The Jews of 1632 Submission for the Grantville Gazette Douglas W. Jones

The Jews of 1632

Submission for the Grantville Gazette

Douglas W. Jones

Preface

     In reading the stories set in Eric Flint's world of 1632, I find that many authors have had difficulty accurately recreating the Jews of that era.  What I have written in the following is intended as a handy resource for anyone contemplating using Jewish characters in fiction they set in this world.  I have tried to cover issues that would matter to a writer trying to invent realistic Jewish characters without more than a cursory glance at matters of theology, except as these would be seen by an outsider observing the Jews of the era.  The one exception to this is in the area of Kaballah, where I have delved deeper because this was at the center of the the largest controversy in the Jewish world of the era.

     In writing what follows, I have tried to consistently transliterate Hebrew words into English using natural spellings of the Ashkenazic pronunciation, since this was the dominant pronunciation in Germany in the seventeenth century.  By way of example, consider the word Sabbath, pronounced Shabbos by most Ashkenazic Jews, with the emphasis on the first syllable.  In contrast, Sephardic Jews pronounce this as Shabbat, with the emphasis on the second syllable.

     Most modern transliterations from the Hebrew follow the Sephardic pronunciation because that is how modern Israeli Hebrew is pronounced.  I will not use any of the standard Hebrew to English transliteration schemes that are used in scholarly work.  Some of these use diacritical marks unfamiliar to most readers, while others generate bizarre spellings that don't suggest any widely spoken dialect of post-biblical Hebrew.  For example, rendering Sabbath as Shabboth.

     Unfortunately, there is no one-to-one correspondence between the letters of the English alphabet and the Hebrew aleph-beis.  There is one Hebrew letter that can be pronounced as either b or v, so the name Abrabanel and Abravanel are both reasonable transliterations of the same Hebrew spelling.  Similarly, another letter can be pronounced either s or sh.  In both cases, there are diacritical marks that can be used in the Hebrew to indicate the intended pronunciation, but these are omitted in most written Hebrew.

     The glottal ch sound found in many Hebrew words has no English analog.  This is used in the words chiam and bruchah, meaning respectively life and blessing, and pronounced as the ch in Bach or Loch Ness.  It should be easy for Germans and Scots to pronounce, but it gives many English speakers trouble.  Some transliterations use the letter h for this sound, others use the awkward looking kh; given that English readers expect to see ch used for this sound in loan words from Gaelic and German, it is hard to justify these other alternatives.

     A final reason for irregular transliterations from Hebrew to English lies in places where both Hebrew and English grammar can be used.  Should we construct the plural of mitzvah, commandment, as mitzvahs, following the English rules for plural formation, or should we construct the plural as mitzvos or mitzvot, using the Hebrew rules for plural formation?  I will generally do the latter because it demonstrates how a Jewish character would say the word where a writer might want to emphasize their Jewishness by having them drop in an occasional Hebrew word.  I recommend doing this in careful moderation except where you want your Jewish characters to come across as incomprehensible.

     In the context of remarks in the novel 1632 about the American habit of using acronyms, it is relevant to note that the Jewish world has been using acronyms for a very long time.  The Jewish Bible is known as the Tanach, formed from the initials for Torah, nevi'im (prophets) and ketuvim (writings), with random vowels added to allow it to be pronounced as a word.  Similarly, stam calligraphy is used for the texts of the Sefir Torah, tefilin and mezuzot.  Many more of these acronyms will be mentioned later, in the section on Jewish names.

Introduction

     Judaism centers on the covenantal obligation of Jews to perform the 613 divine mitzvos that have been identified in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible.  As a result, Judaism has, at its core, a code of law known as halacha, a word meaning the path.  It is reasonable to compare this to the canon law of the Church, but where Christianity is a matter of faith and can survive without its law code, it is difficult to formulate versions of Judaism that are not centered on the mitzvos.

     Jewish law was considered to be binding on all Jews, and throughout most of the european Jewish world of the seventeenth century, Jewish courts were empowered by the Christian authorities to enforce this code of law in all disputed between Jews.  Halacha is not just a religious code, for example, it includes a highly developed code of commercial law, and matters of doctrine or creed are not addressed in any depth.

     The two primary jobs of a rabbi have traditionally been to serve as a teacher and a judge of Jewish law.  It follows that the Talmud, which is the central text of every rabinnical seminary or yeshivah, can be thought of as a law text although it is much more than that.  The Talmud is massive and must be studied in the context of more recent rabinnic rulings.  As a result, shorter codes of Jewish law have long attracted readers.  In the seventeenth century, the Shulchan Aruch by Rabbi Yosef Karo of Safed was the newest compendium, but it was also somewhat controversial.

     Under Jewish law, all prohibitions can be suspended when doing so will save a life, excepting the prohibitions against murder, idolatry and sexual immorality.  Dietary prohibitions and modesty rules fall by the wayside if they stand in the way of saving a life, as do the prohibited categories of work on the Sabbath and even the laws against theft.  In times and places where Jews were subject to serious persecution, many Jews interpreted the obligation to save lives narrowly, applying it primarily to Jewish life.

     The Jewish world of 1632 was a complex one; broadly speaking, it was divided between the Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities, but this greatly oversimplifies the picture.  The Jews of Italy, in particular, included an indigenous community dating back to Roman times that was neither Ashkenazic nor Sephardic.  This community had its own ritual tradition dating back to Roman times, although by the 17th century, Italy also hosted Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities, most notably in Venice.  The Babylonian and Yeminite communities were also distinct.

     In general, the division between the different Jewish communities was not one of ideological disagreement, but one of traditions.  The Jews of these communities usually agreed that the traditions of the other communities were valid and that, within each community, these traditions had the binding force of law.  The greatest differences between these communities were in the prayerbook, where one community or the other had made additions to the basic structure of the liturgy mandated by the Talmud, and in minor dietary laws, particularly those surrounding Passover.

     In addition to the traditional and ritual differences between the Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities, there was significant prejudice.  Sephardic Jews still remembered being at the center of the Jewish world prior to the expulsion, and tended to think of their Ashkenazic cousins as uncultured and vulgar.  Ashkenazic Jews, in turn, resented this dismissive attitude.

     There was also, of course, the matter of language.  The mamaloschen (mother tongue) of the Ashkenazic community was Judische Deutsch, formed from German with a liberal admixture of Hebrew roots (laschon is, for example, the Hebrew word for tongue).  In the seventeenth century, Judische Deutsch was already well on the road to becoming what we now call Yiddish, but this process was centered in Poland.  In areas where the larger community spoke various local German dialects, it is not clear that Judische Deutsch should be described as Yiddish, marking it as a distinct language as opposed to just another German dialect.  The Sephardic community, in contrast, spoke Ladino, or Judaeo-Spanish, while the Italian community spoke Judaeo-Italian.  There was also an indigenous Jewish community in North Africa that spoke Judaeo-Arabic.

     All of these languages contained numerous Hebrew words and were written in Hebrew characters.  It is fair to say that these languages were mutually incomprehensible with the possible exception of slowly spoken and carefully enunciated Judaeo-Italian and Judaeo-Spanish.  Rabbis, many laymen and some women in all of these communities would have known enough Hebrew to overcome any communication difficulties caused by these language differences.

     As already noted, the Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities had distinct Hebrew dialects.  The th sound, as in the name Ruth, had disappeared from all but the Yeminite dialect of Hebrew.  In Ashkenazic, it had become an s, so Ruth was pronounced Roos, and in Sephardic, it had become a t, so the name became Root.  There was also a shift in the pronunciation of some vowels and a shift in syllable emphasis.  Where Sephardic Jews generally emphasized the last syllable, as in talit or amen, Ashkenazic Jews tended to emphasize the first syllable, talus or omain.

Jewish names

     Family names, as we know them today, were uncommon in the seventeenth century Jewish community.  From biblical times to the modern era, all Jews generally have patronymic names, so Moische ben Aaron is Moses, the son of Aaron, and Frumah bat Yosef is Faith, the daughter of Joseph.  Jewish marriage, divorce and death records will always give the name in this form, as will Jewish court records.  In addition, this form of name is used when a Jew is called up in the synagogue for any liturgical purpose.

     There is one general exception to this, the family names Cohen and Levi, which are of biblical origin.  The name Cohen, indicating priestly descent, has numerous variants, including Kahn and Kaplan.  In the same way, Levi indicates descent from the biblical Levites and gave us family names such as Levine.  In formal liturgical usage, these names are appended to the patronymic form, so Samuel son of Moses the Cohen would be known as Schmuel ben Moische haCohain.  When the Torah is read in the synagogue, the first and second sections of the reading are reserved for the Cohen and Levite, if any are present.  This and a few other minor ritual privileges have ensured the continuity of these family names.

     In the 17th century, a few Jewish families were using family names approximately as we use them today.  Most frequently, these were used as a way of calling attention to relationships with prominent ancestors.  For example, many descendants of the noted French Torah commentator and mathematician Gershonides, or Rabbi Levi ben Gershon used the family name Ralbag to call attention to their ancestry; Ralbag was simply the acronym for his full name.

