Al Reguel Ajat

The genizah, which means «hiding place» in Hebrew, is a place where books and documents that are no longer useful are kept. Because they contain the name of God, they cannot be destroyed. Since it is also customary to write God’s name at the beginning of a letter or other document, these are also eventually kept in the genizah.

The most famous genizah is the Cairo genizah, due to the size and content of the documents found there. For nearly a thousand years, the Jewish community of Fustat, in the old part of Cairo, deposited used books and other documents in the genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue, built in 882. In 1896, Solomon Schechter, professor of Talmud and rabbinic literature at Cambridge University, arrived in Cairo with financial assistance from Charles Taylor and, after several months of arduous work and with the permission of the Egyptian Jewish community, brought nearly 190,000 documents to England. The Taylor-Schechter collection of the Cairo Genizah in Cambridge is the most extensive, although not all of the genizah documents are housed there.

The Cairo Genizah is one of the greatest treasures of Judaism ever found. Its contents provided the world with invaluable information about the Middle East in medieval times. In addition to documents on the Bible and the Talmud, there were also documents on daily life. Schechter even found a letter signed by Maimonides himself. In 1970, Professor Stefan Reif, an expert in medieval Judaism and Semitic languages, was appointed head of the department responsible for the genizah collection. Reif tells us: “Before the genizah, if we wanted to know something about that period, the only way was with documents from the 16th and 17th centuries. Thanks to the genizah, we have documents dating from the 9th to the 13th centuries.”

Professor Reif explains that letters, certificates, wives’ complaints about their husbands, lists of jewelry, and so on were found in the genizah. This material reflects daily Jewish life at the time. There are also documents that have revolutionized fields of study, such as some with Hebrew punctuation forms different from those previously known. Reif tells us that the genizah documents reveal the great dispute that existed between the academies of Babylon and those of Israel, where halacha was more flexible. The Babylonian sages accused those of Israel of not being strict enough in their practice. Reif also found material that now allows us to better understand the Jerusalem Talmud, relegated to the background by the Babylonian Talmud.

Reif says: “We don’t know much about prayer books from before the 9th century. Until then, prayer was prayed orally, and each leader prayed according to his own preferences, without a unified text. The Babylonian sages favored a single text, while those in Israel allowed each leader to pray according to his own preferences. The Genizah documents showed that Babylonian custom prevailed over that of Israel.” There is still much to be discovered among the Cairo Genizah documents. What we do know is that the Cairo Genizah hid different ideas stored in old documents.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Interview with Dr. Stefan Reif by Tali Farkash and other sources.

Isaac Mayer Weiss was born in 1819 in Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic. From a young age, he proved to be a brilliant student. He studied the Bible and Talmud, especially with his father, Leo Weiss, and his grandfather. He graduated from the Universities of Prague and Vienna, and at age 23, a rabbinical court awarded him the title of rabbi. In 1846, Weiss emigrated to the United States, finding it difficult to be a rabbi in Bohemia due to a series of government restrictions against Jews. Once in America, Weiss changed his surname to Wise.

He initially served as a rabbi in Albany, New York, but due to differences with the congregation’s president, he resigned and moved to Cincinnati. There, he was offered a lifelong position as rabbi of the Bnei Jeshurun ​​congregation. In 1847, he presented to the Bet Din (rabbinical court) a project for a prayer book to be used throughout the country, which he called «Minhag America.» The proposal remained pending until 1855, when a conference of rabbis in Cleveland asked him and two other rabbis to edit and publish it. «Minhag America» ​​became the prayer book of most Jewish synagogues in the South and West of the United States.

Wise used his newspaper, «The American Israelite,» to spread his ideas of unifying the country’s Jewish congregations and their rabbis. In 1848, he called on «all Israelite ministers» in the United States to unite and thereby end the prevailing religious anarchy. To this end, he summoned them to a meeting in Philadelphia the following year, but it did not take place. His idea was more widely accepted among the congregations, who organized themselves in 1873 into the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, headquartered in Cincinnati.

