212
DEATH AND AFTERLIFE, JUDAIC DOCTRINES O F
affirms that ". . . we should be frank enough
to admit that all the speculations regarding
life here on earth after the resurrection simply do not 'ring a bell' for us whereas the
more spiritual interpretation of a Maimonides
does" (p. 319).
Finally, w e should note two recent booklength inquiries into Jewish notions of the
afterlife by Simcha Paull Raphael and this
author, Neil Gillman. Both volumes review
the history of the doctrines and both conclude
with more personal statements of the authors'
beliefs. Raphael's personal statement draws
on the Jewish mystical tradition, hasidism,
contemporary thanatology, Buddhism and
Hinduism, and o n the teachings of the
transpersonal school of psychology.'-'
My own study views all eschatological
discourse as mythical and claims that belief
in resurrection is neither a biological statement nor primarily a prediction of events that
will take place in some indefinite future. It
is rather an integral portion of the classical
Jewish religious myth, which is designed
to help the individual Jew make sense of
his or her existence in the here and now. For
the rest, I draw on the writings of the authors mentioned above, primarily Herberg,
Borowitz, and Wyschogrod, and the French
Catholic philosopher, Gabriel Marcel. I thus
affirm the indispensability of the doctrine of
bodily resurrection understood precisely as a
mythical statement, because it asserts the
integrity of the body to the sense of self.14
Conclusion: It is too early to predict
whether or not this recent reappraisal of bodily resurrection will have a lasting impact on
post-millennia1 Judaism. One indicator will
be the outcome of the ongoing discussion of
liturgical change in Reform prayer books. A
decision on the part of Reform rabbis and lay
people to reintroduce the traditional Hebrew
closure of the Gevurot benediction in forthcoming Reform prayer books would be a
notable expression of the power of the traditional doctrines. Finally, it is not unlikely
that the coming millennium will generate a
renewed interest in eschatology in general
and in the afterlife in particular.
EASTERN EUROPE, PRACTICE O F JUDAISM IN
2 13
Bibliography
Bailey, Lloyd R., Sr., Biblical Perspectives or1
Death (Philadelphia, 1979).
Barr, James, The Garden of Eden and the Hope
of Imnzortalip (Minneapolis, I 992).
Gillman, Neil, The Deatlr of Death: Resurrectiot~
and Imnzortality ill Jenisli Th011ght (Woodstock, 1997).
Irnmo1.Nickelsburg, George W.E.. Resrr~.~-ectior~,
tality and Eternal Life in Intertestamental
Judaism (Cambridge, 1972).
Raphael, Simcha Paull, Jewish Views of the Afrerlife (Northvale, 1994).
Notes
'
The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Inlmortality (Minneapolis, 1992), pp. 62-65.
My interpretation of the Daniel passages
follows that of George W.E. Nickelsburg, Resurrection, 1rnn101-mlityand Ete1.nn1Life in Intertestamer~talJ ~ ~ d a i s(Cambridge,
~n
1972), pp.
11-28, and James J. Collins, Daniel: A Coninie~~.
tary on the Book ofDaniel (Minneapolis, 1993),
pp. 394-398.' Collins, ibid., p. 393.
$ "or
the complete text of this Introduction, see
I. Twersky, ed., A Moinlo~~ides
Reader (New
York, 1972), pp. 401-423. For the complete text
of the Essay on Resurrection and a discussion of
its contents, see Abraham Halkin and David
Hartrnan, Crisis and Leadel-ship: Epistles of
Mainlonides (Philadelphia, 1985), pp. 209-292.
This is proposed by Joshua Finkel, "Maimonides' Treatise on Resurrection: A Comparative
Study," in PAAJR 9 (1939), ch. 4.
A useful compendium of the views of medieval philosophers on this issue is in J. David
Bleich, With Perfect Faith: The Forri~dationsof
Jewish Belief (New York, 1983), pp. 619-687.
' Gersholn Scholem, On the Mystical Shape of
j
the Godhead: Basic Co~lceptsill the Kabbalah
(New York, 1991), p. 241.
"akob J. Petuchowski, Prayerbook Reforni in
E~irope:The Litur-gv of European Liberal arld
Refol-nz Judaism (New York, 1968), p. 215.
' Arthur A. Cohen and Paul Mendes-Flohr,
eds., Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought
(New York, 1987),pp. 807-8 13; in Judaism 17:2,
Spring, 1968, pp. 186-196.
lo Cohen. ibid., pp. 81 1-8 12.
" Op. cit., p. 191.
'' Eugene B. Borowitz, Liberal Judaism (New
York, 1984), p. 222.
" Simcha Paull Raphael, Jewish Views of the
Afterlife (Northvale, 1994), pp. 357-402.
'INeil Gillman, The Death of Death: Resurrection arld Inlnlortality in Jewish Thought
(Woodstock, 1997), pp. 243-274.
NEIL GILLMAN
the Khazars in Eastern Europe, the extent of
JUDAtheir representation in the subsequent Polishand Lithuania in particular-was,
for many centuries, Jewish population, and their influence on its
the domain of the largest and most impor- religious practices are to this day debated by
tant Jewish settlement in the world, a com- historians. The views on this matter range
munity that fashioned a distinctive and from the great nineteenth-century histoparticularly intense form of traditional Jew- rian Heinrich Graetz's insistence that the
ish learning and religious practice. Jews first Khazar conversion to Judaism had almost
settled in Poland and the Grand Duchy of no effect on subsequent Jewish practice in
Lithuania in the twelfth century. From the Eastern Europe to Arthur Koestler's controsecond half of the fifteenth century until the versial book, The Thirteenth Tribe, which
Second World War, the Jewish population of argues that a majority of Ashkenazic Jewry
is descended from the Khazars. The latter
Eastern Europe rose steadily and produced
claim notwithstanding, it is clear to scholars
many of the most important and influential
today that, over the course of the fourteenth
Jewish religious and educational institutions.
On the eve of the Nazis' invasion in 1939, and fifteenth centuries, most of the Khazars
more than 3.4 million Jews lived in Poland, were assimilated into Poland's dominant
and another four million lived in Lithuania Jewish community, which was ovenvhelmand Russia (including Ukraine and Belarus), ingly of Ashkenazic (Franco-Germanic) origin. T h e consensus among contemporary
the vast majority of whom were exterminated
Jewish historians regarding the Khazars then
in the Holocaust.
