuine discussion between Jacob and a Christian acquaintance.
After lengthy but rather cordial disputes concerning the trinity,
incarnation, allegory, and standard Christological verses, Jacob’s
opponent, who is clearly an orthodox Christian, announces that he
has a friend named Paul who has posed two philosophical objections
against Judaism. The objections are described, Jacob responds, and the
discussion then returns to Biblical verses. There is, however, something
suspicious about those objections, and they deserve some very careful
scrutiny.
Paul said: I truly know that the Jews believe in God, and they believe that
he is a God who exists and brings everything into being, that he is primeval
without antecedent, and that he is in the category of what is and what can
be. If so, then the two principles of good and evil, which are what is and
what can be, are found in him. He (Paul) also said that since he exists and
brings everything into being, then he brings about evil just as he brings
about good. He also said that since he is without beginning and without
end, all created things, which have a beginning and an end, are in him;
therefore, he contains evil as well as good. Indeed, my eyes have thus seen
and recognized that the Jews do not believe anything, for even according to

37 On the date and place, see Rosenthal’s introduction to his edition of Milhamot Hashem
(Jerusalem, 1963). The problems cited by Ch. Merhavya (Kirjath Sepher 39 [1964]: 144–
148) are not sufficient, in my opinion, to cast substantial doubt upon the 1170 date in the
colophon. On the translations from Matthew, see Rosenthal’s “Targum shel ha-Besorah
‘al Pi Matti le-Ya‘aqov ben Reuven,” Tarbiz 32 (1962): 48–66, and on the translation from
Crispin, see my “Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille, and Jacob ben Reuben: A Study in the
Transmission of Medieval Polemic,” Speculum 49 (1974): 34–47.

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 The Middle Ages

their own words they believe in a God in whom there exist two principles—
good and evil. Now, one who makes evil has evil in him, as I have shown
you on the basis of their type of faith and through that which they concede
and believe. I have therefore said that your (read: their?) words have no
foundation and that faith has been lost and cut off from their mouths.38

This is an amazing objection for the obvious but devastating reason

that there is nothing in it that cannot be directed against Christianity
itself. Whatever reservations may be expressed about the formulation
of the premises of the argument (and Jacob does object to at least one
such formulation), the crucial fact is that none of those premises are
characteristic of Judaism and not of Christianity. Since Christians also
believe that God brings everything into being and that he is without
beginning and end, it should follow that they too must concede that
there is evil in God. But this is heresy! Indeed, it is the Cathar heresy, or
something very much like it.39
The 1160s were a turning point in the history of Catharism in
southern France; it was in this decade that dualism began to spread
and to become a vital force.40 Needless to say, not every Christian
who became attracted to dualism as it began to spread immediately
announced that he was a heretic. Under the inquisition, of course,
concealment of heresy became crucial, but it was hardly unknown in the
earlier period. The temptation is therefore overwhelming to suggest that
Paul was a concealed dualist of recent vintage who approached an old
friend with some objections against Judaism; his real target, however,
was not Judaism at all. Under the guise of giving a lecture about the
deficiencies of Judaism, Paul was really sowing seeds that would weaken
his friend’s faith in orthodox Christianity. A fourteenth-century
Christian writes about heretics who pretended to be Jews in order to

38 Milhamot Hashem, pp. 116–117. I have tried to provide an extremely literal translation.
Despite Merhavya’s suggestion to the contrary (op. cit., pp. 146–147), it is quite clear that
this Paul, who is a contemporary of the author, is not the same as the Paul mentioned
in several earlier passages of Milhamot Hashem. Even if that Paul is not the apostle (and
he probably is), he is certainly no contemporary of the disputants since he is mentioned
along with Jerome and Augustine as one of the founders of the Christian faith (p. 5).
39 Whatever dualist elements may have influenced early Christianity (see Rosenthal’s note
ad loc.), it was clearly unacceptable for a twelfth-century Christian to say that there is evil
in God.
40 See Borst, Die Katharer, pp. 89–108. Cf. also Russell, Dissent and Reform, p. 200, and
R. I. Moore, “The Origins of Medieval Heresy,” History 55 (1970): 23.

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 Christian Heresy and Jewish Polemic in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

be free to spread heretical ideas;41 here we are probably dealing with

a heretic pretending to attack Judaism in order to accomplish the same
end. Jacob’s disputant apparently failed to grasp the implications of the
question, or, like a famous fourteenth-century convert to Christianity,
he may have concocted an orthodox interpretation of it,42 and so he
passed it on to his Jewish acquaintance. The fact remains, however, that
if we take this passage at anything resembling face value, it is urging
a dualistic belief based on premises shared by both Judaism and orthodox
Christianity.
Paul posed a second objection against Judaism in addition to the
first, and an examination of this objection ought to help us confirm or
deny the impression that there is something quite unusual about this
anti-Jewish polemicist. Here, then, is Paul’s second argument.

Paul continued and said: I truly know that the Jews believe in him who is
the Lord, God, Almighty, true, and living, as it is written, “The Lord is the
true God; he is the living God and eternal king” (Jeremiah 10:10). And
[they believe in him who is] mighty and powerful, as it is written, “Through
his great might, his might and power” (Isaiah 40:26). [They] also [believe]
in him who is “merciful and compassionate, forbearing and constant in
his love” (Psalms 145:8). Now, I know that he is not true by partaking
of truth, so that truth would be something other than he; nor does he
live by partaking of life as man does, who is alive at one time and dead
at another; nor is he powerful by partaking of power as man is, who is
powerful at one time and weak at another. The creator, blessed be he, is
not that way. Rather, his essence is truth, and his essence is life, and his
essence is power, and his essence is merciful, and his essence is God, and
his essence is Almighty, and the same is true of all the names that apply
to him. Moreover, we certainly know that the principle of strength is not
merciful, and the principle “merciful” is not strength, and the principle of
life is not truth; even though truth cannot exist without life, life exists as
a principle without truth. Thus, each of them is a principle in itself, and
each one is the basic essence of the creator, blessed be he. Since this is so,
it follows that the one in whom you believe is more than one, for his basic
essence includes all these things. Now, there is no one who does not believe
that he is the Lord, God, Almighty, merciful, compassionate, and living; and
each of these is a principle in itself. This is the truth.43

41 See the quotation in Baron, History, p. 58.

42 For the assertion by Abner of Burgos that evil in this passage does not mean evil, see
Rosenthal’s note ad loc.
43 Milhamot HaShem, pp. 120–121.

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 The Middle Ages

This second objection is only slightly less suspicious than the first.
Once again, Paul presents a position that is almost incredible coming
from an orthodox Christian and is, in fact, a common Jewish and Muslim
argument against Christianity.
In this period, Christians often explained the trinity in terms of
divine attributes. The identification of the trinity with power, wisdom,
and will, or essence, wisdom, and will, is frequently represented in the
polemical literature of the period, and Jewish writers cite this argument
all the time.44 Both Jews and Muslims responded with a philosophical
explanation of attributes designed to undermine this assertion,45 but
they also did something else which was far simpler and probably more
effective. God, they said, has more than three attributes.46
Paul’s argument, then, is once again most peculiar. He asserts that
divine attributes imply a multiplicity of some sort within God, but it
is a multiplicity of more than three. The only difference between his
argument and that of Jewish polemicists is that he purports to believe
in such multiplicity while Jews explicitly assert it just for the sake of
argument. By purporting to believe in it, Paul can claim to be attacking
the Jewish belief in the absolute unity of God, but the effect of his
argument is to undermine the standard philosophical interpretation of
the trinity as well. Now, Cathars probably did not believe in this kind of
multiplicity within God, but they did not believe in the trinity either,47
and this sort of argument may well have been designed to erode the faith
of the orthodox Christian in the trinity.48
44 See Meir of Narbonne, Milhemet Mizvah, Parma ms., 30a–b, 49b–50a, 99a–101a; Moses
of Salerno, Ta‘anot, in S. Simon, Mose ben Salomo von Salerno und seine philosophische
Auseinandersetzung mit den Lehren des Christentums (Breslau, 1932), Hebrew section,
pp. 6, 15; Nahmanides, Vikkuah, Kitvei Ramban, p. 320; Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogus, PL 157:
606ff. On the early formulation of this interpretation of the trinity, see H. Wolfson,
“The Muslim Attributes and the Christian Trinity,” HTR 49 (1956): 1–18.
45 See the references in Rosenthal’s notes ad loc. Cf. also Nahmanides’ Vikkuah, p. 320.
46 See Simon, Mose ben Salomo von Salerno (Heb. sec.), p. 6, and Nahmanides’ Vikkuah, loc.
cit. Baron (op. cit., p. 85), while incorrectly stating that Nahmanides did not use this
argument, refers to it as a “long-debated” matter. The extension of alleged Trinitarian
references in the Bible beyond three was also a rather common Jewish approach; see
appendix 1 of my forthcoming edition of the Nizzahon Vetus.
47 See the references in note 36, and cf. also S. Runciman, The Medieval Manichee (Cambridge,
1947), pp. 148–149, and C. Thouzellier, Catharisme et Valdéisme en Languedoc à la Fin du
XIIe et au Début du XIIIe Siècle (Paris, 1966), p. 61.
48 It might be argued that all Paul meant is that Jews who maintain that there are more than
three attributes must believe in extensive multiplicity within God; he himself, however,

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 Christian Heresy and Jewish Polemic in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

Can it be a coincidence that both of Paul’s objections to Judaism

pose a direct challenge to orthodox Christianity? Perhaps. It may be
that he was just an incompetent polemicist who could not refrain from
putting his foot in his mouth, or it may be that I have missed something
and misinterpreted him. However, because of the time and place of
this discussion, because both questions appear to undermine elements
of Christianity which the Cathars denied, and because Paul presented
his arguments against Judaism to Christians and not to Jews,49 the
possibility looms large that we have uncovered a subtle method of Cathar
propaganda.50
Jewish polemic, then, appears to shed considerable light upon the
unhappy triangle of Jews, Christian heretics, and the Orthodox Church
in the high middle ages. It reveals some Jewish knowledge of heretical
doctrines and provides insights into the tactics used by Jews and heretics
to combat orthodox Christianity. The author of the Nizzahon Vetus was
apparently aware of a heretical belief which he used to undermine the
Christological interpretation of a crucial Psalm and which he later
attacked directly on the basis of the Gospels themselves.51 Mordecai of
Avignon knew some central heretical teachings and cited them explicitly
and accurately in an attack against the Orthodox Church. Finally, Jacob

believes in only three hypostases. Aside from the fact that he never says this explicitly,
his final comment that “there is no one (ein ehad mi-kol ha-nivra’im) who does not believe”
in all these attributes as well as his remark that “this is the truth” make such a position
very difficult to maintain. If Paul was a concealed heretic, these last remarks might have
been insincere, but if he was an orthodox Christian, he should not have expressed himself
in such a fashion.
Moreover, it should be noted that Paul’s assertion of divine multiplicity in connection
with the attributes of God (or, if our suspicions are correct, in connection with the
attributes of the good God) is analogous to the reported views of a thirteenth-century
heresiarch with respect to the evil god; in light of this, it is altogether possible that
Paul meant what he said. According to the Summa of Rainerius Sacconi, John of Lugio
maintained that “the first principle of evil is called by many names in the Holy Scriptures.
It is called malice, iniquity, cupidity, impiety, sin, pride, death, hell, calumny, vanity,
injustice, perdition, confusion, corruption, and fornication. And he also says that all the
evils named are gods or goddesses, that they have their being from the malice which, he
asserts, is a first cause, and that this first cause is signified from time to time by the vices
named” (Wakefield and Evans, Heresies, p. 339.
49 Milhamot Hashem, p. 118.
50 In light of the paucity of heretical texts from the middle ages, it seems worthwhile to
point out explicitly that if this suggestion is correct, Jacob ben Reuben has indirectly
provided what is in effect a medieval heretical document from a relatively early period.
51 Cf. note 19.

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 The Middle Ages

ben Reuben may have preserved evidence of the fascinating possibility

that heretics used anti-Jewish polemic as a cover for efforts to undermine
the traditional Christian faith.

Addendum (published with the original article):

After this article went to press, I decided that Posnanski’s identification
of the author of the polemic mentioning Albigensians and Bogomils as
Mordecai of Avignon (see n. 35) cannot be accepted with certainty. It
would have been much safer to ascribe the passage (which comes from
Vittorio Emanuele Hebrew MS 53, 23b) simply to “a thirteenth century
French polemicist.”

Addendum 2:
For further comment on this manuscript, see note 104 of my Introduction
to The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages reprinted in this
volume.

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 GILBERT CRISPIN, ALAN OF LILLE,
AND JACOB BEN REUBEN
A Study in the Transmission of Medieval Polemic

From: Speculum 49 (1974): 34–47.

One of the most influential medieval polemics against the Jews was
Gilbert Crispin’s Disputatio Iudaei et Christiani, which was written in
the late eleventh century and may reflect a genuine discussion between
Crispin and a Jewish disputant.1 However, the dependence of the third
book of Alan of Lille’s Contra Haereticos2 upon Crispin’s disputation has
not been widely recognized. Blumenkranz, for example, in discussing the
impact of Crispin’s work in the twelfth century, noted the resemblance
between the Disputatio and the Dialogus inter Christianum et Iudaeum
ascribed to William of Champeaux,3 but made no mention of the far closer
relationship between Crispin and Alan.4 Vasoli, in a special study of the
Contra Haereticos, also overlooked the major source of book three.5 Even
d’Alverny, who noted the relationship between the two works, did not
give a precise indication of its extent. Alan, she writes, “was inspired in
large measure by the Disputatio of Gilbert Crispin and reproduced entire

1 The work was edited by B. Blumenkranz (Utrecht, 1956) = PL 259: 1005–1086. (All refe-
rences will be to Blumenkranz’s edition.) See also Blumenkranz, Les Auteurs Chrétiens
Latins du Moyen Age sur les Juifs et le Judaisme (Paris, La Haye, 1962), pp. 279–287.
2 De Fide Catholica Contra Haereticos, PL 210: 305–480 (Liber Tertia Contra Judeaos, cc. 399–
422). On its late twelfth century date, see below, note 23.
3 PL 163: 1045–1072.
4 Disputatio, introd., p. 17. Blumenkranz’s comments are very similar to those of J. de
Ghellinck, L’essor de la Littérature Latine au XIIe Siècle (Paris, 1946), p. 164.
5 Cesare Vasoli, “Il Contra Haereticos di Alano di Lilla,” Bulletino dell’ Istituto Storico Italiano
per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratoriano 75 (1968): 123–172, esp. 171–172.

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 The Middle Ages

passages of this work.”6 In fact, just under forty percent of Alan’s polemic
is copied almost word for word from Crispin or a previous digest of Crispin.
The following table indicates the passages which Alan copied:
Alan (PL 210) Crispin (Blumenkranz’s ed.)
Column 401. Lines 16–227 = Page 33. Lines 15–19
407.20–409.13 = 28.12–33.8
409.14–410.6 = 34.30–36.23
410.43–411.9 = 34.7–28
411.12–53 = 37.9–39.4
413.38–414.5 = 43.7–26
414.20–43 = 46.13–47.4
416.8–22 = 59.7–60.18
416.30–417.24 = 51.17–52.24
418.14–419.48 = 48.12–50.339

Certain significant and rather obvious corollaries result from the

recognition of the nature and extent of this dependence. First of all,
the utmost caution must be exercised in drawing any conclusions about
Alan’s thought from the material in these passages; a man who is copying
an argument mechanically may include expressions and even ideas which
are not fully consonant with what he would have written on his own.
Secondly, the text of Alan’s work can be corrected in several places once
his source is known, particularly since we possess a good critical edition
of that source.10 Finally—and here we tread upon much more dangerous

6 Marie-Therese d’Alverny, Alain de Lille: Textes Inédits, avec une introduction sur sa vie et ses
oeuvres (Paris, 1965), p. 161.
7 In determining line numbers in PL, the lines in chapter headings have been counted.
8 This passage contains an alleged Jewish suggestion that the famous ‘almah of Isaiah 7:14
means hidden (abscondita). See also Crispin, p. 55, and Alan, c. 415. R. Werblowsky has
presented an interesting argument that this is not a genuine Jewish interpretation and
that it raises serious questions about the genuineness of the discussion in Crispin’s work;
see his “Crispin’s Disputation,” Journal of Jewish Studies 11 (1960): 69–77. It is, of course,
not impossible that a Jew should have presented such an interpretation even though
it is not attested in Jewish sources, but it is certainly true that the references to this
interpretation in Alan and in Peter of Blois’ Contra Perfidiam Judaeorum, PL 207: 841
(neither of which is noted by Werblowsky) are a reflection of Crispin and not of actual
Jewish arguments.
9 It is possible that Alan 404.24–29 is based upon Crispin 52.26–53.2, but this may be
coincidence.
10 In the first parallel passage, for example, Alan’s “nugantes” (401.18) is probably
a corruption of the phrase in Crispin (33.16–17) in which “negando” appears. See also
below, note 32.

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 Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille, and Jacob Ben Reuben

ground—we may be justified in wondering whether the remainder

of Alan’s work might not also be dependent upon an earlier, written
polemic. As we shall see, there may be reason to believe that passages
from Crispin’s disputation were included in a polemical collection that
also contained other material; if Alan used such a collection, then other
parts of his work might be dependent upon other sections of his source.11
This suggestion, however, must remain in the realm of speculation.
One of the passages in Crispin which was reproduced by Alan deals
with the allegorical interpretation of Pentateuchal law. This issue was, of
course, central to the Jewish-Christian debate, and Christians had argued
the case for allegory since New Testament times.12 What is particularly
important about this passage, however, is the hitherto unnoticed fact
that it was translated into Hebrew in one of the earliest (and perhaps the
very earliest) anti-Christian polemics written by a European Jew—Jacob
ben Reuben’s Milhamot Hashem (Wars of the Lord).13
Milhamot Hashem was probably written in Provence in 1170,14 and
it contains an epoch-making translation and critique of sections of
Matthew. No earlier Hebrew translation of the New Testament from Latin
is known with the exception of two small fragments of poor quality, and
while we cannot be certain that Jacob did not use an earlier translation,
Rosenthal’s feeling that he did not is certainly supported by the fact that
an additional translation can now be identified in his work.15
Indeed, it appears that Jacob ben Reuben can now be credited
with breaking even more new ground in the translation of Latin into
Hebrew, for the passage to be discussed below may constitute the earliest
translation into Hebrew of any section of a medieval Latin work. It
is clear, at any rate, that no complete Latin work was translated into
11 The most important lines of Alan’s third book come at the end of Chapter 10 (c. 410),
where a Talmudic passage is cited for the first time to prove the truth of Christianity. See
Ch. Merchavia, Ha-Talmud bi-Re’i ha-Nazrut (Jerusalem, 1970), pp. 214–217. In light of the
minimal effort that Alan put into the composition of this section of the Contra Haereticos, it
appears likely that this information came his way by accident (perhaps through a convert)
or that it was already recorded in the source from which he was copying.
12 Cf. Hebrews 10:1. In general, see B. Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Notre
Dame, 1964), pp. 1–26 and passim; M. Simon, Verus Israel (Paris, 1948), pp. 104–117,
177–184; Blumenkranz, Die Judenpredigt Augustins (Basel, 1946), pp. 130–145.
13 This work was edited by Judah Rosenthal (Jerusalem, 1968).
14 See Rosenthal’s introduction, p. viii.
15 See J. Rosenthal, “Targum shel ha-Besorah ‘al Pi Matti le-Ya‘aqov ben Reuven,” Tarbiz 32
(1962): 48–66, esp. 50–51.

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 The Middle Ages

Hebrew before 1170, and thus Jacob may own the twin distinctions of
being the first Jew to translate both a substantial passage of a medieval
Latin work and sections of the Latin New Testament into Hebrew.16
In his introduction, Jacob ben Reuben informs us that his Christian
interlocutor “took in his hand a book by the scholars of their early
generations who established their error (i.e., Christianity) firmly.
These were three authors; the first was Jerome, the second Augustine,
and the third Paul. These three founded, sought out, and established
(cf. Ecc. xii 9) the basis of the entire error and set it up. But Gregory
prepared instruments for them” (i.e., he added to the system founded
by the other three).17 Now, this statement could refer to a manuscript
containing three separate books, but this does not seem likely. First of
all, the reference to a book (lit., “one book”) does not really give such
an impression. Secondly, a manuscript containing a work of Jerome
followed by a work of Augustine followed by a Pauline epistle would be
rather surprising. Thirdly, the reference to Gregory leaves an ambiguity
as to whether or not he too was represented in this “book.” In addition,
Jacob ben Reuben later quotes a passage from Paul which is nowhere in
the New Testament and a passage from Jerome which neither the editor
of Milhamot Hashem nor I have been able to locate in Jerome’s works.18

16 On Hebrew translations of medieval Latin works, see M. Steinschneider, Die Hebräischen

Übersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmestscher (Berlin, 1893), pp. 461 ff.,
616 ff., and 775 ff. Cf. also Charles Singer, “The Jewish Factor in Medieval Thonght,” in
The Legacy of Israel, ed. by E. Bevan and C. J. Singer (Oxford, 1927), pp. 178–314, and
A. S. Balkin, “Translation and Translators (Medieval),” Encyclopedia Judaica, Jerusalem,
1971, vol. XV, cc. 1318–1329, esp. c. 1324. H. Gollancz (The Ethical Treatises of Berachya,
London, 1902, introduction) dated Berechiah ha-Nakdan’s free paraphrase of Adelard of
Bath’s Quaestiones Naturales before 1170; see, however, the critical remarks in the Revue
des Etudes Juives 46 (1908): 285–288. (Gollancz himself thonght that Berechiah’s work
was based on a French translation rather than the Latin original.) Most recent writers
date Berechiah in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, thus placing his paraphrase
later than Milhamot Hashem. See, for example, W. T. H. Jackson in his introduction to
M. Hadas, Fables of a Jewish Aesop, New York and London, 1967, and A. M. Habermann
in his introduction to Mishlei Shu‘alim (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, 1946), p. vi, and in his
articles on Berechiah in the Enziqlopediah Ivrit and the Encyclopedia Judaica. It should also
be noted that aside from Boethius (see Steinschneider, p. 466), Crispin may be the first
medieval Christian to have had a portion of his work translated into Hebrew at any time
during the Middle Ages.
17 Milhamot Hashem, p. 5.
18 See Milhamot Hashem, pp. 26–27, 28–29. Rosenthal (p. 27, n. 8) does supply a reference
to Jerome, but he means only that it deals with the same general subject matter as the
passage quoted by Jacob.

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 Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille, and Jacob Ben Reuben

Finally and most important, the material from Crispin shows either that
Jacob’s disputant provided him with an additional book that we were
not told about in the introduction or that the same book contained
this material as well, and there is a concrete indication that the latter
alternative is the correct one. One of the selections from Crispin is
repeated, and its second appearance (where the language is closest to
that of our Latin text) is separated from the main body of the Crispin
passage by the quotation from “Jerome” and is followed immediately
by the quotation from “Paul.”19 On balance, then, it appears likely that
the book shown to Jacob was a collection of polemical and exegetical
material taken from various authors which did not always identify
its sources and which occasionally contained inaccurate ascriptions.
The possibility that Alan of Lille used a source similar to that of Jacob
ben Reuben cannot be dismissed out of hand; in any event, there is
concrete evidence for believing that Jacob’s text sheds light on otherwise
unattested readings in Alan’s source, although the relationship between
their texts is certainly more hypothetical than the clearcut citations of
Crispin in Milhamot Hashem.
The passage translated by Jacob contains a short introduction, four
questions intended to prove the necessity of allegorical interpretation,
and a concluding paragraph.

Introductory Passage
Crispin (p. 29):
Primum itaque legem bonam et a deo datam dicimus, tenemus,
astruimus. Ac proinde, quicquid in ea scriptum est, diuino sensu intellectum
suis temporibus obseruatum et obseruandum esse sancimus. Diuino
quidem sensu legis mandata intelligenda esse dicimus, quia, si humano ea
omnia sensu et ad litteram accipimus, multa sibi inuicem aduersantia et
multum repugnantia uidemus.

Alan (col. 407):

Ad haec primo respondemus legem esse bonam, et a Deo datam
dicimus, ac ideo quidquid in ea scriptum est, divino sensu intellectum,
suis temporibus observatum et observandum esse sentimus; ea vero divino
intellectu intelligenda erant, quae si ad litteram accipimus, multa sibi
repugnantia videmus.

19 Ibid., pp. 26–29. See below. note 34.

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 The Middle Ages

Jacob ben Reuben (p. 24):20

The beginning of my statement is to establish in truth and strengthen
with validity the proposition that all the words of Moses are true and
correct to one who understands them, that his Torah and testimony are
faithful, and his word is valid. Intelligent men should examine the words
with intellect and observe all the commandments in their time, for if we
will examine the words of the Torah only according to the letter, many
things will appear difficult to us.21

Jacob’s translation here probably reflects a slightly different Latin

text from the ones we have, although he may have simply added some
rhetorical flourishes on his own. The main point, in any case, is that
the law was indeed revealed by God but that it must be understood
allegorically because a literal reading produces contradictions.22
The one peculiarity in Jacob’s translation comes in his final phrase,
but this can be accounted for by a misunderstanding of the text reflected
in Alan. Jacob’s translation says, “If we will examine the words of the
Torah only according to the letter, many things will appear difficult to
us.” The Latin text, on the other hand, means, “If we accept (the com-
mandments of the law) according to the letter, we will see many things
contradictory (lit., repugnant) to one another (multa sibi repugnantia
videmus).” Jacob apparently took “sibi” to mean “to ourselves” rather
than “to one another” and thus misinterpreted the final phrase. This
misinterpretation, however, is significant because it is possible only on
the basis of Alan’s text; Crispin’s more elaborate statement (with its
“sibi invicem adversantia”) does not lend itself to Jacob’s explanation. It
follows, then, that Alan’s shorter version reflects not his own abridgement
but rather a shorter text which he had before him.23
20 The translations from Milhamot Hashem, are my own; they have generally been kept as
literal as possible in order to facilitate a direct comparison with the Latin.
21 Hahiloti ledabber bi-tehillat devaray leqayyem be-qiyyum ha-emet u-lehazzeq be-hizzuq ha-
yosher ki kol divrei Mosheh amitiyyim u-nekhohim la-mevin, ve-torato ve-ceduto ne’emanah
u-millato nekhonah. Ve-yesh la-maskilim lehitbonen ba-devarim mi-tokh ha-sekhel ve-lishmor
be-‘ittam kol ha-mizvot, ki im lo nitbonen be-divrei ha-torah akh ke-fi ha-mikhtav, yiqshu ‘alenu
devarim rabbim.
22 For this general argument in earlier Christian polemic, cf. Blumenkranz’s references in
his notes ad loc., in his Juifs et Chrétiens dans le Monde Occidental, 430–1096 (Paris, 1960),
p. 240, and in his Auteurs, p. 98.
23 It should be noted here that Jacob wrote before Alan, and so the Hebrew cannot be
a reflection of Alan’s work. See Vasoli, op. cit., p. 185, for the estimate that Alan wrote
Contra Haereticos between 1185 and 1195. Jacob’s inclusion of Crispin’s second question,

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 Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille, and Jacob Ben Reuben

Question 1
Crispin (pp. 29–30):
Cum enim peracta creatione mundi Moyses dicat: Vidit deus cuncta
que fecerat et erant ualde bona, quomodo in discretione animalium postea
scribit hec munda et illa animalia esse inmunda, his uti permittit, illa non
solum tangere, sed eum, qui tetigerit, morte multari et puniri mandat?
Quod enim est inmundum, quomodo est ualde bonum? Vbi enim cuncta
nominauit et ualde bona esse cuncta dixit, neque hoc neque illud animal
excepit. Quomodo igitur deus cuncta creauit ualde bona animalia, et postea
uetat comedi hec uel illa animalia, et causam reddit dicens, ea esse inmunda
animalia? Nec solum ea prohibuit, que sui natura homini ad uescendum
noxia sunt, uerum et multa, que gustu iocunda et usu eque salubria ad
comedendum existunt. Aliquid ergo sacramenti hec in se continent, que
licet a deo dicta sint tamen a se ad litteram inuicem omnino dissident.

Alan (col. 407):

Cum enim Moyses dicat: Vidit Deus cuncta quae fecerat, et erant
valde bona, quid est quod in lege quaedam dicantur munda, quaedam
immunda? Ad litteram quidem non est immundum, quoniam est valde
bonum: nec solum ea prohibentur in lege, quae sui natura nociva sunt
homini ad vescendum, verum etiam quae gestu (read: gustu) jucunda, et
aeque salubria ad comedendum existunt. Aliquid ergo sacramenti haec in
se continent, quae, licet a Deo dicta sint, tamen a se invicem ad litteram
omnino dissident.

Jacob ben Reuben (pp. 24–25):

Moses also wrote in his book, “And God saw everything that he had
made, and, behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1: 31). He thus included
all his creatures—everything that he had made both above and below—
in the category of “very good.” Elsewhere, however, in distinguishing
between animals, he wrote, “These are they which are unclean to you”
(Leviticus 11: 31), “These may you eat” (Lev. 11: 9). Moreover, with regard
to the impure animals, he did not warn against eating alone but also
against touching, as it is written, “Whosoever touches their carcass shall
be unclean until the evening” (Lev. 11: 24). Now, how can those animals
which are so disgusting in the eyes of the creator that they are impure to
the touch have been included in the category of “very good”? For where
he wrote, “And he saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was

which Alan omitted, is a further indication that he did not use Contra Haereticos or any
work dependent upon it. (The fact that Alan’s work is a product of his stay in southern
France is also relevant to the suggestion of a relationship between his text and the one
used by Jacob.)

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 The Middle Ages

very good,” once he said “very good” he did not leave anything out. Now,
if you examine the Torah according to the letter alone, you should wonder
how the creator could have made all the animals “very good” and then
declared some pure and others impure. And he did not declare those
animals impure which are harmful to man by nature; rather, he prohibited
many which are very good to eat. Consequently, we should understand
some symbol and allegory in these words. Even though God said them,
according to the letter their meanings are inconsistent with one another
in accordance with the shell of the statement. It is therefore proper for
a man to go into the matter deeply, to penetrate the depths of the intellect,
and to reach the heights of knowledge.24

The basic argument in this passage is that a literal understanding of

the prohibition of certain animals as impure contradicts the statement
that “God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:
31). As Rosenthal points out, this alleged contradiction was cited for the
same purpose by Novatian and Petrus Alfonsi.25 An even more elaborate
use of the same argument is found in a work by Isidore of Seville in
which he systematically emphasized the discovery of contradictions as
a justification for allegory.26
24 ‘Od katav Mosheh be-sifro: Va-yar Elohim et kol asher ‘asah ve-hinneh tov me’od, ve-hevi kol
yezurav bi-kelal tov me’od, kol hanivra’im ma‘lah u-mattah asher ‘asah. U-be-maqom aher be-
hilluq ha-behemot katav: Elleh ha-teme’im lakhem, et zeh tokhelu. U-ba-teme’ot lo ba lehazhir
ba-’akhilah levad akh gam ken be-magga‘, she-ne’emar, Kol hanogea‘ be-nivlatam yitma ‘ad
ha‘arev. Ve-elleh asher nim’asu be-‘enei ha-bore lihyotam teme’im le-magga‘ ha-’adam, eikh
nikhlelu bi-kelal tov me’od? Ki ba-maqom she-katav, Va-yar et kol asher ‘asah ve-hinneh tov
me’od; be-amro tov me’od lo hish’ir davar lehozi min ha-kelal. Ve-yesh ‘alekha litmoah, im
titbonen ba-torah ke-fi ha-mikhtav levad, eikh yazar ha-bore kol ha-behemot tovot me’od, ve-
aharei ken tiher et elleh ve-timme et elleh? Ve-lo timme ha-bore ha-behemot ha-mazziqot la-
adam be-‘ad ha-toledet, akh rabbot me-hen asher asar ahar she-hen tovot me’od le’ekhol. ‘Al ken
yesh lanu lehavin ba-devarim ha-elleh dimyon u-mashal. Af ‘al pi she-ha-bore amaram, ke-fi
ha-mikhtav ein pitronam shaveh zeh ‘im zeh be-‘inyan qelippat ha-ma’amar. Akh ya’ut la-adam
lavo be-tokh ha-‘omeq ve-laredet be-mordei mezulot ha-sekhel u-lehagbiah be-govhei madda‘.
Rosenthal placed a comma after ve-timme et elleh and a question mark after ha-toledet.
This punctuation, however, is inherently dubious and is definitively ruled out by the Latin
source
25 Novatian, De Cibus Judaicis, PL 3: 956; Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogus, PL 157: 667. In the
same note (Milhamot Hashem, p. 27, n. 8), Rosenthal refers to Crispin’s use of this one
argument, which he was familiar with through the brief summary in A. Lukyn Williams,
Adversus Judaeos (Cambridge, 1935), p. 376.
26 See Isidore’s Liber de Variis Quaestionibus Adversus Judaeos seu Ceteros Infideles
(mistakenly attributed to Raban Maur), ed. by E. Martène and U. Durand, Thesaurus
Novus Anecdotorum V (Paris, 1717), ch. 64, 68, col. 617–19, 529. (I have been unable
to obtain the critical edition of A. C. Vega and A. E. Anspach [Escorial, 1940].) For

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 Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille, and Jacob Ben Reuben

Aside from Jacob’s reversal of the order of Crispin’s first two

questions27 and his supplying of several verses which may or may not
have been in his source, there are at least two textual problems here
which deserve.further discussion.
First of all, Jacob ben Reuben may have afforded us the opportunity
of actually correcting a difficult text in Crispin. The last part of Crispin’s
first sentence (which is not found in Alan’s work) means, “Why . . . did he
permit these animals while he not only [prohibited] touching the others
but commanded that one who touched them be punished by death?”
Blumenkranz has already noted the necessity of introducing the verb
“prohibited” in order to make sense of this sentence, but there remains
an additional difficulty; there is, in fact, no death penalty mentioned in
the Pentateuch for one who touches an impure animal.
Now, Jacob’s translation reads as follows: “With regard to the
impure animals, he did not warn against eating alone but also against
touching.” It is extremely tempting to suggest that a phrase rather than
just a word dropped out of the text of Crispin and that the section about
the death penalty was added by an early copyist in order to complete
a meaningless sentence. Specifically, I propose the following: The original
text read, “. . . illa non solum comedere vetat sed etiam tangere” (while
he not only prohibited eating the others but also touching them). The
words “comedere vetat sed etiam” dropped out, and what was left simply
meant, “ . . . while not only touching the others.” (It must be kept in
mind that we have to assume that “vetat” dropped out in any case.)
A copyist surveying this shambles might have automatically supplied
the word “prohibited” in his mind and not realized the need to write
it down, but the phrase “not only” required some additional section in
the sentence; i.e., Moses not only prohibited touching impure animals,
but also did something else, even more extreme than that. Presumably
that something else was the imposition of the death penalty upon the
transgressor. Thus, it is possible that Jacob ben Reuben has preserved
a correct reading in Crispin which is corrupted in all the known
manuscripts of the Disputatio.

an instance of extensive verbatim copying from Isidore in an anti-Jewish polemic,

cf. his Questiones in Leviticum, PL 83: 886–889, with Peter Damian’s Dialogus, PL 145:
57 ff.; see my “St. Peter Damian: His Attitude Toward the Jews and the Old Testament,”
Yavneh Review 4 (1965): 80–112.
27 Alan cannot help us on this point because he omits Crispin’s second question entirely.

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 The Middle Ages

A second, less significant but rather interesting textual question is

raised by Jacob’s translation of the last sentence in Crispin and Alan. The
Latin means, “. . . granted that these things were said by God, neverthe-
less, according to the letter they differ from one another (a se invicem)
entirely.” Jacob’s translation is peculiar and redundant: “Even though
God said them, according to the letter their meanings are inconsistent
with one another in accordance with the shell of the statement.”
“According to the letter” and “in accordance with the shell of the
statement” seem blatantly repetitious and extremely awkward. Placing
the comma after “letter” in order to minimize the redundancy does not
appear to help much and is in any case ruled out by the Latin where
“ad litteram” (according to the letter) clearly belongs with the second
part of the sentence. Moreover, the phrase “the shell of the statement”
is simply missing from the Latin entirely.
The fact is, however, that Jacob was almost certainly working with
basically the same Latin text that we have, and his translation is a result
of one simple misreading. He (or the man who copied the text he was
using) read “inuicem” (one another) as “in nucem” (in accordance with
a nut). Now, an unbroken nut was used in twelfth-century polemic as
a symbol of literal interpretation; the allegorical meaning was like the
kernel of a nut which could be reached only if the shell were broken.28
On the basis of this misreading, therefore, Jacob had his redundancy in
the Latin text: “. . . tamen a se ad litteram in nucem omnino dissident”
(nevertheless, they differ from each entirely according to the letter, in
accordance with the nut).29

28 See the Dialogus inter Christianum et Iudaeum aschribed to William of Champeaux, PL 163:
1048–1049:
Christ. Propono te tenere nucem in manu tua.
Jud. Fiat, teneo nucem.
Christ. Si hanc nucem infractam ederes, forsitan te strangulares.
Jud. Utique cito contingeret.
Christ. Ergo nux integra non est bona ad comedendum.
Jud. Utique.
Christ. Prius ergo oportet testam frangere et sic pervenire ad nucleum.
Jud. Nullatenus aliter esse potest.
Christ. Audi igitur: non potes nucem integram edere utiliter, nec pervenire ad nucleum
nisi prius testa fragatur, sicut non potes pervenire ad novam legem nisi vetus lex
conquassetur.
29 The elimination of “invicem” does not distort the remainder of the sentence because
“a se” alone is sufficient to convey the meaning “from one another.”

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 Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille, and Jacob Ben Reuben

Question 2
Crispin (p. 30):
Item scimus quia dixit deus ad Adam: Ecce, dedi uobis omnem herbam
afferentem semen super terram et uniuersa ligna, que habent in semetipsis
sementem generis sui, ut sint uobis in escam. Qua igitur ratione deus dedit
primo homini uniuersa ligna in escam et statim postea prohibuit, ne de
ligno scientie boni et mali sumat in escam? Vbi uniuersaliter uniuersa ligna
concessa homini commendat, nullum exceptum lignum fuisse insinuat.
Non igitur absque mysterio id aecipiendum est.

Alan:
Omitted.

Jacob ben Reuben (p. 24):

For we have seen that Moses wrote in the book of Genesis that the
creator told Adam, “You may eat of all the trees of the garden” (Genesis 2:
16). Now, when he told him “of all the trees of the garden” he left nothing
out; he kept nothing from him and permitted whatever he desired. In the
next verse, however, he told him, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil, you shall not eat of it, for on the day that you eat of it you shall
surely die” (Gen. 2: 17). Now, look into this matter and pay close attention.
If we are to understand these verses only according to the letter, how can
you reconcile the two of them in a straightforward manner? Your own eyes
can see (if you are prepared to admit the truth) that when the creator told
Adam, “You may eat of all the trees of the garden,” once he said “of all the
trees” he did not leave over a single tree of all the trees of the garden to
be added. Nevertheless, he subsequently prohibited to him the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, which had been among the other trees of the
garden and thus permitted to him. I therefore maintain that the Torah was
given for the understanding of other matters and different interpretations
which are not superficially evident from the verses.30

30 Ki ken ra’inu she-katav Mosheh be-sefer Bereshit asher amar ha-bore la-adam: Mikol‘ez ha-
gan akhol tokhel, ve-ka’asher amar lo mikol ‘ez ha-gan lo shiyyer kelum velo mana‘ mimmennu
davar akh she-hittir lo ha-kol ke-hefzo. U-va-miqra ha-sheni amar elav: U-me-‘ez ha-da‘at
tov va-ra‘ lo tokhal mimmennu ki be-yom akhalekha mimmennu mot tamut. Ve-‘attah re’eh
ve-hitbonen ve-sim libbekha le-davar zeh, im lo naskil ba-miqra’ot ha-elleh akh ke-fi ha-
mikhtav, eikh tukhal leyasher et shenehem be-derekh yesharah? She-harei ‘einekha ro’ot, im
tahpoz lehodot ‘al ha-emet, ki be-emor ha-bore el ha-adam, Mi-kol ‘ez ha-gan akhol tokhel,
keivan she-amar mi-kol ha-‘ez lo hinniah‘ez ehad mi-kol ‘azei ha-gan lerabbot, ve-aharei ken
hizhiro ‘al ‘ez ha-da‘at tov va-ra‘ she-hayah bi-kelal she’ar ‘azei ha-gan she-huttar lo. Al ken
amarti she-nittenah ha-torah lehaskil ‘inyanim aherim u-panim aherot she-lo nir’eh la-‘ayin
min ha-katuv.

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The essential argument here is that God first gave man all trees for food
and then apparently contradicted himself by prohibiting the fruit of the
tree of knowledge. The precise texts, however, are somewhat different,
and the major difference may give us a clue as to why Alan omitted this
argument entirely.
The verse quoted by Crispin to show that Adam was given all trees for
food is Genesis 1: 29; in Genesis 2: 17, however, the tree of knowledge is
forbidden. This, Crispin argues, constitutes a contradiction. In Milhamot
Hashem, on the other hand, the verse cited to show that all trees were
permitted to Adam is Genesis 2: 16 (“You may eat of all the trees of the
garden”); the alleged contradiction is, therefore, in the very next verse,
which prohibits eating from the tree of knowledge.
There is little doubt that the text used by Jacob reflects the efforts of
an overly eager copyist (influenced, perhaps, by Crispin’s “statim postea
prohibuit”) to “improve” his text by making the contradiction come
immediately after the first verse quoted. The truth is, of course, that this
change completely vitiated whatever force the original question may have
had, because the obvious response is that Gen. 2: 17 does not contradict
but simply qualifies 2: 16. As Jacob points out in his answer, you simply
cannot write two things at the same time.31
Now, Alan of Lille was not in the habit of omitting significant sections
in the middle of a passage that he copied, and his omission of one of
Crispin’s four questions is very peculiar. This omission, however, can be
explained very easily if we assume that Alan had before him the same
text as Jacob ben Reuben. He left out this question because, in the form
in which he had it, it was simply ridiculous.

Question 3
Crispin (pp. 80–81):
In Exodo, inter alia precepta de faciendo altari, dominus Moysi ita
precepit: Altare de terra facietis mihi et offeretis super illud holocausta et
pacifica uestra. Et de qua materie alia fieri liceret et quomodo, ita subdidit:
Quod si de lapidibus illud edificare uolueris, de non sectis lapidibus illud
edificabis. In expletione autem tabernaculi et uasorum atque utensilium
tabernaculi ita legitur: Fecit Moyses altare thimiamatis de lignis sethim
habens per quadrum singulos cubitos et in altitudine duos. Et post pauca:

31 Milhamot Hashem, p. 32.

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 Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille, and Jacob Ben Reuben

Fecit et altare holocausti de lignis sethim quinque cubitorum per quadrum

et trium in altitudine. Non temerario quidem ausu seu presumptione fiebat,
quod tam discreta dimensione altitudinis et quadrature fiebat. Item post
aliquanta: Fudit bases eneas in introitu tabernaculi et altare eneum cum
craticula sua. Item in fine: Candelabrum stabit cum lucernis suis et altare
aureum in quo adoletur incensum coram archa testimonii. Quo modo ergo
dominus iubet, ut altare de terra faciatis et super illud holocausta uestra
offeratis, econtra Moyses fecit altare thimiamatis ligneum et fecit altare
holocausti ligneum, fecit altare eneum, fecit et aureum, fecit aliquando
etiam et lapideum? Multum itaque aduersum uidetur, ut aliud et aliter
quam dominus per Moysen iubet ab ipso Moyse agatur. Altius ergo quam
littera sonat et hec accipi oportet.

Alan (col. 407–8):

In exordio32 autem, inter alia praecepta, de faciendo altari Dominus
Moysi ibi ita praecipit: Altare de terra facietis mihi; in sequentibus autem
legitur sic: Fecit itaque Moyses altare thymiamatis de lignis setim. Et alibi:
Fundavit bases aeneas in introitu tabernaculi. Multum itaque adversum
videtur, ut aliud et aliter quam Dominus per Moysen jubet, ab ipso Moyse
agatur. Aliter ergo quam littera sonat hoc accipi oportet.

Jacob ben Reuben (p. 25):

The creator also commanded Moses among the other laws: “An altar
of earth shall you make unto me, and shall sacrifice thereon your burnt-
offerings and your peace-offerings” (Exodus 20: 21). And at that point he
taught him in what way he should make all the other altars that he would
make, as it is written, “If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build
it of hewn stones” (Exod. 20: 22). But when he came to the construction of
the tabernacle, Moses made the altar of gold and the altar of brass. Now,
with respect to one of the altars it says, “And he made the altar of incense of
acacia-wood: a cubit was the length thereof, and a cubit the breadth thereof,
foursquare; and two cubits was the height thereof; the horns thereof were
of one piece with it. And he overlaid it with pure gold” (Exod. 37: 25–26).
And afterwards it says, “And he made the altar of burnt-offering of acacia-
wood: five cubits was the length thereof, and five cubits the breadth thereof,
foursquare, and three cubits the height thereof. And he made the horns
thereof upon the four corners of it; the horns thereof were of one piece with
it; and he overlaid it with brass” (Exod. 38: 1–2). Now, on the basis of all this
I ask you why Moses acted in this manner. After all, I have already noted
that the creator told him, “An altar of earth shall you make unto me,” and
that he warned him, “If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build
it of hewn stones.” In light of this, why did Moses do all these things? And

32 Read “Exodo” in light of Crispin.

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 The Middle Ages

for what reason did he make one a cubit in length and a cubit in breadth,
foursquare, and the other five cubits in length and five cubits in breadth?
Now, this is a very difficult thing, that we should say of Moses, who was the
most faithful of all the prophets, that he did that which the creator did not
command him. If you will argue that the creator did command him to do
this but it was not recorded since Scripture is generally concise, then this
matter would be even more difficult, for we would be asserting that the
creator, blessed be he, goes back on his word. I have therefore told you that
everything is to be understood allegorically and not in accordance with the
letter at all, lest we lose our way and walk in darkness.33

The basic elements of this question are that God commanded Moses to
make an altar of earth (Exodus 20: 21–22), and yet Moses later made
altars of wood and metal (Exodus 37: 25; 38: 1–2; 40: 4–5). With some
changes in order and with the elaboration of an argument implicit in the
Disputatio, Jacob ben Reuben’s text is very close to that of Crispin. Alan’s
shorter version is probably his own condensation of the essential points
of the argument.

Question 4
Crispin (p. 31):
Rursum, cum ea omnia humanis usibus deum creasse Moyses dicat,
eaque omnia homini subdidisse comemoret, ut presit, inquit, piscibus maris,
uolatilibus celi, animantibus terre et omni reptili quod mouetur in terra,

33 ‘Od zivvah ha-bore le-Mosheh bi-she’ar ha-huqqim: Mizbah adamah ta‘aseh li ve-zavahta
‘alav et ‘olotekha ve-et shelamekha, ve-sham moreh ‘alav be-eizeh ‘inyan ya‘aseh kol ha-
mizbehot ha-aherim asher ya‘aseh, kemo she-katuv, Ve-im mizbah avanim ta‘aseh li lo tivneh
ethen gazit. Ve-ka’asher higgia‘ le-ma‘aseh ha-mishkan ba Mosheh ve-‘asah mizbah ha-zahav
umizbah ha-nehoshet. U-ba-mizbeah ha-ehad omer: Va-ya‘as et mizbah ha-qetoret ‘azei shittim
ammah orko ve-ammah rohbo ravua‘ ve-ammatayim qomato mimmennu hayu qarnotav va-
yezaf oto zahav tahor. Ve-aharei ken amar: Va-ya‘as et mizbah ha-‘olah ‘azei shittim hamesh
ammot orko ve-hamesh ammot rohbo ravua‘ ve-shalosh ammot qomato va-ya ‘as qarnotav
‘al arba‘ pinnotav mimmennu hayu qarnotav vayezaf oto nehoshet. U-mi-kol zeh ani sho’el
elekha lammah ‘asah Mosheh ken. She-kevar ra’iti she-’amar elav ha-bore, Mizbah adamah
ta‘aseh li, ve-ra’iti she-hizhiro, Ve-im mizbah avanim ta‘aseh li lo tivneh ethen gazit. Ve-aharei
ken mah ra’ah Mosheh she-‘asah et kol elleh? U-me-eizeh ta‘am ‘asah ha-ehad ammah orko
ve-ammah rohbo ravua‘, ve-ha-ehad hamesh ammot orko ve-hamesh ammot rohbo? Ve-davar
qasheh hu me’od she-nomar mi-Mosheh she-hayah navi ne’eman ‘al kol ha-nevi’im she-
ya‘aseh mah she-lo zivvahu ha-bore. Ve-im tomar she-habore zivvahu ve-lo nikhtav, ve-derekh
ha-katuv leqazzer, kol she-ken yiqsheh ha-davar yoter, ki nomar me-habore she-yahazor be-
dibburo. ‘Al ken amarti elekha she-ha-kol nittan lehavin be-‘inyan mashal ve-lo ke-fi ha-mikhtav
kelal, pen nit‘eh ba-nativ ve-nelekh ba-hoshekh.

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 Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille, and Jacob Ben Reuben

cur postea uetat, ne homo aret in boue et asino? Onus aliud, quodcunque
tibi placet, asino imponere licet, et ponere iugum boui cum asino quare
non licet? Ad pascua ducere bouem cum asino licebit, in pascuis ea simul
esse et conpasci lex permittit, et arare ea simul prohibet et interdicit. Si
autem propterea uetat, quia hoc animal inmundum lex dicit, quare circa
illud cetera, que dicta sunt, permittit, solum arare excipit? Equus in lege
animal inmundum esse perhibetur et alia multa, nec tamen arare bouem
cum equo uel alio animali inmundo in lege prohibetur.

Alan (col. 408):

Item, ad litteram quomodo stare potest, quod Deus prohibet: Ne homo
aret in bove et asino? Onus aliud quodcunque tibi placet asino imponere,
non vetat lex, et ponere jugum cum asino, quasi non licet, cum ad pascua
bovem cum asino ducere licet, in pascuis simul esse, et compasci permittit
lex, et arare simul prohibet, et interdicit. Si auctor propterea haec vetat,
quia hoc animal immundum esse perhibetur, cur non etiam arare bovem
cum equo vel alio animali immundo prohibetur in lege?

Jacob ben Reuben (pp. 27–28):34

The creator said, “You shall not plow with an ox and an ass together”
(Deuteronomy 22: 10). Thus, he prohibited only plowing. With respect to
another burden, the creator did not take pity upon it, but with respect
to a yoke, he prohibited you from tying it together with an ass. However,
when they graze, he permitted that an ox and an ass be together, but while
plowing this is a serious prohibition. Now, if the ass was prohibited by the
creator because it is an impure animal, why did he permit an ox and an ass
to graze together? He should have prohibited even standing and grazing,
and yet he prohibited only plowing. With respect to a horse, the Torah
says that it is an impure animal, and so too with respect to a mule and
many other animals; nevertheless, the creator did not prohibit them from
plowing with an ox nor the ox with any other animal except the ass.35

34 This passage from Milhamot Hashem is taken from the section which presumably gives
the Christian interpretation of these verses; in fact, the Christian question is reiterated
here in a form closer to that of Crispin and Alan than the form in which it first appears
in Milhamot Hashem (p. 26). Even Jacob’s initial formulation, however, is quite close to
the text given here.
35 Amar ha-bore, Lo taharosh be-shor u-va-hamor yahdav, ve-asar ha-harishah levad, u-le-‘inyan
massa aher lo has ha-bore ‘alav, akh le-’inyan ‘ol asar lekha shelo tiqshor oto ‘im ha-hamor.
Aval ka-’asher yir‘u hittir lekha she-yihyu ha-shor ve-ha-hamor yahdav, u-be-‘et ha-harishah
hu issur gadol. Ve-im ne’esar lekha ha-hamor me’et ha-bore ba‘avur she-hi behemah teme’ah,
maddua‘ hittir sheyir‘u yahdav ha-shor ve-ha-hamor? Hayah lo le’esor afilu ha-ma‘mad ve-ha-
mir‘eh, velo asar ki im ha-harishah levaddah. U-me-ha-sus amrah ha-torah she-hi behemah
teme’ah u-me-ha-pered u-mi-behemot aherot rabbot, ve-’af ‘al pi ken lo asaram ha-bore laharosh
‘im shor ve-shor ‘im behemah aheret huz me-ha-hamor.

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 The Middle Ages

In Crispin, this is a two-part argument. First of all, the Bible says that
man would rule over the animals of the earth (Genesis 1: 26), and then
it prohibits plowing with an ox and an ass together (Deuteronomy 22:
10). This is an alleged contradiction of the sort that this passage has
been discussing all along. Crispin then continues with a series of logical
arguments designed to show that the prohibition in Deuteronomy is
inherently implausible. Why is only plowing prohibited? And if an ox
may not plow with an ass because the latter is an impure animal, why
was the ass singled out? There are, after all, quite a number of additional
impure animals.
Both Jacob and Alan present only the logical arguments and omit
the contradiction entirely. Here again Jacob’s text probably reveals that
the citation of Genesis 1: 26 was missing from Alan’s source. This would
have been a reasonable conjecture even without Jacob’s translation; it
is, after all, unlikely that Alan would have omitted the contradiction on
his own since the basic character of this passage leads one to expect
the citation of contradictions. Nevertheless, it is only Milhamot Hashem
which enables us to make this assertion with some confidence.36

Concluding Passage
Crispin (pp. 31–32)
Hanc non solum in his que dicta sunt mandatis, sed in quampluribus
aliis legalibus cerimoniis contrarietatem uidemus, nisi ea conpetenti
sensu intellexerimus. Discreto itaque et diuino sensu hec discutienda et
intelligenda sunt, quia fieri non potest, ut ad litteram sumpta ea omnia
impleantur. Si uero legem debito sensu accipimus, omnia legis mandata
debita obseruatione obseruare poterimus, quedam ad litteram et sine
ullo figurarum uelamine dicta esse accipiendo, quedam uero ad figuram
et profundo figurarum uelamine adumbrata esse intelligendo. Quedam ad
tempus obseruari iussa sunt, quedam sine ulla temporum determinatione
obseruanda sunt. Que enim sacramenti alicuius prenunciatiua erant
et ueritatis future figura, suo tempore manifestata rei atque ueritatis
presentia, oportuit, ut eorum remaneret prenunciatio et figura. Nam
sicut ipso usu loquendi uerborum utimur uicissitudinibus, dicendo ‘erit’,
quamdiu futurum est, et ipsum ‘erit’ prorsus omittentes in presenti ‘est’

36 Christian questions concerning the inherent logic of Biblical commandments in order to

set up allegorical exegesis are quoted in other Jewish polemics as well. See Meir ben Simon
of Narbonne, Milhemet Mizvah, Parma ms., pp. 46a–47a; Nizzahon Vetus, in J. Wagenseil,
Tela Ignea Satanae (Altdorf, 1681), II, pp. 10, 19.

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 Gilbert Crispin, Alan of Lille, and Jacob Ben Reuben

assumimus, quidque ipsum iam preterisse significantes utimur ‘fuit’, sic

in rebus prenunciatiuis alicuius sacramenti, ubi presens manifestatur
sacramentum, eius iam superfluo seruaretur seu figura seu signum.

Alan (col. 408):

Hanc non solum in iis quae dicta sunt mandatis, sed etiam in pluribus
aliis legalibus caeremoniis contrarietatem videmus, nisi ea competenti
sensu intellexerimus. Discreto itaque et divino sensu haec intelligenda
sunt et discutienda. Si vero legem debito sensu accipimus, omnia legis
mandata debita observatione observare poterimus; quaedam ad litteram
et sine ullo figurarum velamine dicta esse accipiendo, quaedam ad figuram
et profundo velamine obumbrata esse intelligendo: quaedam ad tempus
observari jussa sunt, quaedam sine ulla temporum determinatione.
Quae enim alicujus sacramenti praenuntiativa erant, et veritatis figuram
faterentur, suo tempore, manifestata rei atque veritatis praesentia,
oportuit ut eorum non remaneret praenuntiatio et figura. Nam sicut
ipso suo loquendi sensu utimur verborum vicissitudinibus, dicendo, erit,
quandiu futurum est ipsum quod erit; prorsus omittentes in praesenti, et
assumendo, est; cumque ipsum jam praeteriisse significantes utimur, fuit:
sic in rebus praenuntiativis alicujus sacramenti, ubi praesens manifestatur
sacramentum, ejus jam superflue servaretur figura, seu signum.

Jacob ben Reuben (p. 28):

Similar strange things can be found in many places in the Torah of
Moses. It is therefore proper to interpret and understand in accordance
with the profundity of the human intellect, for if we should examine it on
the basis of the letter alone, it could never be observed. If, on the other
hand, we understand the Torah as it is proper to understand it, we shall
be able to observe all the commandments as they are, some just as they
are written without any symbolism at all, and others through allegory and
symbol. Some were commanded to be observed for all time and have no
time limit, while others were commanded to be observed for a fixed time.
With regard to those which were commanded for a fixed time, once that
time has passed, the commandment has been abolished, just as a man
usually says of an event which is to take place in the future, “It will be,” for
it has not yet come, while after it has come it becomes something which
already “was.” Such is the case with regard to most of the commandments
in the Torah of Moses, which were said for a fixed time; after that time has
passed, it is only proper that they be abolished.37

37 Ve-ki-devarim elleh she-hem teimah yesh be-rov meqomot be-torat Mosheh. ‘Al ken ya’ut
lefaresh u-lehavin me-‘omeq sekhel ha-adam, ki im lo nitbonen bo raq ke-fi ha-mikhtav, lo
yitqayyem le-‘olam. Akh im naskil ha-torah asher ya’ut lehaskil, nukhal leqayyem kol ha-mizvot
kullan ka’asher hen, ha-aherot beli shum dimyon ba-‘olam ka’asher hen ketuvot, ve-ha-aherot

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 The Middle Ages

This passage is almost identical in the three works. It maintains that

there are many other difficulties in the Law if it is interpreted literally and
that the commandments may be divided into two groups—some which
can be taken literally and others which must be understood allegorically.
This was a time-honored position in Christian thought although it raised
problems which Jews did not hesitate to exploit.38
We have seen, then, the existence of an unsuspected Hebrew
translation of a selection of Gilbert Crispin’s Disputatio which may be
the first Hebrew translation of any section of a medieval Latin work.
Moreover, this translation may reveal the existence of a polemical
collection which circulated in France in the twelfth century and
contained extensive quotations from Crispin. In at least one instance,
these quotations have apparently preserved a reading in the Disputatio
which has been distorted in all the known manuscripts. Furthermore,
it is at least possible that Alan of Lille used a similar collection of
polemic in writing the third book of his Contra Haereticos; at the very
least, this translation reveals variant readings which probably underlie
Alan’s version and which are preserved in no other source. Finally, we
may conclude that the impact of Gilbert Crispin on the Jewish-Christian
debate in the twelfth century was truly pervasive and exceeded even
the generous estimates that have hitherto prevailed.

be-mashal ve-dimyon. Ha-aherot niztavvu lishmor kol ha-yamim, she-ein lahem zeman,
ve-ha-aherot niztavvu lishmor li-zeman qavua‘. Ve-otan she-niztavvu li-zeman qavua‘, ahar
she-‘avar ha-zeman nitbattelah ha-mizvah, kemo she-adam ragil lomar mi-davar she-‘atid
lihyot “yihyeh,” she-‘adayin lo ba, ve-ahar she-ba shav ha-davar lihyot “hayah.” Ve-ken rov
ha-mizvot she-ne’emru be-torat Mosheh li-zeman qavua‘, ahar she-‘avar ha-zeman din hu
she-yevattelu otam.
38 Cf. Eucher of Lyon, PL 50: 781, and Leo the Great, PL 54: 88–89. For the Jewish argument
against allegory, see appendix 3 of my dissertation, The Nizzahon Vetus: A Critical Edition,
with an Introduction and Commentary on the First Part, Columbia University, 1970.