Wise did not relent in his efforts to unite the rabbis. To this end, he called a conference in Cleveland in 1855, but this not only failed to unite them, but instead divided them into two camps: Wise and his followers on the one hand, and a group of prominent rabbis from the East Coast on the other. At the conferences in Philadelphia in 1869, New York in 1870, and Cincinnati in 1871, differences were gradually smoothed over, until the Central Conference of American Rabbis was formed in 1889. Wise served as its first president and served for eleven years, until his death.

He was equally tireless in his insistence on creating a seminary to train rabbis. He criticized many who posed as spiritual guides, saying they were not properly prepared. He attempted to establish a seminary in Cincinnati, but failed after a year. He remained undeterred and continued to propagate his seminary idea through his newspaper. On October 3, 1875, Hebrew Union College opened its doors. The first four rabbis graduated eight years later.

Despite his great leadership abilities, Wise was considered an unprepared colleague. This was echoed by some German rabbis who had earned doctorates from Central European universities and arrived in America in the 1850s. Nevertheless, Wise represented the pragmatic approach to American Judaism. The tripartite structure he devised—the union of congregations, the association of rabbis, and the rabbinical seminary—was the basis for organizing Jewish religious movements in the United States. Wise was primarily an institution-builder rather than an ideologue. His greatest merit was having laid the foundation for Jewish-American religious movements.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Encyclopaedia Judaica and other sources.

Bundism was another response to the problems facing Jews in the late 19th century, especially in the Pale of Settlement in Russia. It was a secular, socialist Jewish movement. The General Union of Jewish Workers, known in Yiddish as the «Alguemeiner Yidisher Arbeter Bund,» was founded in 1897 as the Jewish component of the socialist movement in Russian society.

The structure and ideology of the Bund (Union) was a response to the difficult situation prevailing in the Pale of Settlement, the area where Jews were permitted to live in the land of the Tsars. At that time, antisemitism was widespread among the Russian population, and the difficult economic and social situation in small Jewish towns encouraged emigration to other countries, especially the United States. Also, as part of the Russian socialist movement, the Bund shared its goals, tendencies, divisions, and methods.

The Bund received support primarily from three sectors of Jewish society. The first was the group of Jewish wage workers who began to realize their working-class status and organize into union-style groups, especially in the garment industry. The second was the circles of radical Jewish intellectuals who combined revolutionary Marxist ideas with their Jewish identity and concern for the Jewish proletariat. The third group was those Jews who were deeply rooted in Jewish culture.

In the 1870s, the Bund made its first attempts to disseminate socialist ideas among the Jewish population, using Yiddish, their native language, instead of Russian. This indirectly contributed to revitalizing the language and its literature. With its «Kultur Lige» (Cultural League), the Bund promoted Yiddish literature, theater, art, and secular Jewish culture in general.

The Bund was part of the Russian Social Democratic Party, the organization that united various revolutionary groups operating in the Russian Empire into a single structure. At its second congress, held in London in 1903, the Bund, with five delegates out of a total of 51, sought recognition as the representative of the Russian Jewish proletariat and recognition of Yiddish as its language, but its motion was rejected, leading the Bund to leave the party.

The Bund did not consider Judaism a global national entity and fought only for the rights and autonomy of Jews in their places of residence, especially in Russia. It strongly opposed Zionism and religious orthodoxy, believing that in a socialist society, the Jewish question would be resolved. It promoted secular Jewish culture as the identity of the Jewish people, expressed in Yiddish. It spread to many countries, although its influence waned after the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel. After the war, a world coordinating council of the Bund was founded in New York. Little of the Bund’s socialist ideas remained, but its love for Yiddish endures to this day.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Encyclopaedia Judaica and other sources.

In the 19th century, despite the changes brought about by modernity, Jews had not been able to fully integrate into European societies, and European societies, in turn, had failed in their attempts to incorporate them. This problem, known as «the Jewish question,» was widely debated at the time within Judaism and in European Gentile society in general.