     Most of the great Jewish scholars have had their names reduced to acronyms.  For example, the 11th century French biblical commentator from Troyes known as Rashi was Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzach, and the greatest scholar of the twelfth century was the Rambam, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon of Cairo, known in the Christian world as Maimonides.  Aside from Ralbag, however, these acronymic names did not generally become family names.

     It was common to use the name of a home town as a last name.  For example, the merchant and Talmudist Simon ben Eliezer was known as Simon Günzburg after his birthplace; he lived in Ulm for a while and was also known as Simon Ulma.  He was famous enough that his descendants carried on both of these names as family names, giving rise to the modern names Günzburg and Ginsberg as well as Ulma and Ulman.

     When someone had an extremely common name, for example, Yehudah ben Avraham, there was a need to distinguish them from others with the same name.  The most prominent person with such a name in any given community generally got to keep the name, while others needed to add something.  The Abravanel family, for example, is probably descended from a prominent resident of Seville named ben Avraham; other ben Avrahams from Seville would have had to use a different name.  The question of whether it should be transliterated Abravanel or Abrabanel is fair.  The former transliteration is more common, but because the letter v is pronounced more like an f in German, the latter transliteration would be more likely in German lands.  Because it is an unaccented syllable, it hardly matters.

     In the mid seventeenth century, Rabbi Schlomo ben Yitzach, of Frankfort had a very common name.  There were many Solomons who were sons of people named Isaac.  To distinguish him from others of that name, he was sometimes called Solomon Rothschild.  The name Rothschild, in turn, was used because his father Isaac, the leader of the Frankfort Jewish community, lived in a house with a red shield hanging over the door.  These shields were put up in the Frankfort Jewish quarter in the early 1600's at the insistence of the Christian authorities.  At the time, the name Rothschild had no special meaning, and in fact, Schlomo ben Yitzach also called himself Solomon Bacharach and would probably have preferred that name if the Christian authorities had not imposed the name Rothschild.  His descendants, on the other hand, continue to take pride in the name Rothschild to this day.

     Nicknames were common in the Jewish world of the seventeenth century, and it was common for Jews to go under variant names in different circles.  Yitzach of Frankfort, for example, was probably Isaac Frankfurter to his Christian neighbors.  To his close friends and colleagues, he was probably Yitz.  In German, if you could address him as du, you would call him Yitz, while if you had to call him sie, he would be Yitzach.  To his wife or mother, he might have been Yitzelle (little Yitz).

     Names in translation also occurred.  The name Chiam became Vidal in Judeo-Italian and Ladino because it means life.  The names Tzvi and Ari, meaning deer and lion, became Hirsch and Loew in Judische Deutsch.  The name Loew became a family name as early as the 15th century.  Rabbi Yaakov Loew ben Chiam, born around 1480, was Reichsrabbiner or chief rabbi of the German Jews.  The most famous member of this family was the Maharal, Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel of Prague (1525-1609).  Today, the Maharal is remembered as the creator of the Golem of Prague; this legend may have been unknown in the mid seventeenth century but his work on whether it was permissible to use automatic mechanisms to do work on Shabbos was fairly well known.

     The master of the house, baal beis in Hebrew, was known as the balebus in Judische Deutsch.  Any familiar but also highly respected man was likely to be addressed as Reb, used as a title of respect, but only with his first name.  The honorific Reb is close in value to Mister, as it was used in the 19th century, which is to say, as a title for the master of the household; any balebus was therefore entitled to this honorific.  The honorific Rav was appropriate for rabbis only, and the wife of the Rabbi would be the Rebitzin.  (It is noteworthy that tradition discouraged unmarried men from serving as rabbis.)

     Women of the 17th century Jewish community sometimes had Hebrew names but in other cases, they had German or distinctly Judische Deutsch names.  The Maharal's children included Gitele, Tilla, Rachel, Leah, Vögele and Realina.  Some biblical names, such as Eve or Rebecca would rarely be heard in their German form, but rather, they would be pronounced in their Hebrew form, Chava and Rivka except in dealings with non Jews.

     Jews and Gentiles

     The laws governing the Jews of seventeenth century Europe encouraged Jews to support themselves through the loan business.  In exchange for being allowed this one source of income, Jews were forced to pay special taxes.  In areas with significant Jewish populations, these Jew taxes were a major source of income.  For the nobility, raising the Jew taxes and having the Jews pass these on as high interest rates was a safe way of squeezing money out of the their subjects because borrowers generally directed their anger at the Jews for the high interest rates instead of blaming the government.

     The Jews of the 17th century generally lived within walking distance of synagogues because of restrictions on the distance a person could travel on the Sabbath and a prohibition on riding on the Sabbath.  When possible, Jews lived within walled and gated compounds within towns and cities; Jewish law encourages this because the prohibitions on carrying on the Sabbath relax considerably if you are within a walled area, called an eruv, although the city walls themselves would suffice.

     Christian law following from the Papal bull of 1555 required that all Jews living under Christian rule live in the Jewish quarters of their towns and required that the gates to the Jewish quarter be closed on Sunday, lest the Jews spoil the Christian Sabbath.  The gated Jewish quarter provided some protection against mob violence against Jews, particularly around Easter when attacks against Jews were common enough to be described as traditional.

     The term ghetto itself was new, dating only to 1516, when the principality of Venice restricted Jewish residence to an area formerly occupied by a foundry (ghetto, in the Venitian dialect).  Many German towns had Jewish districts organized along a single long street; in most such towns, the district was known as the Judengasse (Jewish lane).  The most famous Judengasse was that of Frankfort am Main.

     Despite Papal and imperial decrees that all Jews be confined to the Jewish quarters of towns, there were Jews living outside these quarters.  Such Jews were known as Shutzjuden or protected Jews, and they lived outside the Jewish quarters only because they paid Shutzgeld, protection money, to the local noble.  In effect, this Shutzgeld was a bribe to the noble in his role as magistrate to have him overlook the decrees he was legally charged to enforce.  By the seventeenth century, status as a protected Jew was generally governed by a contract that could be inherited.  In some areas, Shutzgeld was a major source of income to the local nobility.

     Jewish commerce with non-Jews was strictly limited.  Jews were forbidden to sell new goods, to join guilds, to bear arms or to hold public office.  Aside from making loans, the only other businesses generally permitted were trading in used goods such as scrap and rags.

     In the seventeenth century, the restrictions on Jewish occupations began to soften.  Jews had to be careful about this, constructing legal fictions in order to bend the rules carefully.  For example, where a Jew could not legally buy and then resell some product, he might legally act as a broker, taking delivery of the product from the seller, delivering it to the buyer and taking care of the cash transfer for a fee.  Restrictions on Jewish commerce were generally more likely to be enforced in areas with significant Jewish populations, while they were weak where Jews were few and far between.

     The word Gentile itself is worthy of note.  In the Jewish world, the term used would invariably have been goy, (plural goyim).  In Hebrew, this word means exactly the same thing as the Latin gens, a race, a people or a nation.  As used in Judische Deutsch the word goy became a synonym for gentile; it only had negative connotations because, until recent times, it was a safe assumption that if a person was a Gentile, he was likely to be anti-Jewish and therefore dangerous.  Jews did trust some Gentiles, but such trust was rare, conditional, and risky.  All Jews were generally familiar of stories about Gentiles who had proven themselves to be trustworthy through many years and then had betrayed that trust.

     One story, in particular, illustrates the risks of such trust.  Over the centuries, there have been many churchmen who extended considerable protection to the Jews, only to withdraw it.  Martin Luther is the most famous example; early in his career, he urged that Jews be treated with great respect, but once he concluded that such tolerance would not convince large numbers of Jews to convert to Christianity, he wrote On the Jews and their Lies (1543), one of the most antisemitic works ever written.  Luther went so far as to say "We are at fault in not slaying them."  As a result of this change, the Jewish communities of many of the new Lutheran lands faced persecution so severe that essentially all of the Jews were driven out.

     Of course, the term anti-Semite would be entirely unfamiliar to any resident of the seventeenth century.  It is a nineteenth century coinage, invented by Wilhelm Marr when he wanted a respectable and scientific sounding term for the older Judenhass (jew hatred).

     In general, when Jews and Christians interacted, there was a very strong asymmetry.  Christians were urged by their tradition to do everything they could to attract the Jews to convert, while Jews were urged by their tradition not to talk about Judaism to non Jews.  For the past thousand years, the experience of the Jewish community with such dialogue had been extremely negative.  The Catholic Church had organized many disputations in which Jewish and Christian scholars were pitted against each other, but the outcome of these disputations was generally preordained and frequently fatal for the Jewish participant.  As a result, genuine inter-religious dialogue was extremely rare and when it occurred, it was almost always conducted in private.

     In the context of the book 1632, for example, it is quite likely that Rebecca Abrabanel would have been quite reluctant to say much about the depth of her own allegiance to Judaism to Michael Stearns for several years after she married him.  He might not even notice small observances she maintains while living with him, and when he does, he may completely misunderstand their significance.

Jewish Dress

     In general, in every age, Jews have dressed more or less like their neighbors.  Examination of medieval illuminated manuscripts makes this quite clear, as does examination of the works of several 17th century artists.  There are, however, some distinctively Jewish elements to clothing.

