Al Reguel Ajat

Something interesting we can learn from the effects that emancipation had on the Jewish people was the number of responses the Jewish mind devised to address the problem. One of those responses was the Musar movement, which means «moral conduct with discipline.»

The Musar movement sought to develop ethical conduct based on the values ​​of the Torah. It was founded in Lithuania by Rabbi Israel Salanter (1810-1883), who taught that ethical conduct based on the commandments of the Torah was one of the fundamental goals of the Jewish people. His work focused especially on teaching Jewish ethics in business. He said that just as we verify that a food item is kosher, in the same way one should verify with equal care that the money one earns was made kosher, that is, ethically.

Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz tells us in “Shaar Haotiyot”: “The mezuzah we have placed on the doorpost of our house is connected to the things we bring into and take out of our homes. We gather in our homes the wealth that God has bestowed upon us, and it must have been obtained honestly and in good faith, as befits a house where God’s law is inscribed on its doorpost. This is the secret to conducting our business ethically. In other words, what one brings into the house, the livelihood one earns, must be obtained ethically, and what we take out, how we spend our money, must also be ethical.”

The word “kosher” or “kashrut” comes from the Hebrew root “kaf-shin-reish,” which means proper, permitted, or correct. There are over 100 commandments in the Torah related to the kashrut of our money, many more than those related to the kashrut of food. For example, our sages teach us that the eighth commandment, “You shall not steal,” not only refers to the act of stealing a material good from someone, but also extends its meaning to the prohibition of acting falsely or fraudulently in matters of commerce and business.

In Leviticus, there are several verses that regulate ethical conduct in business: 19:35-36 says: “You shall not do unfairly in judgments, in measuring the measure of length, weight, or capacity. You shall have just balances, just weights, and just measures.” 25:14 says: “And whether you sell to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor’s hand, you shall not defraud your brother.” 25:17 says, «Let no man deceive his neighbor,» and 19:14 says, «You shall not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind,» which we interpret as not abusing someone who is in a disadvantaged position compared to us.

The Musar movement brought new life to traditional Judaism, combining the intellectual study of the Lithuanian yeshivot with the spirituality of the Hasidim. It served as a bond between the two groups in the face of emancipation. Its ethical message remains relevant to this day, not only in business but also in daily life. So, how kosher is your business?

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: The Jewish Religion by Louis Jacobs, Encyclopaedia Judaica, and other sources.

Putting on tefilin each morning during Shacharit prayer is based on four verses from the Torah: Exodus 13:9 and 13:16, and Deuteronomy 6:8 and 11:18. All four have the same message: «Write these words of mine upon your heart and upon your soul, and they shall be for a sign upon your hand and a reminder upon your forehead (or between your eyes), that the law of the Lord may be in your mouth.» Some groups during the Second Temple period, such as the priests, explained this commandment figuratively, saying that we are to think of the words of the Torah as if they were before our eyes. But the rabbis of that time took it literally and said that the words of the Torah should be written and placed physically between the eyes and on the arm.

At least two dozen fragments of tefillin scrolls were found in the Cumran Caves, along with their boxes and leather straps. They are estimated to date from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE, a crucial period in the development of rabbinic Judaism. There is no evidence of the use of tefillin in earlier periods, such as in biblical times. Conical tefillin, some overlaid with gold, were found in the Cairo Genizah. These included the Decalogue among the scroll texts, in addition to the traditional four passages: Exodus 13:1-10 and 13:11-16, Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21.

The use of tefillin, or phylacteries (from the Greek phylakterion, meaning amulet), began to become popular among the Hebrews as a practice to counteract the use of amulets by idolatrous peoples. They used it all day long, not just in prayer as it is today.

The manufacturing process of the leather tefillin boxes is quite complex, especially the head box, which has four compartments, unlike the hand box, which only has one. The process involves special tanning of the leather, die-cutting with hydraulic presses to form the compartments, embossing the letter Shin on the outer surfaces, painting the exterior black, and affixing the scrolls. Four scrolls are placed on separate rolls for the head box, and the four scrolls on the hand box are placed on a single roll. After the boxes are closed, straps are attached with knots simulating the letter Yod on the hand box and the letter Dalet on the head box. The manufacturing process for a pair can take up to a year.