Jewish integration not only involved knowing the country’s language and living with their neighbors, but also led to their own secularization, as they sought to be part of a society based on three principles: equality of all before the law, separation of church and state, and loyalty to the country of residence. By the end of the 19th century, many viewed the Jewish people more as an ethnic and cultural group than a religious one. What secularists sought at that time was to integrate Jewish culture into European humanist education, detaching it from religion. From this secular stance emerged movements in Judaism that proposed various solutions to the Jewish question.

 One of these was the nationalist movement expressed in Zionism, which proposed the reconstruction of Jewish national life in the Land of Israel as a solution to the problems that modernity had brought to the Jewish people. Migration to a homeland was the answer to the problems of Jews in Europe. Antisemitism in Russia sparked the growth of the Zionist movement, but the underlying cause was the end of the Jewish way of life in the ghetto and the limited possibilities of integrating into European society.

Jews always dreamed that one day the Messiah would solve their problem. Three times a day, the Amidah is prayed for the reconstruction of Jerusalem, but for 18 centuries, the Jewish people did nothing practical to make it a reality, despite being constantly subjected to discrimination by Christians and Muslims, and despite the fact that modernity did not mitigate antisemitism in Europe.

The Jewish national movement began in the 1870s, first in Russia and later in Poland. Groups promoted migration to the land of Israel, such as the «Hovevey Zion.» Moses Hess, in his book «Rome and Jerusalem» (1862), argued that Jews were not a religious group but rather a national group with their own religion. Zionists criticized reformers for trying to reshape Judaism by copying Gentile religious forms.

The Zionist movement gained political strength with Theodore Herzl when he convened his first congress in 1897. Herzl had witnessed how «the Jewish question» had acquired a national dimension, not just a social and religious one. His proposal had a political focus, although there were other Zionist approaches with a cultural, religious, social, or practical action focus.

The religious response to modernity had not been sufficient to resolve the «Jewish question.» Therefore, Zionism proposed a national solution. For them, the best thing was to return home.

By: Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: The History of Zionism, by Moshe Maor and other sources.

One of the first Jews to arrive in what is now the United States was a group of 23 men, women, and children fleeing Recife, Brazil, who landed in 1654 in New Amsterdam, present-day New York. Later, Ashkenazi and Sephardi traders arrived in the American colonies. By 1730, the majority were Ashkenazi, although synagogues were governed by Sephardi ritual and customs, which combined modern aesthetics with ancient traditions. Order, decorum, rationality, and refinement prevailed.

The next major wave of immigrants were German Jews, who began arriving in the 1840s. They left Germany because of its restrictive laws, poor economic situation, and the failure of political movements seeking change in German society. They settled in the Midwest, West, and South of the American Union. Especially in Cincinnati, home to Isaac Mayer Wise, the first leader of the American Jewish Reform movement. In addition to promoting Reform Judaism, German Jews created institutions such as B’nai B’rith (1843) and the American Jewish Committee (1906).

By 1880, Eastern European Jews began immigrating to the United States in large numbers. They were fleeing overcrowding, oppressive laws, antisemitism, and poverty. Between 1880 and 1924, more than two million Jews from Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Austria, Hungary, and Romania arrived in the United States. They settled in the working-class neighborhoods of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and Chicago. They worked as laborers, especially in the garment industry. Therefore, they supported union movements to improve their working conditions. Yiddish culture, expressed in plays, journalism, and literature, flourished in the immigrant neighborhoods. They brought with them ideological principles that influenced American Judaism, such as socialist ideas, liberal politics, and Jewish nationalism.

Generally speaking, Jews from Eastern Europe were uncomfortable with Reform Judaism. They insisted on maintaining their traditions but in a modern context, which contributed to the establishment of Conservative Judaism and the continuity of Orthodox Judaism. However, many of them relaxed the strict religious discipline they had experienced in Europe to adapt to the conditions of a new culture. Judaism in America became pluralistic, and its observance now depended on the individual. There was no chief rabbi or central religious organization. Instead, a wide range of religious movements emerged, competing for adherents, each insisting that its ideas were the best for the survival of Judaism. In any case, America was not Europe; America was America.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: The American Jewish Experience through the XIX Century, by Jonathan D, Sarna and Jonathan Golden. History of the American

In biblical times, God was conceived as a national deity, who protected the Israelites in their land, helped them in their disputes, freed them from hunger, and generally provided for their sustenance. Bad fortune, poor harvests, and illness could be overcome by offering sacrifices to God. God was seen as the exclusive Lord of the Israelites; they could not worship any other deity, and God could not protect any other people.

