Judah ben Samuel

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Jehuda ben Samuel , called Jehuda he- Hasid ("Jehuda der Pious", born around 1140–50, presumably in Speyer ; died on February 22, 1217 in Regensburg ), was a German-Jewish scribe , philosopher and ethicist . He was one of the most important representatives of a movement within high medieval Judaism, the Chaside Ashkenas , who, as a reaction to the bloody persecution of Jews during the time of the Crusades from 1096 , opposed the strictly rational rabbinical scholarship with a mystical-spiritual piety, asceticism and veneration of martyrs.

Life

Jehuda ben Samuel he-Chasid came from the well-known rabbis and scholarly family of the calonymids . His father was the scribe Samuel ben Qalonymus he-Chasid . Besides his father, one of his teachers was his brother Abraham ben Samuel He-Hasid, who later worked as a rabbi and liturgical poet . After his work in Speyer, Jehuda the Pious moved his residence to Regensburg in 1195/96, probably due to anti-Jewish riots on the Lower Rhine, where there was also a strong Jewish community . There he founded a Talmud school . Through Jehuda ben Samuel he-Chasid, the city briefly rose to a center of Jewish learning, from which contacts to communities and scholars from Eastern Europe such as B. Prague or Krakow were knotted. He stayed there until his death in 1217. The most important student of Yehudah the Pious is Eleazar von Worms , who is related to him . Other historically suspected students of his are Isaac ben Moses von Wien and Baruch ben Samuel von Mainz .

While there are no contemporary sources about Yehuda he-Chasid, numerous legends about him from the 15th and 16th centuries have survived. Although there is in principle no official veneration of saints in Judaism, he was transfigured after his death in Jewish hagiography, at least in German-speaking countries, as an ascetic "saint" and miracle healer ( Baàlé Schemot ).

Works

Sefer Chasidim by Juda ben Samuel, edition from 1724, Frankfurt am Main

The most influential of the works partially ascribed to him is the Sefer Chasidim (“Book of the Pious”), which, according to Gershom Scholem, represents “one of the most important and memorable products of Jewish literature”, which allows “to delve deep into the real life of a Jewish community to gain insight in all of its utterances. ”It is a partly socio-ethical and socially revolutionary text that opened up new perspectives to medieval Judaism, but at the same time a work full of puzzling and mystical symbolism that is difficult to interpret. The work is a unique source of its kind for Jewish life and its Christian environment in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. Another important book ( Sefer HaKavod - "Book of Honor") was lost and has only survived in fragments through quotations from other authors. Most of his writings on esoteric theology have been lost. Some passages of the Book of the Pious also explain the philosophical-mystical side of the Tanach and Talmud. The mystical-esoteric aspects of the Book of the Pious , however, had hardly any effect. Later, the Spanish Kabbalah was more authoritative.

Worth knowing

The importance of Juda ben Samuel is emphasized by a legend that Juspa Schammes has handed down in his collection of stories Ma'asseh nissim : According to this, while his mother was pregnant with him, a carter tried to pick her up in the Hinteren Judengasse , a narrow alley the east side of the Worms synagogue , to be run over with a cart. She was only saved because the synagogue wall that she pressed against had moved inward. The dent in the wall can still be seen today.

Eleazar ben Juda ben Kalonymos , rabbi of the Jewish community of Worms and a leader in the association of ShUM cities , was his student.

