The Polish-Jewish Renaissance in the 16 th Century

The original Jewish legal position in the Polish Kingdom

2.2. The Polish-Jewish Renaissance in the 16 th Century

But this massive move from the West to the East changed not only the social and economicstructure of the world’s Jews. It also brought profound cultural changes.

A thorough transformation of Jewish consciousness took place even if notyet neces

sarily making it more open. Thiswas so, becauseneitherthesignificant - even if one

104 2. The original Jewish legal position in the Polish Kingdom

sided - economicroleofthe Jewsin the Commonwealth,nor their contacts with the Christians withina multiethnic,multireligious federal and multilingual noble repub lic wereabletoopen theirculture to the outsideworld. Quite thecontrary, the Jews of Poland-Lithuania turnedeven more towards themselves and kepttheir distance from the surrounding environment; in other words they became more “nomadic”. Individually, many Jewsdeveloped veryintimate relationshipswith their nobili

ty patrons, especially the magnate protectors. But collectively Jewish life wasinsular and tightlyboundalready from the time ofthe Crusades and theBlack Deathin the 14th century.44They closed in and whenthe catastrophe of the Khmielnitzky uprising of 1648 struck themagain, they solidified even more this process of isolation and at the same time their spiritual sublimation.Thisprocess on the one hand gave the rabbinic Judaism a rigidevenif extremely sophisticatedcast,andon theotherhand prepared the wayfor anexplosionof Jewish spiritual, mass mysticismof which the Hassidicmovement ofthe 18thcenturyconstitutedits crowningachievement.

44 E.H. Flannery, The Anguish of the Jews, pp. 143-144.

45 See H.J. Berman, Law and Revolution, pp. 149-155. It would be interesting to find out how much both milieus interacted and how much pilpul was influenced by the scholastic method, with it major idea that any valid law for humans should conform to natural law via the system of universal human law and its rationality, the idea which could also be discerned in Maimonides. Of course the Jewish thought did not recognize natural law, but rational ideas had to be inherent in its method of study. See R. Lerner, “Moses Maimonides”, in L. Strauss, J. Cropsey (ed.), His

tory of Political Philosophy, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1987, pp. 230-234, 244.

Asfar as the rabbinic Judaism was concerned Poland-Lithuania became from the 17th century onwards its major andmost influential place of development. Thema jority of the CentralEuropean rabbiswere educatedinPoland. In addition topurely

religious works that period witnessednumerous philosophical, ethical and didactic workspublishedbythe Jewishprint shops.The yeshivas setup in Polandin the 16th century werequickly recognized asthe centers of Jewish learningand thought, and theirfame spread quickly beyond the borders ofthe Kingdom. Their high academic standards were quaranteed by outstanding rabbi-teachers, who were able to gather roundthem agroup of students readyto disseminatethisknowledge further. Suchwas the way of creating famousrabbinic schools connected with their outstanding rabbis.

Amethodof analyticalinterpretation and exegesis of rabbinic works known as pilpul (lit. pepper, sharp reasoning) was perfected in Poland, especiallyin the times of the Krakówsage, the rabbi from PragueJakub Pollak (1460-1541), a student of Jacob Margulies from Regensburg who is often credited with its invention. The pilpul wasbased on an analytical method of discussing and decipheringthemeaning of words, setting out arguments forand against, and introducing particulardistinc

tions and divisions ofdefinitions existing in the Talmud. The aim of the method was to sharpen one’s memory and analytical skills, to reconcile contradictions and absurdities and to derive any nuances of meaning fromthe text. Themethod was to a great extentsimilar to the scholasticmethod practicedin the Christianuniversities andschools as faras thecivilRomanand Canon laws were concerned.45Themethod

2. The original Jewish legal position in the Polish Kingdom 105 of pilpulwas sharply criticized bysomerabbis like SolomonLuria, Isaiahb. Abra ham Halevi Horowitz (c. 1565-1630), Juda LoewbBezalel of Prague (1525-1609) or the preacher Rabbi Ephraim Solomon (1550-1619), a generation younger than Pollak, who considered its use to be a waste oftime, but anothergreat rabbi from Regensburg IzraelBruna heartily defended it.46 Within the Jewish diaspora in Poland this methodwas defended and taughtmainly byPollak’s students. Themethod, still used in Talmudic schools in the 19th centuryand even inthe 20th century, was often considered a legitimate way of study.Jakub Pollakset up the first Talmudic school in Poland. He did notleaveany writtenworks, but his traditionwas taken upbyhis most famous students such as Szalom Szachna (ShalomShachna) (1500-1558) and Mojżesz Fiszel(MosesFishel) (1480-1542). The first became arabbi inLublin, the second inKraków. In 1541 both werenominatedby the Polish king Zygmunt I the Old as the general rabbis of Lesser Poland (Małopolska), probablythemost prestig