This concept began to change in the 8th century BCE. The Assyrians, who sought hegemony over the world, promoted the idea of ​​a single, unified world, an idea that resonated in Israel, not materially but spiritually. The prophet Amos (751 BCE) raised this question when he affirmed that God was not only the God of Israel, but of all the peoples of the world. The Book of Amos begins with the announcement of the punishment that the nations and cities neighboring Israel would suffer because of the cruelty of their conduct in war. God expected good behavior from all, not just from Israel. Amos also said that if the Jews ceased to have faith, God could terminate the covenant and seek another people who would accept His commandments.

Amos preached that the Jews should be faithful to the covenant to ensure that they would continue receiving God’s favor. The Israelites were surprised to hear from this prophet that their God was a universal God, who existed alone, and that everyone, not just they, must obey His Law. Even so, the prophet Amos, the first universalist, believed that God could only enter into a covenant with one people and that the Jewish people could only worship God in the land of Israel. Isaiah, the disciple of Amos (740-700 BCE), said that both Assyrians and Israelites had to obey God’s ethical commandments. This was a fundamental step for Judaism to acquire a universal character, because a critical connection had been made: Isaiah said that God was the God of the whole world, not just of Israel, and that His laws were addressed to all people.

The departure of the Jews from the land of Israel to Babylon in 586 BCE meant that, after losing their national independence, religious precepts became the element that most defined their identity. The scholarship-based rabbinate replaced the lineage-based priesthood; synagogues and academies replaced the Temple; and Torah study and prayer replaced sacrifices. Most importantly, as the prophet Jeremiah sensed, God could be worshipped outside the land of Israel. Previously, to integrate into the Jewish people, you had to go live with them in their land; now you could convert to the Jewish religion, wherever they were. Judaism and its commandments, including its ethical principles, were open to everyone. Now, loving your neighbor as yourself included all people.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: The Theory and Practice of Welcoming Converts to Judaism by Lawrence J. Epstein and other sources.

In biblical times, the Israelites were more of a nation than a religious group. They did not have the concept of religious conversion, because it was an incoherent idea to consider religion as something separate from nationality. That is why Abraham Avinu was called «the Hebrew» (ha ivri) and his descendants «the Hebrews.» These are terms that denote a nationality and, like all nations at that time, included worship of their own particular deity, the God of Abraham.

At that time, there was no formal religious conversion, but rather a cultural integration into the group, as many non-Israelites joined the Hebrews, through marriage or by accepting their customs and their God. Abraham himself and his descendants absorbed many pagans and their own servants, thereby increasing the size of their ethnic group. At the time of the Exodus, according to the Midrash Tanhuma, those who left Egypt were not only Hebrews, but a portion—the Midrash speaks of 40,000—of non-Israelites who joined them and were also present at the reception of the Torah at Mount Sinai. Once settled in the land of Israel, the Hebrews increased their number by incorporating members of the neighboring peoples living in Canaan.

The Torah uses the terms «ezrakh» when referring to someone who is an Israelite by birth; «nochri» when referring to a foreigner living among them but maintaining political, cultural, and religious ties with their native people; and «ger,» meaning resident or proselyte, for those who, although not born Hebrew, have integrated into their culture, customs, and beliefs.

The «gerim» often joined the Israelite group through intermarriage. Pagan women married Hebrew men and automatically accepted belonging to their clan and practicing their religion. The resulting marriages were viewed positively, because by marrying, the pagans exchanged an idolatrous practice for the God of Abraham.