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 THE ATTITUDE OF ST. BERNARD OF
CLAIRVAUX TOWARD THE JEWS

From: Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 40 (1972):

89–108.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) was a pivotal figure in the

intellectual and political changes that shook Western Christendom in
the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Apostle of the Gregorian reformers,
Bernard believed not merely in the primacy of religion but in its right
to control all political and social phenomena. Consequently, he became
the self-appointed conscience of Europe; he chastised kings, advised
popes, and exercised an undeniable influence upon the most significant
religious and secular decisions of his time.
Bernard was, furthermore, in the forefront of the revolution in
Christian piety that had begun in the eleventh century. He practically
founded a new and more rigorous monastic order, contributed to the
burgeoning Mary cult, and helped to strengthen popular piety. These
intellectual and emotional changes certainly played some role in the
broadening and intensification of anti-Jewish feeling in the second half
of the Middle Ages.
The question we shall try to answer in this paper is whether Bernard
himself was impelled by these forces toward a more strongly anti-Jewish
attitude than his predecessors. As we shall see, he presents a fascinating
case study of the increasing tension between the standard theological
rationale for tolerating Jews in its most liberal form and the growing
hatred for Jews in twelfth-century Europe.
Bernard is a good example of a Christian who formed his attitude
toward the Jews almost entirely on the basis of theoretical and theolo-
gical considerations, for aside from some knowledge of their usurious
activities, his contact with Jews was minimal. Malcolm Hay writes that

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 The Middle Ages

“not a single word (in Bernard’s works) suggests the possibility of friendly
personal relations with them.”1 Stephen Harding, Bernard’s predecessor
as head of the Cistercian movement, had used rabbis to help him with
textual problems in the Hebrew scriptures, but there is no evidence at
all that Bernard continued this practice, and there are some positive
indications that he did not do so systematically.2
Consequently, his action during the one time of his life when he was
faced with a Jewish crisis is reflective of the effects of official Christian
theology rather than of any personal relationship with Jews. This action
came during the preparations for the second crusade, a crusade that
was preached by Bernard, when a Cistercian monk named Radulph
left his monastery and began encouraging the mobs to massacre Jews.
Bernard heeded an urgent appeal and wrote a number of letters opposing
Radulph; ultimately, he even preached to the mobs in order to prevent
the massacres.
Part of the texts of Bernard’s letters at this time will serve as
an excellent basis for a discussion of some of his central positions on
Jewish questions:
For the rest, not I but the Apostle warns you, brethren, not to believe every
spirit. I have heard with great joy of the zeal for God’s glory which burns
in your midst, but your zeal needs the timely restraint of knowledge. The
Jews are not to be persecuted, killed, or even put to flight. Ask anyone who
knows Sacred Scripture what he finds foretold of the Jews in the Psalm.
‘Not for their destruction do I pray,’ it says. The Jews are for us the living
words of Scripture, for they remind us of what our Lord suffered. They are
dispersed all over the world so that by suffering for their crime they may be
everywhere the living witnesses of our redemption. Hence the same Psalm
adds, ‘only let thy power disperse them.’ And so it is: dispersed they are.
Under Christian princes they endure a hard captivity, but ‘they only wait
for the time of their deliverance.’ Finally, we are told by the Apostle that

1 Europe and the Jews (Boston, 1961), p. 40.

2 On Harding, see Watkin Williams, St. Bernard of Clairvaux (Westminster, Maryland,
1952), p. 259. As for Bernard, there is one sermon, for example, where he expresses
doubt as to whether the phrase “meliora sunt ubera tua vino” (Cant. 1.2) was spoken by
the bride or bridegroom. A reference to the Hebrew “dodekha” would have resolved the
issue (assuming the acceptance of Massoretic vocalization). See Sermones super Cantica
Canticorum (henceforth referred to as SCC), 9.4, S. Bernardi Opera, ed. by J. Leclerq,
C. H. Talbot, and H. M. Rochais (henceforth referred to as LTR) (Rome, 1957), I, p. 44; Life
and Works of St. Bernard, tr. by Samuel J. Eales (henceforth referred to as Eales) (London,
1896), IV, p. 45. Translations from SCC are, with occasional changes, taken from Eales.

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 The Attitude of St. Bernard of Clairvaux toward the Jews

when the time is ripe all Israel shall be saved. But those who die before will
remain in death . . . . If the Jews are utterly wiped out [or ‘ground down’—
conterantur], what will become of our hope for their promised salvation,
their eventual conversion? If the pagans were similarly subjugated to us,
then, in my opinion, we should wait for them rather than seek them out
with swords. But as they have now begun to attack us, it is necessary for
those of us who do not carry a sword in vain to repel them with force. It
is an act of Christian piety both to ‘vanquish the proud’ and also to ‘spare
the subjected’, especially those for whom we have a law and a promise,
and whose flesh was shared by Christ whose name be forever blessed.3

In another letter, Bernard wrote:

‘Put back thy sword into its place; all those who take up the sword will perish
by the sword.’ Is it not a far better triumph for the Church to convince and
convert the Jews than to put them all to the sword? . . . . Otherwise, when
does that saying come in, ‘Not for their destruction I pray,’ and ‘When the
fulness of the nations shall have come in, then all Israel will be saved,’ and
‘The Lord is rebuilding Jerusalem, calling the banished sons of Israel home’?4

There are a great number of highly significant statements in these

passages. Let us begin with the most basic question: the prohibition of
converting Jews at the point of a sword. This prohibition, in the view
of Bernard, is based upon two independent considerations. The first is
logical and the second Scriptural. The logical argument is what prompts
him to say that he would tolerate even subjugated pagans, and this
argument appears more clearly elsewhere.
In a famous passage in his Sermons on the Canticle,5 he says that
heretics should be taken not by force of arms but by force of arguments. In

3 Selections from the Latin of this passage:

Non sunt persequendi Judaei, non sunt trucidandi, sed ne effugandi quidem ... propter
hoc dispersi sunt in omnes regiones, ut dum justas tanti facinoris poenas luunt, testes
sint nostrae redemptionis ... Denique cum introiret gentium multitudo, ‘tunc omnis Israel
salvus erit,’ ait Apostolus (Rom. 11:26).
Epist. 363, Sancti Bernardi ... Opera, ed. by Johannis Mabillon, I (henceforth referred
to as Mabillon) (Paris, 1719), c. 329–330 = Migne, Patrologia Latina (henceforth PL) 182:
567. The English is based on Bruno Scott James, The Letters of St. Bernard of Clairvaux
(London, 1953), Letter 391, pp. 462–463. Henceforth, the enumeration and pagination
of letters in James’ translation will be placed in parentheses next to the usual number. It
should be noted that James translates “poenas luunt” as “expiating their crime,” but this
is unlikely
4 Epist. 365, Mabillon, c. 332 = PL 182: 57 (James, 393, p. 466).
5 64.8, LTR, II, p. 170, Eales, IV, p. 386.

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 The Middle Ages

this he follows the rather obvious insight of Gregory I that only preaching
can effect a sincere conversion.6 However, there is a second, less tolerant
step in the reasoning associated with this position. Two sermons later,7
Bernard adds that though faith is produced by persuasion and not by force,
it is better to coerce heretics at sword point than to permit them to “draw
away many other persons into their error.” This is similar to his argument
in Ep. 363 with regard to pagans although there he refers to military
attacks rather than pagan persuasion. Thus, the logical consideration
operates to grant toleration only to docile pagans and heretics. When they
become militant or troublesome, they are to be “coerced by the sword.”
The Jews, however, are protected not only by logical argument
but also by Biblical injunction. What, may we ask, would be the status
of a Jewish people which was attracting Christians away from their
faith? Would the Biblical requirement that Jews be tolerated also fall
before the fear that they would “draw away many other persons into
their error”? There is a passage in his De Consideratione8 where Bernard
implies that the Bible would prevail: “Let them [heretics], I say, either be
corrected by your zeal in this way lest they perish or be coerced lest they
destroy others.” He then goes on, apparently dealing with a situation in
which they might “destroy others,” and says: “But concerning the Jews,
time excuses you: They have their own end which cannot be brought
earlier. The fulness of the nations must precede it.” This is a radical
statement of extreme toleration.
Whether or not Bernard would have maintained such a position in
the face of a proselytizing Judaism is surely open to question, but the fact
remains that his actual statements in this area are extremely tolerant,
especially when we compare them with his attitude toward pagans. He
writes in a letter, “We utterly forbid that for any reason whatsoever
a truce should be made with these peoples [Eastern European pagans]
... until such a time as, by God’s help, they shall be either converted or
wiped out.”9 In another letter, after quoting the very verse about putting
away the sword which he used in letter 365 to defend the Jews, he argues

6 Gregory’s Epist. 1.47. Cf. James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue
(Cleveland, New York, and Philadelphia, 1961), p. 211.
7 SCC 66.12, LTR, II, p. 187, Eales, IV, p. 407.
8 III. 1.3, Mabillon, c. 433 = PL 182: 759 = J. Leclerq & H. M. Rochais, S. Bernardi Opera III
(Rome, 1963), p. 433.
9 Epist. 467 (394, p. 467).

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 The Attitude of St. Bernard of Clairvaux toward the Jews

that it must sometimes be overridden. “I believe that the time has come
for both swords to be drawn in defense of the Eastern Church.”10
Bernard’s letter on the Jews, then, distinguishes them favorably from
the pagans and was at least partially effective in halting the massacres.
His activity on behalf of the Jews was not forgotten by the beneficiaries,
and both the twelfth-century Ephraim of Bonn and the sixteenth-century
Yosef ha-Kohen refer to his actions with varying degrees of enthusiasm.11
Malcolm Hay, however, has recently proferred a much less favorable
appraisal of Bernard’s action in this matter.12 He emphasizes the fact that
Bernard’s reasons for opposing the massacres were not humanitarian but
theological, and his language in condemning Radulph is scarcely as strong
as it could and should have been. When he condemned the murder of
a Christian, Master Thomas, he was far more indignant than he was on this
occasion. Furthermore, he ended his letter by freeing all crusaders from
exactions of usury,13 a “consolation,” says Hay, “for recruits who were now
forbidden to exercise their swordsmanship upon defenseless civilians.” It
should be added that there is no clearcut evidence for Graetz’ apologia
that Bernard was forced to remit the interest by Papal pressure.14
The fact is, however, that Hay’s strictures are more a condemnation
of medieval anti-Semitism generally than they are of Bernard. Few
medieval leaders waxed eloquent over their deep humanitarian concern
for Jews, and while occasional feelings of genuine sympathy do appear,
they are hardly characteristic of the period. Moreover, to the extent that
appeals to Christian mercy are made with regard to treatment of Jews,
such appeals are found in Bernard’s letters as well.15

10 Epist. 256 (399, p. 471).

11 Yosef ha-Kohen is more enthusiastic than his predecessor, who had emphasized Bernard’s
theological motivations. See Ephraim of Bonn’s Sefer Zekhirah in A. M. Habermann,
Sefer Gezerot Ashkenaz ve-Zarfat (Jerusalem, 1946), p. 116, and Yosef ha-Kohen’s ‘Emeq
ha-Bakhah, ed. by M. Letteris (Vienna, 1852), p. 41. There is a reference to the Jewish
reaction in Richard S. Storrs’ brief and enthusiastic account of Bernard’s activities
on behalf of the Jews; see his Bernard of Clairvaux (New York, 1912), pp. 176–181. See
also B. Blumenkranz in K. Rengstorff and S. von Kortzfleisch, Kirche und Synagoge, I
(Stuttgart, 1968), pp. 121–122.
12 Europe and the Jews, chapter 2, pp. 40 ff.
13 Epist. 363, Mabillon, c. 330 = PL 182: 568.
14 H. Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, third ed., VI, (Leipzig, 1894), p. 148 = Divrei Yemei Yisrael,
translated by S. P. Rabbinowicz (Warsaw, 1894), IV, p. 190.
15 One medieval leader who appears to have felt some genuine sympathy for Jews was Pope
Alexander II. In a letter written in 1063 regarding the murder of Jews by knights in Spain,

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 The Middle Ages

Furthermore, Bernard maintained the most liberal of the views that

were possible within the accepted theology. It was, of course, universally
maintained that Jews should not be massacred; indeed, Psalm 59:12
(“Do not kill them ... “), which Bernard cites in his letter, was a classical
proof-text quoted very frequently to buttress this position.16 Nevertheless,
even so extreme an anti-Jewish measure as expulsion was sometimes
considered consistent with this and similar verses. Pope Leo VII had
written to archbishop Frederick of Mayence between 937 and 939 that
Jews should not be forced to convert but that they may be expelled if
they refuse.17 In addition, Bernard’s apparent view that even militant Jews
should be tolerated, as well as several opinions that we shall discuss below
(e.g., the unusual vigor of his insistence on their ultimate salvation and his
view that they retain a special favorable status), clearly serve to classify
his practical position on the Jews as extremely tolerant. Indeed, even
his suggestion that certain debts be voided appears mild in comparison
with Peter the Venerable’s proposal on the same occasion that Jewish
funds be confiscated for use by crusaders.18 Finally, it ought to be noted
that Radulph was held in very high regard in Germany and that vigorous
opposition to his preaching was neither easy nor assured of success.19
Now, the same verse which prohibits destruction of the Jews (Psalm
59:12) prophesies their dispersion (“only let Thy power disperse them”).
Bernard was strongly imbued with the idea of Jewish serfdom, writing
that “there is no more dishonorable nor serious serfdom than that of the

he called those knights stupid, avaricious, and madly raging for trying to kill people whom
divine pietas had predestined for salvation, and in another letter he added, “God does not
enjoy the shedding of blood nor delight in the destruction of the wicked.” See PL 146:
1386–1387. For a less impressive but similar remark by Bernard, see below, note 25.
16 See H. H. Ben Sasson, Peraqim be-Toledot ha-Yehudim bi-Yemei ha-Beinayim (Tel Aviv, 1958),
pp. 31–32. Cf. also Peter Damian, whose general outlook was quite similar to that of
Bernard: “Unde per Psalmistam dicitur . . . ne occidas eos,’” Epist. 13, PL 144: 284–285.
On Damian’s attitude toward the Jews, cf. my “St. Peter Damian: His Attitude toward the
Jews and the Old Testament,” The Yavneh Review 4 (1965): 80–112.
17 PL 132: 1084–1085.
18 See PL 189: 368, and cf. Ch. Merchavia, Ha-Talmud bi-Re’i HaNazrut (Jerusalem, 1970),
p. 130, and B. Blumenkranz in K. Rengstorff and S. von Kortzfleisch, Kirche und Synagoge,
I, p. 121.
19 See the citations in Carl Neumann, Bernhard von Clairvaux und die Anfänge des Zweiten
Kreuzzuges (Heidelberg, 1882), p. 35. For a fairly recent discussion of some of Bernard’s
activities in connection with the crusade, see A. Bredero, “Studien zu den Kreuzzugsbriefen
Bernhards von Clairvaux und seiner Reise nach Deutschland im Jahre 1146,” Mitteilungen
des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung 66 (1958), pp. 331–343.

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 The Attitude of St. Bernard of Clairvaux toward the Jews

Jews; they carry it with them wherever they go, and everywhere they find
their masters.”20 Furthermore, he used the existence of this servitude as
an anti-Jewish argument. “But if that flower [of the Jews] still remains,
where, then, is the kingdom? where is the priesthood? where the prophets
and the temple? where those mighty wonders etc.?”21 This argument was
common,22 and in this literary form it is taken straight out of a sermon by
Peter Chrysologus who asked, “Where is the temple? Where is the priest?
Where is the sacrifice?”23
This serfdom is, of course, punishment for that greatest of all crimes,
the crucifixion. Bernard mentions the Jews’ “viperous venom” in hating
Jesus and the bestial stupidity and miserable blindness which caused
them to “lay impious hands upon the Lord of Glory.”24
Nevertheless, in spite of the length and severity of what Bernard
considered a richly deserved servitude, he firmly believed that the
Jews will be saved at the final judgment. The brunt of his argument
against their destruction is that such a destruction would invalidate
Scriptural prophecies, such as the oft-quoted verse (Romans 11:26)
that “all Israel will be saved.” He is so thoroughly convinced of the anti-
Scriptural character of Radulph’s preaching that he writes, “Are you
the one who makes the prophets liars and empties out the treasures of
piety and mercy of Jesus Christ?”25 This form of argument is particularly
intriguing, since it was usually used as part of anti-Jewish polemic. Thus,

20 De Consideratione, I, translated in S. W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews

(2nd ed., Philadelphia, 1957), V, p. 129.
21 “First Sermon on the Virgin Mother,” St. Bernard’s Sermons for the Seasons and the Principal
Festivals of the Year, tr. by a priest of Mt. Melleray (henceforth Sermons) (Westminster,
Maryland, 1950), I, pp. 60–61.
22 Cf., e.g., Damian’s Dialogus, PL 145: 65–66, and Jacob ben Reuben, Milhamot Hashem,
ed. by J. Rosenthal (Jerusalem, 1963), p. 5. For the Jewish response to the Christian
argument from the small number, servitude and degradation of the Jews, see Sefer Yosef
ha-Meqanne, Festschrift Berliner’s (Frankfurt A.M., 1903), p. 87; Rosenthal’s edition
(Jerusalem, 1970), p. 58; Meir ben Simon of Narbonne, Milhemet Mizvah, Parma ms.
p. 14; Joseph Kimhi, Sefer ha-Berit, in Milhemet Hovah (Constantinople, 1710), p. 36a;
Solomon Ben Moses de Rossi, ‘Edut Hashem Ne’emanah, partly edited by J. Rosenthal, Sura
3 (1948): 260–264; Sefer Nizzahon Yashan in J. Wagenseil, Tela Ignea Satanae (Altdorf,
1681), II, pp. 253–257; Rupert of Deutz, Dialogus Christiani et Judaei, PL 170: 606.
23 PL 52: 512.
24 SCC 60.4, LTR, II, p. 144, Eales, IV, p. 362. See too “Second Sermon for Christmas Day,”
Sermons, I, p. 395. Cf. also Epist. 158 (164, p. 233).
25 “Tune es ille qui mendaces facies prophetas et evacuebis omnes thesauros pietatis et
misericordiae Jesu Christi?” Epist. 365, Mabillon, c. 332 = PL 182: 571.

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Bernard may subtly be arguing that Radulph is no better than the Jews
whom he is attacking.26 In a sermon, he says that the judgment against
Israel is only partial (ex parte) and quotes the verse that God will not
reject them to the end, but will save a remnant (“sed nec repellet in
finem, reliquias salvaturus”).27 It would not do to press the contradiction
between “all Israel” and a “remnant”; Bernard probably felt that the entire
last generation of Jews (= all Israel) would be saved, while “remnant” has
the wider perspective of all the generations. In fact, Bernard himself
mentions both verses one after the other.28
What is especially surprising in this connection is Bernard’s use of
the verse, “The Lord is rebuilding Jerusalem, calling the banished sons
of Israel home,” as a prophecy of Jewish redemption. In many places,
Bernard understands “Jerusalem” as a spiritual term and “Israel” as
Christians. He says that at the second advent, God will “rebuild the
Jerusalem of your souls.”29 He refers to the “true Jerusalem,”30 to the
renewal of the “spiritual Jerusalem, the true holy city,”31 and to the “free
Jerusalem which is above and mother of us all.32 Indeed, this widespread
conception goes back to Galatians 4:26: “But the Jerusalem above is free,
and she is our mother.” Bernard, moreover, agrees with the universal
Christian belief that the Christians are verus Israel.33 It would seem, then,
that in order to save the Jews, Bernard suppressed what he believed to

26 For the argument that Jews, in effect, proclaim the prophets liars, see John 5: 45–47;
Doctrina Jacobi Nuper Baptizati, ed. by N. Bonwetsch (Berlin, 1910), pp. 20–21, 65 (ean
ouk elthen ho christos, pseudetai ho prophetes); Les Trophées de Damas, ed. by G. Bardy,
Pat. Orientalia 15, p. 240 (ton patriarchan pseusten epoiesas); Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogus,
PL 157: 618 (Christians believe in the incarnation because they don’t consider the
prophets liars); Rupert of Deutz, Dialogus, PL 170: 596 (“O Judaee, quaecumque loquuntur
Scripturae ut vera sunt aut non; sed dicere quis audeat quia non vera sunt ?”).
27 SCC 14.2, LTR I, pp. 76–77, Eales IV, p. 75.
28 SCC 79.5–6, LTR II, p. 275, Eales, IV, p. 486. Raban Maur also quoted the verse on all Israel
and a verse mentioning the reliquiae without noticing a contradiction. Cf. PL 110: 582.
For other references to Jewish salvation in Bernard, cf. SCC 16.15, LTR, I, p. 97, Eales,
IV, p. 94, and Epist. 467 (394, p.467).
29 “Fifth Sermon for Christmas Day,” Sermons, I, p. 42.
30 Epist. 469 (395, p. 468).
31 “First Sermon for Septuagesima,” Sermons, II, p. 60.
32 Epist. 64 (67, p. 91).
33 “Second Sermon for Christmas Eve,” Sermons, I, p. 317; “Fourth Sermon on the Virgin
Mother,” ibid., p. 114; “First Sermon for the First Sunday after the Octave of the
Epiphany,” Sermons, II, p. 37; Epist. 397 (429, p. 499); Epist. 288 (410, p. 479). On the
history of this conception, see M. Simon, Verus Israel (Paris, 1948), esp. pp. 110–111, and
B. Blumenkranz, Die Judenpredigt Augustins (Basel, 1946), pp. 164–175.

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 The Attitude of St. Bernard of Clairvaux toward the Jews

be a perfectly valid interpretation of this verse and referred it instead

to carnal Israel.34 He implies, furthermore, that the ultimate Jewish
conversion will take place at least with the consent of the Jews’ free
will; it cannot be entirely imposed from without.35 Bernard’s view of
Jewish salvation, then, was of the most positive nature possible within
the framework of medieval Christian thought.
It is a matter of particular interest that Bernard appears convinced
that Jews retain some special status even after the crucifixion and that
some Biblical promises still apply to them. He writes that the Jew,
unlike the Christian, has the right to temporal riches, for he “received
the promise of a temporal reward.”36 It is, of course, possible that this
is a rationalization to explain the theologically uncomfortable fact that
some Jews were quite successful financially, but this possibility does
not render Bernard’s remark insignificant. Moreover, his above-quoted
statement suggesting that Jews are to be spared partly because Jesus
shared their flesh reinforces the impression that he was genuinely
convinced that even carnal Israel has a special, favorable status.37
There are a number of other places in his works where Bernard shows
some moderate leanings favorable to Jews. Even the infidel, he feels, can
love God, though neither Jew nor pagan can love Him as much as the
Christian can.38 He attributes a chaste custom to the Jews by saying that
Mary was betrothed to Joseph because the intended husband would,
according to “a Jewish custom,” watch over the virtue of his intended
wife.39 In apologizing for Paul’s early persecution of Christians, he

34 It is also possible that Bernard referred this verse to the Jews because of the phrase
“banished sons of Israel,” and Christians had never been banished. Indeed, this argument
was used by Jewish polemicists in connection with the Verus Israel question in general.
See the Sefer Nizzahon Yashan in J. Wagenseil, Tela Ignea Satanae (Altdorf, 1681), II, p. 31,
and cf. my doctoral dissertation, The Nizzahon Vetus, Columbia Univ., 1970, pp. 31, 111.
35 The Treatise of St. Bernard Concerning Grace and Free Will (De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio),
tr. by W. Williams (London and New York, 1920), pp. 16–17.
36 “First Sermon for the Feast of All Saints,” Sermons, III, p. 338.
37 See Epist. 363, Mabillon, c. 330 = PL 182: 567 (James 391, p. 463). It must be granted
that he is not being theologically rigorous in this sentence (note his “proof-text” regarding
vanquishing the proud and sparing the subjected from the Aeneid, a work that was hardly
canonical despite Virgil’s medieval reputation as a near-prophet).
38 The Book on the Love of God (De Diligendo Dei), ed. and tr. by E. G. Gardner (London, 1915),
pp. 38, 42, 64.
39 “Second Sermon on the Virgin Mother,” Sermons, I, p. 82. This interpretation, however,
is theologically motivated and was current before Bernard.

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supplies, perhaps unwittingly, a basis for mitigating Jewish sin, saying,

“He ‘did it ignorantly in unbelief.’”40 While interpreting the verse, “Thou
shalt not walk upon the asp ...”, he avoids an Augustinian interpretation
which said that the asp was the Jew.41 Finally, he says that Christians are
worse usurers than Jews, a statement we shall discuss below.42
Nevertheless, despite the pro-Jewish tendencies discussed above, the
general tenor of Bernard’s sermons and letters is strongly anti-Semitic.
As a loyal member of an anti-Jewish tradition going back to the classical
world, Bernard strongly condemns Jewish exclusiveness. “He desired
them [the Gentiles] to draw near; but the Synagogue forbade them . . .
For Judah has in abundance the oil of knowledge of God, and keeps it
to herself, as a miser . . . She desires to possess alone the worship, the
knowledge, the great name of God, not because she is jealous of her own
happiness, but because she is envious of mine.” He then adds that the
Jews desire that “the unction of salvation remain upon Aaron’s beard
alone.”43
Bernard’s negative assessment of Jewish character is not confined to
their rejection of Jesus alone, for he refers to Jewish perfidia during the
first Jewish Commonwealth.44 He says, with Acts, that the Jews always
resist the holy spirit,45 and, with the Psalmist, that they are ungrateful
and “not mindful of His benefits.”46
However, Bernard discusses most of the repulsive traits of the
Jews in connection with their rejection of Jesus and the circumstances
surrounding his advent. He is quite emphatic, for example, in his
discussion of their extreme cruelty. Joseph had to hide the pregnant
Mary lest “that stiff-necked people . . . , those cruel and incredulous
Jews, would have mocked at him and stoned her . . . What would they
have done to him whilst yet unborn, on whom afterwards, when glorified
by miracles, they did not hesitate to lay sacrilegious hand?”47 Now, this

40 “Third Sermon for the Feast of SS. Peter and Paul,” Sermons, III, p. 212.
41 “Fourteenth Sermon on Psalm XC,” Sermons, I, p. 278 (cf. translator’s note).
42 Epist. 363, Mabillon, c. 330.
43 SCC 14.1–2, LTR, I, pp. 75–77, Eales, IV, pp. 74–75.
44 SCC 46.5, LTR, II, p. 59, Eales, IV, p. 284: “Ita intonans [propheta] in perfidiam
Judaeorum.”
45 Epist. 311 (374, p. 445).
46 SCC 11.2, LTR, I, p. 56, Eales, IV, p. 56.
47 “Second Sermon on the Virgin Mother,” Sermons, I, pp. 86–87. For the passage from
Jerome mentioned next, cf. translator’s note, p. 85.

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 The Attitude of St. Bernard of Clairvaux toward the Jews

particular passage is motivated by exegetical considerations and is, in

any case, inspired by Jerome who wrote that Mary was betrothed so that
she might not be stoned by the Jews as an adulteress (“ne lapidaretur
a Judaeis ut adultera”). Emphasis on Jewish cruelty, however, appears
in numerous other passages in Bernard. He remarks that the Apostles
had good reason to fear the Jews even after the crucifixion,48 and he
describes the Synagogue as a “cruel mother” for having “cast forth the
child of thy womb [Jesus] with none to receive or to care for him.”49 He
makes this criticism even though, in another sermon, he praises Jesus
for having “left the Synagogue, his mother, so that you might cleave to
him.”50 Elsewhere, he says that the Synagogue acted like a stepmother in
crowning Jesus with a crown of thorns.51
In various places, anti-Jewish stereotypes color Bernard’s vocabulary.
Like many writers, he uses the word synagogue as a term of opprobrium.
When speaking of the heretic Henry, he writes, “Churches are regarded as
synagogues.”52 In another letter, he commends Abbot Warren of the Alps
for “destroying those synagogues of Satan, the cells where three or four
monks live without order or discipline.”53 On the basis of the conviction
that Jews are unusually hard-hearted, he says that Jesus engraves his
law on a “heart of flesh, ... that is to say, not hard, not stubborn, not
Judaic.”54 We shall later examine another, more significant stereotype

48 “Fifth Sermon for the Feast of the Ascension,” Sermons, II, p. 285, and “First Sermon
for Pentecost,” ibid., p. 289. There was even a Christian view that the major cause of
the punishment of the Jews was their persecution of the apostles after the crucifixion.
See Pseudo-Bede in PL 93 : 460, cited in B. Blumenkranz, Les Auteurs Chrétiens Latins
du Moyen Age sur les Juifs et le Judaisme (Paris, 1963), p. 138, and esp. Gregory I, PL 75:
862, cited in Auteurs, p. 86.
49 “Sixth Sermon for Christmas Eve,” Sermons, I, pp. 379–380.
50 “Second Sermon for the First Sunday after the Octave of the Epiphany,” Sermons, II,
p. 46.
51 “Fifth Sermon for the Feast of All Saints,” Sermons, III, p. 393.
52 Epist. 241 (317, p. 388). See L. I. Newman, Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements
(New York, 1925), pp. 134–135. Newman (p. 195) compares the following passage with
Bernard’s: “Sunt autem Burgares seu ‘Burgari’ secta Catharorum quorum Ecclesiam vel
potius Synagogam memoriat Reinerius.” Cf. also p. 230.
53 Epist. 254 (329, p. 408). The phrase “synagogue of Satan” is based on Revelations 2:9 and
3:9. Cf. also Agobard, PL 104: 88, cited in Merchavia, op. cit., p. 83.
54 “First Sermon for the Feast of the Dedication of a Church,” Sermons, II, p. 389. See also
“Second Sermon for Lent,” Sermons, II, p. 81; see sec. 65.2, LTR, II, p. 173, Eales, IV,
p. 394 (“O foolish and hard of heart, filled with the spirit of the Pharisees”). Cf. Peter
the Venerable, PL 189: 551.

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which affects Bernard’s vocabulary—that of the Jewish usurer. The final,

most common, and least significant stereotype is, of course, that of the
proud and hypocritical Pharisee.55
Other Jewish characteristics that Bernard criticizes are hypocrisy56
and envy of Christians.57 Moreover, in one sermon, he goes so much
out of his way to criticize Jews that he begins in the following awkward
manner: “My brethren, it seems to me that these assemblies of ours are
far from deserving that reproach of the Prophet addressed to the Jews:
‘Your assemblies are wicked.’ For our assemblies are not wicked.”58
Does Bernard attribute to the Jews a diabolical hatred of God in
explaining their rejection of Jesus, or does he say that they are simply
stupid? Both points of view were current at this time, and Bernard
does not seem to have chosen between them, for at times he expresses
the one and at times the other. He says in one sermon, “But the Jews,
ever mindful of the hatred wherewith they hate his Father, take this
opportunity to vent it on the Son . . . . What then will these wicked
men do to him, the mere sight of whom they cannot bear?”59 “Judea,”
he says elsewhere, “hates the light.”60 In another sermon, he explicitly
calls the Jews the instruments of Satan.61 In other places, however, he
implies that the Jews reject Jesus only out of blindness, for in attacking
the heretic Henry he suggests two possibilities for his heresy: either he
is afflicted with Jewish blindness, or he resents the truth.62 The latter
possibility is not attributed to the Jews. Moreover, in a long and famous
passage, he attributes the intransigence of the Jews to their stupid and
bovine intellect. It is in this passage that Bernard tells the Jews that he is
kinder to them than Isaiah, for the latter placed them below the animals

55 Epist. 6 (7, p. 28); 94 (91, p. 141); see SCC 13.2, LTR I, p. 69, Eales, IV, pp. 67–68; “Second
Sermon on Lent,” Sermons, II, p. 91; “Third Sermon for the Feast of the Annunciation,”
Sermons, III, pp. 162, 164; De Gradibus Humilitatis, tr. by G. B. Burch (Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1942), pp. 152–154.
56 This, of course, was standard Christian procedure. “Second Sermon for Christmas Eve,”
Sermons, I, pp. 317–318.
57 SCC 25.9, LTR, I, p. 168, Eales, IV, p. 154 (“aemulis posse respondere Judaeis”); “Third
Sermon on the Virgin Mother,” Sermons, I, pp. 103–104; “Second Sermon for the First
Sunday after the Octave of the Ephiphany,” Sermons, II, p. 45.
58 “Sermon for the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist,” Sermons, III, p. 173.
59 “Sermon for the Octave of the Feast of the Circumcision,” Sermons, I, pp. 438–439.
60 “Third Sermon for the Feast of the Epiphany,” Sermons, II, pp. 22–23.
61 “Second Sermon for the Feast of St. Andrew,” Sermons, III, p. 60.
62 Epist. 241 (317, p. 388).

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 The Attitude of St. Bernard of Clairvaux toward the Jews

in intelligence. Incredibly, Watkin Williams quotes this statement as

an example of Bernard’s “peculiarly tender feeling toward the Jews,”
because he was kinder to them than Isaiah.63
Bernard strongly criticizes Jewish character in economic matters as
well. He proclaims, in an important anti-Jewish statement, that Jews are
“coarse, . . . for their action carried them into wars, all their inclinations
were devoted to the pursuit of gain (affectus in lucris totus erat), their
intelligence stopped short in the thick husk of the Law, and their worship
consisted in shedding the blood of sheep and cattle.”64 Bernard’s other
important statement on the Jews in economic affairs (aside from his
theological justification of their possession of temporal wealth) is his
above-quoted statement that Christian usurers are taking more interest
(pejus judaizare) than the Jews. Though Bernard is apparently making
an anti-Christian statement, Baron maintains that he “introduced
a novel term of opprobrium” against the Jews here (judaizare = lend
at interest) and thus lent authoritative support to the stereotype of
the Jew as usurer.65 By using this term, he managed to focus blame on
Jews even while blaming Christians.
Bernard, in fact, commonly used Jews as a standard of comparison for
various forms of heresy and sin. A Christian who forgets the sufferings
of Jesus becomes “a sharer in the unparalleled sin of the Jews.”66 The
heretic Henry is charged with “more than Jewish blindness.”67 Those
who sell relics differ from Judas Iscariot only in that they are more

63 St. Bernard of Clairvaux, p. 259. See SCC 60. 4–5, LTR, II, p. 144, Eales, IV, p. 362. The
old phrase “bovine intellect” was also applied to the Jews by Peter the Venerable, PL
189: 539 (cf. also c. 602); see note 76 below. On Jewish blindness, cf. also Bernard’s
epist. 365, Mabillon, c. 332 = PL 182: 571, where he refers to the Church’s prayer that
God “will remove the veil from their heart and draw them out from their darkness to
the light of truth.” Regarding this “veil,” see II Cor. 3.13–18, and cf. B. Blumenkranz,
Le Juif Medieval au Miroir de l’Art Chrétien (Paris, 1966), pp. 52–54, 64, and W. Seiferth,
Synagogue and Church in the Middle Ages (New York, 1970), pp. 95–109. On the diabolical
Jewish rejection of what they know to be the truth, see J. Trachtenberg, The Devil and the
Jews (New York, 1966), pp. 15 ff., and cf. Parkes, Conflict, p. 103.
64 SCC 60.3, LTR, II, p. 143, Eales, IV, p. 361. Jews, of course, brought no animal sacrifices
in the Middle Ages, but some Christians continued to raise this issue. See my “St. Peter
Damian . . . ,” Yavneh Review 4 (1965): 102.
65 Baron, Social and Religious History, IV, pp. 121, 301. That Bernard was the first to use
judaizare in this sense had been pointed out by S. Posener, Encyclopedia Judaica (Berlin,
1929), IV, p. 294. Cf. also Trachtenberg, op. cit., p. 190.
66 “Sermon for Spy Wednesday,” Sermons, II, p. 149.
67 Epist. 241 (317, p. 388).

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avaricious.68 Jesus “suffers a greater persecution from the man who . . .

attempts to wrest from him the souls he has ransomed than from the Jews
by whom that blood was shed.”69 The excommunicate is worse than the
Jew, the heretic, and the heathen, for the Church prays for the latter and
not for the former.70 It is presumably possible to argue that these remarks
represent pro-Jewish tendencies since they argue that at least some groups
are worse.71 Nevertheless, this widespread medieval habit of regarding
the Jews as a standard for evaluating all sorts of sinners, heretics, and
pagans was hardly a phenomenon at which Jews could rejoice.
Against this background of Bernard’s anti-Jewish prejudices, we
can approach his role in the Anacletus controversy with greater under-
standing. In 1130, a schism developed between Gregory, a Cardinal-
Deacon of St. Angelo, and Peter Pierleoni, Cardinal Priest of St. Calixtus.
The former was elected Pope Innocent II, and the latter, in a slightly later
and larger election, Pope Anacletus II. What is significant for us in this
affair is that Anacletus was of Jewish descent and Bernard opposed him
bitterly. The question we must ask is whether his opposition was based
on the Jewish parentage of Anacletus.
Bernard writes that he supports Innocent because “his reputation
is more fair and his election more sound.”72 “When the first election has
taken place, a second one is no election at all.”73 The fact is, however, that
Bernard undermines this argument in the very same letter by saying
that the supporters of Anacletus could have demanded immediate
reconsideration, but to make a new convention now would cause more
faction. This sort of backtracking leads one to suspect deeper motives.
Bernard, moreover, uses the most vicious sort of language against
Anacletus. “The fruitless growth, the rotten branch has been lopped off,”
68 SCC 10.3, LTR, I, pp. 49–50, Eales, IV, p. 50.
69 “First Sermon for the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul,” Sermons, III, p. 75.
70 De Gradibus Humilitatis, 22.56, The Steps of Humility, tr. by Burch, p. 232. For the status
of the evil Christian in Bernard, cf. Pierre Dérumaux, “St. Bernard et les Infidèles,”
Mélanges St. Bernard (Dijon, 1954), p. 74.
71 Agobard, for example, had regarded Jews as worse than pagans: “Judaei . . . nationibus
pejores inveniuntur: quia illae quidem nec legem acceperunt, isti vero post datam
sibi legem, post missos ad se prophetas, etiam Dei filium occiderunt,” PL 104: 96. Cf.
B. Blumenkranz, Les Auteurs Chrétiens Latins du Moyen Age sur les Juifs et le Judaisme,
p. 166. Cf. the same author’s Juifs et Chrétiens dans le Monde Occidental, 430–1096 (Paris
and The Hague, 1960), pp. xvii-xviii. See also Merchavia, op. cit., p. 82.
72 Epist. 125 (128, p. 190).
73 Epist. 126 (129, p. 195).

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he writes to Peter the Venerable.74 It may be of some interest that the

images of a flower without fruit, of withered grass, and of a fruitless
tree are used by Bernard elsewhere about the Jews.75 In another passage,
he calls Anacletus a beast.76 There can be little doubt that in view of the
anti-Jewish prejudices that we have seen in Bernard, his objection to
Anacletus’ Jewish descent must have been among the complex motives
which led to the virulence of his attack. And in an oft-quoted letter, he
explicitly mentions that “it is to the injury of Christ that a man of Jewish
race has seized for himself the see of Peter.”77 It should, however, be
remembered that others were far more virulent in specifically attacking
Anacletus’ Jewishness. Bishops Arnulf and Meinfredus wrote that in his
face he presents a Jewish image, that he is worse than a Jew, and that
he is still not free of Jewish leaven.78 Thus, Bernard was motivated to
some extent by Anacletus’ Jewishness but was more circumspect than
others in emphasizing it. In any event, Baron’s remark that “the racial
issue was seized upon by Anacletus’ enemies as an excuse for, rather
than as a major cause of, their opposition” is probably valid at least as
far as Bernard is concerned.79 Moreover, as Vogelstein and Rieger point
out, “We have no evidence that the opponents of Anacletus aroused the
fanaticism of the mob against the Jews.”80
A general appraisal of Bernard’s actions during the Second Crusade
and the reasons he gives for them together with an examination of his
anti-Jewish sermons and letters and his role in the Anacletus schism

74 Epist. 147 (147, p. 216).

75 Exhortatio ad Milites Templi, chapter 7, Mabillon, c. 556 = PL 182: 930 (“Floris odor
fructus saporem praecederit . . . , Judaeisque tenui odore contentis”); “First Sermon
on the Virgin Mother,” Sermons, I, pp. 60–61 (“Jews must be withered as the grass”);
SCC 60.3–4, LTR, II, pp. 143–144, Eales, IV, pp. 361–362 (the Jews are a sterile fig-tree
which had to be pruned).
76 Epist. 126 (129, p. 195). Peter the Venerable himself was strongly opposed to Anacletus,
causing James (Letters, pp. xi, 187) to say that “even Peter the Venerable, usually so careful
and so moderate,” made pejorative statements about Anacletus. James was apparently
willing to overlook Peter’s strongly anti-Semitic writings. On Peter the Venerable and
the Jews, see Merchavia, op. cit., pp. 128 ff., and cf. esp. p. 131 for varying appraisals of
Peter’s attitude. See also Blumenkranz in Kirche und Synagoge, I, pp. 119 ff. It should also
be noted that the term bestia was often applied to Jews by Peter. See Merchavia, p.132.
77 Epist. 139 (142, p. 210).
78 “Petrus iste . . . judaicam facie repraesentat imaginem . . . Jam nec Judaeus quidem, sed
Judaeo deterior . . . .” Quoted in Latin in Newman, Jewish Influence, p. 250.
79 Social and Religious History, IV, p. 11.
80 Geschichte der Juden in Rom (Berlin, 1896), I, p. 222.

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 The Middle Ages

leads to the conclusion that he was an unusually strong opponent of the

destruction of Jews, yet an equally strong spokesman for anti-Jewish
stereotypes and prejudices. Bernard himself, because of his very strong
belief in the Biblical promises which he cites and his devotion to canon
law, was able to overcome his prejudices and protect Jews from physical
violence, but this achievement was no simple matter.
Indeed, he appears to have been conscious of the inner tension
involved in his position toward the Jews, for he points it out quite
explicitly in several passages in his sermons. In these passages he
combines fierce denunciations of the Jews with a description of the
incredible mercy shown toward them by Jesus and the Church.
His “First Sermon for Easter Sunday”81 includes the following passage:
“What will you do now, O ye Jews, who on the day of the crucifixion were
wagging your sacrilegious heads before the cross, and heaping insults
on Christ . . . O venomous tongues!” He then adds: “He received with
humility the blasphemous reproaches of the Jews.” In another sermon,82
he marvels that Jesus did not murmur against “his own peculiar people,
from whom he received so much evil in return for so much good” and
adds, “You are stones, O ye Jews, but you have struck against a softer
stone, calling forth therefrom the sweet sound of mercy and the oil of
charity.” Jesus, he says elsewhere, is merciful toward the Jews, for “if he
had treated them according to their merits, he would inflict judgment
without mercy upon those who show no mercy (cf. James 2:13).”83 The
Church wishes the Synagogue to be saved though they are enemies.
“This degree of charity would be incredible, were it not that the words
of the bride here recorded compel us to believe them.”84 There can be no
doubt that a person listening to such sermons would be inspired to hate
Jews rather than love them through imitation of Jesus and the Church.
Imitatio (misericordiae) Dei is no easy task after hearing such invective.
Consequently, Bernard himself was not led to violence by his
prejudices, but the hatred which he preached was fanning the flames of
violence in lesser men. The great Christian protector of twelfth-century
Jewry sowed seeds which would claim the life of many a Jewish martyr.

81 Sermons, II, pp. 162–165.

82 “Sermon for Spy Wednesday,” Sermons, II, pp. 136, 147.
83 SCC 14.2, LTR, I, pp. 76–77, Eales, IV, p. 75.
84 SCC 79.5–6, LTR, II, p. 275, Eales, IV, p. 486.

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 ST. PETER DAMIAN
His Attitude toward the Jews and
the Old Testament1

From: Yavneh Review 4 (1965): 80–112.

INTRODUCTION

A cursory examination of the career of St. Peter Damian (1007–1072)

would probably yield the impression that his was a significant role in
the development of anti-Semitism in the high middle ages. Damian was
a powerful force in heightening medieval piety through his advocacy of
semi-eremitic monasticism, his stressing the adoration of the Virgin, and
his contribution to the tremendous upheaval in early medieval values
that culminated in the Gregorian reform. There can be little doubt that
a deeper and more widespread piety was a key factor in the tremendous
upsurge of Judaeophobia that came with the crusades. Furthermore,
Damian wrote the first full-scale anti-Jewish work produced on the
continent of Europe in two centuries, and the preserved history of Italian
polemics of this nature begins with him. The impression is clear. We must
now determine whether or not it is accurate.
Damian, of course, cannot be held responsible for the indirect effect
that the cult of Mary may ultimately have exercised in fostering a hatred
for Jews. Damian as an individual must be judged on the basis of the
attitude that he expresses in his writings, and it is to these writings that
we now must turn.
Before doing so, however, we must take cognizance of a most
important fact. The attitude of a medieval Christian toward the Jews
could be closely related to, and often reflected in, his attitude toward

1 The term “Old Testament” is used for convenience.

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 The Middle Ages

the Old Testament and its law. In Damian’s case, there is special reason
for interest, because his anti-Jewish works deal almost exclusively with
the Old Testament and because he is associated with the replacement
of “the judging, wrathful, distant God of the Old Testament . . . by the
loving, self-abnegating Son of the New Testament, with his weeping and
charitable Mother.”2 How real was this dichotomy in Damian’s own eyes,
and what were his feelings toward that part of the Bible which he shared
with the Jews? These are questions that we shall try to answer in the
second part of this paper.

I. DAMIAN AND HIS ATTITUDE TOWARD THE JEWS

The status of the Jews in eleventh century Italy was far from ideal. The
scattered references that we possess tell of a number of anti-Jewish
accusations. After an earthquake in Rome in 1020 or 1021, Jews were
savagely punished for having mocked a crucifix. Rabbi Meshullam ben
Kalonymus of Lucca wrote to R. Hai, the Gaon in Babylonia, about
an “upheaval” in his town—either a persecution or a defeat by an army.
In 1062, Jews in Aterno were accused of committing a ritual outrage
on an image of Jesus in their synagogue on Good Friday. An attempt
at a program of forced conversion in Benevento (c. 1065) drew a strong
protest from Pope Alexander II, but the attempt is significant in gauging
the attitude of Italian Christians toward the Jews.3
Earlier in this century, the rumor had spread through France and Italy
that the Jews were responsible for Moslem persecution of Christians in
the Holy Land. In France, this rumor led to a campaign of forced baptisms
(1007) which was stopped only through Papal intervention.4 Such reports
could not have passed entirely without effect in Italy, at least in the realm
of personal relations between individual Christians and Jews.
Nevertheless, three or four incidents in a century, even granted
the paucity of sources, do not constitute a bleak picture of the overall

2 Norman F. Cantor, Medieval History, The Life and Death of a Civilization (New York, 1963),
p. 308.
3 See Cecil Roth, The History of the Jews of Italy (Philadelphia, 1946), p. 72, for the
information in this paragraph.
4 Bernhard Blumenkranz, Juifs et Chrétiens dans le Monde Occidental, 430–1096 (Paris,
1960) (henceforth referred to as Juifs et Chrétiens), p. 136.

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 St. Peter Damian

situation. It would appear that the Jews of Italy enjoyed relative

tranquillity; anti-Semitic incidents, however, kept them aware of the
painful lack of long-term, meaningful security.
There had been a lull in the Jewish-Christian polemic in Europe
during the late ninth, tenth, and early eleventh centuries. It is true
that Bernhard Blumenkranz maintains that “this polemic is a ringing
manifestation of the intellectual vitality of the middle ages. This vitality
was not at all limited (to any period) . . . ; we can observe it throughout
our period.”5 The fact, however, is that an examination of Blumenkranz’s
own survey of the literature6 shows that since 846, when Amolon
wrote his Liber Contra Judaeos, no major anti-Jewish work appeared
on the continent till Damian. The anonymous Altercatio Aecclesie contra
Synagogam, written between 938 and 966, is probably an English
creation.7 The only other lengthy, major references are in Ratherius’
Qualitatis Conjectura8 (tenth century) and three sermons delivered by
Fulbert of Chartres in 1009.9
In Italy, written polemics simply did not exist in the Middle Ages
before Damian. Even oral disputations are mentioned most infrequently.
Alcuin (c. 750–760) describes a disputation between a Jew named Julius
and a Master Pater of Pisa at Pavia.10 Ahimaaz of Oria describes how
an archbishop called in a Rabbi Hananel for a religious discussion at
the end of the tenth century, and the Vita of the anchorite Simeon in
the Acta Sanctorum describes a discussion he had with a Jew on religious
matters during a meal at Lucca in 1016. The authenticity of both these
sources is open to question.11
Damian, then, appears in a time and place where the social situation
would not have drawn his special attention to the Jews and where the
polemical tradition was weak to say the least. Did he have a desire to
change the relationship between Christians and Jews? Did he wish to
revive the Judaeo-Christian polemic?

5 Juifs et Chrétiens, p. xv. The “period” is 430–1096.

6 “Les Auteurs Chrétiens Latins du Moyen Age sur les Juifs et le Judaisme” (henceforth
referred to as “Auteurs”), Revue des Etudes Juives 9 (109) (1948–49): 3–67; 11 (111)
(1951–52) : 5–61; 13 (113) (1954): 5–36; 14 (114) (1955): 37–90; 17 (117) (1958): 5–58.
7 “Auteurs,” REJ 14 (1955): 76 ff.
8 J. P. Migne, Patrologia Latina (henceforth PL) 136: 535–537.
9 PL 141: 305–318.
10 L. I. Newman, Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements (New York, 1925), p. 333.
11 Juifs et Chrétiens, pp. 68–69 and 71.

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 The Middle Ages

Peter Damian became involved in many controversies which

he disliked and for which he was temperamentally unsuited. His
strongest inclination was toward a semi-eremitic monasticism in which
he could “avoid human contact.”12 Patricia McNulty maintains that
it was “to his credit that he did not stand aside or refuse to aid the
Roman Church in her need.”13 The truth of the matter is that Damian
agreed to become a cardinal only under threat of excommunication
and constantly requested permission to return to a monastic life.
Thus, though Damian’s was a highly emotional nature,14 he would
have preferred to utilize his emotions in the relationship between
himself and God; only the most compelling necessity drove him to
direct them toward society. His advocacy of self-flagellation15 is but
one manifestation of the enormous energies he was willing to devote
to his personal monastic life. Basically, then, in the words of R. Biron,
“he was a contemplative man by temperament.”16 His involvement in
the battle for reform brought him more personal frustration than
fulfillment. Why should such a man enter into the acrimonious polemic
between Christian and Jew?
First of all, the Antilogus contra Judaeos and the Dialogus inter Judaeum
Requirentem et Christianum e contrario Respondentem17 were not written
through Damian’s own initiative; they are in essence a responsum to
a letter from the Egyptian bishop Honestus requesting material with
which to counter Jewish arguments. We shall see later that Honestus
did not make a very wise choice in choosing Damian. In any event, the
latter was not particularly enthusiastic about fulfilling the task, and
he characteristically compared this battle with the far more important
struggle undertaken daily by every conscientious monk.

12 De Perfections Monachorum, ch. 3, PL 145 : 294. Translations from De Perf. Mon. are
taken from Patricia McNulty, St. Pietro Damiani: Selected Writings on the Spiritual Life
(London, 1959) (henceforth Spiritual Life).
13 Spiritual Life, pp. 22–23.
14 J. Gonsette, Pierre Damien et la Culture Profane (Louvain, 1956), pp. 16–17.
15 Norman T. Boggs, in Christian Saga, vol. 1 (New York, 1931), pp. 374–375, gives great
emphasis to this element in Damian’s thought.
16 St. Pierre Damien, p. 192. Quoted in J. Joseph Ryan, “St. Peter Damiani and the Sermons
of Nicholas of Clairvaux: A Clarification,” Mediaeval Studies 9 (1947): 152.
17 PL 145: 41–68. The Antilogus-Dialogus (it is basically one work) was probably composed
c. 1070. Damian writes (col. 55) that 1040 years have passed since the fulfillment of
Daniel’s prophecy. From his general treatment of the passage in Daniel it would appear
that fulfillment took place at the crucifixion.

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 St. Peter Damian

“But,” he writes, “if you wish to be a soldier of Christ and fight for
him courageously, then take up arms as an illustrious warrior against
the vices of the flesh, the contrivances of the Devil—an enemy that will
indeed never die—rather than against the Jews who will soon be almost
destroyed from the face of the earth.”18
Nevertheless, he undertakes to do as Honestus requested, and he
states three reasons for doing so. First, it is disgraceful (inhonestum!)
for a churchman to hear calumnies against Christianity and remain
silent through ignorance. Second, such silence could arouse doubts in
the minds of loyal Christians. And finally, Damian expresses the hope
that Jews may be converted by well-presented Christian arguments.19
Damian keeps this third purpose in mind throughout the Antilogus
and Dialogus. At the beginning of the Antilogus, he writes, “When
someone begins a dispute about this matter, he should be warned not
to exasperate his opponent with insults or haughtiness. But he should
soothe his mind with benevolent charity and most patient gravity, for
a stony heart which was able to be all the more stubborn when bitterness
was poured forth can perhaps be softened toward belief by modest
sweetness of words.”20
Such confidence in the soft and moderate approach is not new in the
history of Christian polemic. Maxim, an Arian bishop (c. 365-c. 430),
wrote in his Tractatus Contra Judaeos, “We speak thus against them not
with a desire to harm . . . We wage a lively battle for people’s salvation . . .
We seek to save them by conversion . . . Therefore, we who seek the
truth do not look for (captious) quarrels.”21 We find a similar attitude
in Gregory the Great who said that only preaching can effect a sincere
conversion.22
At the end of the Dialogus, this hope turns into a ringing exhortation
to his fictitious Jewish opponent. “Therefore, O Jew, listen now to my
advice and you may have God, who is now angry at you, well-disposed
toward you . . . Desert the error of Jewish blindness, and direct yourself
18 “Sed si Christi miles esse, et pro eo viriliter pugnare desideras, contra carnis vitia, contra
diaboli machinas insignis bellator arma, potius corripe; hostes videlicet qui nunquam
moriuntur: quam contra Juadaeos, qui jam de terra pene deleti sunt.” PL 145: 41.
19 Loc. cit.
20 Loc. cit.
21 Quoted in “Auteurs,” REJ 9 (1948–49): 11.
22 Ep. I.47. Quoted in James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue (henceforth
referred to as Conflict) (Philadelphia, 1961), p. 211.

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 The Middle Ages

to the truth of Evangelical grace . . . May the God of your fathers cast aside
the old veil of ignorance from your heart, and, with the darkness of error
dispelled, he will besprinkle you with the new light of His knowledge.”23
The basic method that Damian uses to bring about this hoped-for
conversion is the accumulation of Old Testament passages which, to
his mind, prove that Jesus is the Messiah, that God consists of three
persons, etc. “In this truly naive way,” write Vogelstein and Rieger,
“through the piling up of Biblical passages, does Damian seek to
demonstrate the truth of Christianity to the Jews.”24 Actually, this method
was the classic Christian approach in dealing with Jews, and it begins in
the Gospels themselves. The most influential medieval work of this type
was Isidore of Seville’s De Fide Catholica ex vetere et novo testamento contra
Judaeos,25 and Damian was certainly not alone in considering this the
basic method of attack.
The Jews, in fact, could be most thankful for this approach, for it
is when Christians became less optimistic and less naive that more
virulent and dangerous anti-Semitism appeared. And, indeed, not all
Christians were naive. As early as the seventh century, Julian of Toledo
felt little hope of converting the Jews and wrote against them mainly
for Damian’s second reason—confirming Christians in their faith. Julian
was closely associated with the anti-Jewish policy of seventh century
Spain and wrote in his De Comprobatione Aetatis Sextae, that the Jews
are a sick part of the body of the Spanish people.26 His attitude is most
clearly reflected by the judgment that the worst thing about France is
that it is “a brothel of Jews blaspheming our Savior and Lord.”27 Clearly,
Julian’s pessimism arose from contact with actual Jews, not merely those
mentioned in books. Did Damian retain his optimism despite contact
with Jews, or did his hopes result from ignorance?
23 “Nunc igitur, Judaee, audi meum consilium ut Deum, quem iratum habes, possis habere
propitium... Desere Judaicae caecitatis errorem, et te ad Evangelicae gratiae dirige
veritatem... Deus patrum tuorum a corde tuo vetustum ignorantiae velamen abjiciat, et,
depulsis errorum tenebris, nova te cognitionis suae luce perfundat.” PL 145: 66.
24 Herman Vogelstein and Paul Rieger, Geschichte der Juden in Rom (Berlin, 1896), p. 268.
25 PL 83: 449–538.
26 “Auteurs,” REJ 11 (1951–52): 34–37. This pessimistic attitude toward conversion of the
Jews is reflected in the statement of Freculphe of Lisieux (9th cent.) that the Jews are
«naturally inimical to Christian dogma» (PL 106: 1199). See “Auteurs,” REJ 13 (1954): 25.
27 “... quod pejus his omnibus (sc. malis) est, contra ipsum Salvatorem nostrum et Dominum
Judaeorum blasphemantium prostibulum habebatur.” PL 96: 766. Translation by Parkes,
Conflict, p. 342.

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 St. Peter Damian

It would appear that the latter is true. Damian does not seem aware
of the implications of a polemic with Jews. It should have been obvious
to him that the Jews have their own interpretations of the verses he
quotes. Yet he writes as if no Jewish commentator had ever dealt with
the plural verb in Genesis 1:26 (“Let us make man in our image”). He
expects such evidence of the trinity as the thrice-repeated word “holy”
in Isaiah 6:3 to carry weight with Jews.
Damian almost never reaches the second stage of debate in the
exegesis of a verse. It is true that the problematic character of the
Christian case in the area of “testimonies” is partially to be blamed,
but certainly an attempt can be made to disprove some of the typical
Jewish refutations of Christian interpretations. Let us take, for example,
Genesis 49:10,28 one of the verses where a plausible case can be made for
the Christian argument. Damian spends about two or three lines on it29
without mentioning any possible Jewish explanations. When Fulbert of
Chartres, a far superior polemicist, dealt with this verse, he dwelt mostly
on the refutation of Jewish exegesis.30 In only one place did Damian
bother to refute Jewish interpretations. This is where he tried to show
that certain Psalms must refer to Jesus and not to David or Solomon.31
As a whole, then, by neglecting to deal with Jewish exegesis, Damian
must certainly have failed in helping Honestus. Furthermore, he did
not deal at all (except with regard to the Law) with questions initiated
by Jews, e.g., “How could Jesus have been the Messiah if none of the
Messianic prophecies have been fulfilled?” We must thus accuse Damian
of serious negligence or else conclude that his knowledge of Jews and
their arguments was minimal. Since none of his other writings betray
a familiarity with Jews, we are led to the conclusion that the latter
explanation is correct.
If this is true, then the use of stereotyped anti-Jewish expressions
in other theological, exegetical, or homiletical works becomes far less
significant. Gregory the Great, for example, who displayed a most
humane attitude toward the Jews in his correspondence, is vehemently
anti-Jewish in his Biblical commentaries, where Jews are symbolized

28 “The scepter shall not pass from Judah nor a lawgiver from among his descendants ad ki
yavo Shiloh.”
29 PL 145: 46.
30 See his three speeches against the Jews, PL 141: 305–318.
31 PL 145: 49–53.

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 The Middle Ages

by camels, wild asses, and serpents.32 Damian, who seems to have had
hardly any contact at all with Jews, can scarcely be blamed or considered
unusual for using phrases that, as we shall see, were a hackneyed part of
patristic and early medieval literature.
There are a number of passages in which Damian uses very harsh
language about the Jews. Perhaps the most extreme instance is in the
De Sacramentis per Improbos Administratis33 where he discusses Jewish
accusations that Jesus associated with sinners. These accusations, he
says, “are the root and entire matter whence the wild furor of Jewish
envy (or “spite”) against the Lord grew hot (unde feralis in Dominum
furor Judaici livoris incanduit); hence did the malice of their poisonous
bile conspire toward his death (hinc in mortem ejus viperini fellis malitia
conspiravit).”
A vituperative passage. But who is the primary object of attack here?
Not the Jews, but neo-Donatist Christian heretics. Damian here hit upon
a tactic which, as we shall see later, was quite common. First, he succeeds
in equating Jews—and the ancient Pharisees at that—with Donatists.
The next step is to bitterly malign the Jews (an easy and non-controversial
task in a treatise intended for Christians) and let the virulence of these
statements apply, by implication, to Donatists as well.
Furthermore, every anti-Jewish term in this passage has a “respect-
able” history in earlier writings. First, the term “feralis,” with its allusion
to wild beasts. As early as the fourth century, the Jews are referred to
as a “feralis secta.”34 In 387, this image was used by John Chrysostom
in his sermons against the Jews, where he stated that Jews are “wilder
than all wild beasts.”35
Taio of Saragossa referred to the “furor (saevitia) of the Jews against
Christ.”36 The term “livor” appears in the statement of Angelomus
of Luxeuil (died c. 855) referring to the “depravity of evil intention
which the Jewish perfidy wished to stretch forth from the quiver of its
spite (livor).37
32 Cf. Parkes’ very perceptive comments on the phenomenon in Conflict, pp. 219–221.
33 PL 145: 529.
34 Conflict, p. 185.
35 The Jews therion hapanton gegonasin agrioterai. PG 48: 852. In his sixth speech against
the Jews, Chrysostom switches the metaphor and compares himself to a wild beast who
has drunk blood (of the Jews) and cannot stop. See PG 48: 903.
36 PL 80: 778.
37 PL 115: 264. Quoted in “Auteurs,” REJ 13 (1954): 33.

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 St. Peter Damian

The image of the Jew as a serpent (“viperinus”) appears elsewhere

in Damian as well. In the Antilogus, he asks his Jewish adversary not
to behave like “a slippery serpent.”38 Elsewhere, he compares the
Jews to an ass, saying that “the ass used by Abraham represents the
uncomprehending stupidity of the Jews.”39 We have seen above that
both these comparisons are found in the exegetical works of Gregory
the Great. In the fourth century, the Synod of Jerusalem complained
of “Jewish serpents and Samaritan imbeciles listening to sermons in
Church like wolves surrounding the flock of Christ.”40 Of course, Damian’s
lack of original imagery is largely attributable to the fact that almost
every possible negative image had already been applied to the Jews. The
key point for this passage is that Damian had a special (anti-Donatist)
reason for his vitriol here.
In other passages, the Jew is naturally condemned for his disbelief.41
Jews are audacious,42 and, what is most frustrating of all, they are blind.43
The theme of the Jews’ blindness is extremely common in medieval
literature. It was especially annoying to Christians, because the Jews
after all were the carriers of the testimony of Jesus’ advent, yet they
could not see what they showed others. Leo the Great (c. 391–461)
wrote, “Carnal Israel does not understand what it reads, nor does it see
what it shows.”44 This phenomenon troubled a man like Damian greatly,
for he seems deeply convinced that the testimonies he quotes are quite
irrefutable.

38 “ . . . nisi ut lubricus anguis, cum captus fueris, manus evadere gestias.” Earlier he said of
this behavior, “ut vester mos est.” PL 145: 44.
39 “Asinus autem ille quo tunc utebatur Abraham, insensata erat stultitia Judaeorum.” Sermo
de Inventione Sancti Crucis, PL 144: 603. Tr. by McNulty, Spiritual Life, p. 169.
40 “Nos, nos inquietarent Judaici serpentes et Samaratinorum incredibilis stultitia.” PL 22 :
769. Tr. by Parkes, Conflict, p. 173.
41 “Erubescat Judaeus infelix, qui negat Christum de Virgine natum.” Sermo de Epiphania
Domini, PL 144: 514. I see no reason for doubting the authenticity of this sermon. Kurt
Reindel’s reason for such doubts is, to say the least, inconclusive. “Sermon one,” he
says “in contrast to Damian’s other sermons, makes a quite impersonal impression; it
is almost entirely constructed out of Biblical quotations.” “Studien zur Überlieferung
der Werke des Petrus Damiani I,” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 15
(1959): 29.
42 “Qua inverecundiae mentis audacia tam claris . . . poteris assertionibus obviare.” Antilogus,
PL 145: 52.
43 PL 145: 47.
44 “Carnalis Israel non intellegit quod legit, non videt quod ostendit.” PL 54: 242. Quoted
in “Auteurs,” REJ 9 (1948–49): 23.

