Search Results

This chapter discusses the author's essay which challenges Avraham Grossman's portrait of Ashkenaz in the eleventh century. Avraham Grossman has argued that the traditional picture of a deeply observant Ashkenazic community in the eleventh century is an exaggeration, for the responsa literature of that era shows that the community was constantly contending with criminals and violent men. The evidence he adduces may be entered under four headings. The first heading relates to repeated instances throughout the eleventh century of resistance to communal ordinances. The second heading concerns the need of communities to impose fines and excommunication to control their members. The third heading deals with recourse by individuals to Gentile courts. Finally, the fourth heading concerns references in responsa to thieves, perjurers, and occasional strong-arm tactics. The essay analyses each phenomenon in detail.

This chapter analyzes two claims made by Avraham Grossman. The first is that the tosafist movement arose, not in the talmudic academies of France in the twelfth century as commonly thought, but in those of Germany in the eleventh century — more specifically in Worms, in the academy of R. Shelomoh b. Shimshon (also known as Rabbenu Sasson). The tosafist method of study is dialectical. Furthermore, Grossman's opinion is that one of the three major factors behind the rise of dialectics in the eleventh-century Jewish academies is the flourishing of Christian scholasticism at that time. The chapter considers these claims factually and methodologically.

This chapter provides some critiques on Grossman's study, Ḥakhmei Ashkenaz ha-Rishonim. Here, Grossman has characterized R. Shelomoh b. Shimshon (Rabbenu Sasson) as a decisor (posek) who tended towards stringency without serious regard to the economic cost of his rulings. Moreover, he ‘opposed innovation, making any changes in the status quo’, and he ‘preserved custom studiously and defended the received communal practices with zeal’. Following Grossman, Rami Reiner recently extended Rabbenu Sasson's conservative outlook to include a blind acceptance of the Halakhot Gedolot. Grossman and Reiner naturally document these assessments. The chapter scrutinizes these portrayals as well as the various pieces of evidence that have been adduced.

This chapter dissent from the now widely held view — which has arisen over the past quarter of a century as a result of the writings of Grossman — that the scholars of Early Ashkenaz did not feel bound by the Babylonian Talmud (Bavli); that, on the contrary, they knowingly and openly disregarded that corpus in their rulings and resolved halakhic questions on the basis of Mishnah, aggadah, and biblical verses. This view was then expanded by I. M. Ta-Shma to include the Tosafists. Hence, the chapter addresses the arguments made for Early Ashkenaz. It shows that the controlling role of the Bavli is in evidence everywhere and, it should be emphasized, from the earliest days of the Ashkenazic community. The determinations of the Bavli are at all times dispositive of the question at bar, and the rare exceptions to the rule merit careful examination.