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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2014
Unlike the works of the “old masters” in the fine arts, often seen as the apotheosis of the creative spirit of their and all time, works of historiography have a much briefer shelf life. It is in the nature of scholarship to subject forebears to critical scrutiny; few works hold up beyond a generation or so. We are charged in this forum with reconsidering one of the “old masters” of Jewish historiography, Salo Wittmayer Baron, whose formidable mastery of languages and sources and his prolific output position him as one of the preeminent twentieth-century historians of the Jewish people. Has Baron's three-volume The Jewish Community, a masterpiece of historical synthesis first published in 1942, still retained its scholarly relevance? What is striking about this work is how much ahead of his time it was in certain respects, and how, in this work on a subject so central to understanding pre-modern Jewish life, Baron's construction was ahistorical in crucial dimensions. Baron's Jewish Community has fallen into disuse, so much so that in the Hebrew collection, Kehal Yisrael (2004), intended to portray specific Jewries and their communal lives, the latter two volumes, comprising dozens of essays and over 800 pages, written by leading Israeli scholars, contain only two references to Baron, in the notes. This blatant example of ignoring Baron's treasure trove is true not only of Israeli scholarship: most recent studies of Jewish communities make scarcely any use of it. Is the neglect deserved?
1. Baron, Salo Wittmayer, The Jewish Community (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1942)Google Scholar, republished by Greenwood Press in 1972.
2. Kehal Yisrael, vol. 1, ed. Gafni, Isaiah, vol. 2, ed. Grossman, Avraham and Kaplan, Yosef, vol. 3, ed. Bartal, Israel (Jerusalem: Merkaz Shazar, 2004)Google Scholar, vol. 2–3.
3. Baron, The Jewish Community, 1942 ed., 1:3.
4. Robert Seltzer, “Simon Dubnow,” 2010. YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Dubnow_Simon (accessed June 13, 2014).
5. Baron, The Jewish Community, 2:351.
6. Baron, The Jewish Community, 1:22.
7. See e.g., Simonsohn, Uriel, A Common Justice: The Legal Allegiances of Christians and Jews Under Early Islam (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 25–60Google Scholar, 120–146, 174–204; Kasper-Marienberg, Verena, “Vor Euer Kayserlichen Mayestät Justiz-Thron”: die Frankfurter jüdische Gemeinde am Reichshofrat in josephinischer Zeit (1765–1790) (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2012).Google Scholar
8. A full survey of the literature would overwhelm this brief discussion. Some landmark studies include Baumgarten, Elisheva, Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe (Princeton, 2007)Google Scholar; Marcus, Ivan, Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe (New Haven, 1998)Google Scholar; Kaplan, Debra, Beyond Expulsion: Jews, Christians, and Reformation Strasbourg (Stanford, 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar See Mediterranean Historical Review 27, no. 2 (2012)Google Scholar, devoted to Jewish minorities in Venice's Greek territories—not to mention the burgeoning world of Genizah studies.
9. Baron, The Jewish Community, 2:174.
10. Baron, The Jewish Community, 2:167.
11. Baer, Yizhak, “Ha-yesodot ve-ha-hathalot shel ʿirgun ha-kehilah ha-yehudit be-yemei ha-beinyim,” Zion 15 (1950): 1–41Google Scholar. English trans., “The Origins of Jewish Communal Organization in the Middle Ages,” in Binah: Studies in Jewish History, vol. 1, ed. Dan, J. (1988).Google Scholar
12. For Ashkenaz, see Grossman, Avraham, “Ha-kehillah ha-yehudit be-'ashkenaz ba-me'ot ha-10 ve-ha-11,” in Grossman and Kaplan, Kehal yisra'el (Jerusalem: Mercaz Shazar, 2004) 2:57–74Google Scholar; Soloveitchik, Haim, Sh'ut ke-makor histori (Jerusalem: Mercaz Shazar and Hebrew University, 1991), 87–106.Google Scholar
13. Baron's testimony accessed at http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/e/eichmann-adolf/transcripts/Sessions/index-01.html, sessions 12 and 13.
