"Sefer Hasidim" and the Ashkenazic Book in Medieval Europe. Ivan G. Marcus
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between the longest editions of Sefer Hasidim and Sefer ha-Hasidut suggests a historical context for each that has not been considered. Although SHP, and the closely related former JTS Boesky 45, and SHB do not seem to refer to the rabbinic idea of ancestral merit (zekhut avot), that is, an appeal to biblical and other ancient figures’ merit to mitigate later generations’ deserved punishment, they do refer to the merit of the pietists’ own families going back three or four generations.42 This theme correlates with their awareness of family traditions that they sometimes refer to as “minhag avoteinu,” but Sefer ha-Hasidut does not have any awareness of time.43 Instead, its focus is on the individual pietist’s sins and merits alone as the basis of one’s reward or punishment.
This difference points to a possible historical link between the martyrs and Jews who survived as forced converts in 1096, the anti-Jewish riots in the Rhineland that accompanied the First Crusade, and R. Judah he-hasid’s vision of an ideal society. In Germany, the trauma of the anti-Jewish riots in 1096 was real, and there are other signs that the memory of 1096, including survivor guilt but not contemporary persecution, underlies Sefer Hasidim’s world. When someone rewrote Sefer Hasidim in northern France, a region that did not experience or remember the converts and martyrs of 1096, it is understandable that he would not invoke the ancestral merit of four generations earlier, that is, of the martyrs of 1096. The Jews of northern France also did not need the same penitential system for the same reasons, assuming for the moment that conversion guilt was a factor in generating some of the need for ascetic penances. In point of fact, the penitentials focus much more on sins of pride, anxieties over women, money, and violence carried out between Jews than with apostasy.44 In stark contrast to these social concerns but like Huqqei ha-Torah, Sefer ha-Hasidut floats in social space. That text does not contain the imagined utopian pietist society that one finds everywhere in the longest manuscripts of R. Judah he-hasid’s Sefer Hasidim.
The most significant difference between Sefer ha-Hasidut and some of the manuscripts of Sefer Hasidim and other German pietist writings is the absence of penances and the theory of teshuvat ha-mishqal (suffering proportional to pleasure) and reliance instead on Maimonidean repentance, following Saadia’s approach already quoted in SHP.45 Such repentance requires a change of will, avoidance of sin, and confession of sins, but not public or even private acts of atonement or penances as the three German pietist authors stipulate. The innovation of Sefer ha-Hasidut was not in adding to ascetic penances a different form of atonement based on Maimonides, but in replacing the former by the latter. However, since the ascetic penitentials, even in confessing one’s sins to another Jew, as in Sefer Hasidim, were practiced by some in later Judaism (see below), one could argue that the author of Sefer ha-Hasidut failed to neutralize the influence of hasidei ashkenaz penitential atonement with the Maimonidean substitute. Regarding penitential practice, at least, it is misleading to claim that “SH I [Sefer ha-Hasidut] had a diffusion far greater than that of Sefer Hasidim itself.”46 Unless one insists on arbitrarily defining Sefer Hasidim as being only the long manuscripts that contain Judah’s social critique, there are some twenty manuscripts of Sefer Hasidim in fourteen editions; of Sefer ha-Hasidut, there are but three manuscripts that circulated with that text alone.
