Discrimination Against Blacks Practiced by Jews in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam

Here is an interesting example of what one might see as Jewish “racism” within the Amsterdam Sephardic Jewish community in the seventeenth-century. According to Adam Sutcliffe:

The exclusion of non-whites from participation in the life of the Sefardic community took many forms. An ordinance of 1644 asserted, in protection of the “reputation and good government” of the community, that circumcised Black Jews could not be called to the Torah. In 1647, the Mahamad marked apart a separate, less prestigious area of the cemetery for the burial of Blacks and mulattos. In 1658, mulatto boys, as well as all other non-Sefardim, were excluded from study at the Amsterdam yeshivah, Ets Haim. An unmistakable strain of color-conscious racial prejudice is evident in these ordinances. (Adam Sutcliffe, “Regulating Sociability: Rabbinical Authority and Jewish-Christian Interaction in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam.” Rabbinic Culture and Its Critics Ed. Daniel Frank and Matt Goldish pg. 306.)

Sutcliffe goes on to put this into context. It was not just Blacks that the Sephardic Jewish community looked down upon. They also had absolute contempt for Ashkenazic Jews (Jews from Germany and Eastern Europe). One wonders as to what extent this attitude toward Blacks and mulattos was a reflection of the Spanish and Portuguese cultures that these Jews had fled from. The Spanish created the most elaborate race code of any pre-nineteenth European culture and are the premier example of pre-modern racism. The Sephardic community in the Netherlands was made up conversos, people raised as Christians, and their descendents. We see many examples where, while they may have rejected Catholicism as a religion, they remained good Spanish Catholics to the core. This might be one of them.

I must say, this whole attempt to keep Blacks as lesser members of the Jewish community actually reminds me a lot of the Mormons. The Mormon Church, until the 1970s, did not allow Blacks into the priesthood. In theory they could be baptized but would always remain as outsiders to the group.

Abraham Yagel on Joan of Arc and Merlin

Abraham Yagel (1553-1623) was one of the great Jewish thinkers of the early modern period. In his discussion of prophecy in his book, Bat Rabim, he argued, contrary to the Kuzari, that non Jews could also be prophets. As evidence to this he uses the biblical example of Balaam, but he also brings down the cases Joan of Arc and Merlin. Yagel exerts the reader:

Observe what happened to the seventeen-year-old girl who was a shepherdess during the time of Charles VII, the king of France, who was surrounded by the armies of the English king, which almost took from him [Charles] his entire kingdom. But this young maiden arose, aroused herself from her slumber, gathered her strength, left her flock in the field, went to King Charles, and told him what she told him; the essence of her words was that she desired to lead his armies and to be victorious over his enemies. And the king trusted her word and placed her in charge of his army; and she girded her weaponry and fought the king’s enemies and was victorious over them with great honor. And the chroniclers of the time sang her praises as if she were skilled in war from her youth and knew her enemy’s strategy in war.

And who would believe the account of the child born in England named Merlin, who revealed future events and secret things and who transcribed in a document before the kings and nobles all that would happen to them in the end of days, in addition to all the incredible feats he accomplished in the days of his youth, which were recorded in the chronicles of that kingdom. (David Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic and Science pg. 86)

During the sixteenth and seventeenth century there was a widespread interest in the prophecies of Merlin, particularly in England, and there were many supposed works by him in circulation. (See Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic.) The idea that a Jew would hold up a Christian visionary, who in modern times would be made into a saint, as a true prophet is interesting. For Yagel, as with many others during this time period, prophecy was something in nature, to be studied as any other natural phenomenon, and hence was universally applicable and could be achieved by anyone. (He obviously rejected the view of the Kuzari that prophecy was a genetic trait, which only Jews possessed.) This is not really that different from Pope Clement VII being willing to accept Shlomo Molcho as a prophet. It is all in keeping with the eclectic and often strangely ecumenical mystical theological scientific worldview of early modern Europe.