However, the true meaning of the verses that gave rise to tefillin was not to create another ritual in prayer. Placing God’s commandments between your eyes means constantly thinking about them, and tying them to your arm means putting them into action. Tefillin are more than an adornment in prayer; they are a call to thought and action.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Jewish Encyclopedia and other sources.

The Reform movement was the pioneer in attempting to modernize while simultaneously maintaining the essence of Judaism, within a culture of enlightenment and emancipation. They were deeply dedicated people and deeply concerned about the future of Judaism. They were convinced that what they were doing was the best way to preserve Judaism. Other responses to modernity, such as the Conservative movement, the Modern Orthodox movement, and even Political Zionism, were a response to the work of the Reformists.

The Reformists focused on two major questions: what aspects of Judaism should be changed? and how would those changes be made? What to change ranged from superficial aspects, such as the language of sermons (German or Yiddish) or the length of the service, to issues that touched the essence of Judaism, such as maintaining kashrut, praying with tefillin and a kippa, or praying to Zion. And the question of who would decide had its own problems: Who would decide, each rabbi, the leaders, or the members of the congregation? These and other issues had supporters and detractors, from liberals to traditionalists.

One of the dissenters was Zechariah Frankel, the chief rabbi of Dresden, who in 1845 broke with the Reformists, maintaining that Hebrew should remain the primary language of prayer and that the laws of kashrut should be upheld. He argued that Jewish law was not static, but evolved according to new conditions. He called this «Positive Historical Judaism,» which is having a positive attitude toward norms but with an open mind to accept new laws and customs, as had happened throughout history. He argued that the Reformists’ changes were not based on history and tradition.

Frankel was not the only opponent. In 1854, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch viewed Judaism as “an untouchable sanctuary that should not be subject to human judgment or subordinated to human considerations” and that “progress is valid only to the extent that it does not interfere with religion.” His motto, “Torah and Derech Eretz,” means observing the mitzvoth while simultaneously understanding and interacting with the society and culture in which we are immersed.

Another position was that of political Zionism. Although it does not strictly have a religious content but rather a political and national one, Zionism can also be considered a response to modernity. In 1882, Leon Pinsker spoke of self-emancipation, accepting that the Jewish people would be emancipated only when they had their own country and not while they continued to live among other nations.

Frankel is considered the initiator of the Conservative movement, Hirsch of Modern Orthodoxy, and Herzl, Pinsker, and other thinkers of political Zionism. But the catalyst for these currents was undoubtedly the Reform movement.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Conservative Judaism by Neil Gillman and other sources.

Harry Heine was born in 1797 in Düsseldorf, Germany. He was the son of Samson Heine and Betty von Geldern, who educated their son in schools run by Jesuits and French refugees. Harry grew up in a culinary Jewish atmosphere: Shabbat dinners and Passover seders. He learned Hebrew only so he could say the blessings at the holidays. His youth had been the most benevolent period for German Jews, thanks to the emancipation Napoleon had brought to Germany.

In 1815, he traveled to Hamburg to visit his uncle Solomon Heine, the city’s most important banker. Heine sent him to study law, first in Bonn and then in Berlin. There, he began to frequent the home of Rahel Varnahagen, a meeting place for many intellectuals, such as Alexander von Humboldt and members of Leopold Zunz’s group, who founded the Society for the Scientific Study of Judaism, with the aim of uniting modern culture with Judaism. In Rahel’s salons, Harry confronted, on the one hand, his yearning for a unified Germany, like any young German, and on the other, the effects of discrimination for being Jewish.

With Napoleon’s defeat, the rights granted them by emancipation were reversed, and Jews lost many of the prerogatives they had achieved. The Society for the Study of Judaism failed, leading several of its members to convert to Christianity, the only path to a professional career in Prussia at that time. The effect this had on Heine caused him to abandon his focus on Jewish themes and instead devote himself to German literature. From 1822 to 1827, he produced a series of poems that practically placed him at the pinnacle of German literature, culminating in his «Buch der Lieder,» one of the most beautiful collections of lyric verse produced by a German poet. His wit was essentially Jewish, derived from the intellectual circles where he moved in Berlin. He began writing a romantic novel, «Rabbi von Bacharach,» on the theme of the persecution of Jews by the Crusaders, but did not finish it.