     The first of these is the response to the commandment to wear "tassels on the corners of your garments" (Numbers 15:37).  This has led to the universal Jewish custom of men wearing a tallus or prayer shawl during morning prayers.  In the Sephardic dialect, this was pronounced tallit.  Medieval persecution and pietism combined to lead Jews of the medieval Ashkenazic community to convert this to an undergarment that could be worn all day without being obvious.  The big tallus gadol was still worn during morning prayers.  Only the four tzitzis, or tassels of the little tallus katan undergarment hung out into public view.  To any Jew or to any Gentile who came in regular contact with Jews, these fringes served as a badge that the wearer was Jewish.  German Jews frequently referred to the talus katan undergarment as a tzitzis, after the fringes it carried.

     By the seventeenth century, the Ashkenazic tradition was that all men, starting in cheder or elementary school, wore tzitzis, but only married men wore the tallus gadol.  The story in the Sephardic world is less clear; Jews in the Ottoman Empire were wearing the talit katan, but it is difficult to identify evidence that the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam wore this undergarment.  Certainly, crypto-Jews living in Spain or Portugal would be risking their lives to wear such a garment.

     In 1434, imperial law required German Jews to wear a Jew badge, in keeping with the Papal bull of 1425.  The requirement that Jews wear the Jew badge was rigorously enforced, although some exceptions were made by noble decree, usually for court Jews or physicians and sometimes for their families.  In rare cases, the badge laws were abolished for an entire community; for example, in 1541 Charles V anulled them in the county of Öttingen.  Generally, badge laws remained in effect until the Emperor Joseph II abolished them in 1781.

     The most common form for the Jew badge was a yellow ring two to three inches in diameter worn on the left breast of the outer garment.  Some illustrations show a ring that looks like it might have been a brass hoop, perhaps pinned onto the garment, but the instructions that have survived for making the badge describe a yellow cloth ring that was to be sewn on.

     By the late seventeenth century, when ruffed collars were in vogue, a yellow collar or a collar with a yellow edge became a common form for the badge, but the legal requirement of a yellow ring remained in force to the end of the century in much of the Holy Roman Empire.  In many cases, women wore the same badge, but Jewish women's headdresses were also distinctive and served the same purpose in many communities.

     During prayer, all Jewish men have traditionally covered their heads with a hat, although this is generally agreed to be a matter of tradition and not law.  In the Sephardic community, some Jews only wore hats during prayer, but the Ashkenazic tradition was to wear head coverings at all times.  By the 17th century, as several portraits by Rembrandt make clear, many of the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam were wearing an essentially modern yarmulke at all times, and wearing it under other and more fashionable hats when out in public.  There is no reason to believe that the Ashkenazic tradition was any different, as this certainly conforms to the practices of eastern european Jews into the 20th century.

     During the middle ages, Ashkenazic Jews developed the custom of wearing peaked felt hats that came to be known as Jews' hats.  For two centuries prior to 1425, German Jews were required to wear such hats, and they remained in occasional use even after the enactment of the badge laws.  There is no evidence, however, that these hats were worn in the seventeenth century, and one apparent reason for the introduction of the Jew badge was the decline in popularity of the distinctive Jew's hat. 

     Broadly speaking, Jewish law forbids shaving, although the use of scissors to cut the hair very closely is permitted.  More detailed analysis of Jewish law shows that shaving of parts of the head and face are permitted, but not the sideburns, chin or upper lip.  Generally, prior to modern times, few Jews would have shaved except crypto-Jews, who would have followed the shaving customs of their Christian neighbors.  In the Ashkenazic world of the 17th century, many men would have trimmed their facial hair closely with scissors, while others, particularly rabbis, would grow full beards.  The tradition of growing long peyos (sidelocks) as a sign of piety was distinctly Ashkenazic, with medieval origins.  Sidelocks could be pushed behind the ear or allowed to hang free.  Documentation of the age of these traditions is found in illuminated manuscripts.

     The modesty code of Jewish law has generally been interpreted as requiring Jewish women to cover their arms and legs, and also requiring that married women cover their hair.  This was not materially different from the conventions of the Christian world of the 17th century, but it is noteworthy that Jewish women of 17th century Germany frequently wore a headdress that took a two-horned or two-paddled form, possibly supported by a pair of combs set into a single bun at the rear, or possibly covering a "double bun" hairdo similar to that worn by Princess Leah of Star Wars fame.  The veil worn over the buns and hair combs was frequently marked by two blue stripes, and the badge laws of some regions recognized such a veil as a variant Jew badge.

     Remember that the folk costumes of European women frequently involved elaborate headdresses that clearly identified their regional or ethnic origins; the distinctive Jewish women's headdress fit cleanly into this more general pattern.  In sixteenth century Italy, Jewish women began to wear wigs as head coverings, but this fashion spread slowly, and it was only centuries later that most Ashkenazic women began to wear wigs in order to technically cover their hair while following bare-headed fashions of the era.

     Finally, note that the modesty code of Jewish law was generally interpreted as forbidding men and women from touching in public.   For a Jewish man to, for example, shake hands with a Jewish woman would have been considered quite improper in the 17th century.  To use modern terminology, initiating such contact would have been seen as sexual harassment.  There was also a tradition that a Jewish man should not give something directly into the hands of a Jewish woman other than his wife; instead, men would set things down where the woman could pick it up.  This tradition avoided the risk of touching and it avoided coming close to the marriage ritual, since one way to create a legally binding marriage involved the groom giving an item of even nominal value into the bride's hand.  Similarly, for a man and a woman other than his wife to enter a room and close the door behind them could create the impression of sexual impropriety, so this too was prohibited.

Jewish Travel

     Jewish law forbids work and travel on Shabbos (the Sabbath or Saturday), Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), the two-day holy days of Rosh Hashanah (the New Year), Shavuos (Pentecost), and the first and last two days of each of the eight-day festivals of Succos and Pesach (Passover).  The dates of the festivals are fixed in the Jewish lunar calendar, and Shabbos and all of the festivals run from sunset the night before to nightfall of the final day.  Authors interested in writing historical fiction that involves Jewish characters should use a perpetual calendar to locate the dates of the festivals for the year in question.

     The travel restrictions for the Sabbath allow walking 2000 amos (cubits) beyond the border of the city walls, and they forbid carrying anything, even something as small as a housekey, outside the border of the eruv or walled Jewish district.  Many modern commentators arbitrarily define 2000 amos as one kilometer, although 3000 feet would be more accurate.  The restrictions on travel and carrying on the festivals are only slightly less restrictive.

     The complexities of the general requirements for observing the spring festival of Pesach are such that Jews of the seventeenth century would not begin a long trip until Pesach was over.  Where Easter falls after Pesach, it would generally not be safe to begin the trip until after Easter, as a matter of self protection.  Long trips during the winter would be unlikely because of the weather and lack of all-weather roads, but if a Jew set out on such a trip, he would generally attempt to return home at least a week before Pesach in order to have the time to prepare for the festival.

     Similar constraints surround the fall holiday season, which for Jews, runs from Rosh Hashana through the Days of Awe to the fast day of Yom Kippur and then through the festival of Succos, which ends with Simchas Torah.  Jews on a long trip would generally plan to reach their destination before Rosh Hashana, and they would rarely start a major trip until after Simchas Torah.  Long distance travel after these fall holidays would be rare because of the weather.

     As a result, except in the case where war or expulsion forced Jews onto the road involuntarily, the Jewish travel season would have been from the end of Pesach or Easter, whichever came later, until Rosh Hashana.

     In general, long distance travelers would hope to reach the safety of the Jewish quarter of a town by Friday of each week, and they would almost certainly avoid travel on Sunday because of the threat of persecution.  The gates of many Jewish quarters were locked on Sundays.  Thus, a typical traveler would have five days per week available for travel, and there are typically 109 days available for travel between Pesach and Rosh Hashana.  Because Shavuos fell in midweek in 1632, long distance travelers might well elect not to travel that week, and many travelers would not travel during the fast day of Tisha Bav in August, because travel on an empty stomach is uncomfortable.

     In sum, a typical Jewish merchant would plan on about a hundred days of travel per summer.  If we assume that this is done on foot with a loaded pack at about fifteen miles a day, this gives the traveler a range of fifteen hundred miles per year.  As the crow flies, it is about five hundred miles from Frankfort to Lodz, Poland, but it is dangerous to measure distances that way.  On foot along the roads of the seventeenth century, the path could easily have been twice this long.  A round trip to Lodz would thus be unlikely in a year, but a one way trip could easily be planned.  Any traveler planning such a trip would be well advised to leave soon after Pesach in order to allow for difficulties along the way, but such a traveler would not worry overly about the loss of a week here or there along the road.  A well-to-do traveler on horseback or traveling by carriage could easily double this travel radius, planning on a visit to Poland and return in one summer with time to spare.

