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Apostasy

APOSTASY, term applied by members of the deserted faith for the change of one faith, set of loyalties, and worship for another. The conception of apostasy could not arise in the atmosphere of polytheism practiced in antiquity before the advent of *Hellenism. The Bible frequently condemns those worshiping other gods, but though this is conceived as a heinous transgression it still lacks the totality of apostasy-conversion.

A product of the spread of Hellenistic culture in Ereẓ Israel was the group of Mityavvenim (hellenizers), who according to Jewish sources adopted Hellenistic ways of life and religious worship during the reign of *Antiochus IV Epiphanes in the second century B.C.E. Some scholars take these to be the instigators of his persecution of the Jewish faith. In the Books of the *Maccabees, the Jews who abetted the officials of the Seleucids or joined their armies are described as renegades and apostates. The Tosefta (Suk. 4:28) has preserved the tale of "Miriam of the House of Bilga [a priestly house] who apostatized (שנשתמדה) and married an official of one of the kings of Greece. As the Greeks entered the Temple, Miriam came and struck the top of the altar, saying… 'You have destroyed the property of Israel and did not come to their help in their trouble.'" The woman appears to express disillusionment with the Jewish God. Because of her apostasy, her family was disqualified from certain privileges and symbols of priestly status. *Tiberius Julius Alexander, the nephew of the philosopher *Philo Judaeus, went to the extreme of commanding some of the Roman units during the siege and subsequent destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. As described in the Talmud, the figure of the second-century scholar and teacher Elisha b. Avuyah, who joined the pagan-philosophic camp, disputed with Jewish scholars, and ridiculed the Jewish religion, has a certain grandeur and is accorded a grudging respect.

After the rise of Christianity apostasy became an accompanying phenomenon of Jewish life, a problem between Jews and their neighbors, and a constant source of irritation to the various religious camps as well as to the apostates themselves. The forlorn hope of Judeo-Christians (see *Jewish-Christian sects) of reconciling the Law with the Cross petered out. By the latter half of the second century it had been rejected both by the vast majority of Christians and by Jews. The parting of the ways between church and synagogue had been reached. Acceptance of Christianity that had forsaken the Law was regarded by Jews as apostasy in the fullest sense. The Christian dogmas of Incarnation and Trinity gave to the acceptance of Christianity an idolatrous character (avodah zarah).

The history of ferocious persecutions and systematic humiliations which the Jews subsequently endured for their religion (see *History, Jewish; Church, *Catholic; Jewish *Badge; *Blood Libel; Desecration of the *Host) combined to invest apostasy from Judaism with the character of desertion from the persecuted and a crossing over to the persecuting ruling power. This attitude was enhanced by the fundamental divergence between Jewish and Christian approaches to conversion to the respective faiths, which led Jews to draw a strong moral distinction between apostasy and *proselytism, regarding the two in an entirely different light. As developed in Jewish theory and practice, proselytism to Judaism was made dependent on full and deliberate acceptance of partnership in the Jewish fate and historical consciousness, as well as of belief in its faith and hopes. The attitude to apostasy, however, was conditioned by the Christian missionary approach, which, even when abstaining from the use of threats or forcible coercion, still set out to gain converts by compelling Jews to attend missionary *sermons and involved automatic betterment of the social and legal status of the apostate. This therefore appeared in the Jewish view as a vulgar and essentially nonspiritual attempt to harm souls through moral pressure and promise of material gain. The fear of expulsion or massacre, which always loomed in the background, very often was the root cause of apostasy. Even an apostate whose sincerity was beyond all doubt, like *Abner of Burgos, stated in the 14th century that the starting point for his apostasy was the "revelation" he experienced, in which "I saw the poverty of the Jews, my people, from whom I am descended, who have been oppressed and broken and heavily burdened by taxes throughout their long captivity – this people that has lost its former honor… and there is none to help or sustain them… when I had meditated on the matter, I went to the synagogue weeping sorely and sad at heart. And I prayed… And in a dream, I saw the figure of a tall man who said to me, 'Why dost thou slumber? Hearken unto these words… for I say unto thee that the Jews have remained so long in captivity for their folly and wickedness and because they have no teacher of righteousness through whom they may recognize the truth" (Baer, Spain, 1 (1961), 328–9). To those who gloried in shouldering the burden of the Jewish fate and history, were imbued with love of Jewish culture and way of life, and continued to hope for salvation and the establishment of God's kingdom in the future, such a motivation inevitably appeared the outpourings of a weakling and the self-justification of a traitor. This attitude was strengthened in regard to many apostates who became willing and active virulent enemies of Judaism, like Abner of Burgos himself.

