Reuven Bonfil: An Appreciation

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Tov Elem: Memory, Community and Gender in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Societies Essays in honor of Robert Bonfil

Elisheva Baumgarten, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Roni Weinstein

Editors:

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| David B. Ruderman

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Reuven Bonfil: An Appreciation

Memory, Community and Gender in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Societies Essays in honor of Robert Bonfil
Editors:

Tov Elem:

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Elisheva Baumgarten, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Roni Weinstein

The Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The Bialik Institute Jerusalem

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| David B. Ruderman
English section: Doron Narkiss Hebrew Section: Noa Rosen
Style Editing:

The publication of this book was made possible by the assistance of The Charles Wolfson Research Fund, The Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; The Fanya Gottesfeld Heller Center for the Study of Women in Judaism and the Israel and Golda Koschitsky Fund, Bar Ilan University and The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

ISBN: 978-965-536-035-6 Copyright by the Bialik Institute Jerusalem and the Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2011 www.bialik-publishing.co.il Set by Danon Printing Production, Jerusalem Printed by Offset Shlomo Natan Printed in Israel

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Reuven Bonfil: An Appreciation

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This book is being published in loving recall of

Mrs. Rosa Nagel, of blessed memory,

woman of valor, crown to her husband, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. Unassuming woman of modesty and kindness, she stood firmly by her husbands right side in their acts of philanthropy and benevolence and received each individual with a countenance of radiant beauty and joy. May her soul be bound in the bond of eternal life.

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Contents

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English Section
David B. Ruderman: Reuven Bonfil: An Appreciation 9*

Part One: Gender and Culture in Pre-Modern Jewish Societies

Sylvie-Anne Goldberg Is Time a Gendered Affair? Category and Concept: Women and Mitzvah Elliott Horowitz Between Cleaniness and Godliness: Aspects of Jewish Bathing in Medieval and Early Modern Times Hava Tirosh-Samuelson Gender and the Pursuit of Happiness in Maimonides Philosophy Kenneth Stow Jewish Pre-Emancipation: Ius Commune, the Roman Comunit, and Marriage in the Early Modern Papal State Jeffrey R.Woolf Damsels in Distress: Jewish Women in the Responsa of Rabbi Joseph Colon Roni Weinstein Abraham Yagel Galicos Commentary on Woman of Valor: Commenting on Women, Family and Civility 15* 29* 55*

79* 103* 118*

Part Two: Communal Space and Representations of the Past

Ivan G. Marcus Why Is This Knight Different? A Jewish Self-Representation in Medieval Europe Alessandro Guetta Italian Translations of Hebrew Literature and Jewish Philosophy in the Renaissance 139* 153*

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Joanna Weinberg Azariah de Rossi and Pythagoras, Or What has Classical Antiquity to do with Halakhah? Benjamin Ravid Translators of Hebrew Documents for the Venetian Government and the Venetian Government as Preserver of Documents of the Venetian Jewish Community Robert Bonfil: Publications

178*

188* 215*

Hebrew Section
Part One: Gender and Culture in Pre-Modern Jewish Society
Roly Zilberstein The Role of Jews in Greek-Latin Polemics: Beards and a Comment about Fasting on the Sabbath Avraham Grossman The Plight of the Yebama in Eleventh and Twelfth Century Ashkenaz Alick Isaacs Decorated Women Among the Men: Gender and Space in the Medieval Ashkenazic Synagogue Elisheva Baumgarten Pious Pretenders: A Gendered Look at Medieval Jewish European Piety Moshe Idel The Feminine Aspect of Divinity in Early Kabbalah Nadia Zeldes Jewish Women in Late Medieval Sicily: Subversive Culture within Religious Conformism? Micha Perry Female Slaughterers: Halakhic Traditions and Late Medieval Realities Motty Ben-Melech The Other in the Eyes of the Other: Women in David HaReuvenis Writings Maria Modena-Mayer Womens Language in Judeo-Italian Yosef Kaplan Clandestine Marriage in Amsterdam, Broken Hearts in Hamburg and a Kidnapping in London 23 40 55 68 91 111 127 147 165 171

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Part Two: Communal Space and Representations of the Past

193 223

Ithamar Gruenwald Typology of Exemplary Figures and Leadership in Relation to Multiplicity of Divine Revelations Yom Tov Assis The Beginnings of Jewish Settlement in Provence David Cassuto and Niccol Boccaria The Synagogue and the Ritual Baths in Palermo in Light of Textual and Archaeological Evidence Avraham David Spiritual Life in the Kingdom of Naples at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century according to Hebrew Texts Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin Law and Censure: The Printing of the Shulkhan Arukh as the Commencement of Jewish Modernity Joseph Hacker The Historical Vision of R. Samuel Valero Gerard Nahon Epigraphy, Literature and History by R. Jacob Prado (1740-1819) Robert Bonfil: Publications in Hebrew

241 282

306 336 363 381

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Reuven Bonfil: An Appreciation