A Blog to Take Over the World (Part II)

(Part I)

Take, for example, one of the more polemical posts I have written, my discussion of Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky and the speech he gave in honor of my grandfather, which some might see as contradicting my previously stated ethos. Admittedly I received a lot of criticism for that post from people who saw it as a personal attack on Rabbi Kamenetsky. That was not my intention. For one thing, this was hardly a full-on vitriolic, foaming at the mouth assault. I did not accuse him of being a child molester or of helping child molesters. I did not question his patriotism to this country or his love of the Jewish people and Israel. I even praised him as a good speaker. My only qualm with him was that I thought it was the wrong speech for the audience and it was delivered in a manner that was ill-suited to the circumstances. In the end, I questioned his ability to be a leader of the entire Jewish people. As far as I am concerned the last part was not even a criticism of him at all. He is the head of the Philadelphia Yeshiva, a position he is well qualified for, and he is not trying to be anything else. For that matter I myself am not cut out to be a leader of the entire Jewish people and, while we are at it, I am also not qualified to be an Olympic athlete, an astronaut or the president of the United States. This is not an act of self-criticism; it is simply a statement of fact. In the end, the real target of this post was not Rabbi Kamenetsky, but those who would seek to put him on some sort of pedestal and declare him to be the leader of the Jewish people.

In essence, this post, like many others, was anti-Haredi. Haredim serve as a Demosthenes for me; they represent an ideology that I can counter. Also, there is a personal element. Since I grew up connected to the Haredi world and to a certain extent I still am today, they are a major dialectical opposition. One of the major issues running through my blog is my attempt to answer the question, why am I not Haredi. (I also confront questions such as why am I not a secular materialist or why am I not a modern liberal.) As such it can only be expected that I would be less than supportive of a Haredi rabbi. That being said there is a very big difference between my "attacks" and the kind of attacks on Haredim you will find in DovBear and Failed Messiah. To put what I said in a different context, I treated Rabbi Kamenetsky more gently than I treated J. K. Rowling, Libba Bray, and Stephenie Meyer when I felt the need to criticize them. Now all three of these authors are people whose work I actually admire. I see myself as advocating for them. I am an intellectually honest person, though, so I am also willing to call out those who I see as one of “my” people when they mess up. I do not see myself as being on Rabbi Kamenetsky’s side so it makes perfect sense that I would call him on it when he fails at something. At the end of the day, though, I kept my criticism of him at a civil and respectable level. Just because someone is not on your side does not mean that you do not respect him. In fact, it is a healthy thing to respect one's opponents. It keeps you intellectually honest.

Here is to the Locke school of blogging. I have been blogging for nearly two years now. I may not have gained much popular traction, but I like to think that I have put out a quality product, albeit one that I am still working to improve on. I have done my best to keep the polemics and ad hominem attacks to a minimum. If nothing else I hope this blog can be something that people of all stripes, even those who may vehemently disagree with me, can read and respect. If anyone wants me to run for world leader, I am busy at the moment, maybe in two or three decades.

A Blog to Take Over the World (Part I)

In the novel Ender’s Game, while Ender Wiggin is away at Battle School, his siblings back on earth, Peter and Valentine Wiggin, become, in essence, bloggers as part of Peter’s plan to become a world leader. The idea being that on the net he can assume an identity of his own choosing and not be bound by the fact that he is only twelve years old. Through the net, his ideas can reach anyone in the world. Thus he can become a person of influence, someone whom people across the world would willingly listen to. Orson Scott Card published Ender’s Game in 1985, before the rise of the internet so it truly was clairvoyant of him to appreciate how something like the internet could change how information is exchanged and how this could affect the discourse of power. The internet allows a person to reach everyone without any mediation, thus bypassing the traditional guardians of public discourse. The moment I have the internet to reach people with then I do not have to work for a major newspaper, hold public office or even hold an advanced degree and a tenured post at a prestigious university to be a major player in the public discourse. This makes me, a lone individual, powerful in ways that I could never have been before the internet.


Peter takes on the identity of Locke (a reference to the seventeenth-century English political philosopher John Locke) and Valentine take on the identity of Demosthenes (the famous fifth century BCE Athenian orator). While one might expect someone with designs on taking over the world to become a rabble-rouser, playing to the prejudices of the masses, Peter’s Locke does nothing of the sort. It is Valentine’s Demosthenes who is the rabble-rouser. She plays a populist conservative, who whips up popular hysteria, particularly against Russia. In this role, she serves as a foil for Locke, who is a voice of moderation and tolerance. In this capacity, Demosthenes is someone whom Locke can argue against, which is why Peter brought her into this project in the first place. Peter chooses not to play the role of the rabble-rouser because he recognizes that, while such a position can easily lead to widespread popular support, it will close off any chance of gaining the respect of the intellectual and political elites, which is what Peter craves. (This is Card making fun of what he sees as the elitist liberal establishment. In reality, they are just as prejudiced and open to manipulation as the populace they heap scorn upon; it just requires a different and more subtle lever to push them.)


