This paper considers the notion of exile in responsa literature. The words golah and galut meaning exile or expulsion were used widely in Hebrew texts either for a punishment prescribed by Jewish law (excommunication)1 or for life in the Diaspora.2 Prominent rabbis including Gershom ben Judah (d. 1040) of Mainz and Asher ben Jehiel were called ‘the Light of the Exile’. In Rashi’s letters Gershom is mentioned as ‘rabbenu Gershom, the Light of the Exile that by his words we all live as well as all the children of the Ashkenaz exile and non-Jews’.3 The book written by Isaac ben Joseph of Corbeil (the second half of the thirteenth century) was entitled ‘Pillars of the Exile’. A few ways of using these words will be examined, among them the notion of ‘our exile’, meaning life in the Jewish diaspora. Next will be presented the manner in which references to exile became a stylistic element aimed at complementing the legal experts to whom the letters were addressed. Finally, it will be shown how various issues caused by the expul-sion of the Jews were addressed in rabbinical letters.
The question of how the story of the Jewish exile was interpreted in antiquity was raised, among others, by Israel Yuval. According to his paper, Jewish identity is based on the imagination of a collective memory rather than on a common territory.4 Professor Yuval examines the myth of Jews driven from their histori-cal homeland. Why does he think it is a myth? Because according to him ‘the exile from the land’ after the destruction of the Second Temple is not a clear and evident historical fact.5 In his article I. Yuval explains the origin of this myth, showing that the strong connection between the destruction of the Temple and the exile established in the Babylonian Talmud was erroneous. He notices that
1 See for example: Isaac Al Fasi, Commentary on Makkot 1:1: ויתחת הצולח ןב וא השורג ןב הז השעי ןירמוא ןיא תולג בייח אוהש ינולפ שיא תא ונא ןידיעמ םיעברא הקול אלא; Responsa of Bar Sheshet 331 (Vilna, 1879), p. 182.
2 See for example, The Book of Kuzari 2: 20: ונצחלו ונתולג ינפמ ,ונתלוז ול םיוואתמו וילא םיגגוח תומואה לכשו;
Rosh, Orkhot Chaim for Shabbat, 21: לבאתיו תינעתבו דפסהב תורוסא ןהש תולילה דבלמ ןשיש םדוק הליל לכב הדותיש ונימיב הרהמב הנביש ונתראפתו ונשדקמ תיב ןברוח לעו ונתולג ךרוא לעו תונוע לע.
3 Responsa of Rashi 70 (New York, 1943), p. 83: ונלוכ ןייח ונא ויפמש הלוגה רואמ םשרג וניבר.
4 Y. Yuval, ‘The Myth of the Jewish Exile from the Land of Israel’ in Common Knowledge, vol. 12 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), p. 16.
5 Y. Yuval, op. cit., p. 19.
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the midrashim from the Land of Israel as well as some Babylonian texts describ-ing both the destruction and the exile refer to the First Temple. It is only in Babylonia that these events were applied to the Second Temple.6 I. Yuval showed the difference between the two episodes of destruction of the Temple. Though their meaning was essentially the same, their consequences were different, and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the emperor Titus did not lead to the immediate exile of all Jewish people from the land of Israel. Another interesting point made by professor I. Yuval is that it was Christian clerics and philosophers who encouraged the development of the legend about the Jewish exile. In Yuval’s opinion, there was no connection between the destruction of the Temple and the exile. In recent years, this issue was raised in a number of publications.7
The purpose of my paper is to show how the authors of Jewish responsa and some other Hebrew texts in the Middle Ages in Southern France and Catalonia perceived the issue of exile and its consequences. In order to achieve this, a num-ber of questions will be treated. First, some attention will be paid to a numnum-ber of texts that consider Jewish diaspora to be a result of exile. Than it will be seen how exile is used in honorific titles in rabbinical correspondence. Finally, the use of exile in referring to those exiled from the various countries that expelled their Jews will be brought in.