ious post sincetheroyal city of Kraków waslocated there.47

46 As Polonsky writes, for Rabbi Loew the pilpul form of reasoning was “intellectually dis

honest, and destroyed the character and perverted the values of yeshiva students. He even went so far as to assert that dishonest argumentation could lead to dishonest behavior”, in Jews in Po

land and Russia, Vol. 1, p. 135. The pilpul s form argumentation was criticized by Rabbi Efhraim Solomon, the head of the yeshivas of Lviv and Prague, a poet and Torah commentator, best known for his commentary Keli Yakari, who was appointed rabbi of Prague in 1604, a position he held until his death. For Solomon pilpul practiced in yeashivas “reduces itself to mental gymnastics and empty arguments called hiluk. It is dreadful to contemplate that some venerable communicate to others some new interpretation, should offer a perverted explanation of the Talmud, though he himself and every one else be fully aware that the true meaning is different. Can it be God's will that we sharpen out minds by fallacies and sophistries, spending our time in vain and teaching the listeners to do likewise? And all this for the mere ambition ofpassing for a great scholar! [...]

I myself have more than once argued with the Talmudic celebrities of our time, showing the need of abolishing of pilpul and hiluk, without being able to convince them. This attitude can only be explained by the eagerness of these scholars for honours and rosh yeshivah posts. These empty quibbles have a particularly pernicious effect on our yeshivah students, for the reason that the student who does not shine in the discussion is looked down upon as incapable, and is practically forced to lay aside his studies, though he might prove to be one of the best, if Bible, Mishnah, Talmud, and the Codes were studied in a regular fashion”, as quoted in ibid. See also L. S. Levin, Seeing with Both Eyes. Ephraim Luntshitz and the Polish-Jewish Renaissance, Brill, Leiden- -Boston 2008, esp. pp. 91-208.

47 M. Bałaban, Historia i literatura żydowska..., Vol. 2, p. 301; Vol. 3, p. 116, 151; S. Wo

jciechowski, ‘Gmina żydowska w Lublinie w XVI wieku’, Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego w Polsce, No. 2 (1952), p. 211.

One ofthe most outstanding interpreters of rabbinic literature was Moses Is- serles (1520-1572), an eminentAshkenazi rabbi and Talmudist, who adapted for the benefit oftheAshkenazim JosephCaro’s Szulchan Aruch. Isserles, also referred to as the Rema, (orRemo, Rama), the Hebrew acronym forrabbi, was also agreat posek, a term inJewish law meaning “decider”, that is, alegal scholarwhodecides theHalakhaincasesof law where previous authorities areinconclusive, and also in thosesituations whereno halakhicprecedent exists.Isserles wasbomin arich fam

106 2. The original Jewish legal position in the Polish Kingdom

ily in Krakow’s Kazimierz Jewish district, where his father founded a synagogue there in 1533, known till today as the Remu synagogue. He was a student of the Lublin rabbi Szalom Szachna, and also his son-in-law. Afterreturning to Kraków in 1542 hebecame a rabbi of itsJewish kahal. In 1547 the King Zygmunt I the Old nominated him a general rabbi of all kahals in the LesserPoland (Małopolska). He was also one ofthemost outstanding delegates to theCouncil of Four Lands ofthe Kraków Province.

In 1552 Isserles became the rector of the famous Kraków yeshiva, to which the students fromBohemia, Silesia, Germany andHungary came to study Jewish law. His many outstandingworks inphilosophyandcommentaries on religious and legal tracts had great influence on Jewishlearningin the 16th and the 17th centuries.

Isserles was famous mainly forhis fundamentalwork of Halakha tellinglyentitled ha-Mapah (lit., “thetablecloth”), adetailedcommentary on theShulchanAruch(lit.

“aset table”). But he also wrote the DarkheiMoshe commentary on the Tur, another important Halakhic code collected byYaakov ben Asher (1270-1340) referred to as

“Ba ’alha-Turim", “Author ofthe Tur”. Shulchan Aruch was based on thefour-part structureofthe Tur aswell its division into chapters (simanim).Isserles commenting on the work ofthe greatly influentialCaro adjusted the Talmudic law which he ap

plied to the particular conditionsof the AshkenaziJews. TheIsserles’s commentary is a basic in-depth exegesisofCaro’swork still usedbythe Orthodox Jews.48

48 A good account of Moses Isserle’s thought is in L. S. Levin, Seeing with Both Eyes..., pp. 20-35; see also classical M. S. Lew, The Jews of Poland. Their Economic, Social and Com

munal Life in the Sixteenth Century as Reflected in the Works of Rabbi Moses Isserls, E. Goldston, London 1944, p. 68; also E. Reiner, ‘The Ashkenazi Élite at the Beginning of the Modem Era:

Manuscript versus Printed Book’, Polin, Vol. 10 (2007), p. 97. Moses Isserles was buried in the old Jewish cemetery in Kraków. Each year many of his Orthodox followers from all over the world come to Kraków to pay him homage and to pray by his grave.