Initially, Demosthenes is much more successful than Locke at gaining popularity. This makes perfect sense considering the nature of their styles and whom they are trying to attract. Peter understood this going in, yet it still frustrates him. He perseveres, though, and eventually succeeds. Over the course of the events narrated in the Shadow series, Peter rises to become the Hegemon and leads a united planet into a golden age of expansion into space.

Peter Wiggin is a model for me. Not that I really have any plans on taking over the world, though I do like to joke about that. I do wish to be Locke though. The internet is full of Demostheneses of both the liberal and conservative variety, spewing invective and playing to people’s passion. This goes to the very nature of the medium itself. In such a crowded marketplace the one who shouts the loudest gets heard. People like a spectacle and take a certain pleasure in beholding people saying extreme things. This is the secret to Ann Coulter’s success. I want to have a positive effect on the world. I believe that my background and my Asperger syndrome allow me to have a different perspective on things from most people and a message to give them. I do not see myself as trying to convince people to become more religious, less religious, liberal or secular. I see this blog as giving people an alternative vision of the world; one that transcends the categories that people are used to.

(To be continued ...)

Military Fiction: A Call for Help

In our book club, we are finishing up Brave New World. It has taken us a lot longer than it should have as there were some delays. For our next book, we are doing Twilight, which has me jumping for joy. I have wanted to do Twilight for a while now but did not think I would get it, considering that the book club was mostly guys. I gave it to the chair of the book club and she fell in love with it and decided to push for it. It helped that two girls recently joined us, giving us more balance in terms of gender. While I am looking forward to several weeks of Twilight I am concerned about how it will play out with certain members of the group. One of the problems with choosing books is that we not only have a wide range of reading interests but also of reading ability. For example, there are two people in the group, one of whom has since left for college, besides for me who have very strong backgrounds in science fiction and fantasy. We had a habit of going off on side tangents which no one else in the group understands. To add to this, all three of us can quote long sections of Monty Python at each other, much to the annoyance of everyone else. The ongoing process has been the chair leaning on me to lean on them to keep them in line and to keep the conversation to things that other people can understand and follow. As for reading ability. I am working on a Ph.D. in history. There is another person in the group who is a Ph.D. student in English. The chair just got her Ph.D. But then we have people in the group for whom reading books is a struggle. One such person has little interest in reading anything except for novels about modern warfare. He is particularly fond of Tom Clancy. This is life in a group full of people with Asperger Syndrome.

It is about our Tom Clancy fan that I am writing. He is dead set on us reading a Tom Clancy novel or at least something along those lines. I and others in the group have no interest in reading Tom Clancy. Besides for the fact that Clancy’s books tend to be full of right-wing cold war paranoia, they are also too long to work well for us. Every time we have voted on a book this person has dutifully posted a Clancy or something along those same lines and every time he has been voted down, much to his great frustration. I would like to help him out here so I am turning to you, my readers. Can anyone recommend a novel about modern warfare (World War II to the present) that is not Tom Clancy or a Tom Clancy clone? It should have plenty of action, but still have useful discussion material and be less than five hundred pages.

I welcome any and all suggestions.

Abortion Rights Versus the Rights of Special Needs Children (and All Other Inconvenient Individuals)

Governor Sarah Palin, now John McCain’s vice presidential nominee, is the mother of a Down syndrome child, Trig. In keeping with her strong anti-abortion beliefs, she carried that child to term and did not get an abortion even though she knew she was carrying a child with Down syndrome. In her recent speech at the Republican National Convention, she spoke about her child and pledged herself to be an advocate for families of special needs children. One should not underestimate the value of such sentiments in terms of its crossover appeal. There are liberal parents out there with special needs children to whom Palin may hold an appeal.