     The biggest special financial difficulty faced by Jewish travelers was paying the Jew taxes required for entry or temporary residence in various communities along the way.  This tax varied; sometimes Jews entering a city paid the same head tax as livestock.  Foreign Jews in the county of Öttingen were required to pay an eighteen kreuzen daily poll-tax set in 1623.  The annual rate was eight thalers in eighteenth century Berlin, seven gulden in late seventeenth century Oldersum.  (It is worth noting that the terms gulden and thaler were originally synonymous, referring to one-ounce silver coins, but during the Thirty Year's war, debased Gulden were minted, eventually with a value of 1/11th of an imperial Thaler.)  In addition to their use as a source of revenue, Jews taxes were used to prevent entry of Jewish refugees into a community and to discourage them from staying if they were passing through, although there were occasions when these taxes were waived on humanitarian grounds.

Jobs in the Jewish community

     Whatever the source of income for the Jewish community as a whole, the internal economy of the community generally created a number of jobs.  There were teachers, malmuds in the cheder (elementary school) and rabbis in the yeshivah (secondary school or seminary).  Only the more important communities had yeshivos.  In general, all Jewish communities dating back to Roman times had an established system of public education.  The obligation to provide for schooling is placed squarely on the community in the Talmud, and there is ample evidence of public funding for schools in both the Ashkenazic and Sephardic worlds.

     It is worth noting here that the Talmud, which is written in Aramaic, was the central subject of study in the yeshivah, so any yeshivah graduate was literate in both Hebrew and Aramaic.  In general, yeshivah graduates are entitled to be addressed as rabbi, although not all of them are entitled to sit as judges on a rabbinical court.  Not all yeshivos were organized formally, and some rabbis of the 17th century took on individual students for private study leading to ordination.

     Because of the need for kosher meat, any Jewish community, even a small one, would have someone who was trained as a shochet, a specialist in kosher slaughter and butchering; the Yiddish word shechter, from the same Hebrew root, is also used, and it eventually became a family name.  The training required for a shochet centered around study of the laws of kosher slaughter in the yeshivah, but of course, it also included practical training in the care and use of the specialized tools of kosher slaughter, how to properly salt the blood out of the meat, and other aspects of the butcher's art.  The most notable tool of the shochet is the knife used for slaughtering cattle; this has a 2-foot square-ended razor-edged blade that must be perfectly sharp and free of defects before each use.

     The laws of kashrus generally place no restrictions on whole fruits and vegetables, but there are very strong prohibitions about drinking wine (or other grape products) that have been made with the intent that it be used by idolaters.  This prohibition dates back to the times of the cult of Baccus, but the use of wine as a Christian sacrament guaranteed the extension of this prohibition to the present day.  Because of this, Jews generally have used kosher wines, that is, wines made by Jews.  Kosher wine can be made by the individual homeowner, starting with whole grapes or raisins, but there were many kosher winemakers in Europe.  The great Torah commentatior Rashi supported himself as a winemaker and the better kosher wines were shipped over fairly long distances.

     The laws of kashrus also forbid the eating of bread baked by a non-Jew, and they forbid cooking over a fire lit by a non-Jew.  The concern about bread is that the bread may have been baked using lard or non-kosher tallow and that the oven itself may have been non-kosher because of contamination with food residues from non-kosher cooking.  While anyone can bake bread at home, home ovens were still uncommon in the seventeenth century, so most communities relied on Jewish bakers or communal ovens.  It was not uncommon for the communal ovens to be part of the synagogue complex.

     The torah scroll required for a public worship service and the smaller scrolls enclosed in mezuzot and tefillin, to be discussed in a moment, were all required to be handwritten on parchment prepared from the skin of a kosher animal, usually calfskin velum.  Every Jewish community of any significant size would have a sofer, a scribe trained in the copying of these texts.  The sofer was generally a yeshivah graduate, and his practical training included the making of pens, ink, parchment and hide glue, as well as the copying of texts.  With the advent of printing, it is highly likely that the first typesetters and proofreaders involved with Hebrew printing were soferim.  A Jewish marriage contract, a ketubah, generally required the services of a sofer, as did divorce papers. 

     Every Jew is commanded "to write these words on the doorposts of your house" (Deuteronomy 11:21), and this commandment has been taken almost literally since biblical times by affixing a small handwritten parchment scroll containing Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21 to the doorpost of the entrance to a Jewish house.  The case containing this scroll is called a mezuzah, and the most visible sign that a house is occupied by Jews is generally the presence of a mezuzah on the doorpost.  On passing through a door marked by a mezuzah, essentially all seventeenth century Jews would give it a symbolic kiss, touching it with their fingers and kissing their fingertips.

     As mentioned previously, all Jewish men would wear some form of talus, or prayer shawl during daily morning prayers.  In addition, essentially all adult Jewish men of the seventeenth century would wear tefillin on weekdays but not on Shabbos or the festivals.  Some writers prefer to translate the word tefillin as phylacteries; the latter is technically an English word, but it is so rare that there is no good reason to prefer it to the Hebrew.

     Tefillin are cubical leather cases containing small parchment scrolls with the texts of Exodus 13:1-10, 11-16, Deuteronomy 6:4-9, and 11:13-21, in fulfillment of the commandment to "Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a frontlet between your eyes."  The tefillin worn on the forehead is held on by a leather strap with a complex quatrefoil knot at the back, while the tefillin worn on the upper arm is held in place by a long leather strap that is wound around the arm, hand and fingers in a complex way.

The Synagogue and Jewish Community

     By the middle ages, all Jewish communities in Europe had fairly well defined communal structures.  Communities were generally led by an elected council, and the head of this council, the Parnas, could properly be called the president of the community.  Under Jewish law, the community was responsible for providing schools, a synagogue, a cemetery, a burial society, a bath house or mikvah, and financial support for widows and orphans.  Ovens were also frequently constructed by the community since it was difficult for individual families to afford the large brick ovens of the pre-modern era.  The community had the legal mandate under Jewish law to tax its members to support these institutions.  These obligations were reinforced by the Christian authorities, who frequently demanded that the Jewish community administer the Jew taxes and provide for the Jewish poor so that they would never burden Christian charities.

     As a result of all of this, synagogue buildings frequently served many purposes beyond worship.  They provided classroom and meeting space, and they frequently incorporated community facilities such as a mikvah or bath house and ovens.  Backing the oven up against the wall of the mikvah was a good idea in areas where the winters were cold!  Some mikvos even appear to have had Roman style hypocaust heating systems.  Given that the Jewish community in the Rhineland dates back to Roman times, this should not be surprising, but of course, each time a community was expelled or slaughtered, such complexities tended to be simplified or lost.

      Because ten adult men (age 13 or older) were required for a full religious service, the presence of a synagogue in a town generally implied the presence of around ten families.  Similarly, two synagogues implied the presence of around twenty, although unless there was an ideological or liturgical dispute, it would usually take a much larger population before a second synagogue was founded.  The Christian authorities generally regulated the foundation of synagogues, but where there was no legally constituted synagogue, congregations frequently met in private homes.

     The sanctuary of the synagogue or schul would always contain an ark, or cabinet along the eastern wall to hold the Torah scrolls.  The ark would have both a cloth curtain and a wooden door, so you must open both to expose the Torah.  When these are open, tradition demanded that the congregation stand as they would in the presence of royalty because the Torah is the word of God.  It takes a Torah scroll to hold a full service, but a synagogue would hope to own at least two because many services had readings from different parts of the Torah that would require long pauses to wind and rewind the scroll if there was only one.  The larger wealthier synagogues of the seventeenth century usually had many Torah scrolls.

     The Torah scroll was handwritten on parchment, and it was wound around two posts, called the eitz chiam or trees of life.  No other Jewish scroll was ever wound on two posts.  The complete Torah scroll was big, with pages about two feet tall sewn side by side, with text written in columns about eighteen inches tall by six inches wide.  Posts and all, a Torah scroll weighs ten to fifteen pounds, depending on how thin the parchment was scraped.  Lighter scrolls on thin parchment with smaller lettering would cost more than big scrolls on thick parchment with big lettering.  When stored in the Ark, Torah scrolls are always stored vertically, resting on their eitz chiam and leaning back against the back of the ark.

     Torah scrolls were dressed differently in the Sephardic and Ashkenazic world, but the Amsterdam Sephardic world followed Ashkenazic customs.  Sephardic scrolls were typically permanently bound into a wooden clamshell case with a silver cover.  These cases are cylindrical, and when opened, they expose just enough of the scroll to be read.  Ashkenazic scrolls were dressed in a cloth cover, typically the most expensive cloth available, with lots of fine embroidery, and then armed with a breastplate and crown.  The crown, if there is just one, would look like what you expect a king to wear.  If there were two, they would be called rimonim, and would be tall and narrow, sometimes resembling gothic spires, with one set over each of the eitz chiam.  The armament for a Torah scroll would typically weigh several pounds, and it would be made of silver as befits royalty.  The fact that the Frankfort Jewish community had to sell its synagogue silver in the winter of 1631-32 is evidence of how desparate that community was, since this is close to the last thing a community would sell off in hard times.

     Synagogues of the seventeenth century were generally built in the round, with a central reading table large enough to unroll the Torah scroll for reading and still have space for several open books on each side.  This was necessary because, during the Torah reading, the reading table needed to accommodate not only the reader and the person called up for the honor of saying the blessing over the reading, but also two checkers who would follow along in their printed copy of the text and correct the reader when he makes mistakes.  The reading table sits on a raised platform in the center of the room, called the bimah, and it faces the ark.  In the seventeenth century, was very rare to put the bimah anywhere but the center of the room.

