Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz. Elisheva Baumgarten

Jews of medieval Ashkenaz, much as they were among their Christian neighbors. Before turning to these medieval Jewish developments, I survey medieval Christian approaches to penance.

       Penance in Medieval Christian Culture

      Fasting was an essential component of Christian penance, along with prayer and almsgiving, as described above,¹³⁷ and medieval penance was a subject of scholarly investigation among theologians and legal historians. These scholars defined the thirteenth-century institution of mandatory confession for every Christian by the Fourth Lateran Council as a landmark for Christian society and also examined the founding of schools and universities that developed common curricula and methods for conceptualizing and teaching about penance.¹³⁸ Some of these researchers have interpreted this systematization of penance as a battle over doctrine.¹³⁹ Over the past decade, scholars have begun to uncover the social contexts where penitential books were used and how penance was practiced. Their examination of liturgies and records of public penance suggest a lack of congruence between doctrinal divisions and contemporaneous religious practice.¹⁴⁰ As a result, some scholars have forged a new approach that interprets debates about penance as attempts by university teachers to provide an overview of this rich tradition for their students, not as efforts to reconcile doctrinal distinctions.¹⁴¹

      Two key aspects of penance that have received current scholarly attention are its origins among laity (as compared with its history in monastic communities) and the differences between private and public penance.¹⁴² As the older of the two forms, public penance was reserved for grave sins. This once-in-a-lifetime ritual and would take place during Lent, in response to the call for confession and penance issued to all Christians at that time each year. Driven by penitential piety, individuals would dress in special (often white) garments and perform penance publicly.¹⁴³ Starting in the Carolingian era, some sins, if known to the public, required stricter discipline. In such instances, this ritual was presided over by a bishop rather than a local priest and the penitent was formally separated from the community on Ash Wednesday until being reintroduced on Holy Thursday.

      In contrast with the singular nature of public penance, private penance could be practiced multiple times each year.¹⁴⁴ Scholarly understandings of this sacramental ritual have shifted significantly over the past decade. Recent scholarship has challenged Alexander Murray’s widely accepted assertion that confession was rare among the laity before the thirteenth century; instead, scholars have identified the ninth century as a pivotal period in the emergence of confession and the rites of penance for laity and members of monastic orders.¹⁴⁵ This new research claims that “private confession” is more anachronistic than accurate as a description of the penitential ritual performed by individuals regarding their own sins, and that confession rarely occurred in private: detailed scholarly descriptions of confession in medieval Europe reveal that penitents were neither alone with their confessors nor concealed from view.¹⁴⁶ In his study of penance in the early Middle Ages, Rob Meens explains that the so-called “private” penance (paenitentia occulta or secreta) is best characterized by way of negation. “It is not public penance, in the sense of a highly ritualized form of penance imposed by the bishop,” but it did incorporate various elements adapted from public penance (such as wearing special garments, almsgiving, and fasting) that rendered the penitent visible to the community.¹⁴⁷ “These differences should not be overdrawn,” writes Karen Wagner; “the actual confession of one’s sin was rarely public, and given the communal nature of early medieval society, no penitential satisfaction could remain entirely private.”¹⁴⁸ As Sarah Hamilton remarks, scholars have viewed penance and confession from the perspective of clergy more than from that of the laity; changing that focus has revealed the widespread and public nature of this process.¹⁴⁹ These scholars, along with Mayke de Jong and Mary Mansfield, have each demonstrated that “private” penance was far from private in ninth-to thirteenth-century Christian practice.¹⁵⁰

      As private penance developed over the course of the Middle Ages, it came to include the confession of sins to a priest, an assignment of rituals required to achieve absolution—fasting, praying, or almsgiving (with some acts being interchangeable)—and a granting of absolution. While confession was a prerequisite for participation in Mass and receiving the Eucharist, it was also a key component of penance. Fasting was not the province of ascetics alone any more than penance was exclusive to the clergy prior to the Fourth Lateran Council (1215).¹⁵¹ Throughout the Middle Ages, penance could include fasting for periods ranging from weeks to months or even years to be forgiven for theft, sexual transgressions, or other sins.¹⁵²

       Jewish Fasting and Confession in the High Middle Ages

      In this atmosphere, amid the growing importance of penance and confession for Christians, the concept and act of repentance were dramatically transformed by the Jews of medieval Ashkenaz. This revolution is exceptionally documented in the writings of Samuel b. Judah, his son Judah, and Judah’s star pupil, Eleazar b. Judah of Worms. These innovators developed their teachings building on ideas from ancient sources and integrating them with current practices.¹⁵³ The literature that they produced consistently encourages fasting: Sefer Hasidim and Sefer Rokeah; other compositions by Judah the Pious, such as Sefer haGematriyot; and the extensive oeuvre by Eleazar of Worms, known for its focus on mysticism. These works emphasize fasting as a means for achieving atonement, along with prayer and charity. Relating fasting to these other two components—for example, to refrain from eating before praying—was a long-accepted practice.¹⁵⁴ Similarly, Judah the Pious instructed his followers not to eat until they had both prayed and given charity as they had pledged.¹⁵⁵ This medieval pietist’s prescription for repentance stands out for the rigor with which it was embraced and its demand that atonement be actively sought in daily practice.

      As numerous scholars have demonstrated during the past century—from the work of Yitzhak (Fritz) Baer and the tremendous expansion of this scholarship by Haym Soloveitchik, Ivan Marcus, and others—Hasidei Ashkenaz have been characterized by their belief in the need for repentance, which was founded on long-held customs while also representing significant degrees of innovation.¹⁵⁶ Hasidei Ashkenaz exemplified extreme piety in their relentless search for rituals that would elevate the level of religious devotion in daily Jewish life. Their writings express fresh notions of how to satisfy “the will of the Creator” (ratzon haboreh) and express love for God that balanced fear and awe (yir’ah).¹⁵⁷ Liturgically, Hasidei Ashkenaz were known for their prolonged prayer services and their meticulous attention to each word therein.¹⁵⁸ A defining feature of their worldview is the conviction that every human is incessantly lured by temptations which must be resisted and that, consequently, everyone is rewarded in proportion to the suffering involved in that struggle.¹⁵⁹ As part of their quest to worship God wholeheartedly, Hasidei Ashkenaz crafted a distinctive system of repentance that Ivan Marcus outlined two decades ago in his book Piety and Society. As Marcus and other scholars have noted, certain dimensions of this framework for repentance are drawn from earlier Jewish texts, particularly Hekhalot literature.¹⁶⁰

      Samuel b. Judah, Judah, and Eleazar of Worms constructed a system where atonement was accomplished through penitent actions that corresponded to the sin committed. Samuel b. Judah expanded the talmudic definition of repentance to include the ability to refrain from repeating sinful behavior¹⁶¹ by prescribing acts of repentance derived from the biblical punishment for a given sin and the pleasure experienced from that behavior.¹⁶² In the course of their writings, Samuel and Judah developed a four-part conceptualization of sin (and, therefore, repentance) that was articulated more fully by Eleazar of Worms. The four categories are known as teshuvat hagader—preventative repentance; teshuvat hamishkal—weighted repentance; teshuvat hekatuv—scriptural repentance; and teshuvat haba’ah—anticipatory repentance.¹⁶³ Fasting was an intrinsic component of repentance, as sinners sought atonement through fasts that extended over lengthy periods—even weeks, months, or years. Anyone who had committed a grave sin was also expected to wear black clothing and to give charity. In some cases, transgressors were directed to submit themselves to lashings, to shave their heads, and to exhibit other signs of remorse.¹⁶⁴ Sins that involved men having