The issues of abortion and the rights of people with special needs are connected in ways that are problematic for those who support abortion rights. (A group that I count myself as part of even if only as a very moderate member.) In the case of Down syndrome, it is now common practice to screen for it. As such future parents of Down syndrome children usually know beforehand and are left with a stark choice, to abort the fetus or take on a lifetime of special responsibilities. How many unborn children with Down syndrome are being aborted? I do not judge parents who make such a choice. That being said this sets a troubling precedent; it means that as a society we are willing to condone the removal of those who are inconvenient. To make matters more difficult, the more people decide to abort such inconveniences, the greater the burden will become for those who, like Palin, do not make such a choice. The fewer Down syndrome children out there the harder it will be to advocate for them. Also, the stigma attached to them and their families will increase. This creates a cycle; as the challenges of being a Down syndrome parent increases more parents will opt out and abort which will, in turn, increase the challenges for the remaining parents and cause them to also opt-out until there will be few to none willing to take on the burdens of being a parent of a Down syndrome child.

As technology advances, we are likely going to find genetic markers for other inconveniences. This will create similar scenarios. What will happen if a genetic marker for autism is found and fetuses could be tested for it before they are born? What about Asperger syndrome? On a purely emotional level, my reaction to the notion that unborn children would be aborted because they have Asperger syndrome is that I would want those responsible, both the doctor and the mother, to be frog-marched directly to jail to do hard time. There is no way I could allow myself to stand back and allow myself to commit personality trait suicide. If there is going to be a future for people with Asperger syndrome then those with Asperger syndrome are going to need to be protected not just from birth but also from conception.

What would happen if they found a way to screen for homosexuality? Could the gay community stand back and allow themselves to be destroyed? Clearly, they would have to fight back and this would put them up against feminists. So much for NOWs pretense that women’s rights and gay rights are one and the same thing.

Contrary to traditional pro-choice rhetoric, there is more to abortion than a woman having control over her own body. There are many different things at stake amongst them is how, as a society, we are going to deal with people deemed inconvenient. In the end, abortion has the potential to split apart the left and change liberalism as we know it.

The Democratic party has good reason to fear Sarah Palin.

The “Immodesty” of Women Voting

During the early 1920s there was a major debate amongst the religious community in Israel as to whether women should be allowed to vote. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook famously opposed it. One of the defenders of women’s suffrage was Rabbi Ben-Zion Hai Uziel, who would later go on to become the Sephardic chief Rabbi. In particular Uziel rejected the argument that we should be concerned lest women voting lead to increased intermingling between men and women and thus lead people to sin. Uziel challenged this premise:

What licentiousness can there be in each person going to the poll and entering a voting slip? If we start considering such activities as licentious, no creature would be able to survive! Women and men would be prohibited from walking in the street or from entering a shop together; it would be forbidden to negotiate in commerce with a woman, lest this lead to intimacy and hence to licentiousness. Such ideas have never been suggested by anyone. (The Jewish Political Tradition Vol. II pg. 204)

Looking back at this response, nearly a century later, one is struck by how naïve Uziel was. He obviously never had to deal with modern Israeli Haredim, who see any contact between unrelated men and women as inherently sinful and have no problem banning such activity. For example the recent campaign to have women sit at the back of buses. (See here) The irony here is that Haredim today allow their women to vote. Is it liberalism on their part or an unwillingness to commit political suicide? I suspect it is not the former.

De Rossi Really Was Like Slifkin

During the campaign against R. Natan Slifkin one of the claims made by his opponents was that they were following in the footsteps of the rabbis in the sixteenth century who opposed Azariah de Rossi and his book the Meor Enayim. There may be more truth to this than Slifkin’s opponents would like particularly if one accepts the account of the early stages of the campaign against de Rossi offered by Robert Bonfil in his essay, “Some Reflections on the Place of Azariah de Rossi’s Meor Enayim in the Cultural Milieu of Italian Renaissance Jewry (Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century ed. Bernard Dov Cooperman pg. 23-48). Interestingly enough Bonfil wrote this essay in the early 1980s, two decades before this whole controversy.