Penitential Practice in Later Ashkenaz Reconsidered
Athough Judah he-hasid’s sectarian vision did not take hold in medieval German towns, Sefer Hasidim’s model of confession to another Jew continued in Ashkenaz for centuries after the death of Judah he-hasid in 1217. Several Ashkenazic Jews either confessed sins in person to another Jew or wrote to a rabbi to request penances, and this practice continued well into early modern times. Although R. Eleazar of Worms justified writing his several private penitential manuals on the grounds that some Jews were too embarrassed to confess their sins to another Jew and receive penances, confession to a sage or to a rabbi continued in medieval Ashkenaz side by side with the use of R. Eleazar of Worms’s private penitential manuals. Thus, German pietist modes of atonement were influential not only through Eleazar’s penitential handbooks, but also from the inspiration of confession to a sage as described originally in Sefer Hasidim.47
The idea of confession to a sage (hakham) is found in a fourteenth-century text written by R. Moses b. Eleazar ha-Kohen, who refers to “a story about a man who committed many sins his whole life … and went to a sage” (ma‘aseh be-adam ehad she-‘asah ‘aveirot harbeh kol yamav … ba ezel hakham ehad).48 This story pictures a Jew confessing his sins to a “sage” and receiving a penance from him to atone for all of his sins, just as we find scores of times in Sefer Hasidim itself.49
Encouraging confession to an important Jew is a theme in a penitential sermon that has been recently published. The unknown German pietist author places great emphasis on the value of the sinner embarrassing himself by confessing his sins to an important person, the very issue that R. Eleazar of Worms mentions as a problem for some.50 In addition to the anonymously composed sermon that advocates sage-like confession, R. Eleazar of Worms himself composed a series of rhymed Hebrew penances that complement the prose private penitentials that he wrote.51 Apparently there was a lively disagreement about confession of sins to another Jew since we find new works encouraging it as well as Eleazar’s penitentials that are written to replace it.
There are several indications that the pro-confession camp won some followers. For example, in a collection of German Jewish traditions written down in Italy, we find a description of a penance administered for a violation of the Sabbath.52 In an oft-cited case, a Jewish father writes to R. Meir b. Barukh (Maharam) of Rothenburg (d. 1293). He was afraid that “the enemies” (ha-oyevim) would kill his family and so he killed his family himself. But before he could take his own life, he was rescued, and he asks R. Meir of Rothenburg if he sinned and requires a penance or if he did the right thing.53 R. Meir’s response is that no penance is needed since administering one now would imply that Jews who had acted the same way in the past had sinned.54
The same R. Meir of Rothenburg tells a Jew who publically insulted a respected member of the Jewish community to do penance by fasting, self-flagellation, and giving charity.55 Two rabbis, R. Jonah and R. Shemaryah, ask one R. Isaac b. Mordecai, a contemporary of R. Meir of Rothenburg, about revealing crimes that Jews had confessed to him. The questioner mentions Christian confession to monks and their vows of secrecy.56
The late thirteenth-century, anonymously written French Hebrew work, Sefer ha-Neyar, refers to a woman’s confession to a R. Haim Barukh. She angered her husband and the rabbi imposed on her a fast of three days.57 In the fifteenth century, R. Joseph b. Moses Hahn, a student of R. Israel Isserlein, lists cases of confession and penances in his “Laws of Atonement” (Hilekhot Teshuvah).58 From around the same time, the niece of R. Jacob b. Moses ha-Levi Mölln (Maharil) forgot to light Friday candles and she is given a penance.59
Given the cases of Jewish confession to another Jew, Eleazar’s introductions to his written handbooks should no longer be interpreted as a sign that confession to a sage or rabbi disappeared and was replaced by written penitentials. Rather, Eleazar added them for those Jews who resisted such confession, while others were doing this very thing.60 It is also important to realize that hagiographical stories in Hebrew and Yiddish that portray Jews’ and Christians’ confessions to Judah he-hasid and asking him for penances show that he was remembered for his role as dispensing penances. None of the hagiographical stories in Hebrew or Yiddish about Samuel or Judah picture a Jew using a written penitential. Some Jews continued to follow Judah he-hasid’s form of penitence long after he was gone.61
Sefer Hasidim, Sefer ha-Hasidut, and the Historical Impact of German Pietism
We should note that Ashkenazic book culture was strong enough to withstand Maimonides’ presence there from the thirteenth century on. Although Sefer ha-Hasidut and then Sefer Mizvot Gadol and Sefer Mizvot Qatan took on Maimonidean content, Ashkenazic book culture did not emulate the Sephardic book form that Maimonides’ works embodied. Ashkenazic authors who