The Gerim were permanent residents and enjoyed many of the privileges of the native Israelites. All non-Israelites who joined a family or tribe were given equal rights and responsibilities, although their participation in religious rituals occurred in stages. The Torah commanded love for the stranger because the people of Israel had been strangers in Egypt. It is written in Numbers 15:16: “One law (Torah) and one right shall you have, you and the stranger who sojourns with you.”

Cultural integration occurs when someone joins a majority group and acquires its characteristics or customs, losing or relegating what distinguished them. The best-known biblical case is that of Ruth. It is written: (Ruth 1:16) “And Ruth said, ‘Do not urge me to leave you or to turn back from you, for wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God shall be my God.’” Just as Ruth, the Moabite from whom King David is descended, so did Ziporah, the Midianite, wife of Moses, integrate herself into the people of Israel by accepting their customs and their God.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: The Theory and Practice of Welcoming Converts to Judaism by Lawrence J. Epstein and other sources.

Jewish communities in Europe in the 19th century could not remain indifferent to the effects that emancipation and enlightenment had on the daily lives of their members. Some chose to reject them, while others accepted them. The latter were convinced that ghetto Judaism needed to be «reformed» so that it would fit in with a free and modern society.

The first reformers were not rabbis but businessmen. They felt the need to reshape Judaism, because through contact with Gentiles, they saw the world opening up before their eyes. A banker, Israel Jacobson, stood out among these reformers. He criticized the fact that Jewish schools did not teach secular subjects and did not prepare for any profession other than being a rabbi. He argued that German Jews should be integrated into the country as citizens.

Jacobson (1768-1828) was educated in Jewish religious schools and independently studied German literature and read Moses Mendelssohn. He mastered rabbinic literature to such an extent that the University of Helmstedt recognized him as a scholar of Judaism. In 1801, using his own resources, he founded a Jewish school in Seesen, the town where he lived. For the first time, Jewish boys and girls studied together. At that time, most girls did not receive a formal education. For Jacobson, the idea of ​​equality between men and women was very important. Not only did he begin to teach secular subjects such as arithmetic, science, and German, but he did so with such high quality that Christian parents requested that their children be admitted to Jacobson’s school. He accepted them, as he wanted Jews to live together with their Christian neighbors and vice versa. The Jewish religion was also taught at the school in a logical and orderly manner.

But in the long run, the most important effect on Judaism, was the school’s temple, dedicated in 1810, because the service that Jacobson designed was different. It was well-organized, orderly, and decorous. It was also beautiful and solemn. Jacobson criticized the disorder, length, repetition, and informality of the traditional synagogue. Jacobson shortened the service, primarily by eliminating repetition. Many prayers were translated into German so that people could understand what they were praying. He included the use of the organ and a mixed choir of men and women singing together. People were expected to arrive on time, participate in unison, and behave in a solemn and respectful manner.

He also implemented the sermon. Until that time, only a few sermons in Yiddish and Hebrew were preached before major holidays to remind congregants of a particular ritual. In the new Reform temples, sermons were held weekly and discussed the problems of each day. Since the sermons were in German, the entire congregation could understand what was being said. This new service format attracted many adults. Jacobson reshaped the practice of Judaism. He was the great reformer of reformers.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Explaining Reform Judaism by Eugene N. Borowitz and Naomi Patz, and other sources.

From the 7th to the 14th centuries, there is evidence of the presence of Jews in what is now Belarus, Ukraine, and European Russia. They were few compared to those in Russia’s neighboring countries. The countries of Central and Eastern Europe already had a growing Jewish population, which arrived in Poland at the invitation of King Casimir III, after being expelled from England, France, and Spain, and having suffered persecution in Germany in the 14th century. Jews settled in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Hungary, and sparsely populated regions of Ukraine.

During the reign of Tsarina Catherine II the Great, the Russian Empire took possession of large territories in Poland and Lithuania that included a large Jewish population. This occurred during the second (1793) and third (1795) partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Catherine established that Jews could only live in the so-called «Zone of Settlement,» in Hebrew «Thum Hamoshav,» an area that included parts of Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Western Russia.