     During the Torah reading, everyone would typically sit facing the Bimah, and many would follow along with the reading if they had a copy of the Chumash, the printed text of the Torah.  Except during a few special prayers, notably the standing prayer or Amidah, it was not unusual to find quiet conversations while the service was in progress.  During the Amidah, everyone was expected to stand and face east.

     With extremely rare exceptions, women and men never prayed together in the seventeenth century.  The Talmud states that the voice of a woman is indecent, and where some interpreters held that this applied broadly, it was generally agreed that this applied in the context of prayer.  A notable exception to this rule is that after successfully giving birth, a woman was required to stand before the congregation to say a thanksgiving blessing.  What would become a standard synagogue layout, with women's galleries above the main level, was developed in Amsterdam around 1639.  Prior to this, for many centuries, many synagogues had included a women's gallery off to the side or in back.  The minimum separation between the women's gallery and the main sanctuary was a railing, but many synagogues had lattices.  Technically, women had no obligation to pray in the synagogue, but there is ample evidence that many did.

Jewish Religious Practice

     In general, observant Jews would pray 3 times a day; in Jewish communities of the seventeenth century, one of the jobs of the synagogue shamus (sometimes translated as sexton or beadle) was to bang on shutters in the morning in order to rouse his congregation for morning prayers.  The longest prayer of the day was the morning prayer, which was traditionally said before breakfast and could take an hour.  There were traditional short forms of this prayer that could be said if work was pressing, and in a real pinch, it could be reduced to just the Shema, Deuteronomy 6:4.  There was a strong emphasis on saying the morning prayers with the congregation if at all possible.  The Shema was also said in the evening, and traditionally, Jews hoped that the Shema would be on their lips as their last breath.

     The afternoon prayer had to be said before sunset, and the evening prayer had to be said after sunset.  When these were said communally, particularly in the winter, they were frequently said in quick sequence, one after the other at sunset.

     A central element of all three daily prayers was the Amidah or standing prayer, a sequence of bruchas or blessings said while standing.  In the morning and afternoon prayers, the tradition for communal worship was to recite the Amidah privately, silently, in a whisper or in a quiet voice, and then have the chazzan (cantor) chant it aloud when everyone had finished their private recitation.  As a general rule, when a Jew heard someone say a blessing, he was required to respond Amen, or Omain, as an Ashkenazi Jew would likely have pronounced it.  It follows that the congregation would respond with an Amen after each of the blessings in the Amidah.  The evening Amidah was said privately, without a cantoral repetition.  During the Amidah in particular, but while standing at prayer in general, Jews traditionally sway back and forth.  This practice is ancient and well documented in medieval sources.

     All services contained psalms.  One psalm in particular is said as part of every service, Ashrei, which is Psalm 145 expanded with a few borrowed verses of other psalms.  The preliminary segment of the morning service included a block of psalms ending with Psalm 150 before the introduction to the Borochu, the call to worship.

     After each section of each service, some version of the Kaddish would be said.  This prayer is in Aramaic, not Hebrew, and there is the short or half Kaddish, the long Kaddish, and the mourner's Kaddish.  The Sephardic community has a slightly different version of the long Kaddish than the Ashkenazic, and some Jews speculate that the Lord's Prayer of the Christian world began as yet another version of the Kaddish.  The mourner's Kaddish, it should be noted, is said by those who have lost a spouse, parent, child or teacher in the past year, or on the yartzeit (anniversary) of the death.  All other Kaddishes would be said by the Chazzan.  Different communities had their own traditons about standing or sitting, but in general, in the 17th centuries, most communities would stand during the Kaddishes.

     Every Jew had the legal right to stop the service in the synagogue immediately before the Torah reading in order to present a grievance and demand justice.  While this right was never widely exercised, it provided an important check against injustices being perpetrated by the community leadership.

     Readings from the Torah Scroll would be included in the morning and afternoon services on Shabbos, the Sabbath or Saturday, as well as on Mondays and Thursdays, but only when a minyan of ten men is present.  The readings are traditionally chanted to a rather complex trope, so the practice has long been to have a expert in Torah trope do the readings.  Because the Torah scroll contains no vowels, it is also traditional to have two others at the bimah (lectern) to check the reading and offer corrections to any error.  During the reading, members of the congregation are called up to the Torah, nominally to read their portion, but in fact, merely to say the blessings before and after their portion while the reader does the actual work.  The Shabbos morning reading is the longest, broken into eight sections, while the other readings are shorter, with only three.  After the Shabbos morning Torah reading, the final person called up reads the Haftorah, a selection from the prophets selected to complement the Torah reading.  By the 17th century, the Haftorah readings and the text used by the checkers would both come from printed copies of the Chumash, not from scrolls.

     As a rule, was is not possible to conduct a full worship service without a minyan, a quorum of ten men over age 13.  If a minyan was not present, the Chazzan could not repeat the Amidah, the Kaddishes could not be said, and the Torah and Haftorah could not be chanted.  These parts of the service were simply omitted, both in the synagogue, if less than ten were present, and in private prayer.  If ten men were present, whether or not they were in a synagogue, these parts of the service would become obligatory, although if there was no Torah scroll available, obviously it could not be read.

     A rabbi was not required for the conduct of any Jewish worship service.  Any knowledgeable Jew could lead services.  Of course, as the most knowledgeable member of the community, the rabbi was likely to be called on to lead services. Synagogue services in the seventeenth century rarely contained anything resembling a sermon.  In general, public preaching was dangerous because an attempt to explain the Torah in a context where a Christian might be listening could contradict some biblical interpretation of the Church, bringing down the wrath of the Christian authorities on the Jews.

     Whether in public or private, the worship service was supposed to be read and not recited from memory.  Every observant Jew hoped to own a copy of the Siddur, or prayerbook, along with a Chumash, an annotated copy of the Torah.  Typically, many students would complete their own handwritten copy of the Siddur as part of their schoolwork in pre-modern times, but by the seventeenth century, printed prayerbooks were common.  The standard printed form of the Chumash in the seventeenth century included Rashi's commentary along with the Aramaic translation of Onkelos; some editions of the Chumash and Siddur were available that offered Judische Deutsch translations as well.

     After the Shabbos evening service Friday night, the men would go home to their families for dinner.  The women of the household were responsible for having the table ready, with specially baked bread (challah) wine and candles.  All cooking was required to be completed and the candles lit about half an hour before sundown, although food could remain in a warm oven or over a banked fire for as long as needed.

     Both the Shabbos evening and morning services would end with making kiddush, that is, the chazzan or some member of the congregation would say bruchas over wine and then over the bread.  These were said for the benefit of travelers who might be staying and eating in the synagogue, which sometimes served as a community guesthouse.  Outsiders may think these bruchas are blessing the wine and bread, but they do not bless the food, they give thanks for it.  In some cases, kiddush was expanded into a full meal in the synagogue.

     The home was also an important center of Jewish worship.  Before eating a meal, it was traditional to say a very brief brucha for the food being eaten.  On Shabbat, kiddush was said, even if the men had already said it in the synagogue.  The birkas or grace after meals is much longer and in the Ashkenazic world, it was generally read from a bentscher, a small book of prayers for the table, and chanted to a rollicking melody that invites a family sing-along.

     In general, the Ashkenazic community had the most developed musical system, while the Ashkenazic stereotype of the Sephardic community was that their melodies for prayer and Torah trope are loud and toneless.  Like other stereotypes, this is not entirely fair, but the greatest Sephardic melodies are reserved for hymns and non-liturgical music.  Where the Ashkenazic worship service centered on the solo performance of the cantor, with congregational responses, the Sephardic service was more likely to include congregational singing.  Some tunes span the Sephardic-Ashkenazic gap and probably date back to the Roman era and possibly before that; these include some of the melodies for the Kaddish and the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15:1-21), as well as the basic melodic framework of the Torah trope.

Kaballah

     The greatest controversies sweeping through the Jewish world of 1632 centered on the Kaballa.  The term Kaballah refers to the received mystical tradition that kabalists insist can be traced back to Moses.  Skeptics trace large elements of this tradition to Moses de Leon who lived and wrote in thirteenth century Spain.  Whether Moses de Leon was inventing, creating a new synthesis or transmitting received wisdom, his book, the Zohar, played a central role in the development of Kaballah.

     Traditional Judaism imposes strict limits on who may delve into the esoteric world of mysticism.  A man was not to study mysticism or metaphysics until he reached age forty, until he was married, and until he had mastered Talmud.  In addition, these subjects were never to be studied alone, but were to be studied under the direction of a wise teacher.  These restrictions are found in the Talmud.

     Rabbi Isaac ben Shlomo Luria Ashkenazi, the son of German Jews living in Jerusalem, changed much of this in the mid sixteenth century.  In his early twenties, he studied the Zohar on his own while living in Egypt.  While there, he had visions of meetings with the prophet Elijah.  These meetings led him to move to Safed, in the Galilee, where he joined the community of Sephardic kabalists there.