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 The Middle Ages

In discussing the story of David and Absalom, Damian compares

those concubines with whom David would not have relations upon his
return to Jerusalem to the Jews. “The concubines . . . are those who
persevere in guarding the old law . . . Nor does that celestial bridegroom
approach them, for, as it were, he is designated to offer his fellowship to
women prostituted by the Devil, and, because they have been polluted
by adultery, he gives them a book of repudiation.”45 It is especially
interesting and indicative of the extent to which Damian is imbued with
Old Testament concepts that in a passage where he assails the old law
his entire allegory is based upon divorce—a feature of that law—and
that he uses the very term “repudii libellum” of Deuteronomy 24:3. The
same phrase is found in the writings of Rabanus Maurus (d. 856) who
said, “Understand that the Jews have received a book of repudiation,
and have been completely forsaken by God.”46 Damian would have had
great difficulty in substantiating the charge of adultery; at most, the
Jews may have been frigid. He was, however, impelled to make this
charge because of the Biblical story on which he was commenting, for
the concubines had had relations with Absalom.
Another instance in which Damian makes an almost incomprehen-
sible anti-Jewish statement because of a Biblical passage he is allegorizing
is found in his speech De Inventione Sancti Crucis. In discussing the
passage in II Kings 1:6–7, he says, “And the axe cut down the trees on
the banks of the Jordan because the Wisdom of God deigned to correct
the impious Jews by the severity of his preaching, standing on the banks
of the river of our mortality, hewing them down like barren trees in
the stiffness of their pride . . .”47 What follows is the descent to hell and
the resurrection of Jesus. Certainly no Jews were “hewn down” before
the resurrection by the preaching of Jesus. It is even quite difficult to
determine just what Damian means. But a commitment to allegory will
often drive a commentator to uncomfortable lengths.

45 “Concubinae . . . hi sunt qui in veteris legis custodia perseverant . . . Nec ad eos (Judaeos)
coelestis ille sponsus ingreditur, quia tanquam mulierculis a diabolo prostitutis suum
praebere contubernium designatur, eisque, quia pollute sunt per adulterium, repudii dat
libellum.” Epistola 13 [ad Desiderium Abbatem et Cardinalem], PL 144: 287.
46 “Intellige accipientes Judaeos libellum repudii, et omnino a Domino derelictos.” This
comes right after an explicit mention of Deut. 24:3.
47 “ . . . Dei sapientia, juxta fluidum mortalitatis nostrae decursum, dignata est impios
Judaeos suae praedicationis austeritate corripere, et velut infructuosas arbores a statu
rigidae superbiae desecare.” PL 144: 610. Trans. by McNulty, Spiritual Life, p. 174.

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 St. Peter Damian

There is one strongly anti-Jewish sermon printed among Damian’s

works, but it is one of nineteen sermons printed there that were written
by Nicholas of Clairvaux. This sermon is De S. Stephano Protomartyre.48
We have seen, then, that almost all of Damian’s anti-Jewish references
are either stereotyped phrases or results of the exigencies of exegesis.
They certainly would not seem to classify him as a significant anti-Semite.
Further examination, as we shall see, will reinforce this impression.
Damian knows, of course, that before the birth of Jesus, Jews were
religiously superior to Gentiles. At Jesus’ birth, “The voice of the angels
spoke to the Jews, as to reasonable men; the star of heaven spoke to
the Gentiles, since they were like the beasts of wood and field.”49 We
have here, incidentally, a most unusual situation—the term Jew (and
not Hebrew or Israelite) applied to pre-Christians with the result of its
acquiring a non-pejorative connotation. The Jews, as Damian tells us
elswhere, then lost their claim to the title Israelite.50 Nowhere, however,
(at least not to my knowledge) does he draw the more radical conclusion
that the Jews are now inferior to non-Christian gentiles. Agobard
(d. 841), for example, does draw this conclusion, saying, “The Jews are
worse than the other nations, for the latter never received the Law, while
the former, after having received the Law, after the Prophets had been
sent to them, nevertheless killed the Son of God.”51
Whether Jews are inferior, equal, or superior to heretics, was
a contested point in the early middle ages. Agobard and Amolon (d. 853)
felt that the Jews were worse, for they entirely reject the Church’s

48 For the anti-Semitic embellishments in this sermon, see PL 144: 854, where Jews
are stupid, Satans, serpents, etc. The verses in Acts (6:9–10) which serve as the
basis of this part of the sermon simply say, “Then there arose certain people of the
synagogue . . . disputing with Stephen, and they were not able to resist the wisdom
and the spirit by which he spoke.” For the spurious sermons see Migne’s introduction
to PL 144 and J. Joseph Ryan, “St. Peter Damiani and the Sermons of Nicholas of
Clairvaux: A Clarification,” Mediaeval Studies 9 (1947): 151–161. It is most interesting
that many scholars have used these sermons in discussing Damian. McNulty even
translates one (on St. Benedict). No. 69—which lists more than seven sacraments—
has been quoted very often in Damian’s name.
49 “Judaeus itaque tanquam ratione utentibus loquitur vox angelorum, gentibus vero quasi
brutis et jumentis in campis silvae loquitur lingue sive stella coelorum.” PL 144: 507.
Tr. by McNulty, Spiritual Life, p. 148.
50 “Sancti enim apostoli... Israeliticae gentis filii sunt.” Antilogus, PL 145: 47.
51 “Judaei... nationibus pejores inveniuntur: quia illae quidem nec legem acceperunt, isti
vero post datam sibi legem, post missos ad se prophetas, etiam Dei filium occiderunt.”
PL 104: 95–96.

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 The Middle Ages

teaching. Peter Chrysologus, Alcuin, and others considered heretics

more reprehensible.52 In a strongly anti-Jewish passage, Damian tells
the Simoniacs that they are worse than “the Jewish perfidy itself” and
than any heretical depravity.53 Thus, at least some heretics are worse than
Jews, and there is no indication that any are better.
This passage and the one quoted above from the De Sacramentis per
Improbos Administratis are without question the most strongly anti-Jewish
passages in Damian. In both cases, his wrath was excited not by Jews but
by Christian heretics, and in both cases he uses his insults against the
Jews as a means of attacking these heretics. This was a widespread and
effective method of combating a position or group that one did not like.
Thus, Cassiodorus compared Jews to Donatists54 and Hadrian I used this
method against the iconoclasts.55
In the same passage in the De Sacramentis, Damian maintains that
it is no crime to associate and eat with sinners. It is unclear whether or
not this would apply to Jews as well. A number of Church councils had
forbidden the clergy to eat with Jews.56 Agobard had written of the Jews,
“We must not be joined to them by participating (with them) in food and
drink.”57 Thus, it is possible that Damian would disagree with a fairly
strong current in Christian tradition and permit association with Jews.
Since we are dealing with an individual who lived so close to the
crusades, we should try to determine his feelings about the use of violence
toward Jews. It has been said that “the massacre of Jews in 1096 ... found
its ultimate authority in the writings of Damian himself.”58 Is there really
anything in Damian’s writings to indicate approval of such an action?
In his discussion of the Jews’ rejection of Jesus, Damian, it would
appear, quotes a verse in Deuteronomy (18:19), as follows: “The Lord
will raise up a prophet for you from your brothers: anyone who will not
listen to that prophet will be exterminated (“exterminabitur”) from his

52 Juifs et Chrétiens, pp. xvii-xviii.

53 Liber Qui Dicitur Gratissimus, ch 37. PL 145: 153. Humbert too maintains that we should
consider “quanto sceleratiores Judaeis arbitramur istos (sc. Simoniacos).” PL 143:
1093C.
54 PL 70: 74D (“Judaei vel Donatistae”).
55 PL 98: 1255–6. See Juifs et Chrétiens, pp. xvi-xvii and note 11 there.
56 Conflict, p. 320. But compare the Vita of Simeon cited above at n. 11.
57 “...non debemus eis conjungi participatione ciborum et potuum.” PL 104: 73–74, in De
Insolentia Judaeorum.
58 Medieval History, p. 308.

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 St. Peter Damian

people.59 This last part of the verse (from “exterminabitur”) is not found
in Deuteronomy. The Hebrew is anokhi edrosh me-immo, the Vulgate
has “ego ultor existam,” and the Septuagint gives ego ekdikeso ex autou.
The general meaning of all three is “I (God) will punish him.” Damian’s
version, in a work intended to combat Jews, is taken from Acts 3:22–2360
where this much harsher version is found.61 Nevertheless, it would be
quite far-fetched to draw any inferences about violent action toward
Jews from this quotation. First, the extermination could be left to God,
as in Jewish tradition. Second, Damian himself does not discuss any
such implications. And finally, he may simply have been quoting from
memory, and the New Testament version stuck in his mind.
We have, moreover, an explicit statement by Damian that the Jews
must not be killed. The Jews, he says, live to carry the Old Testament
everywhere in the original, and are thus a testimony to the truth of
Christianity. “Therefore,” he writes, “it is said by the Psalmist, ‘My God,
show me good things among my enemies. Do not kill them, lest they forget
your law.’”62 The relevant part of the Hebrew text reads pen yishkehu ammi
(“lest my people forget”). There is no mention of “your law.” The Vulgate
follows the Hebrew: “populi mei.” The best manuscripts of the Septuagint,
however, give “your law” (= “legis tuae”).63 If Damian knew both versions,
then he made his choice in order to strengthen his point that the Jews
have a mission. But be that as it may, Damian is certainly quite emphatic
about not killing the Jews. The Augustinian doctrine that the Jews have
been dispersed to spread the witness of Christ was quite widespread in
Christian thought, and Damian has adopted it as one interpretation.64

59 Antilogus, PL 145: 46.

60 Estai de pasa psyche hetis ean me akouse tou prophetou ekeinou exolothreuthesetai ek tou
laou.
61 Jewish tradition does state that a transgressor of the commandment in this verse
will be killed at a younger age at the hand of God. See Mishnah Sanhedrin 11:5. This
transgression involves both disbelief (II Kings 7:2, 19–20) and disobedience (I Kings
20:35–36). Cf. D. H. Hoffmann’s commentary to Deuteronomy, ad loc. This tradition may
have influenced the Gospel version.
62 “Unde per Psalmistam dicitur, Deus meus, ostende mihi bona inter inimicos meos, ne
occidas eos, ne quando obliviscantur legis tuae” (Psalms 59:11–12 in the Hebrew Bible).
Epist. 13, PL 144: 284–285.
63 Rahlfs, on the basis of the Gallic Psalter, prints tou laou mou in his Septuagint, feeling
that nomou sou came in under the influence of Psalms 119, verses 61, 109, 153.
64 Cf. Cassiodorus, PL 69: 415, quoted in “Auteurs,” REJ 9 (1948–49): 46, and Isidore of
Seville, PL 83: 226 and 236, quoted in REJ 11 (1951–52): 18.

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Objections to using violence against the Jews find a very strong

expression in one of Damian’s best friends, Pope Alexander II. Under
Nicholas II, Damian and Anselm of Lucca (the future Alexander II) were
sent to administer ecclesiastical affairs at Milan. With the partisans
of reform, Damian contributed, on October 1, 1060, to elect Anselm
Alexander II.65 Anselm was one of his allies in the battle against simony,
and James F. Loughlin calls Hildebrand, Anselm, and Damian “the saintly
triumvirate.”66 At least a part of Alexander’s spiritual personality and
religious views must have been influenced by his Italian friend.
And Alexander was especially emphatic about not killing Jews. He
wrote of certain Spanish Christians who were killing Jews, “They, having
been moved by stupid ignorance or perhaps by blind greed, wished
to rage for their (the Jews’) slaughter, whom divine love has perhaps
predestined for safety (perhaps “salvation”—salus) ... They (Jews) have
been preserved by Divine mercy so that, with their homeland and liberty
lost ... having been damned by the prejudice of their fathers [note well]
in spilling the Saviour’s blood, they may live dispersed through the blows
of the world.”67 There is a genuine tone of pity here.
Alexander wrote a similar letter to Berengarius of Narbonne. “Let
your prudence know,” he writes, “that it pleases us that you protect the
Jews who are under your dominion, that they not be killed. For God
does not find joy through the spilling of blood, nor does he rejoice in
the destruction of evil men.”68 Of course, Damian was not the only
influence on Alexander, and we know that the latter’s teacher Lanfranc
had a rather charitable interpretation of the Jews’ responsibility for
the crucifixion. We must be very wary of equating Alexander’s merciful
tone with Damian’s rather cold statement that the Jews should not
be killed.

65 See G. Bareille in the article “Damien” in Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, vol. IV,
col. 42–43.
66 Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. I, p. 286.
67 “Illi quippe stulta ignorantia, vel forte caeca cupiditate commoti, in eorum (Judaeorum)
necem volebant saevire, quos fortasse divina pietas ad salutem praedestinavit . . . Dei
misericordia servati sunt, ut, patria libertateque amissa, . . . patrum praejudicio in
effusione sanguinis Salvatoris damnati, per terrarum orbis plagas dispersi vivant.” PL
146: 1386–1387.
68 “Noverit prudentia vestra nobis placuisse quod Judaeos qui sub vestra potestate habitant
tutati estis ne occiderentur. Non enim gaudet Deus effusione sanguinis, neque laetatur
in perditione malorum.” PL 146 : 1387.

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 St. Peter Damian

We must also remember that protection of the Jews did not always
imply amicable relations with them. Ratherius of Verona (c. 890–974)
wrote, “It is sufficient if they (Christians) let them (Jews) live some-
how; they should not let them publicly blaspheme the Lord Jesus Christ.
‘We shall live under your shadow,’ said the prophet of them. ‘We shall
live,’ he said, not ‘we shall enjoy ourselves.’ ‘And he gave them to mercy’—
not to exaltation, not to friendship, not to any honor.”69 Moreover,
an alternative to forced baptism was expulsion.70 One thing, however, is
clear. Damian would not have lent his authority to the massacre of Jews.
Damian’s general attitude toward the Jews of his time, as far as we
have been able to ascertain it, has been outlined. We must now try to
determine his attitude toward their future. Where do the Jews fit in to
the eschatological picture? Before we can answer this question, we must
find his attitude toward a great event in the Jewish past, for all of Jewish
history was determined by the rejection of Jesus and the crucifixion.
There were Christian thinkers before Damian who presented more
moderate statements of Jewish guilt than might be expected. Bede
maintained that though the Jews are guilty, so is every Christian sinner.
Every sinner “betrays the Son of Man.”71 Lanfranc in effect conceded
a point of many Jewish polemicists. “The sin of the Jews,” he wrote,
“enriched the world, for had they not crucified the Lord, the cross of
Christ, the resurrection and the ascension ... would not have existed in
the world.”72
Damian does not seem to have shared this attitude. He argues in
the Dialogus that the Jews have been placed in eternal exile because of
a crime which transcends all others—the murder of the Son of God.
After all, he says, the Jews committed terrible crimes recorded in the
Old Testament, yet their worst punishment was a seventy year exile.

69 “Suffecerat si eos vivere sinerent utcunque, non permitterent eos Dominum Jesum
Christum tam publice blasphemare: “Sub umbra enim tua vivemus” dicit de eis pro-
pheta. “Vivemus,” inquit, non “oblectabimur.” “Et dedit eos in misericordias”—non in
extollentias, non in amicitiam, non in ullum honorem.” Qualitatis Conjectura, PL 136: 536.
70 Leo VII wrote to archbishop Frederick of Mayence between 937 and 939 of the Jews,
“Si autem credere noluerint, de civitatibus vestris cum nostra auctoritate illos expellite,”
but “per virtutem autem et sine illorum voluntate... nollite eos baptizare.” PL 132: 1084–
1085.
71 “ . . . Filium hominis tradit.” PL 92: 271.
72 “Delictum Judaeorum ditavit mundum, quia nisi ipsi Dominum crucifixissent, crux
Christi, et resurrectio, et ascensio praedicata et credita in mundo non esset.” PL 150: 141.

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 The Middle Ages

Only a truly horrible crime could explain an exile of over one thousand
years, one which Damian feels sure is eternal.73
Blumenkranz maintains that with this type of argument, Damian
introduced a new concept into medieval polemics—the concept of
an argument from reason (ratio) in addition to those from authority
(auctoritas).74 It is true that Damian states, “With the prophetic passages
having been set forth, it pleases us to contend with you by reason alone.”75
But the argument following this statement—the argument set forth in
the previous paragraph of this paper—is not novel at all.
Prosper of Aquitaine (d. c. 463) wrote that because of the great sin
of killing Christ, “grace deserted the Jews, and their land became sterile
and deserted. For all prophecy, all sacrifice and all sacraments ceased,
and they passed to the humiliation of the nations.”76 The same statement
is found in Peter Chrysologus77 and in Cassiodorus.78
Damian, then, does blame the Jews severely for the crucifixion.
What will consequently become of them? Will they ever repent and be
forgiven?
Damian introduces a reference to Zechariah 12:10 with the
remark, “ . . . where a little later is added (a verse) concerning the Jews’
damnation.”79 This is an eschatological passage; Damian would thus seem
to speak of an ultimate Jewish damnation. There certainly was such a view.
Bruno of Wurzbourg (d. 1045) wrote of the end of days: “The impious
ones and the Jews will cry out to Christ . . . He will not hear them.”80
And yet Damian could not have held such a view. The hope which
he expresses that the Jews will convert is found, as we have seen above,

73 PL 145: 65–66.
74 Juifs et Chrétiens, pp. 217–218.
75 “Libet adhuc, postpositis scilicet prophetarum exemplis, sola tecum ratiocinatione
contendere.” PL 145: 64.
76 “Judaeos deseruit gratia, et facta est terra eorum sterilis atque deserta. Quia omnis
prophetia, omne sacrificium, omna ibi sacramenta cessarunt, et ad humilitatem gentium
transierunt.” PL 51: 309.
77 PL 52: 512. Quoted in “Auteurs,” REJ 9 (1948–49): 17.
78 PL 69: 525 and 545. Quoted in “Auteurs,” REJ 9 (1948–49): 46.
79 “Ubi etiam paulo post de Judaeorum damnatione subjungitur . . . ” It is interesting that
Amolon knew that the Jews interpreted this verse in Zechariah in light of their belief in
a Messiah the son of Joseph who would precede the Messiah son of David. PL 116: 148–9.
Mentioned in “Auteurs,” REJ 14 (1955): 51.
80 “Clamabunt impii et Judaei in futuro judicio ad Christum . . . non exaudiet eos.” PL 142:
98.

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 St. Peter Damian

throughout the Antilogus-Dialogus. The answer is probably to be found in

an eschatological passage in Rabanus Maurus. The latter quotes a verse
in Isaiah (10:22), “If the number of your people Israel will be as the sand
of the sea, a remnant of it will return.”81 It is very likely that Damian too
felt that some of the Jews would be converted either by persuasion or by
God’s grace while others would suffer damnation.
In Damian’s mind, the Jews and the Old Testament are very closely
related. They bear it as testimony, and it is only by appealing to its
evidence that one can hope to convert them. Finally, adherence to the
ancient law was certainly the clearest mark of a Jew.
The time has come to look at Damian and the Old Testament.

II. DAMIAN AND HIS ATTITUDE TOWARD

THE OLD TESTAMENT

Peter Damian was very deeply imbued with a knowledge of the Old
Testament; in fact, as McNulty says, he quotes “chiefly from the Old
Testament and the Pauline Epistles.”82 He seems extremely well-versed
in the Hebrew Scriptures, and they have left a very deep impression upon
his writings. Throughout De Perfectione Monachorum, for example, he
refers to monks as Israelites.
He seems a bit unclear as to the scope of the Jewish Bible. In the
Antilogus, he quotes a verse from Baruch (3:36) to prove to the Jews
that Jesus was the Messiah. A book of the Apocrypha would, of course,
have no authority with the Jew. Yet this mistake does not originate
with Damian, and it is possible that he either copied from a predecessor
without giving the matter much thought or else he may have had some
defense. Gregory of Tours cited this very verse to the Jew Priscus in
a disputation.83 For a possible Christian defense, we may note Gilbert
Crispin’s Disputatio of the late eleventh century where he replies to the
Jew’s objections by maintaining that Baruch was, after all, written at
Jeremiah’s dictation.84

81 PL 110: 582.
82 Spiritual Life, p. 50.
83 See Juifs et Chrétiens, p. 73.
84 See Israel Levi, “Controverse entre un Juif et un Chrétien au XIe Siecle,” REJ 5 (1882):
242.

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 The Middle Ages

Whether or not Damian had a clear conception of the precise limits

of the Old Testament as defined by Jews, he did have a deep emotional
attachment to its contents. And here he found himself confronted by
the crucial questions: Is the Old Testament superseded? Is only its Law
superseded? Perhaps part of the Law remains valid. Is that part which is
superseded to be disregarded completely? If so, why then is it retained in
the Bible? Why was it ever given? Did it ever have any value? If it is to be
taken allegorically, then was it ever intended to be taken literally?
These problems were central to any serious medieval Christian. Many
approaches are found in the long history of Christian grappling with
these questions. Let us begin with proponents of the negative attitude.
In the Dialogue with Trypho, we find the view that the Law is
an unimportant part of Scripture which was added because of the Jews’
wickedness. In chapter sixteen, the author states, “Circumcision was
given to you as a sign, that you may be separated from other nations and
from us and that you alone may suffer that which you now justly suffer.”
Jerome, in Epistle 121, says that the law was a deliberate deception of
the Jews by God to lead them to their destruction.”85
John Cassian, who must have been read avidly by a monk of Damian’s
inclinations, draws a sharp contrast between the Old and New Testaments.
Surprisingly, rather than showing that the Law is harsher (which the
paragraph heading implies), he maintains that the New Testament is
more effective in preventing sin. Compare, for example, the ability of
sexual abstinence to prevent adultery as against that of marriage.86
There are passages in Damian’s works which reflect a similar, very
negative attitude toward the Law. He says of Jesus, “He did not scorn to
be cursed, so that he might free us from the Law’s curse.”87 Concerning
the Law, he quotes a verse in Ezekiel (20:25), “I gave them laws that are
no good and precepts by which they will not live.”88 Here, he seems to feel
that, at least when given to the Jews, the Law was a curse and an evil.
There is, however, a much different view of the Law in Christian
tradition. It is one that we will do well to examine, for we shall see that

85 See Conflict, pp. 83–84 and 101 for the references in this paragraph.
86 “Gratia,” he says, “ . . . non ramos tantum nequitiae amputat, sed ipsas penitus radices
noxiae voluntatis evellit.” PL 49: 1214.
87 “Maledici non respuit, ut nos de maledicto legis absolveret.” PL 144: 608. Spiritual Life,
pp. 171–172.
88 PL 144: 605.

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 St. Peter Damian

there are places where Damian appears much closer to this view than to
the one already described.
Perhaps the most complimentary explanation by Christians of their
ceasing to obey the Law is in Romans 7:14–25. Paul says that he is too
weighed down by sin to observe the spiritual Law.89
A second Pauline interpretation is to be found in Romans and
Galatians. The law was temporary and meant to be a guide to lead us
to “faith in Jesus Christ.”90
In some places, Tertullian seems to go even farther than Paul and
uses the Law as a norm of conduct He forbids the teaching of secular
studies, for how can a loyal Christian teach literature when the Law
prohibits the pronunciation of the names of the gods?91 He later states
that “the Law prohibits to name the gods of the nations, not, of course,
that we are not to pronounce their names the mention of which is
required by conversation.”92 And so Tertullian seems to be conducting
his life on the basis of at least some of the Law’s precepts.
This attitude is reflected in Damian in a number of his works. In
Dominus Vobiscum, he is concerned with a technical question of monastic
ritual. In making his point, he appeals to the authority of both Testaments
and then adds, “We do not take away from or add to the authority of
the Holy Scriptures because of changing circumstances, but rather the
customs of the Church are preserved in them.”93 Thus, the Old Testament
is to be appealed to not only in homiletical, but also in legal matters.
A perhaps more significant passage is the eighth chapter of De
Perfectione Monachorum.94 Here, Damian is allegorizing the first two
seven-year periods during which Jacob worked for Laban. These, he
says, are the periods which every person must pass through, for the first
seven years correspond to the seven commandments of the Decalogue
concerned with love of one’s neighbor and the last seven symbolize the
seven commandments of the Gospel which he proceeds to enumerate.

89 See especially 7:14.

90 See Romans 3:21–22 and Galatians 3:24–26.
91 “ . . . fidelis litteras doceat . . . cum lex prohibeat, ut diximus, deos pronuntiari.” De Idolat.
X. Quoted in Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York, 1962), p. 111, note 78.
92 De Idolat. XX. Translation by Lieberman, p. 112.
93 This custom “a Veteris Novique Testamenti auctoritate descendit. Sicut ergo divinarum
Scripturarum auctoritati nil pro rerum varietate subtrahitur, nil augetur: sed potius in
his ecclesiastica consuetudo servatur.” PL 145: 234.
94 PL 145: 303–304.

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 The Middle Ages

Only after passing through these stages can one reach Rachel. It appears
from this chapter that certain parts of the Pentateuch—namely, the
moral law—are of eternal validity.
This is a time-honored Christian position. Eucher of Lyon (d. c.
450–453) wrote in his Instructiones as follows: “Question: What parts
of the Old Testament should we abandon and what parts should we
observe? Answer: We should observe commandments which pertain
to the correction of life and abandon the ceremonies and the rites of
sacrifices which brought forth the figures and the shadow of future
events.”95 We shall see later that Damian would agree completely with
both parts of Eucher’s response.
Leo the Great (c. 391–461) wrote that it is necessary to preserve
“the moral commandments and precepts (of the Old Testament) just as
they were set forth.”96 Eginhard (c. 770–840), when enjoining respect
for one’s father, wrote, “Though this is ordained in the Old Testament,
it is part of the numerous laws which the scholars of the Church have
declared as valuable to Christians as to Jews.”97
This division of the Law into two parts—the moral and the ritual—
cannot be accomplished without much difficulty, for the borderline is
extremely vague and unsteady. A similar division is found in Jewish
philosophy in R. Saadiah Gaon, the division of commandments whose
purpose is comprehensible and those which are inscrutable, and this
division is open to the same objections. There is, of course, an important
difference in the acuteness of the problem. To Saadiah, it is a question
of classification; to the Christians, it is a problem of acceptance or
rejection. Leo, for example, places the prohibition of idolatry among
the moral precepts. This could be defended. But Tertullian’s concern
with the prohibition of pronouncing the name of a foreign god is a good
indication that the division was not entirely along moral-ritual lines.
It is true that Damian does not include that part of the Decalogue
which precedes “Honor thy father and thy mother,” but this could

95 “Interrogatio: Quae de veteri Testamento relinquere vel quae observare debemus?

Responsio: Debemus observare mandata quae ad corrigendam vitam moresque pertinent:
relinquere autem caeremonias ritusque sacrificiorum, quae figuras atque umbram futuris
tunc rebus praetulerunt.” PL 50: 781.
96 “ . . . mandata vero et praecepta moralia sicut sunt edita.” See PL 54: 188–189.
97 Quoted in “Auteurs,” REJ 13 (1954): 27 from Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epist.
5, 115.

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 St. Peter Damian

very well be because the seven years forced him to include only seven
commandments. In any event, even if Damian wanted to retain a sharp,
theoretical boundary between the moral and ritual sections of the
Law, the practical difficulties are such that such a position devolves in
a good number of instances into an acceptance of statutes one likes and
a rejection of those that are not appealing.
Thus, Damian feels that the ritual law is of course superseded. At
times, he expresses the view that it was always a curse. At other times,
he seems to imply that it was an unpleasant necessity: the instrument
of bringing justice into the world.98 In any case, the contrast between
the Old and New is quite strong in this area. We shall see presently that
through allegory, even the ritual law can be shown to have eternal value.
The moral law is still binding.
Before passing to a detailed treatment of Damian’s allegorical
explanations of ritual law, we must ask ourselves—what of the rest of
the Old Testament? Did Damian feel that the entire Old Testament is
infected by the same harshness found in a literal interpretation of the
ritual law? Is love to be found only after the advent of the Savior?
We may confidently answer that Damian was not aware of such
a dichotomy. Tears and mercy were, to Damian, the most profound
expressions of love. And in discussing the efficacy of tears, he shows
how the God of Israel was moved to compassion when he saw genuine
tears being shed. David, despite adultery and indirect murder, did not
lose his kingdom or life—because of tears.99 Hezekiah and Jerusalem
were delivered—because the king wept. “Esther ensured that God would
deliver the people of Israel from their common danger of death and that
the sentence of hanging ... should be suffered by Haman”—through tears.
He quotes Psalms 39:13, “Listen to my weeping” to show that tears are
efficacious.100
“The ark,” he writes, “was smeared with pitch within and without,
so that she should be outwardly soothed by brotherly sweetness and
inwardly united in the truth of mutual love.”101

98 “Moses, the faithful servant (“fidelis famulus”), brought the commandments of naked
justice; Christ, our truly loving (“pius”) Lord tempered the harsh severity of the Law.”
PL145: 315, Spiritual Life, p. 117.
99 Cf. Eliyyahu Rabba ch. 2.
100 De Perf. Mon., ch. 12. PL 145: 308.
101 De Perf. Mon., ch. 24. PL 145: 326. Spiritual Life, p. 134.

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 The Middle Ages

Damian traces the eremitic ideal, that highest expression of man’s

love for God, to the Old Testament. It was of the hermit’s cell that
Jeremiah said (Lamentations 3:26), “It is good that a man should
quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.”102 It was to this little room
that Solomon cried out, “How fair and pleasant art thou, O love, for
delights” (Song of Songs 7:7).103 Clearly, the Old Testament as a whole is
a source of love, compassion, and the ideal Christian life.
There does, it seems, remain one part of the Old Testament which is
worthless or worse—the ritual law. Yet, as indicated above, there is a way
to redeem even this section—the way of allegory.
Immediately after quoting the verse from Ezekiel about statutes
by which one cannot live, Damian continues, “Nevertheless, if we join
the confession of the cross and the mystery of the Lord’s passion to
this law, immediately that which was bitter turns into the sweetness
of spiritual intelligence.”104 The cross clarifies all the hidden meaning of
the Law and thus turns a curse into a source of meaningful teachings.
Allegorical interpretations of the ritual law are found throughout
Damian’s works. Church bells come from the trumpets of Numbers 10,
from “the mystical tradition of the old Law.”105 The incense symbolizes
good works; the two women of whom one is loved and the other hated
are pleasure and virtue respectively.106 The beautiful woman captured in
war represents secular knowledge.107
The one place, however, where Damian carefully and at length
allegorizes a series of Old Testament laws is at the beginning of the
Dialogus. Here he would seem to have made an important contribution
to the polemic against Jews and to have enriched Christian exegesis.
Blumenkranz, in his treatment of Damian in “Auteurs,” does not note any
major source of his allegories nor, to my knowledge, does any other scholar.
Yet the entire passage is an almost word for word borrowing from
Isidore of Seville.108

102 Dominus Vobiscum, ch. 19. PL 145: 249. Spiritual Life, p. 78.
103 Dom. Vob., PL 145: 250. Spiritual Life, p. 79.
104 “Cui tamen legi si confessio crucis et Dominicae passionis mysterium copulatur, protinus
quod amarum fuerat, in spiritualis intelligentiae dulcedinem vertitur.” PL 144: 605.
105 “. . . ex antiquae legis mystica traditione descendit.” PL 145: 315–316. Spiritual Life,
p. 118.
106 De Vera Felicitate et Sapientia, PL 145: 834–836.
107 De Perf. Mon., PL 145: 307.
108 Quaestiones in Vetus Testamentum—in Leviticum, PL 83: 336–39.

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 St. Peter Damian

The magnitude of this copying will become sufficiently evident only

by a comparison of the two passages in Latin.

Introduction
Isidore:
Nunc vero jam de quibusdam caeremoniis quid spiritualiter in his
habeatur dicendum est. De quibus etiam et Judaei scrupulosissime
quaerunt.

Damian:
Nunc autem de quibusdam caeremoniis, super quibus saepe
scrupulosissime quaeritis... Age igitur.

Problem 1
Why do Christians not practice circumcision? Answer: Baptism takes its
place as a promise of the future; it was merely a prefiguration of Christ.
Isidore:
Quaeritur ergo curjam non circumdatur carne Christianus si
Christus non venit legem solvere, sed adimiplere. Respondetur: Ideo jam
circumciditur Christianus, quia id quod eodem circumcisione prophetabatur
jam Christus implevit. Exspoliato enim carnalis generationis quae in illo
tacto figurabatur, jam Christi resurrectione impleta est, et quod in nostra
resurrectione futuram est, sacramento baptismi commendatur.

Damian:
Quaestio 1: Si Christus non venit legem solvere, sed implere, cur carne
non circumciditur Christianus? Responsio: Imo jam se ideo Christianus
minime circumdidit quia quod circumcisione prophetabatur, Christus
implevit. Exspoliato quippe vitae carnalis, quae in veteri lege furat figurata,
in Christi jam cernitur resurrectione completa, et quod expectamus in nostra
resurrectione futurum, jam in sacri baptismatis mysterio commendatur.

Problem 2
Why don’t Christians observe the Sabbath? Answer: Christians rest in
Christ.
Isidore:
Cum quaeritur Sabbati otium cur non observet Christianus, si Christus
non venit legem solvere sed adimplere, respondetur: Imo et id propterea

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 The Middle Ages

non observat Christianus quia quod ea figura prophetabatur jam Christus

implevit; in illo quippe habemus Sabbatum, qui dixit: “Venite ad me, omnes
qui laboratis et onerati estis, et ego vos reficiam. Tollite jugum meum
super vos, et discite a me quia mitis sum et humilis corde, et invenietis
requiem animabus vestris” (Matt. 11:28). Cessationem ergo Sabbatorum
jam quidem supervacue ducimus observare ex quo spes revelata est nostrae
quietis aeternae.

Damian:
Quaestio 2: Cur omittit Christianus Sabbatum colere, si Christus non
venit legem solvere, sed implere? Responsio: A nobis Sabbatum ideo non
servatur, quia quod tunc erat in figura praemissum per exhibitionem rei
jam videmus impletum... in illo (Christo) toto cordis amore ac devotione
quiescimus, ut ab omni vitiorum servili opere ac terranarum rerum
ambitione cessemus. Ad quod Sabbatum celebrandum ipse provocat,
dum clamat, “Venite ad me... et discite quia mitis sum et humilis corde,
et invenietis requiem animabus vestris.” Carnalis ergo Sabbati cultum
supervacuum ducimus, cum jam illud verum et salutiferum, propter quod
institulum est, celebramus.

Problem 3
Why do Christians ignore the dietary laws? Answer: We now distinguish
between clean and unclean in morality.

Isidore:
Cum quaeritur quare non observet differentiam ciborum quae in lege
praecipitur, si Christus non venit legem solvere sed adimplere, respondetur:
Imo propterea non observat eam Christianus, quia quod in illius figuris
prophetabatur Christus implevit, non admittens ad corpus (quod corpus in
sanctis suis in vitam aeternam praedestina sit) quidquid per illa animalia
in moribus hominum significatum est.

Damian:
Quaestio 3: Si Christus non venit legem solvere, sed implere, cur
Christianus negligit ciborum differentiam, quae in lege praecipitur
observari? Responsio: Imo idcirco haec a Christianis ciborum differentia
non admittitur, quoniam a Christo quod per hanc figurabatur, impletur.
Immunditia quippe quae tunc cavebatur in cibis, nunc in moribus reprobatur
humanis. Sicut enim sancti quique, ac justi transferuntur in corpus Christi:
sic ab eo reprobi et inique tanquam cibi repellantur immundi.

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 St. Peter Damian

Problem 4
Why don’t Christians bring sacrifices? Answer: Jesus’ sacrifice made
them unnecessary. Furthermore, sacrifices were instituted to keep Jews
away from idol worship.109
Blumenkranz maintains that this question was introduced to instruct
Christians, for no Jew would press Christians on this matter.110 The
fact is that there was a heretical sect in eleventh century Italy that did
sacrifice.111 The whole question, however, should be applied to Isidore
rather than Damian, and actually these problems do fit more readily in
a Biblical commentary.
Isidore:
Cum quaeritur quare Christianus non, animalibus immolatis, carnis
et sanguinis sacrificium offerat Deo, si Christus etc., respondetur: . . . ea
quae talibus rerum figuris illi prophetabant immolatione carnis et sanguinis
sui Christus implevit. Nam de sacrificiis eorumdem animalium quis
nostrum nesciat magis ea perverso populo congruenter imposita, quam
Deo desideranter oblata?

Damian:
Quaestio 4: Si Christus etc. cur et animalium carnibus sacrificium Deo
Christianus non curat offerre? Responsio: . . . quidquid in illis hostiis typice
gerebatur, totum in immolatione agni, qui tollit peccata mundi, veraciter
adimpletur. . . Quis enim nesciat eadem sacrificia potius ad hoc inobedienti
populo, ne cum idolis fornicarentur, imposita, quam Deo, tanquam ipse
desideraret, oblata.

Problem 5
Why do Christians not eat unleavened bread on Passover? Answer: They
have expelled the leaven of the old life.
Isidore:
Cum quaeritur cur azyma non observet Christianus, si Christus etc.
respondetur: . . . quod expurgato veteris vitae fermento, novam viam
demonstrans implevit Christus.

109 Cf. Leviticus 17:7. This idea was made famous in Jewish circles by Maimonides. He,
however, believed that they would nevertheless be reinstituted in the time of the
Messiah.
110 “Auteurs,” REJ 17 (1958): 39.
111 Juifs et Chrétiens, p. 58.

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 The Middle Ages

Damian:
Quaestio 5: Si Christus etc. cur Christianus azymam. .. non observat?
Responsio: quoniam expurgato veteris vitae fermento, nova conspersio
spiritualiter adimpletur.

Problem 6
Why do Christians not sacrifice the paschal lamb? Answer: Jesus’ sacrifice
made it unnecessary.

Isidore:
. . . Cur de carne agni Christianus pascha non celebret, si Christus etc.,
respondetur: . . . quia quo illa figura prophetabatur Agnus immaculatus
sua passione Christus implevit.

Damian:
Quaestio 6: Si Christus etc. cur Christianus paschalis agni sanguine
Pascha non celebrat? Responsio: . . . quia postquam verus ille Agnus . . .
qui significabatur, superfluus judicatur.

Problem 7
Why don’t Christians observe the New Moon? Answer: It prefigured the
new man in Christ.

Isidore:
Quam ob causam neomenias in lege mandatas non celebrat
Christianus, si, etc., respondetur: . . . Celebratio enim novae lunae
praenuntiabat novam creaturam, de qua dicit Apostolus: “Si qua igitur
in Christo nova creatura, vetera transierunt, et facta sunt omnia nova.”
(II Cor. 5:17).

Damian:
Si etc., cur lege mandatam non celebrat neomeniam Christianus?
Responsio: . . . Novae quippe lunae solemnitas novam designat in ho-
mine fieri creaturam, de qua dicit Apostolus: “Si qua. . . sunt omnia nova”
(II Cor. 5:17).

— 286 —
 St. Peter Damian

Problem 8
Why do Christians not perform ritual immersions? Answer: Baptism
enables us to participate in Christ’s death and resurrection.

Isidore:
. . . Cur illa singularum quarumque immunditiarum baptismata . . . non
observet Christianus, si etc., respondetur: Venit enim (Christus) consepelire
nos sibi per baptismum in mortem, ut quemadmodum Christus resurrexit
a mortiis sic et nos in novitate vitae ambulemus.

Damian:
Si Christus etc., cur Christianus illa ablutionum baptismata . . . non
observat? Responsio: Consepulti enim sumus Christo per baptismum in
morte; ut quomodo surrexit Christus a mortuis per gloriam Patris, sic et
nos in novitate vitae ambulemus.

Problem 9
Why do Christians not observe Tabernacles? Answer: The tabernacle
prefigured the Church; furthermore, Christians are the tabernacle of
God.

Isidore:
. . . Qua causa scenopegia non sit solemnitas Christianorum si etc.,
respondetur tabernaculum Dei fideles esse . . . et . . . jam Christus in
Ecclesia sua quod illa figura prophetice promittebat implevit.

Damian:
Si etc., quid rationis objicitur, ut a Christianis Scenopegiae solemnitas
non colatur. Responsio: Tabernaculum Dei societas est populi Christiani,
et . . . illud tabernaculum sanctam praefigurabat Ecclesiam.

Problem 10
Why do Christians not observe the sabbatical year? Answer: It prefigures
the last judgment.
The texts here are very lengthy. Suffice it to say that again the answers
are identical and linguistically extremely close.
Thus, Damian does believe even the ritual law to be of permanent
value, provided that it is allegorized in light of the new grace.

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 The Middle Ages

CONCLUSION

Peter Damian was not, in any direct way, an important forerunner of

the ideas of post-crusade Judaeophobia. Any effect that he may have had
on their development took place through his contributions to popular
piety rather than through his anti-Jewish writings. Damian, in fact,
presents an excellent summation of the pre-crusade attitude toward the
Jews, for we have seen that all his statements have a substantial history
in the writings of Christians who preceded him.
Damian had very little inclination to write his anti-Jewish works.
He chided Honestus for making the request, and he finally wrote the
Antilogus-Dialogus because he felt that Christians were being humiliated
and because of the naive hope of converting the Jews by these arguments.
However, it seems evident that these reasons would not have impelled
him to write the treatise had not Honestus asked him to.
We have concluded after examining his works that Damian probably
had very little knowledge of Jews or contact with them. This ignorance
of Jews and their arguments greatly decreased his effectiveness as
a polemicist. Thus, the Antilogus-Dialogus is quite naive and, significantly,
rather conciliatory toward the Jews.
Damian does have harsh things to say about the Jews in a few
passages. But we have seen that the two most virulent of these were
primarily motivated by hatred toward Christian heretics, and all the anti-
Jewish expressions are quite hackneyed.
Damian is very clearly against using violence with respect to Jews. He
does blame them quite strongly for the crucifixion, but he probably felt
that a significant “remnant” would be saved at the last judgment.
As far as the Old Testament is concerned, Damian studied it closely
and loved it deeply. The moral law he considered forever valid. The ritual
law may once have been a curse, but a new allegorical understanding of it
made possible by the advent of Jesus endows it with sacred and eternal
significance.

— 288 —
 RELIGION, NATIONALISM,
AND HISTORIOGRAPHY
Yehezkel Kaufmann’s Account of Jesus
and Early Christianity 1

From: Scholars and Scholarship: The Interaction between Judaism and Other
Cultures, ed. by Leo Landman (Yeshiva University Press: New York, 1990),
pp. 149–168.

To open a volume by Yehezkel Kaufmann is to embark upon an

intellectual adventure. A stimulating, polemical style draws us into the
presence of a creative and probing mind that scrutinized the problems
of the Jewish experience from the religious struggles of the biblical
period to the Zionist controversies of the twentieth century. One does
not read Kaufmann: one confronts him.
Though Kaufmann is best known for his monumental Toledot ha-
Emunah ha-Yisre’elit (History of the Religion of Israel),2 which presents
a strikingly original, sweeping reevaluation of the biblical evidence for the
faith of ancient Israel, his earlier Golah ve-Nekhar (Exile and Alien Lands)3
examines the even larger canvas of Jewish history as a whole with the
broad vision and penetrating brilliance that are the hallmark of his work.
The ambitious subtitle, “A Historical-Sociological Study of the Question
of Jewish Destiny from Antiquity to the Present,” is almost understated:
Golah ve-Nekhar is probably the only serious effort to construct a detailed
philosophy of Jewish history in this century.
Shortly after the publication of the book, Yitzhak Baer expressed
puzzlement at the surprisingly lengthy treatment devoted to the rise

1 After this article was submitted for publication, G W. Efroymson’s translation of the
relevant section of Golah ve-Nekhar appeared under the title Christianity and Judaism:
Two Covenants (Jerusalem, 1988).
2 8 vols. Tel Aviv, 1937–56. See also Moshe Greenberg’s abridged translation, The Religion
of Israel (Chicago, 1960).
3 Tel Aviv, 1929 (hereafter cited as Golah). All references are to vol. 1 unless otherwise
indicated.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

of Christianity, and he attempted to account for it as an expression of

Kaufmann’s emphasis on the power of a handful of abstract ideas.4 There
can be little doubt, however, that at least two additional motives were
at work. First, although Kaufmann made rather promiscuous use of the
phrase “of unparalleled interest” in characterizing historical phenomena,
the reader cannot avoid the impression that when he described “the
formation of a gentile religion out of a Jewish nationalist movement” as
“a development full of unparalleled historical interest,”5 he really meant
it. One reason for Kaufmann’s lengthy discussion is simply that the
subject fascinated him. More important, these chapters are in fact central
not only to the major themes of Golah ve-Nekhar but to Kaufmann’s
entire life’s work. The mission and destiny of the Jewish people, as
Kaufmann understood them, were illuminated by an understanding
of the rise of Christianity—indeed, they could not be comprehended
without it. Consequently, an examination of his discussion of Jesus and
early Christianity will afford us insight not only into one of the major
developments in human history but also into one of the most ambitious
and perceptive works in modern Jewish historiography.
If Kaufmann was a complex thinker, the rise of Christianity is an even
more complex phenomenon, and the work before us demands analysis
within an unusually multifaceted context: the history of Jewish attitudes
toward Jesus and Christianity, the perceptions of Jesus in nineteenth-
and twentieth-century scholarship, the impact of Jewish nationalism
on the historiography of the Jews, and Kaufmann’s own original and
challenging oeuvre. Thus, we shall have to embark upon a lengthy,
somewhat superficial, but unavoidable and, I hope, not uninteresting
detour before returning to Golah ve-Nekhar.

To most medieval Jews, Jesus was a sorcerer justly executed for

enticing his compatriots away from the purity of their ancestral faith,
while the religion that he founded was idolatry pure and simple. Even
in the Middle Ages, however, a variety of factors impelled some Jews
to a more nuanced examination of these perceptions. With respect to
Jesus himself, a careful reading of the Gospels revealed an anti-Christian
argument far more effective than the hurling of insults against “the

4 Qiryat Sefer 8 (1931/32): 313.

5 Golah, p. 336.

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 Religion, Nationalism, and Historiography

hanged one”: it appeared that the very figure whom Christians worshipped
had rejected the mantle of divinity and demanded observance of the
Torah (e.g., Luke 18:18–19 and Matthew 5:17–18). Medieval Jews who
utilized this argument were careful not to depict Jesus in glowing terms,
but several of them insisted upon his essential loyalty to both Jewish
theology and Jewish law. It was only the tragic distortion of Jesus’
original teaching—perhaps by Paul, perhaps by later Christians—that
had caused the fateful abyss that now separates the two faiths.6
Similar ambiguities are evident in the medieval Jewish evaluation of
Christianity. On a theoretical level, there was a need to explain the role of
the Christian faith in the divine economy, and a number of Jews—most
notably Maimonides—regarded both Christianity and Islam as means
of spreading knowledge of Torah in preparation for the messianic age.7
Although Maimonides considered anyone who accepted Christianity
an idolater, he apparently saw no impediment to the belief that God
would utilize (even initiate?) an idolatrous faith for a holy purpose.
While this position is not paradoxical in any technical sense, the positive
role assigned to Christianity could not coexist comfortably with the
assessment that Christians were idolaters, and this tension may have
contributed somewhat to a more charitable evaluation of Christian faith
by later Jews. The medieval Jew most famous for such a reevaluation,
Rabbi Menahem ha-Meiri of Perpignan (1249–1316), appears to have
been motivated largely by moral considerations. Concerned about
talmudic passages that discriminated against gentiles, he argued that
they referred only to the barbaric heathens of ancient times; Christians,
who adhere to the limits imposed by the mores of civilized faiths, must
be treated in accordance with the most rigorous ethical standards. Ha-
Meiri also declared that Christians were not idolaters. These declarations,
however, are innocent of any theological analysis and appear secondary
to the ethical criteria that he established.8

6 The most important and effective expression of this argument is Profiat Duran’s Kelimat
ha-Goyim. See Frank Talmage, Kitvei Pulmus li-Profiat Duran (Jerusalem, 1981).
7 Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim 11:4, in the uncensored version. See the discussion in
Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, “The Reformation in Contemporary Jewish Eyes,” Israel Academy
of Sciences and Humanities, Proceedings 4, no. 12 (1970): 240–242 = “Ha-Yehudim mul ha-
Reformazia,” Divrei ha-Aqademia ha-Leumit ha-Yisre’elit le-Madda’im 4, no. 5 (1970): 62–64.
8 On ha-Meiri’s attitude toward Christians, see Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance
(Oxford, 1961), pp. 114–128; E. E. Urbach, “Shitat ha-Sovlanut shel R Menahem ha-
Meiri—Meqorah u-Migbeloteha,” in Peraqim be-Toledot ha-Hevrah ha-Yehudit bi-Yemei

— 293 —
 Modern and Contemporary Times

The most influential formulation exculpating Christians from the sin

of idolatry resulted from economic pressures and had to be thoroughly
misinterpreted before yielding its ecumenical meaning. In order to
permit certain commercial ventures with Christians, medieval Jewish
authorities would sometimes argue that contemporary Christians
were not truly attached to idolatry or that they merely followed the
customs of their forefathers. In one such discussion, a ruling was issued
permitting the acceptance of an oath from a Christian despite the fact
that the oath would contain a Christian formula. One element of this
ruling is of genuine theological interest. A leading tosafist conceded
that Christians might have Jesus in mind when they take an oath in the
name of God; nonetheless, he said, Jews need not be concerned about
engendering this oath as long as Jesus was not mentioned by name,
particularly since the intention of the Christian was “to the Creator of
heaven and earth.” Thus, while the worship of Jesus presumably remains
idolatrous, the God Christians worship is ultimately the true Creator. The
sharpest way to formulate this position is through an oxymoron: to at
least one tosafist, Christianity is idolatrous monotheism or monotheistic
idolatry. This striking perception doubtless resulted from considerations
having little to do with a careful analysis of Christian theology, and no
medieval Jew expressed it so clearly; nonetheless, I think that it is a fair
extrapolation from the text before us.9
This section of the ruling, however, had less resonance for later
Jews than the following passage, which was the one subjected to
a highly significant misinterpretation. Non-Jews, we are told, “were not
commanded regarding shittuf (“ partnership” or “association”). Properly
understood, the phrase almost surely meant that when Christians take
an oath, they may associate the name of God with that of the saints (who
are not divinities even in Christianity),10 but some early modern Jews

ha-Beinayim u-ba-et ha-Hadashah—Muqdashim li-Professor Y. Katz (Jerusalem, 1980),

pp. 34–40; J. Katz, “Od al Sovlanuto ha-Datit shel R. Menahem ha-Meiri,” Zion 46
(1981): 243–246; Yaakov Blidstein, “Yahaso shel R. Menahem ha-Meiri la-Nokhri—Bein
Apologetiqah le-Hafnamah,” Zion 51 (1986): 153–166.
9 The best text of this discussion is in R. Yeruham ben Meshullam, Sefer Toledot Adam
ve-Havvah (Venice, 1553), 17:5, fol 159b. See also Tosafot Sanhedrin 63b, s.v. asur, and
cf. Tosafot Bekhorot 2b, s.v. shemma.
10 This point continues to be widely misunderstood by both historians and talmudists.
For what I think is an essentially accurate understanding, see Mahazit ha-Sheqel in the
standard editions of Shulhan Arukh Orah Hayyim 146:2, s.v. yithayyev. In at least one

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 Religion, Nationalism, and Historiography

took it to absolve gentiles from the prohibition of believing in a divine

partnership. As time passed, this understanding was eagerly embraced by
many Jews, not for the old economic reasons, but as a means of fostering
improved relations in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance.
Although the Jewish folk attitude toward Jesus continued to be
decidedly pejorative, more positive assessments made considerable
headway among influential modern Jews. Rabbi Jacob Emden (1697–
1776) made the striking assertion that Jesus and even Paul did not
aim their message at Jews; rather, their intention was to convince
gentiles to observe the laws that Judaism considers obligatory for “the
descendants of Noah.” Moreover, the distortions of later Christianity
should not obscure the fact that in the final analysis this mission
was largely successful.11 Moses Mendelssohn replied to a question by
expressing his respect for the moral character of Jesus, though only
with the understanding that the latter had made no claims of divinity
for himself.12 Many nineteenth- and twentieth-century Jews discovered
that the assertion of Jesus’ Jewishness served two remarkably disparate
purposes: it fulfilled the old polemical goal by appealing to the authority
of Jesus to challenge the Christian rejection of Judaism, and by describing
the founder of Christianity with sympathy and even enthusiasm, it could
serve as a vehicle for alleviating interfaith tensions.
Ironically, the development of liberal religious trends in the nine-
teenth century actually served to exacerbate these tensions. Both Reform
Jews and liberal Protestants emphasized the uniqueness of their own
religion’s ethical message, but there was really no substantive difference

edition (currently printed by A. Friedman), the relevant paragraph in Mahazit ha-Sheqel,

which asserts that trinitarianism is forbidden as idolatry even to gentiles, was deleted,
no doubt because of Christian censorship or Jewish fear; in another edition (currently
printed by M. P. Press), the word lo was mistakenly omitted from the phrase ben (or
benei) Noah lo niztavvu ‘al zeh. [Addendum: I am no longer certain of the validity of
the interpretation that I endorsed here. It is at least as likely that Tosafot meant that
gentiles are not forbidden to take an oath in the name of God while having Jesus in
mind. I continue to consider it highly unlikely that they regarded Christian worship
as permissible for non-Jews. For a survey of interpretations of this passage, see my
The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference (London and Portland,
Oregon, 2001), Appendix III, pp. 175–177.]
11 See Blu Greenberg, “Rabbi Jacob Emden: The Views of an Enlightened Traditionalist on
Christianity,” Judaism 27 (1978): 351–363.
12 See Alexander Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (Philadelphia, 1973),
pp. 204–205.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

between the ethical positions of the two groups. Hence, what was once
an argument about content had now become an argument about turf. For
many Christians who had abandoned fundamentalist beliefs, the need
to denigrate Jewish ethics was especially compelling; such Christian
scholars, who tacitly and even explicitly conceded the old arguments
about dogmas and Christological verses to the Jews, needed to move the
center of gravity to the question of ethics, where they could still award
victory to Christianity.
With specific reference to the image of Jesus, Christians who had
serious doubts about his divinity were impelled to defend his unique
role by portraying him as ethical innovator par excellence. To accomplish
this, it was necessary to depict first-century Judaism in the darkest
possible hues: arid, legalistic, hypocritical, and exclusivist. The superiority
assigned to the ethics of Jesus in particular and of Christianity in general
became so central in the consciousness of nineteenth-century Christians
that it plays a crucial role not only in scholarly works but in the writings
of missionaries like Alexander McCaul13 and in the fulminations of
overt anti-Semites. The self-centered Jew, obsessed with legal minutiae
and insulated by a particularistic ethic, stood in sharp contrast to the
Christian, who was liberated from the stultifying letter and concerned
with universal salvation and a morality that taught undifferentiated love
for all mankind.
Jewish apologists responded along a broad front. Christians, they said,
had distorted the character of rabbinic Judaism out of both ignorance
and malice. There is nothing significant in Jesus’ ethical pronouncements
that cannot be found in rabbinic literature; indeed, the only real novelty
in such texts as the Sermon on the Mount is the pushing of certain
ethical doctrines ad absurdum so that no human being could realistically
be expected to comply. Moreover, Christians show no understanding
of the power of religious law to produce spiritual inspiration. One of
the great ironies in this Jewish response is that Reform Jews, who had
rejected many Jewish rituals for deficiencies not so different from those
ascribed to them by Christians, now found themselves producing
rhapsodic elegies to the spiritual beauties of talmudic law.14 Finally, Jewish
13 See McCaul’s The Old Paths (London, 1837).
14 See, for example, Israel Abrahams, “Professor Schuerer on Life under the Jewish Law,”
Jewish Quarterly Review, o.s. 11 (1899): 626–627. On the general debate, see the
references in Ismar Schorsch, Jewish Reactions to German Anti-Semitism, 1870–1914

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 Religion, Nationalism, and Historiography

writers insisted that concern for universal salvation is a manifestation

of Judaism far more than of Christianity. It is Judaism that teaches
that righteous gentiles who observe the Noahide covenant attain sal-
vation; the Christian impulse to convert the world arose precisely out
of the intolerant conviction that all nonbelievers are condemned to the
eternal torments of hell.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the image
of Jesus as a figure whose raison d’être was ethical reform received
a serious jolt from Christian historiography itself. In 1892, Johannes
Weiss published his Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiches Gottes, which “marks
the turning point from nineteenth- to twentieth-century New Testa-
ment research.”15 Weiss’s emphasis on the eschatological dimension
of Jesus’ thought and his expectation of a wholly new world16 was
reinforced by Albert Schweitzer’s Das Messianitats und Leidensgeheimnis:
Eine Skizze des Lebens Jesu17 and further reinforced by the latter’s
enormously influential survey, The Quest of the Historical Jesus.18 To
Schweitzer, Jesus was convinced that a radically new order was upon us
and the extreme ethical demands that he made should be understood
as an interim ethic to be observed for the briefest of periods until the
world as we know it would be supplanted by the new order.
Some Christians, of course, were disturbed not only by the deemphasis
of Jesus’ ethics, but also by the assertion that his central obsession was
a conviction that failed to materialize; nevertheless, the new stress on his
proclamation of an apocalyptic kingdom inspired greater interest in his
perception of the role that he would play in that kingdom. Thus, the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were also marked by a renewed
examination of the term “son of man” and its context in Daniel 7:13
and especially in the apocalyptic book of I Enoch; a growing number
of scholars came to believe that Jesus’ use of this term meant that he
may have regarded himself as an angelic savior, the celestial son of man

(New York, 1972), p. 257, nn. 63–65. I have noted some of the points in these paragraphs
in my “Jewish-Christian Polemics” in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. by Mircea Eliade
(New York, 1987), vol. 11, pp. 389–395.
15 R. H. Biers and D. L. Hollard in the introduction to their English translation, Jesus’
Proclamation of the Kingdom of God (Philadelphia. 1971), p. 2.
16 See, for example, the English translation, p. 93.
17 Tübingen and Leipzig, 1901.
18 London, 1910. German original, Von Reimarus zu Wrede: eine Geschichte der leben-Jesu-
forschung (Tübingen, 1906).

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

who would descend with the clouds of heaven to redeem the righteous
and inaugurate the Kingdom of God. This conception does not sit well
with the belief in a national Messiah from the house of David, but it
was regarded by some as an embryonic manifestation of precisely the
tensions that culminated in the divine Messiah of mature Christianity.

These developments in Christian historiography coincided with

the rise of the modern Jewish historical consciousness, which was
especially concerned with the nature of Jewish nationhood and religion
and with the special character and mission of Israel. As early as the
first half of the nineteenth century, Nahman Krochmal attempted to
construct an overarching theory of Jewish history in which Jews would
be subject to the normal processes of historical causation while retaining
an almost metahistorical uniqueness. Nations, he said, grow, flourish,
decline, and die; the Jewish people grows, flourishes, declines—and
then begins to grow once more. Since it is ultimately spiritual force
that sustains a people, and since the Jewish collective is sustained by
unalloyed, “absolute” spirit, it can avoid the inevitable destruction that
marks the end of the saga of all other nations.19 Heinrich Graetz, the
greatest Jewish historian of the nineteenth century, was less concerned
with abstract philosophy of history, but in his major essay “The Structure
of Jewish History,” he attempted to delineate the special character of
Judaism as an amalgam of a unique religious idea and a political and
social theory. In a later work, he spoke of the unfinished mission of
spreading the ethical message of Judaism, and his writings are permeated
by intense Jewish pride to the point where non-Jews attacked him for
parochialism and the German Jewish Gemeindebund excluded him from
its committee of scholars lest his approach offend the gentile world.20
Graetz’s most distinguished successor, Simon Dubnow, wrote during
a period in which Zionism and other forms of Jewish nationalism
moved to center stage on the Jewish agenda. In Dubnow’s ideology
of autonomism, or diaspora nationalism, the affirmation of Jewish
nationhood was essential, but a national homeland was not; indeed, the

19 Moreh Nevukhei ha-Zeman, chaps. 7–8, in Kitvei R. Nahman Krochmal, ed. by Simon
Rawidowicz, 2nd ed. (Waltham, Mass., 1961).
20 See Heinrich Graetz, The Structure of Jewish History and Other Essays, translated, edited,
and introduced by Ismar Schorsch (New York, 1975), editor’s introduction, esp. pp. 39,
59. See also Schorsch, Jewish Reactions to German Anti-Semitism, p. 45.

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 Religion, Nationalism, and Historiography

need for a land was symptomatic of a lower level of national identity.