literature

Text editions and translations

  • Sefer Ḥassidīm
    • Sēfer ha-ḥasîdîm , printed by Salman Aftrur, Frankfurt am Main, 1724.
    • Sefer hasidim. Ed. Reuven Margaliot, Mosad ha-Rab Quq, Jerusalem 1957 (edition of the Hebrew text after the first print in Bologna 1538).
    • Sefer ha-asidim. Ed. Jehuda Wistinetzki, Berlin 1891, reprints Frankfurt 1924, Jerusalem 1969. (Reprint of the Parma manuscript from Codex De Rossi 1133).
    • Sefer Hasidim. Edited by Ivan G. Marcus, Jerusalem 1985 (Hebrew text based on MS Parma H3280).
    • Yehudah HaChasid: Sefer Hasidim. Edited by Shimon Gutman, 2 volumes, Otzar HaPoskim, Jerusalem 2007 (Hebrew reading edition with commentary) Review by Eliezer Brodt, 2007.
    • Moritz Güdemann: History of the educational system and the culture of the Jews in France and Germany ... Volume 1, Vienna 1880, pp. 178-198 (excerpts translation into German) ( digitized at archive.org ).
    • The ethics of Judaism. Excerpts from the "Book of the Pious" (sefer hahasidīm) by R. Jehuda Hachassid. Compiled and translated by Abraham Sulzbach , Singer & Friedberg, Frankfurt a. M. 1923 ( digitized version of the Frankfurt University Library).
    • Jehudah ben Chemouel le Hassid: Sefer Ḥassidim. Le guide des hassidim. Tradition de l'hébreu et présenté par Édouard Gourévitch, Cerf, Paris 1988, ISBN 2-204-02827-4 (French translation according to academic standards).
    • SA Singer: Medieval Jewish Mysticism, Book of the Pious. Northbrook 1971 (partial English translation).
    • Susanne Borchers: Jewish women's life in the Middle Ages. Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1998, ISBN 3-631-33490-7 (German partial translation).

