Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages

by Jacob Katz

A new edition of Katz's study of European Jewish society at end of the Middle Ages. It taps into a rich source, the responsa literature of the Rabbinic establishment of the time, a time when self-governing communities of Jews dealt with their own civil and religious issues.

Genres: History, Judaism

392 pages, Paperback

First published September 10, 1973

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for the basics of the early modern period in Jewish history. . . covers the kehillah structure and its breakdown, family and community life, the birth and impact of modern yeshivot, the Haskalah, Sabbateanism, Hasidism, and more. Definitely foundational, informative, and important. I recommend this book for anyone looking to start learning about this critical time period in Jewish history. . . and anyone interested in learning more about Jacob Katz and his views. An excellent read. . . glad I opted to buy it because it’s the kind of book I’ll be referring to again and again.

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tradition and Crisis was first published in Hebrew (Masoret u-Mashber) in the 1950s, before the popularity of social history as a discipline, which is part of why it was such a seminal work. Prior to then, people only liked to study historical dynamics, not static institutions. Therefore, Katz’s method of examining the static institutions of the Jewish community and how they eventually did collapse and change was a highly novel approach at the time.
The book looks at the “end of the middle ages,” or what people would now call the Early Modern period, and it looks at Ashkenazic Jewry, which, at least during those centuries, can actually be studied as a unit. He examines the kehilla, the parnasim, the rabbinate, the yeshivot, the chevrot, the economic profile of the community and other social elements that had remained constant in traditional Jewish life. Then, he traces how rationalism/Enlightenment and hasidism were the two forces that destabilized this traditional, pre-modern existence (to use the Weberian idea of tradition and modernity) and ushered in an irrevocable new era.
The most accepted and influential point that Katz makes is about the role of neutral space in carving out the social raw materials for Jewish modernization. Prior to the existence of neutral space, there was no society into which Jews could integrate other than one that was saturated and steeped in religious Christianity. As social gathering, recreation, science, academics and politics became less overtly Christian for the rest of the world, there emerged a space into which it was even possible for the Jews to integrate. Everyone cites Katz on this point.
The other important implication of Katz’s study is for periodization. When does the Jewish “middle ages” end and the modern period begin? Katz would argue that although defection and modern thinking had existed among isolated Jewish individuals for a long time, it was only around 1775 that things reached a breaking point, and the number of people involved in non-traditional life caused the total and irreversible disruption of the traditional social institutional structure. Once people were aware that they had options, traditional life became a conscious choice, which made it entirely different from the old kind of traditional life. The “crisis” facing traditional Jewish existence ushered in a new period of Jewish history for everyone.
The most controversial point here is that Hasidism was to eastern Europe what the Enlightenment was to western Europe in its destabilization, in the way that it fostered a “crisis” to the “tradition”. Most scholars would agree that it’s not fair to look at the two phenomena as parallels.

[Frieda Vizel]

Very informative and interesting book, albeit not an easy read. The sociological factors that influenced traditional Judaism of this era, as analyzed by Katz, were quite fascinating and seemed accurate for whatever remains of these societies today. Some parts of the society, especially the family life and the recreational life, exist in pretty much the same way in today's Hasidic society. Katz's analysis on the elements within the Jewish society that led to the rise of two opposite movements --Hasidism and Haskalah -- are important introductions to either of these two movements. He places the success of the Hasidic movement as a consequence of the disintegration of the kehilla and Haskalah in relation to the European enlightenment. He discusses traditional society and why some historical events (ie rise of luranic Kabbalism and sabbateanism) did not disintegrate the structure of the existing traditional society and why Hasidism and Haskalah were able to. These insights were quite revelatory.

It was fun to connect the lifestyle and culture of the End of the Middle Ages with surviving stories (maases) in Hasidic folklore in which these personalities feature prominently (ie the court jew, the beggar, the rich Jewish financer, etc).

The book includes an Afterword that was written with the translation from Hebrew to English 40 years after the book was originally published, with a historiography of sorts on other scholarship that appeared since publication. The author discusses how Katz's work influenced other scholarship, was responded to or criticized.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good only if you want to read an idealized version of Jewish history. Jacob Katz isn't writing a history of Jewish life at the end of the Middle Ages as it happened. Instead, drawing solely from internal elite sources, Katz constructs a Weberian social history that generalizes what life would be for Jewry during the early modern period. However, there are no concrete dates or places to which Katz refers. It would be nice to think that Jewish life during the early modern period was this clear cut, but it's not.