Other prominent andexcellentscholarswereSalomon Luria(1510-1573), a dis

seminator of the rational method of the interpretation ofthe Talmud and, a great expert and commentator on religious Jewish law. Luria contestedPollak’s method, reading and commenting on the Talmud. He began his career as a rabbi and the principal ofthe yeshivain Ostróg. In 1567 he was invited by theLublin kahal to be the principal of theyeshiva there. King Zygmunt II August quickly nominated him and his followers for the position of rector ofthat yeshiva. Luria, rejectingthe then- existing contemporary Talmudic and legal methodology, dismissed the dominant scholarly beliefof his timeand place “that the legal opinions of earlier generations were almostsacrosanct. Luriamaintained that his generation had just as equal ac

cess to knowledge as those that went before it. Luria believed that it was incumbent on scholars in each generation to comb the sources from their Talmudic beginnings through the Tosafists to their own day, analyzing and weighing each matterand allopinions before comingtoa well-consideredconclusion. To drawlegal conclu sions on the basis of a simple majority among three leading medieval authorities, as Joseph Caro had done in his sixteenth-century code of Jewish law - theShulhan

2. The original Jewish legal position in the Polish Kingdom 107

‘aruk-was, inLuria s opinion, simply wrong. Unlike his contemporaries, Luria was unfettered by theweight of medieval halakhic traditionsand had the independence and boldness of character tooverturn almost any opinion inhis passionate search forthe truth.”49

49 E. A. Fram, Jewish Law and Social and Economic Realities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Poland, Ph.D. diss., Columbia University 1991, pp. 21-22.

50 L. S. Levin, Seeing with Both Eyes..., pp. 24, 27-28.

51 See on this for instance L. Batnitzky, ‘Leo Strauss and the “Theologico-Political Predica

ment’” in S. B. Smith (ed.), The Cambridge Companion on Leo Strauss, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2009, pp. 54-56; also R. Lerner, ‘Moses Maimonides’, pp. 228-247.

One of the most fascinating instances of this remarkable Jewish Renaissance in Polandwasthe famous Isserles-Luria correspondence“the dispute between the young pro-philosophicalMoses Isserles andhis older anti-philosophical cousin Somolon Luria [...] [which] took placeinthe early years ofIsserles Cracowtenure, i.e. around

1550 [...]. Whereasthe issue between Luria andIsserles [...] generally [can be] con

struednarrowly as permissibility ofstudying Aristotele [...] broadercultural issues [were] at stake.Luriaobjects to Isserles s playful banter which signals apossible de

viation in idiom from sacredJewish study to secular Reneissance cultural discourse [...] Luria is responding to the whole tone of Isserless letter, even theplayful use he makes of the traditional authorities. Isserless letteris notprimarily intendedas halakhic argument [...].It is most alien tolove-banter, imitating gentileRenaissance models, ofwhichIsserels could see live examples in the behavior of the frequenters of theroyal court in Cracow, and of which he may have heard of literary examples through his Jewish acquaintances who came from SpainandItaly [...].Itpartookof the culture of Cracow, where religious and secular ideas intermingled, and where the leaders of Polandinteractedwithforeigners ina cosmopolitan idiom. It contrasted with the more traditional culture of thePolish hinterlands, Ostrog and Brisk, where Luria served andtaught [...] Isserless letter [had] a slightly ludicrous air which Shakespeare or Rabelais wouldhave appreciated, butwhichLuria found inappropri ate ina youngrabbinic scholar. There was clearly something about Isserles s entire letter thatirritatedLuria [...], perhaps it was partly the notorious ‘pilpul of vanity ’, the sustained subversion of Talmudic learningtoprove the author’s cleverness-com

mon enough among the yeshiva youth butlooked down on byserious Talmudists [...].

Perhaps Luria did not have the perspective to see the pilpul of yeshiva youths as a Jewishtransformation of theRenaissance fashion of learned banter".50

What irritated Luria was Isserles’s quotation of Aristotle, an attempt, probably one ofthe first ones in the contextof the Polish rabbinical thoughtin the tradition of Maimonides, to make a synthesis of reason and revelation, tocombine Jerusalem withAthens, one of therecurring andmesmerizing phantoms of therabbinic Juda

ism.51 Whatever could besaid aboutthe obvious isolation of the rabbinic Judaism from the Christianworld there is no doubt that some ofthe Jewish scholars were fascinated by Aristotle, who atthe same time was a basis of St. Thomasphilosophy.