‘Today in our exile’
In the Middle Ages, Hebrew texts show a variety of attitudes towards the mandment on living in the Land of Israel. A passionate appeal to create the com-munity in Palestine is found in the text of an anonymous Karaite author pub-lished by Jacob Mann.8 This source maintains that at least five men must be sent from each town as delegates in order to form the nucleus of a new congregation of Karaites in the Holy City.9 The listing of commandments recapitulated by
6 ibid, p. 21.
7 Exilerfahrung und Konstruktionen von Identität, 1933 bis 1945 / herausgegeben von Hans otto Horch, Hanni Mittelmann, und Karin Neuburger (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2013); Literatur und Exil: neue Perspektiven / herausgegeben von Doerte Bischoff und Susanne Komfort-Hein (Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2013); Interpreting exile: displacement and deportation in biblical and modern contexts, ed. by B. Kelle, F. Ames, and J. Wright (Leiden: Brill, 2012); M. Goodman, Abraham, the nations, and the Hagarites: Jewish, Christian, and Islamic perspectives on kinship with Abraham, ed. by M. Goodman, G.
van Kooten and J. van Ruiten (Leiden: Brill, 2010) pp. 139–476; The concept of exile in ancient Israel and its historical contexts, ed. by Ehud Ben zvi and Christoph Levin (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2010), p. 257 – 295. T. Lemos, Marriage gifts and social change in ancient Palestine, 1200 bce to 200 ce (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010).
8 J. Mann, ‘A Tract by an Early Karaite Settler in Jerisalem’, The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, vol. 12 (Jan., 1922), pp. 257–298.
9 ibid., p. 257.
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Maimonides does not contain the mitzvah on going to the Land of Israel. He himself spent a few years in Palestine but then settled in Egypt.10
This expression is frequently mentioned in commentaries on the Bible. The one written by Abraham ibn Ezra considers the exile to be an event which influ-enced the life of his fellow-Jews who are referred to as ‘the sons of our exile to the kingdom of Ishmael (that is Spain under Muslim rule) and Edom (meaning the countries of Christian Europe)’.11 The same meaning is found in much later commentary by Isaac Abarbanel.12
Basing on Ibn Ezra’s commentary, Moses ben Nahman Girondi analyses a fragment from Devarim 31:21 saying that ‘our expulsion’ is supposed to come to an end under condition that the Jewish people follow the commandments of God.13 His concept was built on the theory of redemption, of which his own lifetime was only an early stage.
The pupil of Solomon ben Abraham Aderet Bahye ben Asher (1255 – 1340) in his commentary also associated the exile with the ‘enemies’ from the sons of Edom (‘moving their fingers here and there’) and Ishmael (‘whose custom is to clean their hands and feet but not their heart’).14 He distinguished between re-flected messianic expectations related to the Land of Israel. He wrote, comment-ing on the fifth day of creation:
the fifth day hints towards the fifth millenary, when we were sent to exile among the idolaters that deal allegorically with a beastly soul. All this millenary from its begin-ning till its end was our exile. That is why it was not said concerbegin-ning the fifth day ‘And it was so’, since our exile is not forever, but after that there will be redemption.15 It seems that Bahye’s writings on exile are based on the commentary of Nahmanides, who also mentioned ‘the beast’ in whose domain the Jews were exiled.16
10 M. Halbertal, Maimonides: Life and Thought (Princeton, 2014), pp. 40–41.
11 Abraham Ibn Ezra, Commentary on Exodus, Itro, ch. 20. (Vienna: Menorah, 1925), p. 143: ונתולג ינב םודאו לאעמשי תוכלמב.
12 Abarbanel, Commentary on the Torah, Genesis, Vaihi 49 (Jerusalem: Bnei Arbal, 1964), p. 435: היה יכ םהה ’ויכלמב רשא ונתולג בור; Deuteronomy, Ki Tavo 28: ךוראה הז ונתולג.
13 Moses ben Nahman, Sefer Hageulah, in Kitvey Rabbenu Moshe ben Nahman ed. Ch. Chavel (Jerusalem: Mosad Ha-Rav Kook, 1963-64), vol. 1, p. 264.
14 Midrash of Rabenu Bahye on the Torah, pt 2, Devarim, Nitzavim 30 (Jerusalem, 1973), p. 82.
15 ibid., pt 1, Bereshit 2, p. 21.