     Luria became a leader of this community and was hailed as the Ari or the Lion.  The Lurianic Kaballah he taught spread like wildfire after his death in 1570 and publication by his student Chiam Vital.  In short, the Lurianic Kaballah teaches an expanded version of the creation story, it gives reasons for prayer and piety, and it teaches that the coming of the Messiah is imminent.

     Under Luria, the kabalists of Safed created new liturgy, weaving kabalistic elements into the service, notably the Kabalat Shabbat element of the Friday evening service, which receives the Sabbath with psalms and the beautiful hymn Lecha Dodi that uses imagery from the Song of Songs, likening the arrival of the Sabbath to the arrival of a bride at the wedding.

     The kabalistic creation story begins before creation, when God was initially all that there was, indivisible, unchanging and free of all properties.  Neither space nor time existed in this state, known as the Ayn Sof, meaning without end.  In order to allow creation, God underwent a process of withdrawal, creating the void in which creation could occur, walled off from the divine light so that we in the created universe can have free will.

     Kabalists hold that the sephiros were created to channel or contain the divine energy.  The Zohar identified ten sephiros, and kabalistic imagery frequently arranges these into a pattern as the tree of life.  The word sephiros, pronounced sephirot in Sephardic, has been translated as numbers, from Hebrew, or explained as a borrowing from the Greek for spheres.

     The kabalistic creation story continues that the sephiros were smashed during God's first attempt at creation, scattering divine sparks or shards throughout the universe.  The creation story in the book of Genesis must therefore describe God's second attempt.  The kabalists go on to explain that the reason God created humanity was to create agents to aid in the repair of a fallen world, bringing about the original intent of creation by finding and liberating the divine sparks.  We do this by performing the mitzvot or obeying God's commandments.

     Kabalistic mysticism frequently focused on contemplation of the Ayn Sof, but unlike many streams of mystical thought, the emphasis was on action in this world, reaching up to bring the divine down instead of seeking to escape this world into the divine.  Kabalists taught that, when a person perfors a mitzvah, a divine spark is released, and that the release is more effective if the person performs that mitzvah knowingly and in the right state of mind.

     From this teaching, kabalists concluded that we personally can play a role in bringing the Messiah, redeeming the world and bringing about the final judgement.  This new teaching found fertile soil in the world of European Judaism in the early seventeenth century.  It is reasonable to describe the spread of Kaballah as a wave of pietist religious revival through a people who felt helpless in the face of an obviously broken world.  By midcentury, kabalistic thought had become normative throughout the european Jewish world.

     Resistance to the acceptance of the Lurianic Kaballah was based on some fairly obvious grounds.  Opponents held that kabalists were violating Talmudic restrictions on the study of the esoteric and that kabalists were telling a creation story that could not be found in Torah or Talmud.  Perhaps the most important objection, though, is that the mystical explanation of the reason for performing the mitzvos was wrong on at least three counts.

     The first problem opponents would raise is that Judaism had long held that one should perform God's commandments for their own sake, not in order to influence God.  Second, the idea that one could force God's hand by sufficient piety struck some as sacreligious.  Finally, the idea that human piety could force the coming of the Messiah has a dark side, allowing believers to hold the community responsible if the Messiah does not come.  Indeed, this led some kabalists, when they became community leaders, to take an extremely rigid attitude toward any lapses in personal piety within their communities.

     Opponents would say that the downside of the Lurianic Kaballah was realized when Rabbi Nathan of Gaza proclaimed Shabbatai Zvi of Smyrna to be the Messiah, the fulfillment of the Messianic hopes of the kabalists.  This story spread through Europe starting in 1665, and many communities were deeply divided between believers in Shabbati and scoffers.  When Shabati Zvi confronted the Sultan and was forced to convert to Islam, the news embarrassed huge numbers of Jews throughout europe and shattered the faith of many.

The Sephardic World

     Sephardic Jews originally come from Sepharad, the Jewish name for Spain or Al-Andalus.  During the four centuries before the Christian Reconquista, this community flourished as the intellectual center of the Jewish world, producing great poets such as Solomon Ibn Gabriol, rennaissance men such as Judah Halevi, known both for his poetry and his theology, Abraham ibn Ezra, physician, theologian and astronomer, Rambam (Maimonides), known for his philosophical and medical works as well as his theology, Ramban (Nachmanides), known both as a physician and theologian, and Isaac Abravanel, court Jew to Alfonso V of Portugal and to Ferdinand and Isabella as well as a theologian of note.

     Prior the expulsion of 1492, Jewish life in Spain and Portugal varied from idyllic to terrible, with enough of the former to keep alive the dream of coexistence, but enough of the latter to keep this dream in doubt.

     The Almohad (Berber) dynasty of the 12th century forced many Jews and Christians to chose between flight, conversion to Islam or death; at around the same time in Christian Spain, Jews were forbidden to hold public office and royal debts to Jews were cancelled.  Christians instigated pogroms in 1391 that lead to widespread forced conversions and massacres of Jews throughout Christian Spain.  The Spanish inquisition, begun in 1478, began to systematically hunt down Marannos or secret Jews who had publicly converted to Christianity to avoid persecution, and in 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella signed their order of expulsion.

     After the expulsion from Spain, huge numbers of Jews fled to Portugal, where their refuge lasted just long enough to separate them from what money they had managed to bring out of Spain.  Written accounts by refugees in this period suggest that the death rate among refugees was extremely high, with shiploads of Jews turned away from port after port as they sought food and shelter.

     Large refugee communities made it to the Ottoman empire, settling from Ottoman Palestine to the Balkans.  Salonika became the new commercial center of Jewish life, and Tzefat (Safed) in the Galilee became a new spiritual center.  Sephardic refugees also came to dominate many of the old Jewish communities of northern Africa, notably those of Morocco and Algeria.

     Converseros or Marannos were followed by the inquisition wherever they went within the Catholic world.  Whatever degree of personal piety they preserved, they were forced to behave in public as more Christian than the Christians.  Only in Protestant or Islamic lands could Converseros "come out" as Jews.

     With the Protestant Reformation and the Dutch rebellion, Marannos from Portugal found refuge in Amsterdam starting in 1593.  It was a very rocky start; the first Jewish settlers were captured by English pirates before they finally made it to their destination.  The first communal worship service in Amsterdam was held in 1595 at the home of the Moroccan ambassador, Don Samuel Palache.  In the years that followed, a small Ashkenazic community also settled in Amsterdam, but these communities had little to do with each other.

     The Beit Yaakov (house of Jacob) synagogue was founded in 1596 in rented space, and in 1608, a second synagogue was founded, Nevi Shalom (prophet of peace).  The latter was not a peaceful synagogue; it was torn by internal dissent under Rabbi Isaac Uzziel of Fez; in 1622, Uzziel's student, Menasseh ben Israel succeeded him.  The controversy under Rabbi Uzziel led to the founding of the Beit Yisrael (House of Israel) synagogue in 1618 by Abraham Farrar, a man known as a freethinker.  Beit Yisrael was headed by another student of Isaac Uzziel, Rabbi Isaac Aboab de Fonseca from about 1626 to 1638.  Rabbi Uzziel and his students were all kabalists.

     Jewish worship in Amsterdam was not formally legalized until 1615, when laws were passed allowing Jewish worship and forbidding Jews to speak publicly or publish anything against the Christian religion or to intermarry with Christians.  From 1615 to 1638, the Jews of Amsterdam were governed by a community council that included representatives of all three synagogues.  The three congregations merged in 1638, with the Beit Yisrael building converted to a school while Nevi Shalom, with city approval, became the Sephardic synagogue.

     Menasseh ben Israel printed the first Hebrew book in Amsterdam in 1627, and the Amsterdam printers set new standards for the quality of their Hebrew typography, eclipsing the printers of Venice, who had set the standard up to this time.

     In the 1580's, Sephardic Jews began to settle in Hamburg, where they were welcome and treated as if they were Christians.  Among them were a spice merchant, a trader with Brazil and a sugar importer.  In 1603, the community was first recognized as Jewish, with an immediate demand for their expulsion.  This demand was repeated by the clergy in the following decades.  By 1612, the community had grown to 125, and the Senate of Hamburg issued a residence permit good for a period of 5 years for a cost of 1000 Marks, simultaneously forbidding the practice of Judaism.  The fee was converted to an annual tax, and restrictions against the practice of Judaism began to lift gradually.  In 1611, the Jewish community was allowed to appoint a rabbi; in 1623, kosher slaughter was permitted, and in 1628, they were granted a prayer hall.  Jews were not permitted to live in the inner city, but were allowed to live freely in the developed area outside that.  There were only a few Ashkenazi Jews, with that community growing to 15 families between 1600 and 1649 when the Ashkenazi Jews were expelled.  This is one of the rare cases where the Christian government authorities made distinctions between the Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities.

The Ashkenazic World

     Ashkenazic Jews come from Ashkenaz, the Jewish name for the Rhineland.  Jewish settlement of Ashkenaz dates back to the late Roman era, but we know that there was a major influx from northern Italy between the 8th and the 12th centuries.  By the time of the Crusades, the Ashkenazic community was vibrant, spreading from Paris to Prague.