Origins--Khazars and Karaites: There generally follows Salo Baron's view that,
while the conversion of the Khazar king and
is some uncertainty regarding the religious
and racial origins of the first Jews to settle some members of his nobility was a significant event in medieval Khazar history, it
in Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Included among the earliest adherents of had at the very most a marginal impact
some form of the Jewish faith to reside in the on the subsequent religious and ethnic identity of the Jewish population of Eastern
region (as early as the first half of the twelfth
Europe.
century) were not only "Ashkenazic" Jews of
As for the Karaites, they gradually sepWestern European origin but Khazars and
arated themselves entirely from the AshKaraites as well. The Khazars were a conglomerate of nomadic Turkic tribes from kenazic Jews and maintained their o w n
central Asia: Around the year 740 C.E., a communities, traditions, and religious institutions. During the Nazi occupation of EastKhazar king, Bulan, converted to Judaism,
together with some elite members of Khazar ern Europe, the Karaites successfully saved
society. Over the course of the next three themselves from persecution by asserting
that they were not Jews at all. A tiny Karaite
centuries, many of the Khazar tribes migrated
community, with a synagogue and cultural
northwest into Russia.
The Karaites were a Jewish religious sect center, remains today in the village of Trokai,
near Vilnius, Lithuania.
originating in North Africa that broke with
Ashkenazic Judaism: The beginnings of
normative Judaism in the eighth century, rea
significant
Ashkenazic Jewish community
jecting the rabbinical interpretations of the
Bible contained in the Talmud and codes of in Eastern Europe can be traced primarily to
Jewish law. Some Karaites migrated from several major waves of immigration from
the orient to Russia during the eleventh and Western and Central Europe. In the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Jews, mostly
twelfth centuries and from there apparently
fleeing intense anti-Jewish persecutions and
moved westward into Poland. The destiny of
EASTERNEUROPE,PRACTICE
OF
ISM IN: Eastern Europe-Poland
1
-
.
--
LH.J I C K I V
cUKUYlz,
PRACTICE O F JUDAISM IN
a series of expulsions, migrated eastward
from Germany and Bohemia into Poland and
the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. There was
a sharp rise in massive Jewish migrations
to Eastern Europe over the course of the fifteenth century, largely in response to another
wave of expulsions of Jews from more than
a dozen cities and towns in Bohemia.
These Jews brought with them the distinctive form of Ashkenazic, or Franco-German,
Judaism. Both culturally and spiritually, East
European Jews remained Ashkenazic in
nature until their extermination during the
Holocaust. The liturgy and particular religious traditions of the Jews of Poland, Lithuania, and, later, Russia and Ukraine, followed
those of the medieval Franco-German Jewish communities from which the majority of
Polish Jewry had originated. Moreover, unti1 the sixteenth century, most of the leading
rabbis of Poland were Cmigrks from the west
who had trained in the Ashkenazic rabbinical academies of Germany and Bohemia.
Unlike the Sephardic Jews (i.e., those$.
of Spanish origin) who flourished in Spain,
North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire, and
who were profoundly influenced by the surrounding lslamic society and culture, Ashkenazic Jewish religion and culture were
deeply insular, based almost entirely on the
study of Rabbinic texts and adherence to
the norms of Talmudic law. There was precious little interest in, or knowledge of, any
aspects of the surrounding European culture. Among the main characteristics of the
religion was its devotion to and reliance upon
the Talmud, its commentaries, and the Rabbinic legal codes based on them as virtually 1
the sole sources for religious practice, theology, and spirituality. Unlike the Sephardic
Jews of Spanish and Portuguese origin who,
in the more religiously tolerant and culturally open Iberian Muslim society, developed
varied and sophisticated philosophical and
mystical interpretations of Judaism as well
as belletristic traditions, Ashkenazic Jews- 1
largely because of their intellectual and cultural isolation from a hostile Christian society-focused almost solely on the extant
Rabbinic literature in shaping their religious
belieis and practice.
Despite their profound alienation from
the gentile culture and societies of Eastern
Europe, Jews initially found far greater security in Poland and Lithuania than they
had enjoyed in the Western European lands,
thanks in large measure to a succession of
pr-illilegia, or charters, issued to them by the
Polish and Lithuanian monarchs. The motive
for the promulgation of these charters, which
guaranteed the Jews basic rights and privileges, was clearly economic: they were intended to attract Jewish traders to Poland
and Lithuania in order to bolster these young
countries' infirm monetary resources and were
not motivated by any spirit of religious tolerance or pluralism. The first of the "Jewish
charters" was granted in 1264 by Prince
Boleslav the Pious of Great Poland and
Kalisz. This chartey-known as the statute of
Kalisz-was confirmed by Kazimir the Great
in 1364 for the Jews of Poland and in 1367
for the Jews of Cracow, Sandomierz, and
Lwow. In only slightly altered form, these
charters were again confirmed by King
Ladislas Jagiellow in 1387.
The basic content of the Jewish charters
was to guarantee the Jews the rights of residence, physical protection from assault, the
freedom to worship in their own traditions,
and almost complete autonomy for their
municipal governments and religious courts
and other institutions. By the mid-sixteenth
century, the Jews of Poland had developed an
autonomy unprecedented in Jewish history.
Jewish communities were well-organized,
highly structured, and almost totally selfgoverning. Each major Jewish community, or
Kehillah, had its own city council as well as
both lay and religious court systems. The
Kehillah governed virtually all aspects of
Jewish civic life, such as taxation, the regulation of settlement and demographics, the
adjudication of legal disputes, the maintenance of law and order, and the management of relations with the monarch and other
gentile authorities. The kehillah also exercised much authority over the smaller Jewish communities in the surrounding villages.
Regional, inter-kehillah synods, the largest
and most important of which was known as
the "Vaad Arba Aratzoth" (Council of Four
EASTERN EUROPE, PRACTICE OF JUDAISM IN
Lands), met ~.egularlyin the larger cities.
such as Cracow and Lublin, to govern relations and settle any religious or civil disputes
between the various Jewish communities.
From the very beginning, the leading rabbis of Eastern Europe were intimately connected with the powerful kehillah leadership.
Not only did the kehillah appoint rabbis for
the Jewish communities in cities and towns
across Eastern Europe; it was very common
for the sons and daughters of the rabbinate
to many into the wealthiest and most powerful families in the Jewish community. While
the rabbinate and the kehillah leaders had
differing responsibilities and authority, the
intricate connections between the two often
rendered them indistinguishable.
This extensive communal autonomy and
Rabbinic influence, unprecedented in the history of the Jewish diaspora, secured Jewish
life for centuries. But such autonomy also
had the long term effect of radically separating Jews both socially and culturally from the
larger society. As a consequence of this separation, Jewish learning and religious practice
in Eastern Europe remained for centuries
ingrown and almost entirely immune to outside intellectual and spiritual influences. Perhaps the most overt sign of this was the East
European Jews' almost exclusive use of the
Yiddish vernacular in daily life-a cognate
of German written in Hebrew characters and
incorporating a vely large number of Hebrew
and Talmudic-Aramaic terms. Even during
the period of European enlightenment, when
the Jewish intelligentsia strove to acclimatize the Jews to the larger European society
and culture, the Jewish masses of Poland,
Russia, Ukraine, and Lithuania largely remained culturally, linguistically, and religiously secluded.