According to Bonfil’s reconstruction of the event:

De Rossi’s real problem began once R. Isaac Foa of Reggio read the book. The old rabbi, whose intellectual energies seem to have been devoted entirely to Talmudic studies interspersed with mystical speculation, appears to have been shocked at the nonchalance with which de Rossi dealt with certain Aggadot believed by kabbalists to have great theosophical implications. For the likes of R. Foa, this was unthinkable. He dispatched an alarmed letter to Venice, where his son-in-law, R. Menahem Azariah da Fano, had been residing for some months. The letter has not been preserved, so wed do not know exactly what alarmed R. R. Foa. We do know, however, that the letter left a deep impression upon R. Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen. This scholar, though a competent Talmudist, does not seem to have been distinguished either by his intellectual sensitivity or by his realism, and was, moreover, rather young at the time. He acted impulsively, apparently before he had even had a chance to read the Meor Enayim. In a circular letter addressed to the Italian Jewish communities, he summarized the warnings of R. Foa and appended to it the text of a manifesto against the book that he proposed for signature. The letter itself has not been preserved, and therefore we do not know whether R. Katzenellenbogen was any more specific in it than in his manifesto, where his charge against the book was rather vague, to say the least: “And there were some chapters,” he wrote, “of that third section, called Days of the World, full of new issues never dreamed of by our fathers.”

R. Katzenellenbogen did not claim any position of leadership for himself in the crusade he called for. Perhaps he thought, or hoped, that “the very excellent scholars of each and every city” would agree to sign the manifesto, especially since it merely sought to require that every Jew who wanted to read or own the book “obtain written permission from the rabbis of his city." …

Nonetheless, R. Katzenellenbogen’s initiative seems to have come as a major surprise. Those who heeded his call and signed with him in Venice were no outstanding scholars. Most of them were leaders of the Levantine community, recently settled in Venice; some are unfamiliar to us, and may have also been so to their contemporaries. … (pg. 26-27)

Bonfil brings the example of R. Abraham Manahem Porto ha-Cohen.

R. Porto had not read the book, but testified rather that “through hearsay I heard of him [de Rossi] having treated lightly the words of the Sages.” He had moreover, heard from de Rossi himself about his dangerously novel chronological theory. … R. Porto delivered before his flock a standard sermon on the prohibition of reading sfarim hitzoniyim, warned them of the potential harmful consequences of a practical nature that could result from de Rossi’s chronological reckonings, posted the manifesto in the synagogue without signing it, and stood by for clarifications. (pg. 28)

R. Porto would later retract his ban after de Rossi agreed to make some editorial changes to the book, which did not include his acceptance of standard chronology.

So de Rossi was the victim of a bunch of little known rabbis, who went after him without having bothered to read his book and the issue cascaded from there. Rather than demonstrate the cohesiveness of the sixteenth-century rabbinate the de Rossi affair shows a rabbinate that was in disarray and easily manipulated to suit the purposes of those pulling the strings. Does this remind you of anything?

To Whom May Quaker Women be Compared to?

Phyllis Mack’s book, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England, is a study of female prophets and visionaries in seventeenth century England. The majority of the book focuses on the early Quaker movement in which women, such as Margaret Fell, played highly public roles. Mack was one of the pioneers of the modern study of prophetic figures. She is not concerned with such issues as whether the individuals she deals with were fakers or insane. Her focus is on placing the people she studies within their given social context; how did such people fit into society and how do they shed light on the world that they lived in.

Mack is also not particularly concerned with issues of feminism. Her book is not about whether these women were fighting patriarchy or submitting to it. Mack eschews such rigid bifurcations. She recognizes that these operated within a very specific context and used it for their own purpose. As such there is a give and take here. We are dealing with a traditional patriarchal society, but the discourse of this same patriarchal society could also be used to suit the purposes of women.

Mack compares her Quaker women to Orthodox Jews. “Like the orthodox matron presiding over her Sabbath table, their [the Quakers’] religious expressiveness emanated from a female identity that was both personalized and traditional.” (pg. 238) Just as Orthodox Jewish women are capable of using the context of a patriarchal religion such as Orthodox Judaism to fashion their own unique identity, outside of masculine control, so too did women in the early Quaker movement use the context of Seventeenth Century Christian thought to fashion an identity that was outside of masculine control.

To be Cyrano de Bergerac

This past evening I went to see a production of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, which was put on in Schiller Park here in Columbus. I was familiar with the play from seeing the film version, starring Gerard Depardieu, in high school. This was free theater so I did not have too high expectations. While most of the actors were fairly mediocre, John Beeker, who played the title role, was outstanding. I would definitely pay good money to see him perform. The music was also very good. (It was taken from Cirque du Soleil’s KA.)