Since he had to belong to the bar to earn a living, Harry Heine accepted the title, «the ticket to European culture.» It was then that he wrote to his friend Moses Moser: “From what you see, you can imagine that baptism is of no importance to me. I don’t consider it important, even as something symbolic, and that’s why I will dedicate myself even more to achieving the emancipation of the unfortunate members of our people. Nevertheless, I consider it a disgrace and a stain on my honor that, in order to hold a position in Prussia, I had to allow myself to be baptized.”

Harry, now Christian Johann Heinrich Heine, soon saw that his sacrifice didn’t do him much good. In 1827, he wrote “Buch Le Grand,” an apologia for Napoleonic ideas. This closed the door even further to him, so he emigrated to France, where he died in 1856. In his work “Almansor,” he wrote: “This is only the prelude: where they burn books, they will eventually end up burning people.” Heinrich Heine, the great German poet, was baptized but not converted, and he never ceased to be Harry the Jew.

By Marcos Gojman.

Bibliography: The Jewish Encyclopedia and “Emancipation” by Michael Goldfarb.

Initially, there were two extreme responses to the problems that emancipation posed for Judaism. Those who rejected it completely proposed that Jews continue their traditional way of life, isolated from the outside world, as if they had never left the ghetto. They feared that contact with this new world would alienate them from Judaism. This insistence that Judaism could not adapt to modern times ironically produced the other extreme response: many Jews simply chose to convert to Christianity. These Jews argued that one could be modern or Jewish, but one could not be both at the same time. A middle path was needed, one that did not reject emancipation and did not reject Jewishness.

To achieve this, the traditional forms of the Jewish faith had to be adapted to the new conditions of the time. The Haskalah, the movement that brought the Enlightenment to Judaism, of which Moses Mendelssohn was a leading figure, grappled with this problem, but initially chose to leave traditional norms more or less intact. However, it was the Reform movement that ultimately introduced innovations into synagogue services and Jewish religious life.

Reform-minded thinkers within German Jewry, such as Israel Jacobson, Abraham Geiger, Samuel Holdheim, and Leopold Zunz, sought to modernize Jewish practices and beliefs. They convened synods to discuss the issue, but did not formally establish an independent rabbinical organization or body. However, the reform effort changed when the German government allowed the establishment of new institutions within the Jewish community. Between 1840 and 1850, independent Reform congregations were established in two major Jewish centers, Frankfurt and Berlin.

In 1870, an even more important step was taken: the creation of a rabbinical seminary and research center. Rabbi Abraham Geiger suggested that the way of observing Jewish life could change to make it more appealing to young people. Geiger, a scholar expert in both biblical studies and German cultural studies, was also a researcher of the history of Judaism. He maintained that Jewish life was always in a state of constant change. Old practices were modified and new ones were introduced, resulting in a Jewish life quite different from what it had been 1,000 or 2,000 years earlier. He realized that these changes were intended to adapt the practice of Judaism to the historical moment in question. Geiger concluded that the process of change needed to continue so that Judaism could face modernity without losing its essence.

At that time, Darwin proposed his theory of the evolution of living beings and said that change, not permanence, was natural. Similarly, the Reform movement maintains that Judaism has changed since its beginnings. Because evolution is natural, even in Judaism.

By Marcos Gojman

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

Emancipation, the recognition that Jews had the same rights as other citizens, was seen as a historic change that heralded a better future for the Jewish people and became a central issue for Jews everywhere, although each community had to fight its own battle to achieve it.

In many places, it was a long process of social and economic integration of Jews into Gentile society, which also required them to renounce their traditional way of life. In 1789, Count de Clermont Tonnere, in his famous speech before the French National Assembly, said: “The Jews must be denied everything as a nation, but they must be given everything as individuals.” The French introduced this type of emancipation to all the countries Napoleon conquered. Whether as a result of a deliberate choice, as in France, or imposed by force, as in Germany or Italy, or the product of a long process of sociocultural maturation, as in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, emancipation was a difficult and painful process. The customary religious animosity of Gentiles toward Jews did not make it easy.

Emancipation suffered setbacks in the years following the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15, after Napoleon’s defeat. However, liberal and democratic groups took up the banner of Jewish emancipation as a central theme of their political campaigns. By 1848, the idea of ​​equality for Jews was an accepted concept in Western countries.