While the royal privileges, particularly
when compared to the dreadful conditions of
Jewish life in Germany and Bohemia, rendered Poland an attractive place for Jews to
settle, there was, from the beginning, significant anti-Jewish hostility in Polish society,
particularly on the part of the Church. AntiJewish persecution was particularly fierce
during the fifteenth century, largely due to
the efforts of Cardinal Zbigniew Olesnicki,
2 15
whose intense anti-Jewish agitations resulted
in the Nieszawa statute of 1454, repealing all
of the charters and privileges that had previously been granted the Jews. But despite
these setbacks, by the first decade of the sixteenth centuly, most of the Jewish privileges
in Poland had been re-instated by the king.
There was, indeed, a constant tension generated by conflicting attitudes towards the Jews
between the Church and the Polish monarchy. The Church preached that the Jews
ought to be condemned to a life of perpetual
poverty, subjugation, and serfdom, as a punishment for the crime of "deicide" (that is,
the murder of Christ, for w h ~ c hmedieval
Christianity held the Jews responsible), while
the Polish monarchs generally favored protecting the Jews and granting them basic
freedoms.
Though originating in opposing attitudes
to the Jews, the Church's antisemitism and
the monarchs' protection of the Jewish community's autonomy converged in their impact
on the nature of Eastern European Judaism.
Communal separation and religious antagonisms combined to intensify the profoundly
particularist quality of East European Judaism. Alienated from the larger society, deeply
distrustful of gentiles, autonomous in their
self-government, and excluded from general
European learning and culture, East European Jews remained for centuries virtually
untouched by outside, non-Rabbinic influences. Only the Talmud, its Rabbinic commentaries, and the codes of Jewish law were
studied in the Jewish elementary schools and
rabbinical seminaries. While this produced
a population that was uniquely steeped in
Rabbinic literature and culture, and a Rabbinic elite with unprecedented Talmudic erudition, with regards to any and all forms of
non-Rabbinic knowledge, the masses of East
European Jews were functionally illiterate
until the twentieth century. The daily lives
of the Jewish masses-particularly those living in the shtetls (small towns) and villages
were almost completely governed by the
norms and customs of Jewish law.
T h e Golden Age: The sixteenth century is
usually described as the goldell age of Polish Jewry. During this period, the community
216
EASTERN EUROPE, PRACTICE OF JUDAISM IN
began to produce great educational and culAlong with the precipitous growth of
tural institutions of its own. Perhaps the most Poland's Jewish population, Jewish religious
important development was the creation life and talrnudic scholarship continued to
of important Polish yeshivas (rabbinical deepen and flourish in the seventeenth censchools), which eventually became famous
tury. In this period, significant numbers of
for a distinctively complex and casuistic Jews moved eastward however, following
method of Talmudic study known as "pilPoland's colonization of the Ukraine and the
pul." By the mid-seventeenth century, Po- unprecedented economic opportunities this
land had become the international center of
expansion afforded.
rabbinical scholarship, and-in a dramatic
Persecution a n d religious decline: Many
reversal of earlier trends-Jewish
commu- of the Jews who settled in eastern Poland
nities in other countries, such as France and and the Ukraine sewed as leaseholders, tax
Germany, became dependent on the Po- farmers, shopkeepers, and tavern managers
lish yeshivas to provide them with religious
for the Polish landowners, thus finding themleaders.
selves in the uncomfortable role of economic
The founder of the first great rabbinical
middlemen between the Polish nobility and
school in Poland was Jacob Polak of Lublin.
Ukrainian peasantry. Combined with their
Polak was born and educated in Bavaria total religious, linguistic, and cultural alienand served as Chief Rabbi of Prague before
ation from the peasants, this engendered tremoving to Poland. In 1492, he established
mendous resentment of the Jews on the part
Poland's first advanced talmudic academy
of the Ukrainian masses. That anti-Jewish
in Cracow. His most distinguished student;
hostility exploded during the Cossack rebelShalom Shakhna, established Poland's sec- lions against the Poles of 1648-1649, led by
ond great yeshiva in Lublin. For almost three the Ukrainian nationalist, Bogdan Chmielcenturies, Lublin and Cracow remained the nitski. Along with the Polish Catholic clergy
most important centers of rabbinical scholarand nobility as well as members of the Uniate
ship in the world. Lublin was widely known church, Jews were among the principal taras the "Jerusalem of Poland," and on the eve gets of the marauding Cossack waniors, who
of the Second World War was the home of
managed to devastate entire Jewish comthe most eminent yeshiva in Poland, "Hakhmunities on both sides of the Dniepr River.
mei Lublin," founded by Meyer Shapiro in Aside from the tens of thousands of Jews
1931.
who were killed, many thousands were forced
One of the most distinguished disciples of to accept Christianity. The ferocity and scope
Shalom Shakhna was Moses Isserles (1520- of the destruction inflicted on the Jew1572), who became known as the "Maimoish population was unprecedented in Jewish
nides of Poland." Isserles, who became Chief
history and left the Jewish communities
Rabbi of Cracow after studying in the Lublin
across the region severely traumatized. SevYeshiva, was a distinguished Jewish theoloeral Jewish authors of the period wrote chilgian and a leading authority on Jewish law. ling chronicles depicting the horrors of the
His most important and influential work was Ukrainian revolt, the most extensive and
a series of glosses to the Shulkhan Arukh accurate of which is Abyss of Despair, by
Code of Jewish Law, which remain the au- Nathan Nata Hanover. Hanover documented
thoritative basis for Jewish religious observ- in particular the eradication of the great
ance for orthodox Ashkenazic Jews to this Jewish religious and educational instituday. Among the major Rabbinic authorities tions, which had flourished during the sixof this period were Solomon Luria, author of teenth century "golden age" of Polish Jewry.
the Talmudic legal compendium Yam She1 He also provides the niost vivid, if nostalgic,
Shelonzo, and Mordechai Jaffe, author of the description of the rich Jewish religious life
ten volume encyclopedia of Judaism, Asara
and institutions that flourished before the
Lel~~lsizim.
massacres.
'
EASTERN EUROPE, PRACTICE O F JUDAISM IN
Despite these tragic setbacks, the Jewish
community continued to grow demographically, and Jewish religious life began once
again to thrive during the eighteenth century. The population increase during this
period was particularly dramatic. According
to the census of 1764 (the year of the abolition of the Council of Four Lands), there
were almost 600,000 Jews in Poland, more
than sixty percent of whom were living in
the eastern regions of the country and the
Ukraine.
