Jonathan M Elukin | Trinity College, Connecticut (original) (raw)

Papers by Jonathan M Elukin

AJS Review, 2018

movement. Extending Sabbatian influence deep into Jewish modernity, the volume incudes texts by I... more movement. Extending Sabbatian influence deep into Jewish modernity, the volume incudes texts by Isaac Bashevis Singer and S. Y. Agnon. Given Maciejko’s thesis, one wonders why he did not include texts outside Judaism. There has already been excellent work in English on Sabbatianism from David Halperin, Elisheva Carlebach, Matt Goldish, Ada Rapoport-Albert, Bezalel Naor, and others. This volume offers readers not only important primary texts in translation for the first time but, when read through the compelling revisionist lens Maciejko presents in the introduction, it offers us a new theory of Sabbatianism that will take the study of this crucial phenomenon beyond Scholem’s work while still remaining indebted to its groundbreaking scholarship.

Journal of the History of Ideas, 1998

Since the Reformation, European Christians have sought to understand the origins of Christianity ... more Since the Reformation, European Christians have sought to understand the origins of Christianity by studying the world of Second Temple Judaism. These efforts created a fund of scholarly knowledge of ancient Judaism, but they labored under deep-seated pre judices about the nature of Judaism. When Jewish scholars in nineteenth-century Europe, primarily in Germany, came to study their own history as part of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement, they too looked to the ancient Jewish past as a crucia l element in understanding Jewish history. A central figure in the Wissenschaft movement was Heinrich Graetz (1817-1891). 1 In his massive history of the Jews, the dominant synthesis of Jewish history until well into the twentieth century, Graetz constructed a narrative of Jewish history that imbedded mysticism deep within the Jewish past, finding its origins in the first-cen tury sectarian Essenes. 2 Anchoring mysticism among the Essenes was crucial for Graetz's larger narrative of the history of Judaism, which he saw as a continuing struggle between the corrosive effects of mysticism [End Page 135] and the rational rabbinic tradition. An unchanging mysticism was a mirror image of the unchanging monotheistic essence of normative Judaism that dominated Graetz's understanding of Jewish history. Ironically, this narrative model of the history of mystic ism may have been influenced by Christian attacks on Judaism itself, a point which I can briefly take up at the conclusion of the article. First let us turn to the role that the Essenes played in Graetz's historical ideology of mysticism. Graetz inherited a long intellectual tradition about the identity of first-century sectarians. Ever since the fourth-century historian Eusebius asserted that the therapeutae, a group mentioned by Philo, were actually Christian monks, the religious identity of these Alexandrian sectarians-distinct from the Essenes-had been the subject of constant debate. 3 Were they Jews or Christian ascetics? During the Middle Ages the tradition articulated by Eusebius gave the Church an additional claim for the antiquity of one of its central institutions. The religious identity of the Essenes, a seemingly similar sectar ian group mentioned by Josephus and other ancient historians, also became a point of dispute. 4 The secluded, monastic life of the Essenes made them equally likely candidates to be proto-Christians. The dispute over the alleged Christian nature of the therapeutae and the Essenes would survive, after generations of Catholic and Protestant sch olarly polemic, into nineteenth-century scholarship on late antique Judaism. 5 It was in the work of Graetz that the Essenes and their putative relationship to Christianity received the fullest treatment by a Jewish historian. 6 Since the only documented therapeutae were in Alexandria, they could not be considered [End Page 136] likely sources-even if they were Jewish-for a nascent Palestinian Christianity. The Essenes offered more fertile ground to explore the relationship between Judaism and early Christianity.

Traditio, 2002

During the Middle Ages, Christians largely accommodated themselves to the small number of Jews wh... more During the Middle Ages, Christians largely accommodated themselves to the small number of Jews who lived amongst them. Augustine (354-430) explained that God had punished the Jews after their rejection of Jesus by destroying the Temple and sending them into exile. Their survival was divinely guaranteed, however, because the presence of the Jews, Augustine believed, testified to the authenticity of Scripture and the fulfillment of the prophecies upon which Christianity built its faith.1 The Jews themselves, of course, argued that God had never truly rejected his chosen people. By claiming the Jews as their witnesses, Christians inadvertently accepted the Jews' identity as the descendants of the biblical children of Israel. This proved to be increasingly irksome to many Christians. Christians had appropriated the text of the Hebrew Bible by reading into it allegories of Christianity's ultimate truth (which included seeing themselves as the true Israel). As I hope to show in this article, Christians during late antiquity and the early Middle Ages tried other ways to counter the Jewish claim of enduring "chosenness." They did this by trying to present contemporary Judaism as unworthy of being the heir of the Judaism of the Bible. In other words, contemporary Jews could not claim to be the true descendents of the Israelites and the preservers of the biblical tradition. Some Christian intel lectuals, largely in the Greek tradition, sought to make contemporary Juda ism into a collection of heresies in contrast to the unity of biblical Judaism. Others, mostly Latin writers following Jerome's lead, sought to cast the Judaism of their day as a monochromatic but corrupt Pharisaism equally alien to the nature of biblical religion. The evidence for portraying Judaism both as a fragmented array of here sies and a tradition undermined by Pharisaism can be found, of course, in the New Testament. The authors of the Gospels presented Judaism as di vided into several main groups with the Pharisees, Sadducees, Samaritans, 1 Augustine, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (New York, 1986), 4.34, p. 178. I would like to thank the editors and referees of Traditio for their very helpful comments and criticisms, as well as the audiences at Hebrew University and Trinity College where earlier versions of this paper were delivered. Dr. Jeffrey Kaimowitz, the curator of the Watkinson Library at Trinity College, also provided welcome assistance.

