2009
ISSUE 72 | 81
Modalities in Medieval Jewish Law
for Public Order and Safety
Stephen M. Passamaneck
,
HUC Annual, 2009
I
n his introduction, Dr. Stephen Passama-
neck writes: “The history of medieval
Jewry presents one inescapable fact: the Jews
were a people apart. No matter where or
when we find a Jewish community in the
Middle Ages, it was an ‘alien’ enclave in a
host society which was sometimes cordial to
it and sometimes not. Jews were a foreign el-
ement which managed its own communal
affairs, creating religious, educational, and
charitable institutions, mechanisms for col-
lection and disbursement of taxes to the host
government, and various systems for inter-
nal governance and the administration of
justice. The Jews governed themselves and
dispensed justice in so far as possible ac-
cording to
halakhah
,
their ancient internal
legal system. This legal system was the sub-
ject of devoted and loving study and careful
enhancement over the centuries by skillful
interpretation, by mixture of local customs
and by local ordinances, which helped the
system keep pace with changing circum-
stances….This inquiry has exposed some of
the less exalted or inspiring episodes of me-
dieval Jewish history. Some of what was
done, or was proposed to be done, was cruel
and inhuman by modern standards. Some
of it does not rise to a modern standard of
legality, but the medieval world did not run
according to our rules, and necessity over-
rode moral idealism from time to time even
among the most sensitive, learned, and
pious of our ancestors. The rabbis well un-
derstood that they were to pursue justice,
but justice was justice for the greater good
of the people as a whole, not necessarily for
the individual. Doubtless we would not
often do as they did. Yet they are by no
means to be faulted or derogated for their
defense of their standards of public order,
safety, and, indeed, decency.”
The volume includes chapters on
punitive modalities, preventive and coercive
modalities, and protective modalities, as well
as appendixes on “A Plea for Calm,” “The
Arresting Officer,” and “Human Rights
and
Kavod Habriut
”
and a comprehensive
bibliography.
EXCERPTS OF NEW BOOKS BY HUC-JIR FACULTY | EXCERPTS OF NEW BOOKS BY HUC-JIR FACULTY
The American Jewish Archives
Journal, Vol. LXI, No. 1 (2009)
D
evoted to the topic of Reform Judaism
and the Dead Sea Scrolls, this volume of
the
AJA Journal
features a fascinating article
by Dr. Jason Kalman, Assistant Professor of
Classical Hebrew Texts and Interpretation,
HUC-JIR/Cincinnati, on HUC-JIR’s in-
volvement with Dead Sea Scroll scholarship
and a documentary analysis of two sermons
on the Dead Sea Scrolls by JIR alumnus
Rabbi Harold I. Saperstein, introduced by
HUC-JIR alumnus and principal of Leo
Baeck College, Dr. Marc Saperstein, and
annotated by Dr. Kalman. The issue also
includes an interesting article on Reform
Judaism’s reception of the Dead Sea Scrolls
by Professor Richard A. Freund, University
of Hartford. The online version of the
journal can be accessed at:
jewisharchives.org/journal
regard is that social reformers’ impulse for a
new expression of Jewish particularism did
not depend on the surrender of their Ger-
manness. Instead, through a dialectical
dynamic of Jewish assimilation, Weimar Jews
forged a new notion of Jewish difference out
of the raw materials of German culture. Thus,
rather than viewing assimilation as an appro-
priation of external elements to some kind of
essential Jewish culture, Jews also expressed
their uniqueness “in an idiom always acquired
from their environment,” as Amos Funken-
stein has argued. Like other Germans, Jews
who worked in the social and medical profes-
sions viewed the strengthening of the family,
the attempt to increase reproduction, the need
for expanding welfare, and the rehabilitation
of orphaned and delinquent youth as a cru-
cial means of redeeming the German nation
and restoring its national spirit. But in this
process, self-identified Jews, who were deeply
rooted in non-Jewish middle-class German
society and culture and saw themselves as fully
“
German,” utilized the ideas and methods of
contemporary social politics as a means of sig-
nificantly expanding the scope, authority, and
distinctiveness of the Jewish community.
Thus, we see in this period not only the evo-
lution of “Germans into Nazis,” to use Peter
Fritzsche’s notable formulation, but a simul-
taneous development of Germans into Jews.