     The Crusades were the first of a series of great disasters to befall this community, killing sizable fraction of the entire Ashkenazic community.  The seventeenth century was an equally severe disaster, and between the Crusades and the 17th century, stories of massacre and expulsion were an everpresent element of Ashkenazic life.  Most towns in Ashkenaz appear to have suffered a major massacre or expulsion about once per century.  The Rindfleisch massacres of 1298 swept a large part of the Rhineland, as did the persecutions of the fourteenth century surrounding the Black Death.  The Protestant Reformation brought yet another wave of expulsions from newly Protestant cities in the sixteenth century.

     The Ashkenazic community of the seventeenth century was well connected to the larger Jewish world.  For example, the false messiah David Reuveni from Yemin and his disciple Solomon Molcho from Portugal came to Regensburg to see Emperor Charles V, and emissaries of the Sephardic community of Safed, in the Galilee, came to many Ashkenazic communities to spread the teachings of the Kaballah.  Jewish merchants frequently crossed the Alps from Italy, and there were also open commercial routes between Salonika in the Ottoman empire and Prague to the north.  There is ample evidence of rabbis trained in Poland serving French or German communities as well as the reverse.  Not too many years after the Thirty Years' war, news of the false messiah Shabatai Zvi swept north from the Ottoman world to attract attention throughout the Ashkenazic world.

Ashkenazic Communities of the Seventeenth Century

     In response to persecution over past centuries, many Jews had already fled east into Poland, and by the last quarter of the 16th century, a unique new living arrangement had emerged there.  The Polish government granted a degree of autonomous self-government to the Jews that they had not seen since the Romans destroyed Jerusalem.  The "Council of Four Lands," as it was called, met at Lubin between Purim and Passover in the spring, and in Yaroslav during the month of Av or Elul, and was composed of representatives of each Jewish community in Poland, Lithuania, Podolia (Polish Russia), Volhynia and Galicia.  Polish documents refer to this as the Congressus Judaicus or Seim (Diet) of the Jews.  The governing structure included a supreme rabinnical court, with jurisdiction over all civil cases between Jews, as well as the congress, which had control over taxation within the Jewish community and budgetary responsibility for supporting schools and other community institutions.

     With each new hardship for the Jews of the various German states, new waves of Jews moved east, but the Ashkenazic heartland was still fairly populous until the 30 Years War.  Outside of the heardland, there were healthy Ashkenazic communities in France, Austria and Hungary, and the Alsatian community spread south into northern Switzerland.  The following brief descriptions focus on the Jewish communities within a few weeks travel from the Thüringer Wald:

The Ashkenazic Heartland

     Worms had a Jewish community before the year 1000, and suffered the usual massacers and expulsions, with the most recent expulsion in 1615.  By imperial order, Jews were readmitted to Worms in late January 1616.  The winters of 1632 and 1635 brought "pestilence", probably plague, and the taxes imposed on the community drove it into extreme poverty.  Many Jews were imprisoned for non-payment of taxes until an imperial order in 1636 cancelled the taxes and ordered their release.

     Mainz or Mayence had a Jewish community in the early tenth century, but the usual expulsions and massacres ended with the massacre of 1349.  A new Jewish community was not started there until 1583.  This community grew by the addition of refugees from Frankfort-am-Main in 1614 and from Worms after the expulsion there in 1620.  In November 1620, Pappenheim stormed Mainz and gave no quarter to its residents, but the Jewish community continued, and in 1630, a rabbi was officially appointed.

     Speyer had a walled Jewish quarter by the end of the eleventh century, but after the usual atrocities, there were fewer than ten Jewish families in Speyer during the early seventeenth century.

     Metz had a Jewish community as far back as the first century, and this was one of the most secure Jewish communities in the region.  By 1614, there were 500 Jews, and in 1624, 120 families and 600 individuals under the leadership of Rabbi Moses Cohen of Prague.  At that time, the Jews had considerable freedom under letters patent granted by Henry IV in 1605, and Louis XIII enlarged these freedoms in 1632.

Ashkenazic Communities along the Main

     Frankfort am Main may have had a Jewish community in 1175, and after the usual ups and downs, this grew between 1543 and 1612 from 43 to 454 Jewish families.  In August 1614, Fettmilch, the leader of the town's guilds, instigated riots that slaughtered a good fraction of the Jews of Frankfort and led to the expulsion of the survivors.  Fettmilch was tried, convicted and hanged for this crime, evidence of a sense of justice that was not typical of previous centuries.  1,380 Jews survived, but it was not until 1616 that the community was allowed to re-establish itself under the protection of the emperor.  In 1618, there were 370 families living in 195 houses, served by 2 synagogues, one built in 1462, one in 1603.  Jews lived under the usual economic restrictions, and at times, the interest rate was reduced to a very modern sounding 8 percent.  The vastly overcrowded Jewish quarter was decimated by epidemics in the winter of 1632, when the entire town was impoverished by payments to Gustavus Adolphus.  Rabbi Shabbethai Hurwitz was the elected chief rabbi and Rabbi Joseph Juspa Hahn was a rising star at the time.  By 1694, Frankfort had 109 Jewish money lenders, 106 dry-goods merchants, 24 spice merchants, 9 retail beer and wine merchants, 3 innkeepers and 2 restaurants.

     Hanau saw its first Jewish settlement in the thirteenth century, with the atrocities leading up to expulsion in 1592.   Count Philipp Ludwig II reopened the town to Jews in 1603 and permitted the construction of a synagogue on the Judengasse.  Initially, there were only ten families, but by 1707, the number had grown to 111, with a significant number being refugees from the Fettmilch riot in Frankfort.  A Christian printer in Hanau, Hans Jacob Hene, produced about 30 Jewish works in Hebrew between 1610 and 1630; he must have cut his own type, because the letter shin in his typography was distinctive.  He published a Jewish prayerbook in 1628, a number of works on theology and Jewish and popular works in Judische-Deutsch.  Among his typesetters, we know he employed the Günzburg family, and Mordecai ben Jacob of Prossnitz.  Rabbi Menachem ben Elhanon was a noteworthy scholar in town, until his death in 1636; his school was the foundation of the yeshivah of Hanau.

     Aschaffenburg, or Aschaff on some maps of the era, was home to a considerable Jewish community in the 17th century, but by the end of the century, only 20 members or 20 families remained.  Rabbi Meïr Grotwohl is the only name I can find from the 17th century.  In addition to the town Jews of Aschaffenburg, there were Shutzjuden in many of the surrounding towns.

     Wertheim readmitted Jews in 1449, and they rebuilt their synagogue in the 1590's.  In 1622, there were 16 Jewish families.

     Würzburg expelled its Jews in 1565.  As was occasionally the case elsewhere, the community moved only a short distance, settling in Heidingsfeld, just across the river Main.

     Heidingsfeld's Jewish community had a charter dating back to 1498 which permitted seven families of schutzjuden to remain for a yearly payment of 120 florins.  By the 15th century, the community had a rabbi, and with the expulsion of the Jews from Würzburg, it became the seat of the chief rabbi for the Würzburg region.  Throughout the 17th century, the Jews of Heidingsfeld lived in a well defined ghetto, probably limited to the land held by the 7 charter families.

     Schweinfurt closed all Jewish schools, and annulled all debts owed to Jews in 1544.

     Bamberg had a Jewish community that was reestablished around 1500, although the threat of expulsion was constant during the 16th century.  The community was devastated during the Thirty Years' war, but not destroyed; the community was wealthy enough, in 1683, to ransom itself in the face of a demand for expulsion.  Their oldest surviving synagogue in the seventeenth century was a building dating back to before the expulsion of 1478, and starting in 1561, the community rented space in the rear of a building for another synagogue.

     Nuremberg's Jews were expelled in 1499, and the evidence of Jewish settlement from then until 1824 consists largely of restrictive ordinances designed to suppress interaction with the Jews of Fürth and to prevent resettlement.  From the mid 1500s to 1693, Jews were permitted to do business in public fairs outside the city but forbidden to enter the city.

     Fürth, a suburb of Nuremberg, rose to importance when the Jews were expelled from the city.  The Jews of Fürth at the end of the sixteenth century were privileged, living under the direct protection of the emperor, administered through the chief rabbi of the empire and subject to special taxes.  The usual economic restrictions were applied, although Jews could buy and sell real estate and close contracts.  By 1617, there were 1,500 Jews in Fürth, with a new synagogue built on land purchased from the cathedral provost of Bamberg.  The synagogue was severely damaged by Mansfield's troops in 1621, and Tilly used it as a prison.  In 1634, it was used by the Croat cavalry as a stable.  Trade between Christians and Jews was prohibited in 1623, and this prohibition was repeated in 1627, although by that time, trade was at a standstill because of the war.  Fürth was home to a yeshivah, headed by Menachem Man Ashkenazi, who died in 1655.

Communities along the Frankische Saale

     Hammelberg had a synagogue as far back as 1487; in the sixteenth century, a cemetery was purchased across the Frankische Saale, in the suburb of Pfaff, now the stadteil of Paffenhausen.  A new mikvah and synagogue were built in town in the seventeenth century, prior to the expulsion of the Jews in 1671, when the Jewish community relocated to Pfaff.