Although Dubnow was more of a materialist than Graetz, he argued
that Jews had transcended the sort of nationality that is based on racial
kinship or even the nation state and had attained the rarest and must
exalted level—nationality rooted in spiritual-cultural identity.21
Though the religious overtones have been eliminated, there are
echoes of Krochmal here: the Jewish spirit prevails where lesser nations
could not survive. Within the secular context of Dubnow’s thought,
however, the critical role of religion in Jewish culture became particularly
problematic. To a secular Jew who defined Jewish nationhood in largely
cultural and historical terms, that defining culture had to be extricated, at
least in significant measure, from its traditional religious matrix. Despite
fundamental differences, a similar problematic faced cultural Zionists:
the national cultural revival that would be facilitated by a Jewish center in
the land of Israel would be profoundly different from the religious culture
of the exile. In this case, however, the return to the land itself could be
cited as both catalyst and justification for the elimination of religious
practices whose function was perceived as the temporary preservation
of a people in the unnatural state of dispersion.
The quest to define the nature of Jewish nationhood and religion
and to identify the uniqueness of the Jewish mission remained at the
center of Jewish historiography for much of the twentieth century.
Yitzhak Baer began his classic History of the Jews in Christian Spain with
a controversial introduction of doubtful relevance which set forth his

21 On Dubnow’s views of Jewish history and his relationship to Graetz, see Robert M. Seltzer,
“From Graetz to Dubnow: The Impact of the East European Milieu on the Writing of
Jewish History,” in The Legacy of Jewish Migration: 1881 and Its Impact (New York, 1983),
ed. by David Berger, pp. 49–60. On levels of nationality, see Dubnow, Nationalism and
History: Essays on Old and New Judaism, ed. by Koppel S. Pinson (Cleveland, 1958),
pp. 86–95, and Oscar I. Janowsky, The Jews and Minority Rights (1898–1919) (New York,
1933), pp. 57–60. See also Reuven Michael, “AI Yihudan shel Toledot Yisrael be-einei
Jost, Graetz, ve-Dubnov,” in Temurot ba-Historiah ha-Yehudit ha-Hadashah (Jerusalem,
1987), pp. 501–526, which contains some additional references. On the views of Dubnow
and Ahad HaAm on national character and their relationship to Kaufmann, see the
discussion in two very similar articles by Laurence J. Silberstein, “Religion, Ethnicity
and Jewish History: The Contribution of Yehezkel Kaufmann,” Journal of the American
Academy of Religion 42 (1974): 516–531, and “Exile and Alienhood: Yehezkel Kaufmann
on the Jewish Nation,” in Texts and Responses: Studies Presented to Nahum N. Glatzer on
the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday by His Students, ed. by Michael A. Fishbane and
Paul R. Flohr (Leiden, 1975), pp. 239–256.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

position on the distinctive social message of the sages of the Mishnah

as a leitmotif of Jewish history; later, he abandoned Spain with single-
minded determination to concentrate on the earlier period, in which
the wellsprings of the Jewish character and mission were to be found.
Gershom Scholem expanded the historiographical parameters of
the Jewish religion itself, arguing that the rationalist inclinations of
nineteenth-century historians had created a hostility to mysticism which
precluded a true understanding of its vital role in the Jewish experience.
Joseph Klausner, whose Yeshu ha-Nozri (Jesus of Nazareth) was the first
significant treatment of Jesus in modern Hebrew, would often judge
historical figures by their loyalty to the Jewish national cause which he
so fervently advocated. Nonetheless, Klausner regarded his work on early
Christianity as a landmark of objectivity; his description of Jesus as “the
ethical personality par excellence” was resented by many Jewish readers,
but he laid equal stress on the Jewish sources of much of that ethical
message as well as the drawbacks of Jesus’ exaggerated formulations.
In essence, Klausner the nationalist wanted to reclaim Jesus for the
Jewish people without exempting him from the critical scrutiny that
every Jewish instinct required. Though Klausner himself did not entirely
ignore the Middle Ages and was especially proud of his essay on the
philosophy of Solomon ibn Gabirol, his concentration on the Second
Temple and modern Hebrew literature is symptomatic of an approach
that characterized many other Zionist theoreticians: the glories of Jewish
history are to be found only in the sovereignty of the remote past and in
today’s heroic struggle toward a national renaissance.22

These themes—Jewish nationhood, religion, and mission—form

the core of Yehezkel Kaufmann’s work. National identity, he argued, is
based essentially on racial kinship and a common language. At the same
time, he insisted on the supreme historical importance of the power of
ideas; in the case of the Jewish people, it was an extraordinary religious
idea that served as the vital force in its formative period and as the
key guarantor of survival amidst the stress and distress of exile. Golah
ve-Nekhar and the later collection Be-Hevlei ha-Zeman23 contain biting
22 Valuable insights into Klausner’s ideology and self-perception can be gleaned from his
autobiography, Darki Liqrat ha-Tehiyyah ve-ha-Geullah (Tel Aviv, 1946; 2nd ed., Tel Aviv,
1955).
23 Tel Aviv, 1936.

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 Religion, Nationalism, and Historiography

attacks on economic determinism and its denigration of the role of ideas

in history. In a particularly striking passage, Kaufmann observes that
Marxist materialism itself stems from the driving idea of social justice;
ironically, he says, what emerged from this catalyzing force was a system
that felt impelled to deny its own idealistic roots.24
Not only is the Jewish religious idea central to the history of Israel;
it is unique and almost primeval. From the moment the Jewish people
emerges on the stage of history, Kaufmann argued, it is driven by a faith
unprecedented and unparalleled: there exists but one God, and that God
transcends nature, is not subject to magical manipulation, and cannot
be grasped in mythological terms. Monotheism is not merely a matter
of numbers: the nature of the biblical God is at least as striking and
significant as the fact that He is the sole divinity. The ordinary processes
of pagan religious development might have produced one god, but only
ancient Israel, by an intuitive leap whose etiology must elude historians,
produced one God. Moreover, this faith was not the preserve of a small
elite. On the contrary, its power and significance rest on the fact that it
permeated the consciousness of the people as a whole. Biblical religion
was the popular religion of Israel.
Though Kaufmann was far removed from any sort of fundamentalism,
there are elements in his thesis that are congenial to traditionalist
views,25 and they are surely conducive to the nurturing of Jewish
national pride. The essential core of this position is already present in
Golah ve-Nekhar, but its classic expression came in Kaufmann’s Toledot
ha-Emunah ha-Yisre’elit. In this work, he inveighed against standard
biblical criticism for its blurring of the distinctions between Israelite
monotheism and the pagan religions of the ancient Near East, and he
argued that concentration on details (occasionally even nonexistent
details magically called into being through textual emendation) had
blinded scholars to the monumental evidence in the biblical record. It is

24 Golah, pp. 51–55.

25 The observation was made by Menahem Haran, “AI Gevul ha-Emunah,” Moznayim 24
(1967): 52–53. Note too Moshe Greenberg, “Kaufmann on the Bible: An Appreciation,”
Judaism 13 (Winter 1964): 86: “Though himself not a man of faith, Kaufmann leaves
room for the answer of faith to the phenomenon of the Bible.” It is especially worth
noting that the responses to Kaufmann’s central thesis have been marked by a striking
irony. The desire of traditionalists to affirm the monotheism of ancient Israel produces
the inclination to explain away prophetic denunciations of idolatry, while radical critics
insist on taking them at face value.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

often the absence of a fundamental idea that constitutes a monumental

phenomenon, and Kaufmann was keenly sensitive to what he perceived
as critical omissions: no magic, no true, deeply rooted mythology, no
syncretism, a failure even to understand the theology of paganism and
the consequent perception of polytheistic religion as fetishism and
nothing more, the absence of charges of idolatry in biblical narratives
covering the very periods in which the literary prophets appear to
describe rampant polytheism.
Though biblical monotheism arose in a particular ethnic group
with a strong sense of national identity, the monotheistic idea could
not help but transcend narrow nationalism and assume a universal
mission. By the time Christianity appeared upon the scene, Judaism
had a long-standing commitment to a doctrine of religious conversion
in which prior ethnic identity played virtually no role. Jews had long
believed that the knowledge of the universal God could and should be
spread throughout the world with no national impediment. Despite the
significance of the physical people of Israel in Jewish lore, from a legal
perspective the door to conversion was wide open, and many Jews in the
Roman world were urging gentiles to enter it. Jewish universalism left
nothing to be desired.26
Christianity, however, did appear upon the scene with its own version
of a universal calling, and it is finally time to turn our attention to
Kaufmann’s central assertions about its origin, its mission, and its hero.
There is a special fascination, he says, in the transformation of Christianity
from a sect founded by a Jewish messianic figure into a universal faith
that encompassed the world. Jesus was thoroughly Jewish, but his
message, ironically, was narrower than that of mainstream Judaism
in the first century. In the eschatology of the biblical prophets, which
continued to dominate the messianic vision of many Jews, the people
of Israel prevail over the nations of the world and are the instrument of
universal redemption, but the framework of the present order remains
intact. To the increasingly popular apocalyptic mentality, on the other
hand, an entirely new world was imminent, and that world was not seen
through the prism of national divisions. This, however, did not make
its message more universal; on the contrary, apocalypticists tended to
envision the utter destruction of the gentiles as well as of most Jews.

26 See, for example, Golah, pp, 220, 224, 255, 292.

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 Religion, Nationalism, and Historiography

Jesus, then, who was a major representative of this world-view,

was not only unconcerned with gentiles and the imminence of their
destruction; he was convinced that a majority of Jews would also be
doomed in the impending cataclysm. Repentance would save a small sect
of Jewish believers, and despite some lovely ethical sentiments, the key
moment in that repentance is the acceptance of Jesus himself. Kaufmann
argues vigorously that Jesus’ forgiving of sins and his performance of
exorcisms through his own power demonstrate that he used the term
“son of man” in the apocalyptic sense; though he had no pretensions to
divinity, he regarded himself as a celestial being destined to redeem the
world. The central teaching of Jesus, then, is the imminent kingdom to
be ushered in by the apocalyptic son of man who is now among us.
Though this conception largely obscures the national mission of the
traditional Jewish Messiah, that mission could not be fully exorcised.
Thus, Jesus came to Jerusalem for the purpose of being crowned king of
the Jews. His execution, which was an entirely unanticipated disaster,
came at the instigation of the Jewish authorities on the grounds of false
prophecy and blasphemy. Indeed, many tentative believers may have
regarded the threat of execution as the best way to force him to produce
the sign that so many had requested. In Kaufmann’s typically sharp and
felicitous formulation, Jesus was crucified even by those who believed
in him.27
Within Judaism, belief in a crucified Messiah could survive only in
sectarian form, but the mission to the gentiles began to succeed just
as the message to the Jews was being largely rejected. Ironically, says
Kaufmann, it was precisely the narrowness of Jesus’ teaching that led
to Christian universalism. The Jewish rejection of the good news was
received with special bitterness and perplexity precisely because the
Christian message was initially directed only to Israel. Hence, the idea
was born that Jewish rebelliousness had led to the transfer of the gospel
and the election from carnal Israel to the gentiles.
To Kaufmann, the ultimate success of the Christian mission was
not due to ethics, which were neither new nor central; it was not due
to the downgrading of ritual, which did not really occur and would in
any case have had little impact (circumcision aside) on the attractiveness
of the faith; nor was it due to the universal character of Christianity,

27 Ibid., p. 384.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

which was no greater than that of Judaism. Christianity, like Islam,

prevailed because of the power of the Jewish message. It was that message
and that message alone which swept away the pagan world. Monotheism
could not be accepted directly from the Jews because Judaism, through
the accidents of history, had come to be associated with exile and defeat.
Thus, it was indeed Jewish national identity that served as a stumbling
block for gentiles, but this was not a limitation stemming from the
national dimension of Judaism as an idea; rather, it was one that had
been created by the fortuitous historical circumstances of destruction
and exile. The gentile world could not identify itself with a dispersed and
defeated nation. This obstacle needed to be removed, and Christianity
and Islam removed it.28 In the final analysis, however, it is Judaism that
conquered the world.29
This brief summary does not begin to do justice to Kaufmann’s
richly textured and brilliantly argued thesis,30 but it does afford us
the opportunity to take a closer look at several salient features of his
presentation. In a sense, although Kaufmann’s argument owes nothing
to Maimonides, he has reproduced the tension of the Maimonidean
analysis in a new and sharper form: to both thinkers, Christianity is
an idolatrous religion whose essential mission is the destruction of idolatry.
In Maimonides, there is no need to mitigate the idolatrous element in
Christianity in order to accept this conclusion, since it is solely through
the spreading of the Torah that the mission is achieved. Despite the
gradualism which is the hallmark of the Maimonidean position, the final
transformation of Torah-oriented idolaters into monotheists will come
through the intervention of the Messiah ex machina, so that Christianity
does not have to generate the monotheistic impulse directly.
Kaufmann, on the other hand, wrote after many generations of Jewish
efforts to see Christianity in as monotheistic a light as possible, and he
was able to utilize this perspective in the service of his central theme
without rejecting the classical Jewish perception of Christian idolatry.
If the concept of Christianity as idolatrous monotheism is implicit in the

28 For this crucial discussion, see ibid., pp. 292–301.

29 Ibid., pp. 306–314.
30 On the day after Kaufmann’s funeral, Abraham Malamat told Chaim Potok that Kaufmann’s
discussion of the rise of Christianity is “one of the most significant chapters ever written
on the subject.” See Potok, “The Mourners of Yehezkel Kaufmann,” Conservative Judaism
18, no. 2 (Winter 1964): 3.

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tosafists, it is explicit in Kaufmann. It is true that Christianity is a semi-

pagan religion. Jesus has been worshipped for centuries as a god,31
and this idolatrous belief may have grown out of his own grandiose
(though nonidolatrous) self-perception. Early Christianity was marked
by an increasing emphasis not on ethical values but on the mythological-
magical character of Jesus,32 and it was this emphasis that separated the
new religion from Judaism, thus eliminating the barrier that the Jews’
defeated condition had erected between them and the world of potential
converts. For anyone familiar with Kaufmann, the term “mythological-
magical” immediately conjures up the image of pagan religion par
excellence. In other words, the monotheistic dimension of Christianity
was the positive force that enabled it to prevail, while the polytheistic
dimension was the facilitating force that allowed the monotheistic appeal
to overcome the obstacle of Jewishness. And so—this idolatrous faith
destroyed idolatry; this idolatrous faith spread precisely because its
mission was the destruction of idolatry; at its core, this idolatrous faith
is not idolatrous at all.
While modern Jews had generally recognized the essentially mono-
theistic character of Christianity, they had tended to emphasize its
residual paganism and its abrogation of the Torah as the central elements
in its success. Otherwise, why should it have prevailed over Judaism?
Thus, Kaufmann’s emphasis on Christian monotheism is unusual in Jewish
writing, and his position on this question is essential to the significance
of his entire life’s work. The bulk of that work was devoted to the Jewish
monotheistic idea and its impact on history, and it was crucial to him to
insist that this idea had conquered the world not as a secondary, largely
obscured element in a system deriving most of its power from other
sources, but as the central, driving force of history. Kaufmann was not
studying the religion of a Near Eastern people, however important it
may have been; he was studying the belief that had changed the world.
Though he was, of course, aware that polytheism was not fully uprooted
on a global scale (and on rare occasions he speaks of Europe and western
Asia rather than the world), the sweeping, almost poetic rhetoric of his
perorations on this theme reveal his deep emotional involvement with
a universal upheaval that he regarded as the core of his work.

31 Golah, p. 375.
32 See, for example, ibid. pp. 407–408.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

Not only does Kaufmann insist that Jewish monotheism was the
single positive factor in the success of Christianity; he is concerned to
deny even a facilitating role to those characteristics of Christianity that
were regularly cited as evidence of its superiority to Judaism. Thus, as
we have already seen, he utterly dismisses universalism, ethics, and
the discarding of ritual. On the whole, his arguments are forceful and
often persuasive, but one of those arguments reflects a methodological
problem that besets Kaufmann’s work in a variety of contexts. He asserts
that the prevalence of ritual in Islam, including even circumcision,
constitutes decisive proof that Christianity’s deemphasis of ritual
cannot have been a major reason for its success.33 Kaufmann has often
been criticized for excessive emphasis on the power of ideas at the
expense of a careful, empirical examination of less exalted historical
forces, and this is a case in point. Islam spread from the outset in the
context of military conquest. Christianity did not. Perhaps ritual is
indeed a critical obstacle to the widespread acceptance of a new religion,
but it is an obstacle that can be overcome by the sword, Eventually,
of course, Christianity too spread through the exercise of concrete
pressure, and in a different context, Kaufmann distinguishes between
the period in which it converted individuals and the time when it began
to convert groups. He does not, however, relate this transition to the
ability of the church to mobilize the powers of the state: the distinction
between attracting individuals and converting entire groups is analyzed
solely in terms of the different ways in which they respond to the power
of an idea and to the obstacle of Jewish exile.34 Despite the probable
validity of Kaufmann’s essential point about ritual, the methodology
of his analogy to Islam reflects a disregard of the sort of specificity that
can often be achieved only by a descent from the rarefied heights of
the history of ideas into the cluttered trenches of social, political, and
military history.
In the service of his thesis, Kaufmann must downgrade the
substantive differences between Judaism and Christianity by reducing
them almost solely to the question of authority.35 Although at a later
point in his analysis he makes some brief remarks about the religious

33 Ibid., p. 285.
34 Ibid., pp. 422–423.
35 Ibid., pp. 314–333.

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reasons for Jewish disbelief, the body of his discussion of the “conflict
of covenants” gives little consideration to the possibility that substantive
theological considerations can underlie the decision to reject the
authenticity of a particular Messiah. The failure to fulfill biblical prophecy
is not as incidental a concern as Kaufmann indicates; it goes to the heart
of one’s definition of the Messiah. Nor can it be asserted with serene
confidence that the doctrines of later Jewish mysticism demonstrate
Jewish flexibility of such magnitude that even belief in a divine Messiah
might have been absorbed by mainstream Judaism.36 There is much
to Kaufmann’s point that we are dealing largely with a dispute about
covenants, but his minimizing of crucial distinctions results from his
central theme: Christianity acted as the messenger of Judaism.
As for Jesus himself, Kaufmann’s analysis once again reflects
elements both old and new. Like his Jewish predecessors, Kaufmann
sees little that is new in Jesus’ ethics. Many Jews who made this point,
however, agreed with Christian scholars that ethics lay at the heart of
Jesus’ message, and we have already seen Joseph Klausner’s emphatic
reiteration of this perception. Kaufmann, on the other hand, adopted
the image of Jesus as a man obsessed with the apocalypse and his own
role in the Kingdom of God.
At this point, we must confront a characteristic of Kaufmann’s work
which is rather disturbing and is by no means isolated. Kaufmann
creates the strong impression that his analysis represents an original
break with the portrait of Jesus the ethical preacher that is maintained
almost universally by Christian scholars. It is true, he writes, that
a small minority of such scholars reluctantly recognize Jesus’
messianic claims, but even they attempt to strip those claims of any
political dimension. These brief remarks appear at the beginning of
the chapter on Christianity.37 The footnote accompanying them refers
to a concession by Wellhausen that there is a bit of truth in Reimarus’
assertion of Jesus’ messianic self-consciousness, and it continues with
the observation that “Eduard Meyer also disagrees” with those who deny
the value of the evidence for Jesus’ messianism, although he believes
that Jesus had “no political intentions.”38 And that is all. Kaufmann’s

36 Ibid., p. 315.
37 Ibid., pp. 339–341.
38 Ibid., pp. 340–341, note 1.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

crucial subchapter entitled “The Apocalyptic Messiah” is bereft of a single

reference to the secondary literature on this theme.39
As we have already seen, the issues of the apocalyptic kingdom and
the meaning of “son of man” were at the cutting edge of European New
Testament scholarship at the time that Kaufmann wrote. Even before
the turn of the century, Wilhelm Baldensperger had discussed Jesus’
use of the term “son of man” in the context of its apocalyptic use in
Daniel and I Enoch, and had even noted the implications of Jesus’
forgiving of sins, which is one of Kaufmann’s central points.40 The works
of Weiss and Schweitzer moved the apocalyptic kingdom to center stage.
Kaufmann’s grudging reference to Meyer gives no indication of the
substantial discussion in Ursprung und Anfänge des Christentums of the
possibility that Jesus perceived himself as a celestial apocalyptic “son
of man,” a possibility that Meyer takes very seriously even though he
does not embrace it with conviction.41 Two years before the publication
of Golah ve-Nekhar, a major scholarly conference was held in Canterbury
which has been described as “the true triumph of apocalyptic in the
interpretation of the Kingdom of God in the teaching of Jesus.”42 Not
a whisper of this intellectual ferment can be discerned in Golah ve-Nekhar.
While Kaufmann may have been only partially aware of the most
recent research on the frontiers of New Testament scholarship, he surely
knew more than he told his readers. Moreover, this is not an entirely
atypical phenomenon in Kaufmann’s work. Some scholars have leveled
criticisms against his history of biblical religion not only for ignoring
developments after Wellhausen that might have required him to shift
the focus of his study43 but also because he pays no attention to scholars
whose views came closer to his own.44 Nonetheless, the positions of those
scholars are not close enough to Kaufmann’s to sustain an accusation

39 Ibid., pp. 355–379.

40 Wilhelm Baldensperger, Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu im Lichte der messianische Hoffnungen
seiner Zeit, 2nd ed. (Strasbourg, 1892), pp. 182–192, and esp. p. 172.
41 Vol. 2 (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1921), pp. 330–352, 446–447.
42 Norman Perrin, The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus (Philadelphia, 1963), p. 56.
The proceedings of that conference were published in Theology 14 (1927): 249–295.
43 Stephen A. Geller, “Wellhausen and Kaufmann,” Midstream 31, no. 10 (December
1985): 46.
44 Jon D. Levenson, “Why Jews Are Not Interested in Biblical Theology,” in Judaic Perspectives
on Ancient Israel, ed. by Jacob Neusner, Baruch A. Levine, and Ernest S. Frerichs
(Philadelphia, 1987), p. 291.

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 Religion, Nationalism, and Historiography

of unacknowledged dependence or even of an inappropriate failure to

cite virtually identical views. With respect to Golah ve-Nekhar, however,
Laurence Silberstein has noted omissions of major proportions, though
he makes the point in muted tones. Thus, “none of the major writings of
the historical-sociological tradition are referred to in the pages of Golah
ve-Nekhar despite the subtitle of the work and the evident influence
of this school of thought in a variety of fundamental ways.”45 Again,
“Although Kaufmann makes no reference to Durkheim, Rudolf Otto,
or Weber, there are many similarities” between his views and theirs.46
Silberstein deduces from this that although Kaufmann was surely aware
of these thinkers, he “came to these issues by way of philosophy.”47 The
most likely explanation for this recurring phenomenon probably lies
in Kaufmann’s penchant for polemical style. The argument in virtually
all his works is structured dialectically and builds through a critique of
earlier views. In this context, references to thinkers and scholars who
anticipated important points in Kaufmann’s position is structurally
inconvenient, and he succumbed to the temptation of leaving them out.
While there is little doubt that the remarkable dramatic impact of his
work would have suffered from adherence to the proper conventions of
scholarly acknowledgment, there is equally little doubt that in the final
analysis this is no excuse.
These observations should not be allowed to obscure the fact that
even with respect to the particular point about Jesus’ apocalyptic
views, the fundamental thrust of Kaufmann’s discussion is original.
All the Christian scholars who wrestled with the issue remained deeply
committed to Christian apolegetics, and the reader of Kaufmann’s ana-
lysis certainly comes away with a perception radically different from
those that permeate the works of Baldensperger, Weiss, Schweitzer,
and Meyer. Moreover, Kaufmann’s deemphasis of the ethical element
in Jesus’ teaching extends into his discussion of the early church,
where he argues for the ethical inferiority of Christianity through
a strikingly original argument which is considerably sharper than the
usual Jewish observations about the unrealistic extremism of Christian

45 “Historical Sociology and Ideology: A Prolegomenon to Yehezkel Kaufmann’s Golah

ve-Nekhar,” in Essays in Modern Jewish History: A Tribute to Ben Halpern, ed. by Frances
Malino and Phyllis Cohen Albert (East Brunswick, N.J., 1982), p. 181.
46 Ibid., p. 186.
47 Ibid., p. 181.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

moral ideals. The new religion, he says, was so unconcerned with ethics
that it rejected not only Jewish ritual but also the entire corpus of
Jewish civil and criminal law—a corpus self-evidently superior to the
torture-ridden corpus iuris of the Romans with which Christians were
perfectly satisfied to live.48
The discussion of Jesus’ career and particularly his trial demonstrates
that Kaufmann had an eye for detail as well. In an important respect,
this discussion breaks with the Tendenz of modern Jewish scholarship
and apologetics and stands firmly rooted in the Jewish Middle Ages.
In Kaufmann’s view, the Jews did crucify Jesus, or at least they were
responsible for the crucifixion. Virtually all modern Jews regarded such
a position as inimical to fundamental Jewish self-interest, and Kauf-
mann’s willingness to assert it is a striking indication of remarkable
courage and independence. For all its boldness, however, the discussion
of this point is marked by a serious flaw. Kaufmann argues that Jesus
could properly have been executed as a false prophet, even according
to mishnaic law, for refusing to provide a sign authenticating his
messianic claims.49 In fact, a person who refused to provide a sign might
well forfeit his right to be believed, but he would not forfeit his life.
Only a prediction or sign that did not materialize could be grounds for
execution, and nothing in the sources indicates that this had occurred.
If Jesus claimed to be the Messiah but refused to produce a sign, the only
evidence strong enough to justify his execution would be the fact that he
died without redeeming the world. Jews presented that evidence to the
court of history, but it was too late to present it to a court of law.
In any case, Kaufmann’s Jesus died as a false prophet. He had
no unique ethical message, and neither did Christianity. He did not
deemphasize ritual, and neither, at first, did Christianity. We have already
noted Kaufmann’s explanation for the transformation of the Christian
message into a universal one, and here his crucial point was not to deny
that Christianity developed this characteristic but to insist that Judaism
had possessed it for centuries before the dawn of the new faith.
This assertion of Jewish universalism leads to a final, fundamental,
and tragic tension in Golah ve-Nekhar. Kaufmann was a committed Jewish
nationalist who saw the great Jewish mission as the dissemination of

48 Golah, pp. 405–406.

49 Ibid., pp. 391–393.

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 Religion, Nationalism, and Historiography

the monotheistic idea on a supranational, universal scale. Judaism

made this possible by effectively abolishing the criterion of nationality
through the establishment of religious conversion. But this sacrifice,
if indeed it was a sacrifice, was to no avail, since the impediment of
exile reintroduced the obstacle of ethnicity. Thus, the mission could
be fulfilled only through the agency of Christianity and, later, Islam.
Religion preserved the Jews as a national group, and in an age of nascent
nationalisms, there was finally hope for the removal of the albatross of
exile. Kaufmann regarded this as a consummation devoutly to be wished,
though he wrestled with the dilemma of what would preserve the Jewish
nation in a postreligious world.50 In the deepest sense, however, it is
impossible to avoid the feeling that the national redemption of Israel
comes too late. The nation’s unique mission lies in the past, and its
fulfillment has been achieved by proxy.
It is no accident that after completing Golah ve-Nekhar, Kaufmann
turned his full scholarly attention to the biblical period, when the
quintessential insight of the Jewish people was exclusively theirs and
when the mission of Israel was still to be fulfilled. Kaufmann was no
Toynbee, and his Jewish people, poised on the threshold of a national
renaissance, was no fossil. Nonetheless, there is a disquieting sense that
the nation’s truly heroic age can never be recovered. In the chapter on
Christianity, for all its celebratory rhetoric about Judaism’s conquest of
the world, lies the fundamental tragedy of Golah ve-Nekhar.

50 See his “Hefez ha-Qiyyum ha-Leumi,” Miqlat 4 (June-August 1920): 194, cited by
Silberstein in all three of his articles on Kaufmann. (See nn. 20 and 44 above.) See also
Golah II, p. 427.

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 THE “JEWISH CONTRIBUTION”
TO CHRISTIANITY

From: The Jewish Contribution to Civilization: Reassessing an Idea, ed. by

Jeremy Cohen & Richard I. Cohen (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization:
Oxford and Portland, Oregon, 2007), pp. 80–97.

From the late nineteenth until the middle of the twentieth century,
Jews and their sympathizers devoted considerable research, energy,
and ingenuity to the documentation of signal Jewish contributions
to Western civilization. Whatever objections critics might have raised
regarding the extent of the Jewish role, the positive assessment of the
discipline, field, or ideal to which Jews had allegedly contributed was
not usually a matter of controversy, so that the authors of this literature
generally take the intrinsic value of the “contribution” for granted.
In 1921 an American Christian recounting what “the Jew has
done for the world” listed patriotism, the prophet Samuel’s “argument
that battered down the enslaving doctrine of Divine Right of kings,”
involvement in the discovery of America, science, mathematics,
medicine, politics, poetry, philology, and law-abiding behavior.1 Four
years later another book of this genre provided chapters on Jewish
contributions to education, folklore, literature, philosophy, the law,
scientific research, medicine, chemistry, infant welfare, art, music, drama,
athletics, Eastern exploration, and citizenship. Still, even such lists, read
at a later time, reveal unsuspected layers of complexity. Thus, a heading
that I have skipped, “Jewish Pioneers of British Dominion,” was of
course seen by the author as unequivocally positive; in our age, with
its deep reservations about imperialism, that chapter inadvertently
alerts us to the value judgments that underline and potentially bedevil

1 Madison C. Peters, Justice to the Jew: The Story of What He Has Done for the World
(New York, 1921), p. 23.

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 The “Jewish Contribution” to Christianity

aspects of this enterprise, a point already evident if we contemplate

how a seventeenth-century European would have reacted to the
assertion that the Jewish Bible undermines the divine right of kings.2
Indeed, since the Bible is the primary source of the doctrine affirming
the divine right of kings, the tendentiousness of the argument that
a single speech in the book of Samuel establishes Jewish responsibility
for undermining that doctrine is particularly striking. As late as 1951
we find a shorter but similar list pointing to Jewish contributions
to achievements understood as self-evidently meritorious: democracy,
science, medicine, exploration, and the military.3
So far, with the exception of the reference to Samuel, we have
looked at headings that are relentlessly secular, and even the apparent
exception congratulates Jews for a political contribution that liberated
its beneficiaries from the shackles of a religious conception. But a dis-
cussion of Jewish contributions omitting the religious dimension is
a quintessential example of the Hebrew adage ha-ikkar haser min ha-sefer
(“the main element is missing from the book”). As soon as we turn our
attention to that dimension, the valuation assigned to both the Jewish
characteristic and its purported consequence becomes anything but
self-evident, and we are propelled into a fascinating arena of warring
values and competing perceptions.
Nonetheless, even on the religious front, we find efforts to produce
lists of Jewish influences on Christianity intended to sound soothing

2 The Real Jew: Some Aspects of the Jewish Contribution to Civilization, ed. by H. Newman
(London, 1925). Needless to say, this is not the only assumption in such a book that
can render a contemporary reader uneasy. Here is a description of Jewish athletic
aptitude: “The highly emotional and excitable temperament characteristic of the Jew
is singularly adapted to enable the possessor to excel . . . . The alert Jewish mind is well
suited to boxing and sprinting. Moreover, the Jewish mentality, the morbid anticipation
that precedes competition, the almost uncanny knack of seizing opportunities are
admirable. The certainty the Jew has of rising to the occasion . . . his overwhelming
self-appreciation and confidence—what qualities can be more calculated to enable a man
to achieve high athletic distinction? The Jew born of Jewish parents possesses physical
qualities and mental qualities well suited to athletic success” (Harold M. Abrahams,
“The Jew and Athletics,” in The Real Jew, pp. 248–249). On the other hand, Charles
and Dorothea Singer, in one of the best books of the “Jewish contribution” genre,
assert—albeit with some hesitation—that there is no Jewish race. See their “The
Jewish Factor in Medieval Thought,” in The Legacy of Israel, ed. by Edwin R. Bevan and
Charles Singer (Oxford, 1927), p. 180.
3 The Hebrew Impact on Western Civilization, ed. by Dagobert Runes (New York, 1951).

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

and uncontroversial, describing religions whose essential approaches

are the very quintessence of harmony. A Christian writer, in a chapter
entitled “The Fountainhead of Western Religion,” asserted that “much
that came to be called Christian was, in fact, the lengthening shadows
of Hebraic ideas and influences.” His bill of particulars includes a sense
of destiny and the unification of morals and religion, even the identity
of Judaism’s and medieval Catholicism’s list of cardinal sins, to wit, “the
shedding of blood, sexual impurity, and apostasy.”4 That “apostasy” for
Jews included the embrace of medieval Catholicism goes unmentioned.
Cecil Roth’s Jewish Contribution to Civilization (1940), a classic work
on our theme by a prominent historian, concentrates on the secular
areas typical of this genre, but the introductory chapter underlines
Jewish contributions to Christianity itself, and through it, to the
world at large: monotheism, the value of human life, the sanctity of
the home, the dignity of the marital relationship, equality of all before
the one God, the messianic vision, prayer, even Christian ceremonial
(baptism, Communion [from the Passover seder], lectionaries, and
the liturgical use of Psalms).5 Perhaps the lengthiest list of his sort
was compiled by Joseph Jacobs in 1919, and despite its general tone
of apodictic certainty, it includes occasional qualifications that, once
again, provide some hint of the problematics of this enterprise. In
the realm of practice: prayer (especially the Psalter), the Mass or
Communion, baptism, bishops (from the synagogue position of gabbai),
charity boxes, ordination of priests, religious schools, the missionary
character of early Christianity (borrowed from the missionary spirit
of the Judaism of the time), aspects of canon law. In the realm of
theology: the kingdom of heaven, original sin (“though it must
be allowed that it has received much more elaborate development
in Church doctrine”, while Judaism mitigated its harshness with
“original virtue,” to wit, the merit of the fathers), special grace to
God’s favorites, the Fatherhood of God (and even, to some degree,
“the analogous conception of the Son of God”), the chosen people,

4 Vergilius Fern, “The Fountainhead of Western Religion,” in The Hebrew Impact on Western
Civilization.
5 Cecil Roth, The Jewish Contribution to Civilization (Cincinnati, 1940), pp. 4–13. Leon Roth,
Jewish Thought as a Factor in Civilization (Paris, 1954), lists the messianic idea, the return
to Hebrew Scriptures in Christian Reform movements, the Psalter, even the sense of sin
and divine punishment.

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 The “Jewish Contribution” to Christianity

resurrection, hell (though Christianity laid greater emphasis on this),

repentance, confession of sin, the Messiah, the Golden Rule (though
this is more practical in its negative, Jewish form), the dicta of the
Sermon on the Mount, the Lord’s Prayer, and the importance of the
Law to Jesus.6 Jacobs does add that while the only difference between
primitive Christianity and developed Judaism is the vague one of
Jesus’s personality, three major distinctions eventually emerged: the
Law, image worship, and the doctrine of a Man-God.
One suspects that Jacobs was well aware that some items on his list
of contributions bore a more mixed message than he acknowledged.
Thus, Jewish apologists generally denied the existence of any serious
concept of original sin in Judaism, pointing inter alia to a Jewish prayer
beginning, “My God, the soul that you have given me is pure,” and
minimizing the lasting effect of the sin of Adam and Eve on the spiritual
nature of their descendants. Like Roth, he does not inform us that
Jews through the ages, like the early Calvinists, perceived the Catholic
Mass as an idolatrous ceremony, whatever its original connection to
the Passover seder, and he does not acknowledge what Jews saw as the
critical distinction between confessing one’s sins to God and confessing
them to a human being.7 He was surely not interested in noting the
interesting irony that while Jews had decidedly “contributed” the idea
of the Messiah to Christianity, Reform Judaism, by abandoning belief
in a personal Messiah, had recently moved away from a central element
of that concept, which was precisely the one that Christians had placed
at center stage. Finally, I suspect that one of the items on his list was
intended as a subtle critique of Christianity, though he deliberately left
the implication unspoken. For a Jew to include “the chosen people” in
an accounting of Jewish contributions to Christianity is to underscore
the argument that Christian stereotypes of narrow Jewish particularism
versus Christian universalism obscure the reality that Christendom has

6 Joseph Jacobs, Jewish Contributions to Civilization: An Estimate (Philadelphia, 1919),

pp. 91–100. Some of the last items should arguably have been classified as practice
rather than theology. The unelaborated reference to the Sermon on the Mount relies,
says Jacobs, on Gerald Friedlander’s The Jewish Sources of the Sermon on the Mount (New
York, 1911).
7 For a particularly sharp medieval example of this Jewish critique of Christianity, see my
The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of the Nizzahon Vetus
with an Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Philadelphia, 1979), pp. 22–23 and n.
60, 223–224, 339.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

identified itself as the new chosen people to the exclusion and perhaps
damnation of the rest of humanity.8
The tendency of authors writing in this genre to avoid highlighting
the Jewish clash with Christianity is sharply illustrated in Louis
Finkelstein’s classic, monumental The Jews: Their History, Culture and
Religion (1949). His work is far more than an exemplar of the typical
effort to establish a Jewish contribution to civilization, but this is surely
a major component of its mission. In its four massive volumes, we look
in vain for any serious discussion of the relationship between Judaism
and Christianity. The brief allusion to Christian ethics in Mordecai
Kaplan’s contribution affirms, as we shall see, complete commonality
between the two faiths. And the editor’s own, even briefer, comment
on Jewish attitudes towards Christianity is quite remarkable: “Rabbi
Jacob Emden (1697–1771), one of the foremost teachers in the history
of Judaism, summarized the general Jewish view regarding Christianity
in the following words . . . ‘[Jesus] did a double kindness to the world by
supporting the Torah for Jews and teaching Gentiles to abandon idolatry
and observe the seven Noahide commandments’.”9 And that is all. So
does one of the most strikingly positive—and highly atypical—Jewish
assessments of Christianity ever proffered by a traditional rabbi become
“the general Jewish view.”
It is worth noting that Jewish scholars and apologists during the
period in question frequently affirmed that another atypical Jewish
view of Christianity was in fact standard. Rabbi Menahem ha-Meiri of
late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Perpignan had taken the
position that Christianity is not to be seen as idolatry at all and that its
adherents are entitled to full equality with Jews in matters of civil law
because they are among the “nations bound by the ways of religions.”
Though elements of this position were shared by other medieval and
early modern authorities, it is profoundly misleading to describe it as

8 As we shall see more strikingly in our discussion of Leo Baeck, the assertion that Jews
contributed the missionary spirit to Christianity is also noteworthy and by no means
typical.
9 The Jews: Their History, Culture and Religion, 4 vols, ed. by Louis Finkelstein (Philadel-
phia, 1949), IV, p. 1347. On the rarest of occasions, we find a Jewish scholar writing
during the period under discussion who exaggerates Jewish hostility to Christianity.
Thus, Samuel Krauss asserts that “Jesus’ illegitimate birth was always a firmly held dogma
in Judaism” (“The Jews in the Works of the Church Fathers,” Jewish Quarterly Review,
o.s. 5 (1892): 143).

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 The “Jewish Contribution” to Christianity

typical. Nonetheless, distinguished Jewish authors, for reasons that are

not difficult to discern, often described it as such—sometimes, I suspect,
in full sincerity.10
If the only dynamic in play were the assessment of the Jewish
contribution to civilization, it might have been possible to sidestep
the major tensions between the two faiths and affirm the Jewish
contribution to Christianity by recording the bland commonalities
that we have already noted—or by resorting to the silence and
disingenuousness of Finkelstein’s work. But during the period in
which this enterprise was at its height, a period that I will delineate
for the purposes of this chapter as roughly the 1890s to the middle
of the twentieth century, a related dynamic was also at its height: the
depiction by Christian scholars and theologians of a sharp contrast
between rabbinic Judaism and Christianity, and the consequent need
for a Jewish response.11

10 Cf. my observations in “Jacob Katz on Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages,” in The Pride
of Jacob: Essays on Jacob Katz and his Work, ed. by Jay M. Harris (Cambridge, Mass., 2002),
pp. 42–44. On ha-Meiri, see Moshe Halbertal, Bein Torah le-Hokhmah: Rabbi Menahem
ha-Meiri u-Ba‘alei ha-Halakhah ha-Maimonim bi-Provence (Jerusalem, 2000). An English
translation of much of the relevant chapter appeared in the online Edah Journal, 1 (2000),
<http://www.edah.org/backend/JournalAAicle/halbertal.pdf>, accessed 11 Sept. 2006.
11 A substantial scholarly literature has developed around this confrontation, providing
analysis of the earlier part of the 19th century as well as the period of direct concern
to us. First and foremost is the brilliant work of Uriel Tal, Christians and Jews in
Germany: Religion, Politics and Ideology in the Second Reich, 1870–1914 (Ithaca, NY,
1975). Susannah Heschel addressed the content and impact of a seminal Jewish
figure’s perception of Jesus in Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (Chicago, 1998).
Christian Wiese’s important study, Wissenschaft des Judentums und protestantische
Theologie in wilhelminischen Deutschland (Tübingen, 1999) is highly relevant in its
entirety; chapter 4, which deals with particularism versus universalism, ethics versus
law, and love versus fear in the context of the debate surrounding Wilhelm Bousset’s
Die Religion des Judentums im neutestamentalischen Zeitalter (Berlin, 1903), bears most
directly on our concerns. (An English translation has now been published: Christian
Wiese, Challenging Colonial Discourse: Jewish Studies and Protestant Theology in Wilhelmine
Germany, trans. by Barbara Harshav and Christian Wiese [Leiden, 2005]). Ismar Schorsch,
Jewish Reactions to German Anti-Semitism, 1870–1914 (Newark, 1972), pp. 169–177,
provides a succinct summary of Jewish concerns from an institutional perspective.
Overviews of modern Jewish assessments of Jesus and Christianity include Gosta
Lindeskog, Die Jesusfrage im neuzeitlichen Judentum. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Leben-
Jesu-Forschung (Uppsala, 1938); Jacob Fleischmann, Be‘ayat ha-Nazrut ba-Mahashavah
he-Yehudit mi-Mendelssohn‘ad Rosenzweig (Jerusalem, 1964); Walter Jacob, Christianity
through Jewish Eyes: The Quest for Common Ground (Cincinnati, 1974); Donald A. Hagner,
The Jewish Reclamation of Jesus (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1984).

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

During the course of the late nineteenth century, the maturation of

both liberal Protestantism and biblical criticism produced a concerted
attack on classical Judaism. Since many liberal Protestants no
longer believed the standard dogmas of Christianity, they shifted
their faith’s center of gravity to the arena of ethical teaching and
an intense spiritual relationship to God. The trajectory of pre-Christian
Israelite-Jewish religion came to be seen roughly as follows: The early
Pentateuchal documents affirmed by adherents of the newly regnant
critical hypothesis reflected a naive, rather primitive perception of a God
who was accessible in an immediate, almost tangible sense and whose
ethical character left much to be desired. With the rise of the literary
prophets, both the moral and theological understanding of God reached
unprecedented heights. At the same time, the transcendent theology
expressed in what the critics identified as the Priestly document of the
exilic period produced a remote Deity and came to be associated with
overemphasis on ritual, legalism, and arid genealogies, while in the
quintessential cases of Ezra and Esther, late biblical Judaism degenerated
into extreme, chauvinistic exclusivism. It is these characteristics that
persisted into what came to be described as Late Judaism, that is, the
Judaism of Jesus’s time. Jesus himself, and Christianity after him, not
only restored the highest form of religion found in the Hebrew Bible
but transcended it, combining ethical selflessness with a fresh, direct
experience of God without sacrificing the essence of monotheism.
Needless to say, Jews could not allow this portrait to go unchallenged.
Much has been written about the Jewish indictment of Christian
scholars for distorting rabbinic Judaism out of both malice and
ignorance, and I will not reiterate this aspect of the argument in detail.
These Jewish reactions were not without their effect; nonetheless, the
old critique of the rabbis persisted in some circles into the mid-twentieth
century despite all the efforts of Jewish apologists and sympathetic
Christian scholars. Thus, no less a theologian than Rudolf Bultmann,
notwithstanding a few pro forma qualifications, produced a chapter
entitled “Jewish Legalism” in his Primitive Christianity that could have
been written in the 1890s. He informs us that ritual in Judaism became
more important than morality, “with the result that men lost sight of
their social and cultural responsibilities.” Precepts that had become
meaningless “still had to be obeyed unquestioningly. . . . Regulations
went into detail to the point of absurdity . . . This ritualism . . . sanctified

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 The “Jewish Contribution” to Christianity

the life of the community, but that sanctity was an entirely negative
affair.” And on and on.12
Consequently, from the late nineteenth century until the middle
of the twentieth, Jews faced the delicate, challenging task of balancing
a complex of objectives that were often in tension with one another.
They surely wanted to demonstrate that Judaism played a central role
in the rise of Christianity. After all, no Jewish contribution to Western
civilization could be clearer than this. At the same time, they did not
want to erase the line between the religions. They did not want to offend
Christians, but they did not want to absorb the indictment of Judaism
supinely. They wanted to embrace Jesus as their own without accepting
him as a Jewish authority or granting Jewish legitimacy to the religion
that he founded (or, perhaps, did not found).
In this daunting enterprise, their religious and ethical perspectives
came to be deeply engaged. One of the most intriguing aspects of
this study is the light shone by the historical and apologetic works of
these Jews on their own differing values. What some Jews considered
quintessentially Christian, others saw as a Jewish influence; what some
saw as an admirable Christian belief, others saw as an unfortunate
deviation; what some saw as central to Judaism, others saw as proble-
matic and dispensable. Nonetheless, there are also broad and deep
commonalities marking the Jewish assessments of the relationship
between the religions.
While the range of issues marking these controversies covers
a broad spectrum, several stand out in bold relief. These include the Law,
particularism and universalism, ethics, the experience and conception
of God, and the view of redemption and redeemer. It is to these that we
now turn our attention.
On one level, Jews had long argued—inconsistently to be sure—
that Jesus himself did not reject the Law.13 In the modern period, the
perception of a ‘Jewish’ Jesus became dominant, to the point where the

12 Rudolf Bultmann, “Jewish Legalism,” in Bultmann, Primitive Christianity (New York,

1956). I was first alerted to this chapter in graduate school as a result of a passing remark
by Gerson Cohen.
13 See my “On the Uses History in Medieval Jewish Polemic against Christianity; The
Search for the Historical Jesus,” in Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor
of Yosef Haym Yerushalmi, ed. by Elisheva Carlebach, John M. Efron, and David N. Myers
(Hanover, NH, 1998), pp. 25–39.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

distinguished German Reform rabbi Leo Baeck eloquently, though no

doubt tendentiously, produced an “original Gospel” consisting entirely
of Jewish elements.14 Beyond this point, Jews needed to defend the role
of law in rabbinic Judaism itself. Two of the most distinguished Jewish
scholars in Britain turned their attention to this task: Israel Abrahams
in his classic essay on Emil Schuerer’s caricature of rabbinic law and
Solomon Schechter in his encomium to the Sabbath and, more briefly,
to the donning of tefillin.15 Wilhelm Bousset’s invidious characterization
of Judaism generated several Jewish reactions, most fully and notably by
Felix Perles, who underscored the deep spirituality of the rabbinic concept
of repentance, the joy attendant upon fulfilling the commandments
(simhah shel mizvah), and the understanding of the Law as an expression
of divine love.16 The essential argument of these works was repeated
decades later in a lesser-known essay by the Edinburgh rabbi Salis
Daiches, who remarked that to those who know Judaism from within,
depicting it as legalism standing in contrast to spirituality “appears not
only unfounded but also unintelligible.”17
In an ambitious, systematic response to Adolf Harnack’s The Essence
of Christianity (Das Wesen des Christentums, 1900), the Berlin rabbi
Joseph Eschelbacher not only composed a paean of praise to the halakhah
but also formulated a sharp riposte. Scholastic argument, he noted,
developed Christian dogmatics through the ages. In our time, Julius
Wellhausen has agreed that the basic teachings of Jesus can be found in
Jewish sources but has insisted that they are submerged by a legal system
in which everything is equal. Well, said Eschelbacher, did not Christian
dogmatics do to the message of Jesus precisely what Wellhausen ascribes
to the Jewish legal system?18

14 Leo Baeck, Judaism and Christianity (Philadelphia, 1960), pp. 98–136. This volume,
published shortly after Baeck’s death in 1956, contains English translations of works
written several decades earlier.
15 Israel Abrahams, “Professor Schuerer on Life under the Jewish Law,” Jewish Quarterly
Review, o.s. 11 (1899): 626–662; Solomon Schechter, “The Law and Recent Criticism,”
Jewish Quarterly Review, o.s. 3 (1891): 754–766.
16 See Felix Perles, Boussets Religion des Judentums im neutestamentalischen Zeitalter kritisch
untersucht (Berlin, 1003), and the discussion and references in Wiese, Wissenschaft des
Judentums und protestantische Tbeologie, p. 161.
17 Salis Daiches, “Judaism as the Religion of the Law,” in The Real Jew.
18 Joseph Eschelbacher, Das Judentum und das Wesen des Christentums (Berlin, 1908),
pp. 27–28.

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 The “Jewish Contribution” to Christianity

In a different mode, Moritz Guedemann argued in 1892 that the

depiction of Jewish adherence to the letter rather than the spirit is
itself an unfair caricature. Jewish contemporaries of Paul would not
have quarreled with the assertion that “the letter killeth but the spirit
giveth life” since the letter of various biblical laws from the lex talionis
to the year of release were in effect set aside by rabbis in favor of the
spirit. While Guedemann had no intention here of fully homogenizing
Christian and Jewish attitudes towards the Law, this is a striking
instance of taking a liberal understanding of the operation of rabbinic
law, placing it into a conceptual framework that the rabbis themselves
would not have endorsed—and thereby neutralizing a Christian objection
to Jewish legalism.19
A disturbing problem for some Jews engaged in apologetics regarding
the Law was generated by the fact that some of them adhered to Reform,
or Liberal, Judaism, so that they rejected elements of the ceremonial
law for reasons not very different from those proffered by Christian
critics.20 In 1907 the Reform rabbi Israel Goldschmidt, in another of
the book-length Jewish responses to Harnack, wrote an entire appendix
to demonstrate that the differences between Orthodoxy and Reform do
not undermine a proper analysis of the contrast between Judaism and
Christianity. He provided an abstract, highly philosophical account of
those differences, and that account enabled him to argue that the essence
of Judaism is unaffected by the Orthodox-Reform divide. For him, the
basic difference between the Jewish movements is not the Law per se but
Orthodoxy’s assertion that the bond between God and Israel was formed
in a supernatural fashion versus the Reform understanding that sees it
in terms of historical evolution.21
This approach, however, by avoiding a direct confrontation with
the question of the Law, left the issues raised by the Christian critique
unresolved. The most striking example of a Liberal Jewish move in

19 Moritz Guedemann, “Spirit and Letter in Judaism and Christianity,” Jewish Quarterly
Review, o.s. 4 (1892): 352–353. Though this article appeared in an English journal,
Guedemann resided in Vienna, where he pursued a distinguished rabbinic and scholarly
career.
20 I made this point in “Religion, Nationalism, and Historiography: Yehezkel Kaufmann’s
Account of Jesus and Early Christianity,” in Scholars and Scholarship: The Interaction
between Judaism and Other Cultures, ed. by Leo Landman (New York, 1990), p. 154. See
now Wiese, Wissenschaft des Judentums und protestantische Theologie, p. 162.
21 Joseph Goldschmidt, Das Wesen des Judentums (Frankfurt am Main, 1907), pp. 218–219.

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the direction of the Christian position on this issue appears in Claude

G. Montefiore’s 1927 commentary to the Synoptic Gospels. Not sur-
prisingly, the passage in question was noted both by Lou Silberman in
his Prolegomenon to the 1968 Ktav reprint of Montefiore’s work and by
Donald Hagner in his evangelically oriented analysis of Jewish approaches
to Jesus, though neither of them quite captures its full radicalism.22 The
Gospel text in question is Mark 7:15: “There is nothing outside a man,
which entering into him can make him unclean, but the things which come
out of a man, these are what make him unclean.” Montefiore asserted
that this is one of the two chief justifications for Liberal Judaism’s view
of “the old ceremonial law.” First, the “old prophets” said that “the true
service of God is not ceremonial, but moral.” But they dealt with the
ceremonial laws that were supposed to affect God. Jesus’s observation,
on the other hand, deals with those ceremonial laws that were supposed
to affect man. “Upon these two doctrines, the doctrine of Hosea . . . and
the doctrine of Jesus . . . the new attitude of Liberal Judaism toward
the ceremonial Law depends.”23 Montefiore hastened to add that Liberal
Judaism takes the further step of retaining the ceremonies that it values;
nonetheless, we find here a remarkable citation of Jesus as an authority
on a par with Hosea in undermining the binding character of sections of
the Torah. While this is extraordinary and atypical, it underscores with
ruthless candor a central dynamic in the Reform Jewish discourse on
Christianity and the Law.
A secondary but revealing point that emerges from this discussion
is Montefiore’s distinction between ceremonial laws that were supposed
to affect God and those intended to affect man. The former category
presumably refers to sacrifices, which are ostensibly subjected to
criticism in several notable passages in the literary prophets. It is highly
unlikely that any pre-modern Jew would have adopted this classification
except in a kabbalistic context, where other commandments as well could
affect the upper worlds. Sacrifices, whatever their precise purpose, were
designed to affect human beings no less than God. For Montefiore,
however, they are a reflection of a primitive religious mentality in which
God’s behavior is directly changed by propitiatory offerings. The prophets
took one step towards a more elevated religious sensibility by decrying
22 Claude G. Montefiore, The Synoptic Gospels (first pub. 1927; New York, 1968), Prolego-
menon by Lou Silverman, pp. 11–13; Hagner, The Jewish Reclamation of Jesus, pp. 114–115.
23 Montefiore, The Synoptic Gospels, pp. 131–132.

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 The “Jewish Contribution” to Christianity

this crude ceremonial practice; it was left for Jesus to discern the triviality
and inappropriateness of ceremonies whose theological primitivism is
less evident. Perhaps, then, one should say not that Jesus is on a par
with Hosea but that he stands on a higher rung than the prophet on the
ladder of spiritual development.
It is a matter of no small interest that Martin Buber, who did not
have a high regard for the ceremonial law, nonetheless saw both biblical
sacrifice and the prophetic criticism directed against it through a very
different lens.

One of the two fundamental elements in biblical animal sacrifice is the

sacralization of the natural life: he who slaughters an animal consecrates
a part of it to God, and so doing hallows his eating of it. The second
fundamental element is the sacramentalization of the complete surrender
of life; to this element belong those types of sacrifice in which the person
who offers the sacrifice puts his hands on the head of the animal in order
to identify himself with it; in doing so he gives physical expression to the
thought that he is bringing himself to be sacrificed in the person of the
animal. He who performs these sacrifices without having this intention in
his soul makes the cult meaningless, yes, absurd; it was against him that
the prophets directed their fight against the sacrificial service which had
been emptied of its core.24

With respect to the central issue before us, Buber’s dismissive attitude
towards the legal component of Judaism placed him in agreement
with the liberal Protestant critique. He dealt with this, as Ekkehard
Stegemann has pointed out in a perceptive analysis, by identifying
Jesus as a perfectly good Jew who indeed recaptured the prophetic,
ethically resonant dimension of Judaism, while describing Paul as one
who transformed this message into ‘the sweet poison of faith’. Thus,
historic Judaism contains whatever is valuable in Christianity and justly
rejects that which is distinctively Christian.25 Through this approach,
Buber, at least in his own mind, rendered unnecessary the defense of
the ceremonial law that presented such a daunting challenge to Liberal
Jewish apologists.

24 Martin Buber, “The Two Foci of the Jewish Soul,” in Jewish Perspectives on Christianity:
Leo Baeck, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Will Herberg, and Abraham J. Heschel, ed. by
Fritz A. Rothschild (New York, 1990), p. 126.
25 See Stegemann’s introduction to the selections from Buber in Jewish Perspectives on
Christianity, pp. 15–16.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

We have already noted Eschelbacher’s structural analogy between

the Law in Judaism and dogmatics in Christianity. Montefiore provided
the more direct analogy between Jewish law and Christian ritual. Thus,
John would have objected to the abolition of baptism and the Eucharist
just as Philo objected to the abolition of Pentateuchal Law.26 Similarly,
Yehezkel Kaufmann, whose brilliant and original oeuvre addressed not
only biblical religion but the entire span of the Jewish experience, argued
that Christianity could not have prevailed over Judaism because of its
rejection of the Law since Christianity itself is replete with ritual.27
Leo Baeck, however, emphasized not the similarity but the disparity
between Jewish law and Christian ritual. Paul left Judaism when he
embraced sola fide and moved from there to dogma and sacrament.
Sacrament is not law in the Jewish sense; it is mystery made tangible.
What then is the Law to the Liberal rabbi? In one place it is exemplified by
ethics. But at the end of the essay he moves to the Sabbath. “The Law, and
quite especially the Sabbatical element in it—has educated that capacity
in man which is born of the depth of life—the capacity to be different.”
From here he returns to his earlier emphasis on Judaism as a special
synthesis of mystery and commandment. “This is the gift and possession
of Judaism.”28 This last sentence encapsulates perfectly the challenge
at the heart of the discourse regarding “the Jewish contribution” to
Christianity and perhaps to civilization as a whole. Jews wanted to show
that they have provided a gift—but that it is still their special possession.
The Sabbath is an ideal vehicle for the realization of Baeck’s objectives.
It is an embodiment of law, but it can be affirmed without all the details
of the Law; it is a gift to the world, yet it remains uniquely Jewish.
While this aspect of Baeck’s argument, for all the originality of his
formulation, is consistent with the mainstream Jewish attitude towards
Christianity, he also proffers a highly unusual approach to the relationship
between Judaism and Christian antinomianism. A talmudic statement
affirmed that the world would last 6,000 years: 2,000 desolation, 2,000
Torah, and 2,000 the messianic age. Since the late twelfth century,
Christians had cited this statement to demonstrate that the Torah would

26 Claude G. Montefiore, “Notes on the Religious Value of the Fourth Gospel,” Jewish
Quarterly Review, o.s. 7 (1895): 46.
27 This is part of a larger analysis of the success of Christianity in Yehezkel Kauhnann, Golah
ve-Nekhar (Tel Aviv, 1929), pp. 292–301.
28 Baeck, Judaism and Christianity, pp. 177, 175, 184.

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 The “Jewish Contribution” to Christianity

be annulled in the messianic age, and since the thirteenth, Jews had
struggled to show that this conclusion did not follow. Baeck adduced this
rabbinic passage along with some other evidence to establish precisely
what Christians had affirmed all along—that the messianic age is not
an age of Torah. He proceeded to argue that since this was the standard
Jewish view in antiquity, Paul’s rejection of the Law was deeply Jewish.
His only innovation was his conviction that the final age had already
arrived. In other words, Paul’s belief in Jesus’ Messiahship required
him—on Jewish grounds—to affirm the abolition of the Law. Christian
antinomianism is itself a Jewish contribution to the new faith.29
Adherence to the Law was often seen as a manifestation of Jewish
particularism. Christians had criticized Jews for this presumed failing
as early as the Middle Ages; in early modern times, the issue rose to
greater prominence, and by our period it was almost ubiquitous. A central
explanation—so it was said—of Christendom’s victory over Jewry is that
the former bore a universalistic message while the latter was concerned
only with itself. Here again Jews and their supporters demurred, but in
very different ways. One approach was to emphasize the particularism
of Jesus himself, who did not want to cast his pearls before non-Jewish
swine and who was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.30
With respect to the broader arena, a Christian writing enthusiastically
of the Jewish struggle against paganism in a book bearing a philosemitic
message would only affirm that Judaism had the potential to become
a world religion, but, he said, the rabbis robbed it of its vital force
through a policy of isolation. Thus, “the role which it might have filled
was handed over to Christianity.”31 Yehezkel Kaufmann agreed with
the final sentence but strongly rejected the reason. Judaism, he argued,
was thoroughly universalist, providing everyone the option to enter
the Jewish people through conversion. It was not particularism or even
Jewish ethnicity per se that caused Judaism to miss its opportunity.
Rather, it was the historical accident of exile that transformed this
ethnicity into an insuperable obstacle. Non-Jews would have joined
the Jewish people, but not a defeated Jewish people. It was the Jewish
message of universalist monotheism—and that message alone—that
29 Ibid., pp. 154, 161–164, 241–242.
30 See e.g. Samuel S. Cohon, “The Place of Jesus in the Religious Life of his Day,” Journal of
Biblical Literature 48 (1929): 89, citing also Joseph Klausner and Montefiore.
31 George H. Box, “How Judaism Fought Paganism,” in The Real Jew, p. 34.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

accounted for the sweeping triumph of Christianity and then of Islam.

The tragedy of Jewish history is that this victory was achieved only by
proxy.32
Some Jews went even further by arguing that Judaism is more
universalist than Christianity. For Israel Goldschmidt, the concept of
a church is particularistic in the extreme. Unlike Christianity, Judaism
is a Schule or an Orden, a school of thought or an order, rather than
a Kirche.33 Montetiore, conceding Jewish particularism, dealt with it
through his openness to religious development: “Jewish particularism is
very objectionable . . . but it was happily not part and parcel of the real
Jewish creed. It could be, and has been, easily got rid of.” On the other
hand, John’s division of humanity into saved Christians and damned
others is deeply embedded in the creed, and thus harder to exorcise. If
the rabbis restricted the dictum “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”
to Jews—at least to some degree—John restricts it to Christians. Is
this really an improvement?34 Similarly, but without any overt reference
to Christianity, the British rabbi and scholar Abraham Cohen affirmed
that the brotherhood of man, including the salvation of righteous
Gentiles, is essential to Judaism, which does not “stipulate the necessity
of a uniform creed for all.”35 Needless to say, this argument goes back at
least to Moses Mendelssohn and served as the stock in trade of many
Jewish apologists throughout modern times.
Montefiore himself took the denial of a relationship between faith
and salvation to an extreme that can be explained only by his commitment
to Liberal Judaism combined with his desire to maintain what was for
him a crucial contrast between Judaism and Christianity:

To all Jews, presumably to all liberal Christians, the action of God on

man is not determined by the accuracy of his belief about God. We do not
believe that the relation of God to man is different in the case of a Jew and
in the case of a Christian. We realize that varying religious beliefs may and
do have varying effects upon character, but so far as God is concerned we
do not believe that he has other laws of influence and judgment for those
who believe concerning him more truly or less truly, or even for those who
have failed to find him altogether. Least of all do we believe that these

32 See my discussion in “Religion, Nationalism, and Historiography,” pp. 159–168.

33 Goldschmidt, Das Wesen des Judentums, pp. vi-vii, 214.
34 Montefiore, “Notes on the Religious Value of the Fourth Gospel,” pp. 41, 43.
35 Abraham Cohen, “Great Jewish Thoughts,” in The Real Jew, p. 25.