16 Ramban, Commentary on Devarim, Ki Tavo 28: תיעיברה היחה דיב םויה ונתולג ןמז לע אוה יכו.
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Bahye suggested that the era of redemption was approaching. According to his accounts, the period of exile in which he lived was three times longer than the exile to Egypt, and it was coming to its end in 1360.17
David Kimkhi of Narbonne (1160 – 1235) compared ‘our exile’ to an act of sale telling that Jews were sold to the ‘gentiles’ by God.18 He also said, commenting on Psalms 126:4, that the exile was like the desert of Negev, and the redemption will be like streams.19
The crusades and the Reconquista reinforced Christian influence over Jewish conceptions concerning the Holy Land. Emigration to Jerusalem was declared an essential stage in a messianic scenario.20 Beginning in 1211, a number of Talmudic scholars from France and England went to Palestine in order to settle there. Their movement is known as ‘the emigration of the Three Hundred Rabbis’. The prin-cipal source dealing with these events is the chronicle ‘Malkhei Edom’ appended to Solomon ibn Vergas’ sixteenth-century book ‘Shevet Yehudah’.21 R. Chazan provided evidence of ‘some contemporary corroboration for this late account.’
Abraham, the son of Maimonides, in his report referred to Joseph ben Baruch of Clisson and his brother who visited Egypt on their way to Jerusalem.22 Spanish poet Judah Alharizi mentioned his meeting with the same French rabbis in the Holy City.23 This migration was criticized by the hasidei Ashkenaz.24 It seems that the impact of this migration is overestimated. The texts that have been preserved show the negative attitude of the Tosafists towards migration to Palestine. In their commentary on the case of a married couple, one of whom wants to leave for the land of Israel and the other decides to stay at home, it is said that this law does not apply at this time due to the danger of travelling on the roads. Referring to Chaim Cohen of Paris, they added that there was no longer any commandment to live in the land of Israel.25
17 ibid., pt 1 Lekh Lekha 12, p. 54: תולג לע רתוי םיקלח ’ג תויהל יוארש הז ונתולג ץק לע ררועתהל ליכשמה לע שי ,הבשחמב :אטחה יקלח ’גב ונאטחו ז”ע ונדבעש ןושאר תיבב ו”ק ,רובדה אטח לע הנש ל”ת םירצמב ודמעש ךותמ יכ ,םירצמ השעמה דגנכ ל”ת ,הבשחמה דגנכ ל”ת ,רובדה דגנכ הנש ל”ת ונילע רזגנ ,השעמבו רובדב.
18 Rabbi David Kimhi, Full Commentary on Psalms, A. Darom ed., Psalms 44 (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1971) p. 105: םיוגל ונתרכמ וליאכ ונתולג ךרוא ןכ.
19 ibid., Psalms 126, p. 285.
20 Y. Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perception of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (University of California Press, 2006), p. 70.
21 Y. Yuval, ibid.
22 R. Chazan, Medieval Jewry in Northern France. A Political and Social History (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1974), p. 86.
23 R. Chazan, ibid., p. 87.
24 A. Grossman, ‘Ties of Maharam of Rotenburg to the Land of Israel’ (Hebrew), Cathedra 84 (1997), p. 63.
25 Tossafot BT Kethubot 110:72: הווצמ וניא ושכעד םייח וניבר רמוא היהו ,םיכרד תנכס אכיאד הזה ןמזב גהונ וניא י’’ראב רודל.
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In his text addressed to the Jews of Lerida, rabbi Solomon ben Abraham Aderet (Rashba) wrote a commentary on the treatise of Yevamot 82b referring to the God-given inheritance of the Jewish people.26 He described two expulsions of Jews from the Land of Israel (the Babylonian captivity and that following the destruction of the Second Temple). Rashba added that there was a significant difference between the two expulsions. He said: ‘The first exile is ours and not that of Babylon’.27 The expulsion after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans is called by Rashba ‘the first expulsion’, because, in his opinion, all the Jews were dispersed to all the countries of the world. The exile to Babylon had a lesser impact on the integrity of the Jewish people, since only two tribes of twelve were expelled and only to one country. Not all of the exiles returned to the Land of Israel, but only a part of them did. Therefore, Rashba anticipates the future return to Palestine of the entire Jewish people. It is interesting that Rashba’s pupil Bahye ben Asher in his commentary also attributed the words ‘the first exile’ to the Jewish Diaspora of his times suggesting, however, that the era of redemption was coming soon.28 In any case, the legal status of the Land of Israel changed greatly after the destruction of the Second Temple and the expulsion of Jews, because it lost its sanctity.