     The Kissengen region, now Bad Kissengen, must have had some Jewish residents during the Thirty Years' war, because there is a monument in the town hall to a bearded and helmeted man who is purported to be a Jew who helped in the defense of the town against the Swedes by casting bullets that never missed their mark.  There are records of schutzjuden in the region; in 1650 and again in 1656, the butchers of Kissingen complained about competition from Jews living in the region.

     Neustadt an der Saale, now Bad Neustadt, had a Jewish community at the time of the Black Death, as recorded in the Memorbuch of Nuremberg.  I can find no evidence of Jewish settlement in the 17th century.

Saxon communities

     Saxony in general had few Jews; there was a general expulsion in 1559 that included the Jews of Thuringia.  Jews were forbidden to live in cities, and only at the end of the seventeenth century were they were permitted to settle on the estates of the nobility.  There may have been a few exceptions, however, and there is some evidence that some of the Jews expelled from the cities settled in rural areas.  Most, however, would have fled to Poland.

     Schmalkalden became the home to Rabbi Meïr ben Jacob Schiff in 1636, a noted scholar of Talmud, Kaballah and Torah.  It is likely that he settled there with a small community, most likely a community invited to fill the vacuum created by the Thirty Years' War.  Similar resettlements occurred in many Saxon communities after they had been depopulated by the war.  In general, the nobility hoped that by settling Shutzjuden in their villages, they could increase their revenue flow.

     Arnstadt expelled its Jews in 1496 and 1532, but there is evidence of two Jewish converts to Christianity in the seventeenth century, suggesting that some Jews must have been present in the region to convert.

     Dessau allowed Jewish settlement in 1621, but this community was destroyed in the Thirty Years' war.

     Leipzig banished its Jews in 1439, but starting in the mid 15th century, while no Jews were allowed to settle there, Jews were important participants in the Leipzig fairs.  These were held twice yearly at Easter and Michaelmas.  Statistics on Jewish participation at the fairs dates back to 1675, by which time, hundreds of Jewish merchants participated, many from outside Germany.

An Academic Question

     Suppose that, in the spring of 1631, the town of Grantville West Virginia was plunked into the Thuringer Wald.  When would the first Ashkenazi Jews arrive?  For the sake of this discussion, I will ignore what is said in the novel 1632 and focus on the Jewish and larger worlds of the period.  One thing is clear, and that is that the winter of 1631-32, with the passage of the war down the Main valley to Frankfort, would have let loose a flood of refugees; it also seems clear that some part of this flood would have been likely to end up in Grantville, since by that time, it would be fairly well known that Grantville treated refugees well and was genuinely serious about nondiscrimination.  Here, though, I am not interested in the time of the arrival of the peak of this flood, but rather, the arrival of the first scattered Ashkenazic refugees.

     Consider what the Jews of the lower Main valley knew in the  spring of 1631.  Taxes were extremely high everywhere in German lands, with the Jew-taxes even higher.  Trade was at a standstill, inflation was out of control, and most of the Jewish community had recent memory of war, starvation or disease.  There was excellent reason to leave.  Lands under French rule to the east were relatively stable and home to an established Jewish community, but they were not anxious to accept poor Jewish refugees.  Amsterdam was in a state of near perpetual war fending off the Spanish, but it was a haven to Jews.  Some Jews were certainly traveling to these lands to the north and west.

     Poland was another interesting destination.  With the withdrawal of Gustavus Adolphus, Poland was largely at peace.  The system of Jewish self-government was functional, so that, although there were Jew taxes, they were administered in a relatively fair manner.  As a result, in early 1631, Poland would have looked very attractive.

     For a Jew from Frankfort or Aschaffenburg contemplating the journey to Poland, there would be several obvious routes.  By Passover, everyone in Frankfort would have heard that Gustavus was on the move West of Berlin and that the Imperial army was besieging Magdeburg.  Travelers would therefore avoid the route north of the Franconian highlands and the Thuringer Wald.  The middle route, up the Fränkische Saale river would be direct, requiring crossing through the Thuringer Wald, but putting the travelers on the road to Leipsig, while a southern route via Prague would be longer but probably safer.

     The middle route would be likely to attract at least some Jewish travelers in the spring of 1631, with some travelers from as far south as Würzburg likely to come this way.  The economic appeal of travel through the hills of the Spessart and Thüringer Wald might have been significant, since both were centers of mining and industry.  The entry of new traffic along this route would stop as soon as news of the fall of Magdeburg arrived, since at that point, the Imperial troops moved south and travel across the southern Saxon plains would have become far too dangerous.

     Fast travelers from the lower Main valley, those on horseback or able to afford carriages, would likely manage about 20 to 30 miles a day.  If we assume they leave to the east in the week after Passover, they would have passed the Ring of Fire before it happened.  Once past, the news of the Ring of Fire would catch up with them only slowly, and if they did hear the news, they would be unlikely to turn back.  With good transportation, they would be in a good position to flee any soldiers they encountered, so they would likely make it to Poland and would be unlikely to arrive in Grantville.

     Slow travelers from Frankfort and fast travelers leaving later are another story.  If we assume travelers on foot or with slow carts for their baggage, they will make from 10 to 20 miles a day.  Travel would be even slower if they are subsisting off the land within the limits imposed on Jews by Christian law, for example by buying rags and scrap metal to sell to the paper mills and iron foundries along the way.

     That from one to three such slow-moving groups would pass through the upper Fränkische Salle valley at about the time of the Ring of Fire, hearing rumor both of the fall of Magdeburg and the Ring of Fire at some point between Neustadt and Hildburghausen seems not only plausible but likely.

     This news would drive them to veer south to avoid Tilly's mercenaries on the Saxon plains and to avoid the new and strange city of Grantville.  Working through this schedule suggests that such groups would encounter rumor of the "court Jews" of this new community as they began their dodge to the south, and news that Grantville was actively recruiting refugees and attempting to impose law and order on its little corner of the world could easily reach them as they were about a day's travel from Grantville.

     The most likely avenue of approach for such a refugee group would be down the Schwarza valley, which would bring them to the border of the Ring of Fire sometime not to long before or after Shavuos.  The festival would force them to camp in one place for a minimum of three consecutive nights, no matter what, and this camp will be either in Grantville, for example, at the refugee camp just being built by the power plant posited by the novel 1632, or not too far outside the ring if they are on a somewhat later schedule.  However this develops, by the end of Shavuos, they will have heard detailed accounts of the arrival of bands of mercenaries in the plains to the east, and there is a high likelihood that they would elect to stay in the Grantville region.

     The interaction between these refugees and the new town of Grantville will be interesting, although an author contemplating writing such a story must solve the problem of including these Jews in the population of Grantville without their coming afoul of the established canon for this series.

Resources for Writers

     Those considering writing Jewish characters into their fiction should consult a Jewish calendar for the year they are writing so they can keep their characters behavior in line with the Jewish liturgical year.  There are excellent interactive web sites that will generate custom calendars for any year.

     http://www.hebcal.com/hebcal/

     http://www.hebrewcalendar.net/

     These calendars all show holidays, fast days, and the Torah portion for each Sabbath, as well as the connection between the Jewish and Gregorian dates for that year.  It is worth noting that all Jewish months begin with the new moon, so the fourteenth of the month is always a full moon.

     If your Jewish characters are moderately observant, they might study the Torah portion for the coming week.  If you want to know what pithy biblical quotes they are likely to come up with, read the relevant Torah portion.  Ask for the weekly sedrot to be included in a calendar generated by the Hebcal web site listed above, and then click through from the calendar to the biblical text and commentaries from several rabinnical organizations.

     Look up the history of the Jewish communities of each nonfictional town that is visited.  The Jewish Encyclopedia, published in 1901, is entirely available on-line and has well researched entries on the Jewish communities of the world, including many small German communities.

     http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/

     The web site includes a search engine but it is sometimes slow.  Unfortunately, for those interested in German cities, there are multiple ways to enter text containing diacritical marks, and as a result, searching for city names containing umlauts is not always easy.

     Many german cities have their own historical web sites that also contain a wealth of information.  True gems can be found by blind searching with Google.  Try searches on the word Jews or Juden plus the city name in question; these will frequently find the Jewish Encyclopedia entry where the built-in search engine did not because Google is much smarter about umlauts.

     The Jewish Theological Seminary library has an extensive web site that includes several exhibits that pertain to this era.  Their exhibit on culture and costume and on the synagogues of Amsterdam includes some very useful material from the seventeenth century.

     http://www.jtsa.edu/library/exhib/pastexhib.shtml

     There are a few extraordinarily good works of fiction that portray Jewish life not too far before this era remarkably well.  Francis Sherwood's The Book of Splendor, set in the Prague of Rudolf II (1601), and does a good job of painting the Jewish community of that time and place in relationship to the larger community.  Richard Zimler's The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon paints an intriguing picture of the Sephardic community of Lisbon in the era when the inquisition was on the rise and Jews faced the choice of fleeing or going underground.