Superstition a n d messianism: Despite
the dramatic demographic resilience of East
European Jewry, the educational and religious institutions that had shaped Jewish life
during the golden age never fully recovered
from the trauma of the Ukrainian pogroms.
With the numbers of yeshivas greatly diminished and the terrible memories of the
pogroms still vivid, two very different forms
of Judaism that deeply divided the Jewish
community began to emerge: an effete, scholarly religious culture based exclusively on
Talmudic erudition but restricted to an aristocracy of rabbis and the very wealthy members of the kehillah elite and an ignorant,
intellectually unsophisticated and heavily
superstitious faith of the hoi polloi, whose
Judaism became increasingly dominated by
a variety of primitive folk-beliefs and superstitions. The popularity of moralistic books
of popular mysticism replete with superstitious belief in demons, magical amulets, the
powers of curses, and a deep distrust of
gentiles, such as Yesod Yosef and Kav haYashar., both of which were translated into
Yiddish for mass readership, reflects this
phenomenon.
The intensification of antisemitic persecution and successive waves of Ukrainian
pogroms in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries not only deepened the isolation and
religious primitiveness of Eastern European
Jews. It also led to a rise in messianic expectations and a susceptibility to false messianism. The infamous messianic pretender,
Shabbetai Zevi (1626-l676), gained a mass
following in Poland and Ukraine. And Poland
produced the most notorious messianic figure
'
217
in Jewish history, Jacob Frank (1726- 179 1).
who transformed the messianic doctrine into
a bizarre antinomian faith, whose central
teaching was that the ritualistic violation of
the tenets of Jewish law would hasten the
redemption. In 1759, after wreaking havoc
in many Polish Jewish communities and
participating in the public burning of the
Talmud, Frank converted to Christianity.
Sabbatean and Frankist believers subsequently concealed their faith in East European Jewish society because of fear of excommunication but persisted secretly in their
beliefs and practices well into the nineteenth
century.
Hasidism: In the context of such deepening superstition and perverse messianism, the
populist-mystical Hasidic movement originated in the heavily Jewish populated southeastern regions of Podolia and Volhynia.
Founded by a school of charismatic kabbalists and faith healers, Hasidism spread rapidly throughout Eastern Europe during the
last decades of the eighteenth century, gaining hundreds of thousands of adherents and
thereby transforming the spiritual life of Polish Jewry.
Although the mystical spirituality associated with hasidism developed in Eastern
Europe during the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries, the actual founding of
the movement is commonly identified with
the personality of Israel b. Eliezer (17001760) of Mezibozh (a small town in Volhynia, in southeast Poland) and his circle of
close disciples. Israel was a charismatic mystic popularly known as the Beshr, an acronym for the Hebrew honorific, Baal Shem
Tov (master of the divine name), a title he
earned thanks to his reputed powers as a
kabbalistic faith-healer. The Besht was part
of a small coterie of religious pneumatics
in Podolia and Volhynia, who. though never
renouncing Jewish law, favored religious
spontaneity and the ecstatic practice of the
kabbalah over the more conventional Rabbinic disciplines of intense Torah study and
traditional halakhic observance.
As the Besht's reputation as a charismatic
1
1
mystical teacher and faith-healer spread
218
EASTERN EUROPE, PRACTICE OF JUDAISM IN
EASTERN EUROPE, PRACTICE OF JUDAISM IN
219
--
across Poland and the Ukraine, he attracted
an impressive cadre of disciples, many of
whom had previously held distinguished
rabbinical positions but were apparently attracted to the spiritual passion and personal
magnetism of the Besht. According to the
hasidic hagiography of the Besht, Shivhay
ha-Besht (In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov),
many of these rabbis were weary of the dry
and perfunctory regnant Rabbinic culture and
found the religious ecstasy promoted by the
Besht to be a refreshing alternative to the arid
and emotionless practice of conventional
Talmudic Judaism.
The two most eminent of these Rabbinic
disciples of the Besht were Jacob Joseph of
Pollnoe (d. 1782) and Dov Ber of Mezeritch
(d. 1772), both of whom were distinguished
rabbinical figures before being attracted to
his mystical teachings. Jacob Joseph was
hasidism's first major literary figure. His biblical commentary, Toledoth Yaakov Yosef,
which was the first hasidic work ever published (1780), created a storm of controiersy
in Eastern European rabbinical circles. This
book is of singular theological importance
because it contains dozens of teachings received first-hand from the Besht, who did not
himself record his ideas. Toledoth Yaakov
Yosef is also of tremendous historical significance since it includes a sustained critique
of the rabbis of Jacob Joseph's generation,
whom the author refers to using the shocking term "Shaydin Yehudain," or Jewish demons. Jacob Joseph's major complaint against
the rabbis was their scholarly elitism and
distance from the Jewish masses. He complained that they were far more interested in
the fine points of Talmudic discourse and the
minutiae of Jewish law than in the actual
lives and daily spiritual struggles of the Jewish masses. In his writings, we find the first
formulation of an alternative model of religious leadership, that of the hasidic zaddik
(righteous man), or rebbe. Whereas the religious and communal authority of the Eastern European rabbis had always derived from
their scholarship-specifically their mastery
of the Talmud and the codes of Jewish lawthe hasidic rebbes were primarily charismatic
leaders whose authority derived from their
personal holiness and reputed spiritual powers. And, unlike the establishment rabbis who
remained isolated and divorced from the Jewish masses in their Talmudic ivory towers,
the hasidic rebbes dedicated their spiritual
energies to helping the many simple Jews who
did not enjoy the advantages of advanced
Talmudic training.
At the very heart of hasidic life in Eastern
Europe was the intimate relationship that
developed early on in hasidic history between
the masses and the zaddikinz, or rebbes. The
influence of the hasidic rebbes and their total command over the lives of their followers
was, in fact, unprecedented in Jewish history.
Unlike the traditional non-hasidic rabbis, the
rebbes' domain of authority was not limited
to matters of Jewish law and religious ritual..
The r e b k w a s the final arbiter of every imaginable personal problem and predicament
facing his flock.
While Jacob Joseph formulated an elaborate theology to advance the religious authority and vital social role of the rebbe, it
was the other major disciple of the Besht,
Dov Ber of Mezeritch (best known as the
Maggid, or preacher, of Mezeritch), who put
this theory into practice by preparing the
members of his own circle themselves to
serve as rebbes. The Maggid of Mezeritch
was a highly charismatic cleric who created
the model of a hasidic "court," from which
the zaddik ruled the lives of his hasidim, or
adherents, in truly regal fashion. This model
of hasidic leadership has continued virtually
unchanged since then and-successfully
transplanted from Eastern Europe to hasidic
communities in America and Israel--can be
observed to this day. The Maggid not only
trained a significant number of disciples in
the ways of hasidic spiritual leadership; he
strategically dispensed them throughout Eastern Europe to establish courts of their own.