Emancipation had its own timetable. It was achieved in 1786 in Virginia, in 1787 throughout the United States, in 1791 in France, in 1796 in Holland, in 1812 in Prussia, in 1814 in Denmark, in 1831 in Belgium, in 1832 in Canada, and in 1866 in Switzerland. It was achieved in 1867 in Austria and Hungary, in 1869 in Italy, in 1870 in Sweden and Greece, and in 1871 in Great Britain and Germany. It was achieved in 1919 in Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania. It was achieved in 1917 in Russia, when the Russian government granted equal rights to all its citizens. In Poland, it lasted until 1935.

In Latin America, it occurred as a consequence of the independence movements of each country in the early and mid-19th century. In the Islamic world, there was no emancipation in the Western sense. In the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan granted equal rights twice, in 1839 and 1856, to Jews and Christians. The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 ratified this. In Yemen, Jews were never granted equal rights. In Egypt, Syria, Libya, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, they were officially granted, but were revoked after Israel’s War of Independence.

Today, it’s hard for us to imagine that there were places and times when Jews did not have the same rights as any other citizen. Achieving them was not a natural and simple process, but rather difficult and painful.

By Marcos Gojman.

Bibliography: Encyclopedia Judaica and other sources.

The time of the French Revolution was when, for the first time, European Jews were granted the right to be citizens of the countries in which they lived. Ghettos were abolished, special clothing or insignia were abolished, people could live where they wanted, dress as they wanted, and have whatever occupation they wanted. Many Jews settled outside the Jewish quarters and began to live like their neighbors and speak the language of the country. They also began to attend secular schools and universities.

In 1815, after Napoleon’s defeat, Jews lost their citizenship rights in some European countries. It was then that some of them converted to Christianity in order to retain those rights. Scholars of the problem realized that these actions were not because these Jews disliked their Judaism, but rather they had done so in order to retain the advantages that being citizens now gave them. Many rabbis thought that the solution was to force Jews to distance themselves from Christians and not attend their schools. But this did not work.

In 1819, Leopold Zunz proposed that Jews study their history and learn from the great achievements of their past. Together with other young men, including the poet Heinrich Heine, he founded the “Society for the Culture and Science of the Jews,” with the aim of presenting the Jew as a people in his own right and not just as a religious tradition. Although the society was not very successful, the concept of the “Science of Judaism,” Der Wissenschaft des Judentums, inspired many intellectuals to study Judaism in a structured way.

Their idea was to put Jewish culture on a par with Western European culture and they sought to introduce Judaic studies into universities as an area of ​​study as valid as any other. They wanted to end the prejudice that presented Judaism as an inferior precursor to Christianity. His approach to Jewish studies involved complete freedom in interpreting traditional texts, without concern for the effects of such interpretations on religious observance.

Although Zunz was observant of Jewish ritual practices, he understood them as symbols, in contrast to the traditional position that saw them as divine commandments to be obeyed without questioning their meaning. Nevertheless, the “Science of Judaism,” der Wissenschaft des Judentums, had a religious background. Many rabbis in seminaries followed its guidelines when preparing their students, as a preamble to what would be the new approaches of liberal Judaism. However, other scholars such as Zecharias Frankel and Heinrich Graetz, who used critical methods for the study of Judaism, continued to consider religion and Jewish history as a reflection of divine revelation and guidance.

The “Science of Judaism” produced a great number of academic works, but the most notable of these was the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1906, considered the culmination and final fruit of this era. Its legacy was inherited by universities such as the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Brandeis and Harvard in Boston and many others that have opened departments of Jewish studies. The “Science of Judaism”, der Wissenschaft des Judentums, left a mark that has lasted to this day.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Encyclopaedia Judaica and other sources.

In ancient times, the most important thing for people was faith in God. Religious authorities were the intermediaries between the divine and the common people, and they held that tradition was sacred and unchangeable, so they strictly enforced accepted religious customs and principles. The rabbi was the most important authority. He, in addition to being a scholar of sacred texts, also officiated at religious ceremonies and acted as a judge.

Professor Jonathan Israel tells us that Western civilization was once based “on a core of faith, tradition, and authority.” But in the mid-17th century, the Enlightenment emerged, a European movement whose thinkers held that human reason could combat ignorance, superstition, and tyranny. Their writings began to challenge the authority of the most respected institutions, such as the figure of the rabbi. They sought to replace belief in the supernatural with knowledge of nature, dogmas with science, commandments with natural laws, priests with philosophers. Reason and experience were exalted as the way to solve problems. And special consideration was given to human rights, especially the right to be free from oppression and government corruption. Thus, faith was transferred from God to man.