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 The “Jewish Contribution” to Christianity

variations of belief affect the destiny of the soul beyond the grave . . . . But
inconsistently, as we believe, with the justice of God and the universalism
of his providence, the author of the Fourth Gospel did presumably believe
that the result of true belief... is the prerogative of eternal life.36

“All Jews,” then, in 1895, presumably including the traditionalist

masses of eastern Europe and the Muslim world, as well as their rabbinic
leaders, rejected Maimonides’ assertion that denial of his principles
deprived the non-believer of a portion in the world to come. It is hard
to envision a more striking example of parochialism than Montefiore’s
blinkered vision of the Jewish world in which he lived. Moreover, even
if his presentation of the theology of his contemporary co-religionists
had been accurate, there is a transparent element of unfairness in
comparing the views of the Fourth Gospel on a point like this with the
Judaism of the 1890s rather than that of the first and second century.
And then there was the argument for Jewish nationalism, which
in some sense affirmed the value of parochialism. The paradigmatic
exemplar of this approach in our context is Joseph Klausner, a fervent
Zionist who regularly utilized his scholarship as a handmaiden of his
ideological commitments. Klausner insisted that monotheism itself could
be preserved only through Jewish adherence to a particular national
identity. Abandonment of that identity would have caused Israel—and
its unadulterated monotheism—to have been swallowed up by the far
more numerous nations.37
The contrast between universalism and particularism is not unrelated
to the evaluation of Jewish versus Christian ethics. I have already alluded

36 Montefiore, “Notes on the Religious Value of the Fourth Gospel,” pp. 32–33.
37 Joseph Klausner, Mi-Yeshu ad Paulus (Tel Aviv, 1940), vol. 2. pp. 220–221. The full
discussion fades, as best as I can see, into near incoherence, but I hope I have captured its
recoverable essence. It is no accident that, in a quite different context, the argument from
the need for national survival was invoked by the Zionist historian to defend acts that
raise moral questions of the most serious sort. The Hasmonean expulsion of pagans and
occasional acts of forcible conversion appear unjust, says Klausner, but a different policy
would have led to the destruction of Judaea and the end of the Jewish people. Faced
with such a prospect, “the moral criterion cannot help but retreat, and in its place there
comes another criterion: the possibility of survival.” See Historiah shel ha-Bayit ha-Sheni,
2nd edn, 5 vols (Jerusalem, 1951), vol. 3, pp. 65–66. I discuss this and other aspects of
Klausner’s Zionist historiography in “Maccabees, Zealots, and Josephus: The Impact of
Zionism on Joseph Klausner’s History of the Second Temple,” in Studies in Josephus and
the Varieties of Ancient Judaism: Louis H. Feldman Jubilee Volume, ed. by Shaye J. D. Cohen
and Joshua Schwartz (Leiden, 2006), pp. 15–27.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

to Mordecai Kaplan’s avoidance of any contrast between the ethics of the

two faiths in his contribution to Finkelstein’s The Jews. “The Christian
Gospel ... not only retained the confidence the Jews had had in their
own way of life, as well as the original emphasis upon the primacy and
divine character of the ethical, but it also possessed the irresistible vigor
and impetus of a new revelation.” Thus, it saved “the ethical emphasis
of Judaism from being confined to the Jewish people.” Monotheism
made Judaism’s teachings acceptable to the sophisticated as well as the
unlettered, and “the same is true of Christianity.”38
This irenic, contrast-free presentation is, however, highly atypical. For
both liberal Protestants and Liberal Jews, a key factor, perhaps the key
factor, defining the quintessential character of their respective religions
was ethics. Since Liberal Jews were no longer committed to traditional
Jewish law, and liberal Christians, as I have already noted, were no longer
committed to traditional Christian dogma, it followed that unless their
ethical teachings could be distinguished from those of rival religions,
their own faith’s raison d’etre was called into question.
That this dynamic operates even in the absence of any ill will to-
wards the Other was brought home to me with particular force in
a contemporary context quite different from that of late nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century Europe. The State of California was preparing
a religion curriculum for its schools, and a still unfinished textbook in
the history of religions prepared for this purpose had elicited criticism
from Jewish organizations (and, not surprisingly, from other groups as
well). The Jewish concerns centered on the depiction of Judaism in the
time of Jesus. I was asked to comment on these criticisms and quickly
realized that, mutatis mutandis, I had been transported back into the days
of Schuerer, Bousset, Harnack, Eschelbacher, Abrahams, Perles, et al. This
time not a trace of anti-Semitism could reasonably be attributed to the
authors, and yet they faced an intractable dilemma. How are the career
and significance of Jesus of Nazareth to be presented in a school textbook?
Separation of Church and State precludes the affirmation that he was the
Messiah and Son of God who died for our sins. At the same time, the
United States is a predominantly Christian country, so that Jesus cannot
be presented simply as a charismatic preacher who taught more or less

38 Mordecai Kaplan, “The Contribution of Judaism to World Ethics,” in The Jews, vol. 2,
pp. 686–687.

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 The “Jewish Contribution” to Christianity

what his contemporaries taught but somehow so inspired his disciples that
they succeeded in founding a religion centered upon him. What remains
is precisely what remained for liberal Protestants in Europe a century
earlier: a depiction of Jesus as the bearer of an ethical message distinct
from that of his surroundings and markedly superior to it. While many of
those liberal Protestants went well beyond what this structural dilemma
had forced upon them, to a significant degree they had little choice.
Perhaps the most systematic—and one of the most combative—
Jewish works arguing that whatever is admirable in Jesus’ ethics is Jewish,
while the rest is not particularly admirable, was Gerald Friedlander’s The
Jewish Sources of the Sermon on the Mount (1911).39 It is worth noting in
this connection that scholars, both Christian and Jewish, of the early
twentieth century were not unaware of a methodological issue that
has attained particular prominence in our own generation, to wit, the
problem of using rabbinic materials, which have come down to us in
a literary form that does not predate the second century, to characterize
first-century Judaism. Friedlander cites several Christians who made this
point with respect to various concepts, most notably the Fatherhood
of God, but he argues vigorously, in part by resort to New Testament
criticism, that the evidence of rabbinic texts and liturgy can justly be
used to argue for Jewish priority.40
Joseph Klausner also asserted that the key ethical categories of
Judaism are equal or superior to those of Christianity. Thus, Paul’s agape
is simply Jewish love; indeed, he may have refrained from ascribing
the principle of loving one’s neighbor specifically to Jesus (Rom. 13:
8–10; Gal. 5: 13–14) precisely because he knew that this emphasis
was already that of Hillel. At the same time, excessive emphasis on
love can eclipse justice, so that Pauline love may be appropriate for the
individual, but it cannot serve as the basis for social or national life.
I think it is fair to maintain that Klausner and other Jews saw justice as
a quintessential Jewish contribution to civilization but did not see it as
mediated through Christianity except perhaps in the technical sense that
Christians served as a conduit for the Hebrew Bible. I am tempted to say,
in a reversal of the medieval Christian assertion, that Christians served
as the book-bearers of the Jews.

39 See n. 6.
40 Friedlander, The Jewish Sources of the Sermon on the Mount, pp. 129–134.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

Yehezkel Kaufmann, in his argument that Christian ethics did not

provide the attraction that accounted for its victory over Judaism,
made the particularly acute point that if Christians were so ethically
sensitive they would have chosen Jewish civil and criminal law over
the torture-ridden Roman corpus iuris.41 But the most striking Jewish
reversal of the argument from Christian ethical superiority was made by
Leo Baeck. Christianity, he asserted, is the ultimate romantic religion,
and the romantic stays away from law, from commandment, from the
sphere of good and evil—and hence from ethical action as the highest
ideal. Indeed, for Paul and Luther faith is counterposed to all works, not
just the ceremonial. Paul made moral demands because he was rooted
in Judaism, but ethics are merely an appendage to his religion as well
as to that of later Christians. “In the Church, ethics has basically always
caused embarrassment. It was there—it had been introduced by the Old
Testament which had been accepted as part of the Bible—but the faith
lacked any organic relation to it.”42
Despite the centrality of the ethical moment, liberal Christians
who had forsaken much of Christian dogma did not rest their case for
Christianity on ethics alone. Harnack’s famous account of the essence of
Christianity spoke also of the kingdom of God, the Fatherhood of God,
and the infinite value of the human soul, and especially emphasized the
immediacy of Jesus’ relationship with God. Eschelbacher’s is the most
detailed, systematic Jewish response to these assertions, appealing both
to the biblical prophets and to rabbinic aggadah to establish the vibrancy
of the Jewish encounter with the divine.43
Buber made a major point of insisting on the reality of the Jew’s
immediate personal relationship with an imageless God.44 And Montefiore

41 Kaufmann, Golah ve-Nekhar, vol. 1, pp. 405–406, noted in my “Religion, Nationalism, and
Historiography,” p. 166.
42 Baeck, Judaism and Christianity, pp. 192–193, 249–251, 256. The standard approach
of Jewish apologists in the exchange about ethics is exemplified by Moritz Lazarus, Die
Ethik des Judentums (Frankfurt am Main, 1898, 1911).
43 Eschelbacher, Das Judentum und das Wesen des Christentums, passim.
44 Martin Buber, Two Types of Faith (New York. 1951), pp. 130–131. A Christian scholar
writing in our genre also stressed that “the Fatherhood of God” is a Jewish term, but
could not refrain from adding a qualification about the fresh vitality infused into it by
Jesus. See Francis C. Burkitt, “The Debt of Christianity to Judaism,” in The Legacy of
Israel, p. 72.

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 The “Jewish Contribution” to Christianity

insisted with vigor and eloquence that the doctrine of the Incarnation
was not needed to bridge the gap between God and man. Jews “from
Isaiah to Jesus and from Jesus to Mendelssohn” did not feel what
a Christian writer described as “despair at the seemingly hopeless task of
climbing the heavens and finding the unapproachable God.” Indeed, says
Montefiore in a somewhat different context, the complete incarnation
of the Logos at a particular time and place substitutes “something
mechanical, sensuous, spasmodic, magical” for the gradual unfolding of
God’s plan for the world.45
Finally, a word about eschatology. That Judaism “contributed”
to Christianity its concept of a redeemer hardly needs to be said.46
Jews through the ages concentrated on stressing the differences
between the Jewish criteria for identifying the Messiah and those
of Christianity, not the obvious commonalities. Thus, inter alia, the
Jewish Messiah is a human being, not a denizen of the heavens. But
the genre we are examining can produce, as we have already seen,
some surprising assertions of influence. In this case, Leo Baeck, while
of course rejecting the conception of a fully divine redeemer, insisted
that the concept of a supernatural Messiah was indeed borrowed
from Judaism. Baeck was convinced that the figure “like a [son of]
man” in Daniel 7 who comes with the clouds of heaven is in fact the
pre-existent Messiah. Thus, “faith had long raised the figure of the
Messiah beyond all human limitations into a supra-historical, supra-
terrestrial sphere. He was endowed with the radiance of the heavens
and transfigured above the earth.” Buber maintained that the son of
man in Daniel is a “still indefinite image,” and even this is too strong
a depiction of a figure who is almost certainly nothing more than
a symbol. But Baeck sees him as a supernatural Messiah, so that the
basic building block of the Christian messianic conception is not merely
in extra-biblical apocalypses but in the Jewish Bible itself.47 Baeck does,
however, make a point of noting that the Greek word soter, or savior,

45 Montefiore, “Notes on the Religious Value of the Fourth Gospel,” pp. 66–67, 40.
46 Burkitt, “The Debt of Christianity to Judaism,” pp. 95–96, makes the related observation
that “the reality and eternal significance of time,” the awareness that reality is a grand
drama to be played out but once, is a lesson learned from Judaism by all forms of
Christianity.
47 Baeck, Judaism and Christianity, pp. 66, 148; Buber, Two Types of Faith, p. 112.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

which is applied by Luke to Jesus, is a term whose Hebrew equivalent is

used in the Jewish Bible about God alone.48
No less surprising is Baeck’s identification of the Christian missionary
spirit as a function of Jewish influence. The modern affirmation of Jewish
universalism and tolerance, going back to Mendelssohn’s emphasis on the
portion of ethical non-Jews in the world to come, led Jews to characterize
Christian mission as a function of a regrettably intolerant spirit. Not so
Baeck. Romantic religion, he says, looks inward, possessing the promise
as a gift. It was the Jewish element in Paul, with its “confidence in the
meaning of man’s exertions,” that gave Christianity its missionary
impulse, which remains strongest in those Christian groups who are
closest to Judaism and the Old Testament.49
The project of demonstrating the Jewish contribution to civilization
was simultaneously easiest and most difficult when the object of Jewish
beneficence was Christianity. Jews wanted to show that they had enriched
the world through their daughter religion, but they did not want to
render her as attractive as her parent. What is Jewish and what is not,
what is Christian and what is not, what is legalistic and what is not, what
is ethical and what is not, what is particularistic and what is not—these
questions and more provide a window not only into the dynamics of
Judaism’s encounter with a dominant faith but into its struggle to define
its own contours and to penetrate the depths of its soul.

48 I cannot resist noting a personal experience with the term soter in the context of Jewish-
Christian relations. In 1995 the Open University in Israel distributed an eight-part video
of discussions between Yeshayahu Leibowitz and Marcel Dubois about Judaism and
Christianity that had taken place in 1992 (“In Two Octaves”). The conversations were
held in Hebrew, and the video supplied English subtitles. I was asked to comment on
two of the installments when the series was shown on a cable TV channel in New York,
and so I read the English carefully. Near the end of the second program, Leibowitz
tells Dubois that Paul did a terrible thing by denying halakhah and insisting that
everything depends on the soter. The term recurs about five times at the end of that
installment and the beginning of the third. The translator, who knew Hebrew and
English but had no understanding of theology or of Greek, recognized soter as a perfectly
good Hebrew word, and repeatedly provided the incoherent translation “refuter” or
“refutation.” When I noted this, I had to struggle to convince the moderator that the
translation was incorrect.
49 Baeck, Judaism and Christianity, pp. 284–289. We recall that Joseph Jacobs had also
included Christian missionizing in his lengthy list of Jewish influences on Christianity.
See n. 6.

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 JEWISHCHRISTIAN RELATIONS
A Jewish Perspective

From: Journal of Ecumenical Studies 20 (1983): 5–32.

Our generation has seen some fundamental, even revolutionary

changes in the official position of many Christian churches toward
Jews and Judaism. Anti-Semitism has been denounced, contemporary
Jewish responsibility for the crucifixion denied, missionizing re-
examined, text-books revised, and dialogue encouraged. These changes,
though welcomed by most Jews, have left many lingering problems
unresolved, and, especially in the case of dialogue, they have raised
new, complex questions about the propriety and character of interfaith
relations.
The most famous Christian statement on the Jews in recent years
is, of course, the widely heralded and much debated document issued
by Vatican II in 1965 (Nostra Aetate 4), which spoke of a special bond
between Christians and Jews. Since then, a series of Catholic statements
both in Rome and in various national churches has attempted to grapple
with the ambiguities and omissions in Nostra Aetate 4, and in January
1975, official guidelines were issued for the implementation of the
council’s declaration and the encouragement of continuing contacts
between Catholics and Jews.
Protestant churches have also moved toward a reassessment of their
attitudes concerning Jews and Judaism in a number of statements by
the World Council of Churches, international conferences of individual
denominations, and national organizations. Although the decentralized
character of Protestantism makes generalization difficult, most of the
major trends in the Catholic declarations appear among Protestants as

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well, and here, too, the call for interfaith dialogue is a prominent and
recurring feature.1
To further such contacts, both Christians and Jews have set
up institutional mechanisms whose primary function is interfaith
relations. The Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the
Jews and the Consultation on the Church and the Jewish People of
the World Council of Churches are major examples of Christian bodies
which function on a worldwide scale. In the United States, the Catholic
Secretariat for Christian-Jewish Relations, the Committee on Christian-
Jewish Relations of the National Council of Churches, and a substantial
number of national officials of individual Protestant churches deal
primarily with Jewish issues. Jews reciprocate with significant programs
for interreligious affairs at the American Jewish Committee, Anti-
Defamation League, American Jewish Congress, Synagogue Council of
America, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and elsewhere,
while the National Conference of Christians and Jews continues to
expand its longstanding efforts. Though the scope and intensity of
such activities vary greatly from country to country, some increase in
interfaith contacts is noticeable in virtually every Western nation with
a significant Jewish population.2
This essay will concentrate on some of the substantive issues raised
by these contacts: the problem of dialogue itself, mission and covenant,
anti-Semitism, the State of Israel, and moral questions affecting public
policy. These topics may not exhaust the Jewish-Christian agenda, but

1 The major statements, both Catholic and Protestant, have been compiled by Helga Croner
in Stepping Stones to Further Jewish-Christian Relations (London and New York, 1977)
(hereafter, Croner). For highlights of the developing Catholic position, see Leonard
Swidler, “Catholic Statements on Jews—A Revolution in Progress,” Judaism 27 (1978):
299—307; and Jorge Mejia, “Survey of Issues in Catholic-Jewish Relations,” Origins
7.47 (May 11, 1978): 744–748. An excellent bibliographical survey has been provided by
A. Roy Eckardt, “Recent Literature on Jewish-Christian Relations,” Journal of the American
Academy of Religion 49 (1981): 99–111.
2 On the current situation in Western Europe, see the summary articles in Face to
Face 7 (Summer, 1980): 1–16. For obvious reasons, Israel provides a special, atypical
environment for Jewish-Christian discussions; in addition to such ongoing groups as
the Israel Interfaith Committee, the Ecumenical Theological Research Fraternity, and the
Rainbow, the Director General of Israel’s Ministry of Inter-Religious Affairs has recently
established the Jerusalem Institute for Inter-Religious Relations and Research as a public,
nongovernmental body (Christian News from Israel 27.2 [1979]: 62). In general, see Face
to Face 2 (Winter/Spring, 1977).

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they play a central role in defining both the progress and the continuing
problematic of a relationship which is nearing the end of its second
decade and its second millennium at the same time.

THE PROBLEM OF DIALOGUE

At first glance, the case for dialogue is self-evident, straightforward, and

deceptively simple. Communication is preferable to isolation; friendship
and trust can be established only by people who talk to one another.
Nevertheless, although dialogue is often initiated by the Jewish side,
the history of Jewish-Christian relations has bequeathed to many Jews
a legacy of mistrust and suspicion which makes them perceive the
Christian advocacy of such discussions as a subtle and more sophisticated
expression of the missionary impulse. We shall have to examine the
question of mission later on, but to the extent that this perception could
be defended, the argument for dialogue—at least in the eyes of many
Jews—would be severely undermined.
The conviction that the motivation for dialogue is a sincere desire
for mutual understanding is indispensable for the legitimation of
such conversations, but it does not define their content. The most
interesting questions, in fact, arise only in the context of a favorable
decision about the fundamental enterprise. What should be discussed?
Are some subjects too sensitive, or does the exclusion of such topics
contradict the essential objective of interfaith dialogue? Should
discussants direct their efforts toward the solution of clearcut problems
in Jewish-Christian relations, or should they address essential matters
of faith as well? If a separation between such issues is desirable, is it in
fact possible?
In a thoughtful and perceptive article, Henry Siegman argued that
Jews and Christians bring different agendas to what is essentially
an asymmetrical discussion.3 Since Jews can understand their faith
without reference to Christianity, there is no internal Jewish need to
engage in theological discussion with Christians; Christianity, on the
other hand, confronts Judaism the moment it “searches into the mystery

3 “A Decade of Catholic-Jewish Relations—A Reassessment,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies

(henceforth cited as J.E.S.) 15 (1978): 243–260.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

of the Church.”4 The Jewish agenda is historical rather than theological

and focuses on such issues as anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and the State
of Israel. Although each side may recognize some value in the other’s
agenda, the basic impulses leading to dialogue are profoundly different.
Since no one can compel the discussion of any particular issue,
inhibitions about the content of interfaith exchanges are likely to be
respected. While Christians may be more interested in theology, they
have no fundamental objections to a discussion of the “Jewish” themes,
and considerations of conscience make a refusal to confront such topics
both morally questionable and politically awkward. Many Jews, on the
other hand, regard certain theological discussions very warily, and the
Jewish agenda has generally prevailed.
A striking example of this Jewish “victory” is the agenda proposed
by a Christian writing in the middle of the last decade. Though he
expressed hope that “the frequency and scope” of purely theological
discussions would be increased, the major elements of his list were
the establishment of study groups, recognition that Jews can be saved
without conversion, renunciation of missionary work, more effective
denunciation of anti-Semitism, curricular changes in Christian seminaries
and congregational schools, liturgical revisions, and joint social action.5
The primary emphasis of this proposal is self-evident.
Some Christians, however, have been more assertive. One leading
ecumenist, though referring to Siegman’s article as a “now classic”
statement, has argued that Jewish theology can be aided by Christian
insights on “covenant, mission, peoplehood, [and] the Kingdom,” while
Jewish “self-articulation” in the Christian period was deeply affected by its
relationship with Christianity.6 Another Christian response to Siegman’s
analysis put the issue even more sharply. “Full attention to theology and
ultimate questions can wait. The point is, can they wait forever?”7

4 The phrase (which Siegman does not use) is from the first sentence of the Vatican II
statement. On the impact of this asymmetry on early Jewish-Christian contacts, see my
discussion in The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1979),
pp. 4- 8.
5 Paul J. Kirsch, We Christians and Jews (Philadelphia, 1975), pp. 122–141.
6 Eugene Fisher, “A Roman Catholic Perspective: The Interfaith Agenda,” Ecumenical Bulletin
44 (November-December, 1980): 11–12.
7 Edward Flannery, “Response to Henry Siegman,” J.E.S. 15 (1978): 505. Cf. also David-
Maria Jaeger, “Catholic-Jewish Dialogue,” Christian Attitudes on Jews and Judaism 69
(December, 1979): 1–3.

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 Jewish-Christian Relations

A look at some very recent Christian proposals for discussion reveals

a combination of “historical” and “theological” issues. A German Catholic
working paper lists belief in the wake of the Holocaust, the meaning
of the State of Israel, the problem of combining belief in salvation and
political action, a variety of ethical issues, and the diminishing of the
supposed conflict between a religion of law and a religion of grace.8 In
a statement that has aroused considerable attention, the Evangelical
Church of the Rhineland suggested a similarly “mixed” agenda: the
Holocaust, a common Bible, the standing of Jesus, “the one people of
God,” justice and love, and the problem of mission to the Jews.9
In the eyes of many Jews, these lists present a minefield of sensitive
issues. Dialogue is by definition a two-way street, and, if Jews expect
Christians to revise certain longstanding perspectives on Judaism,
they cannot expect Christians to refrain from entertaining reciprocal
expectations. This development emerges with striking clarity in the
German Catholic working paper. The Christian, it says, cannot regard the
Jew as merely a surviving witness of the period of the “Old Testament”
and early Christianity. “Conversely, the Christian partner cannot be
satisfied if the Jewish partner thinks that only he has something to say
to the Christian which is essential to the Christian’s faith, while that
which the Christian has to say to the Jew has no essential meaning
for the faith of the Jew.” The Jew cannot know how Abraham became
the father of a multitude of nations without an understanding of
Christianity; indeed, dialogue can take place seriously only when Jews
assume that Christianity was caused by God and when Christianity
interests them “for God’s sake.” Moreover, “Jews can acknowledge that,
for the Christians, Jesus has become the way in which they find Israel’s
God,” and one example of a possible “Jewish interest in Christianity” is
Franz Rosenzweig’s statement that “whether Jesus was the Messiah, will
be shown when the Messiah comes.” This sort of expectation—closer to
a hope than to a demand—is also reflected in a recent book by the Swiss
Catholic scholar, Clemens Thoma, who quotes David Flusser’s very similar

8 “Basic Issues of the Jewish-Christian Dialogue: A Working Paper of the Workshop

on ‘Jews and Christians’ of the Central Committee of Roman Catholics in Germany,”
Encounter Today 14 (1979): 105–113, 125; and Service International de Documentation
Judéo-Chrétienne (henceforth cited as SIDIC), 13.2 (1980): 28–32.
9 Zur Erneuerung des Verhältnisses von Christen und Juden (1980), pp. 12–28. Partial English
translation by Franklin H. Littell in J.E.S. 17 (1980): 211–212.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

remark that “I do not think many Jews would object if the messiah when
he came again was the Jew Jesus.”10
Even with respect to the core issues of trinity and incarnation,
Thoma attempts to show from biblical, midrashic, and mystical sources
that “a Christological perception of God—apart from its historical
realization—is not un-Jewish.” On similar grounds, another Christian
theologian wants Jews to recognize that the doctrine of the trinity
“acquired its depth” from the Jewish Scriptures.11 In a more oblique
fashion, the question was raised by John Sheerin in an article whose
major thrust is to persuade Christians to modify their preconceptions
about Judaism; dialogue, he says, is made difficult if not impossible
by some of these Christian ideas. “Likewise, many Jews feel that they
cannot engage in dialogue with Christians because they see the adoration
of Jesus as sheer idolatry and they simply cannot bring themselves to
discuss it with Christians.”12 Since Sheerin’s article is not concerned
primarily with this problem, he does not say explicitly what Jews should
do about it or whether or not this makes dialogue impossible from
a Christian perspective. Nevertheless, it is clear that some Christians are
beginning to expect a measure of theological reciprocity if meaningful
dialogue is to progress.
Can Jews offer such reciprocity? In most cases, I think the answer
is no. Statements like those of Rosenzweig and Flusser about Jesus and
the Messiah are thoroughly atypical in the Jewish community, and there
is little prospect that this will change; indeed, aside from the subtle
pressures of the “dialogue” relationship, there is no moral or intellectual
reason for such change. Though many Jews are prepared to say that
classical Christian theology does not constitute idolatry for Gentiles,
there is a consensus that it is idolatry for Jews. Efforts to make the
combined doctrines of trinity and incarnation more acceptable to Jews
by citing the sefirot of the kabbalists or the shekhinah of the rabbis are
not likely to bear more fruit today than they did in the late Middle
Ages.

10 A Christian Theology of Judaism (New York, 1980), p. 134; citation from Flusser’s article
in Concilium, new series, 5.10 (1974): 71.
11 Dom Louis Leloir, “One of the More Burning Issues in Jewish-Christian Dialogue: Unity
and Trinity in God” (the title is noteworthy), Encounter Today 13 (1978): 101–110. Cf.
also note 22, below.
12 “Has Interfaith a Future?” Judaism 27 (1978): 311.

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 Jewish-Christian Relations

It is therefore a matter of considerable importance for the future

of dialogue that Christians not maintain illusory expectations about
significant modifications of such theological positions.13 At the same
time, this situation points up an even more troubling asymmetry in
interfaith discussions. Many Christians involved in dialogue have been
prepared to modify venerable attitudes toward mission, covenant, the
significance of Judaism, and even the historicity of Matthew’s account
of the crucifixion. Jews are not in a position to make gestures nearly
as significant, and this creates a situation in which Jews appear to be
demanding change without offering very much in return.
There are, of course, valid reasons for this state of affairs. As Siegman
has noted, the fundamental factor that gives Jews the “standing” to
suggest certain changes in Christian theology is “the price that [they]
have paid for such theology in history.”14 As we shall see in our discussion
of anti-Semitism, a modification of those elements in Christianity which
may lead to hatred of Jews requires at least a careful look at beliefs which
come uncomfortably close to the core of the faith. On the other hand,
although there is no denying that a pejorative perception of Christians
and Christianity exists among many Jews, such perceptions have not led
to any significant Christian suffering in the last millennium; moreover,
some of them result at least as much from anti-Semitism itself as they
do from Jewish theology. Consequently, the relative absence of a Jewish
quid pro quo is in a certain sense justified.15
Notwithstanding this justification, there is an uncomfortable
imbalance in the structure of Jewish-Christian discussion, and one can
only admire those Christian participants who are genuinely interested in
revising certain elements of Christian theology without expecting much
change on the Jewish side. One way to correct this imbalance, at least to
some extent, is for Jews to resist as much as possible the temptation of
telling Christians what to believe. This is an extremely delicate question
which we shall encounter in specific cases later on, and there are several
fine lines on the road from hope to suggestion to expectation to demand.

13 This point was made by Richard Lowry in a paper presented to a Catholic-Lutheran-

Jewish conference in the fall of 1980.
14 Siegman, “A Decade,” p. 257.
15 See, however, Gerald Blidstein’s remarks about the need for Jews to reassess the image of
Christianity (Tradition 11 [1970]: 103–113), cited approvingly by Siegman, “A Decade,”
p. 254.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

Often Jews are simply responding to Christian questions about the effect
of certain doctrines, and on such occasions they are acting as what one
prominent rabbi has described as a resource for the Christian community.
Nevertheless, there is no obligation to answer every question; silence is
still sometimes “a hedge around wisdom” (Mishnah Avot 3:13).
The classic, extreme formulation of this position, which has theore-
tically governed official Orthodox involvement (and non-involvement)
in dialogue, is Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s argument that matters of
faith are not an appropriate subject for interreligious discussion because
they are rooted in the profoundest recesses of the religious experience
of both the individual and the faith community.16 Such Orthodox re-
servations about dialogue are reflected to a somewhat lesser extent in
the attitudes of many Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals. The
dangers of dialogue for these Christians emerge with striking clarity from
an assertion by two liberal Christians whose devotion to the Jewish people
and interfaith discussion is unsurpassed. Alice and Roy Eckardt have
argued that insistence on “the divine inspiration of all Scripture . . . cannot
escape a proclivity to anti-Semitism” and makes interfaith dialogue very
difficult.17 Their theoretical goal is presumably to persuade fundamen-
talists to abandon fundamentalism, though the realistic objective is to
prevent their “achieving forms of political power and influence.” To the
extent that this approach to dialogue envisions significant changes in the
basic beliefs of the participants, it can appear especially threatening to
both Christian fundamentalists and Orthodox Jews.
The issue of Jewish relations with fundamentalist evangelicals has
become particularly acute in the United States as a result of the meteoric
rise of the Moral Majority and related groups. Jewish reactions have
varied widely, because the positions espoused by these groups can arouse
both enthusiasm and deep suspicion when examined from the perspective
of Jewish interests. On Israel their stand is exemplary. On theological
issues, they are oriented toward mission and Christian triumphalism,
and denials that they seek a Christian America, while welcome, do not
always appear consistent with the policies and behavior of local activists.
Remarks by the head of New York’s Moral Majority (for which he later
apologized) asserting that Jews control the city and the media and

16 “Confrontation,” Tradition 6 (1964): 5–29.

17 “The Achievements and Trials of Interfaith,” Judaism 27 (1978): 319.

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 Jewish-Christian Relations

possess a supernatural ability to make money show not so much conscious

anti-Semitism as staggering naïveté and unthinking acceptance of anti-
Jewish stereotypes; incredibly, the statement was genuinely intended to
demonstrate support and admiration. (Jerry Falwell, who knows better
by now, reacted immediately by denying that “you can stereotype any
people.”18) On social issues, most Jews are considerably more liberal than
the Moral Majority, but there is no unanimity on these questions; still,
school prayer is an example of a major goal of the politically oriented
evangelicals which is opposed by virtually the entire spectrum of the
Jewish community. Hence, the perceived dangers to pluralism and
liberalism have led Jewish leaders such as Alexander Schindler to
denounce this movement with exceptional vehemence; the vigorous
support of Israel has led some Zionist groups to express enthusiastic
approval in a world where offending Israel’s friends appears suicidal; and
the conservative position on moral issues has led some hasidic figures, for
whom interfaith discussions are usually anathema, to support an alliance
in the face of a deluge threatening all traditional morality.19
With respect to dialogue between Jews and evangelical groups
in general (not necessarily the political activists), there has been real
progress, and some voices have been raised questioning the general view
that Jews are “safer” holding discussions with Christian liberals than
with conservatives and fundamentalists.20 The challenge here will be to
establish communication and friendly relations without the expectation
of much theological flexibility in the Christian position. In light of the
potential tensions in the standard dialogue, this is a situation that
deserves to be explored with interest. From the perspective of the “Jewish
agenda,” the prospect of improving relations without theological change
was put forcefully by Yosef Yerushalmi: “After all that has happened, do
we still have to await a reformulation of Christian theology before the

18 New York Times, February 5, 1981. Several months after this was written, the individual
involved was removed from his post.
19 Face to Face 8 (Winter, 1981) is devoted in its entirety to an important collection of
reactions to this movement by both Christians and Jews.
20 Cf. William Harter’s paper delivered to the Synagogue Council of America on December
7, 1972 (available at the library of the American Jewish Committee); William Sanford
Lasor, “An Evangelical and the Interfaith Movement,” Judaism 27 (1978): 335–339;
M. Tanenbaum, M. Wilson, and A. J. Rudin, eds., Evangelicals and Jews in Conversation
(Grand Rapids, Mich., 1978); and A. J. Rudin, “A Jewish Perspective on Baptist Ecume-
nism,” J.E.S. 17 (1980): 161–171.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

voice of Jewish blood can be heard crying from the earth? Is our common
humanity not sufficient? In any case, Christian theology is an internal
affair for Christians alone.”21
Nevertheless, most Christian and some Jewish participants in
dialogue remain interested in “internal” theological issues, and the
inner dynamic of the interfaith process may lead inexorably in the
direction of such discussions. The historical agenda does not lead to new
frontiers, so that some Christians involved in dialogue for many years
have begun to complain of discussions that review the same issues again
and again. To the extent that such a perspective is correct, progress
can be made by either involving new people or exploring new topics,
and even though reaching out to new participants is an essential goal
of interfaith programs, there remains the inexorable impulse to keep
the dialogue vibrant on all levels. Since the frontier appears to be in
the theological arena, there is reason to expect—or to fear—that the
“victory” of the Jewish agenda will turn out to be ephemeral. To some
extent this development is already evident: Clemens Thoma’s book,
which demonstrates a genuine, sympathetic understanding of Judaism,
has been the focus of a major dialogue; the March, 1981, meeting of
the National Conference of Christians and Jews dealt with a Christian
theology of Judaism and a Jewish theology of Christianity; a recently
published discussion on monotheism and the trinity was held some time
ago in Europe; and, on a practical level, the National Council of Churches
and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations have prepared
guidelines for joint worship.22
The dialogue, then, for all its accomplishments on the intellectual
and especially human levels, is facing a major challenge. The historical
agenda may be losing its freshness and vitality; the theological agenda
is fraught with problems of the most serious sort, especially from
the Jewish perspective. Advocates of dialogue will have to display
a remarkable combination of creativity and caution. An interesting
decade lies ahead.

21 Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era?, ed. by Eva Fleischner (New York, 1977), p. 106. The
case for non-intervention in internal Christian theology was expressed eloquently by
Siegman in “A Decade,” p. 257.
22 See Pinchas Lapide and Jurgen Moltmann, Jewish Monotheism and Christian Trinitarian
Doctrine (Philadelphia, 1981); “Jews and Christians in Joint Worship: Some Planning
Principles and Guidelines,” Ecumenical Bulletin 44 (November-December, 1980): 36–39.

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 Jewish-Christian Relations

MISSION AND COVENANT

Perhaps the most vexing question with a direct bearing on the feasibility
of dialogue is the status of the traditional Christian desire to convert the
Jews. The point was made with exceptional vigor in a recent article in The
Christian Century: “Dialogue can never be an attempt at conversion, nor
can it occur if one party assumes an objective ultimacy or a superiority
for his or her point of view. Dialogue must be an interaction in which
each participant stands with full integrity in his or her own tradition and
is open to the depths of the truth that is in the other.”23 The last sentence
is an exaggeration (a person cannot be entirely open while standing with
full integrity in a religious tradition), and if the assumption of objective
superiority makes dialogue impossible, then most believers will find it
impossible. What is, however, indubitably true is that dialogue cannot be
an attempt at conversion; if it is, it automatically becomes disputation or
polemic, which is precisely what dialogue is intended to transcend.
What is less clear is whether dialogue is impossible with people who
run a missionary program to convert you, provided that this particular
discussion is not geared to that objective. What if they hope that you will
be converted but have no missionaries? And what if that conversionary
hope applies only to the end of days? Answers will differ, but there is
certainly something uncomfortable about religious discussions with
a partner who is working actively toward the elimination of your
faith. Consequently, the “dialogue” relationship has played a role in
a reassessment by some Christians of the applicability of the missionary
ideal to the Jewish people.
Three approaches characterize Christian attitudes on this question:
missionize everyone, including Jews; missionize everyone, especially
Jews; missionize everyone except for Jews.24 The first approach
requires no explanation. The second argues that since Jews were the
original chosen people, since Jesus was of their flesh and was originally
sent to them, and since their conversion is singled out as part of the
eschatological drama (Rom. 11:25–26), they should be the special targets
of the Christian mission. The third approach is the most recent and the
23 John Shelby Spong, “The Continuing Christian Need for Judaism,” The Christian Century,
September 26, 1979, p. 918.
24 The classification is borrowed from Harold Ditmanson’s article in Face to Face 3–4 (Fall/
Winter, 1977): 7–8.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

most interesting. No one, it is true, can reach the Father except through
Jesus (John 14:6), but Jews are already with the Father. The covenant
with the original Israel has never been abrogated (Rom. 11:28–29);
hence, there is no theological necessity for Jewish conversion, at least
not before the end of history.
This so-called double-covenant theory has played a major role in
Christian discussions of the standing of the Jewish people and the
propriety of missions to the Jews. The central text in Romans leaves
room for divergent interpretations and deserves to be quoted in full:
“As concerning the Gospel, they [the Jews] are enemies for your sakes,
but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sake. For
the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” All this text says
clearly is that the Jews are in a certain sense still chosen; it says nothing
unequivocal about Judaism. Hence, when a Christian writer says that
the Vatican II declaration “makes clear that the Jewish religion has
a continuing validity” because of its paraphrase of this Pauline passage,25
he goes beyond the evidence. On the whole, official and semi-official
Christian documents have avoided a clearcut assertion of the double-
covenant theory in a way that would ascribe anything like religious
equality to contemporary Judaism; such documents tend to remain
ambiguous or to acknowledge frankly the existence of divergent views
on this question.26 Explicit recognition that Judaism remains binding for
Jews, with its implication that Jewish conversion is not even desirable,
remains confined to a relatively small group of interfaith activists.
May Jews legitimately tell Christians that they must abandon the
belief that Christianity supersedes Judaism? One Jewish leader has
recently described Christian supersessionism as “vainglory (and) a kind
of religious arrogance that must be labeled a sin. And that sin . . . needs
to be purged from the soul of Christianity.”27 This is an exceptionally
strong statement which seems to deny any religion the right to declare
its own beliefs true and those of another religion false. As Siegman
put it, “Judaism constitutes a denial of the central Christian mystery
and its notion of salvation; it cannot at the same time demand that

25 Sheerin, “Has Interfaith a Future?” pp. 308–309.

26 Note, e.g., the statements of the World Council of Churches (1968) and the Lutheran
Commission on World Missions (1969) in Croner, pp. 79, 91.
27 Daniel Polish, “A Jewish Perspective: This Moment in Jewish-Christian Relations,”
Ecumenical Bulletin 44 (November-December, 1980): 8–9.

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 Jewish-Christian Relations

Christianity be reformulated to accommodate the ‘equality’ of Judaism.”28

Nevertheless, it is exceptionally interesting that the World Council of
Churches’ most recent draft guidelines for Jewish-Christian dialogue
discuss supersessionism under the rubric of Anti-Semitism and come
very close to the sort of affirmation that most official documents have
so far avoided:

We must be especially attentive to those traditional convictions that have

furthered antisemitic stances and attitudes on the part of Christians.
Attention should therefore be given to the following points: Judaism should
not be presented as a kind of anachronism after the coming of Christ:
the Jews are a living people, very much alive in our present time as, for
instance, the establishment of the State of Israel shows. Neither should the
impression be given that the Church has superseded the Israel of old. The
Jewish People continues to be God’s People, for God is not unfaithful to
those whom he has chosen (Rom. 11:29). As long as Christians regard Israel
only as preparation for Christianity, as long as Christians claim the validity
of God’s revelation to them by negating the validity of God’s revelation to
the Jewish People, Judaism is denied any theological validity, and it becomes
impossible to maintain a common ground for our common hope.29

Even this carefully formulated statement does not say that the
conversion of Jews is not desirable, and in a later paragraph the
document acknowledges differences among Christians concerning the
obligations to “bear witness . . . to the Jews.” It is when the discussion
shifts from the abstract level of covenant to the more concrete plane of
“witness” and mission that matters become particularly difficult for both
Christians and Jews.
Christian witness is a rather important element in most forms of
Christianity, and, in the absence of a fairly extreme position on the
covenant question, it is difficult to see why Judaism should be excluded
as the object of such witness. At the same time, not only is dialogue made
difficult by an affirmation of missionizing, but the consciences of many
Christians are troubled by the unsavory history of missionary efforts
directed at Jews. The solution has been a distinction between witness,
which is obligatory, and proselytism, which is forbidden. What is the

28 Siegman, “A Decade,” p. 256.

29 Paragraph 2.4 of the Guidelines (Ecumenical Bulletin 44 [November-December, 1980]: 30).
See note 61, below.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

difference? In the most important Catholic paper on this subject, Tomasso

Federici describes “unwarranted proselytism” as any witness or preaching
involving “a physical, moral, psychological or cultural constraint on the
Jews . . . that could . . . destroy or even diminish personal judgment,
free will, full autonomy to decide, either personal or communitarian.”
This excludes the offering of “legal, material, cultural, political, and
other advantages” and certainly rules out any form of coercion. Finally,
since conversion must involve the free religious conscience and come
only after inner distress and spiritual transformation, no organization
should be set up for the conversion of the Jews.30
Now, it is perfectly clear that the reasoning in this last sentence does
not apply to the Jews any more than it applies to any other group, and
its use in this context points up an important ambiguity in the paper.
In an early passage, Federici refers to the survival of God’s covenant
with the Jews, and he later concludes by encouraging study of the
“history and mission of Israel, . . . her election and call, her privileges
recognized in the New Testament”; nevertheless, these observations do
not appear at the heart of his argument. With the exception of a reference
to the unpleasant history of Christian mission to the Jews, the central
arguments against “unwarranted proselytism” of Jews appear to be
arguments against unwarranted proselytism of anyone. Such a position
is naturally commendable, but the impression given by Federici that
Jews have special standing in this matter appears more rhetorical than
substantive when the concrete arguments are examined.
Catholic reactions to the Federici paper have varied widely. Some
conservative figures have condemned it outright and defended the
necessity of missionizing Jews.31 While one account reports that
Federici rejected “high pressure evangelism,”32 another cites his paper
along with other Catholic statements as evidence that proselytism,
apparently meaning all missionary efforts with respect to Jews, has been
rejected.33 The truth is that some of those other statements speak of
rejecting proselytism in the context of dialogue, which is not the same
as total rejection, though one or two—particularly a 1973 declaration
by the bishops of France—do make the point quite vigorously and in
30 “Study Outline on the Mission and Witness of the Church,” SIDIC 11.3 (1978): 32.
31 The National Catholic Register, July 10, 1977.
32 Sheerin, “Has Interfaith a Future?” p. 311.
33 Swidler, “Catholic Statements on Jews,” pp. 305–306, citing Croner, pp. 7, 12, 18, 51, 64.

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a more general context. In a recent paper, Eugene Fisher attempted to

read Federici’s work in the most liberal way possible and to go beyond
it toward a position in which the permanent value of Judaism would
rule out any of the traditional forms of mission to the Jews.34
Needless to say, Protestant views reflect at least as wide a range
of opinion as those of Catholics. Back in 1968, the World Council of
Churches denounced crude missionizing (“cajolery, undue pressure or
intimidation”) and reported the belief of some Protestants that “service”
rather than “explicit words” might be the best way to testify to the
Jews. On the whole, the document recognizes the goal of conversion
quite frankly and does not renounce active missionary efforts. The
Lutheran World Federation in 1973 placed mission to the Jews on
an equal footing with mission to all other groups, while the position
of the German Evangelical Church in 1975 is a striking example of the
studied ambiguity often generated by this question: “We have now come
to understand mission and dialogue as two dimensions of one Christian
witness. . . . Mission and dialogue as descriptions of Christian witness
have an ominous sound to Jewish ears. Christians must therefore reassess
the meaning with regard to the Jews of their witness to Jesus Christ as
salvation for all mankind, the terms by which to identify their witness,
and the methods of procedure.”35
We have already seen that the most recent draft guidelines of the
World Council of Churches continue to report disagreement about
the need to witness to the Jews. The guidelines, however, do “reject
proselytism both in its gross and refined forms. This implies that all
triumphalism and every kind of manipulation are to be abrogated. We
are called upon to minimize the power dimension in all encounters with
the Jews and to speak at every level from equal to equal.” At the same
time, the guidelines say that “future work” includes “reaching a common
understanding of the nature of divine revelation and thus healing the
breach which exists between the Jewish people and the Church.” While
the precise meaning of these remarks is unclear, they are hardly likely to
allay Jewish suspicions about the persistence of missionary intentions
in an age of dialogue.
34 “Mission and Conversion in Roman Catholic History and Contemporary Debate:
The Mission to the Jews,” presented at the Kennedy Institute Trialogue, October 13,
1980.
35 Croner, pp. 81, 128–129, 148.

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Among American evangelicals, Jews continue to be considered

appropriate targets of missionary activity, although Billy Graham
noted in 1973 that he has never singled out Jews as Jews and is
opposed to “coercive proselytizing.”36 Jews for Jesus and other groups
whose raison d’être is missionizing Jews receive considerable support
from evangelical Christians. Here even Jews who hesitate most about
intervention in the internal affairs of Christianity have some mixed
feelings. Henry Siegman argues that Jews have no right to demand
that Christians abandon such missionary activity but notes that “an
active Christian mission to the Jews precludes serious dialogue.”37 Jacob
Petuchowski maintains that telling a Christian not to missionize is “an
illegitimate attempt by one faith to dictate to the other”; nevertheless,
he cannot refrain from going beyond Siegman and adding that he
would argue that such efforts are unwise and that perhaps the Jews’
conversion should be left to God.38
This issue, which is a deeply emotional one for many Jews, can
be viewed as a matter of simple self-defense. When Marc Tanenbaum
persuaded President Carter’s sister not to address a group whose purpose
was converting Jews, this was not an assertion of the “subordination
of Christianity to Judaism,” as the National Review described it in
a remarkably insensitive editorial, but a reaction to a direct spiritual
threat.39 The Jewish mandate to protect Jews from conversion is no less
a religious requirement than any Christian mandate to convert them, and,
although my basic sympathies are with the “non-interventionists,” in the
case of aggressive missionizing aimed specifically at Jews the overriding
principle of pikkuah nefesh, or danger to life (including spiritual life), may
well prevail.
Active missionaries are in any case rarely dissuaded from pursuing
their task, and the Jewish response must often take the straightforward
form of replies to missionary argument. Such exchanges run the risk of
acrimony; in fact, however, they need not be strident or disrespectful.
Several years ago, the Jewish Community Relations Council (J.C.R.C.) of
New York asked Michael Wyschogrod and me to write a booklet addressing
the central issues raised by Jews for Jesus; our fundamental objective
36 Rudin, “A Jewish Perspective,” pp. 162–163.
37 Siegman, “A Decade,” pp. 257–258.
38 “From the Viewpoint of Contemporary Judaism,” Face to Face 3–4 (Fall/ Winter, 1977): 13.
39 See National Review, June 23, 1978, p. 763.

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was to produce a work that would combine frank argumentation with

a respectful tone.40 Whether or not we succeeded is not for me to judge,
but the angry denunciation that sometimes marks the Jewish response
to this challenge is sometimes inappropriate and usually self-defeating.41
Even more recently, the New York J.C.R.C. has set up a hotline to advise
Jews faced with this problem, and a variety of Jewish organizations
have recognized the need for a low-key but carefully prepared program
to counter missionary efforts.42
The counter-missionary act which has aroused the most resentment
among Christians is a recent Israeli law which makes illegal the offering
of material inducements to convert. At the same time, several mainline
churches have supported American Jews in opposing the misleading
propaganda of various “Hebrew Christian” groups which attempt to
give the impression—at least initially—that they are simply Jews.
Finally, a leading Reform rabbi has recently suggested that Jews begin
to proselytize. Although he has carefully restricted this proposal to
“unchurched” Gentiles, the idea remains unpalatable to most non-Reform
Jews, partly because of religious principle, but also because it appears to
undercut the moral basis for Jewish opposition to Christian missionizing.
Like most issues in Jewish-Christian dialogue, the question of mission
is one in which significant progress has been made but which remains
extremely sensitive, profoundly difficult, and ultimately unresolved.

ANTISEMITISM

Condemnations of anti-Semitism are by now routine in the declarations

of most major churches. For some time, the linguistic nuances of such
statements were examined with exquisite care, so that it became a cause
celebre when Vatican II “decried” but did not “condemn” anti-Semitism,
when it avoided the word “deicide” in declaring contemporary Jews
free of responsibility for the crucifixion, and, more seriously, when it

40 See Jews and “Jewish Christianity” (New York, 1978).

41 Annette Daum, Missionary and Cult Movements: A Mini-Course for the Upper Grades in
Religious Schools (New York, 1979) is another example of a response that maintains a civil
and respectful tone.
42 The status of this problem in the late 1970s was summarized by Mark Cohen in
“Missionaries in Our Midst: The Appeal of Alternatives,” Analysis 64 (March 1978).

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refrained from any recognition of Christian guilt for Jewish suffering.

On the whole, these nagging points are no longer a problem. At least
one official Catholic statement now “condemns” anti-Semitism, and
various quasi-official or local declarations speak of Christian guilt.43
Among Protestants, the first assembly of the World Council of Churches
in 1948 denounced anti-Semitism as a sin; a 1968 statement by its
Faith and Order Commission followed the lead of Vatican II by rejecting
the ascribing of responsibility for the crucifixion to most Jewish
contemporaries of Jesus or to any Jews living today; and the latest draft
guidelines speak of an “ashamed awareness of Christian anti-Semitism.”
In the United States, even conservative churches have no hesitation
in declaring anti-Semitism an unchristian phenomenon that must be
combated.44
This, however, is not the end of the issue. It is here that the “historical”
and “theological” agendas become disturbingly, perhaps inextricably,
intertwined. Rosemary Ruether has coined what has developed into
a classic phrase in this discussion; anti-Semitism, she says, is “the left
hand of Christology.” In Alan Davies’ paraphrase, “The question of anti-
Judaism is more than a question of a few notorious Matthaean, Pauline,
and Johannine passages, but deals with the basic structure of New
Testament theology itself.” The problem, he says, is whether or not anti-
Semitism is a fundamental part of the essential Christian heritage.45
Ruether’s own view is that anti-Semitism can be purged from
Christianity only by a rather fundamental revision of Christian theology.
If she is right, then Jews participating in dialogue face a stark dilemma.
On the one hand, the right of self-defense would appear to justify
demands for such revision;46 on the other hand, Jews who ask Christians
to respect Judaism cannot at the same time demand that classic Christian

43 Swidler, “Catholic Statements on Jews,” pp. 301–302.

44 Croner, pp. 70, 82–83; Draft Guidelines 2.1; Rudin, “A Jewish Perspective,” p. 164.
45 Rosemary Ruether, “Anti-Judaism Is the Left Hand of Christology,” in Jewish-Christian
Relations, ed. by R. Heyer (New York, 1974), pp. 1–9; Ruether, Faith and Fratricide
(New York, 1974); idem, “Anti-Semitism and Christian Theology,” in Fleischner’s
Auschwitz, pp. 79–92; and Alan Davies, Anti-Semitism and the Foundations of Christianity
(New York, 1979), p. xv.
46 The classic sociological study attempting to demonstrate the connection between certain
Christian beliefs and anti-Jewish attitudes is Charles Glock and Rodney Stark, Christian
Beliefs and Anti-Semitism (New York, 1966). Note also the later, much more limited
survey by B. Cohen and A. Lacognata, A Pilot Study on Christian Beliefs and Anti-Semitism,
1976 (available in the library of the American Jewish Committee).

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beliefs be dismantled.47 Moreover, the problem cannot be easily avoided

even if Ruether is wrong, because there still remain those “few notorious
passages” in the New Testament which have undeniably bred anti-
Semitism in the past. If, for example, the Jews really said that Jesus’
blood would be on them and on their children, and if Matthew’s report
of this statement is read as a theological endorsement (Matt. 27:25),
anti-Jewish consequences could not easily be avoided.
Concerned Christians have addressed this problem in various ways.
Some are prepared to deny that such passages are binding at all; the
solution is to develop a “hermeneutic . . . that is not slavishly dependent
on accepting the New Testament in toto as the Word of God.”48 A some-
what different formulation is that though the text is divinely inspired,
on a certain level it must reflect the political and polemical concerns
of its time; nevertheless, when read as a whole, the New Testament
cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.49 Finally, there are Christians who
refuse to reject even one line of the Gospels but nevertheless argue that
no antisemitic implications need emerge.
What position should Jews take on these questions? Since the ideal
answer is clearly that Jews should not prescribe the nature of Christian
faith to their partners in dialogue, the only justification for taking
a position is, as we have seen, the need for self-defense. If, however,
that objective can reasonably be sought in more than one way, Jews,
I think, should choose the approach which requires the least intervention
in matters of Christian theology. Thus, Jews should encourage efforts
to break the link between certain New Testament passages and anti-
Jewish consequences but should avoid instructing Christians not to
believe what the Gospels report. Needless to say, Jews do not have to
become fundamentalist Christian missionaries, and the position of
Christians who have rejected certain of those “notorious passages” can
be welcomed. But Jewish preaching against the historicity of the Gospels
is not only unseemly in the context of dialogue; it is probably also unwise

47 Cf. John Oesterreicher’s reaction to Jewish support for Ruether, cited in Siegman,
“A Decade,” p. 257. For Christian denials of an inevitable link between Christology and
anti-Semitism, see Fleischner, Auschwitz, pp. 93–94, 195–197.
48 Robert Willis, “A Perennial Outrage: Anti-Semitism in the New Testament,” Christian
Century, August 19, 1970, pp. 990–992. See also note 17, above.
49 Cf. Eugene Fisher, Faith without Prejudice (New York, 1977), pp. 54–58. For a general
discussion of this issue, see also P. van Box and M. McGrath, “Perspectives: Anti-Jewish
Elements in the Liturgy,” SIDIC 10.2 (1978): 25–27.

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from a purely pragmatic standpoint. Fundamentalist Christians are not

about to reject the historicity of Matthew because Jewish ecumenists
tell them to, and all that will be accomplished is the transformation of
dialogue into polemic with all the resentment—and perhaps even anti-
Semitism —which this can generate.
The best example I have seen of a sensitive, yet vigorous approach to
these problems is the recommendations made by two Christian scholars
for changes in the Oberammergau passion play. At the request of the
Anti-Defamation League, Leonard Swidler and Gerard Sloyan produced
a commentary on the play which, with one or two exceptions, avoids
any proposal based on the rejection of the Gospel crucifixion accounts.50
For example, when dealing with the passage in Matthew wherein the
Jews say, “His blood be on us and on our children,” they do not insist on
deletion, even though that is the solution they would no doubt prefer.
Instead they suggest an alternative more palatable to the people of
Oberammergau: the crowd should say it once, as in Matthew, and not
four times, as in the play, and the choir, which now responds, “It will
come on you and on your children,” should change just one word: “It will
come on you—not on your children.”
None of this means that Jewish scholars who are convinced that
such a passage is unhistorical should censor their scholarly work. These
considerations of restraint apply only to the context of religious dialogue,
where respect for the other’s faith commitment is the essential element
that separates dialogue from disputation. There are, furthermore, certain
scholarly issues which belong under the rubric of anti-Semitism that do
not address the most sensitive matters of faith and can appropriately
be raised in dialogue. These issues were addressed by Charlotte Klein in
an excellent study of Anti-Judaism in Christian Theology,51 in which she
examined the treatment of Judaism in scholarly works used in European
seminaries and universities.
The results were profoundly discouraging. Judaism in the time of
Jesus continues to be depicted as a legalistic faith concerned primarily
with trivialities; the Jewish people in first-century Israel is described as
the Jewish religious community; and the term “late Judaism,” with its
50 A Commentary on the Oberammergau Passionspiel in regard to Its Image of Jews and Judaism
(New York, 1977). See also Swidler’s brief guidelines in Face to Face 7 (Summer, 1980):
19–20.
51 Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978; German original 1975.

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 Jewish-Christian Relations

implication that the religion came to an end with the rise of Christianity,
remains in vogue. Klein’s chapter on “Jewish Guilt in the Death of Jesus”
is especially depressing. It is not the defensible assertion that Jews were
involved in the crucifixion; it is, rather, the motives ascribed to them
and to their descendants throughout the generations for their rejection
of Jesus. This rejection allegedly results not from understandable or
even honest error but from obstinacy, the desire to remain the chosen
people, culpable blindness, and the like. Nothing in the Gospels really
requires such assertions, and Jewish indignation need not be restrained
when confronted with this sort of antisemitic pseudo-history. It is worth
noting that the 1975 Vatican guidelines specifically state that “the Old
Testament and the Jewish tradition founded upon it must not be set
against the New Testament in such a way that the former seems to
constitute a religion of only justice, fear, and legalism, with no appeal
to the love of God and neighbor.”52 Though the Pope himself violated
this guideline in the recent encyclical, Dives in Misercordia, it remains
an important statement, and the one encouraging finding in Klein’s
book is that Anglo-American scholarship displays far greater accuracy
and sensitivity on these issues.
All the ringing denunciations of anti-Semitism and progressive
reassessments of Judaism have little importance if they are confined
to an activist elite and have no resonance among ordinary Christians.
Liturgical reform and textbook revision are, therefore, key elements
in the effort to exorcise the impact of historic Christian anti-Judaism.
With respect to liturgy, the most serious problems in at least some
churches arise in connection with Holy Week in general and Good Friday
in particular, when biblical passages commemorating the crucifixion
are read. Some of these passages inevitably convey an anti-Jewish
message, and, although thoughtful proposals for retranslation, judicious
omissions, and substantial corrective commentary have been made, they
all raise serious difficulties and face considerable obstacles.53 The Good
Friday “Reproaches” hymn, which is perhaps the most disturbing single
prayer, has now been made optional for American Catholics. In 1976, the
Liturgical Commission of the Episcopal Church recommended that the
52 Croner, p. 14.
53 John Pawlikowski has presented an excellent summary of both proposals and problems,
in Fleischner’s Auschwitz, pp. 172–178. See also Face to Face 2 (Summer/Fall, 1976):
3–8.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

hymn be adopted;54 eventually, the proposal was rejected, but the very
suggestion indicates that movement on these matters is not always in
the direction that Jews would like.
On the textbook issue, there has been considerable progress, at least
in the United States. Though various problems remain, the depiction
of Jews and Judaism in both Protestant and Catholic texts has shown
marked improvement. The Pharisees are no longer simply hypocrites,
and there are some indications that Judaism has remained a living
religion despite the advent of Christianity. Since there is a movement
away from standardized texts, it is now especially important that
teachers and preachers be trained to appreciate and transmit these
changing perceptions. This is a gargantuan task, but it is crucial if
declarations about anti-Semitism are to have a significant impact in the
real world.55
The most terrible manifestation of anti-Semitism has taken place in
our own time, and the vexing question of Christian responsibility for
the Holocaust is a brooding presence hovering over all discussions of
anti-Jewish elements in Christianity. Inevitably, assessments of this
question vary widely. Some would assign primary responsibility to
the legacy of Christian teachings; others absolve Christianity with the
argument that Nazism was a neo-pagan revolt against the Christian
past; while others take a middle position. My own view is that Nazi anti-
Semitism achieved such virulent, unrestrained consequences because it
stripped away the semi-civilized rationales which had been given in the
past for persecuting Jews and liberated the deepest psychic impulses
which had been partly nurtured but partly suppressed by those rationales.
The Nazis utilized the standard political, economic, and sometimes even
religious arguments for persecution, but their central message was that
Jews were alien, demonic creatures, subhuman and superhuman at the
same time, who threatened “Aryans” with profound, almost inexpressible
terror. Such fear and hatred have probably been a significant component

54 T. A. Idinopulos, “Old Form of Anti-Judaism in the New Book of Common Prayer,”

Christian Century 93 (August 4–11, 1976): 680–684; John T. Townsend, “‘The Reproaches’
in Christian Liturgy,” Face to Face 2 (Summer/Fall, 1976): 8–11.
55 See Fisher, Faith Without Prejudice; Encounter Today 13 (1978): 111; W.C.C. Draft
Guidelines 3.3; J. Pawlikowski in Fleischner, Auschwitz, pp. 162, 171; and David Hyatt,
“The Interfaith Movement,” Judaism 27 (1978): 273. For a pessimistic comment on the
situation in France, see Encounter Today 14 (1979): 152.

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of the antisemitic psyche for centuries, but they have not been given
free rein. The persecution of political enemies, economic exploiters,
and religious deviants must still be governed by a modicum of civilized
restraint; though this restraint must have seemed invisible to the victims
of the Crusades, it reappears, however dimly, when seen through the
prism of the Holocaust. On the other hand, malevolent demons, terrifying
aliens, and malignant vermin can only be extirpated with single-minded,
ruthless ferocity.
The key question, therefore, is what role Christianity played in
strengthening the image of Jew as demon, and the answer cannot be
unequivocal. There is no doubt that the growth of such a perception of
the Jew in the late Middle Ages was intimately connected with Christian
ideas and served as an important explanation of the Jewish rejection of
Christianity. Though this belief was manifested largely in popular anti-
Semitism, there was no shortage of clergy who endorsed and propagated
it. At the same time, such a view is fundamentally alien to the central
teachings of the medieval church, which protected Jewish life and looked
forward to both the individual and the collective conversion of Jews.
Demons, let alone vermin, are not candidates for conversion. Indeed,
one could argue plausibly that it was precisely the weakening of religious
grounds for anti-Semitism in the modern period which opened the way
for their replacement by the racial, demonic justification.
In sum, the Holocaust is not a Christian phenomenon, but it must
weigh heavily on the Christian conscience. Many observers believe that
it was this unparalleled catastrophe which led to the reexamination
of Christian attitudes toward Jews and Judaism manifested in the
last few decades. Several churches have even introduced ceremonies
commemorating the Holocaust to coincide with the growing Jewish
observance of Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Day,56 and the subject is
a recurring theme in Jewish-Christian dialogues. It is a commonplace
that the Holocaust has deprived anti-Semitism of “respectability,” at least
temporarily, in what passes for civilized discourse, and it has served as
an important reservoir of sympathy for the State of Israel. Many Jews,
however, have begun to worry that this breathing space has passed, and
Christian attitudes toward Israel, though often supportive and sometimes
enthusiastic, have become a source of growing concern.

