Can Halakhic Texts Talk History?

Abstract

Not how halakhic texts tell stories about other things, but how they tell stories about themselves is our concern here. Confronting us is not the problem of extracting evidence regarding trade or communal organization from law, but the question of how one cracks the colorless and highly impersonal mold into which the thought of the medieval period was cast to reveal a world of individuality, development, and ambivalence. Can the fragmentary and recalcitrant halakhic texts be made to talk history?Attempting to argue for the affirmative, I would like to trace the origin and fate of one doctrine over the course of some two centuries. Instead of a running account, it seems wisest for our purposes to interrogate each piece of evidence separately, hoping to see if a continuous narrative emerges from the cross-examination, and whether parts of the story are of wider significance. (The importance of the story as a whole would emerge only in the framework of a much larger study.) In brief, I should like to try to reconstruct step by step a small chapter in the history of the halakhah.As the technique employed is that of piecemeal analysis, I hope that the reader will forgive the temporary lapse from brevity. NOTE: Most of the sources, both in print and in manuscript, cited in this essay have been collected by the author in a lithographed volume entitled Yafias ha-gomelin bein ha-halakhah ve-hamefi'ut published by the Akademon of the Hebrew University. Armed with it, the reader can stalk the errors with ease. 153 154 HAYM SOLOVEITCHIK The topic chosen is an aspect of yein nesekh (henceforth y.n.); the time and place-Ashkenaz in the high Middle Ages.The Talmud had imposed a severe ban on drinking and trading in Gentile wine or wine that a non-Jew had so much as touched. The social difficulties that this injunction entailed are common knowledge; the economic burdens, though less known, were no less great.Wine played a far greater role in the Middle Ages than it does now. Water was not generally drunk, and tea and coffee had not yet come to Europe. Fresh fruits were unavailable for a good part of the year, and whiskey was still undiscovered. Thus thirst could be quenched only by beer and wine. And the thirst was great; partly because the meats were heavily spiced (no other method of food preservation was available), partly because drink was the only escape for the poor and the major entertainment of the wealthy. So drink people did, and on a heroic scale. Indeed the quantities consumed stagger the imagination.The importance of wine in the daily fare gave to it a role in the economic life of the period that we would scarcely dream of. How were the men of the North, England and Scandinavia-great drinkers all-to quench their thirst? Mead and beer were available-indeed, in England a full third of the grain crop at the time of the Conquest was used for beer production-but these were looked upon as lower class drinks. The well-to-do drank wine, and wine was to be had primarily by import. So as Pirenne first perceived and Dion then ...

Giqatilla’s Philosophical Poems on the Hebrew Vowels: Poetry, Philosophy, and Theology in Giqatilla’s Ginnat Egoz and Sefer ha-Niqqud

“…For a discussion of Giqatilla's notion of emanation, see (Dal Bo 2011). In particular, the term hamshakhah refers to taking drawn water and pouring it into the mikveh so that it flows over the ground before entering the pool (Soloveitchik 1978).…”

Ethnography and Jewish Ethics

“… Haym Soloveitchik maintains that the extent to which halakhic authorities respond to the context is more subtle: “Response, when it came, flowed from a conjunction of a distinctive communal self‐image with certain premises of the dialectical method, and as often as not halakhah turned a deaf ear to common need. But under certain specific conditions, circumstances did play a role (if only mediately) in the birth of ideas” (Soloveitchik , 174). Thank you to Phil Ackerman‐Lieberman and Barry Wimpfheimer for pointing me to this source.…”

Food‐Related Interaction Among Christians, Muslims, and Jews in High and Late Medieval Latin Christendom

“… On Christian prohibitions against Jewish wine, see Freidenreich, Foreigners and their food , 121, 125, 193; Stouff, Ravitaillement en Provence , 97. On Jewish prohibitions against gentile wine, see Freidenreich, Foreigners and their food , 209–23; Soloveitchik, “Halakhic texts” (readers of Hebrew should consult Soloveitchik's Yeinam and Ha‐yayin bi‐yemei ha‐beynayim ; an English translation of the former is reportedly forthcoming from the Littman Library). For evidence of wine‐related interaction between Christians and Muslims, see Burns, Medieval colonialism , 41–43; Castro Martínez, La alimentación , 168–69.…”

“…For evidence of wine‐related interaction between Christians and Muslims, see Burns, Medieval colonialism , 41–43; Castro Martínez, La alimentación , 168–69. On wine‐related interaction between Christians and Jews, see Antonio Rubio, Los Judíos en Galicia , 211–14; Meyerson, Iberian frontier kingdom , 38–45; Onega, Los Judios , 335–38; Soloveitchik, “Halakhic texts”; and, especially, Toaff, Love , work , and death , 75–82; see also Assis, Golden age , 283, 318; Assis, Jewish economy 33, 79, 104.…”