The Enlightenment sought to limit the power of organized religion. Baruch Spinoza wanted to separate politics from religion and Moses Mendelssohn said that religion was an individual and private matter. For them, the value of a religion was its ethical principles and not the logic of its theology.

The Jewish Enlightenment, called Haskala, from the Hebrew root sejel = intelligence, was a movement that occurred among European Jews who wanted to adapt the principles of the Enlightenment to Judaism. His followers, the Maskilim, sought to integrate the Jew into European gentile society and to teach secular subjects in schools, along with the Hebrew language and the history of Judaism.

Although the Haskala originated primarily in Germany, it soon spread throughout Europe. Even in Eastern Europe, where the heart of Rabbinic Judaism was with its two streams, the Mintagdim and the Hasidim, the Maskilim brought the ideas of the Haskala to those regions and, with the help of the Russian government, promoted secular education in the Jewish provinces. Their presence in those places resulted in the creation of a secular Jewish culture, with an emphasis on Jewish history and identity. The Haskala went hand in hand with the Emancipation.

The light of the Enlightenment was a watershed in the history of Judaism. Just as in Genesis, the earth was in disarray and darkness was upon its face. But this time it was man who said: let there be light in the human understanding and there was light.

By Marcos Gojman.

Bibliography: Encyclopaedia Judaica and other sources.

In biblical times, the “mohar” was the financial compensation that the groom paid to the bride’s father in order to marry her, and it was customary for the bride’s father to give this money to his daughter. The mohar, rather than an agreement between individuals, was an agreement between families.

In Talmudic times, given the difficult economic conditions of that time, many of the potential grooms did not have the means to pay the mohar, so this custom began to decline and even reached the point where the bride’s father offered a dowry to the groom, so that his daughter could marry. Furthermore, the mohar ceased to be that sum of money that was given directly to the bride’s father, and became a kind of mortgage that would be paid to the wife in the event of divorce or the death of the husband. This sum would come from his property. This was put in writing, in what we know as the Ketubah, the marriage contract where the agreement was certified and the woman’s rights were assured.

Until the end of the Middle Ages, marriage was celebrated with two ceremonies, separated by an interval of time, sometimes up to a year. The first was the betrothal, “erusin,” where the bride and groom agreed to marry on a certain date and which legally implied considering the bride as a married woman, although she still lived in her parents’ house. Breaking this commitment required a divorce process. The second ceremony, “nisuim,” was the wedding itself, when the bride was taken to the groom’s house, to consummate the marriage.

In biblical times, a couple consummated their marriage in a special room. In Talmudic times, this room was called a “chuppah.” In the Middle Ages, the two marriage ceremonies began to be performed at the same time and the use of the chuppah as a bridal chamber was no longer used. Symbolically, the term chuppah began to be applied to different objects in different communities. In some, in the 16th century, it was used to refer to a veil worn by the bride, while in others it referred to a piece of cloth placed over the shoulders of the bride and groom. Many illustrations of Jewish weddings in medieval Europe did not show evidence of the use of the chuppah as we know it today, a canopy supported by four poles.

Today, the rules for celebrating a marriage imply that in the same ceremony, the betrothal, “erusin,” is performed first, where the groom gives the ring to the bride as “payment” for the mohar, followed by the reading of the ketubah and concluding with the “nisuim” part, all this with the bride and groom placed under the chuppah, as a symbol of their future home. The oldest known ketubah dates back to 440 BCE and was found in Egypt. It is written on papyrus and describes, in Aramaic, the amount that a groom paid to his future father-in-law, what each family contributed to the couple’s dowry, and where the wife is named as the beneficiary in the event of the husband’s death. Three hundred years later, the text of the ketubah was defined by Rabbi Simeon ben Shetaj and was written in Aramaic. The current text is very similar to that of two thousand years ago and the Talmud has an entire treatise, Ketubot, dedicated to systematizing all the details relating to this document.

Today, the ketubah records the date of the wedding, the names of the bride and groom, and the obligations of each one towards the other. It is signed by, among others, two witnesses who verified that the groom fulfilled his commitment. The fundamental objective of the Ketubah is to be the basis for a happy marriage, but if this does not turn out to be the case, then the little piece of |paper speaks.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography. Encyclopaedia Judaica and other texts