56 See Face to Face 7 (Winter, 1980): 11–14, 18–19, 17–19.

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THE STATE OF ISRAEL

For nearly two millennia, Christians pointed to the destruction of the

ancient Jewish state as proof that God had rejected the Jewish people
and replaced them with “true Israel.” In the context of such a theology,
any manifestation of Jewish nationalism would inevitably be regarded
as a defiance of the will of God, and the initial reaction of most Christians
to the Zionist movement reflected precisely such an attitude. As
Eugene Fisher has noted, however, the position of Vatican II on Jewish
responsibility for the crucifixion would appear to render such a reaction
obsolete and to leave no theological obstacle to Christian, or at least
Catholic, support of the State of Israel.57
Fisher’s logic is unassailable, and a 1973 statement by the bishops
of France declared that the conscience of the world community cannot
refuse the Jewish people ... the right and means for a political existence
among the nations.”58 Nevertheless, one wonders if the implications
of Vatican II have been fully discerned in Rome; the official guidelines
of 1975 are marked by a deafening silence concerning Israel, while
the Vatican’s failure to recognize the Jewish state remains a source
of tension in Catholic-Jewish relations. This is an issue in which it is
particularly difficult to disentangle politics and theology, but the official
reasons, which speak of the ongoing state of war and the uncertainty of
boundaries, do not carry much conviction.59
That Protestant churches would be divided about Israel is obvious and
inevitable. In 1968, the World Council of Churches (W.C.C.) confessed
its inability to reach a unanimous evaluation of the formation of the
state, which, it said, brought Jews self-assurance and security only at
the expense of injustice and suffering for Arabs.60 This, of course, is
a reservation not about borders but about the fundamental existence
of the state. The W.C.C.’s most recent draft guidelines are a major step
forward in this respect. They acknowledge an “indissoluble bond between

57 Origins 9.10 (August 16, 1979): 158–160.

58 Croner, p. 63.
59 See Marcel Jacques Dubois, “The Catholic Church and the State of Israel—After Thirty
Years,” Christian News from Israel, vol. 27, no. 2 (1979): 64. Some Catholics have argued
that Vatican contacts with Israeli officials constitute de facto recognition. De jure would
be an improvement.
60 Croner. p. 76.

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the Jewish people and the Land of Israel, which has found expression . . .
in the reality of the State of Israel. Failing to acknowledge the right of
Jews to return to the land prevents any fruitful dialogue with them.”61
Just as opposition to Israel can be based on either political or theo-
logical grounds, support for the state can also be formulated in secular
or religious language. Jews have often spoken to Christians about the
religious significance of the connection between Jews and the land, and
such discussions can have two objectives. The moderate goal is to give
Christians an appreciation of the depth and intensity of Jewish feeling on
this matter; the more ambitious goal is to persuade them that Christian
theology itself demands that Christians support this manifestation of
the ongoing, unbroken covenant between God and the Jewish people.
“The gifts of God are,” after all, “without repentance” (Rom. 11:19).
For Christians who remain impervious to such persuasion, it can
sometimes arouse resentment. One Christian, for example, was moved
to make a grotesque comparison between Jewish efforts to convert
Christians to friendship toward Israel and Christian efforts to convert
Jews to Christianity, as if being asked to abandon your faith is analogous
to being asked to revise your political opinions (even when those opinions
have a theological dimension). He later modified the statement, but the
initial reaction remains eloquent testimony to the potential for friction
in this area.62
Even when Christians endorse the theological necessity of the
State of Israel, some strange and unwelcome things can happen if the
justification for its existence is made to shift almost entirely from the
political to the theological sphere. A striking example of this phenomenon
is a 1970 statement by the Synod of the Reformed Church in Holland.
God’s covenant with Israel, it says, is still in effect, and this includes the
connection between Israel and the land. “Because of the special place

61 Guidelines 5.1. The Protestant Church of the Rhineland (see note 9, above) has recently
described the creation of the State of Israel as a “sign of God’s faithfulness to his people.”
In subsequent drafts of the W.C.C. Guidelines adopted well after the completion of this
article, this passage—and the one discussed at note 29, above—have been attenuated
to a point where they no longer retain the significance I have attributed to them. From
a Jewish perspective, the discussion of Israel is no longer a step forward and is, in fact,
quite disappointing.
62 See Christianity and Crisis, October 28 and December 23, 1974. Cf. also the remark by
Willard Oxtoby in The Christian Century, October 13, 1971, p. 1193, cited in F. Talmage,
Disputation and Dialogue (New York, 1975), p. 185.

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of the Jewish people we endorse in the present situation the right of

existence of the state of Israel.” The founding of the state took place in
an “all too human way, as is the case with practically every other state.”
But “the special place of Israel was never based on its moral qualities.”
God’s “covenant-love” is not annulled by sin. “Therefore we ought not to
dispute on moral grounds the right of the State of Israel to exist.”
The document goes on to note that because of the Jews’ special place,
the State of Israel must behave in an exemplary way—to teach the world
a new understanding of what a state is. The state’s boundaries must offer
the Jews a dwelling place, but the need to protect that dwelling place
“should not induce the Jews to make it into a nationalistic state in which
the only thing that counts is military power.” In this respect, Israel must
be better than other states. Finally, it is also called upon to exercise justice
in an exemplary way by recognizing responsibility for the Palestinian
refugees and giving Israeli Arabs de facto and not just de jure equality.63
Though Jews are inevitably pleased by a theologically oriented defense
of Israel on the part of Christians, this document demonstrates the
dangers of relying solely on theological grounds for such support; once
the burden of Israel’s existence is borne by theology alone, it becomes
seductively easy to slip into the apparently unimportant concession that
its survival is questionable on other, moral grounds. Such a concession
is, of course, devastating to Israel’s position in the eyes of anyone who
does not share the particular theological perspective of this document.
Moreover, the end of the statement is an exceptionally frank expression
of the double standard often applied to Israel. To say that Israel is called
upon to pass tests of prophetic stature is to make a demand that no
state can readily meet; to imply, as this document does, that failure to
pass these tests leaves Israel’s right to exist untouched is not only of
questionable value in the political sphere, but it is also—unfortunately—
dubious theology. When the prophets made demands, failure to meet
them had consequences. While Jewish title to the land remained in force
sub specie aeternitatis, God reserved the right to suspend the lease. In
short, this statement is destructive of Israel’s moral and political position
while providing very little theological consolation.
Christians hostile to Israel have applied a double standard in a far more
egregious fashion. Daniel Berrigan, for example, made a famous speech

63 Croner, pp. 104–105.

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after the Yom Kippur War in which he strongly implied that Jews must
behave differently from others and denounced their failure to do so with
the sort of scathing indignation appropriate only for acts of consummate
evil.64 Very recently, several hundred Christian clergy, including the head
of the human-rights commission of the National Council of Churches,
called for a reduction in U.S. aid to Israel because of alleged violations of
human rights. Now, Israel depends on U.S. aid for its very survival. Its
human-rights record is, by any standards, immensely superior to that of
its adversaries; considering the circumstances, that record is so good as
to be almost unbelievable. This Orwellian document is therefore urging
that a state with an excellent human-rights record be placed in jeopardy
in the face of a challenge from states with human-rights records ranging
from poor to terrible—in the name of human rights!65 The signatories,
of course, give the impression that Israel’s sins are sufficiently severe to
deserve comparison with those of notorious offenders, but this is a Big
Lie of proportions that would have done Goebbels proud and merely
underscores the application of a double standard.
Though the major Christian organizations have issued no statements
as disgraceful as this one, a number of recent declarations have aroused
considerable concern among Jews. The embrace of the Palestinian
cause by third-world nations has not left liberal Christians unaffected,
and the National Council of Churches has adopted a statement on the
Middle East which pursues evenhandedness to the point where perfectly
symmetrical demands are made of Israel and the P.L.O. Both must
cease acts of violence, and each must recognize the other (apparently
simultaneously); in Israel’s case, this recognition must include the Pa-
lestinian right to establish a sovereign state. The National Council of
Churches refused to single out P.L.O. terrorism or to make recognition of
Israel a precondition for any change in Israel’s policy. Even more recently,
an August, 1980, a statement by the Central Committee of the World
Council of Churches denounced Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem,
64 American Report, October 29, 1973. For Arthur Hertzberg’s response, see ibid., November
12, 1973. See also Robert Alter, “Berrigan’s Diatribe,” Commentary, February, 1974,
pp. 69–73.
65 New York Times, January 8, 1981. For Christian comments criticizing the double standard,
cf. Fleischner, Auschwitz, pp. 232–233; and Kirsch, We Christians and Jews, p. 119. On
Christian criticism of Israel, see Judith H. Banki’s excellent report, “Anti-Israel Influence
in American Churches” (1979), prepared for the Inter-religious Affairs Department of the
American Jewish Committee.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

equated the city’s importance in Christianity and Islam to its importance

in Judaism, and called on “member churches to exert through their
respective governments all pressure on Israel to withhold all action on
Jerusalem.”66
These statements have virtually no theological content, and we
have already seen that Jews have attempted to introduce a theological
dimension into the Christian approach to this issue. The central point,
however, is not a theological one. Positions of Christian religious
groups which reflect indifference or worse toward the fate of Israel
are interpreted by Jews as “indifference or even antagonism to the
survival of the Jewish people”;67 such positions suggest that, despite
protestations to the contrary, the history of Christian anti-Semitism
has not sufficiently sensitized even some sympathetic Christians to the
specter of the mass destruction of Jews.
This is a strong assertion, and it is important at this point to consider
briefly why active Jewish anti-Zionism is no longer admissible in the
mainstream of Jewish life, despite its respectable antecedents in the
first part of the century. There are various explanations, including the
Holocaust and a growing pride in Israel’s achievements, but the main
reason is the new implications of anti-Zionism created almost overnight
once the State was established. Before there was a state, the anti-Zionist
position simply said that no such state should be established; after May,
1948, active anti-Zionism meant that the existing State should cease to
exist. But the only reasonable scenario for its destruction would have
to be drenched in torrents of Jewish blood. This dilemma is illustrated
sharply in the almost pathetic hope expressed in the fiercely anti-Zionist
work of the late Satmar rabbi; Jews, he wrote, should pray that Israel be
destroyed—but not through the actions of the nations of the world.68
By this time, the critical importance of Israel to Jewish survival
extends far beyond its boundaries. So many Jews have become psycholo-
gically dependent upon the existence of the State—so many perceptions
of Jewish history, Jewish identity, indeed of Judaism itself, have been
linked to its success—that the destruction of Israel would mean not
only the mass extermination of its inhabitants but the spiritual death

66 Current Dialogue 1 (Winter 1980/81): 10.

67 Polish, “A Jewish Perspective,” p. 9.
68 Joel Teitelbaum, Sefer va-Yoel Mosheh (Brooklyn, 1981), p. 8.

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 Jewish-Christian Relations

of a majority of diaspora Jewry. This is a statement of simple fact, and

yet it gives the impression of heated, perhaps overblown rhetoric and
consequently exemplifies a serious challenge facing Jews who wish to
communicate their apprehension. Many well-intentioned listeners react
by attributing such fears to an understandable “post-Holocaust” syndrome
which must be respected but which hardly reflects objective reality. In this
case, however, the paranoiac has real enemies; ironically, it is the detached
observer who distorts the dangers by viewing them through the prism of
a seductive psychological construct which appears to diminish them.
Ultimately, then, it is the identity of the consequences of anti-Zionism
and anti-Semitism which has created a nearly universal consensus among
Jews, whatever their ideology, that protecting Israel must be one of the
crucial priorities of the Jewish people, and it is this perception which
leads to resentment and even anger at certain Christian statements on
the Middle East. A feeling of moral outrage cannot justifiably result from
a failure by Christians to develop their theology on Israel in a manner
pleasing to Jews; it can and does result from the conviction that routine
Christian denunciations of anti-Semitism are virtually meaningless
when combined with policies which, in Jewish eyes, jeopardize the
security of the State and hence the survival of the Jewish people.
This combination of opposition to anti-Semitism and espousal
of positions dangerous to Israel does not necessarily demonstrate
hypocrisy. We have already seen that non-Jews often fail to perceive the
magnitude of the danger or to recognize the link between the threat to
Israel and the threat to both Jewish lives and Jewish survival. There is
also, of course, the existence of a conflicting moral claim made in the
name of Palestinian Arab nationalism. The attractions of this claim are
enhanced by its association with the aspirations of groups who have
elicited considerable sympathy in the leadership of both the National
Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches (the third world,
victims of colonialist oppression, and the like), particularly in light of the
categories of liberation theology.69

69 See Rael Jean Isaac, “Liberal Protestants versus Israel,” Midstream 27 (October, 1981):
6–14, especially 12–13. [Addendum: My discussion of Palestinian statehood in this essay
reflects the prevailing consensus in 1983 that led supporters of Israel to regard a PLO-
governed state as an unacceptable danger. In the wake of the Oslo accords (which I
regarded at the time as a risk worth taking) and their tortuous aftermath, this consensus
no longer obtains. I wish I could say that the reasons for concern have in fact diminished.]

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

This is not the appropriate forum to argue the merits of this moral
claim in detail. Nevertheless, the moral relevance of several well-known
factors is worth noting. There is a Palestinian Arab state named Jordan,
which is somehow not accepted as a legitimate locus for the realization
of Palestinian national aspirations. Palestinian Arab nationalism was
generated in part by the Jewish immigration and has tended to define
itself, at least to the international community, only in relation to the
territory that Jews happen to control (note the lack of interest in
a separate Palestinian West Bank before 1967); that is, once Jews control
an area, it becomes a focus of the Palestinian desire for self-determination.
In a sense, then, a specific Palestinian nationalism (as distinct from
a broader Arab nationalism) originated in resistance to Jewish national
self-expression and was nurtured in the bitterness and frustration of
a refugee status artificially prolonged by Arab states—precisely because
of hostility toward Israel. The moral standing of a nationalism both
generated and defined largely by relentless animosity toward the Jewish
national presence (not to speak of the moral questions regarding the
manner in which this nationalism is being pursued) cannot be accepted
uncritically merely because it uses the terminology of self-determination.
A positive Palestinian nationalism should be able to achieve fulfillment
in Jordan (including, perhaps, much of the West Bank); the sort of
Palestinian nationalism which is now dominant, given a mini-state
in the West Bank and Gaza, will pose a mortal danger to Israel. Moral
considerations surely require that the natural tendency of decent people
to sympathize with the powerless be tempered by a reasonable assessment
of what is likely to happen should they gain power.
Let me emphasize that this argument does not mean that Jews
have the right to express righteous indignation whenever Christians
or Christian organizations criticize Israel; Jews themselves are not
always reticent in expressing disagreement with Israeli policies, and
the self-censorship practiced by some Jews in these matters can hardly
be demanded of Christians. I think, however, that a question can be
formulated which might serve as a rough criterion for a fair Jewish
reaction to Christian statements and for self-scrutiny by Christians
professing concern for Jews: “Is this position rejected by at least ninety
per cent of Israeli Jews on the grounds of national security?”
Israel is a democracy with a diverse and opinionated population;
a positive answer to this question almost surely means that the position

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 Jewish-Christian Relations

rejected is fraught with peril. Christians who find that they espouse such
a position, particularly if this occurs with any frequency, are probably
deceiving themselves about their concern for Jews; in reality, they are
prepared to face the destruction of the Jewish people (not only the State
of Israel) with relative equanimity.70 For their part, Jews can hardly
be faulted for reacting with deep disappointment when Christians
maintain such views, and the National Council of Churches’ statement
falls into this category. The usefulness of dialogue is called into question
when a major Christian body in the United States takes a stand which
jeopardizes the survival of Israel. To make matters worse, this stand
is less sympathetic than the position taken by both American public
opinion and the policy of the United States government itself. It may
be unrealistic to expect dialogue to have produced an attitude more
favorable than that of the average citizen in a given country, but if the
position of the churches is less favorable, many Jews cannot help but feel
disillusioned about the entire process of interfaith discussion.
The picture, nevertheless, is not unrelievedly bleak. Veteran inter-
faith activists such as Franklin Littell, John Oesterreicher, and the
Eckardts remain passionately devoted to the defense of Israel. For
theological reasons, many Christian fundamentalists have spoken out on
Israel’s behalf, and, although we have already seen that many Jews feel
ambivalent about this support, others have welcomed it with genuine
enthusiasm. Given the discouraging atmosphere on the Israel issue as
well as the Moral Majority’s recent efforts to shed its antisemitic image,
rejection of such support is becoming more difficult to justify, and it is
especially noteworthy that Southern Baptists were conspicuous by their
absence among the signatories of that document condemning Israel for
violating human rights.71 The irony that precisely those groups which
participate least in dialogue are the strongest supporters of Israel should
not go unnoticed, but this does not mean that dialogue has not helped
produce Christian friends of the Jewish state—some of them quite
70 After this was written, Steven E. Plaut proposed a virtually identical criterion to define
“What is ‘Anti-Israel’” (Midstream 28 [May, 1982]: 3–6).
71 See the Eckardts’ warning against relying on the theological arguments for Israel which
provide the underpinning of the evangelical position (Judaism 27 [1978]: 320). On the
other hand, support for Israel on other grounds than particularistic theology is not
unheard of among evangelicals. Cf. Carl Henry in Face to Face 3–4 (Fall/Winter, 1977):
17. See especially A. Roy Eckardt, “Toward a Secular Theology of Israel,” Christian Jewish
Relations 72 (1980): 8–20.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

influential. Israel is now inextricably linked to the spiritual and physical

survival of world Jewry, and Jews must pursue every avenue to ensure
its security. Interfaith dialogue is one such approach, and it must be
cultivated with both deep sensitivity and uncompromising vigor.

ETHICS AND PUBLIC POLICY

Religion has something to say about social issues, but precisely what
is not always clear. Wide differences on these questions exist not only
among “religious” people in general but also among members of the
same faith or even the same denomination. For interfaith dialogue, such
a situation presents opportunities and pitfalls at the same time.
In some contexts, the existence of flexibility, divergent opinions
within a single religious tradition, and overlapping views cutting
across religious lines diminishes the adversarial relationship that can
occasionally threaten the atmosphere of dialogue. In dealing with
issues such as poverty and civil rights, all parties share the objective
of maximizing social justice in an imperfect world, and discussions can
constitute a combined effort to articulate the best means of attaining
that end. It is not always clear, however, that such discussions are
religious dialogue as much as they are a consideration of proper social
policy by individuals who happen to be religious. The fundamental ethical
principles are largely shared by all decent people, and choices must be
made on the basis of calculations that are not radically different for
the person of faith and the secular humanist. In other areas of Jewish-
Christian dialogue, theological concerns can become too prominent;
here, the specifically religious dimension can become little more than
window dressing.
With some exceptions, Jewish and Christian participants in dialogue
have tended to be theologically and politically liberal. Until fairly
recently, this has made cooperation on social issues in the United States
relatively straightforward. In the 1960s, for example, the civil rights
movement was fighting for a cause whose justice was unassailable, and
Jewish religious leaders were particularly prominent in a struggle which
exemplified prophetic ideals and evoked no hesitation or ambivalence.
Things are no longer quite so simple. For reasons involving both
ethical ideals and practical self-interest, many Jews have profound

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 Jewish-Christian Relations

reservations about affirmative action quotas, and, even in less sensitive

areas, the recent conservative trend has not left Jews unaffected. Since
many Christian ecumenists have gone along with the sort of redefinition
of liberalism which requires support for quotas, it has become somewhat
more difficult to find common ground on a topic that once served as
a fruitful, noncontroversial area for interfaith cooperation. There should
surely be grounds for satisfaction that the civil rights issue has reached
a point where ethical people can legitimately disagree about key policy
questions, but from the more parochial perspective of Jewish-Christian
dialogue (and Jewish-black relations in general), unanimity has been
sacrificed on the altar of progress.
Other problems of public policy are marked by a more direct
engagement of religious interests. With respect to public school prayer,
which almost all Jews oppose, the liberal orientation of most Christian
interfaith activists creates a commonality of opinion with Jews which
does not mirror the views of the ordinary American Christian. On the
matter of aid to parochial schools, where vigorous Catholic support
means that there are deep divisions among Christians, the religiously
liberal orientation of most Jewish ecumenists creates an illusion of
greater Jewish consensus than really exists. The relative absence from
dialogue of Orthodox Jews distorts the picture, and one Catholic leader
has told me that awareness of significant Orthodox support for such aid
is important in moderating Catholic resentment toward Jews because
of this issue.72
Finally, there are the sensitive, occasionally explosive moral questions
exemplified by the abortion controversy but also including such problems
as euthanasia, homosexuality, and pornography. Here, too, the failure
of Orthodox Jews to participate actively in dialogue can lead to skewed
perceptions of what Judaism has to say about such matters. On abortion,
for example, a number of Jewish organizations concerned with interfaith
relations have declared that Jewish ethics are in essential conformity
with the Supreme Court decision allowing abortion on demand before
the last trimester. In fact, however, such a decision would have been
rejected by every Jewish authority before the twentieth century, and,

72 For a recent work dealing with a variety of social questions, see The Formation of Social
Policy in the Catholic and Jewish Traditions, ed. by Eugene Fischer and Daniel Polish (Notre
Dame, Ind., 1980).

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

while Orthodox attitudes are neither monolithic nor entirely identical

with Catholic views, they are far more restrictive than the public
perception of the “Jewish” position.
On this and related matters, an appreciation of the Orthodox stance
would contribute to a relaxation of tensions with both Catholics and
fundamentalist Protestants. In any case, developments in biology and
medicine have moved forward at such a dizzying pace that all religious
traditions must take a fresh look at an almost bewildering variety of
questions; in this context, abortion is only the proverbial “tip of the
iceberg,”73 and there is every reason to expect that such problems
will receive continuing, urgent attention from theologians.74 Though
interfaith discussions will hardly play a decisive role in this process, they
are likely to be stimulated and invigorated by confronting some of the
most complex issues facing contemporary religious ethics.

CONCLUSION

No area of Jewish-Christian relations has been left untouched by the

fundamental transformations of the last two decades. The revolution
inevitably remains incomplete, and both opponents and supporters of
the interfaith enterprise can cite abundant evidence for their respective
positions. The most straightforward achievement of increased Jewish-
Christian discussions is the least controversial; ordinary human
relationships inevitably improve in the context of regular, sympathetic
contacts. From this perspective, at least, even those with the deepest
reservations about interfaith dialogue can only wish the participants
well as they confront the theological, political, and moral dynamics of
a relationship marked by danger, challenge, and genuine promise.

73 Hyatt, “Interfaith Movement,” p. 275.

74 See “The Bio-Medical Revolution: Applying Jewish Values to Public Policy-Making,”
Analysis 62 (April, 1977).

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 REFLECTIONS ON CONVERSION
AND PROSELYTIZING IN JUDAISM
AND CHRISTIANITY

From: Studies in Jewish-Christian Relations 3 (2008): R1-R8, at

http://escholarship.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1140&context=scjr.
This is a slightly revised version of a talk given at the Presbyterian-Jewish
Consultation, October 30-November 1, 2006, Pendle Hill, PA.

Setting aside disputes regarding the State of Israel, there is no more

sensitive subject in the universe of Jewish-Christian relations than
conversionary aspirations on the part of Christians. The reasons for this
appear obvious—and in large measure they are—but they are also marked
by layers of complexity that we would do well to examine, particularly
in light of the controversy engendered by the revised Tridentine mass
issued by Pope Benedict XVI and a full page advertisement in the New
York Times in which prominent evangelical Christians advocated the
targeted proselytizing of Jews.1
Contemporary discussions of this issue usually take for granted that
Judaism in principle eschews efforts to proselytize others. Thus, a locus
classicus in the Talmud in effect instructs Jews approached by a gentile
expressing an interest in conversion to suggest that the prospective
convert urgently seek out a psychiatrist. Why, after all, would anyone in
his or her right mind join a defeated and persecuted people? Only one
who persists despite this effort at discouragement is eligible to pursue
the goal of becoming a Jew.2
Nonetheless, some see this passage not as an expression of an anti-
proselytizing principle but as the reaction of Jews who had lost the
contest for pagan adherents and decided to make a virtue of their failure.
The argument for the position that there were widespread Jewish efforts

1 The New York Times, March 28, 2008, p. A15. For my reaction to the new text of the mass,
see “Let’s Clarify the Purpose of Interfaith Dialogue,” The Jerusalem Post, Feb. 16, 2008.
2 Babylonian Talmud Yevamot 47a.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

in the Graeco-Roman world to attract converts rests upon the presence of

“God-fearing” semi-proselytes throughout that world as well as explicit or
near-explicit assertions in several texts. In this forum, the most relevant
of those texts is the assertion in Matthew (23:15) that Pharisees compass
land and sea to make one proselyte. While the question of ancient Jewish
proselytizing remains a lively matter of dispute, it is worth noting the
obvious. Whether or not one endorses the plural form “Judaisms” in vogue
among some historians, it is evident that ancient Jewish attitudes toward
a host of religious questions ranged across a very large spectrum, so that
indications of both proselytizing activity and opposition or indifference
to such activity do not constitute a puzzling contradiction. Unless there
are independent grounds to conclude that conflicting evidence about this
issue testifies to historical development, such evidence can easily be read
as a reflection of very different approaches to proselytizing that coexisted
among Jews in the Hellenistic-Roman-rabbinic period.3
As Judaism moved into the Middle Ages, it is evident that an explicit
rabbinic text would carry more weight than evidence from Matthew or
Graeco-Roman artifacts and literature. Jewish reluctance to proselytize
was of course greatly reinforced by the attendant dangers of such efforts
in both the Christian and the Muslim worlds. Setting aside the danger, the
very fact that Jews were a small, relatively powerless minority rendered
the idea that they could win over large numbers of converts unrealistic.
Beyond all this, there was, I think, a fascinating dialectic that played
itself out in the Jewish psyche. To become a Jew is to join a people, not
just a faith. The concept of Jewish chosenness, of the special sanctity
of Israel as a collective, rendered the objective of a mass conversion
to Judaism problematic. Even in the eschaton, all the nations may call
upon God together in a clear voice (Zephaniah 3:9), but they remain
discrete nations. In Jewish eyes, those nations would presumably follow
the Noahide code, binding in historical times as well as at the end of
days, which defines God’s expectations of non-Jews in a manner that
keeps them separate from Israel. Since obedience to this code provides
eternal felicity to its non-Jewish adherents, the drive to convert gentiles
to Judaism is diminished even further.

3 For a book-length discussion of this issue arguing that Jews did not proselytize before
the second century C.E., see Martin Goodman, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the
Religious History of the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1994).

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 Reflections on Conversion and Proselytizing in Judaism and Christianity

At the same time, it is far from clear that medieval Jews refrained
from missionizing only or even primarily because they saw another
route to salvation for gentiles. Given the realities of the medieval
Jewish condition, many Jews so resented their persecutors that they
had no interest in their salvation; rather, they looked forward to their
damnation. While Hitler maintains so unique a position in the history
of Judaeophobia that analogies can be dangerous and even offensive, it
is nonetheless instructive to consider how Jews would have reacted in
the last months of World War II to the prospect of a suddenly repentant
Hitler who will enter the World to Come as a righteous man. Distasteful
as this analogy is, it provides a graphic means of grasping the psychology
of people who yearned for the moment when God would destroy their
oppressors and consign them to damnation.4
Complicating the issue further is the relationship between
Christianity and the requirements of the Noahide code. David Novak
has written with considerable plausibility that a case can be made that
Christianity is a quintessential fulfillment of that code since it not
only establishes the obligatory moral framework but even meets the
Maimonidean requirement that non-Jews observe the code out of belief
that it is a product of divine revelation.5 Nonetheless, this position runs
afoul of a theological point that was at the forefront of the medieval
Jewish psyche, to wit, the status of worship directed at Jesus of Nazareth
as a hypostasis of the triune God. Almost all medieval Jews saw this as
a form of avodah zarah, or worship of an entity other than God, which
prima facie violated one of the seven Noahide commandments. During
the Paris Disputation of 1240, R. Yehiel of Paris displayed considerable
unease when he was more or less forced to imply in response to a direct
4 Some forms of Christianity, at least today, take a position on forgiveness of enemies
that can be quite jarring to Jews. During a break at an international meeting in Lower
Manhattan between Catholic clergy, primarily cardinals, and Orthodox Jews arranged
by the World Jewish Congress, the group walked to ground zero, where Cardinal
Lustiger of France recited a spontaneous prayer. I was stunned when I heard the words,
“Pardonnez les assassins.” I cannot imagine a Jew who would share this sentiment,
particularly in light of the fact that the 9/11 murderers left themselves no opportunity
to repent. My discomfiture was enhanced later in the day when another cardinal spoke
of how we can learn from a Jewish Holocaust survivor who converted to Catholicism
and declared that she forgives those who tormented her in the camps.
5 “Mitsvah,” in Christianity in Jewish Terms, ed. by Tikva Frymer-Kensky, David Novak,
Peter Ochs, David Fox Sandmel, and Michael Signer (Boulder, Colorado, and Oxford,
2000), p. 118.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

question that Christians could be saved through their own faith; other
medieval Jews unhesitatingly answered this question in the negative.6
In sum, then, Jews in the Christian world refrained from missionizing
as a result of an extraordinarily complex constellation of theological,
historical, and psychological considerations not always consistent with
one another: The Jewish people should retain its uniqueness even in
eschatological times; non-Jews have an avenue of salvation without
joining that people (though that avenue is probably not Christianity);
missionizing was dangerous; its chances of meeting with significant
success were minuscule; and the persecutors of Israel should receive their
just punishment for all that they had done.
Despite all this, the impulse to have Christians recognize the truth
was not absent from the medieval Jewish psyche. Members of a minority
regularly mocked for their religious error and periodically pressured to
renounce it enjoyed a sense of validation and enormous satisfaction when
adherents of the majority faith recognized their own error. While this is
a point whose psychological validity is almost self-evident, here is a text
from the Nizzahon Vetus, a late-thirteenth-century Northern European
polemic that I edited several decades ago, that spells it out:

With regard to their questioning us as to whether there are proselytes

among us, they ask this question to their shame and to the shame of their
faith. After all, one should not be surprised at the bad deeds of an evil Jew
who becomes an apostate, because his motives are to enable himself to
eat all that his heart desires, to give pleasure to his flesh with wine and
fornication, to remove from himself the yoke of the kingdom of heaven so
that he should fear nothing, to free himself from all the commandments,
cleave to sin, and concern himself with worldly pleasures. But the situation
is different with regard to proselytes who converted to Judaism and thus
went of their own free will from freedom to slavery, from light to darkness.
If the proselyte is a man, then he knows that he must wound himself by
removing his foreskin through circumcision, that he must exile himself from
place to place, that he must deprive himself of worldly good and fear for his
life from the external threat of being killed by the uncircumcised, and that
he will lack many things that his heart desires; similarly, a woman proselyte
also separates herself from all pleasures. And despite all this, they come to

6 See my discussion in “On the Image and Destiny of Gentiles in Ashkenazic Polemical
Literature” (in Hebrew), in Facing the Cross: The Persecutions of 1096 in History and
Historiography, ed. by Yom Tov Assis et al. (Jerusalem, 2000), pp. 80–81 [translation in this
volume].

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 Reflections on Conversion and Proselytizing in Judaism and Christianity

take refuge under the wing of the divine presence. It is evident that they
would not do this unless they knew for certain that their faith is without
foundation and that it is all a lie, vanity, and emptiness. Consequently, you
should be ashamed when you mention the matter of proselytes.7

In this environment, a classic Talmudic commentary cites a medieval

French proselyte’s interpretation of a rabbinic text declaring converts
to be as damaging to Israel as a serious disease. The reason for this, says
the proselyte, is that converts observe the Torah with such care that they
put born Jews to shame.8
It is a matter of no small interest that in addressing the question
of the permissibility of teaching Torah to non-Jews, Maimonides took
a stringent position with respect to Muslims—even though he saw
them as exemplary monotheists—and a more lenient one with respect
to Christians, even though he saw them as worshippers of avodah zarah.
The reason he provides is that unlike Muslims, who consider the text of
the Hebrew Bible unreliable, Christians accept the accuracy of that text
and are therefore more susceptible to being persuaded of the true faith
if they can be made to understand the correct meaning of the Bible.9
I am not prepared to say that Maimonides advocated a Jewish mission
to Christians, but he clearly hoped that in sporadic, personal encounters,
Jews might be able to demonstrate the superiority of their faith.
Similarly, I am convinced that in the streets of medieval Christian
Europe, some Jews challenged their Christian neighbors with arguments
designed to prove the truth of Judaism, though here too these contacts
do not add up to a Jewish mission or near-mission. The motive was
primarily to reinforce Jewish morale, not to create a cadre of proselytes.10
This motive also plays a role in moderating my earlier observation about
the desire of some medieval Jews for the damnation and destruction of

7 The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of the Nizzahon
Vetus with an Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Philadelphia, 1979; softcover
edition, Northvale, New Jersey and London, 1996), #211, English section, pp. 206–207.
I commented on this passage in “Jacob Katz on Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages,”
in The Pride of Jacob: Essays on Jacob Katz and his Work, ed. by Jay M. Harris (Cambridge,
Mass., 2002), pp. 52–54.
8 Tosafot to Qiddushin 70b, s.v. qashim gerim.
9 Teshuvot ha-Rambam, ed. by Joshua Blau (Jerusalem, 1989), no. 149.
10 See the argument in my “Mission to the Jews and Jewish-Christian Contacts in the
Polemical Literature of the High Middle Ages,” American Historical Review 91 (1986):
576–591.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

their oppressors. Such a desire conflicts with the hope for eschatological
vindication, a hope that provides its full measure of psychological benefit
only if the deniers of Judaism acknowledge their error at the end of days
and proclaim, in the words of the High Holiday liturgy, “The Lord God of
Israel is King, and his kingship rules over all.”11
Jacob Katz argued that by the sixteenth century, the assertiveness
that marked medieval Jewish attitudes toward Christianity, particularly
in Northern Europe, began to wane, and that this transformation also
affected attitudes toward converts and conversion. The Jewish community
had turned inward and no longer sought to impress the Christian
world with its ability to attract outsiders. But as Jews moved toward
modernity, other considerations emerged. Significant authorities began
to affirm that Christianity is not considered avodah zarah when practiced
by non-Jews. Thus, the likelihood that Christians could attain salvation
increased exponentially. For Moses Mendelssohn, religious toleration
became an almost transcendent ideal, and he famously expressed
dissatisfaction with Maimonides’ requirement that the Noahide Code
confers salvation only upon those who accept it as revelation.12 R. Israel
Lipschutz, an important nineteenth-century commentator on the
Mishnah, asserted as an almost self-evident truth that God would not
fail to provide heavenly reward to Johannes Reuchlin for his defense of
Jewish books against those who would have destroyed them.13
If Christians can attain salvation as Christians, the motive for
a Jewish mission is markedly diminished. In modern times, this is
often taken for granted as the reason why Jews have refrained from
proselytizing. In other words, Jewish opposition to mission is a function
of a deeply held principle recognizing the salvific potential of other
religions. As we have seen, the history of Jewish attitudes regarding
this question is far more complicated, but there is an element of truth

11 For a discussion of the scholarly debate about these matters, see my “On the Image and
Destiny of Gentiles in Ashkenazic Polemical Literature,” pp. 74–91. Several participants
in that debate also pointed to a medieval hymn in the High Holiday liturgy that describes
in recurrent, celebratory language how all the world’s inhabitants will gather to worship
the true God. For an English translation of this hymn, see, for example, The Complete
Artscroll Machzor: Rosh Hashanah (New York, 1986), pp. 495, 497.
12 For a translation and discussion of the relevant passage, see, for example, Steven
Schwarzchild, “Do Noachides Have to Believe in Revelation?” in The Pursuit of the Ideal,
ed. by Menachem Kellner (Albany, 1990), p. 36.
13 Tiferet Yisrael to Avot 3:14 (Boaz #1).

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 Reflections on Conversion and Proselytizing in Judaism and Christianity

in this assertion even with respect to the pre-modern period. As Allen

Friedman has put it in an oral communication, medieval Christians and
Muslims did not expect to meet anyone who was not a co-religionist in
heaven; even Jews with a restrictive view of salvation expected to meet
a few righteous gentiles.
Thus far, I have addressed the views of Jews in a traditional society
and their Orthodox successors in modern times. It goes without
saying that almost all non-Orthodox Jews maintain that Christianity
provides its adherents with the ability to find favor in the eyes of God,
and those non-Orthodox Jews who believe in an afterlife affirm that
good Christians have a portion in the World to Come. For such Jews,
proselytizing is a symptom of an intolerant, even immoral theology
of exclusion. While Reform Judaism has, after much soul-searching,
affirmed the desirability of outreach to non-Jews with the hope of
attracting them to Judaism, these efforts are restricted to “unchurched”
gentiles or—sometimes—to Christians who have married or plan
to marry Jews. Committed Christians remaining within their own
community remain beyond the scope of such initiatives for reasons not
only of pragmatism but of principle.
Before attempting to assess how Jewish attitudes toward
missionizing may affect current interactions between Christians and
Jews, we need to turn, however briefly, to historic Christian approaches
toward missionary activity directed at Jews. It is hardly necessary to
say that classical Christianity strove to spread the good news and that
Jews were not excluded as objects of this effort. At the same time,
a theology developed that granted Jews special, even unique toleration
both because they were seen as witnesses to the truth of Christianity
and because Romans 11, however one reads it, speaks of their continued
separate existence when the fullness of the nations arrives.14 Thus,
although it was clearly desirable for individual Jews to save themselves
through conversion, systematic efforts to convert large numbers of Jews
were rare before the thirteenth century. An article on Jewish conversion
in thirteenth-century England in a recent issue of Speculum asserts that
even at this relatively late date, Robert Grosseteste “view[ed] Jewish

14 For a detailed analysis of Christian readings of this difficult chapter, see Jeremy Cohen,
“The Mystery of Israel’s Salvation: Romans 11:25–26 in Patristic and Medieval Exegesis,”
Harvard Theological Review 98 (2005): 247–281.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

conversion as a consequence of the end of history rather than as

a current possibility or even a desire.”15
Though the vision of Jewish conversion at the end of days persisted,
the thirteenth-century saw the exponential growth of efforts to convert
the Jews en masse. As time passed, some of these efforts developed
an eschatological perspective linked to the belief that Jewish conversion
must precede the imminent end of days, while others resulted from the
desire to establish a uniformly Christian Europe. The earlier absence
of conversionary programs does not bespeak a strong interest in the
welfare of Jewish souls, and I see little indication that the primary
motive of the new policy was a sudden concern for the fate of Jews who
would otherwise be condemned to hellfire, though some missionaries
undoubtedly took satisfaction in the benefit that they brought to the
objects of their ministry. The treatment of new Christians in this world
certainly left much to be desired. They were sometimes deprived of their
property, the conditions in the halfway houses for converts were often
lamentable, and other efforts to meet the needs of individuals removed
from their families and support systems were sporadic and generally
inadequate.16
When converts were suspected of judaizing in late-medieval-and-early-
modern Iberia, they were of course subjected to terrible consequences.
Here we confront the logic of imposing one’s faith on an unwilling other
in its most acute form, since the torments inflicted by the Inquisition
were imposed at least in part for the sake of the immortal souls of the
unfortunate judaizers. But the souls of unconverted Jews are presumably
just as destined to damnation as those of insincere converts, so that as
a matter of cold logic the policies of the Inquisition could just as well
have been applied to the former. But they were not. The tradition of
toleration, even in an age of expulsions and intense missionary pressures,
maintained some modicum of its original standing.17
And so we return to modern and contemporary times. The question
of the propriety of a Christian mission directed at Jews depends first of

15 Ruth Nisse, “‘Your name will no longer be Asenath’: Apocrypha, Anti-martyrdom, and
Jewish Conversion in Thirteenth-Century England,” Speculum 81 (2006): 738–739.
16 See, for example, Robert C. Stacey, “The Conversion of Jews to Christianity in thirteenth-
century England,” Speculum 67 (1992): 263–283.
17 For a discussion of both elements constituting the tension in the Church’s position, see
Kenneth Stow, Alienated Minority (Cambridge, Mass. And London, 1992), pp. 242–273.

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 Reflections on Conversion and Proselytizing in Judaism and Christianity

all on the underlying theology of salvation maintained by the Christian

group in question. Such theologies range across a broad spectrum:
• Jews, like all other non-Christians, are condemned to eternal
hellfire.
• Non-Christians, including Jews, are at a distinct disadvantage in
the struggle for salvation, but such salvation is not ruled out.18
• Jews, uniquely among adherents of non-Christian religions, can
be saved no less readily than Christians because they are already
with the Father.
• Salvation is readily available to all good people irrespective of
religion.
Even the last two positions do not in themselves rule out proselytizing
since spreading the good news could be desirable or obligatory because
of the inherent value of ultimate truth without reference to the eternal
destiny of the non-Christian. Still, the first two positions, and especially
the harsher of the two, greatly strengthen the argument for an active
mission.
How then does a Jew, or at least this Jew, respond to such an argument?
As long ago as 1983, I expressed strong opposition to Jewish efforts to
instruct Christians about what to believe regarding their own religion,
and I have repeated this position on numerous subsequent occasions.
I confessed, however, that with respect to missionizing, “even Jews who
hesitate most about intervention in the internal affairs of Christianity
have some mixed feelings.” I went on to say that “the Jewish mandate
to protect Jews from conversion is no less a religious requirement
than any Christian mandate to convert them, and, although my basic
sympathies are with the ‘non-interventionists,’ in the case of aggressive
missionizing aimed specifically at Jews, the overriding principle of
pikkuah nefesh, or preventing danger to life (including spiritual life), may
well prevail.”19 In short, if I could persuade a Christian uncertain of his or
her position regarding mission to the Jews that proper Christian belief

18 This is the position expressed in the controversial Catholic document Dominus Iesus.
See my analysis in “Dominus Iesus and the Jews,” America 185:7 (September 17, 2001):
7–12, also available at http://www.bc.edu/research/cjl/meta-elements/texts/cjrelations/
resources/articles/berger.htm. Reprinted in Sic et Non: Encountering Dominus Iesus, ed. by
Stephen J. Pope and Charles C. Hefling (New York, 2002), pp. 39–46.
19 “Jewish-Christian Relations: A Jewish Perspective,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 20
(1983): 17–18.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

should affirm the possibility of salvation for unconverted Jews, I would

try to do this.
Nonetheless, I do not regard honest advocates of proselytizing who
adhere to the harshest position regarding Jewish salvation as evil in any
sense. Thus, I take the position that someone who has declared war on
me and my people is nonetheless a fine person whom I can embrace as a
friend in other contexts. There is, of course, an emotional tension in this
position, and I ask myself whether an argument for Jewish exceptionalism
can be formulated that does not impinge on Christian doctrine. I think it
possible that this question can be answered in the affirmative. Christians
in the modern world, including those with exclusivist views of salvation,
definitively reject coercive methods, whether physical or economic, to
enforce conformity to Christian belief and practice, and they do this not
only because such methods would be ineffective but because they abhor
them in principle. This appears to mean that even saving another’s soul
does not outweigh all competing considerations. One who refrains from
religious coercion recognizes that the apparently transcendent benefit
does not outweigh the harm done to the coercer’s moral personality, to
that of his or her collective, or to civil society as a whole, not to speak of
the immediate suffering of the presumed beneficiary.
In light of these considerations, we are now in a position to ask if
there is any moral harm inflicted by non-coercive proselytizing. It can
certainly damage, even poison, intergroup relations, and it renders
respectful dialogue about religious matters next to impossible. These
concerns apply to proselytizing directed at any group; the question
is whether they are serious enough to set aside the salvific advantage
of conversion to Christianity. At the very least, they may persuade
Christians who believe that the other party’s salvation is not at stake to
eschew active missionizing.
In dealing with Jews, the moral objections to conversionary efforts
increase exponentially. First, even in an open society, there is a tinge of
pressure, if not genuine coercion, when members of a majority religion
carry out sustained campaigns to convince the minority to abandon its
faith. In 1988, the New York Times published a letter in which I objected
to their accepting advertisements from “Jews for Jesus” containing
biblical prooftexts for Christian doctrines. Setting aside the well-
known issue of the ethically objectionable misappropriation of Jewish
symbols, the letter argued that publishing such religious polemic puts

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 Reflections on Conversion and Proselytizing in Judaism and Christianity

a Jewish respondent in an untenable position. Jews would either have

to explain in a counter-ad why the verses in question cannot legitimately
be understood christologically, which “would pollute the atmosphere of
interfaith relations and create concrete dangers for the Jewish minority,”
or they would have to remain silent, thus accepting “a quasi-medieval
position of being bombarded by public attacks on their faith without
opportunity for candid response.”20
Second, the history of Christian treatment of Jews is genuinely
relevant to this moral calculus. The Jewish community reacts to missionary
efforts by Christians through the prism of crusades, Inquisition, blood
libels, accusations of host desecration and well poisoning, depictions of
Jews as instruments of the devil, and assorted massacres. This reaction
is not merely understandable; it is thoroughly legitimate. The Jewish
people managed to survive these religiously motivated efforts to destroy
it, but contemporary efforts to wipe it out by kinder means are tainted
by this history. Like it or not, the Christian missionary to the Jews is
continuing the work of Count Emicho, Vincent Ferrer, Torquemada, and
Chmielnicki. “Jews for Jesus” can proclaim as loudly and as often as they
wish that these persecutors of Jews were not Christians, but there is
no avoiding the fact that they acted and were perceived as acting in the
name of Christianity. Even if proselytizing other groups is appropriate,
proselytizing Jews is arguably not.
Let me end more softly by returning to my anti-interventionist
mode. In a contemporary context, it is a matter of the first importance
to recognize that belief in eschatological verification is very different from
mission. I have made this point in several essays, but it bears repetition
here. Participants in dialogue often affirm that even the assertion that
your faith will be vindicated at the end of days constitutes morally
objectionable triumphalism. I regard this position as itself morally
objectionable. Both Jews and Christians are entitled to believe that their
respective religions are true in a deep and uncompromising sense, and
that this truth will become evident to all the world in the fullness of time.

20 “Jews for Jesus Ad Poses Painful Choices,” The New York Times, January 9, 1988, p. 26.

— 377 —
 ON DOMINUS IESUS AND THE JEWS

From: America 185:7 (September 17, 2001): 7–12.

The Declaration Dominus Iesus, issued in September 2000 by the

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, aroused deep concern among
many Jews and not a few Catholics. Let me first survey the specific areas
of concern, proceed to address the question of whether or not Jews can
plausibly be said to lie outside the effective scope of the document, and
finally express some personal views about the propriety or impropriety
of the objections that have been raised and examine the implications for
Jewish-Catholic dialogue.
Jewish criticisms of Dominus Iesus have focused on several central
points. The declaration maintains that the salvific grace of God is
given only by means of Jesus and the Church. Though “individual non-
Christians” can attain this grace in a manner that remains difficult
to define, it is a certainty that the process cannot take place without
“a mysterious relationship with the Church.” This appears to mean that
other religions, presumably including Judaism, have no independent
salvific power. The text goes on to emphasize that although “followers of
other religions can receive divine grace, . . . objectively speaking [emphasis
in the original] they are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with
those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation.”
Thus, Jews, if they are included in this assertion, are apparently far less
likely to be saved than Catholics.
Moreover, interreligious dialogue is described as part of the
“evangelizing mission” of the Church, “just one of the actions of the
Church in her mission ad gentes” (no. 22). The declaration goes on to
emphasize in this context that though “equality . . . is a presupposition

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 On Dominus Iesus and the Jews

of interreligious dialogue, [it] refers to the equal personal dignity of the

parties in dialogue, not to doctrinal content” (no. 22). For many Jews, the
denial of doctrinal equality is objectionable, even deeply objectionable,
in and of itself, and the ascription of evangelical intent to the dialogue
appears to be a dagger thrust into its very heart.
The most comprehensive approach to neutralizing these objections
is the assertion that Jews, who received the initial divine revelation
and entered into a covenant with God before the rise of Christianity,
are sui generis. Not only was Dominus Iesus not formulated with Jews
in mind; Jews, we are sometimes told, are entirely excluded from the
purview of its controversial assertions.
I do not find this position plausible.
To begin with, the declaration contains one explicit reference to
Jews, and it comes in the section entitled “Unicity and Universality
of the Salvific Mystery of Jesus Christ,” a title almost identical with
the subtitle of the document as a whole. “It was,” declares Dominus
Iesus, “in the awarenesss of the one universal gift of salvation offered
by the Father through Jesus Christ in the Spirit (cf. Eph 1:3–14),
that the first Christians encountered the Jewish people, showing
them the fulfilllment of salvation that went beyond the Law and, in
the same awareness, they confronted the pagan world of their time,
which aspired to salvation through a plurality of saviours” (no. 13). The
following passages make it crystal clear that this encounter with the
Jews is to be seen in the context of the firm belief that “the universal
salvific will of the One and triune God is offered and accomplished once
for all in the mystery of the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the
Son of God” (no. 14).
It is almost superfluous to pursue the argument further. Though
one short section, which declares “the canonical books of the Old and
New Testament” fundamentally different from the sacred writings of
other religions, clearly places Judaism and Christianity in the same
category, it needs to be stressed that the central theme of the entire
declaration, underscored on virtually every page, is that salvation comes
in only one essential fashion for all humanity, and that is through the
triune God of Christianity and his embodied Word. To suggest that
Jews, who reject belief in both trinity and incarnation, attain salvation
outside this otherwise universal system is to render the document
virtually incoherent.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

The principal author of Dominus Iesus is Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.

Last year on December 29th, the Cardinal wrote a conciliatory piece
in L’Osservatore Romano emphasizing that “the faith witnessed by the
Jewish Bible” is special to Christians because it is the foundation of their
own; consequently, the dialogue with Jews takes place on a different
level from all others. The article appeals to this special relationship to
assert that the Nazis “tried to strike the Christian faith at its Abrahamic
roots in the Jewish people.” As a Jewish observer has pointed out, this
is a deeply objectionable effort to transform the Final Solution into
a primarily anti-Christian campaign, but it is peripheral to our main
concerns. The key point is that Cardinal Ratzinger’s affirmation of
a unique Jewish-Christian relationship, which also includes the prayer
that the paths of Jews and Christians will eventually converge, in no way
contradicts of even modifies the unflinching message of Dominus Iesus.
To understand the Cardinal’s position more clearly, we need to look at
his other writings about Jews and Judaism, collected in a slim volume
entitled Many Religions—One Covenant.1
In these essays, he speaks of reconciliation, emphasizes the ongoing
role of the Jewish people, and defends the value of the Hebrew Bible. It
is clear, however, that he understands these positions as a rejection of
the quasi-Marcionite position that the Hebrew Bible and its God embody
reprehensible moral and religious qualities. On the contrary, argues
the Cardinal, the God of the Hebrew Bible is the same as that of the New
Testament, and the Law of the Hebrew Bible, seen through the prism of the
new covenant, does not really stand in conflict with it. But all this is simply
classic, pre-modern Christian doctrine recast in a spirit of friendship.
“The Sinai covenant,” writes Cardinal Ratzinger, “is indeed superseded.
But once what was provisional in it has been swept away we see what is
truly definitive in it . . . . The New Covenant, which becomes clearer and
clearer as the history of Israel unfolds . . . fulfills the dynamic expectation
found in [the Sinai covenant].”2 And in another formulation, “All cultic
ordinances of the Old Testament are seen to be taken up into [Jesus’]
death and brought to their deepest meaning . . . . The universalizing of
the Torah by Jesus . . . preserves the unity of cult and ethos . . . . The
entire cult is bound together in the Cross, indeed, for the first time has

1 San Francisco, 1999.

2 Pp. 70–71.

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 On Dominus Iesus and the Jews

become fully real.”3 Cardinal Ratzinger, then, who has also declared that
despite Israel’s special mission at this stage of history, “we wait for the
instant in which Israel will say yes to Christ,”4 is a supersessionist.
At this point, we need to confront the real question, to wit, is there
anything objectionable about this position? In a dialogical environment
in which the term “supersessionism” has been turned into an epithet by
both Jews and Christians, this may appear to be a puzzling question. We
need to distinguish, however, between two forms of supersessionism,
and in my view Jews have absolutely no right to object to the form
endorsed by Cardinal Ratzinger. There is nothing in the core beliefs of
Christianity that requires the sort of supersessionism that sees Judaism
as spiritually arid, as an expression of narrow, petty legalism pursued in
the service of a vengeful God and eventually replaced by a vital religion
of universal love. Such a depiction is anti-Jewish, even antisemitic. But
Cardinal Ratzinger never describes Judaism in such a fashion. On the
contrary, he sees believing Jews as witnesses through their observance
of Torah to the commitment to God’s will, to the establishment of his
kingdom even in the pre-messianic world, and to faith in a wholly just
world after the ultimate redemption.5 This understanding of Jews as
a witness people is very different from the original Augustinian version
in which Jews testified to Christian truth through their validation of the
Hebrew Bible and their interminable suffering in exile.
For Jews to denounce this sort of supersessionism as morally wrong
and disqualifying in the context of dialogue is to turn dialogue into a novel
form of religious intimidation. As the pre-eminent Orthodox rabbinical
authority Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik understood very well, such
a position is pragmatically dangerous for Jews, who become vulnerable
to reciprocal demands for theological reform of Judaism, and it is even
morally wrong. To illustrate the point from the perspective of Orthodox
Judaism, I will not shrink from mobilizing the most telling illustration.
The cardinal theological sin in Judaism is avodah zarah, literally
“foreign worship.” I became embroiled in a controversy several years ago
when I carelessly used the usual translation “idolatry,” which is in fact
sloppy and misleading in our context. Properly understood, avodah zarah

3 P. 41.
4 National Catholic Reporter, Oct. 6, 2000.
5 Many Religions—One Covenant, pp. 104–105.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

is the formal recognition or worship as God of an entity that is in fact not

God. For Jews, the worship of Jesus of Nazareth as God incarnate falls
within this definition. Because of the monotheistic, non-pagan character
of Christianity, many Jewish authorities denied that worship of Jesus is
sinful for non-Jews, though many others did not endorse this exemption.
Now, let us assume that I respect the Christian religion, as I do. Let us
assume further that I respect believing Christians, as I do, for qualities that
emerge precisely out of their Christian faith. But I believe that the worship
of Jesus as God is a serious religious error displeasing to God even if the
worshipper is a non-Jew, and that at the end of days Christians will come to
recognize this. Is this belief immoral? Does it disqualify me as a participant
in dialogue? Does it entitle a Christian to denounce me for adhering to
a teaching of contempt? I hope the answer to these questions is “no.” If
it is “yes,” then interfaith dialogue is destructive of traditional Judaism
and must be abandoned forthwith. We would face a remarkable paradox.
Precisely because of its striving for interfaith respect and understanding,
dialogue would become an instrument of religious imperialism.
Once I take this position, I must extend it to Christians as well. As
long as Christians do not vilify Judaism and Jews in the manner that
I described earlier, they have every right to assert that Judaism errs
about religious questions of the most central importance, that equality
in dialogue does not mean the equal standing of the parties’ religious
doctrines, that at the end of days Jews will recognize the divinity of
Jesus, even that salvation is much more difficult for one who stands
outside the Catholic Church. If I were to criticize Cardinal Ratzinger for
holding these views, I would be applying an egregious double standard.
I am not unmindful of the fact that these doctrines, unlike comparable
ones in Judaism, have served as a basis for persecution through the
centuries. Nonetheless, once a Christian has explicitly severed the link
between such beliefs and anti-Jewish attitudes and behavior, one cannot
legitimately demand that he or she abandon them.
We are left, however, with the profoundly troubling passage about
mission as a fundamental component of inter-religious dialogue. Is it
possible that at least this assertion does not apply to Jews? Once again
the answer must be negative. Here too the language of the declaration
is thoroughly universal. In the very paragraph describing dialogue as
an expression of mission, we read that “the Church, guided by charity
and respect for freedom, must be primarily committed to proclaiming to

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 On Dominus Iesus and the Jews

all people the truth definitively revealed to the Lord, and to announcing
the necessity of conversion to Jesus Christ and of adherence to the
Church through baptism and the other sacraments in order to participate
fully in communion with God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” (no. 22).
To say that this sentence, complete with its references to baptism and
conversion, does not apply to Jews is to say they are not included among
“all people” and are already “fully in communion” with the triune God.
Moreover, in an essay on dialogue dealing primarily with Jews
and explicitly including them in the key passage, Cardinal Ratzinger
wrote that missionary activity should not “cease and be replaced by
dialogue . . . . This would be nothing other than total lack of conviction . . . .
Rather, mission and dialogue should no longer be opposites but should
mutually interpenetrate. Dialogue is not aimless conversation: it aims
at conviction, at finding the truth; otherwise it is worthless.” In a world
where other people already know something about God, “proclamation
of the gospel must be necessarily a dialogical process. We are not telling
the other person something that is entirely unknown to him; rather, we
are opening up the hidden depth of something with which, in his own
religion, he is already in touch.”6
In sum, we now have an official document of the Catholic Church,
“ratified and confirmed” by the Pope himself, declaring that a key
purpose of interfaith dialogue is mission, which includes the message
that conversion is necessary to attain full communion with God. There
is overwhelming evidence that the author intended this to apply to Jews
as well. Are there any considerations capable of mitigating the impact of
such a statement sufficiently to enable a self-respecting Jew to continue
to pursue this enterprise?
The answer, I think, is yes, but it is a highly qualified yes. First,
it is very likely that a substantial majority of Catholics involved in
the dialogue disagree with this assertion in Dominus Iesus despite its
official standing. Second, Cardinal Ratzinger himself asserts in his other
writings that the teachings of the Church Fathers instruct us that before
the end of days “the Jews must remain alongside us as a witness to the
world.”7 And speaking about dialogue among religions in general, he
says that unification “is hardly possible within our historical time, and

6 Many Religions—One Covenant, p. 112.

7 Many Religions—One Covenant, p. 104.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

perhaps it is not even desirable.”8 Finally, if dialogue avoids discussion

of core doctrinal issues and focuses on shared moral, social, and political
concerns, it may well be justified even with people whose conversionary
objectives are much sharper that those of Dominus Iesus. Many Jews
hold discussions about such issues with evangelical Protestants who
conduct overt missions to the Jews, and Rabbi Soloveitchik, who did not
believe that such objectives had been abandoned by the Catholic Church,
endorsed discussion of these matters with full awareness that theological
content would play a significant role.
Orthodox Jews are routinely subjected to criticism for conforming
to Rabbi Soloveitchik’s guidelines by resisting dialogue with a primarily
theological focus. The appearance of an official Catholic assertion that
a major objective of dialogue is mission is a striking, unwelcome, and,
for me at least, unexpected validation of the rabbi’s much-maligned
concerns. At the very least, criticism of the avoidance of dialogue about
doctrinal issues should be suspended as long as this passage of Dominus
Iesus remains in force without a formal assertion by the Commission for
the Doctrine of the Faith or the Pope himself that it does not apply to
dialogue with Jews.
Many of the criticisms leveled against Dominus Iesus strike me as
unwarranted, and I greatly admire Cardinal Ratzinger’s profound com-
mitment to his faith. Despite huge gaps in implementation, the Catholic
Church as a whole and the Pope in particular have taken steps to improve
relations with the Jewish people that merit our highest regard. Generally
speaking, criticisms of these initiatives from both Jewish and Christian
quarters, even when technically valid, diminish their moral significance
and sometimes cross the line into blinkered, almost churlish petulance. For
all its imperfections, I see the statement on the Shoah as a historic act of
genuine ethical stature, and the Pope’s apology for Christian antisemitism
and his behavior during his trip to Israel fill me with unalloyed admiration.
But a climactic paragraph of Dominus Iesus effectively expects Jews to
participate in an endeavor officially described as an effort to lead them,
however gently and indirectly, to accept beliefs antithetical to the core
of their faith. Many Jews will no doubt swallow their self-respect and
proceed as if nothing has happened. But it is not clear that they should,
and they should surely not be criticized if they do not.

8 Many Religions—One Covenant, p. 109.

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 REVISITING “CONFRONTATION”
AFTER FORTY YEARS
A Response to Rabbi Eugene Korn

From: http://www.bc.edu/research/cjl/meta-elements/texts/center/
conferences/soloveitchik/Berger_23Nov03.htm.

On November 23, 2003, the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at

Boston College held a conference on the fortieth anniversary of Rabbi Joseph
B. Soloveitchik’s “Confrontation.” Originally a public lecture responding to
the second Vatican Council’s ongoing discussions on the Jews and Judaism,
“Confrontation” criticized the nascent movement encouraging interfaith
dialogue on theological issues. Rabbi Soloveitchik argued that such dialogue
is unwise, dangerous, and, in the deepest sense, not even possible. Eugene
Korn, the main speaker at the event sponsored by the Center, pointed to some
of the problems in Rabbi Soloveitchik’s presentation and maintained that his
opposition to religious dialogue should be modified in light of significant changes
in the Jewish-Christian relationship. I was asked to respond at the conference,
and that response follows.
The full text of “Confrontation,” Rabbi Korn’s lecture, and a series of
additional responses and exchanges appear at http://www.bc.edu/research/cjl/
meta-elements/texts/center/conferences/soloveitchik/#2.