It is likely that Rashba’s letter on the matter of expulsion is based upon Sefer Hageulah, written by Aderet’s teacher Nahmanides. The latter refers, among others, to Yosippon. This confirms Yuval’s statement concerning Christian influ-ence on the conception of the expulsion following the destruction of the Second Temple, since the author of the book of Yosippon used Pseudo-Hegesippus, Latin apocryphal texts the works of Jason of Cyrene and Nicholas of Damascus, and other sources.29 Rashba knew several families leaving for the Land of Israel. He also knew that his own teacher Moses ben Nahman fled to Palestine in order to escape the persecutions of Christian authorities.
Following Ibn Ezra’s commentary, Nahmanides in his Sefer Hageulah com-piles two different ideas of expulsion – that of the book of ovadia 2030 who most likely addressed the Babylonian exile, and that of expulsion of Jews after the destruction of the Second Temple under Vespasianus and Titus.31 Therefore, in
26 BT, Yevamot 82b: Which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it, they had a first, and a second possession, but they had no third one.
27 Responsa of Rashba, pt 4, 187 (Jerusalem, 1960), p. 53 – 54:
הז ונתולג לע אלא ,לבב תולג ןושאר תולג לע הרמאנ אלש.
28 Midrash of Rabenu Bahye on the Torah, Shemot 5 (Jerusalem, 1973), p. 18
29 B.Gustafsson, ‘‘Hegesippus’ Sources and His Reliability’’, Studia Patristica 3:1 (1961), pp. 227–232;
Y. Baer, ‘Sefer Yosippon ha-ibri’, Sefer Dinaburg (Jerusalem, 1949), p. 128 – 205; D. Flusser, ‘Mehaber Sefer Yosippon: demuto u-tequfato’, Zion 18 (1953), p. 109 – 126.
30 obadiah introduces the names of zarephath and Sepharad that in the Middle Ages were attributed to France and Spain respectively.
31 Moses ben Nahman, op.cit., p. 274.
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his interpretation of the story, the Jewish community which had been expelled from Jerusalem settled in Spain.32
An older contemporary of Nahmanides, David Kimhi from Narbonne (d.
1235) was probably the first author who identified Sepharad as Spain.33
Rashba’s opinion was not the only one widely known. A different point of view on the exile was expressed by the Jewish scholars of Provence. Abraham ben David of Posquières (Rabad, 1125 – 1198), in his letter concerning destroyed synagogues, explained why demolished Jewish cult places lose their sanctity. He draws an analogy with the exile from the Land of Israel, when all the abandoned synagogues lost their sanctity together with the whole land. It is remarkable that Rabad describes the synagogues in the Land of Israel as if all of them were gone.
He wrote:
There were several synagogues and houses of learning in Jerusalem and in the rest of the cities, and when the country lost its sanctity, all of them did, and their owners from the exile did not hurry to do with them all they needed.
Rabad did not mention a single synagogue or a single community left in Palestine after the destruction of the Second Temple. It is unclear if he knew anything about Jewish travelers or emigrants going to the Land of Israel in his times. At least, he believed that the entire Jewish people had been expelled from their land by Romans.
Did the notion of the exile have any particular legal meaning and practical im-plications in the responsa literature? It obviously influenced greatly the religious life of Jewish communities, starting with Talmudic regulations. In the Middle Ages, Jewish legal experts had to face, among others, certain practical issues con-cerning the consequences of the exile and local expulsions being a part of it.