Among the most important of Dov Ber's disciples were Levi Isaac of Berditchev, Nahum
of Tchemobil, Elimelekh of Lyzansk, Hayyim
Haykel of Amdur, Aaron of Karlin, Shneur
Zalman of Ladi, and Menahem Mendel of
Vitebsk.
1
Beyond directing a revolution of sorts
against the established Rabbinic order, Dov
Ber inculcated in his disciples a deeply monistic mystical faith in divine in~manence,the
thorough omnipresence of God in the created world. Classical hasidism's conviction
that "God is all" and that "there is no place
uninhabited by his presence" constituted a
rejection of the dualism that characterized
earlier schools of Jewish mysticism as well
as the conventional Rabbinic belief in, and
legal reverence for, distinct realms of the
pure and impure. This hasidic faith in the pervasive presence of God remains hasidism's
central doctrine and still guides many aspects
of hasidic life today.
Charged with the mystical enthusiasm of
their mentor, Dov Ber's disciples in turn
established hasidic courts of their own in
Ukraine, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Belarus,
and Palestine. Thanks to their spiritual enthusiasm and inherently popular and optimistic religious message, hasidism spread and
quickly became a major spiritual force in
virtually every Ashkenazic Jewish community in the world-even in Lithuania, where
hasidism was most vociferously opposed by
the Rabbinic leadership. One of the most
important and charismatic leaders in the
history of hasidism was the mystic Jacob
Isaac of Lublin, best known as the "Seer"
of Lublin, whose many disciples ultimately
became the spiritual leaders of more than
one million Polish Jews before the Holocaust.
One of the more subtle, but highly repercussive, effects of the hasidic revolt against
the Rabbinic establishment was the decentralization of religious authority in Eastern Europe. Although the courts of hasidic
rebbes were based in towns after whom each
sect became known, their authority far
transcended these locales. One could be a
follower of Levi Isaac of Berditchev, for example, and live hundreds of miles from his
Ukrainian town. Since the authority of each
rebbe derived from his personal charisma
rather than his formal appointment as a Chief
Rabbi by the elected community elders,
hasidim would flock from dozens of places
across Eastern Europe to visit and receive the
'
teachings, advice, and blessings of their chosen rebbes. At the same time, the allegiance
of hasidic Jews to local rabbinical authorities declined precipitously.
By the third generation of the movement,
then, hasidism had spread very rapidly as a
revolutionary, populist alternative to traditional Rabbinic Judaism. Despite the reality
that over the course of the nineteenth century Hasidism became, and remained, the
most reactionary religious movement in Judaism, one must keep in mind that it itself
began as a rebellion against the ossification
of the Jewish faith by the Rabbinic oligarchy and kehillah authorities. The chief goal
of that revolution was to restore spontaneity and spiritual enthusiasm to the alienated
Jewish masses, and its net effect was the
disengagement of those masses from the established Jewish community.
Aside from its break with the traditional
Rabbinic leadership of the day, Hasidism's
most important and revolutionary religious
message centered around the concept of
"devekuth," or mystical communion with
God. Whereas, in Jewish spiritual life, any
mystical activity had hitherto always been the
exclusive provenance of a highly restricted,
elite cadre of kabbalistic initiates, hasidism
promulgated a popularized form of religious
ecstasy, intended to be easily accessible to
each and every Jew. Toward that end, the
hasidic leaders broke ranks with the institutional religious life, establishing independent
prayer houses where a kabbalistic variation
of established liturgy was introduced and
in which the prayers were performed with
great mystical enthusiasm, marked feverish
swaying, song, and dance. On account of its
essential optimism and populism, the hasidic
movement attracted many followers particularly among the least educated and most
disenfranchised sectors of East European
Jewish society, further exacerbating the rift
between the wealthy learned elite and the
untutored masses.
The hasidim also instituted a variety of
new rituals and standards for religious observance. The most notable and socially repercussive of such ritual changes was the
220
EASTERN EUKUt'b, t'KACIICk
Vt- JUUAlbM I N
introduction of a stricter method of shek/iitu, wer against which hasidism had originally
the kosher method for the slaughter of ani- revolted.
mals. The creation of autonomous synagogues
By the end of the nineteenth century, the
and the enactment of distinct dietary stand- hasidim accounted for almost half of the
ards effectively disengaged the hasidic corn- world's orthodox Jews. There were hundreds
munity from the rest of Ashkenazic Jewish of hasidic societies, large and small, to be
society.
found throughout Eastern Europe. Among the
In the course of the nineteenth century, largest and most important hasidic sects at
hasidism spread very rapidly throughout the turn of the century were: Ger, Aleksander,
Poland and Galicia and from there made and Rizhin in Congress Poland; Habad (or
significant inroads into Hungary, Romania, Lubavitch) in White Russia (today, Belarus);
and Czechoslovakia. Although never for- Bobov, Belz, and Vishnitz in Galicia; and,
mally repudiating the religious and social Munkacz, Sighet, and Satmar in Hungary and
radicalism of the movement's founders, over Carpathian Ruthenia (today, northern Romathe course of the century, hasidism tended to nia). Though suffering some attrition as a
grow increasingly conservative, largely in result of the modernization of Jewish life in
response to the spread of the Jewish enlight- Europe and the seductions of the enlightenenment to Eastern Europe. While the radical ment, these important groups-along with
mystical ideals of the Besht and the Maggid many other minor hasidic sects-flourished
were officially preserved in the rhetoric and until the eve of the Second World War.
theoretical writings of the later hasidic masThe hasidic world was absolutely devasters, for all practical purposes, they became
tated by the Holocaust. While some of the
the most religiously conservative and politi- most prominent rebbes managed to escape
cally reactionary of Jewish leaders in Europe. ;:. to Palestine, the overwhelming majority of
This conservatism was first reflected in the their followers was completely wiped out by
violent opposition of the hasidic rebbes to the Nazis. In fact, hasidim account for more
the changes in Jewish religious practice ad- than thirty percent of Hitler's Jewish victims.
vocated by the enlightenment and reform The hasidic rebbes' rejection of Zionism and
movement and, later, in their hostility to the their resistance to the emigration of their folemergence of modern Jewish political ideolo- lowers to America only made matters worse.
gies, Zionism and the varieties of Jewish so- For, on the eve of the war-aside from a few
cialism in particular.
thousand hasidim in Jerusalem and New
The very nature of hasidic leadership also York City-Aasidic life was restricted almost
eventually contributed to the internal de- exclusively to Eastern Europe.