Catherine’s successor, Alexander I (1801–1825), expanded the empire’s borders to Alaska. After Napoleon’s defeat, he led the Russian delegation to the Congress of Vienna that defined the new map of Europe. In 1827, Nicholas I succeeded Alexander I and decreed military service for Jews. Between that year and 1854, 70,000 Jews were conscripted, which indirectly caused the cultural and social isolation of Jews to gradually erode. A significant number of Jews adopted Russian customs, education, and the language.

Alexander II succeeded Alexander I, but he was assassinated in 1881. His successor, Alexander III, was a reactionary and anti-Semite. A wave of pogroms occurred in Ukraine in 1881, under the pretext that Jews had assassinated Alexander II. These occurred in 166 Ukrainian towns, where thousands of homes were destroyed and many families reduced to extreme poverty. Many Jews were injured and killed. The wave of pogroms continued until 1884, even instigated by law enforcement. In 1886, Jews were expelled from kyiv, and in 1891, from Moscow. In 1892, they were banned from running for office in the Duma, the parliament. Another wave of pogroms occurred between 1903 and 1905, leaving 1,000 Jews dead and 7,000 wounded.

The Jewish response to this situation was emigration, primarily to the United States. Between 1881 and 1924, more than 2 million Jews arrived in the United States, although it was not the only destination. They also emigrated to Australia, Canada, Western Europe, South America, South Africa, and Palestine with the first aliyah from Bilu and Hovevei Zion in 1882. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, Russia had the largest Jewish community in the world. In the 1897 census, there were 5,189,401 Jews, 4.13% of the total population. Those living within the «Zone of Settlement» represented 11.5% of the population in that area. The «Zone of Settlement» lasted more than 100 years and ended with the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was undoubtedly the largest «ghetto» that ever existed.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Encyclopaedia Judaica and other sources.

Since the time of the Mishnah (2nd century CE), when a Jew had a question or an important problem, whether religious or otherwise, he would write to a rabbi of his choice, who would then respond in writing, basing his answer on quotations from the Bible, the Talmud, commentaries by the sages, or Jewish law codes. These questions and answers are called «Responsas.» Today, more than 9,000 volumes with over 300,000 responsas are known. No responsas are known from periods prior to the Mishnah, as it was customary at that time not to write down commentaries on the commandments of the Torah.

Essentially, the responsas addressed problems arising from new conditions, for which no direct answer could be found in the Talmud, the final authority on Jewish law. To answer them, the questioned rabbis tried to discover analogies in the Talmud or in legal codes, and occasionally even in the answers to other responsa.

The rabbis who answered the questions had not been appointed by any official body. They were considered qualified to answer simply when their colleagues considered them a reliable authority. Obviously, many of the topics sparked debate among the rabbis themselves.

In the yeshivot, there was a procedure for answering the questions. First, they were read and discussed in the full yeshiva, and at the conclusion of the debate, the scribe would write down what the yeshiva director dictated to him, and it would be signed by its senior members. Urgent questions were decided directly by the head of the yeshiva.

Since Judaism does not have a hierarchical structure, and there is no supreme authority recognized by all, in the Orthodox world, a responsa carries more or less weight depending on the prestige of the rabbi who wrote it. Conservative Judaism does have a special committee dedicated to studying these issues and defining a unified position through an edict, or takanah.

The responsa indirectly give us a portrait of what Judaism was like in each era and the issues that concerned them. In ancient times, these questions were not only religious in nature, but also medical and scientific ones. In the 15th century, people wondered whether a get, a divorce decree, was as valid in print as it was handwritten. In the 19th century, questions related to civil law and financial matters. In the 20th century, questions were about Zionism, the State of Israel, and issues arising from new technologies, such as turning on an electric light on Shabbat. In the 21st century, questions are about organ transplants, artificial insemination, etc.

The responsa are the mechanism that allows Judaism to stay current, providing answers to new situations. This keeps it young. So if you don’t know, it’s very good to ask.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Articles by Jay M. Harris, Rabbi Louis Jacobs, and other sources.