European Judaism

This is a shared editorial, but one written by both of us with a heavy heart. When the editorial board set about finding materials to mark the eight-hundredth anniversary of the death of Moses Maimonides, we invited Esther Seidel to oversee this project, and she contributes the second half of this editorial. But neither Esther nor I could have foreseen that we would also be commemorating the untimely death of my co-editor Rabbi Dr Albert Friedlander who, together with his wife, Evelyn, has been directly associated with European Judaism since the birth of the magazine.

Three contributions celebrate the occasion of the eight-hundredth anniversary of the death of one of our greatest sages, Moses Maimonides (1135–1204). Maimonides was a master in every branch of Jewish scholarship. He was the great genius who synthesised the vast world of Talmudic law. He threw light on the Mishnah by one of the most lucid commentaries ever to have been written and he wrote numerous responsa advising Jewish community leaders on intricate problems of interpretation and application of rabbinical law. As a practising physician his advice on prophylaxis and medical treatment was highly valued, while he also had a keen interest in human psychology and in the natural sciences in general, including astronomy.

Mūsā Ibn Maymūn is regarded as one of the most outstanding thinkers to have appeared from the Andalusian Jews. He was a doctor and a knowledgeable philosopher, who spent most of his seventy years living in Andalusia, where he was born, although he later settled in Egypt, and spent some time in Morocco.

The Guide of the Perplexed, written by Moses Maimonides in 1185, is an unusual book that is not easy to interpret in any straightforward manner – that is one of the few remarks that can be made about it upon which there is broad agreement amongst commentators. Admittedly, such a description is not unusual as far as philosophical works are concerned, and many of the great works of philosophy in what can loosely be described as the Western tradition have been subjected to various different, and often incompatible, interpretations by scholars. However, the differences concerning the ways in which The Guide of the Perplexed can be read go beyond this: it is not even universally accepted that it is a philosophical text.

The Guide of the Perplexed is a unique and often daunting work. Written to address a specific group of people whom Maimonides identified as having a specific need, it also presents a wider philosophical system. At its heart is a recognition of the limitation of human knowledge about the divine.

Polin was established in 1986 as a yearbook to provide a resource for the growing number of scholars who seek authoritative historical and cultural material on Polish Jewry. It has attempted to encourage research on an interdisciplinary basis and has sought contributions from many disciplines – history, sociology, politics, anthropology, linguistics, literature and folklore – and from a wide variety of viewpoints.

Jewish Lights may look like a book-publishing company, but it really is an outreach programme. It grew out of my discovery as an adult of a Judaism rich in relevance to my life that was beyond anything I had imagined. Memories of childhood attending an Orthodox Yeshiva in the Bronx, and the synagogue led by the rabbi who wrote just a few years ago that the Reform and Conservative movements are not legitimate expressions of Judaism, were not inspiring.

Asked who has been Britain’s best-selling Jewish poet people might come up with Dannie Abse, or Elaine Feinstein, or, wondering if the question inferred long-dead poets, Amy Levy. None of these … she was born in Nottingham and she wrote poems about fairies. Remember the line ‘There are fairies at the bottom of our garden …’. Britain’s best-selling Jewish poet was the late Rose Fyleman, whose work still has a half-life on Internet sites about fairies. There was no particular Jewish content to her work which immediately begs the question as to what Jewish poetry, as opposed to poetry written by Jews, might be.

A magazine ‘which would be Yiddish in English’, – thus the artist Josef Herman recalled his close friend Jacob Sonntag’s plan to launch The Jewish Quarterly in 1953. It is a fascinating phrase, at once subtly illuminating and profoundly sad, the simple paradox reminding us that Yiddish was, and is, far more than simply a language. Sonntag, like so many of his generation, was a refugee, exiled from his birthplace, his language, his roots and his culture. The establishment of The Jewish Quarterly was his personal contribution to die goldene keyt, the golden chain of generations.

It all started with the re-emergence of the German progressive movement in the early nineteen-nineties of the twentieth century. When progressive Jews had nothing more than an urge to find a positive Jewish identity from the sources of the liberal Jewish tradition a common prayerbook became the unifying factor. With no roofs over their heads and no funding for the establishment of community centres this prayerbook gave a strong message of togetherness. Published in two volumes (based on Siddur and Machzor of the RSGB in Great Britain, edited by Jonathan Magonet) in 1997, Seder haTefillot soon spread over all our congregations and far beyond in all German-speaking countries and became the movement prayerbook of the Union of Progressive Jews in Germany. It was accompanied by the Pessach Haggadah as edited by Michael Shire.

Rabbinic literature was written and shaped by men and the idealized human society the rabbinic sages constructed in their legal formulations was decidedly oriented towards their own sex. Few aspects of women’s lives and experiences are retrievable from this body of highly redacted texts that became the foundation of over a millennia of Jewish social, religious, and intellectual life. While most rabbinic voices agreed that women were beings quite separate from men, with lesser intellectual, spiritual, and moral capacities, and very different, often undesirable, roles to play in human society, rabbinic traditions are unanimous in praising and honouring the mothers and wives who were so crucial to Jewish survival and the smooth functioning of everyday life. In this essay I focus on rabbinic portrayals of women as wives in a variety of aggadic (non-legal) texts.

Albert Hoschander Friedlander, rabbi: born Berlin 10 May 1927; ordained rabbi 1952; Rabbi, United Hebrew Congregation, Fort Smith, Arkansas 1952–56; Rabbi, Temple B’nai Brith, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania 1956–61; Religious Counsellor, Columbia University 1961–66; Founder Rabbi, Jewish Center of the Hamptons, East Hampton, New York 1961–66; Rabbi, Wembley Liberal Synagogue 1966–71; Lecturer, Leo Baeck College 1967–71, Director 1971–82, Dean 1982–2004; Senior Rabbi, Westminster Synagogue 1971–97 (Rabbi Emeritus); Editor, European Judaism 1982–2004; OBE 2001; President, Council of Christians and Jews 2003–04; married 1961 Evelyn Philipp (three daughters); died London 8 July 2004.

Hyam Zoundell Maccoby, biblical scholar and teacher: born Sunderland, County Durham 20 March 1924; Scholar Librarian, Leo Baeck College 1975–95; Visiting Professor, Centre for Jewish Studies, Leeds University 1998–99, then Research Professor 1999–2004; married (1950) Cynthia Davies (one son, two daughters); died Leeds 2 May 2004. Born Newcastle, 21 June 1912. Died London, 23 October 2003, aged 91.

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Black Forest, Blackbird

Harmless Forest

Ulrich Wyrwa (ed.), Judentum und Historismus. Zur Entstehung der jüdischen Geschichtswissenschaft in Europa, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt and New York, 2003, 256 pp., ISBN 3593372835

Nicholas de Lange, Judaism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003, 182 pp., £14.50. ISBN 0199252971

Jacob Neusner and Alan J. Avery-Peck, The Routledge Dictionary of Judaism, Routledge, New York and London, 2003, 192pp., £12.50, ISBN 0415302641

David Albahari, Götz and Meyer, The Harvill Press, London, 2003, 168 pp., £12.00. ISBN 1843430932