generation and spiritual ossification of the
The Mitnagdim: Despite the rapid spread
movement. The early hasidic leaders were of the hasidic movement across Eastern
religious charismatics who rebelled against Europe, Lithuania remained a bastion of
an ensconced Rabbinic elite that had be- traditional Rabbinic culture and was largely
come too powerful and alienated from the unreceptive to hasidism. This was largely due
life and daily spiritual needs of the average to the profound antagonism displayed toJew. However, by the middle of the nine- wards hasidism by the greatest Talmudist of
teenth century, hasidic leadership had be- the time, Elijah ben Solomon of Vilna (1720come almost exclusively dynastic, with rebbes
1797), commonly referred to as the Vilner
bequeathing the mantel of leadership to their Gaon ("the genius of Vilna"). He was the
sons, regardless of their competence or single most important figure in the formaqualifications for the challenges of religious tion of a distinctive Lithuanian form of Judaleadership. The inherited nature of hasidic ism. Although the Vilner Gaon was, for most
leadership, combined with the absolute au- of his life, a reclusive scholar who refused
thority granted by hasidim to the rebbe, led to accept any official post, in his last years
to much abuse and, in many sects, precisely he channeled all of his energies to lead the
the kind of exploitation of rabbinical po- Rabbinic resistance to the spread of the
hasidic movement. The Vilner Gaon directed
an energetic campaign across Lithuania and
Belorussia to block the hasidic rabbis from
attaining any religious influence or communal authority. He even went so far as to
declare meat slaughtered by hasidic rabbis
as unkosher and to ban "intermarriage" between hasidic Jews and members of his own
community.
The basis for the Vilner Gaon's hostility
towards hasidism was ostensibly the movement's emphasis on religious ecstasy and
mysticism at the expense of the Torah scholarship that had hitherto been the supreme
value in Jewish religious life. As an antidote
to hasidism's anti-intellectual spirituality, the
Lithuanian disciples of the Vilner Gaon further elevated the role of Talmudic scholarship to the very epicenter of religious life.
One of the Vilner Gaon's most distinguished students, Hayyim ben Isaac (17491821). established a talmudical academy for
advanced rabbinical students in the small
town of Volozhin, near Vilnius, in 1802. Although numerous yeshivas had existed in
Eastern Europe since at least the sixteenth
century, the academy at Volozhin set new
standards for scholarship and raised the prestige of yeshiva students to unprecedented
levels. Through its graduates, the yeshiva in
Volozhin generated similar elite rabbinical
academies in such Lithuanian and Belorussian cities as Paneviecz, Kaminiecz-Litovsk,
Slobodka, Telsiai, Kletsk, Mir, and Slutsk.
The most important academic innovation of
this network of Lithuanian yeshivas was the
rejection of the old convoluted method of
Rabbinic casuistry, p i l p ~ ~inl ,favor of a more
rational, conceptual approach to the Talmudic text.
Though this impressive network of Lithuanian Talmudical academies, which comprised a kind of "Ivy League" in the world
of Jewish academia, was decimated by the
Nazis, many were re-established after the
war in the United States and Israel and still
bear the names of their Lithuanian towns
of origin. To this day, the orthodox Jewish
world is divided between hasidim, whose
leaders are charismatic mystical rabbis mostly
of Polish and Hungarian origin and their
1
descendants, and the nlitizugdim, led by the
deans of the Lithuanian yeshivas and their
disciples.
One particularly important offshoot of the
Lithuanian yeshivas was the emergence of
the "Musar" movement, a religious revivalist faction of Lithuanian orthodox Judaism
founded by Israel Lipkin of Salant (18101883), which emphasized rigorous moral
introspection and ethical perfection along
with Talmudic scholarship. By fashioning an
intense Jewish spirituality rooted in study
and ethical excellence, the Musar movement
also served to obstruct the spread of hasidism as well as the Jewish enlightenment to
Lithuania.
Largely as a result of the influence of the
mitVilner Gaon and his followers-the
nagdim-Lithuania became famous as the
home of one of the world's most learned and
intellectually vibrant Jewish communities.
The intensity of Jewish learning and the high
level of Rabbinic scholarship in Lithuania
were legendary. According to one tale, when
Napoleon entered the Jewish quarter of the
Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, he was so impressed by the plethora of Jewish religious
and cultural institutions, that he declared:
"This is the Jerusalem of Lithuania." Whatever the actual origins of that appellation,
thanks to the unparalleled tradition of eminent Jewish scholarship that had developed there, Vilnius was widely known as
the "Jerusalem" of Eastern Europe until the
Nazis' liquidation of the Jewish ghetto there
in 1943.
Aside from hasidism's derogation of TOrah scholarship in favor of more mystical and
spontaneous forms of Jewish spirituality, the
mitnagdim maintained a more traditional,
dualistic understanding of the Jewish faith.
They rejected hasidism's popularization of
the notion of divine immanence and its
celebration of the earthly existence and its
physical pleasures as the theater for spiritual
experience, maintaining instead a more ascetic approach to religious life.
The social and theological divisions between hasidim and mitnagdim effectively
divided East European traditional Judaism into two very distinct religious camps,
222
EASTERN EUROPE, PRACTICE OF JUDAISM IN
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through the modern period. Due to the en- ducive to the spread of rationalism and the
during legacy of the Vilner Gaon, the vast ideals of the Jewish enlightenment. Indeed,
majority of traditional Lithuanian Jews de- while the Vilner Gaon himself was a rigid
fined themselves as mitnagdim and remained traditionalist who strongly opposed the inthe sober, dualistic, and ascetic opponents of filtration of secularism into Poland and
hasidism's mystical enthusiasm right up to Lithuania from Western Europe, many of his
the eve of the Holocaust. The center of their disciples were attracted to the enlightenment
spiritual universe was the yeshiva, which and helped facilitate its spread in Lithuania
played a role equivalent to that of the rebbe's and White Russia. Unlike Western Europe
court in hasidic life.
and Galicia however, where the EnlightIn discussing Lithuanian Jewry, it is im- enment often led to the radical reform of
portant to keep in mind that this historic Jewish law and rituals, national self-denial
community is neither defined by nor limited and assimilation, in Lithuania-and later in
to those Jews who actually resided in the ter- Russia-it took on a particularly intense Jewritory that finally came to be defined as Lithu- ish character. This was especially manifest
ania after the country achieved independence in the eventual rise in Lithuania of the two
in 1918. In Jewish history and culture, most important movements of secular JudaLithuanian Jews were distinguished from ism: Zionism and Yiddish cultul-e.
their Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian brethThe most significant distinction beween
ren by certain well-defined religious, linguis- Eastern and Western European Jewries' retic, and social characteristics that transcended spective religious responses to modernity is
politics and national borders. These distinc- the fact that it was only in Germany and the
tive features, which defined Jews as "Lirvak$:. Austro-Hungarian empire that the liberaliza(Yiddish for Lithuanian Jews, as opposed Sb tion of the Jewish I-eligion-as manifest in
"Litviner," the Yiddish term for Lithuanian the emergence of reform Judaism-develgentiles), included a particular Yiddish dia- oped over the course of the nineteenth cenlect, a rational, anti-mystical and anti-hasidic tury. The religious denominationalism that
approach to Jewish religion and an intense 1 characterized modern Jewish life in Germany
inrellectualism, reflected in the traditions of (and later in America) never took root in
the great Lithuanian yeshivas. These reli- Poland or Russia. In Eastern Europe, largely
gious and cultural distinctions were shared because of the blatantly antisemitic nature
with the Jews of Lithuania by virtually all I of the Czan' attempts to control and "mod. Jewish life, no accomodationist reof the Jews of Belarus, or White Russia, II ern~ze"
which had a pre-war Jewish population of I forms of Jewish ritual and practice emulating
more than 400,000, as well as the cultur- the majority religion ever developed. Instead
ally Lithuanian regions under Russian, and of transforming Judaism itself, the Jewish
Eastern Europe
later Polish. rule, such as Vilnius, Bialystok. 1 enlighteners-maskilim-f
Novogrudek, and Pinsk, whose combined developed distinctly secular alternatives to
Jewish populations totaled about 550,000. 1 Jewish religious practice. A variety of secuTherefore, although no more than 175,000 1 lar Jewish cultural and political movements,
Jews actually resided in the independent I expressing themselves in either Yiddish or
Lithuanian Republic in 1938, there were ac- 1 Hebrew, flourished throughout Eastern Eutually more than 1,000,000 "Linoks" living rope from the mid-nineteenth century. This
in Eastern Europe on the eve of the Second tendency culminated in the establishment,
World War. All but a few thousands were in 1897, of the two largest secular Jewish
liquidated in the Holocaust.
political movements, Zionism and the Jewish
Religious responses to modernity: The Labor Movement, known as the Bund. Both
influence of the Vilner Gaon's intellectual- the Zionists, who fostered the creation of a
ism not only fostered a unique religious cul- secular, modern Hebrew culture and literature in Lithuania. It is also credited by many I ture, and the Bundists, who promoted secular
scholars with creating an environment con- Yiddish culture, were equally opposed by the
I
I
1
1
hasidin1 and the mitnagdim, who came closer Judaism, as practiced by the Jewish masses
together as a consequence of their shared of Eastern Europe during the previous cenopposition to all forms of modern, secular turies, remained essentially unchar~ged,partitularly in villages and small shtetls, in
Judaism.
which
the norms of halakhah and the authoriThe type of organized, self-conscious ortative
rulings
of the local rabbis continued to
thodox Judaism that developed in Germany
and Hungary-which was largely a reaction- dominate all aspects of Jewish behavior and
ary response to the reformation of religious to define Jewish life. While in a few of the
largest cities of Eastern Eul.ope, a form of aespractice in Central and Western Europe-therefore also never emerged in the east. theticized, enlightened Judaism developed,
In general, the East European rabbis and practiced in majestic "choral synagogues"
the masses of their followers opposed the and presided over by oficial, Czatist-governpoliticization of Jewish life and rejected new- , ment-sanctioned rabbis, its impact on the
fangled social organizations and political
great majority of East European Jews reparties that were established by the more mained minimal until the eve of the Holosecular Jews. They preferred to be governed caust.
solely by the norms and mores of Talmudic
The most significant contribution of this
modernized, but still halakhic, East European
Judaism, as interpreted by the rabbis.
Despite the traditional Jewish leaders' dis- enlightenment Judaism was the dcvelopdain for the conventions of modern political ment of the elaborate liturgical art of East
life and its institutions, by the beginning of European cantorial music, which borrowed
the twentieth century they found it virtually heavily from the European classical and opimpossible to remain immune to the forces eratic traditions. Still, the popularity of this
of modernization. In 1912, the first ortho- liturgical form was actually greater among
dox Jewish political party-Agudath Israelthe Russian Jewish emigrks to America than
was formed. largely
to the among the Jews who remained in Eastern
.
- - in opposition
emergence of a religious Zionist movement, Europe.
The traditional life of the shtetl: The traknown as Mizrachi. Aftel- World War One,
ditional
Jewish life of the shtetl has been
Agudath Israel functioned in Poland as a
captured
in vivid. but highly nostalgic and
political party. elected delegates to the Seim
romanticized,
terms in literature, theater,
(Polish Parliament), and strenuously opposed the platforms of the secular Jewish music, and film. Perhaps the most popular
parties, such as the Bund and various Zion- rendition of the life of the shtetl is the deist movements. Agudah eventually became piction found in the award-winning Broada major force in Jewish political life in in- way musical (and later the film) "Fiddler on
the Roof." While-like all artistic recreations
terwar Poland. The leadership of Agudah
spanned the traditional ideological spec- of a lost world-there are many problems
trum, further uniting hasidim and mitnag- and inaccuracies with these depictions, the
dim in their battle against modernity. So, for central, salient feature of shtetl life that is
example, two of the party's towering figures described is incontrovertible. the extent to
were Abraham Mordechai Alter (1866- 1948), which Jewish law and custom permeated
the hasidic rebbe of Ger (the single largest every aspect of Jewish behavior. The Judahasidic sect in Poland) and Hayyim Ozer ism of the shtetl was thoroughly mimetic;
it completely governed, indeed saturated,
Grodzinski (1863-19401, the mitnagdic Chief
the
lives and conduct of the shtetl Jews.
Rabbi of Vilna. In addition to its political
work, the Agudah established a network of Probably the most vivid and accurate of the
schools and published newspapers in the nostalgic descriptions of the spiritual life
of the shtetl is Abraham Joshua Heschel's
larger Jewish communities.
Still, despite the political and social famous essay The Earth is The Lord's. This
changes that invaded even the most tmdi- lost world has also been vividly described
tional segments of East European Jewry, through the letters and documentary and
-
224
ECONOMICS, JUDAISM AND
oral history that survived its destruction
in several anthologies, edited by Heschel,
Dawidowicz, and Herzog.
Despite its insularity a n d endurance,
however, the Judaism of the shtetl-whether
hasidic or mitnagdic-began
rapidly to disintegrate during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Aside from the inroads being
made by secular Russian Jewish culture, the
two external events that most threatened the
old forms of traditional Ashkenazic Judaism
were the rapid urbanization of Jewish life and
the massive emigration to America that had
been spawned by waves of increasingly brutal, government-sanctioned pogroms, beginning in 1881 and continuing to the 1920s.