Cyrano de Bergerac (a real historical figure) is about a swashbuckling seventeenth-century swordsman (A character similar to Alexander Dumas’ three musketeers and, more recently, Arturo Perez-Reverte’s Captain Alatriste.) His sword is only matched by his wit and his skills as a poet, something he puts to good use in the play’s opening as he dispatches an opponent with his sword while composing a ballad to commemorate the occasion. Standing in Cyrano’s way are his tendency to speak his mind and thumb his nose at the rich and powerful, thus making for himself many enemies, and his literal long nose, which disfigures his face. Because of his nose, Cyrano finds himself unable to pursue his love, his cousin Roxane, for fear that she will laugh at him. Instead of pursuing her directly, he comes to do so indirectly when he befriends Christian, a fellow soldier in his company, who has also fallen in love with Roxane. Christian has a beautiful face but lacks the necessary skill with words to win Roxane. Enter Cyrano to fill the void; he writes the needed love letters and poems for Christian and even coaches him on what things to say to her. Cyrano and Christian make a perfect team; Christian provides the face and Cyrano provides the mouth. Unfortunately for Cyrano, though, it is Christian’s lips that get to kiss Roxane while he has to stand by as the loyal friend and watch.

As with most great characters, one comes to identify oneself with the Cyrano in a very personal way. I see a lot of myself in Cyrano or at least see in Cyrano something that I could and should be. Cyrano is a highly intelligent, witty, charming and likable individual, who tends to offend people. He is someone full of principles/pride and will sacrifice everything for them, though it is not always clear which one he is standing for. He is someone with a noble romantic soul with the capacity to love in ways that few can. Yet for all this, he is doomed in love because of his deformity, his nose. Cyrano’s nose, though, is really a stand-in for the injuries in Cyrano’s own mind. It is he who thinks of himself as ugly and incapable of pursuing love. While Cyrano’s nose holds him back it is also what allows him to love as intently as he does in the first place. One suspects that if Cyrano would not have become the gallant swordsman and romantic if he had been born with a regular nose. It is his nose that isolates him and makes him feel as intently as he does. Like Cyrano, I am witty, intelligent and charming, though I do tend to put these gifts to use by thumbing my nose at convention and playing by my own rules. While I am likable, I do tend to offend people. I think in terms of duty and obligation; I believe that I owe people a debt for their friendship. I have learned the hard way, though, that other people do not think in terms of duty and obligation and therefore do not feel they owe me anything for my friendship. I have a pretty enough face, but in the end, I am also scarred. Not by my nose but by my depression and Asperger Syndrome. These things have stopped me from finding love.

It is a pattern that has repeated itself several times already, the last time just recently, where a woman has been attracted to me by my wit and charm only to flee as soon as she came to see my depression and Asperger Syndrome and how it affects my life. The irony here is that I owe the wit and charm that attracted them in the first place to the same depression and Asperger Syndrome that robs me in the end. My wit and charm is simply the light side of my depression and Asperger Syndrome and is as much a part of them as the dark side which people have no difficulty labeling as such. My depression and Asperger Syndrome isolate me and keep me away from love but my isolation serves also to make me acutely aware of love and my need for it. I look hungrily at all the normal people out there who seem to have little difficulty with love yet fail to truly appreciate it. I wonder what it would be like to be normal. Utterly boring, I suspect, though they do, by and large, seem to be happy.

At one point in the play, Cyrano is challenged whether he is being Don Quixote, fighting windmills. I have, in my time, been faced with that challenge. As much as I may love the musical the Man of La Mancha, I have no wish to be Don Quixote. I will settle for being Cyrano de Bergerac.

This November Expect the Unexpected

The race for the White House is in full bloom. The Democrats have had their nomination and Barack Obama has chosen Joe Biden as his vice-president. The Republicans are about to have their nomination and John McCain has pulled his surprise move and nominated Sarah Palin. So who is going to win in November? Here is my prediction for the coming election; more so than any election in recent times, the polls, one way or another, are going to be off. There are too many x factors in this election, too many things no pollster can predict.