Reuven Bonfil: An Appreciation

David B. Ruderman

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It is with mixed feelings that I write these words in honor of my dear colleague Reuven Bonfil, on the eve of his retirement. I am grateful for the opportunity of expressing my pleasure at being his friend for some thirty-five years. I am also sorry that this young Turk (I know he is Greek) has formally retired at so young an age. I first met Reuven when I began my graduate work at the Hebrew University in 1968-69. He had been working on his doctorate for many years and teaching. I was a novice without an obvious mentor in Italian Jewish history. He became my guide and friend, offering his generous support and encouragement when he well appreciated how little I knew and how much more I needed to know. From that point on I learned from him at every stage; he challenged everything I wrote, forcing me to reevaluate every step I took. And given my background and my own American notions of doing history as opposed to his European ways, I always argued back. When he told me that my first book on Abraham Farissol was in the mold of Cecil Roth, which for him meant history based on faulty assumptions, I struggled with his criticism. When he termed my book on science as Roth with footnotes, I was compelled to reflect on whether I should be proud of this designation or not. In the end, I found a way to learn from him, to accept him as my most serious critic, and to beg to differ, even though it was clear we agreed on most things, since his power of persuasion and brilliant analytic mind often left me silent at the end of our animated discussions. When I invited Reuven to Yale some fifteen years later, our spontaneous discussions about the meaning of the Renaissance in Italy were even staged, as we proceeded to debate each other publicly at Yale, Princeton and Chicago. It was great fun to engage in conversation with so formidable a presence, always brimming with new ideas, and always with an original take on things. And because of our very different backgrounds, we usually viewed the past and the present, especially the politics of the Middle East, from very different perspectives. I cannot capture the essence of my friends personality and career in such a brief reflection. I simply want to share three moments of our long friendship, which may show how meaningful it has been for me for so many years. After a conference in Venice in the late 1980s, I went with Reuven [ 9* ]

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to my beloved Padua. I was invited to join him at the home of his friend Achille Viterbo, then rabbi of the small Jewish community. It was Shabbat, and the two rabbis went off to synagogue while I impiously headed for the university library. We met for lunch and Rabbi Viterbo mentioned that it was St. Anthonys day, when thousands of worshippers descended on the city to pay homage to their patron saint. I cant recall who suggested the idea, but one of the rabbis (whether Rabbi Viterbo or Rabbi Bonfil, Im not sure) came up with the notion of visiting the church and watching the rituals of the day at first hand. I was reminded of Azariah de Rossis visits to churches in sixteenth-century Mantua, his curiosity in examining their art, his lack of inhibition in not feeling ill at ease in a Christian house of worship, a topic recently discussed by Joanna Weinberg. The rabbis automatically removed their kipot and I followed timidly as we marched through the huge church on Shabbat. Viterbo proceeded to lead us through the huge space filled with thousands of parishioners. I was in completely in awe of the openness and boldness of Reuven and his pious colleague in initiating and carrying out this remarkable visit. My greatest challenge as an academic commentator came at a conference organized at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem on early modern Jewish culture, organized by Shmuel Eisenstadt, also in the late 1980s. Several wellknown scholars, such as Heiko Oberman and Natalie Zemon Davis, had come from the United States to join a group of young and older scholars for this truly interdisciplinary discussion. I was given the honor of commenting on Reuvens paper on the meaning of the ghetto period, which I received only a few hours before the conference. It proved to be one of the most important essays he had ever written, offering a bold, revisionist theory of Jewish cultural formation in early modern Italy, based on structuralist ideas which I could hardly understand at first reading. It was both a frightening and an exhilarating moment in my own development as a scholar, attempting to understand, explain and respond creatively to a brilliant exposition of an epoch by this master historian. This was a high point of intellectual conversation in my own career, and an exciting moment in conceptualizing Italian Jewish history for all who heard and subsequently read Reuvens provocative essay. My third moment is more personal but perhaps the most meaningful. My late father had a special affection for Reuven, who visited him on several occasions. In his later years my father would arrange his own birthday parties, and invite anyone he could convince to praise and bless him publicly before his friends and family. He once asked Reuven to speak at such a gathering, even though their relationship was hardly intimate. Reuven unhesitatingly agreed and my father enjoyed his accolades immensely. When my father was

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stricken with a painful cancer, Reuven visited him regularly, even when I was not in Israel. At his funeral, I asked Reuven to offer a eulogy for my father, a Reform rabbi. He immediately agreed. Like all of Reuvens hespedim, it was eloquent, sensitive and thoughtful. When Reuven referred to my father as his colleague, a rare designation by an Orthodox rabbi, it touched my soul. It was an enormous sign of respect and tolerance for my late father, for me, and even for non-Orthodox Judaism. It is the essence of Reuvens character to be open, tolerant and respectful of other Jews and of other human beings. Reuven expected me to sign my emails or letters regularly with the expression with love (con amore). I initially resisted the idea; I was not used to saluting my male friends, or anyone other than my family, with such a designation. But this took on a deeper meaning for us and our long-term relationship. I do indeed love Reuven, not because he is a great historian, though he is, but because he is a unique human being, despite or perhaps because of all our debates and disagreements. He has taught me much and generously as a scholar and as a person, he is always supportive, and he has welcomed me into his home and heart. Reuvens home, his heart, forever belongs to Eva, his wonderful wife, who gently but firmly keeps him in on the right course and constantly raises his spirits. I wish you, dear Reuven, all the blessings God can bestow on you, on Eva, on your children and grandchildren. You have enriched many lives, professionally and personally, as you have mine. And when I think of all the good that the state of Israel has created for the Jewish people and the world, I think especially of you and your personal presence in Jerusalem. May you be blessed with many more years of creativity, of satisfaction in all your endeavors, and in those of your family, your colleagues, and your many students. Con amore.

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