Naturally, apostasy was not always motivated by debased considerations, the historical situation, or meditations of this nature. The autobiography of an apostate of the first half of the 12th century (Hermannus quondam Judaeus, opusculum de conversione sua, ed. by G. Niemeyer, 1963; see *Hermanus Quondan Judaeus) demonstrates the effect of gradual absorption of Christian ideas and acclimatization to the Christian mode of life through everyday contacts and conversation. It brought the author, Judah ha-Levi of Cologne, to convert to Christianity and become a Premonstratensian monk.

In the Islamic environment the problems were much the same; some apostates attained prominent positions in Islamic states and society, the outer expressions of tension caused by apostasy being on a smaller scale (see below Apostasy in Islam). In the perpetual conflict and tensions that existed between Jews and Christians in medieval Europe, conversion from one faith to another, although rare, was still more frequent than either side cared to admit clearly. Thus, on the occasion of a halakhic deliberation in the 12th century, the talmudist Jacob b. Meir *Tam reported: "More than 20 letters of divorce from apostates have been written in Paris and France… and also in Lorraine… I have also seen myself the letter of divorce given by the son-in-law of the late noble R. Jacob the Parnas who has apostatized" (Sefer ha-Yashar, ed. by S. Rosenthal (1898), 45, no. 25).

Some apostates founded influential families whose Jewish origin was well known among Christians, such as the *Pierleoni family in Rome, the patrician Jud family in Cologne, and the *Jozefowicz family in Poland-Lithuania. Certainly not all apostates from Judaism attempted to injure their brethren. When a number of apostates were asked in 1236 whether there was truth in the blood libel, they denied it categorically. Prominent among the apostates who deliberately set out to attack Judaism were Nicholas *Donin in France, Pablo *Christiani, and Hieronymus de Sancta Fide (Joshua *Lorki) in Spain, and Petrus *Nigri (Schwarz) in Germany. These in the 13th to 15th centuries led the attack on Judaism in the theological *disputations, preached against Judaism, and proposed coercive measures to force Jews to adopt Christianity. Other converts who achieved high rank in the church, like Pablo de Santa Maria (Solomon ha-Levi), who became archbishop of Burgos, did everything in their power to combat Judaism. The most virulent representative of anti-Jewish animus was Abner of Burgos, who initiated the intensified persecution of the Jews in Christian Spain during the 14th and 15th centuries by formulating a complete theory that subsumes the necessity for, and justification of, such persecution. He advised the abolition of Jewish *autonomy, arguing with vicious irony that the Messiah would not come to the Jews "until the Jews possess no authority, not even such petty authority as is exercised over them by their rabbis and communal wardens, those coarse creatures who lord it over the people like kings. They hold out vain promises to them in order to keep them under constant control. Only with the elimination of these dignitaries and judges and officers will salvation come to the masses" (polemical tract, Baer, op. cit., 350). In the name of "many discerning Jews," Abner blamed the pope and Christian monarchs for failing to oppress the Jews adequately. The conditions of salvation for the Jews would come only "when many Jewish communities are massacred and the particular generation of Jews is thereby reduced in numbers, some Jews immediately convert to the dominant Christian faith out of fear, and in that way a handful are saved… and the pain of impoverishment will lead to an increase of shamelessness among them, that is, they will no longer be ashamed to profess the truth openly and convert to Christianity" (Baer, op. cit. 353–4). By this means this apostate tried to reinforce his own experience of Jewish weakness and convert it into a terrible reality that would force many more Jews to relinquish their faith.

At the time of the expulsions from Spain and Portugal at the end of the 15th century, a sharp distinction was made by Jews between the renegade apostates, whom they considered an evil and the root cause of the wave of persecutions, and the mass of forced converts, the *anusim or *Marranos, whom they still regarded as brethren, though obliged to practice Judaism clandestinely. However, in realization, the program promoted by Abner of Burgos and others like him created a strong revulsion in Christian society against both the Marranos and genuine converts alike. Political events and social attitudes in Christian Spain in the 15th to 16th centuries fomented the concept whereby the "New Christians" were not to be equated with, and trusted as, the "Old Christians" of "pure Christian blood." Thus it could happen that the second general of the Jesuit order, Diego Lainez, had to face opposition within the order because of his Jewish blood.