Let us start with Barack Obama. His chief strength is his popularity amongst blacks and young voters (ages 18-22), two groups that are notorious for not voting. Will Obama’s popularity bring them to out to vote or will they stay home like they usually do? Obama is the first black candidate nominated by a major party. How many Democratic voters are there out there who, in the privacy of the voting booth, will find themselves unable to turn the level for a black man? I believe that there are still real racists in this country and not all of them are Republicans.

As for John McCain. He is unpopular amongst both evangelicals and economic conservatives. How many of them, come Election Day, will stay home? There are many women out there upset about the fact that Hillary Rodham Clinton not getting the nomination. How many of them, in the privacy of the voting booth, will find themselves unable to vote against a female vice-president.

With the possible exception of evangelicals and McCain, these are all things that are by definition unpollable. How do you poll if someone will actually go and vote instead of just saying that they will? How do you poll what someone will do in the privacy of the voting booth as opposed to what they will say to a pollster? Who is going to win? I have no idea and neither does anyone else.

From Texts to Narrative: a Review of Jewish Questions

(Just so there should be no undeclared conflict of interest, Matt Goldish is my advisor, my mentor and I also like to think of him as a personal friend.)

There are three parts to the study of history. There is the gathering of historical evidence, usually written texts, the analysis of the evidence and finally one hopes to be able to create a coherent narrative from this evidence. The most important part and the part that most historians primarily deal with is the second part, taking pieces of historical evidence, primarily written texts, and analyzing it to see what sort of conclusions it will lead to. One of the problems with trying to educate the public about history is that when most people think about history they think of it in terms of the third part, the creation of a narrative. Because they do not see what actually goes into the study of history, people tend to think that history is simply a bunch of people giving their own highly biased opinions about the past. Why, if this is the case, is there any need for the professional historian? Anyone could write history. People need to see not just the surface of history but the whole intellectual process that goes on below the surface that is heart and soul of history.

Matt Goldish has done an admirable job in this regard with his new book, Jewish Questions: Responsa on Sephardic Life in the Early Modern Period. While the book deals with a very specific subject, Sephardic (North African and Middle Eastern) Jewish life in the early modern period (1492-1750), this book would benefit anyone seeking to understand the historical method of reading texts and how it is used to create a broader story. This book is a collection of primary sources, in this particular case responsa, questions posed to various rabbis. (It should be noted that rabbis sometimes wrote their own questions as a set up for a given discussion.) As Dr. Goldish shows, these responsa contain stories behind them and these stories tell us things not only about the individuals who asked the question but also about Sephardic Jews as a whole. Through these responsa, we are introduced to merchants, moneylenders, soldiers, housewives, widows and conversos. Each responsa is prefaced by Dr. Goldish, who explains the significance of the text in question and how it sheds light on the larger narrative.

At the beginning of the book Dr. Goldish offers an introduction where he talks about the use of responsa and gives the reader some general background information about the history of Jews in Spain up until the time they were expelled in 1492 and how this created the world revealed by the responsa he uses. Finally Dr. Goldish offers a series of brief bios of the rabbis to whom the responsa questions were written. While a good overview, I cannot say that I cared much for Dr. Goldish’s reference to the “superstitions of the populace” (pg. xxi) when talking about the attacks of 1391.

All in all this is a remarkable book that will be useful not just as a textbook for classes on early modern Sephardim but also for those who wish to understand what history is really all about. With this book, Dr. Goldish demonstrates that he is not only a highly gifted historian but also a master pedagogue, who has done a valuable service advancing the public understanding of history.

An Introduction to the Academic Study of Kabbalah

For anyone interested in the field of Kabbalah, Hava Tirosh-Rothschild (now Tirosh-Samuelson) has a useful review essay, “Continuity and Revision in the Study of Kabbalah.” (AJS Review 16: pg. 161-92) Tirosh-Rothchild focuses on the two leading figures in modern Kabbalah studies Gershom Scholem (1897 – 1982) and Moshe Idel. This is a thirty page review of Idel’s Kabbalah: New Perspectives that puts Idel’s work within the larger context of Kabbalah studies, particularly the work of Scholem, Idel’s main target, who Tirosh-Rothschild devotes the first part of the essay to.

(The link to the essay is through JSTOR, which you will need to have membership in order to access. Most university computer systems are linked to it.)