In most of the cases the notion ‘our exile’ appears in medieval Hebrew texts in order to distinguish between the laws and customs of the period when the Jerusalem Temple still existed and the contemporary times when many ancient regulations were out of use. A German rabbi Yaakov Moelin in his codification of the customs dealing, among other things, with the rules of prayer, explained some changes of the ritual by the fact that the Temple does not exist ‘in our exile’.34
The same attitude could be found in the texts on litigations. Asher ben Jehiel (d. 1328) in his response examined a question dealing with two Jews sharing a
32 Nahmanides proposed the following interpretation of obadiah’s prophecy which says: «And the cap-tivity of Jerusalem, that is in Sepharad, shall possess the cities of the South ». Since the word «Sepharad»
was used for Spain, then the prophecy was considered to refer to Spain as well.
33 See David Kimhi’s commentary on obadiah 20: א"ינפס 'ירוקש דרפס תוצראו.
34 Sefer Maharil (minhagim), Hilkhot Tefilah, I. Spitzer ed. (Jerusalem: Machon Yerushalayim, 1989) 10:
וניתולגב אצמנ וניאו וישדקו שדקמ תאמוט לע רפכל קר םיאב ןניא אהו.
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household and related taxes. one of them took residence in another place and stopped paying the taxes in the city where he had lived before. His former fel-low and the entire community had to pay his share. When he returned for some reason, he was arrested by the Jewish community and reduced into slavery on account of his debts. Then his fellow tried to sue him in order to make him com-pensate for the additional costs incurred due to his absence. Asher declared such a solution to be wrong. In his opinion, the community should in this case should hold the debtor in prison until the debt is repaid without applying to a Jewish tribunal. Asher relied on a usage which was spread ‘in all the diaspora of the exile of Israel’ and therefore it could apply in a particular case of recovering unpaid debts.35 Here the author point out two important issues: first, exile is equaled to the entire Jewish people. Second, it is underlined that local taxation is regulated according to local usages, and not following halakhah (Jewish laws in a proper sense). Since nearly all taxes were imposed by non-Jewish rulers, the issues related to them were out of the domain of Jewish law.
Isaac ben Judah Haccohen of Manosque (the first half of the sixteenth cen-tury) in his responsum mentioned both the exile and the return to the Land of Israel. The text deals with a man who decided to leave for Palestine together with his widowed mother-in-law (she agreed to pay for the trip). His wife did not want to join them, and the couple decided to divorce. Then his mother-in-law changed her mind. She refused to take with her a person who had repudiated
‘the wife of his youth’, and the man stayed at home. He thereby tried to annul his divorce.36 The law was on his side. Isaac ben Judah characterized his country as ‘the boundaries of our exile’.37 This text shows how a passage from exile to the Holy Land could determine the future of family members. From a legal point of view, this was considered to be justifiable cause for the dissolution of a marriage.
Isaac ben Sheshet Perfet (1326 – 1408) referred ironically to the Jews who explained their desire to avoid fulfilling the strict regulations on post-mortem examinations of meat, saying ‘See how greatly we were oppressed in this our exile that we could not even raise our head due to numerous barriers binding and keep-ing us down to the land’.38 Here the exile is treated is an issue leading to indulgence in defining a law concerning the ritual slaughter.39
In another letter concerning the Jews of France Isaac ben Sheshet wrote:
‘When God broadened the scope of the exile and gave them a share in the
35 Shut ha-Rosh 7:11 (zhovkva, 1803), p. 20: םישבוח ,להקל סמ בייחש ימ ,לארשי תולג תצופת לכב טושפ גהנמ יכ ד”ב ינפב ותוא ןיאיבמ ןיאו ,רהוסה תיבב ותוא.
36 Teshuvot chachmei Provence 69 (Jerusalem, 1967), p. 240.
37 ibid.: וניתולג תולילגב
38 Responsa of Bar Sheshet 163 (Vilna, 1874) p. 70:
המדאה לע ונתוא וררצו ונורדג רשא םירדגה בורמ שאר םירהל ונלוכי אלש דע ,הז ונתולגב ונוצחל המכ ואר :םירמואו.
39 ibid.
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kingdom of France’.40 In this text exile is just another word for ‘territory’ where the Jews lived, their right to dwell in that country being justified by God’s will.
kingdom of France’.40 In this text exile is just another word for ‘territory’ where the Jews lived, their right to dwell in that country being justified by God’s will.