Since the small shtetls were most vulnerable to the pogroms, the depletion of their
population was most pronounced. During
the interwar period, the shtetls were rapidly
disappearing and with them the thoroughly
traditional Jewish life that had made them
the last, unique representations of traditional
East European Jewish religious life.
economics and religion for all but some very
unique circumstances, for instance, prior to
the expulsion from the Garden of Eden or in
the wilderness following the Exodus from
Egypt, when God's daily provision of manna
saved the Israelites from the toil and trouble
of working for their living.
Yet economists must reject the notion that
even in such distinctive cases economics
and religion are truly separate. The Garden
of Eden was given to Adam "to till it and to
keep it" (Gen. 2: 15), interpreted by the medieval commentator Ibn Ezra as meaning that
Adam was obligated "to water it and guard
it from the wild beasts." And in exchange for
the manna in the desert, the Israelites were
expected to perform scores of acts with economic significance, from specific business
and familial obligations to the offerings of
sacrifices .at the Sanctuary.
There are several possible ways of analyzing the relationship between religion and
econonlics. The hvo most important are:
Bibliography
Dawidowicz, Lucy S., The Golden Tradition: Jewish Life and Thought in Eastern Europe (New
York, 1967).
Etkes, Immanuel, Rabbi Israel Salanter and the
Musar Movement (Philadelphia, 1995).
Her~og,Elizabeth, and Mark Zborowski, Life Is
with People (New York, 1995).
Nadler, Allan, The Faith of the Mithnagdim (Baltimore, 1997).
Rabinowicz, Hany M., Hasidism: The Movement
and Its Masters (Northvale, 1988).
Schochet, Elijah J., The Goon of Vi111aand the
Hasidic Movenrenr (Northvale, 1994).
Weinryb, Bernard Dov, The Jews of Poland
(Philadelphia, 1973).
ECONOMICS, JUDAISMAND: In the opening
passage of an essay on the relationship between economics and religion,
. Jacob Katz
writes,' "Economics in its widest sense, i.e.,
efforts to satisfy human material needs, and
religion as an expression of the spiritual, the
metaphysical meaning of human life, require,
prima facie, two separate arenas, and it is not
inevitable that any contact between them
evolve." Katz, for his part, rejects such a simplistic notion of the discontinuitv between
ECONOMICS, JUDAlSM AND
I
I. The harmonic view, which sees the two
as centered in distinct but in some ways
complementary poles of human activity,
representing the two major foci of human
life, the spiritual and the material. Religion and economics thus are both expected to contribute to the total welfare
of the individual and the society, and
one may even assume a kind of causal
complementarity between them, whereby material contributions promote objectives of the religious institutions, and
religious spirit and zeal enhance aspects
of productivity.
2. The oppositional view, which argues that
religion and economics are contradictory
forces. By the nineteenth century, classical as well as Marxist schools of economic thinking both regarded religion as
imconcilable with. and therefore detrimental to, rational thinking (classical/neoclassical school) or to the promotion of
proletarian self-consciousness (Marxism).
Consequently religion undermines the
objective function of the economic endeavor to maximize the material welfare
of society. By contrast, many religious
institutions, which strive to elevate society above what they call purely materialistic objectives, consider the ideology of
"market oriented rationalism" a menace
tn
the hllrnl"
rnirit ,,,A
rnri^l
:..^.;^^
Religion is a complex and multifarious phenomenon, with different religions accentuating different idiosyncrasies of human
behavior and social norms. Even for the case
of Judaism alone, one must bear in mind the
variety of dimensions that illuminate different yet vital angles of the Jews' world-view.
Judaism is a set of philosophical postulates
that constitute a comprehensive theological
system of faith. It encompasses a body of
prescribed behavioral and social norms, reflecting a value system, principles for interpersonal relationships, and a clear-cut pattern
of rites and rituals. Finally, it comprises a
network of institutions manned by officials
and functionaries, clergy and laymen, who
work to maintain and shape the Jews' behaviors, attitudes, and perspectives.
Since all of these dimensions have a director indirect relevance to economics, Judaism represents an economically analyzable
phenomenon, in which religious behavior
appears as one of many individual or group
activities that confer utility-in
this case,
mainly of a spiritual nature-upon the rationally behaving religious individual. Importantly, since Judaism focuses upon human
behavior more than upon the claims of theology and faith, it should be regarded more
as a code of conduct than as a statement of
belief. Therefore, within Judaism w e are
bound to encounter many more connections
with economic realities than the routine performance of religious rituals would present.
This is the case even though Judaism provides no broad economic guidelines detailing how people should treat economic life,
and no ancient or medieval Jewish sage produced any encompassing work that can be
considered an economic treatise.
Judaism a n d the economics of religion:
The economics of religion has only recently
drawn the interest of scholars. Until the
1960s religion was viewed as merely of historical importance and hence a s the domain
only of economic historians. Besides, due to
the rapid process of worldwide secularization, economists considered religion's future
significance to be minimal.
The last quarter of the twentieth century
h * r ~ r r i t n ~ c c qnm?
~ r l
r p l i o i n ~ ~revival.
s
seen
225
not only in so-called fundamentalist movements but also among intellectuals in Europe
and the United States. In the United States,
contributions to religious organization are
consistently about 5 0 % of all charitable
donations, reaching, in the late 1980s. $60
billion. Empirical studies conducted in recent years discovered no negative correlation
between religiosity and education, suggesting that earlier hypotheses about religion's
being the asylum of the ignorant should be
rejected. Furthermore, those same studies
discovered that religion is not an "inferior
good," that is, that levels of religiosity have
no tendency to decline with rising income.
Here w e find that another common belief.
that "God is the comfort and salvation of the
poor," tends to fall.
Statistics seem, therefore, to disprove the
view that in modern times only the 1,ictims
of modernization, the unlearned and the poor,
cling to r e l i g i ~ n Economists,
.~
instead, have
embarked upon attempts to model religious
behavior with the accepted tools and assumptions of mainstream economic analysis. Their
underlying hypothesis is that "widespread
and/or persistent human behavior can be
explained by a generalized calculus of utility maximizing b e h a ~ i o r . "This
~
hypothesis
proposes that families maximize utility not
only from the goods and services they buy
but also from what they produce with the
skills, time, and human capital at their disposal. According to this theory people or
households chose to allocate their scarce
resources in such a manner that their utility
is maximized.
T h e extension required to encompass religion in such a routine economic paradigm is
the inclusion of spiritual satisfaction into the
utility function of the individual and the addition of religious activities to the "commodities" that compete for the individual's scarce
resources. We thus can re-phrase the basic
statement and suggest that people allocate
their scarce resources (time and money) between religious and other commodities to
maximize their spiritual and material utility.
For an observant Jew the concept of sacrificing commodities, time, and money for
the acauisition of religious "goods" is an