The Jew as Legitimation, 2017

By the eighteenth century, so-called “continuations” of the works of Josephus appeared in English... more By the eighteenth century, so-called “continuations” of the works of Josephus appeared in English as the foundation of new histories of the Jews. These texts described Jewish history following the destruction of Jerusalem, a subject that had rarely interested Christians. These continuations, inspired by Jacques Basnage’s History of the Jews (1708), emphasized the miraculous nature of Jewish survival. By anchoring the idea of this miracle in the evolution of social relations and identity, they provided a post-Enlightenment miracle that still reinforced Protestants’ belief in God’s intervention in history. At the same time, these histories likely increased Christian empathy for the experience of contemporary Jews and thus helped lead Christians to an acceptance of the legitimacy of Jewish history after the destruction of Jerusalem.

Stephen Crane, aging boy wonder, trekking off to cover the increasingly savage wars of the twenti... more Stephen Crane, aging boy wonder, trekking off to cover the increasingly savage wars of the twentieth century, still trying to live up to, or live down, The Red Badge of Courage. Having already written the definitive war story of his generation, Crane didn't see real combat until he was a war correspondent in Greece, where a few of the more experienced correspondents hinted that he spent a lot of time behind the lines. Later on, in Cuba, he seemed to be trying to prove them wrong, striding erect along San Juan Hill in a long white coat and blithely ignoring the sniper fire he drew. Davis makes it clear that the increasingly frenetic and unreliable behavior of his last few years came from the tensions caused by his dual needs to prove that he was more than just The Red Badge and to race the clock of his own declining health. Davis herself, in a final summing up, argues that Crane's legacy is greater than just The Red Badge of Courage: "Few writers could have matched any of Crane's short works The Blue Hotel,' The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,' The Open Boat,' The Upturned Face,' The Monster even in the course of a long career." It may be unfair to compare, but it's hard to put these stories up against, say, Chekhov's "The Kiss" and find in favor of Crane.

The Medieval Review, 2015

The Catholic Historical Review, 2008

Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Age... more Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. By Israel Jacob Yuval. Translated by Barbara Horshav and Jonathan Chipman. (Berkeley: University of California Press. 2006. Pp. xxii, 313. $49.95.) Yisrael Yuval's provocative study of the polemical interaction of Judaism and Christianity grows out of his determination to re-imagine the nature of medieval European Judaism. Yuval's book promises a lively exploration of Jewish-Christian interaction, but the book's structure and topics make it difficult to appreciate fully this polemical dynamic between two religious cultures. That Judaism was affected by other cultures does not really seem shocking, but Yuval is arguing against what had been, or what he imagined was, an entrenched traditional attempt to sanctify the uniqueness of Jewish history. Even if he has created something of a straw man with this dichotomy, his book would have been useful if it had elucidated ways in which this history of influence between the religions had functioned. Unfortunately, the book's structure makes it difficult to explore and appreciate fully this polemical dynamic between the two religious cultures. First, Yuval confuses competition with influence. His discussion of how early Judaism used the image of Esau as a way of indicting Christianity certainly shows that Jews were aware of and perhaps even threatened by Christianity They were using the images of the biblical tradition to assert the primacy of Judaism as the true religion. It is not clear, however, how this polemical competition actually affected the internal evolution of Judaism. The threat of Christianity, particularly as it became an imperial religion, may have forced rabbinic culture to evolve as Seth Schwartz has recently argued. In this case, Jews were responding to the visible success of Christianity and its role in society rather than rhetorical images. It is frustrating that Yuval turns away from the issue of polemical exchange to discuss the nature of vengeance and redemption in Jewish liturgical material. I do not understand how this section helps him establish evidence of Christian influence on Judaism. That Jews could imagine that redemption depended on or at least involved vengeance over their enemies seems independent of a particularly Christian environment. (Yuval seems to suggest a parallel development of this idea of redemptive vengeance in Crusading theology, but there is no exploration of how, if at all, this idea traveled between Jewish and Christian culture. …

