Sephardim and Ashkenasim
The Diaspora had become divided into two areas: the Sephardim of the Mediterranean world and Spain confronted the Ashkenasim of Germany and Central Europe where the Church ruled.
They differed greatly. Leo Baeck defined the Sephardim as ‘the piety of culture’ and the Ashkenasim as ‘the culture of piety’.7 Sephardic scholars wrote in Arabic and affirmed the outer culture. Ashkenasim wrote in Hebrew and lived within the culture of the Torah. The Sephardim became systematisers; the Ashkenasim, commentators. The giant of them all, Rashi ofTroyes (1040-1105), introduced French words into his commentaries. Yet he is only understood within an Ashkenasi community which could only find culture, education and intellectual dialogue in what was their own and in their tradition: only where there was Torah could there be chochmah (wisdom); piety engendered culture for them. And, to establish their identity, they had to start with the simple meaning of their basic texts, the peshat, as expounded by Rashi and his school of Tosaphists. The most tangled legal arguments of the Torah and Talmud were reduced to their basic meaning in Rashi’s commentaries. Where the Sephardim struggled with the outside culture, Rashi refined and sharpened the understanding of the ancient teachers. A simple unquestioning faith in the rabbinic tradition remained isolated from the turmoil and doubts of the outer world of science and philosophy. The anguish of the Crusades commencing in 1096 tore at their bodies, decimated their communities, made martyrdom a daily reality—and reaffirmed their links with the ancient texts, restored to them by the crystal-clear commentaries of Rashi and his successors. Christianity was instructed by Rashi as much as by Maimonides. In the Middle Ages, much of ancient and contemporary Judaism was admired and respected—while the Jewish people themselves were hated and persecuted. The Crusaders gained practice at killing Jews as they marched through France and Germany; by the time they captured Jerusalem, they were trained enough to herd the Jews there into a synagogue and to burn it and them.In Europe, the feudal system had removed the Jews from the soil, and the guilds kept them out of crafts. They were assigned the role of money-lenders, with most of the profit going to the crown, until the Church realised that it could charge interest by not calling it interest! Then, Jewish life became truly marginal, and the Ashkenasi Jew could only assert his individuality through the daily customs, ceremonies and observances which somehow assured him that even in his lowly estate he continued to be God’s witness in the world.
Mysticism developed. Alongside the musar, the simple ethical instructions for the righteous life, there had to be an escape into a world the persecutors could not enter. The/wwide ashkenas (pious Jews of Germany) stood alongside the great Talmudic scholars, giving an inner glow to the Eves of the lowly, in apposition to the chochmah of mysticism which developed in the Sephardic lands. Against the brilliant systems and speculations of the profound Sephardic vision, theirs was a quiet, daily experience as seen in the Sefer Hasidim (Book of the Pious Ones), described by Baeck as ‘as much a book of ethics as of mysticism. Life cannot be experienced without morality. The heart begins to open itself and to speak... to the questions of human needs.’8
The ritual and communal Jewish life became their profession of faith, organised into structures of law by the rabbis. German rabbis often left for other lands where life was more secure, although their greatest teacher, Meir of Rothenburg, was imprisoned and held for ransom in 1286 when he tried to leave for Palestine. In order not to set a precedent, he refused to be ransomed and died in prison. But Asher ben Yechiel (1256-1328) found a haven in Toledo, and the Sephardim welcomed a man of Talmudic learning even if it was closed to the outside culture. His son, Jacob ben Asher, presentedjewish life with an important code, Arbaah Turim (Four Rows), which was a summary of Jewish law in its most recent developments. Joseph Caro, writing in Safed, built upon this edifice; his Shulchan Aruch became the definitive code for the centuries which followed. Caro was part of the mystic circle around Isaac Luria of Safed, and felt the presence of a spiritual mentor in all of his life. The legal structure of the Ashkenasim here began to shimmer with the glow of Sephardi mysticism.