The Renaissance - the time in which both Luria and Isserles lived and taught -

108 2. The original Jewish legal position in the Polish Kingdom

had to affect the Jewish thought in Polandinwhich the Reneissancerevolution was spectacularly visibleespeciallyinKrakow where the royal court resided. Isserles’s referenceto AristotlealarmedLuria. Itconstituted forhim not only a doubtful bridge from Revelation to rationality, butfirst of all to analien and hostile world of Chris

tianity, a dangerous move not only towards syncretism butfirst ofall to he worldof the goyim mind.

The Aristotle quotation usedby Isserles was unacceptable for Luria because it

“crosseda line. It could beput in a halakhicpigeonhole of forbidden'. [But] it was the capstoneof Isseres s argument, and it confirmed at the same time what was vaguely disturbing[...] the subordination of Torah to worldlyinterests, the reversal of rolesof the true wife and the handmaid. Isserles saw things differently. He was at home in both his Jewish learningand his worldlysetting, and saw no contradiction or competition betweenthetwospheres. It came to him asa shock that the synthesis whichcame so easily to him struck his provincial older cousin [...] as foreign and un-Jewish [...] Lurias sharp response [...]had Isserles totrim his sails. While cit

ingMaimonides in defense of hisright topursue secular wisdom, Isserles retreats and says[...] ‘If I cited somewords ofAristotle, heaven and earthwill testifyofme that I never in mylife studied hisworks themselves, butonly in the [...] books [...]

which our sageswrote. It is from them thatIwrote what I wrote about Aristotle s teachings. Why should I not? didnot Maimonides write in the Guide (II, 22) that whatever doctrinesAristotle arrived at pertaining to the sublunar realm, are true?

He alsowrote that allhis doctrines are inagreement with rabbinic teaching, except for somedoctrines concerning God, angels and the celestialspheres, in which alone

he strayed fromthe way oftruth [...]. Inany case [...]/ never engaged in these pur

suitsexcept on Sabbath [and] holidays[...] but on weekdays I engageto the bestof my poor abilitiesin Mishnah, Talmud, Codes andtheir commentators.Ascholarcan makeup his own mindabout suchthings”.52 53

52 L. S. Levin, Seeing with Both Eyes..., pp. 28-29.

53 Ibid., p. 29.

The argumentbetween Luriaand Isserles constituted oneof thefascinating intel

lectual stirrings within a circle of the Polish rabbinicJudaism, the very center of the Jewishthoughtatthat time, and atthe very same time oneofthe most vibrant places of the Jewish Renaissance inthe world.Isserles represented thebest example of such a thought. His stance was and remained more philosophical or proto-philosophical than theological in many of hisscholarly endeavors. Butdoing this he nevertheless remained faithful to hisprincipal halakhic concerns. Althoughhe wrote extensively about philosophy he was hiding his thoughts within thegeneral commentary pertain

ing to halakhah. His most important “philosophicalmasterpiece Law of the Sacred Offering is an allegoricalinterpretation of the laws of the Temple and thesacrifices, as symbolizingthe physicaluniverseand the truth ofphilosophy”.55 But in Lawof the Sacred Offering Isserles refers many times to Maimonides’s the Guide of the Perplexed, including his four propositions concerning Creation and its allegorical

2. The original Jeuiish legal position in the Polish Kingdom 109 descriptionby means of the intellectual categories taken from the world of science, natureor proto-science.

A hiddenconviction in Isserles’sworks on halakhah that there is no contradic tion between Reason and Revelationis visible insuch moments as when he quotes Moses Botarel for whom “thewisdom ofthe Kabbalah is the wisdom ofphilosophy;

onlythey speak in two languages”. Of course,when speaking aboutphilosophy Is- serles assigned higherplace to Kabbalach thanto philosophy, but when heattempts

“to provide a defensible reading ofthe Kabbalistic works he cites, he does so by interpreting them consistentlywith philosophical premises, inmuch the same way as Maimonides interprets the Bible without anthropomorphism. ThusIsserles retains the language ofKabbalah whilereading into it thesubstance of philosophy. From asubstantivestandpoint,philosophy emerges thedomiant partner in this outwardly amicable union. Howeverit is notradical but conservative Maimonideanism that Isserles adopts as his philosophical position [...]. Maimonides is thefirst-ranking authority in philosophicalmatters, but he holds that rank by virtue of his success in giving the definitive philosophical defense of outstandingprinciples of theJew

W dokumencie Jewish autonomy in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth : from the 16th to the 18th century (Stron 109-124)