Secondary literature

  • Tamar Alexander: Dream Narratives in Sefer Hasidim. In: Trumah . 12 (2002), pp. 65-79.
  • Andreas Angerstorfer : Rabbi Jehuda ben Samuel he-Hasid (around 1140-1217), "the Pietist". In: Mandred Treml u. a. (Ed.): History and culture of the Jews in Bavaria. Resumes. Munich 1988, pp. 13-20.
  • Joseph Dan: Rabbi Jehudah the Pious and Caesarius of Heisterbach . Common Motifs in their Stories, in: Joseph Heinemann, Dov Noy (eds.): Agada and Folk-Literature , Jerusalem 1971, pp. 18-27. Also in: J. Dan: Jewish Mysticism , Vol. 3, The Modern Period, J. Aronson 1999, Northvale, NJ / Jerusalem, ISBN 0765760096 , pp. 297-309
  • Christoph Daxelmüller : Rabbi Juda ha-chasid of Regensburg. In: University of Regensburg (ed.): Learned Regensburg - City of Science. Research centers in the course of time, Regensburg 1995, pp. 105–118.
  • Ithamar Gruenwald: Normative and popular religiosity in Sefer Chasidim. In: Karl E. Grözinger (Ed.): Judaism in the German-speaking area. Berlin 1991, pp. 117-126.
  • Nathanael Riemer: The “ghost car” in Sefer Hassidim and its reception in Jewish literature , in: Judaica. Contributions to the understanding of Judaism, 68 (March 2012), pp. 70–80.
  • SA Horodezky: Art. Jehuda he-Chassid , in: Encyclopaedia Judaica , 1. A., Vol. 8, Berlin 1931, 945–950.
  • Johann Maier : Rab and Chakam in the Sefer Chasidim. In: Julius Carlebach (ed.): The Ashkenazi Rabbinate. Studies of Faith and Fate. Berlin 1995, pp. 37-119.
  • Ivan G. Marcus: The Recensions and Structure of "Sefer Ḥasidim" , in: Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 45 (1978), pp. 131-153.
  • Peter Schäfer: Jews and Christians in the High Middle Ages: The "Book of the Pious" , in: Christoph Cluse (Hg.): Europe's Jews in the Middle Ages . Contributions to the international symposium in Speyer from October 20 to 25, 2002, Kliomedia, Trier 2004, pp. 45–59. Also as: Jews and Christians in the High Middle Ages: The Book of Pious , in: Christoph Cluse (ed.): The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages (Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries) , Brepols, Turnhout 2004, p. 29– 42.
  • Haym Soloveitchik: The Midrasch, Sefer Hasidim and the Changing Face of God , in: P. Schäfer u. a. (Ed.): Joseph Dan Festschrift , Tübingen 2005, pp. 165–178.
  • Haym Soloveitchik: Piety, Pietism and German Pietism . Sefer Hasidim I and the Influence of Hasidei Ashkenaz, in: Jewish Quarterly Review 92 / 3-4 (2002), pp. 455-493.
  • Haym Soloveitchik: Three Themes in the Sefer Hasidim , in: AJS Review 1 (1976), pp. 311-357.
  • Elijahu Tarantul: The »Book of the Pious« in the field of tension between orality and written form , in: Aschkenas - Journal for History and Culture of the Jews 15/1 (2005), pp. 1–23.
  • Joshua Trachtenberg: Jewish Magic and Superstition , Philadelphia 1939.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joseph Dan:  JUDAH BEN SAMUEL HE-ḤASID. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2nd Edition. Volume 11, Detroit / New York a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-0-02-865939-8 , pp. 490-491 (English) .: "c. 1150"; also Rachel Adelman: The Return of the Repressed: Pirqe De-Rabbi Eliezer and the Pseudepigrapha , Supplements to the Journal for the study of Judaism 1140, Brill, Leiden 2009, p. 175 ( available from Google Books )
  2. ^ Roland Goetschel:  Kabbala, I. Judentum . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie (TRE). Volume 17, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1988, ISBN 3-11-011506-9 , pp. 487-500. Here p. 489: "about 1146".
  3. ^ Kaufmann Kohler, Max Schloessinger:  Jehuda ben Samuel he-Chasid. In: Isidore Singer (Ed.): Jewish Encyclopedia . Funk and Wagnalls, New York 1901-1906 .; U. Mattejiet: J [ehuda] ben Samuel hä Chasid . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 5, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1991, ISBN 3-7608-8905-0 , Sp. 347.
  4. ^ Marion Aptroot and Roland Gruschka: Yiddish. History and culture of a world language. CH Beck, Munich, 2010, p. 35.
  5. ↑ Ort der Gelehrsamkeit / Regensburg - A community with a great past on the website of the Jüdischen Allgemeine
  6. ^ Leo Trepp: History of the German Jews , Verlag Kohlhammer, 1996, p. 35
  7. ^ Kaufmann Kohler, Max Schloessinger:  Jehuda ben Samuel he-Chasid. In: Isidore Singer (Ed.): Jewish Encyclopedia . Funk and Wagnalls, New York 1901-1906.
  8. ↑ Susanne Galley:  Popular Piety, II. Judaism . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie (TRE). Volume 35, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2003, ISBN 3-11-017781-1 , pp. 218-221. Here p. 221.
  9. ^ Gershom Scholem: The Jewish mysticism in its main currents , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M., 2000, p. 90
  10. ↑ Freie Universität Berlin / Institute for Jewish Studies: DFG project / Jews and Christians in the Sefer Hasidim ("Book of the Pious") ( Memento of the original from March 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked . Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de
  11. ↑ Cf. Joseph Dan:  ḤASIDIM, SEFER. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2nd Edition. Volume 8, Detroit / New York a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-0-02-865936-7 , pp. 392-393 (English).
  12. ↑ Michael Toch: The Jews in the Middle Ages , Encyclopedia of German History, Volume 44, Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich, 2003, p. 30
  13. ↑ Juspa Schammes: The Rabbi-Jehuda-Hechassid-Mauer . In: Fritz Reuter and Ulrike Schäfer: Miracle stories from Warmaisa. Juspa Schammes, his Ma'asseh nissim and the Jewish Worms in the 17th century . Warmaisa, Worms 2007. ISBN 3-00-017077-4 , p. 18.
  14. ^ Fritz Reuter : Warmaisa: 1000 years of Jews in Worms . 3. Edition. Self-published, Worms 2009. ISBN 978-3-8391-0201-5 , p. 52.
personal data
SURNAME Judah ben Samuel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jehuda ben Samuel he-Chasid; Yehuda ben Samuel ha-Hasid; Yehuda the Pious
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Jewish scribe and philosopher, representative of the Haside Ashkenaz
DATE OF BIRTH between 1140 and 1150
PLACE OF BIRTH unsure: Speyer
DATE OF DEATH February 22, 1217
Place of death regensburg