“Confrontation” is a characteristically brilliant, highly influential, and

notoriously problematic work. While Rabbi Soloveitchik addresses
a number of pragmatic issues clearly and to my mind presciently, he
also makes an apparently unqualified assertion that matters of religious
faith cannot in principle be communicated. Thus, interfaith dialogue
should not and really cannot deal with theological issues. Its only proper
subject is the realm of the secular order, expressed in the pursuit of social
justice and related concerns.
As Dr. Korn notes, serious readers have raised two fundamental
and apparently insuperable objections to these formulations. First, the
assertion of the intrinsic incommunicability of matters of faith leads

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

to, or is already, a reductio ad absurdum. Great religious works have been

written through the ages by members of disparate faiths, and Rabbi
Soloveitchik himself read many of them. Indeed, he was influenced by
many of them—and not just on the level that he describes as cultural,
a level where even secular thinkers can “enjoy and cherish” religious
insights. To make matters worse, he says that the individual “encounter
between God and man” cannot even be communicated to another
individual in the same faith community. Thus, theological discussion
among Jews would also be impossible. Second, the much-quoted footnote
that Dr. Korn describes as “the assumed Achilles heel” of “Confrontation”
affirming that to the man of faith the so-called secular order is also sacred
underscores the artificiality of any sharp division between theological
and non-theological matters.
Great thinkers do not write transparent nonsense. They do some-
times engage in rhetorical hyperbole, and the more obvious it is that the
literal understanding of a hyperbolic assertion cannot be intended, the
more an author has the right to rely on the reader to understand this.
But one must also be careful not to denude the rhetoric of all meaning, to
the point where it says something so removed from its presumed intent
that the formulation misses the point entirely.
Dr. Korn, then, is surely correct in his contention that the plain
meaning of Rabbi Soloveitchik’s assertion of total incommunicability
must somehow be limited. He suggests, then, that the objection to
theological dialogue was restricted to full-fledged religious polemic. Thus,
Rabbi Soloveitchik assumed that the modern dialogue would differ very
little from the medieval model in which Christians attempted to prove
that Jesus was the messiah and that Jewish law has no ongoing validity.
This would be a “theological duel to the death.” Rabbi Soloveitchik’s
assertion that dialogue is absurd refers only to efforts to prove or disprove
faith rationally. He objected, then, or objected primarily, to “doctrinal
disputation.” (We are not told what the secondary objections may have
been.) This is a neat and clean resolution of the problem, but, as we shall
see, I think it does too much violence to Rabbi Soloveichik’s language
as well as to other evidence.
Dr. Korn goes on to argue that the major changes in Catholic teachings
about Jews and Judaism since “Confrontation” largely neutralize Rabbi
Soloveitchik’s concerns. Nostra Aetate itself confirmed the irrevocability
of the election of the Jews, Pope John Paul II made clear that the Old

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 Revisiting “Confrontation” After Forty Years

Covenant is not revoked, the establishment of diplomatic relations with

Israel effectively recognizes the right of the Jewish people to its historic
homeland, anti-Semitism has been repudiated and denounced, mission
to the Jews has been eliminated, influential Catholics consider Judaism
salvific for Jews, and even Cardinal Ratzinger, who looks forward to the
acceptance of Christianity by Jews, does not anticipate this before the
end of days. Thus, there is no triumphalism, no effort to convert, no
disputation, no serious problem.
Let me begin by conceding that Rabbi Soloveitchik was not entirely
unconcerned by the residual problem of outright polemic. Dr. Korn
correctly notes that he uses the term debate at one point, and I agree
that the term is revealing. It is also clear that Rabbi Soloveitchik
assumed that he was dealing, even on the eve of Nostra Aetate, with
a thoroughly supersessionist Catholicism whose adherents were
interested in converting Jews. But I cannot agree that the full intent
of “Confrontation” is exhausted by depicting it as a warning against
engaging in old-fashioned disputation. First of all, Jews did not need
such a warning. Second, it was perfectly clear even in 1963 and 1964
that the call for dialogue was not framed in disputational terms.
Indeed, that is precisely why Rabbi Soloveitchik had to caution against
it. Thus, the preliminary text “On the Attitude of Catholics toward Non-
Christians and especially toward Jews” distributed at the second session
of the Council on November 8, 1963 declared that “since the Church
has so much of a common patrimony with the synagogue, this Holy
Synod intends in every way to promote and further mutual knowledge
and esteem obtained by theological studies and fraternal discussions”
(Arthur Gilbert, The Vatican Council and the Jews, p. 262). Third, Rabbi
Soloveitchik provided guidance to the interfaith representatives of
the Rabbinical Council of America for many years after Nostra Aetate.
By then it was perfectly evident that interfaith dialogue was not
Barcelona-style disputation, that the parties were not engaging in
medieval polemics about Isaiah 53 or the rationality of the incarnation.
And yet Rabbi Soloveitchik, on the whole, held to his guidelines. The
entire thrust of “Confrontation”’s inspirational rhetoric about the
private character of the religious experience is incommensurate with
an interpretation that sees it as a straightforward injunction against
trying to “prove” your faith; the issue is explicitly communicating
an experience, not demonstrating the truth of a position. In other

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

words, though the existential character of R. Soloveitchik’s stance

correctly noted by Dr. Korn is indeed inimical to the notion that religious
positions can be definitively proven, the larger argument is that the
personal experience of faith cannot even be communicated. What can
be communicated is intellectual apprehension of faith. The problem is
that such communication is pitifully inadequate.
This, I think, is the real thrust of R. Soloveitchik’s position. Of course
many elements of religious doctrine, of the content of religious belief,
can be conveyed. The assertion that the great encounter between God
and man cannot be communicated, applied in the same breath even to
individuals of the same faith, cannot mean that no theological discourse
is possible. It means that the deepest levels of the faith experience are
inaccessible to outsiders, and Rabbi Soloveitchik applies this to a collective
of believers as well as to individuals. Thus, as much as theological
propositions can be conveyed, as much as even religious emotions can
be partially expressed, that which ultimately commits a person to God
or a faith community to its particular relationship with God remains
essentially private, leaving not only a lonely man of faith but a lonely
people of faith—a nation that dwells alone.
Since Rabbi Soloveitchik believed that untrammeled interfaith
dialogue presumes to enter into that realm, he declares it out of bounds.
Even though dialogue among believers concentrating on social issues
has a religious dimension, it does not presume to enter that innermost
realm, and its value therefore outweighs its residual dangers. If I am
correct, then even theological discussion that knows its place would
not be subject to the most radical critique in “Confrontation,” and in
this general sense I am in agreement with Dr. Korn. But it is critically
important to recognize that the incommunicability of the ultimate
religious commitment is not the totality of Rabbi Soloveitchik’s
argument. The very fact that he goes beyond that point lends credence to
the view that he did not mean it as an all-encompassing delegitimation
of any theological discussion. If he did, there would have been little
reason to go further. But he does go further, and here his argument
moves from the extreme rhetoric of philosophical absolutism to the
penetrating, pragmatic, prescient insights that make “Confrontation”
an essay of ongoing relevance.
Rabbi Soloveitchik worried that theological dialogue would create
pressure to “trade favors pertaining to fundamental matters of

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 Revisiting “Confrontation” After Forty Years

faith, to reconcile ‘some’ differences.” He argued against any Jewish

interference in the faith of Christians both on grounds of principle
and out of concern that this would create the framework for reciprocal
expectations. Now, the changes in Catholic attitudes detailed by
Dr. Korn are real, welcome, and significant, but they do not undermine
these concerns. Quite the contrary. The trajectory of dialogue to our
own day has confirmed the validity of Rabbi Soloveitchik’s analysis to
an almost stunning degree.
It is precisely friendly theological discussion and not religious
disputation that generates these dangers, all the more so when the
discussion is formalized as a theological encounter not between indi-
viduals but between communities. As I noted in a paper on Dabru Emet,
a prominent participant in the dialogue with as positive an attitude
toward Jews and Judaism as one could hope for congratulated the
Jewish theologians who authored that declaration. “The dialogue,”
he said, “will be stymied if Christians affirm a theological bonding
with Jews . . . without an acknowledgement of such bonding from
the Jewish side.” Several years ago, I criticized The New York Board of
Rabbis for inviting its members to participate in an interfaith prayer
service in the main sanctuary of St. Patrick’s cathedral, asserting in
an interview with The Jewish Week that although many Jewish authorities
maintained that classical Christian theology is not considered idolatry
for Christians, it is for Jews. In light of this, prayer in such a setting
raises the most serious of issues to the point where no Orthodox rabbi
should even consider participating. An important official in the New
York Archdiocese wrote a strong letter of protest to the paper, and
in a private letter to me, he complained about my expressing such
an assessment of Christianity after all that Catholics had done to
reassess their negative image of Judaism. In an article on Dominus Iesus,
I have already expressed my regret at using the term idolatry, which is
easily misunderstood in this context, but my correspondent was not
mollified even after he understood very well that I was not suggesting
that Christians attribute divinity to icons. Rabbi Soloveitchik’s concern
about the trading of favors pertaining to fundamental matters of faith
could not be more clearly illustrated.
In that reaction to Dabru Emet, I also cited an example of the sort
of Jewish demand upon Christians that Rabbi Soloveitchik opposed
and that can so easily lead to reciprocal demands. A prominent Jewish

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

ecumenist denounced a Catholic document for implying that at the

end of days, Jews would discover that the Messiah is after all Jesus
of Nazareth. Such a denunciation is, in my view, a virtual reductio ad
absurdum of the sort of interference in the faith of the other that Rabbi
Soloveitchik warned about. As Dr. Korn notes, and as I emphasized in
my reaction to Dominus Iesus, Cardinal Ratzinger’s expectation that Jews
will recognize the truth of Christianity at the end of days is entirely
unobjectionable, and it indeed parallels Rabbi Soloveitchik’s assertion
of the eschatological confirmation of Judaism. While this assertion does
not necessarily mean that non-Jews will, in Dr. Korn’s formulation,
“adopt the current practices” of Judaism, it does mean that they will
recognize its truth and adopt its creed.
Cardinal Ratzinger’s vision, however, is not confined to the eschaton.
He appears interested in bringing individual Jews to a recognition of
Christian truth even before the end of days, and he sees interfaith
dialogue—though that is not its only purpose—as one means of
accomplishing this end. (It is worth noting that even in the Middle
Ages, the survival of a Jewish collective until the Second Coming was
seen as part of the divine plan.) I argued for this understanding of the
Cardinal’s position in that article on Dominus Iesus and cannot revisit
it now, but at least as I see it, even Rabbi Soloveitchik’s concern about
a missionary aspect of dialogue has not been rendered altogether obsolete
by the developments underscored by Dr. Korn.
The assertion that the caveats expressed in “Confrontation” bear
continuing relevance does not mean that they carry the authority
of Sinaitic revelation or that they are easy to apply. I have already
emphasized my understanding that Rabbi Soloveitchik was not
asserting the categorical impossibility of all theological communication.
Persuasive anecdotal evidence indicates that he worried about the
lack of qualifications for such dialogue among most Orthodox rabbis,
a concern that comes to the fore in Dr. Korn’s eloquent peroration.
One of the rabbis most committed to enforcing Rabbi Soloveitchik’s
guidelines has told me on more than one occasion that his revered
mentor had said that he trusted Rabbi Walter Wurzburger to deal
with theological issues in conversation with Christians. Discussions
of anti-Semitism, which Orthodox representatives consider kosher
and even essential, lead to the most sensitive issues involving sacred
Christian texts. For pragmatic reasons, Orthodox Jews want Christians

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 Revisiting “Confrontation” After Forty Years

to understand the theological importance that Judaism assigns to the

land of Israel. Because of these blurred boundaries, I have prepared
several presentations on such issues in a dialogical setting with the
approval, sometimes enthusiastic, sometimes ambivalent, of Orthodox
organizations. This is not an exact science, and Dr. Korn’s own caveats
toward the end of his talk may mean that our positions are not that far
apart. However that may be, the value of interfaith discussion is real,
and its dangers, especially to traditionalists, are no less real. The forty-
year old document that we are addressing today is very much alive.

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 DABRU EMET
EMET::
SOME RESERVATIONS ABOUT
A JEWISH STATEMENT ON CHRISTIANS
AND CHRISTIANITY

From: http://www.bc.edu/research/cjl/meta-elements/sites/partners/ccjr/
berger02.htm
Read at the first annual meeting of the Council of Centers on Jewish-
Christian Relations. Baltimore, October 28, 2002

Shortly after the publication of Dabru Emet: A Jewish Statement on

Christians and Christianity in The New York Times of September 10, 2000,
I was contacted by the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of
America to formulate a brief reaction. What emerged was the following
paragraph, which was posted on the Union’s website and later adopted
by the Rabbinical Council of America as its official position on the
document.
This is in many ways an admirable statement composed by people for whom
I have high regard. I agree with much of it, including the controversial
but carefully balanced passage denying that Nazism was a Christian
phenomenon. However, I did not agree to sign it for several reasons. First,
for all its exquisitely skillful formulation, it implies that Jews should
reassess their view of Christianity in light of Christian reassessments of
Judaism. This inclination toward theological reciprocity is fraught with
danger. Second, although it is proper to emphasize that Christians “worship
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, creator of heaven and earth,” it
is essential to add that worship of Jesus of Nazareth as a manifestation
or component of that God constitutes what Jewish law and theology call
avodah zarah, or foreign worship—at least if done by a Jew. Many Jews died
to underscore this point, and the bland assertion that “Christian worship
is not a viable religious choice for Jews” is thoroughly inadequate. Finally,
the statement discourages either community from “insisting that it has
interpreted Scripture more accurately than the other.” While intended for
the laudable purpose of discouraging missionizing, this assertion conveys
an uncomfortably relativistic message.

On this occasion, I have the opportunity to address these and other

issues raised by this very important document more fully. Let me begin

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Dabru Emet: Some Reservations about a Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity

with reciprocity, which I consider the most dangerous problem generated

by interfaith dialogue. Dabru Emet formulates this expectation in its
most benign form, but I am uneasy with any document that accepts such
a framework. For Jews, the dynamic of interfaith dialogue has produced
pressure from within or from without to see Jesus as a prophet, or even
as a Messsiah for non-Jews; to see the incarnation as a theologically
acceptable, even if erroneous belief; to downplay the problem of “foreign
worship” (avodah zarah); and to engage in interfaith prayer services. For
Christians, it has produced pressures to deny the historicity of sections
of the Gospels; to see the New Testament as an antisemitic work; to
demand that it be revised; to question even eschatological confirmation
of Christian truth, an issue to which I shall return; to see Judaism as
an absolutely equal religion and to regard as morally abhorrent the
denial that it can provide salvation just as effectively as Christianity.
Let me elaborate briefly on this last point. In the ecumenical arena,
Christians who will not grant Judaism full salvific force are denounced by
both Jews and Christians in language appropriate for characterizing moral
miscreants. But the reason given for granting Judaism such status has
nothing to do with morality at all but rather with the assertion that the
first covenant remains in force—a purely theological point. A Christian
who rejects this position may or may not be making a theological error
from an inner Christian perspective, but he or she is not guilty of a moral
defect unless one is prepared to posit a universal moral principle that
every religion must be granted full salvific efficacy.
While I do not believe that anyone has the right to tell someone
else what that person’s own religion teaches, or should teach, in
matters of belief, there is a right to level criticisms, even demands, of
a universal moral sort. This creates the temptation to make theological
demands on the grounds that the issue in question has moral
consequences. There is sometimes truth, even overwhelming truth, in
such assertions, but I am a very strict constructionist on this matter.
Once Christians are prepared to break the link between a doctrine
and its possible anti-Jewish consequences, Jews should refrain from
any further intervention. Since pressing such points can—and does—
generate backlash, and the only reason for pressing them is pragmatic,
the wisdom of intervention must be scanned even without reference
to the moral imperative of leaving Christian doctrine to Christians.
Participants in the Christian discourse may, of course, wish to address

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

these issues out of an internal moral dynamic. Jews can and should
express appreciation for this, but they should do so as engaged observers,
not as aggressive participants.
Once we become accustomed to arrogating to ourselves the right to
intervene in the other’s faith, we can lose our sense of proportion even
when dealing with moral issues where some expression of opinion is
appropriate. Jewish reactions to the Catholic Church’s treatment of its
own heroic and not so heroic figures are a case in point. I do object (mildly)
to the canonization of Pius IX. I object vehemently to the proposed
canonization of Isabella, whose transformation into a saint would be
the rough equivalent of canonizing a deeply pious early-twentieth-
century Catholic who had been instrumental in carrying out lynchings.
But I do not object to the canonization of Edith Stein. I thoroughly
disapproved of Jewish pressures to open the Vatican archives in the hope
of demonstrating Pius XII’s moral deficiencies. Within the International
Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC), I argued
vigorously both orally and in writing against going ahead with the joint
commission on Church behavior during World War II, a project whose
bad end should have been perfectly evident to anyone who thought the
matter through.
Despite my aversion to any gesture toward expectations of theological
reciprocity, I am of course aware that perceptions of the other are affected
by interaction. Sometimes Jewish perceptions of Christianity have
become more favorable because relations improved, sometimes even
because they became more tense. The latter point is counterintuitive,
but medieval Christian attacks on anti-Gentile discrimination in the
Talmud led Jews to insist on a legally significant distinction between
Christians and the pagans of old, a distinction some came to believe in
full sincerity—and one which I believe to be correct in the eyes of God.
Nevertheless, the expectations generated in contemporary theological
dialogue have become institutionalized, part of the structural warp and
woof of the enterprise, and they are deeply threatening to a traditionalist.
John Pawlikowski may well be correct in his appreciative comment about
Dabru Emet in a commencement address at Hebrew Union College in
Cincinnati in May, 2001: “The dialogue will be stymied if Christians affirm
a theological bonding with Jews . . . without an acknowledgement of such
bonding from the Jewish side.” To the degree that this observation is
true, however, it reinforces my concerns.

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Dabru Emet: Some Reservations about a Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity

Let us now turn to the actual content of Dabru Emet. “Jews and
Christians,” it asserts, “worship the same God. “ This statement, I believe,
is simultaneously true and false. In Christianity in Jewish Terms, the
volume that emerged out of Dabru Emet, David Novak writes, “Idolatry
is the worship of a ‘strange god’ (el zar). The wrong worship of the right
God is ‘strange service’ (avodah zarah), which means the worship of God
by humanly constructed rather than by divinely revealed means.” This is
not flatly incorrect; there are indeed rare forms of avodah zarah, notably
the worship of the golden calf according to some interpretations, that fit
this definition. Nonetheless, it is misleading. Jewish legal and theological
terminology make no use of the term el zar despite its appearance in
Psalm 81. Avodah zarah almost always refers to the formal recognition
or worship as God of an entity that is in fact not God. For one who
denies the divinity of Jesus, classical Christianity is clearly included in
this definition. Thus, it is avodah zarah not merely because of the means
of worship but also because of the object of worship.
Even medieval Jews understood very well that Christianity is avodah
zarah of a special type. The tosafists assert that although a Christian
pronouncing the name of Jesus in an oath would be taking the name of
“another god,” it is nonetheless the case that when Christians say the
word “God,” they have in mind the Creator of heaven and earth. Some
later authorities took the continuation of that Tosafot to mean that
this special type of avodah zarah is forbidden to Jews but permissible to
gentiles, so that a non-Jew who engages in Christian worship commits
no sin. One medieval authority, Rabbi Menahem ha-Meiri, may even have
believed that a Jew engaging in Christian worship is not guilty of avodah
zarah, though no other rabbi of any standing endorsed this position.
In the final analysis, then, virtually all Jews understood that Christian
worship is distinct from pagan idolatry because of its belief in the
Creator of heaven and earth who took the Jews out of Egyptian bondage,
revealed the Torah at Sinai and continues to exercise his providence over
the entire cosmos. Some asserted that the association (shittuf) of Jesus
with this God is permissible for non-Jews. Virtually none regarded such
association as anything other than avodah zarah if the worshipper was
a Jew. Do Jews and Christians, then, worship the same God? The answer,
I think, is yes and no.
It bears noting that this issue is not entirely a one-way street. Some
evangelical Christians object to interfaith prayer even with monotheists

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

on the grounds that it is idolatry to participate in a service with those

who worship anyone but the triune God. I have difficulty understanding
how this position can survive scrutiny from a purely biblical perspective.
While Christians have traditionally believed that the Hebrew prophets
understood and even alluded to the triune nature of God, it is difficult
to assume even from a Christian perspective that the Israelite masses
during the First Temple period were aware of this, and yet prophetic
denunciations of idolatry allude only to the worship of pagan deities.
At the very least, a nontrivial number of Israelites must have worshipped
the God of Israel without understanding the trinity, and yet the prophets
never refer to this form of idolatry. Nonetheless, I can construct a (weak)
response to these objections, and even if I could not, my difficulty in
understanding this position would not justify my denying others the
right to maintain it. They have this right, and I do not harbor the slightest
resentment at their exercising it.
If Christianity is avodah zarah even for non-Jews, does that mean
that Judaism denies Christians salvation? I do not believe that this is
so. The question of salvation for Christians—or even the relationship
of Christianity to what Jewish tradition calls the Noahide covenant
binding on all of humanity—is not addressed in Dabru Emet. I suspect
that one reason for this is that raising this question would have been
very uncomfortable in a document that does not even want to say
that Judaism is true in a way that Christianity is not. In Christianity
in Jewish Terms, Prof. Novak does address the matter, suggesting that
Christians, because they meet the key Maimonidean criterion of believing
that the Noahide laws are divinely revealed, are the quintessential
example of non-Jews who attain salvation. This suggestion, for all
the attractiveness of its central insight, requires the adoption of the
“liberal” view about the permissibility of “association” for non-Jews
and fails to address other complicating features of the Noahide laws
that make the assertion that Christians observe, or even endorse, all
of them less than certain. It needs to be supplemented by the position
of Rabbi Jacob Emden, who asserted in a responsum that non-Jews,
even those who engage in technical avodah zarah because of mistaken
adherence to ancestral tradition, can attain salvation if they observe the
key moral laws in the Noahide code. Non-Jews need not attain a perfect
score in observing their obligations any more than Jews need to do so
in observing theirs.

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Dabru Emet: Some Reservations about a Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity

We move now to the final concern that I expressed, namely, unease

with Dabru Emet’s “uncomfortably relativistic message.” “The humanly
irreconcilable differences between Jews and Christians will not be settled
until God redeems the world as promised in Scripture.” The paragraph that
follows this heading goes on to assert that the key difference regarding the
proper way to serve God “will not be settled by one community insisting
that it has interpreted Scripture more accurately than the other.” Here
again Prof. Novak’s remarks in Christianity in Jewish Terms illuminate
both the careful thought that went in to this document and the stubborn
problems that remain. In providing guidelines for Jewish-Christian
dialogue, he counsels the avoidance of both relativism and syncretism.
The section on avoiding relativism is formulated with admirable vigor. It
sits, however, very uneasily with the section on avoiding triumphalism,
which asks, “What . . . of those Jews who assert that it is precisely at the
end of days that the triumph of Judaism will be manifest, and what of
those Christians who assert that at the Second Coming Christianity will
triumph?” And it answers, “We must answer that the final judgment of
all human history is not yet in.”
For many traditionalists of both faiths, the affirmation that the key
tenets of one’s religion will be verified at the end of days follows ineluctably
from the conviction that they are true. The dialogical environment has
created such distortions that basic religious affirmations of this sort have
become suspect, even morally unacceptable. As I wrote in an article on
Dominus Iesus, “We . . . face a remarkable paradox. Precisely because of
its striving for interfaith respect and understanding, dialogue would
become an instrument of religious imperialism.”
On this last point, let me cite a letter of mine published in the Forward
in response to an article by Rabbi James Rudin:

Jews engaged in dialogue with Christians succumb all too often to the
temptation to tell Christians what to believe about their own religion.
While Christian revision of teachings that contain the potential of spawning
antisemitism is very much in the Jewish interest, Jews need to be cautious
about making demands that can create resentment and backlash and even
legitimize Christian demands for reciprocal revisions in Judaism.

Though this is a longstanding problem about which I have often expressed

concern, I was stunned by Rabbi Rudin’s assertion (“While the Messiah
Tarries,” February 22, 2002) that Catholics must not only assert that

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

the Jewish longing for the Messiah is “valid”; they must assert that “the
messiah’s identity remains unknown, and Jesus, whom Christians believe
to be the messiah, is not waiting at the end of days for Jews to recognize
the ‘error of their ways.’” How does one believe that Jesus is the messiah
and simultaneously refrain from asserting that Jews will discover this
at the end of days?
Rabbi Rudin apparently believes that Jews have the right to demand
that Christians reject one of the core beliefs of Christianity. We have
no such right, any more than Christians have the right to demand that
traditional Jews give up their conviction that at the end of days all
the world will recognize the messiah—and that he will not be Jesus of
Nazareth.
Finally, at this delicate moment in history, I need to add something
about Dabru Emet’s passage on Israel even though I did not address it in my
initial single-paragraph reaction. “Christians,” say the authors, “can respect
the claim of the Jewish people upon the land of Israel.” This statement
is surely true, and its validity is demonstrated by the many instances
of manifest Christian enthusiasm for the Jewish state. Nonetheless,
Christian attitudes toward Israel in the current crisis have once again
raised serious questions in Jewish minds about the value of dialogue.
Support for Israel in the organized Christian community comes primarily
from those who eschew theological dialogue and support conversionary
efforts aimed at Jews. Churches and organizations most involved in
dialogue are far more ambivalent and even hostile. The very habits of mind
that produce the dialogical imperative—the desire to redress grievances
and achieve justice for the historically oppressed— produce sympathy
for Palestinians. In the view of most Jews (myself decidedly included),
this sympathy has led to an inversion of morality in which mass murder
in response to an extraordinary peace proposal, education toward jihad
in the bloodiest sense, and mass dissemination of the vilest antisemitism
evoke next to no protest or even diminution of sympathy. Rather, it is
Israel’s efforts at self-defense, usually carried out with exemplary concern
for innocent life, that arouse passionate moral disapproval.
As long as this state of affairs persists, the Jewish-Christian
relationship, at least on the level of the Jewish street, will not be
determined by theological documents on either side. It will be determined
by an assessment of who cares about the survival of a Jewish state and
the fate of its citizens—and who does not.

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 JEWS, CHRISTIANS,
AND THE PASSION

From: Commentary 117:5 (May, 2004): 23–31.

Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ opened on February 25, Ash
Wednesday. I planned to catch a noon showing that Friday, and I was
a nervous wreck. Even setting aside the question of anti-Semitism,
reviewers had depicted a movie so horrific, with clawed whips sending
chunks of bloodied flesh flying across the screen, that I was not sure
I could endure the experience. (In the aftermath of childhood nightmares,
I have assiduously avoided fictional horror and cinematic gore alike.)
But one can hardly undertake to write about a film whose controversial
nature rests in part on its violence and close one’s eyes when the going
gets tough. And so I entered the theater in fear and trembling.
As the film unfolded, my reactions taught me something about one of
the key issues in this entire affair—the critical role played by expectations
and prior experience in molding a viewer’s response. The Passion is
indeed saturated with anti-Jewish motifs; and yet my expectation of
anti-Semitism had been set at so high a level that I could barely muster
more than a trace of indignation. The violence is interminable, central,
and utterly graphic; but my trepidation had been ratcheted up to a point
where I emerged from the theater with a sense of relief. Essentially, a film
drenched in blood, suffused with sublime sentiments of sacrifice and
forgiveness, and replete with images of venomous Jews left me neither
uplifted nor viscerally outraged. Though I am more than capable of
leaving a movie in tears, I left this one curiously unmoved.
My reaction no doubt resulted in part from the need to steel myself
against surrendering to an experience that might rob me of sleep for
months to come. But there was more to it than that. Despite its powerful

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

cinematic effects, this is a film whose capacity to move depends in large

measure on the viewer’s ability to identify with Jesus of Nazareth for
reasons that are not presented in the film itself. If you come with love
and admiration for its hero, and all the more so if you come with faith in
his divinity and his supreme self-sacrifice, every lash, every nail, every
drop of blood will tear at your psyche. But for a viewer with neutral
sentiments, or with little knowledge—or with the mixed emotions of
a Jew acutely aware of the role of this story in unleashing persecution—
the film provides little basis for empathy. Its unremitting violence
remains just that.
Thus, I had great difficulty—and still do—in assimilating the assertion
of some viewers that they had seen an Oscar-winning performance on
the part of the film’s Jesus (played by Jim Caviezel). Because of the very
nature of Mel Gibson’s faith, his Jesus must be a one-dimensional figure.
After the first moments in the garden of Gethsemane, this is a man
without inner conflict, without inner development, without complex,
evolving relationships with others. Aside from a few flashbacks of
the briefest duration, the task of the actor is to deliver melodramatic
pronouncements and to writhe in agony. No one, however talented,
could turn this into an Oscar-winning role. God is not a candidate for
an Academy Award.
***
The disputes swirling around the movie are remarkably complex,
conforming to conventional lines and at the same time cutting across them.
With respect to the interfaith tensions spawned by this affair, Dennis
Prager’s observation that Jews and Christians have been seeing different
movies is the beginning and perhaps even the middle of wisdom. But the
film has also exacerbated divisions among Christians themselves—and
among Jews—as well as confrontations between secular and religious
Americans, with the potential to create new alliances and damage old
ones. These shifting fault lines reflect and emerge out of a constellation
of deeply entrenched Jewish fears, a half-century of Jewish-Christian
dialogue and rapprochement, Christian attitudes toward the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict, the ambivalent alliance of Orthodox Jewry with the
Christian Right, secularist and liberal Christian concerns about ascendant
fundamentalism, traditionalist Christian resentments at widespread
mockery of their beliefs and values, and more.

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Thus, an entire essay could be devoted to the cultural politics of the

Gibson affair, on exhibit in a vast multitude of opinion pieces in the news
media, on television and radio, on the web, and in magazines occupying
every point of the ideological spectrum. For purposes of manageability,
but also because I believe this to be the most important issue of all,
I mean to concentrate here on the aspect of the controversy touching
directly on Christian-Jewish relations.
Gibson’s project entered public consciousness when, last year, a group
of Catholic and Jewish scholars reviewed a preliminary version of the
screenplay and expressed deep reservations. When their suggestions
for massive changes were transmitted to Gibson, his representatives
charged that the script had been obtained improperly. The United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which had encouraged the
review, then backed away, failing to offer even a modicum of support to
the authors, who came to be subjected to savage attacks.
The scholars had approached the screenplay from a perspective
shared by only a handful of observers. They knew that the passion
narrative had played a central role in fostering and unleashing anti-
Jewish sentiments through the ages. They also knew that it had loomed
large in the dramatically positive transformation of Jewish-Catholic
relations ever since the declaration of the Second Vatican Council in 1965
that, “even though Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead
pressed for the death of Christ, neither all Jews indiscriminately at that
time, nor Jews today, can be charged with the crimes committed during
his passion.” They knew that the Pontifical Commission for Religious
Relations with the Jews had issued “guidelines” and “notes” about how
to apply the Council’s declaration in liturgy, education, and preaching.
Finally, they knew that in 1988 the USCCB’s Committee for Ecumenical
and Interreligious Affairs had issued “Criteria for the Evaluation of
Dramatizations of the Passion.”
The scholars can hardly be blamed for having assumed—naively, as
it turned out—that the Conference took its own published standards
seriously. Among other things, these criteria affirm that dramatizations of
the passion should present the diversity of Jewish communities in Jesus’
time; that Jews should not be portrayed as avaricious or bloodthirsty;
that any “crowd scene” should reflect the fact that some in the crowd
and among the Jewish leaders supported Jesus, and that the rest were
manipulated by his opponents; that Jesus’ opponents should not be

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made to look sinister while he and his friends are depicted in lighter
tones, thus isolating Jesus and the apostles from the Jews as a group;
that “if one cannot show beyond reasonable doubt that the particular
Gospel element selected or paraphrased will not be offensive or have
the potential for negative influence on the audience . . . , that element
should not, in good conscience, be used”; and that Pontius Pilate should
be presented as the “ruthless tyrant” that we know he was.
That the screenplay of The Passion violated the Conference’s criteria in
all these particulars was self-evident. But changing it to conform to the
Conference’s official positions would have required Gibson to start over
from scratch, and there was no way he would accede to such a request.
Instead, he took the offensive. One Catholic figure who supported him
issued the preposterous statement that the screenplay did conform to
established guidelines. Another declared that everything in the film was
historically accurate. Spokesmen for the producers indicated that the film
was a faithful presentation of the Gospel accounts, so that any criticism
of the screenplay was a criticism of the Gospels themselves. Sympathetic
commentators, including several Orthodox Jews, dutifully repeated these
assertions, although very few of them had read the screenplay or seen
the film.
***
At this point in the controversy, I felt both sympathy and antipathy
toward the arguments of Gibson’s defenders. For two decades, I had
publicly expressed strong reservations about the tendency of Jews
engaged in interfaith dialogue to tell Christians what to believe about
their own religion.1 This same caveat had been issued in the 1960’s, in
the midst of the excitement surrounding the Vatican Council, by Rabbi
Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the renowned Orthodox scholar, who was not
only committed on principle to nonintervention but was also concerned
about the dangers of reciprocal expectations. In general, it is because
their own instincts enable them to empathize with the deep, unalterable
convictions of fundamentalists that Orthodox Jews are particularly
reluctant to propose revisions in the faith of others. By contrast,

1 See my “Jewish-Christian Relations: A Jewish Perspective,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies

20 (1983), and my articles on Dominus Iesus, Dabru Emet, and “Confrontation” [reprinted
in this volume].

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 Jews, Christians, and The Passion

secularists, liberal Christians, and non-Orthodox religious Jews, even

with the best of intentions, cannot quite grasp the full dimensions of
an unwavering commitment to the literal truth of a sacred text.
Of course, the word “literal” is not subject to precise definition; but
it is not without meaning, either. Thus, to argue (as some critics of The
Passion have done) that Pontius Pilate could not have been successfully
pressured by a Jewish mob is to argue that the Gospel accounts—all four
of them—are incorrect. To argue that the Gospels contradict each other
regarding the scourging of Jesus, with John placing it prior to the final
decision to have him crucified and Matthew and Mark placing it later, is
to misapprehend the approach of a fundamentalist, who will assert that
he was scourged both before and after.
There is a fascinating irony in the understanding that many Orthodox
Jews exhibit toward the sensibilities of the most traditional Christians.
After all, the Orthodox retain deeper anti-Christian instincts than liberal
Jews—avoiding interfaith prayer, shrinking from theological dialogue,
affirming an ancient obligation to undergo martyrdom rather than
embrace Christianity, and in many cases seeing Christian anti-Semitism
as a metaphysical, unchangeable condition captured in the formula, “Esau
hates Jacob.” And yet, several Orthodox Jews have gone so far as to ask
me whether even hostile non-Scriptural material in The Passion may be
justified in light of authoritative Catholic traditions. I doubt that this
question would even enter the mind of the non-Orthodox.
Beyond empathy with believers who resist the questioning of Scriptural
accuracy, many traditionalist Jews feel a commonality with traditionalist
Christians on a range of other issues as well: abortion, sexuality in the
public sphere, homosexuality, aid to denominational schools, protection
of religious rights, and the claim of Jews to the land of Israel in its entirety.
Lengthy tracts could be written to qualify the simplistic, homogenizing
implications of this list, but it does help explain the fact that Gibson’s most
enthusiastic Jewish defenders have come from the ranks of the Orthodox.
This is not to say, however, that a majority of Orthodox Jews think that
the film is a good idea. Quite the contrary: Gibson’s apologists among the
Orthodox are far outnumbered by those typified, in extreme fashion, by
a relative who told me that once this movie appeared he would be careful
not to stand close to the edge of a subway platform. What the apologists
and the fearful straphangers do have in common is a tendency to regard
vigorous Jewish criticism of the film as incendiary and self-defeating.

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I do not wish to be misunderstood. While I strongly believe that Jews

should not instruct Christians about the proper parameters of Christian
faith, I do not regard alleged faithfulness to the Gospel narratives
as a valid defense of a decision to present those narratives without
elaboration or nuance. In a newspaper piece that appeared well before
the film’s release, I put the point as follows:

The pre-modern Catholic Church—and Gibson is after all an unreconstructed

Catholic who pines for the good old days—actively discouraged any reading
of Scripture by the laity. While few people today would endorse this
approach, it reflects the healthy understanding that the text of Scripture
cannot stand alone. It needs to be explicated—and not by the proverbial
Devil so famous for quoting it. Gibson and his defenders imagine that the
film’s adherence to the words of the Gospels with nothing added provides
their most effective defense. In fact, along with the sadism and gore, it is
precisely what justifies severe indictment.

In short, respect for the power and history of this story requires that
it be placed in a framework that elucidates its message in light of the
teachings of contemporary mainstream Christianity, Catholic and
Protestant alike.
***
In the months leading up to the film’s release, the war of words intensified,
and with it, the anticipation. The most vocal Jewish attacks came from
the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), whose leader, Abraham Foxman,
became the prime target of both Gibsonites and anti-anti-Gibsonites.
In the wake of intense criticism and a more realistic assessment of
potential consequences, the ADL moderated its rhetoric. But the damage
could not be entirely undone.
This episode deserves a brief comment, if only because it continues
to provoke debate. Although the decibel level of the ADL’s initial reaction
was clearly a serious misjudgment, other factors need to be taken into
consideration. First, the organization did try to act behind the scenes,
but encountered a stone wall. Second, some of Gibson’s rhetoric, as well
as his apparent doubts concerning the large-scale gassing of Jews by the
Nazis in World War II, understandably raised Jewish hackles. Third, it
was evident early on that his assertions about the absolute fidelity of the
film to the Gospels were questionable. Finally, and despite what some of

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Foxman’s detractors implied, this movie would hardly have disappeared

into the void had the ADL and others kept silent. Although its success
would almost certainly have been more limited, Gibson’s name, the
technical quality of the production, the mobilization of the evangelical
and traditionalist Catholic communities, and the intrinsic significance
of the story to countless multitudes would have guaranteed a very wide
viewership throughout the world and for many years to come.
In any event, when Ash Wednesday 2004 finally arrived, the film’s
reception rapidly demonstrated the near irrelevance of the framework
within which much of the earlier discussion had taken place. Did viewers
base their reaction to The Passion on the degree of its deviation from
the criteria established by the Bishops’ Conference? The very question is
comical. While the earlier debate did alert filmgoers to the specter of anti-
Semitism, the vast majority reacted through the filter of their religious
commitments. To the degree that the movie was evaluated against some
other standard, that standard turned out to be—other movies.
Thus, the question raised was not whether Gibson’s depiction was
“better” or “worse” than that of the Oberammergau passion play, or of
the Gospels themselves, but whether it was more or less violent than
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. That film, which I have mercifully never
seen, has become a main point of comparison in traditionalist Christian
discourse about The Passion, to the extent that it was invoked by a twelve-
year-old preacher interviewed on Fox News who, I hope, has also not
seen it. In a similar vein, many fundamentalist Christians have pointedly
wondered why secular commentators have fallen silent at best and been
supportive at worst when it comes to gangsta rap and other abhorrent
manifestations of popular culture while subjecting a film about Jesus to
withering attack.
This argument, for all its force, is persuasive only as an ad hominem
riposte (and, as we shall see, it can be easily reversed). Nonetheless, it is
of central importance in explaining the emotions unleashed by criticism
of the film. Since I empathize with some of those emotions, let me try to
formulate the key points as vigorously as I can.
Straightforward logic and elementary intuition inform us that books,
films, songs, theater, and art can exercise a profound influence over
readers, listeners, and viewers. And yet, out of ideological or financial
motives, intelligent people have regularly delivered themselves of the
most transparent absurdities regarding this matter. Producers of violent or

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pornographic films tell us that what happens on screen is not transmuted

into actual behavior, an assertion that, while surely true for most viewers,
is unquestionably false for a nontrivial minority. Distributors of gangsta
rap assert with straight faces that the unspeakably vile lyrics of the songs
they disseminate reflect a regrettable reality but surely do not exacerbate
it. After all, they intone, no listener, whatever his age, would ever dream
of actually carrying out any of the horrific acts that the songs explicitly
encourage—and besides, it is not the responsibility of these pillars of
society but rather the obligation of parents to monitor every piece of
music to which their children are exposed.
The most vigorous critics of this debased ethos and its products have
been traditionalist Christians. For their efforts, they have been pilloried
for narrowness, intolerance, and worse. When, for example, a dung-
splattered Mary appeared in an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, their
objections were dismissed not just on First Amendment grounds but on
the supposed principle that it is the task of a museum to exhibit “cutting-
edge” art. Not surprisingly, unequivocal moral support for Christian
concerns came predominantly from Orthodox Jewish organizations.
It was pent-up grievances of this kind that exploded in traditionalist
Christian circles in the face of attacks on the film by secularist liberals—
attacks that often extended to Christian conservatives themselves. Here,
for example, was Stuart Klawans in the Nation:

However much you might play at seeing his work as just another movie,
Gibson has gone outside the normal bounds of show business and into
the territory of America’s religious absolutists: John Ashcroft anointing
himself with oil, gay-hating lawmakers attempting to write Leviticus into
the Constitution, antiabortionists shooting to kill, generals declaring holy
war against the Muslim infidel. Our country has a great, great many such
people who do not consider their convictions to be open to discussion.
They maintain a significant hold on power; and since a lot of them have
an antinomian streak, I doubt the rule of law would stand in their way,
should we manage to loosen their grip. The ever-boyish and ingenuous
Gibson, with his simple faith, has made The Passion of the Christ as a gift
to such people.

To retain one’s equanimity in the face of such rhetoric is no easy task.

Nonetheless, grievances do not provide a license to suspend one’s own
moral code. It is decidedly true that people who routinely ignore the
damage that popular culture can cause, who wrap themselves in the

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First Amendment to guard against the need to think seriously about the
consequences of music and films, and who then speak of the dangers
inherent in The Passion, may justly be denounced as hypocrites. But so
can those who routinely rail against the dangers of popular culture and
then turn a blind eye to this film’s brutality and its potential for harm.
To speak repeatedly about the psychological damage to children who
are exposed to cinematic violence, and then take high-school classes to
see The Passion, is problematic in the extreme; perhaps, indeed, a form
of child abuse. (It should be unnecessary to add that peer pressure strips
the option to stay home of any meaning.) In assessing the potential
consequences of popular culture, traditionalist Christians do not ask if
those attending a rap concert will seek out women to rape immediately
upon leaving the theater. Similarly, the question of whether crowds will
pour out of multiplexes to initiate immediate pogroms is hardly the
proper criterion for evaluating the potential effect of The Passion on
attitudes toward Jews. Those who understand the power of films to mold
behavior, and who worry about their impact upon even a minority of
susceptible viewers, should be the first to recognize the danger.
***
Finally, then, we turn to the message of the film itself. I do not believe
The Passion was made with the purpose of arousing or increasing hostility
to Jews, but it exudes indifference to this prospect. The litany of its anti-
Jewish motifs, many of them not required by the Gospel accounts and
sometimes even standing in tension with them, is lengthy and impressive.
No filmmaker who actually cared about avoiding anti-Semitism could
have produced anything resembling it.
To begin with, the high priest and his wicked associates wear costumes
that evoke contemporary prayer shawls. They are bedecked with precious
metals. Judas’s thirty pieces of silver are thrown to him in slow motion;
they scatter on the floor, and he greedily picks them up. The Jewish boys
who pursue Judas are transformed into little demons— the metaphoric
progeny, as Andrew Sullivan has noted, of Satan himself (or herself), who
flits menacingly among the Jewish crowds.
In describing Jesus’ arrest by Jews armed with swords and staves, the
Gospels themselves simply assert that he was led away—in John, bound
and led away—to the Jewish authorities. In The Passion, he is beaten
vigorously and repeatedly during his forced march to the point where he

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falls off a cliff, is brought to a sudden halt by the chain around his neck,
and must then clamber back up. It is not enough to remark that the
Gospels tell us nothing of the sort. It strains credulity to believe that the
Gospel writers could have known of such extreme mistreatment without
allowing the slightest hint of it to enter their accounts.2
Once Jesus is delivered to the high priest and his associates, the
Gospels do speak of his being buffeted, spat on, and slapped after or just
before his condemnation. Here too, though, the depiction in the film is
much stronger than that of the Gospels. Then, when he is handed over to
Pilate, the sensitive Roman governor of the movie asks: “Do you always
punish your prisoners before they are judged?” This question, which does
not appear in the Gospels, is left unanswered, but its implications are
unambiguous. If the Jews behave this way as a matter of course, they are
routinely vicious; if not, they have singled Jesus out for special cruelty.
And so we come to Pilate. Before seeing the film, I had vigorously
defended the right of believing Christians to affirm that Pilate was
reluctant to execute Jesus but was successfully pressured by a Jewish
crowd to override his own preference. I continue to adhere to that
position in principle, but the film has impelled me to moderate it. The
inner struggle ascribed to the morally conflicted governor goes beyond
what the Gospels require, and its inconsistency with what we know about
this man’s character from extra-biblical sources becomes a legitimate
basis for criticism.
In the context of the film, Pilate’s (biblically unattested) complaints
to his wife about the rotten outpost to which he has been assigned and
the stinking rabble that he must deal with appear eminently reasonable.
The viewer, then, is led to identify with a perspective that sees Judea and
its undifferentiated population, taken as a whole, through the prism of
this bloodthirsty crowd. Pilate’s moment of discomfort while viewing
the lashing his men inflict on Jesus—a reaction also unrecorded in the
Gospels—forms an acute contrast with the unmoved cruelty of the Jews.
In still another scene, both unbiblical and implausible, Pilate attempts
but fails to quiet the crowd, whereupon the high priest sarcastically

2 “And they that had laid hold on Jesus led him away to Caiaphas the high priest” (Matthew
26:57); “And they laid their hands on him, and took him . . . . And they led Jesus away to
the high priest” (Mark 14:46, 53); “Then took they him, and led him, and brought him
into the high priest’s house” (Luke 22:54); “Then the band and the captain and officers
of the Jews took Jesus and bound him and led him away” (John 18:12–13).

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asks—to appreciative laughter—if they have no respect for the Roman

governor. Thus, the Jewish crowd does more than manipulate Pilate; it
subjects him to open mockery.
Finally, in a controversial scene that is indeed in one of the Gospels,
Pilate washes his hands of guilt, and the crowd apparently exclaims, “His
blood be on us and on our children.” I say “apparently” because Gibson
has, in a fit of philo-Semitism, removed the subtitle at this point, and,
as he told Diane Sawyer, the Aramaic exclamation is partially obscured
by other noise. (I heard the Aramaic “His blood be on us,” but could not
make out the curse on the children; since Gibson has indicated that it is
there, I am prepared to take his word for it.)3
There is, in any case, no realistic way to prevent the addition of the
relevant subtitle in English, in Arabic, or in any other language, as the
film makes its way through the world, through the years, and through
a variety of electronic formats. This is a paradigmatic example of a passage
that a Christian has every right to believe but no right to present in such
a film without some dialogue expressing a disavowal of the sentiment by
figures with whom the audience will identify. Yes, the crowd said it; but
God, for one, did not agree with it. Jesus’ later generic “Father, forgive
them” does not begin to suffice.
At this point we must screw up our courage to examine the scourging
and all the rest. For the last hour and fifteen minutes or so, this is a film
depicting a man beaten to a bloody pulp and then nailed to a cross. In
another controversial choice, Gibson here endorses John’s account of
the scourging of Jesus on Pilate’s orders before the final cries of “Crucify
him, crucify him.” I have already noted my defense of Gibson’s right to
make such a choice, but once again the film impelled me to qualify my
position. The relevant verses in John—in their entirety—read only as
follows: “Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him. And the
soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on his head, and they put on
him a purple robe, and said, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ and they smote him
with their hands” (John 19:1–3). Out of this raw material, there emerge
ten almost unrelieved minutes of unremitting whipping with implements
of varying cruelty, leaving Jesus a welter of blood.
3 Considering the effort that went into preparing an Aramaic script and teaching it to the
actors, the errors in pronunciation reflect a startling degree of sloppiness. To cite but one
example in a very important word, the high priest pronounces the word “messiah” more
than once in a grotesque conflation of Hebrew and Aramaic (meshiaha).

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Since no one could have stood erect or perhaps even lived after such
treatment, it is self-evident that the scene is untrue to the intent of the
Gospel. What this means is that the subsequent scene, in which the Jews
have one more opportunity to change their mind, takes on a dimension
that even the admittedly harsh Gospel account does not convey. The
crowd now beholds a man who has visibly been subjected to unspeakable
torment. The rabbis of the Mishnah say that Jews are “merciful people
descended from merciful people.” Not here. Not a fleeting scintilla of
mercy. “Crucify him! Crucify him! Crucify him!”
So Pilate sends him off to be crucified. At this point, direct
responsibility for the violence shifts entirely to the Romans. And here
in large measure is the basis for my tentative assertion earlier that
Gibson did not intend to foment hostility toward Jews as such. I am
referring to the consistent bestiality of the Roman soldiers, plus a few
small but significant positive indicators of another kind.
The sadism of the Romans underscores Gibson’s consuming desire
to maximize the depiction of Jesus’ torment and to highlight the
contrast between the evil forces of the film’s villains and the pure, self-
sacrificing goodness of Jesus and his followers. When evil is embodied in
Jews, they are depicted in the worst possible light; when it is embodied
in Romans, they are.
***
For Gibson, who was raised in an anti-Semitic household, the images of
avaricious, bloodthirsty, gold-bedecked Jewish monsters are no doubt
standard means of symbolizing Jewish evil, and may be used with no
concern whatsoever for their larger impact. Perhaps, just perhaps, he
really does not understand what some of his clearly decent defenders
also do not understand—that the depiction of Jewish monsters has
a potential for evil consequences that the depiction of Roman monsters
does not. It should not be necessary to make an argument for this
assertion, but apparently it is.
We have been assured that, just as there is no reason to suppose the film
will cause hatred for Italians, there is no reason to suppose it should cause
hatred for Jews. The differences, however, are numerous and compelling.
The Roman soldiers are not the leaders of their people; the high priest
and his associates are. The depiction of the Romans does not reinforce
a hostile stereotype that has persisted over centuries; the depiction of the

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Jews does. The Italians atoned for their sin by embracing Christianity; the
Jews did not. There is no history of persecution directed against Italians
as a consequence of this story; there is a history of persecution—a long
and bloody one—against Jews. There is no longstanding theological
argument for punishing Italians for their role in these events; there is
a deeply influential one for punishing Jews. No non-Jewish Italian has
ever been called “Christ killer” while suffering a beating at the hands of
classmates or mobs; Jews—Italian and otherwise—have lived through
this experience, and sometimes failed to live through it, on countless
occasions from medieval times through the 20th century.
Even on a purely cinematic level, a profound difference obtains.
The Romans in the movie are “innocently” sadistic. They simply enjoy
smashing bones, scourging flesh, making blood flow. They cannot help
it; it is their animal nature. The Jews, by contrast, are villainous out
of conviction; theirs is a thoroughly conscious, thoroughly intentional,
thoroughly satanic evil. There is a distinction, and Gibson cannot but
make it palpable even if he does not consciously mean to.4
Why, then, am I still inclined to see the Roman monsters as
an indication that Gibson’s assault on Jews in this film results not from
intentional anti-Jewish malice but from a Manichaean vision reinforced
by the anti-Semitic stereotypes that he imbibed with his father’s milk?
What nudges me in this direction is the presence of a few touches that
are inconsistent with systematic anti-Semitism.
The most striking of these is a single word spoken by a Roman soldier
to Simon of Cyrene, the Jew forced to help Jesus carry the cross. Simon
himself is depicted more sympathetically than the Gospels require; when
he asks the Romans to show Jesus some mercy, a soldier dismisses him
with the epithet, “Jew.” Here, then, the film underscores the Jewishness
of a sympathetic character where the Gospels do not.
Another such touch appears in the very brief flashback to the Sermon
on the Mount, where some of those present wear prayer shawls, thus
reminding us of the Jewishness of Jesus’ followers. While these tiny
flourishes do not even begin to neutralize the extended anti-Jewish
motifs and images at the core of the film, they do not sit well with the
assumption that it was made with the conscious purpose of fomenting
hatred against Jews.

4 I am indebted to Neal Kozodoy for the point made in this paragraph.

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For me, an unexpected consequence of watching this movie was a new

regard for the Gospel writers’ restraint. Gibson shows us the interminable
beating of Jesus as he carries his cross to the crucifixion. We have already
seen that John asserts in but a single unelaborated verse that Jesus was
scourged before his final conviction. In Luke, there is no scourging at
all. The only references to scourging after Pilate’s final decision appear
in Matthew and Mark, and in each case the information is contained in
the briefest of subordinate clauses: “and when he had scourged Jesus,
he delivered him to be crucified” (Matthew 27:26); “and delivered Jesus,
when he had scourged him, to be crucified” (Mark 15:15). That is all.
Since the flogging implied here is no small matter, and might well
have merited greater emphasis, it appears that the Gospel writers
consciously marginalized this element of the story, that they did not
want the sacrifice of Jesus to turn into a horror movie. In light of this,
the very core of Gibson’s film—which reflects his conviction that, in
order to appreciate Jesus’ sacrifice, one must wallow in his agony—runs
counter to the intentions of the Gospels.
Pondering this point, I have come to understand why a Catholic
priest who has been prominently involved in ecumenical activities both
in the United States and in Rome told me before the film was released
that its reported concentration on the flaying of Jesus was in his view
blasphemous.
***
It is no surprise that the early reactions to showings of The Passion should
have mirrored the positions held before it was released. Nonetheless,
they have been instructive and occasionally troubling.
The scholars who criticized the early screenplay, Christian and Jewish,
reaffirmed their first assessment. Since the film was not changed in any
fundamental way, this was inevitable. As for Catholics of a traditional
bent, most embraced the film enthusiastically. Thus, William Donohue,
president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, described
it in an open letter to the Jewish community as “magnificent beyond
words.” Anyone who subscribes to the notion of collective guilt, Donohue
wrote, or who believes that today’s Jews are responsible for the behavior
of some Jews 2,000 years ago, is demented.
Since not many people are insane, Donohue’s remark was clearly
intended to reassure, as well as to reinforce his denunciation of the film’s

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critics. Unfortunately, however, the Catholic teaching that all sinners are
responsible for the crucifixion was once seen as perfectly consistent with
the doctrine that the Jewish collective, and the Jewish collective alone,
suffered specific, grave, and ongoing punishment for its role. Although
it is a comfort to know that Donohue, a mainstream Catholic holding
a responsible position, cannot even conceive of the rationality of this
position, still, the “demented” view was held by major Church authorities
through the ages and by masses of Catholics even in the United States
through the mid-20th century, and its permanent demise can hardly be
celebrated with confidence.
I was particularly interested in seeing the official review of the movie
by the USCCB’s Office of Film and Broadcasting. It was no doubt to be
expected that the movie’s great popularity among the laity would affect
the positions of Catholic leaders, and so it did. While the review contains
some mild criticisms, it is on the whole laudatory; more to the point,
it contains not a single reference to the “Criteria for the Evaluation of
Dramatizations of the Passion.”
Michael J. Cook, one of the Jewish scholars involved in the original
evaluation of the screenplay, has seen this as no less vexing than the
movie itself. “The solid bridge of trust Jews thought they had with the
Catholic Church now lies exposed as merely a drawbridge, readily placed
in raised position when it is most needed.” My own emotional reaction
is identical to Cook’s; no measure of internal communal dynamics
can justify this betrayal of decades of Catholic-Jewish dialogue. But if
Donohue’s view is too rosy, Cook’s may be too despairing. In moments
of crisis, ecumenical work can indeed be ignored in favor of larger con-
cerns, but the quotidian activity of ecumenists effects slow, gradual, deep
change. The most fervent partisans of this movie have couched their
defense as a denial that it blames the Jews. Two generations ago, certainly
three generations ago, Jewish responsibility was taken for granted.
And evangelical Christians? Despite the Catholic provenance of
the movie, and despite its concentration on themes that Protestants
have historically deemphasized, these denominations have embraced
it with unbridled enthusiasm—to the point of construing criticism of
“Mel’s” work as enmity toward them and their values. In fact, a de facto
alliance between fundamentalist Protestants and traditional Catholics
has developed around the movie, with consequences that are difficult
to foresee.

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 Modern and Contemporary Times

Because uncritical devotion to the film has become a virtual religious

obligation for them, fundamentalist Christians regularly attest that it
is entirely faithful to the biblical account. Interviewing Rabbi Daniel
Lapin, the most outspoken and uncompromising Jewish apologist for
Gibson, Rev. Pat Robertson asked, “What is the story here [regarding
Abraham Foxman’s criticism]? This movie is anything but anti-Semitic.
It is the four Gospels that Christians believe is inspired Scripture. There
is nothing that is departing from this narrative.” To which the rabbi
responded: “It is breathtakingly arrogant. What he is saying is that the
only way to escape the wrath of Foxman is to repudiate your faith.”
Similarly, Patrick J. Buchanan, serving as guest host on the MSNBC
program Scarborough Country, asked Rev. Franklin Graham whether it is
not the case that the film “is extraordinarily faithful to the Gospels.” The
reply: “Of course, Mel has a little bit of Hollywood artistry in the film. But
it’s very accurate . . . it’s extremely close.” Buchanan then posed a similar
question to James Kennedy, described as the most widely watched
Presbyterian minister in the country: “Could Gibson have portrayed it
any other way and remained faithful to the Gospels?” Kennedy replied:
“[W]ith a few tiny little dramatic licenses that he added, no, he could not
have, because that’s the way the story goes.”
Thus have the culture wars impelled biblical literalists to display so
little concern for the Gospel accounts that major deviations and invented
scenes, to say nothing of the larger vision transforming the narrative
into a bloodbath, become “tiny little dramatic licenses.”
The nastiest vignette so far appeared a bit later in Buchanan’s
program, when he interviewed Rabbi Shmuley Boteach in the presence of
Revs. Graham and Kennedy. In an effort to trap the rabbi into declaring
that Jesus was a charlatan, Buchanan began by asking, “Do you believe
Christ rose from the dead?” The rabbi had to reply in the negative, but
made a point of adding that he considered Jesus to have been a devout
Jew. Buchanan proceeded to ask: “If he was a devout Jew, why did he,
in effect, say that before Abraham was, I am, and in effect say, ‘I am the
messiah’? And as a consequence of what he said, he not only laid down
his life, but others laid down their lives. Now, if he was not the son of
God, how can he be a good man if he sent men to their deaths on behalf
of something that was not true?”
In other words, a Jew has no choice but to regard Jesus as less than
a good man. This was a despicable attempt to foment religious enmity,

— 414 —
 Jews, Christians, and The Passion

and in Buchanan’s case it may even have been more than that: an effort
to create discord between Jews and evangelical Christians in the hope of
weakening the support that the evangelical community has extended to
Israel. This, after all, has been a major stumbling block to Buchanan’s ability
to achieve agreement with evangelicals across a broad range of issues.
Whether or not that was Buchanan’s intent— and I put nothing past
him—this same issue is also at the heart of Jewish concerns about the
dangers of criticizing The Passion. To be sure, some liberal Jews—liberal
in both the political and religious sense—are deeply ambivalent about
the alliance established with the evangelical community regarding Israel,
and welcome the opportunity to disengage. But more conservative Jews
regard evangelical support for Israel as a virtual lifeline, valuable in
and of itself and especially crucial at a moment when that community
forms a key constituency for a conservative Republican administration
in Washington . Many Jews worry that the moderate, potential danger
posed by The Passion has been allowed to outweigh the acute and present
danger that currently confronts the Jewish people—and who is to say
that they are wrong?
***
This brings us back to the thesis with which I began: the battles over this
film have struck deep and dangerous chords. Reflecting and intensifying
old antagonisms, they have pitted conservative Christians against
liberal ones and religious fundamentalists against secularists. They have
divided Jews along both familiar and unfamiliar lines, forcing them to
confront the paradoxes of their current engagement with the Christian
world: a world in which fundamentalists who work to convert them in
order to prevent their otherwise likely (or certain) damnation extend
desperately needed support to Israel, while many religious liberals,
recognizing the ongoing value of Judaism and sensitive to manifestations
of old-style Christian anti-Semitism, vehemently denounce almost any
efforts by Israel, no matter how manifestly necessary, to defend its
citizens against mass murder at the hands of terrorists.
In the face of the deep emotions stirred by this controversy, the
challenge of maintaining a posture of measured criticism is especially
daunting. In the Jewish case, total suppression of criticism would not
only constitute a craven abandonment of self-respect; it would betray
Christian friends who have devoted much of their lives to the welfare of

— 415 —
 Modern and Contemporary Times

the Jewish people. But neither can criticism be allowed, on either side,
to descend into self-righteous condemnation of all who disagree. If amity
is to prevail, traditionalist Christians will have to force themselves to
understand that reasonable people have grounds for genuine concern
about this movie, that its critics do not necessarily hate them, and
that some like them very much indeed. Jews for their part will have to
force themselves to recognize that the fervent embrace of the film by
traditionalist Christian audiences is not necessarily a sign of hostility or
even indifference toward them, that it emerges out of positive religious
emotions as well as understandable resentments flowing from the
demonization of the religious Right by influential sectors of American
public opinion. Jews must also force themselves to continue tending
ecumenical vineyards even as the limitations of previous achievements
have become painfully evident.
The reservoirs of good will that have been painstakingly accumulated
in the last generation are being sorely tested. They cannot be allowed to
run dry.