Key Concepts in the Study of Antisemitism, 2020

The American Historical Review

The Princeton University Library Chronicle, 1989

The papers collected here were written in response to a specific question: Was there a golden age... more The papers collected here were written in response to a specific question: Was there a golden age of Jewish-Christian relations? 1 The contributors each offered a different period of history (and location) as a possible golden age. All of the contributors, however, were careful to recognize the deeply problematic nature both of the question and of their individual responses in their papers or the discussions that followed. The term "golden age," of course, evokes nostalgia for a lost world of great accomplishments in literature, art, economics, or politics. Most nations have cultivated the memory of some kind of golden age. The idea itself was first articulated in Hesiod"s works, and then picked up by Virgil and Ovid. 2 Before turning to the specific discussions of the golden ages offered in the papers, we should reflect for a moment on the implications of using the idea of a golden age in any historiographical analysis. Hesiod"s outline of successive ages following a golden time was only one of several ancient ways of imagining the division of time and history. Historians in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, in general, were rather flexible about periodization, with some favoring a kind of cyclical quality to the flow of history. The conception of a golden age, however, had a long life before it in western culture as a compelling shorthand for an unrecoverable, glorious past. It has survived despite Jewish and Christian historical thinking that was linear and forward-looking. Ray and Elukin, Introduction Ray and Elukin CP 4 http://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/scjr golden age. Ultimately, seeing all these periods juxtaposed against each other in this collection may help shake us out of this Manichean worldview of a Jewish past caught between times of persecution and a golden age or ages of tolerance. We may begin to see each age as a spectrum that contained both these qualities.

The English Historical Review, 2012

AJS Review, 2006

Fashioning Jewish Identity in Medieval Western Christendom, by Robert Chasan. Cambridge UK: Cambr... more Fashioning Jewish Identity in Medieval Western Christendom, by Robert Chasan. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 379 pp. $75.00. Christianity, once an obscure Jewish sect, rose to be a major world religion. In so doing it retained the story of harsh Pharisaic suppressions and divine displeasure at them, This memory became enshrined in the New Testament's argument that adherence to the Law of Moses and dismissal of the divinity of Jesus Christ brought God to abrogate his covenant with the Jews. Succeeding generations of Christians always imaged the Jew as the powerful suppressor and enemy of Christian values. Jews, from the beginning, felt a need to dispute Christian claims (aiming to convince and convert); sometimes they were forced to debate, and a few medieval Rabbis have left us their textbooks, records, and commentaries concerning their views of the groundless claims of the Christian attack on Judaism. Robert Chazan has written a book to inform us of some details of Jewish polemical writings in Northern Spain and Southern France. Chasan does not discuss the Jewish/pagan and Christian/pagan polemics that occurred apart from the early Jewish/Christian attacks and counter attacks. The cases are not at all comparable: Jesus had sprung up on Jewish soil, physically and spiritually, and these issues cut deeper to the bone. How did Jews respond? It would seem they more than held their own in literary and actual debates. Any student of medieval polemics finds it difficult to know what precisely is literary and what was face-to-face confrontation. The author, a prominent medievalist, has limited his scope to only a few writings of polemicists: Joseph (Northern Spain and Narbonne) and David Kimhi (Narbonne), Meir bar Simon (Narbonne), Jacob ben Reuben (time and place unknown), Moses Nachmanides (Northern Spain) and a few references here and there to some minor works. He claims he has discovered a new literary genre that took form in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: Jewish polemical writings. He probes the reasons of why it came to be when and where it did. Does he realize that biblical commentaries (or is this a new genre too?) from these areas are also unknown prior to the late eleventh and twelfth centuries? I suspect we have this literature from these places at this time because, for whatever reason, preservations of written materials stemming from these places date from these times and not earlier. Lack of evidence is nor always evidence of lack. Connecting some earlier faint dots (which Chasan sees as garbled and rudimentary) might show us that the genre is not so new. More than anything else the Jewish mindset both in medieval Ashkenaz and Sepharad stemmed from the religiously oriented communal culture that Rabbinic leaders had nurtured for many centuries. For this reason it is fitting to note that both sides saw the medieval disputes as a continuation of past frictions, as Nachmanides claimed (referring to a talmudic story about the Sanhedrin's debates with Jesus' disciples-who were, in the end, executed by it) in the written introduction to his famous disputation in Barcelona. Now, however, the debates often ended in real-life dire consequences for Jews. Christians judged the outcome of the debates. In France, cartloads of valuable Talmud manuscripts were burned as debates began to center on the anti-Christian teachings of the Talmud. …