— 416 —
 INDEX OF SOURCES

Hebrew Scriptures 7:7, 129n41

Genesis 13:7, 84
1:26, 242, 267 14:21, 124
1:29, 218 18:19, 272-3
1:31, 233-4 22:10, 241-2
2, 237-8 24:3, 270
9:5, 69-70 28:48, 96
12:2-3, 218 30:7, 131, 136
15:5, 218 32:21, 116
15:16, 128 32:36-43, 85, 130
25:23, 90, 124 I Samuel
30:38-39, 112 31:4, 60
49:10, 81, 184, 267 II Samuel
49:21, 198 1, 60
Exodus I Kings
12:48, 128 20:35-36, 273n61
20:21-22, 239-40 II Kings
22:30, 172, 173n31 1:6-7, 270
32, 118, 118n18 7, 273n61
37-38, 239-40 Isaiah
40:4-5, 240 1:14, 142
Leviticus 2:3, 125
11, 233 2:11, 84
16, 162 6:3, 267
17:7, 285n109 7:14, 81, 83, 187n31, 228n8
Numbers 9:4, 118n18
10, 282 9:5, 166
Deuteronomy 10:22, 277
1:28, 165 11, 82, 83n17
6:4, 55 14:1-2, 126
7:2, 172 24:21, 129

— 417 —
 Index of Sources

25:8, 123 81, 395

27:8, 128 106:23, 118n18
30:20, 151 110, 194n59
45, 82, 82n15, 214n18 112:10, 127
49:22-23, 131 139:21, 190
53, 76, 81, 108, 207, 387 146:3, 84
56, 126 Proverbs
60, 124 30:4, 83n18
61:5-6, 123-4, 127 Job
65:15, 127 20:26, 118
65:20, 123 Song of Songs
Jeremiah 1:6, 111
1, 217n26 7:7, 282
3:3, 215 Lamentations
17:5, 84, 175n39 1:5, 166
30:10-11, 130 3:26, 282
31:31, 81 Daniel
46:27-28, 129-30 7:13, 297, 308, 331
Ezekiel 8:12, 218n28
4:3, 167
16:14, 111
20:25, 278 Christian Scriptures
23:24, 107 Matthew
32:29, 128n39 2, 150
Obadiah 4:2, 217n24
1:18, 130, 132 5:17-18, 141, 143, 293
Micah 8:4, 146
5:1, 140 11:28, 284
Zephaniah 11:30, 191
3:9, 125, 127, 137, 368 12:1-12, 145
Zechariah 15:11, 148
12:10, 276 23:2-3, 148
13:8-9, 126 23:15, 368
Malachi 25:18, 142-3
2:9, 111 26:57, 408n2
Psalms 26:63-66, 153n39
2, 122 27:25-26, 351, 412
2:8, 218 28:18, 142-3, 143n8
13, 82 Mark
17, 82 7:15, 322
19, 82 10:18, 141
22, 213-4 13:32, 141
24:1, 142 14:46, 53, 408n2
39:13, 281 15:15, 412
45:2-3, 108 Luke
50:16-23, 133 2:5-11, 214n19
59:12, 250, 273 9:58, 142
72:11, 108, 218, 219n29 16:17, 144

— 418 —
 Index of Sources

18:18-19, 293 11:25-26, 181, 251, 343, 373

22:54, 408n2 11:28-29, 344-5
John 13:8-10, 329
5:45-47, 252n26 II Corinthians
6:47-66, 151 5:17, 286
12:49, 143 Galations
14:6, 344 3:24-26, 279
18:12-13, 408n2 4:26, 252
19:1-3, 409 5:13-14, 329
Acts Ephesians
6:9-10, 271 1:3-14, 379
3:22-23, 273 2 Tim.
Romans 2:23-24, 181
3:21-22, 279
7:14-25, 279 Hebrews
11:19, 357 10:1, 229n12

— 419 —
 INDEX

Unelaborated references in footnotes are not listed in the index.

A Amolon, 263, 271, 276n79

Abelard, Peter, 187 Anacletus II (Pope), 258-9, 259n76
Abner of Burgos, 161-62, 223n42 Angelomus of Luxeuil, 268
abortion, 365-6, 403 annunciation, 212-3
Abraham, 61, 100, 128, 269, 337, 380, 392, Anselm, 77
414 Antilogus, see Damian, Peter
Abrahams, Israel, 320, 328 Anti-Defamation League, 334, 352, 404-5
Abravanel, Isaac, 132-3, 133n49, 137-8 anti-Semitism,
Abulafia, Anna Sapir, 30 and anti-Jewish stereotypes, 255-6,
Adam, 7, 218, 237-8, 315 260, 340-1
Adam of Perseigne, 181-2, 182n14, 190 apocalyptic tension and, 21-22, 39, 49
affirmative action, 365 associations with Satan and, 6-7, 10-
aggadah, 58-60, 59nn20-21, 159, 161-2, 11, 38, 38n51, 39, 48, 256, 355, 377
164-6, 173, 207, 330 bottom up, 37, 48, 49
Agobard, 91, 93, 95n63, 258n71, 271-2 and centralization of power, 9, 88
Agus, Irving, 94n61 Christian piety and, 4, 23, 39, 49, 88,
Ahad HaAm, 299n21 261, 288
Ahimaaz of Oria, 263 Christian protection from, 6, 246-9,
R. Akiva, 61 260, 274-5
Alan of Lille, 87, 185, 227-244 economic basis for, 4, 7-8, 10, 27-28,
Albeck, Hanokh, 54 39, 48, 89, 257
Albigensians, 99, 220, 220n36, 226; see also evil Jewish traits and, 254-6
heretics, Christian familiarity with Talmud and, 23, 26-27,
Albigois, see Albigensians 39, 48
Alcuin, 263, 272 and interfaith dialogue, 333-4, 336,
Alenu, 95, 121n24 339-40, 345, 350-5, 384, 387, 390,
Alexander II (Pope), 249-50n15, 262, 274 397
Alfonsi, Petrus, 87, 103, 187, 234 Jewish behavior and, 4, 19, 20, 32-37,
Alkabetz, Shlomo, 136 43, 253
‘almah, 81, 228n8 Jewish eschatology and, 32-37
American Jewish Committee, 334 Jewish exclusiveness and, 253
American Jewish Congress, 334 meaning of the term, 3

— 420 —
 Index

modern nationalism and, 8 liturgy of, 31, 34, 95, 109, 110n3,
in modern times, 7-12, 398 120n23, 121n24, 129, 131n43,
national unification and, 4, 26, 39, 88 132n45, 134n50, 135
Nazi, 10-11, 354-5 martyrdom, 55-62, 68, 96-98, 109
in New Testament, 350-2, 393 polemics of, 52, 109-27, 142-5, 143n8,
in pagan times, 4 145, 149, 152-4, 176, 195-6, 198n77,
as part of larger developments, 4, 19- 213
20, 23, 39, 43 vs. Sephardim, 49, 120-1, 132, 132n45,
as pathology, 4, 8 134n50
perpetuation of, 38-39 self-image of, 111-7, 134-5
popular, 6, 10, 37-38, 48 status of, 88-92
psychological explanations for, 7, 10, view of Christians, 31, 54, 66-73, 109-
28-30, 39, 48 36; see also crusade; polemics
racial, 10, 354-5 asmakhta, 167
religious, 4-8, 10, 253-6, 354-5, 382, Association for Jewish Studies, 18, 40
403, 415 attributes of God, 86, 223-4, 224-5n48
royal protection from, 5-6 Augustine, 24-25, 134n50, 222n38, 230,
tension with Christian elite and, 19-20, 253, 273, 381
22, 27, 39, 48 aural conception, 211-3
top down, 37, 48, 49 Austria, 4
unity of Christendom and, 4, 26-27, avodah zarah (foreign worship), 54, 57, 61,
39 66-68, 71-73, 72n56, 117-19, 120n22,
and usury, 257 130-1, 131n43, 132-3, 138, 146, 152,
and Zionism, 11-12, 360-1 160, 162, 168, 170-2, 170n24, 285,
see also Bernard of Clairvaux; crusade; 292-4, 301n25, 305, 315-6, 338, 369,
expulsions; host desecration; Jewish- 371-2, 381, 389, 392-6
Christian interaction; polemics; ritual
murder; The Passion of the Christ; well B
poisoning Ba‘al Shem Tov, 116
apocalyptic tension, 21-22 badge, 18
apocrypha, 80-81, 277 Baeck, Leo, 316n8, 320, 320n14, 324-5,
apostates, Jewish 63-65, 95, 111, 119, 171, 330-2
194, 197, 370; see also heretics, Jewish; Bahya ben Asher, 136
mumar Baer, Yitzhak, 41, 66, 196n68, 200, 203,
apostles, 82, 155, 255, 255n48, 402 205n8, 291-2, 299-300
Aquinas, Thomas, 51 Baldensperger, Wilhelm, 308-9
Arabs, 11, 110n3, 356, 358, 361-2 baptism, xi, 56n14, 65, 87, 144, 147, 283,
Aragon, king of, 201-5, 204n7 287, 314, 324, 383
aristocracy, 18 baptismal water, 44
Arnulf (Bishop), 259 Barcelona disputation, 68, 164, 194, 194n59,
Ashkenazim, 195n66, 199-208, 387; see also Nahma-
authorities, 57-62, 70, 89-90 nides; Pablo Christiani; polemics
culture of, 21n39 Baron, Salo, x, 15, 26, 26n22, 41, 56n14,
eschatology of, 31-37, 62, 66n37, 109, 94n61, 102n82, 112n8, 180, 197n74,
120-37, 129n41, 135n50 224n46, 257, 259
knowledge of Christianity, 44-45 Bartholomew of Exeter, 184n18
literature of, 109, 110n3, 131, 145, Bede, 275
145n17 Bekhor Shor, Joseph, 55

— 421 —
 Index

Benedict XVI (Pope), 367; see also Ratzinger, Cassian, John, 278
Joseph Cassiodorus, 272, 276
Ben Sasson, Haim Hillel, 112 Cathars, 211, 213, 220, 222, 224-5; see also
Berengarius of Narbonne, 274 heretics, Christian
Berliner, Avraham, 41 Catholicism and Catholics, xi-xiii, 19-20,
Bernard of Clairvaux, x, 6, 73-74, 87n32, 203, 314-5, 333-4, 334n1, 337, 346-7,
210, 212, 245-60 350, 353-6, 365-6, 369n4, 375n18, 378-
Berrigan, Daniel, 358-9 84, 386-7, 389-90, 394, 397-8, 403-4,
bias crimes, 16-17 412-3; see also Christians, traditional
biblical commentaries, censorship, 24, 163
Christian, 82, 285 chalice, 44
Jewish, 82-83, 82n16, 267; see also Chazan, Robert, ix, 16, 89n38, 179n8, 199-
exegesis, Christian; exegesis, Jewish; 208, 210n2
Hebrew Bible; polemics, and exegesis chosen people, Jews as 117, 121, 314-6,
biblical criticism, 301, 318 343, 353, 368
bigotry, 28 Christian, Friar Paul, see Christiani, Pablo
Biron, Reginald, 264 Christiani, Pablo, 89n37, 101, 102n82, 103,
blasphemy, 23-24, 93, 95, 101-2, 132, 159, 107n116, 115n12, 159, 199, 201, 206,
163, 203n5, 260, 266, 275, 303 208
Blidstein, Gerald, 339n15 Christianity,
blood libel, 15, 25, 31-32, 36-37, 91, 99, 103, vs. ancient paganism, 67, 138, 169-76,
377; see also ritual murder accusations 293, 394
Blumenkranz, Bernhard, 41, 177-8, 182n15, antinomianism of, 324-5
197n72, 227, 227n4, 235, 263, 277, 282, and attitude towards pagans, 78, 247-9,
285 253, 258, 258n71, 271
Bocthusians, 156 and blindness of Jews, 83, 83n19, 251,
Bogomils, 99, 210n2, 211, 218, 220, 256-7, 265, 269, 353
220n36, 226; see also heretics, Christian derision of, 93-94, 95n63, 109-10,
Bohemia, 4, 7 110n3, 163-4, 173
Boteach, Shmuley, 414 development of, 292, 302, 318
Bougres, see Bogomils eschatology of, 302-3, 331, 343
Bousset, Wilhelm, 317n11, 320, 328 ethics of, 296-7, 303, 306-7, 310, 316,
Boys, Sister Mary, xii 3317n11, 319, 327-30, 330n42
Breuer, Mordechai, 35, 110n3 historical basis of, 140-57
Brosseder, Johannes, 163n13 as idolatry or “foreign worship” (avodah
Bruno of Wurzbourg, 276 zarah), 54, 57, 61, 66-68, 71-73,
Buber, Martin, 323, 330-1 72n56, 117-9, 120n22, 130-1, 131n43,
Buchanan, Patrick J., 414-5 133, 138, 146, 160, 170-2, 170n24,
Bultmann, Rudolf, 318 292-5, 294-5n10, 304-5, 315-6,
Burke, Edmund, 39 338, 369, 371-2, 381-2, 389, 392-6
Burkitt, Frances C., 330n44, 331n46 image worship in, 315
Byzantine Empire, 99n74, 180, 210 Jewish contributions to, 313-32
and Jewish law, 278-88, 315, 319-25,
C 386
Calvinists, 315 and Jews as chosen people, 343-6
Canaanites, 173 and mission to gentiles, 303-5, 379
canon law, 6, 24, 37, 47-48, 260, 314 as monotheism, 160, 170-2, 301-6,
Cantor, Norman, ix-x 318, 325, 327, 382

— 422 —
 Index

rationality of, 29-30, 48, 75, 80, 85-87, Cohen, Martin, 204n7
200, 387, 413 Cohen, Shaye, 3
role of, 293, 295, 304, 311, 325, 327, commandments, Torah, 64, 73, 93, 114n10,
337 119, 139, 141, 143-5, 145n15, 147, 151,
and salvation of Jews, 247, 250-3, 172, 232, 242n36, 243-4, 278-88, 320,
250n15, 277, 288, 336, 375, 378-9, 322, 370; see also Jewish law; Jesus, and
387, 393 Jewish law; Noahide laws
supersessionism of, 344-5, 381-2, 387, confession, 314-5
393 Confrontation, 385-91; see also Soloveitchik,
universalism of, 296-7, 302-6, 310, Joseph B.
315-7, 325-7 Contra Haereticos, see Alan of Lille
see also anti-Semitism; Catholicism; contributions, Jewish, 312-32, 313n2
conversion to Christianity; Edom; exe- conversion to Christianity, 7, 9, 18, 24, 42,
gesis, Christian; Hebrew Bible; heretics, 51, 58, 61, 88, 171-2, 265-6, 276-7, 306,
Christian; incarnation; interfaith dialo- 370, 373-4, 384
gue; Jesus; Jewish-Christian interaction; and disputants, 102-3, 103n86, 186-7,
mission of Christians; new covenant; 190
New Testament; polemics; Protestantism; eschatological need for, 374
trinity; universal damnation; verus Israel forced, 246-50, 253, 262, 275
Christians, Jacob Katz on, 62-65, 67, 372
evangelical, 337, 340-1, 347-8, 363n71, mass, 7, 306, 373-4
367, 384, 395, 405, 413, 415 motivations for, 63-64, 191-2, 191n46
fundamentalist, 340-1, 351-2, 363, prevention of, 67, 349-50, 375-6
400, 402-3, 405, 413-5 see also apostates; conversos; forced
liberal, 296, 326, 328, 330, 340, 341, apostasy; martyrdom; mumar; redemp-
359, 364-5, 400, 403, 415 tion, conversionary; mission, Christian;
traditional, 343, 397, 400, 403, 405-7, New Christians
412-13, 416 conversion to Judaism, 63-64, 102, 121-3,
see also Catholicism and Catholics; 197, 302, 311, 325, 367-72
Protestantism and Protestants conversos, xii, 7, 42, 212n13
Chrysostom, John, 91, 268, 268n35 Cook, Michael J., 413
Church and Synagogue, 90, 260 copper serpent, 84
church, 44 covenant, 133, 136, 306-7, 334, 336, 339
Chmielnicki massacres, 377 double, 344-6, 393
circumcision, 113, 113n9, 128, 128n39, 141, new, 81, 143, 146-7, 380
143-4, 147, 278, 283, 303, 306, 370 old, 343-6, 357-8, 379, 386-7, 393
Cistercians, 246; see Bernard of Clairvaux Crispin, Gilbert, 44, 87, 91, 102n84, 185,
civil rights movement, 364-5 189-90, 192, 192n52, 193, 221, 227-44,
class system, 20 265
clergy, 6, 24, 25-26, 37, 49, 178n5, 180, crucifixion, 4-5, 19, 23, 76, 153, 186, 220,
188, 190, 192, 198, 201-2, 272, 355, 359, 251, 255, 255n48, 260, 264n16, 274-6,
369n4; see also monks; nuns; preaching 288, 303, 310, 333, 339, 349-56, 403-
orders; priesthood 13; see also Jesus, execution of; passion
Cohen, Abraham, 326 plays
Cohen, Gerson, x, 56n14, 319n12 crusade,
Cohen, Jeremy, 21n14, 23-26, 37, 148n21, and anti-Semitism, 4, 10, 43
163, 178n5, 182n14, 373n14 cancellation of debts for participants
Cohen, Mark, 38n51, 349n42 in, 249-50

— 423 —
 Index

first (1096), 16, 22, 32, 47, 109, 110n3, Docetists, 212; see also heretics, Christian
178-9, 179n8, 272 Dominus Iesus, 375n18, 378-84, 389-90, 397
and increased piety, 4, 88, 261 Donatists, 268-9, 272; see also heretics,
Jews killing children during, 32, 35, Christian
36n47, 45, 57-59 Donin, Nicholas, 23-24, 68, 101, 102n82,
results of, 4, 100, 103, 377 103, 118-19, 159-60, 174-5
second, 6, 32, 179, 210, 246, 259 Donohue, William, 412-3
as turning point, 42, 179n8 dualism, 211-2, 220n36, 222-3, 222n39;
see also anti-Semitism; Ashkenazim; see also heretics, Christian
Bernard of Clairvaux; martyrdom Dubnow, Simon, 298-9, 299n21
crypto-Jews, 42, 209; see also conversos; Dubois, Marcel, 332n48
marranos; New Christians Duran, Profiat, 147-21, 148n21-22, 153-7,
Cyrus, 82, 214n18 153n39, 154n41, 157n47, 293n6
Duran, Simon ben Zemah, 132, 147n20,
148, 148n21, 150-1, 153n39, 154-7
D Duran, Solomon ben Simon, 122, 148
da Correggio, Yair ben Shabbetai, 151 Durkheim, Emile, 309
d’Alverny, Marie-Therese, 227-8
Daiches, Salis, 320 E
da Modena, Leone, 155-7 Eastern religions, 20
Da‘at Zeqenim, 116 Eckardt, Alice, 340, 363
Dabru Emet, 389-90, 392-8 Eckardt, Roy, 340, 363, 363n71
Damian, Peter, ix, 77, 87, 91, 143n10, 182, economic insecurity, 89-91, 89n38, 89n40,
182n15, 185, 190, 191n44, 210, 235n26, 95-96, 103
250n16, 261-90 ecumenism, see interfaith dialogue
Daniel, 132-3, 137, 264n16 Edom, Kingdom of, 96, 117, 128n39, 129-
Dark Ages, 79 31, 131n43, 132, 132n45, 133, 133n49,
David, King, 270, 281 136-8
Davies, Alan, 350 Edut Hashem Ne’emanah, see de Rossi,
Day of Atonement, 31, 95, 116 Solomon
de Leon, Moses, 136 Edwards, Mark U., 163n13
demonology, 6, 354-5; see also anti-Semi- Eginhard, 280
tism, and associations with Satan; Devil; Ehrman, Albert, 104n91
Satan Elhanan b. Yaqar, 44
de Rossi, Azariah, 155, 157 R. Eleazar, 167
de Rossi, Solomon, 90n21, 85, 88, 93, emancipation, 8-12
102n84, 195n66 Emden, Jacob, 295, 316, 396
Derashot ha-Ran, 125n34 Emicho, Count, 377
Devil, 6, 38-39, 38n51, 48, 182, 265, 270, Endelman, Todd, 9
377, 404 Enlightenment, 7, 139; see also Haskalah
dialectical method, 47 Ephraim of Bonn, 249, 249n11
dietary laws, 284 Episcopal Church, 353-4
Disputatio Iudaei et Christiani, see Crispin, Epistle to Yemen, 146; see also Maimonides
Gilbert eremiticism, 261, 264, 282
disputation, 88, 95, 161, 199-201, 263, Esau, 130, 135, 403; see also Edom, Kingdom
343, 387; see also Barcelona disputation; of
Paris disputation; polemics; Tortosa eschatology, see apocalyptic tension;
disputation Ashkenazim, eschatology of; Christianity,

— 424 —
 Index

eschatology of; messianism; polemics, Foxman, Abraham, 404-5, 414

destiny of Christians in; redemption, France, Jews of, 18, 88-90
conversionary; redemption, vengeful French Revolution, 8
Eschelbacher, Joseph, 320, 324, 328, 330 Franconia, 17
Essenes, 156 Fredrick II, 91
Esther, 174, 281, 318 Fredrick of Mayence (Archbishop), 250
Eucharist, 324; see also host; host dese- Friedlander, Gerald, 315n6, 329
cration Friedman, Allen, 373
Eucher of Lyon, 280 Fulbert of Chartres, 184n20, 185, 263, 267
Evangelical Church of the Rhineland, 337, Fulda, 37
357n61 Funkenstein, Amos, 110n3, 180n10
exegesis, Christian, 76-83, 196n68, 267-73,
282-7; see also Hebrew Bible, allegorical G
interpretation of; Hebrew Bible, Christo- Gabriel, 211-2
logical interpretation of; Jewish-Christian Gentiles,
interaction, and biblical exegesis; pole- Ashkenazi view of, 31, 54, 66-73, 109-31
mics, and exegesis righteous, 87n33, 117, 297, 326, 369-
exegesis, Jewish, 41-42, 46-47, 55, 80-84, 73, 396
116, 139, 145, 166, 174n34, 196n68, in Talmud, 24, 70, 89, 95n63, 117, 119,
196n71, 267, 273n61; see also Jewish- 122-3, 123n29, 140, 159-61, 163-4,
Christian interaction, and biblical 169-74, 293
exegesis; polemics, and exegesis ger toshav, 122; see also Noahide command-
exile, 9, 34, 74, 79, 111-2, 114, 114-5n10, ments
128-9, 134n50, 140, 187, 275-6, 305-6, ger zedeq, 122, 126
311, 325, 381 German Evangelical Church, 347
expulsion, 6-7, 15, 25, 179, 250, 275, 374 Germany, Jews of, 90-91, 106, 195
from England, 18, 38 Gerondi, Nissim, 76n42
from France, 18, 90 Rabbenu Gershom, 120n23
in Germany, 91 Gibson, Mel, 399-406, 409-14
Ezer ha-Dat, see Polgar, Isaac Giese, Wolfgang, 197n74
Ezer ha-Emunah, see Moses Ha-Kohen of Glock, Charles, 350n46
Tordesillas God,
Ezra, 318 mercy of, 86
Jewish conception of, 301
F power of, 86
Fallwell, Jerry, 341 will of, 86, 87
Federici, Tomasso, 346-7 wisdom of, 86
Ferrer, Vincent, 377 demeaning doctrines about, 220
Finkelstein, Louis, 316-7, 328 oneness of, 85-86, 223-4
First Amendment, 406-7 omnipotence of, 86
Fisher, Eugene, 347, 356 transcendence of, 330-1
Fleisher, Ezra, 35 see also attributes of God; avoda zarah;
Flusser, David, 337-8 mercy, divine; monotheism; power,
Foa, Anna, 24 divine; will, divine; wisdom, divine
forced apostasy, 32, 37, 55-61, 65; see also Gog and Magog, 122, 126
apostates; conversion to Christianity; golden calf, 118, 118n18, 395
martyrdom; mumar Goldschmidt, Israel, 321, 326
Forde, Gerhard O., 163n13 Good Friday, 353

— 425 —
 Index

Goodman, Martin, 368n3 authority of Law, 278-88, 380

Gospels, 75, 77, 101-2, 101n81, 102n83, Christological interpretation of, 80-84,
104n91, 141n2, 143-4, 148, 150, 152-7, 82n15, 85n22, 158-9, 196n68, 201,
266, 279, 292, 351-3, 383, 393, 402-14; 213, 217n26, 221, 225, 266-70, 296,
see also New Testament 331-2, 338, 376-7
Grabois, Aryeh, 192n52 historical interpretations of, 82
Graetz, Heinrich, 41, 249, 298-9 vs. New Testament, 262, 278, 281
Graham, Billy, 348 read in context, 83-84
Graham, Franklin, 414 source of love and compassion, 282
Grayzel, Solomon, 41, 94n61 Hebrew Christians, 350
Gregory of Tours, 277 hell, 65, 74, 92, 117-20, 118n18, 172, 220,
Gregory the Great, 230, 248, 265, 267, 269 270, 297, 317, 374-5
Gregorian reform, 88, 245, 261, 264, 274 Hellenistic period, 4, 368
Gross, A., 174n34 Henry (heretic), 255-7
Grosseteste, Robert 373-4 heretics, Christian, 20, 77-78, 99-100,
Grossman, Avraham, 16, 42n8, 57, 121, 100n78, 185-6, 257-8, 268, 285, 288
124-7 and Jews, 209-26, 209n1, 271-2
Guedemann, Moritz, 321, 321n19 heretics, Jewish, 72-73n7, 95, 119, 171-2;
Gui, Bernard, 94-95 see also apostates, Jewish
Guibert de Nogent, 186, 191n44, 193 Herman of Cologne, 63, 63n29, 187, 191-2,
Gutwirth, Eleazar, 17, 115n10, 147n21, 195
151n33 Heschel, Susannah, 317n11
Hezekiah, 82, 162, 166, 281
H high and low culture, 40, 47-49
Hackspanius, Theodoricus, 105 high priest, 407-8
Hadrian I (Pope), 272 Hildebert of Lavardin, 189n38
Hagner, Donald, 322 Hildebrand, 274
Hai Gaon, 125, 262 R. Hillel, 162, 329
halakhah, see Jewish Law Hinderbach, 25
halakhic federalism, 71-72, 145n17 history,
Halbertal, Moshe, 72 objectivity of, 139
Halevi, Judah, 62, 97 longue durée, 17-18, 20, 49
Ha-Meiri, Menahem, 54, 54n8, 67, 71-72, in polemics, 139-57
72-73n59, 160, 169, 171-2, 293, 293- and psychology, 48
4n8, 316, 317n10, 395 teleological, 17
Harding, Stephen, 246, 246n2 Hitler, Adolf, 369; see also Holocaust;
Harnack, Adolf, 320-1, 328, 330 Nazism
Hasidei Ashkenaz, 41, 46 Hoffmann, David Zvi, 52-53, 54n8,
Hasidism, 116 273n61
Haskalah, 49; see also Enlightenment Holocaust, 11, 19, 40, 336-7, 354-5, 360-1,
Hasmoneans, 327n37 369n4, 384
Hay, Malcolm, 245-6, 249 Holy Land, see Israel, Land of
Hebrew Bible, 23, 68, 76-78, 101, 163, 273, holy sepulcher, 44, 110n3
275-7, 314n5, 318, 329-30, 332, 337, holy spirit, 92
371, 379-81 homosexuality, 20, 43, 365, 403
allegorical reading of, 78, 229, 231-4, Honestus, 182, 182n15, 191n44, 264-5,
236-44, 242n36, 244n38, 270, 278- 267, 288
88 Hosea, 322-3

— 426 —
 Index

host desecration, 6, 17, 18, 28-30, 30n31, interfaith prayer, 389, 392, 395, 403
43, 377 International Jewish Committee on Inter-
host, 44, 93 religious Consultations, 394
Hsia, R. Po-Chia, 25 Italy, 261-3
interest, see usury
I Isaac ben Yeda‘ya, 113-14, 113n9
ibn Ezra, Abraham, 173n31 Isabella, 394
ibn Gabirol, Solomon, 300 Ishmael, 130, 132-3, 133n49, 135-7; see
ibn Gikatilla, Moses, 136 also Islam
ibn Verga, Solomon, 115n10 Ish-Shalom, Meir 128n39
iconoclasts, 272; see also heretics, Chri- Isidore of Seville, 77, 143n10, 234, 235n26,
stian 266, 282-7
idolatry, see avodah zarah Islam,
idolatrous monotheism, 171, 294, 304 and anti-Semitism, 11
Immanuel prophecy, 108 Christian approach to, 20, 43, 178-9,
incarnation, 85-86, 92-93, 138, 184, 186, 185, 220
188n38, 192, 200, 202, 220, 221, 252n26, and Christianity, 11, 67-68, 224, 371,
331, 338, 379, 387, 393 373
Innocent II (Pope), 258 contact with, 100
Innocent IV (Pope), 25 and Jerusalem, 360
Inquisition, 90, 94-95, 209, 209n2, 222, Jewish attitude towards, 67-68, 72,
374, 377 130, 133, 132n45, 135-7, 146, 293,
interfaith dialogue, x, 333-66 371
and anti-Semitism, 349-55, 390, 397 Jews under, 11, 38n51, 327, 368
with Catholics and Protestants, 333- persecution of Christianity, 262
43, 378-84, 386-7, 389 success of, 304, 306, 311, 325
dangers of, 385-91, 392-4, 397-8, 402 Israel, Ancient, 291, 301, 301n25
evangelical nature of, xi-xii, 378-84, Israel, carnal, 253, 269, 303
390 Israel, Land of, 123n29, 170, 172, 262,
and State of Israel, 356-64, 391, 398, 299, 357, 391, 398, 403; see also State of
400 Israel
and missionary activity, 343-9, 367, Israel, State of, 12, 40, 49, 334, 336, 334n2,
375-7 337, 340-1, 345, 350, 355-64, 367, 384,
non-interventionism in, 342n21, 348, 387, 398, 400, 415
351, 375, 377, 393-4, 397-8, 402-4, Israel, True, see verus Israel
408
parameters of, 333-43, 385-91 J
polemic, 286-7 Jacob ben Reuben, 44, 85, 88, 92, 93n53,
public policy, 364-6 99-100, 102n84, 108, 146, 147n20, 151,
relativism in, 392, 397 193-95, 217n24, 219n29, 221-3, 225,
Soloveitchik on, 385-91, 402 225n50, 225-6, 227-44
supersessionism, 381-2, 387, 393 Jacob of Venice, 88
theological reciprocity, 338, 385-91, Jacobs, Joseph, 314-5, 332n49
392-4, 397-8, 402 James I, 201-5, 204n7
triumphalism, 340, 347, 377, 387, 397 Jerome, 81, 95n63, 222n38, 230-1, 230n18,
see also Jewish-Christian interaction; 255, 278
Dabru Emet; Confrontation; Dominus Iesus; Jerusalem, 110n3, 125, 131, 167, 174, 247,
The Passion of the Christ 252, 270, 281, 303, 359-60

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 Index

Jesus resurrection of, 270, 275, 287, 315, 379

as apocalyptic “son of man,” 142, 275, scourging of, 403, 409, 412
297, 302-3, 307-9, 331 self-perception of, 149-56, 297, 302-3,
and Christian exegesis, 76, 267 307
disciples of, 119, 148-50, 155 as son of God, 149, 153, 154-6, 275,
divinity of, 67, 117, 119, 141-3, 143n9, 314, 328, 379, 414
149-56, 216-7, 217n26, 219n31, worship of, 5, 23
293, 295-6, 382, 395, 400 see also avodah zarah; crucifixion; Hebrew
eschatology of, 297-8 Bible, Christological inter pretations of;
ethical message of, 296-7, 300, 307, incarnation; passion plays; polemics,
309, 318, 328-9 about Jesus; Talmud, references to Jesus;
execution of, 34, 152-5, 153n40, 157, trinity; virgin birth
303, 310, 407-8 Jewish history,
as false prophet, 153n40, 310 Israeli vs. Diaspora study of, 49-50
as forgiver of sins, 308 methodology of study of, 16-17, 41,
genealogy of, 77, 150 47, 49-50
as hasid shoteh, 151, 151n33 moral judgment about, 53
historical, 139-57, 174 periodization of, 15-17, 43, 49, 179-80
and idolatry, 152-7, 171, 174 traditionalist vs. secular scholars of,
ignorance of, 151 49-50
inconsistencies of, 145-9 Jewish law (halakhah),
Jewish attitudes towards, 44, 292-3, and aggadah, 58-60, 59n20, 164
295 development of, 52, 55, 62, 68-71, 139
and Jewish law, 141-9, 143n10, economic effects on, 89-90
145n15, 147n20, 151-6, 278, 293, effect of emotion on, 57-61
315, 322-3 and execution, 153, 153n40
Jews rejection of, 56n14, 76, 177, 251, Gentiles in, 52-55, 66-72, 122-3, 169-
253-4, 256, 272, 275, 301, 353, 355 76, 220n36, 293
and the Kingdom of God, xi, 298, social impact on, 69-70, 139
307-8, 330 see also Christianity, and Jewish law;
loyalty to Judaism of, 141, 141n4, 147, Jesus, and Jewish law; rabbinic Judaism;
155-6, 174, 293 Reform Judaism; Talmud
mercy of, 251, 260 Jewish serfdom, 90-91, 250-1
as Messiah, 76, 153, 153-4n40, 185, Jewish-Christian debate, see polemics
265, 267, 277, 298, 302-3, 307, 310, Jewish-Christian interaction,
325, 328, 337-8, 386, 390, 393, 398, anti-Semitism and, 40, 48
414 areas for further research in, 50
miracles of, 87, 144, 146, 219, 219n31, and biblical exegesis, 41-42, 46-47,
254 196n68, 246, 246n2
modern scholarship on, 292, 297, changes in nature of, 68-69
308-9 cultural influence, 44-48, 111
multiple, 152-3, 154n41, 157, 174 effect of fear on, 68
mythological-magical character of, friendly, 134-5
305 group vs. individual, 69
and Pharisees, 148, 156 and Holocaust, 40, 336-7
as prophet, 168, 322-3, 393 and informal discussion of religion,
punishment of, 173-4 41-42, 46, 181, 190-8, 192n52,
and redemption of world, 219-20 196n68, 196n71, 201, 371

— 428 —
 Index

Jacob Katz on, 51-74 Katz, Steven T., 38n51

vs. Jewish-Muslim interaction, 67-68 Kaufmann, David, 41
legal discrimination and, 40 Kaufmann, Yehezkel, 291-2, 300-11, 301n25
in Northern Europe, 41-44, 68 Kelimat ha-Goyim, see Duran, Profiat
prompting polemics, 181-92 Keshet u-Magen, see Duran, Simon ben
and self-image, 111-7, 134-5 Zemah
in Spain, 42-43, 68 Kedar, Benjamin Z., 179, 193n54
State of Israel and, 40, 336-7 Kennedy, James, 414
study of, ix-x, 40-41, 50 Kimelman, Reuven, 135-7
theological differences and, 40, 67-68 Kimhi, David, 95, 211
see also avodah zarah; conversion to Kimhi, Joseph, 88, 107n116, 108, 115,
Christianity; conversion to Judaism; 147n19, 218n28, 219n31
interfaith dialogue; Jewish law, Gentiles kings, 5-6, 15, 18, 174-5, 174n34, 175n39;
in; polemics; tolerance; wine of Gentiles see also royal protection
Jewish Community Relations Council, 348-9 Klausner, Joseph, 300, 300n22, 307, 327,
Jews for Jesus, xi, 348, 376-7 327n37, 329
Joachim of Fiore, 189 Klawans, Stuart, 406
John of Lugio, 225n48 Klein, Charlotte, 352-3
John the Baptist, 151n33, 324, 326 Korn, Eugene, 385-91
John Paul II (Pope), xiii, 384, 386 Krauss, Samuel, 41, 316n9
Jordan, William C., 18, 29n24 Krochmal, Nahman, 298-9
Joseph, 254 Kuzari, 62, 97-98
Josippon, 156-7
Judaizers, xii, 91, 126, 187n31, 212n13, 374 L
Judas Iscariot, 257-8, 406 Landes, Richard, 20-22, 21n12, 37
Julian of Toledo, 266 Lanfranc, 274-5
Justin, 91, 278 Langmuir, Gavin, 28-31, 38
Lapin, Daniel, 414
K Lasker, Daniel, 86n23
kabbalah, 139, 207, 209n1, 322, 338 leaven, 285
Kanarfogel, Ephraim, 60n23 Leibowitz, Yeshayahu, 332n48
Kaplan, Mordecai, 316, 328 Leo VII (Pope), 250
Katz, Jacob, 51-74, 120n22, 145, 169, 171 Leo the Great, 269, 280
and apologetics, 52-54, 74 leprosy, 20, 43, 112, 112-3n8, 144-5,
on contemporary relevance of medieval 145n15, 215
history, 53, 73-74 Lekhah Dodi, 135
on converts, 62- 65, 372 Levi, Israel, 94n61
on development of halakhah, 54-55, Liberal Judaism, see Reform Judaism
62, 67-71 Lipschutz, Israel, 372
on polemics, 55 Little, Lester K., 28, 28n27
impact of, 41, 74 liturgical curses, 31, 34, 36, 109
on instinct, 54-55 Loeb, Isidore, 106, 199n1, 200, 202
on Jewish attitudes towards Christia- Lord’s Prayer, 315
nity, 54-55, 66-73, 372 Lotter, Friedrich, 30n31
on martyrdom, 55-62 Louis IX, 88, 90, 93, 191n44
on moral judgments in studying Jewish Loughlin, James F., 274
history, 53 Lowry, Richard, 339n13
motivations of, 52-54 Luke, 77, 102n83, 332, 412

— 429 —
 Index

Luther, Martin, 7, 163, 163n13, 330 Mein Kampf, 11

Lutheran World Federation, 347 Meir (b. Simon) of Narbonne, 88, 95, 100,
108, 108n118, 125n34, 203, 220, 143n10,
M 145n15, 149, 194, 209n1, 217n24, 218n28,
Maimonides, 67, 67n42, 72, 95, 114-5n10, 219n29, 219n31, 220n36, 242n36
122, 137, 146, 209, 210n2, 293, 304, Meiri, see Ha-Meiri, Menahem
327, 371-2 Meir of Rothenburg, 58-62, 59n21, 97
Mainz, 60 Mendelssohn, Moses, 295, 326, 331-2, 372
Magen ha-Herev, see da Modena, Leone menstrual blood, 203-16
Malamat, Abraham, 304n30 mercy, divine, 86
Marcion, 77, 78n6, 380 Merhavia, Ch., 221n37, 222n38
Margaritha, 163, 163n13 Meshullam ben Kolonymus, 262
marranos, 7; see also conversos Messiah, 81, 84, 84n21, 93, 101, 121, 161-2,
Martini, Raymund, 102n82, 107n116, 166, 185, 200, 303, 307, 315, 331, 337,
148n21, 161 398; see also messianism; messianism,
martyrdom 31, 32, 35-36, 49-50, 403 false; Jesus, as Messiah
effect of, 32-36 messianism, 49, 56n14, 298, 302; see also
as heroism, 55-56, 58 Ashkenazim, eschatology of; redemption,
influence of Christianity on, 42 conversionary; redemption, vengeful
Jacob Katz on, 55-61 messianism, false, 56, 56n14, 57n16
justification for, 57-62, 97 Meyer, Eduard, 307-9
killing others for sake of, 32, 35, 36n47, mezuzah, 122, 172
45, 57-61, 97 midrash, 59-60, 59n20-21; see also aggadah
motivation for, 32-36, 36n47, 54-56, Milhamot Hashem, see Jacob ben Reuben
62, 96 Milhemet Mizvah, see Meir (b. Simon) of
in polemics, 97-98 Narbonne
and sanctification of the Name of God, militarism, 200, 202
36n47, 62, 96 millennium, 21
spiritualization of, 68 minim (heretics), 95, 95n63, 119, 171-2
by suicide, 57-61, 60n23 minority group, 16, 19
Marxism, 38, 301 Mishnah, 175, 300, 410; see also Talmud
Mary, 44, 85n22, 92, 95, 211-2, 214, Mishneh Torah, 95, 137-8; see also Maimo-
214n18, 203, 205, 253-5, 261-2, 406 nides
Mary cult, 245, 261 mission,
Mashmia Yeshu‘ah, see Abravanel, Isaac Christian, xi, 4, 64, 67, 180-90, 197n72,
Masoretic text, 81 198, 198n77, 314, 316, 332, 333-40,
Mass, 314-5 343-9, 357, 367, 373-7, 378-84, 387,
materialism, 299, 301 392, 398, 415
Matthew, 77, 83, 92, 100, 102n83-96, 144, Jewish, 197, 197n72, 197n74, 248,
148, 194, 221, 229, 339, 351-2, 368, 403, 350, 367-73
412 see also apostate; conversion to Chri-
Maur, Raban (Maurus, Rabanus), 252n28, stianity; conversion to Judaism; forced
270, 277 apostasy; mumar; polemics; witness,
Maxim (Bishop), 265 Christian
Ma‘yenei ha-Yeshu‘ah, see Abravanel, Isaac monasticism, 98, 98n71, 103, 116, 245,
McCaul, Alexander, 296 261, 264, 279
McNulty, Patricia, 264, 277 moneylending, 4, 27, 90, 96
Meinfredus (Bishop), 259 monks, 98, 116

— 430 —
 Index

monotheism, 68, 85-86, 138, 160, 171, 185, New York Board of Rabbis, 389
301, 301n25, 301-6, 311, 314, 318, 325, Nicholas of Clairvaux, 271
327-8, 342, 395; see also Christianity, as Nicolas II, 274
monotheism Nineveh, 116
monotheistic idolatry, 171, 294 Ninth of Av, 110n3
Montefiore, Claude G., 322, 324, 326-7, Nirenberg, David, 17-20
330-1 Nizzahon Beli Nezah sive Triumphator
Moore, R.I., 20-23, 27, 37-38 Vapulans, 104
Moral Majority, 340-1, 363 Nizzahon Vetus (Nitsahon Yashan), x, 50,
Mordecai of Avignon, 88, 107n116, 219-20, 51-52, 52n2, 62, 64, 75-76, 82, 84-85,
220n36, 225-6 88, 91-110, 111-8, 123, 128-31, 142-4,
Moses, 118, 205, 281 148-9, 175n39, 194, 196n68, 197, 213-5,
Moses of Salerno, 86n23, 88, 108, 108n118, 217n25-38, 218, 219n29, 224n46, 225,
116, 143n8, 194 370-1; see also polemics
Moses ha-Kohen of Tordesillas, 73n57, Noahide covenant, see Noahide laws
147-9, 147n20, 148-9, 153, 161-76 Noahide laws, 73, 117, 119-20, 122, 169,
Moses of Burgos, 136 295, 297, 316, 368-9, 372, 396
Moses of Crete, 56 Nostra Aetate no. 4, 19-20, 333, 386-7
Mühlhausen, Yom Tov Lippmann, 69, 103, Novak, David, 369, 395-7
105, 213n14 Novatian, 234
mumar, 65 nuns, 98, 116, 192
Muslims, see Islam
mysticism, 300, 307 O
Oberammergau passion play, 352, 405
N Oberman, Heiko A., 163n13
Nahmanides, ix, x, 88, 107n116, 116, 159-60, Odo, 188-19, 188n36
164, 176, 194n59, 195n66, 199-208, 203n5, Odo of Cambrai, 186, 192-3
204n7, 205n8, 219n29, 224n46; see also Official, Joseph, 30n31, 69, 87n33, 88,
Christiani, Pablo; Barcelona disputation 94n61, 142, 149, 194, 197, 213-5; see also
Napoleonic Sanhedrin, 50 Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne
National Council of Churches, 334, 342, Official, Nathan, 88, 118, 118n18
359, 361, 363 Old Testament, see Hebrew Bible
nationalism, Jewish, 292, 298-302, 310-1, Opuscula de Conversione Sua, 63
327, 356, 358; see also Zionism Or Zarua, Isaac, 55
Nazism, 10-11, 354-5, 380, 392 original sin, 86, 314-15
New Christians, 7, 374; see also conversos; Orthodox Judaism, 49, 52, 320-1, 365-6,
Judaizers; marranos 369n4, 373, 381, 384, 389-91, 400,
Newman, L.I., 209n1, 255n52 402-3, 406
New Moon, 286 Otto, Rudolph, 309
New Testament, 44, 77, 100-2, 101n91,
141-55, 221, 229, 273, 346, 350-3, 379- P
80, 393 paganism, 4, 67, 78, 89, 137-8, 169, 171-2,
Hebrew translation of, 229-30 175, 177, 247-9, 253, 258, 258n71,
modern scholarship of, 292, 297, 301-2, 304-5, 325, 327n37, 354, 367,
308-9, 329 379, 382, 394-6
see also anti-Semitism, in New Testament; papal sovereignty, 21n13
Gospels; Hebrew Bible; polemics, use of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO),
New Testament 359

— 431 —
 Index

Palestinians, 358, 361, 361n69, 362, 398, and argument from success of
400; see also Arabs; Palestine Liberation Christianity, 100, 218-9
Organization authenticity of, 190-6, 200-8, 263,
parhesia (in public), 62 269n41
Paris disputation, 6, 51, 73, 101, 104n91, and Christian heresy, 99-100, 103,
110, 118-9, 123, 152-3, 159, 194, 196n68, 209-25, 209n1
369; see also R. Yehiel of Paris and conception of the Jew, 83
particularism, 315, 317n11, 319, 325-7 converts as disputants in, 102-3,
paschal sacrifice, 128, 286 103n86, 161
pashtanim, 46 as defense against Jewish questions,
Passion, 22 180-4, 190-1, 194
The Passion of the Christ, 399-414 derogatory references to Christianity
passion plays, 352, 401-2, 405; see also The in, 93-94, 95n63, 110, 110n3
Passion of the Christ derogatory references to Jews in,
Passover seder, xii, 31, 314-5 251n22, 268-9
Pastoureaux, 90 destiny of Christians in, 117-38,
patriarchs, 61 123n29, 129n41
patriotism, 8-9 dialogue as, 343, 352, 386-7
Paul, 222n38, 229-31, 253, 277, 279, 293, discrepancies in records of, 200, 203n5,
295, 321, 323-5, 329-30, 332, 332n48, 205, 205n8
355, 350 about doctrinal issues, x, 80-81, 85-87,
Pawlikowski, John, 353n53, 394 140, 158, 211-21
penances, 46 early, 79-80, 79n12, 263
Perles, Felix, 320, 328 effect of realia on, 91-92, 92n46, 95-96,
Peter Chrysologus, 251, 272, 277 99, 108, 110, 134
Peter of Blois, 87, 182-4, 190-1, 191n44, and ethical superiority, 111-7, 117n17,
193, 228n8 134, 218
Peter of Cornwall, 189 and exegesis, x, 46-47, 55, 76-84, 87,
Peter the Venerable, 83n18, 87, 188-9, 91, 140, 158, 173, 196, 196n68, 201,
188n36, 191n45, 250, 257n63, 259, 228, 266-73, 282-7
259n76 and exile, 218, 218n28
Peter, 44, 92 folk, 92
Petuchowski, Jacob, 348 in France, 88-89, 195
Pharisees, 148, 156, 256, 268, 354, 368 and freedom of speech, 200-6
Philip the Bold, 90 use of Hebrew, 188, 190, 188n36
Philip the Fair, 90 use of history, 139-57, 147n21
Philo, 324 about Jesus, 139-57, 211-7, 217nn25-
piety, 4, 23, 39, 46, 49, 88, 245, 261, 288 38, 219, 267-8
Pines, Shlomo, 114-5n10 Jewish defense against, 82-83, 159-
Pius IX (Pope), 394 76
Pius XII (Pope), 394 Jewish initiation of, 42, 84-85, 94,
pogroms, 15, 17-18, 407 94n61, 181-2, 190-1, 194-8
Poland, 4 and Jewish law, 76, 84, 87, 141-9,
polemical literature, see polemics 153-6, 159, 191, 219, 229, 232,
polemics, 239-44, 257, 262, 267, 270-1, 277-
ad hoc arguments in, 146-7 88, 293, 310
as apologia for conversion, 187 and Jewish self-image, 111-7, 124,
apologies for writing, 180-7 134-5

— 432 —
 Index

lack of missionary intent in, 180-7, Pontifical Commission for Religious Rela-
190-3, 197-8, 266 tions with the Jews, 334, 401
limitations on, 200-5 Pontius Pilate, 402-3, 408-10, 412
on martyrdom, 97-98, 103 Posnanski, Adolf, 41, 107n116, 220n35,
missionary purpose of, 188-90, 226
197n72, 197n74, 198, 198n77, 265, Posnanski, Samuel, 41
288 post-colonial age, 19
modern, xi, 376-7 power, divine, 86
and monasticism, 98, 98n71, 103, 116 Prager, Dennis, 400
and moral issues, x, 86-87, 87n33, 96, preaching orders, 180; see also missionary
98 activity
and New Testament, 100-3, 101n81, priesthood, 44, 93, 116, 133
102n83-96, 104n91, 141-57, 221 profit economy, 27-28
objective assessment of, 199, 201, prophets, 93, 132-3, 137, 144, 156, 165, 167,
207-8 240, 251, 252n26, 271-2, 276, 301n25,
pre-crusade, 176-7, 180, 288 302, 318, 322-3, 330, 358, 364, 396
and prophets, 251-2, 252n26 proselytism, see mission; conversion to
and reason (ratio), 87, 276 Christianity; conversion to Judaism
and ritual murder accusations, 98-99, Prosper of Aquitane, 276
103 Protestantism and Protestants, 333-4, 350,
roots of, 76-77, 88, 180-1, 181n11, 354, 356, 404
197 evangelical, 337, 340-1, 347-8, 363n71,
in Spain, 107n116, 114, 117n17, 366-7, 384, 395, 405, 413, 415
130-2, 132n45, 147, 176, 198n77 liberal, 9, 295-6, 318, 323, 328-30
to strengthen Christian belief, 180-4, see also Christians, fundamentalist;
266, 288 Christians, liberal; Christians, traditional
use of Talmud, 101-3, 150-7, 158-76, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 11
188n36, 199, 201, 208 Provence, 94n61, 110n3, 146, 220-2, 228,
tone of, x, 64-65, 75, 88, 91-94, 94n61, 232n23
176, 194-5, 195n63, 198, 198n77, Pugio Fidei, see Martini, Raymond
202, 203n5, 265, 267-8 punishment, divine, 19, 62, 127-38, 131n43,
traditions of, 108, 263 314n5; see also vengeful redemption;
translation of Latin, 229-44, 230n16 polemics, destiny of Christians
and trinity, 224, 224n46, 265, 267
and true religion, 110, 115 Q
and twelfth-century renaissance, Qara, Joseph, 126
180-1
about usury, 96, 84n66, 103 R
see also Alan of Lille; Ashenazim, pole- Raban Maur, see Maur, Raban
mics of; Barcelona disputation; Damian, rabbinic Judaism, 49, 296-7, 303, 306, 309-
Peter; Crispin, Gilbert; disputation; 10, 317-8, 317-21
Hebrew Bible; Jacob ben Reuben; Jewish- Rabbinical Council of America, xii, 387,
Christian interaction; Moses ha-Kohen 392
of Tordesillas; mission; Nizzahon Vetus; Radulph, 246, 249-52
Paris disputation; Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne; Rashbam (R. Shmuel b. Meir), 47
Tortosa disputation; verus Israel Rashi (R. Shlomo Yitzhaki), 47, 65, 95, 119,
Polgar, Isaac, 112-3n8, 114, 114-5n10 121, 126, 129n41, 170, 196n68
political development, 20 Ratherius of Verona, 263, 275

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 Index

Ratzinger, Joseph (Cardinal), 380-4, 387, S

390; see also Benedict XVI Saadiah Gaon, 124, 280
redemption, conversionary, 120-7, 125n34, Sabbath, 55, 65, 69, 141, 143-5, 283, 320,
135-6 324
redemption, vengeful, 31-37, 62, 120-3, sabbatical year, 77, 287
126-34, 132n45, 135n51, 137-8 sacrament, 324, 383
Reform Judaism, 9, 49, 295-6, 315, 320-8, sacrifices, 77, 77n5, 114n10, 257, 257n64,
349, 373 280, 285-6, 322-3
Reformed Church (Holland), 357-8 Sadducees, 156, 190
Reimarus, Hermann S., 307 saints, 44, 72n56, 93, 170-1, 294, 394
Reindel, Kurt, 269n41 Saltman, Avrom, 63n29
religious dissent, 19 salvation, 247, 250-3, 250n15, 277, 288,
religious ritual, Christian, 44-45 326, 337, 375-6, 378-9, 387, 393,
Jewish revulsion towards, 54, 68, 75 396; see also polemics, and destiny of
religious ritual, Jewish, 9, 42-45, 47; see also Christians; universal damnation
Christianity, and Jewish law; Jesus, and Samuel of Morocco, 187, 187n28
Jewish law; Jewish law sanctification of the Name of God, 36n47,
Renaissance, 139-40, 155 62
Reproaches hymn, 353-4 Saperstein, Marc, 29, 113, 113n9
resurrection, 137, 141, 315 Satan, 38n51, 39, 48, 355, 406; see also
Reuchlin, Johannes, 372 Devil
revisionism, 49 Saul, King, 60, 60n33
Rhineland, 16, 32, 178-9 Schechter, Solomon, 320
Ri (R. Isaac of Dampierre), 70, 70-71n52 Schickard, Whilhelm, 104-5
Richard of St. Victor, 187n31 Schindler, Alexander, 341
Rieger, Paul, 259, 266 Schoeps, H.J., 92n52
righteous Gentiles, 87n33, 117, 297, 326, Scholem, Gershom, 209n1, 300
369-73, 396 Schorsch, Ismar, 317n11
ritual immersion, 287 Schuerer, Emil, 320, 328
ritual murder accusations, 6, 15, 18, 25-26, Schweitzer, Albert, 297, 308-9
28, 31-39, 43, 45, 50, 91, 98-99, 103, 179, Second Temple Judaism, 49, 300
377 sectarianism, 156-7
Robertson, Pat, 414 Sefer Ahituv ve-Zalmon, 105
Rome, 26, 132-3, 161, 200, 262, 333, 356, Sefer ha-Berit, see Kimhi, Joseph
412 Sefer ha-Ge’ullah, 207; see also Nahmanides
Rosenzweig, Franz, 337-8 Sefer ha-Nizzahon, see Muehlhausen, Yom
Rosenthal, Judah, 41, 84-85n22, 92n52, Tov Lippmann
83n53, 100n80, 102n84, 94n89, 105, Sefer ha-Peli’ah, 136
107n116, 111n5, 229, 230n18, 234, Sefer Hasidim, 68
234nn24-25 Sefer Nestor ha-Komer, 89n12, 141, 148
Roth, Cecil, 314-5 Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne, 30n31, 51, 52n2,
Roth, Leon, 314n5 84, 88, 92, 100, 102, 104, 104n91, 106,
royal protection, 5-6 110, 110n3, 111-18, 114n10, 118n18,
Rubin, Miri, 29 128n39, 129n41, 131n43, 135, 142-5,
Rudin, James, 397-8 194-7, 213, 218n28, 251n22
Rudolph of St. Trond, 184, 184n20, 192 self-determination, 19
Ruether, Rosemary, 350-1 selihot, 50
Rupert of Deutz, 87, 184, 191-2 Sennacherib, 82

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 Index

Sephardim, royal image in, 174, 174n34

eschatology of, 130-8 Visigothic, 4, 15, 50, 179
view of Gentiles, 31, 44, 120-4, 132, see also Barcelona Disputation; Ashke-
132n45, 137-8 nazim, vs. Sephardim; Sephardim
see also Ashkenazim, vs. Sephardim Spinoza, Benedict, 114-5n10
Septimus, Bernard, 207n9 Stacey, Robert C., 18, 29, 38
Septuagint, 81, 273 Stark, Rodney, 350n46
servi camerae, 90-91 Stegemann, Ekkehard, 323
seven nations, 172-3 Stein, Edith, 394
sexual potency, 113 Storrs, Richard S., 249n11
shamta (curse), 95; see also liturgical curses Stow, Kenneth, 15, 21n13, 48n35, 74n61,
Shatzmiller, Joseph, 27, 94n60 374n17
Shem Tov ben Shem Tov, 136-7 suicide, 57-60, 60n23
Shimon bar Isaac, 132n45 Sukkot, 136
Sermon on the Mount, 148, 151, 296, 315, Sullivan, Andrew, 407
329, 411 superstition, 38
Sheerin, John, 338 Swidler, Leonard, 352
Shevet Yehudah, see ibn Verga, Solomon symbols,
Shiloh, 81 Christian, 30, 30n31, 44-45, 54, 69,
shittuf (association), 71-72, 72n56, 170-1, 94, 262
294-5, 294-5n10, 395-6 Jewish, 55, 376
Shivhei ha-Besht, 116 Synagogue, 90, 254-5, 260
Shoah, see Holocaust Synagogue Council of America, 334
Siegman, Henry, 335-6, 339, 342n21, 344-5, Synod of Jerusalem, 269
348
Silberman, Lou, 322 T
Sigonii, Caroli, 156 Ta‘anot, see Moses of Salerno
Silberstein, Laurence, 309 Tabernacles, 287
Simon of Cyrene, 411 Taio of Saragossa, 268
Simon of Trent, 25-26 Tal, Uriel, 317n11
Simon, Marcel, 79 Talmage, Frank E., 41, 211-2, 216n22,
Simoniacs, 272; see also heretics, Christian 217n23, 218
simony, 274 Talmud,
Sixtus IV, Pope, 25 and the Bible, 123, 166-8, 172-3
Sloyan, Gerard, 352 blasphemies in, 95, 101, 152, 159,
Solomon b. Shimshon, 62 163
Soloveitchik, Haym, 57-60, 70n52, 71, burning of, 6, 88, 101, 104n91, 152,
145n17 209-10n2
Soloveitchik, Joseph B., 340, 381, 384, 385- campaigns against, 6, 18, 23-24, 50,
91 73, 88, 101, 159-76, 209, 209-10n2
Southern France, see Provence Christian familiarity with, 23, 24, 26-
Southern, R.W., 12 27, 51, 43, 47, 48, 101-2, 158-76
Spain, and Christian kings, 174-5, 174n34
anti-Semitism in, 7 and conversion, 367-8
Christian-Jewish interaction in, 42-43, defense of, 148-9, 159-176
110n3 gentiles in, 24, 70, 89, 95n63, 117,
Jewish community, 17 119, 122-23, 123n29, 140, 159-61,
polemics in, 101 163-4, 169-76, 293, 394

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 Index

historicity of, 157, 157n47 U

messianic concepts in, 161-2, 166 United States Conference of Catholic
objectionable statements in, 162, 168 Bishops, xi-xii, 401-2, 405, 413
as “other law,” 23-24, 159, 163 Union of American Hebrew Congregations,
and polemics, 101-3, 158-76 334, 342
references to Jesus in, 140, 147n20, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations
150-7, 159, 161-2, 173-4 of America, xii, 392
sages of, 62, 65, 156, 160, 162, 164-5, universal damnation, 86-87, 297, 302, 316,
167 326, 375
support for Christianity, 159, 161-2, universalism, 302-3, 306, 310, 315, 317n11,
166, 168, 199, 201, 208, 229, 319, 325-7, 332
324-5 Urbach, Ephraim, 93n55, 94n61, 104,
see also aggadah; Jewish law 106n112
Rabbenu Tam, 60n23, 70, 70n52, 85n22 urbanization, 27
Tanenbaum, Marc, 328 usury, 28, 71n52, 84n66, 89, 96, 103, 249,
Ta-Shma, Yisrael, 57 256-7; see also moneylending
tefillin, 122, 320
Tela Ignea Satanae, 105 V
Temple, 114, 114n10, 161-2, 167, 251 Vasoli, Cesare, 227
Tertullian, 219, 279-80 Vatican II, 19, 333, 336n4, 344, 349-50,
Thoma, Clemens, 337-8, 342 353, 356, 401; see also Nostra Aetate 4
Thomas of Monmouth, 33-34 verus Israel, 68, 78-79, 252, 356
Titus, 166-7 Ve-ye’etayu kol le-ovdekha, 121n24, 129-30
Toledot Yeshu, 79, 140-1, 140n1, 156-7 Vikkuah ha-Ramban, see Barcelona disputa-
tolerance, 4-6, 15-16, 23-26, 43, 51, 73-74, tion; Nahmanides
117, 163, 177, 178n5, 245-50, 295, 297, Vikkuah le-ha-Radaq, 88, 211-8, 219n31
332, 373-4 vicarious atonement, 47
Torquemada, 377 violence, 16-17
Tortosa disputation, 68, 102n82, 298n77, virgin birth, 81, 83, 86, 92, 211-5, 214nn18-
201-2 19, 220
torture, 60n23, 61 Vogelstein, Herman 259, 266
Tosafists (Tosafot), 47, 57-58, 57n17, 60, 62, Vulgate, 272
71-72, 72n55-56, 90, 97, 110n3, 170-1,
294, 295n10, 305, 395 W
Tosafot, see Tosafists Wachtel, David, 16n2
Touitou, Elazar, 42n8, 196n71 Wagenseil, Johann Christoph, x, 105
Toynbee, Arnold J., 311 Walter of Châtillon, 87, 93, 184, 191,
transubstantiation, 28-31, 39, 48 191n45
Tridentine Mass, xiii, 367 war, 113, 114-5n10
trinity, 68, 85-86, 86n23, 92-93, 138, 172, Weber, Max309
182, 184-5, 221, 224, 224n46, 265, 267, Weinberg, Jehiel Jacob, 53
338, 342, 369, 379, 396 Weiss, Johannes, 297, 308-9
Triumphator R. Matthias, 105 well-poisoning, 6, 18, 28, 43, 377
True Israel, see verus Israel Wellhausen, Julius, 307-8, 320
true proselyte, see ger zedeq Werblowsky, R., 192n52, 228n8
Twelfth-Century Renaissance, 42, 46, 179- Wiese, Christian, 317n11
80 will, divine, 86, 87
William of Bourges, 189-90

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 Index

William of Champeaux, 87, 102n84, 185, X

227, 236n28 xenophobia, 28
William of Norwich, 32-33, 37
Williams, Watkin, 257 Y
wine of Gentiles, 69-70, 70n52 Yehiel of Paris, 50, 68, 73, 110, 119-20,
wisdom, divine, 86 152-3, 159, 174, 369; see also Paris
witchcraft, 20, 24, 43 disputation
witness, Christian, xi, 345, 347; see also Yehoshua ben Perahiah, 151, 154, 157
mission Yerushalmi, Yosef, 95, 174, 209n2, 341-2
witnesses, Jews as, 4, 134, 134n50, 177, R. Yohanan, 167
246, 269, 273, 277, 337, 373, 381, 383, Yom Kippur, see Day of Atonement
390 Yosef ha-Kohen, 249, 249n11
World Council of Churches, 333-4, 344n26, Ysagoge in theologiam, see Odo
345, 347, 350, 356, 357n61, 359, 361 Yuval, Yisrael, 31-37, 109, 120-9, 120n23,
world to come, 119, 128-9, 166, 327, 332, 125-8, 125n34, 131, 132n45, 134n50,
369, 373 135n51
Worms, 32, 60
Wurzburg, 32 Z
Wurzburger, Walter, 390 Zionism, 11-12, 49, 298-300, 327, 327n37,
Wyschogrod, Michael, xi, 348 341, 356, 360-1

— 437 —