In the Renaissance and *Reformation environment apostasy occurred in various circumstances. One type of apostate was the rootless intellectual like Flavius *Mithridates, a translator from Hebrew and an influential expositor of Hebrew works. Others were led to convert to Christianity by their superficial contacts with Renaissance circles and the new importance attached by humanists like Johannes *Reuchlin and *Pico della Mirandola to learning Hebrew from Jewish teachers. The impoverished conditions of late medieval Germany gave rise to the opportunist who could change over at least three times from Judaism to Christianity and back again, and who on one occasion of reconversion quoted a proverb he had heard: "lasse dich taufen, ich will dir vil Gulden schaffen" ("Become baptized: I will get you plenty of money"; R. Strauss, Urkunden und Aktenstuecke zur Geschichte der Juden in Regensburg (1960), 64–66). The basic attitude of both Jews and Christians toward apostates did not change with the Reformation. Many of the teachers of Hebrew to Christians were Jews, most of them apostates. They also cooperated in bringing out Reformation translations of the Bible. In his later days, Martin *Luther displayed marked distrust of apostates from Judaism. The attacks on the Talmud made by Johann *Pfefferkorn on the eve of the Reformation and the denunciation poured by Anton *Margarita on Jewish ritual practices and way of life continued in new circumstances the tradition of virulent anti-Jewish hatemongering by apostates.

The stimulus provided by 18th-century Enlightenment, stirrings toward *assimilation on the cultural and social plane, and aspirations to attain *Emancipation, inaugurated a trend toward apostasy in the upper circles of Jewish society in Central and Western Europe. A number of Jews opted for Christianity as the basis of European culture and its most sublime expression, despising their Jewish background and traditional way of life as debased and degraded. Typical was a society intellectual like Rachel *Varnhagen von Ense. Others considered apostasy the most facile and ready way of attaining civil equality as an individual before the Jews as such had achieved emancipation. Moses *Mendelssohn was publicly challenged to become converted if he did not refute the testimony advanced in proof of Christianity (see *Disputations). David *Friedlaender proposed in the name of several "Jewish heads of families" to be permitted to accept Christianity without having to subscribe to its "historical dogmas." Jews also left Judaism because they did not find communal obligations or activity to their taste.

Isaac *D'Israeli stated in 1813 to the board of the Bevis Marks congregation in London, as a reason for his refusal to act as warden, that he was "a person who has always lived out of the sphere of your observation; of retired habits of life; who can never unite in your public worship, because, as now conducted, it disturbs, instead of exciting, religious emotions, a circumstance of general acknowledgment; who has only tolerated some part of your ritual, willing to concede all he can in those matters which he holds to be indifferent." This indifference led him to baptize his illustrious son Benjamin in 1817 while formally remaining a Jew himself, a path taken by many others of a similar frame of mind who had their children baptized at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. The attitude of indifference was reinforced by the view that relegated religion to the status of an element in the universal culture or a cell in the social structure.

From the second half of the 18th century the ties linking the individual with the social unit became loosened in the upper strata of European society. Jews then increasingly absorbed the culture and adopted the language of their environment. Baptism was submitted as the visiting card demanded by Christian society for its price of admission. Many able young Jewish intellectuals, among them men outstanding in their field like the jurist Eduard *Gans, Ludwig *Boerne, and the poet Heinrich *Heine, who had first wanted to use their creative activity in the Jewish framework, left Judaism to be able to work within, and contribute to, European culture and society. In some communities, such as Berlin, more than half of the descendants of the old patrician Jewish families adopted Christianity, including the Mendelssohn family. The majority of these did not claim to be drawn by an essential attraction to Christianity or act under rigorous pressure. Apostasy was regarded as a social formality performed for the sake of culture, society, or career. Many of the sensitive among them bitterly regretted their action. Much of Heinrich Heine's work is dominated by a pervasive longing for Judaism, and a biting irony against himself and his fellow apostates, their snobbery and social climbing by means of Christianity.

Karl *Marx, baptized as a child, later professed contempt for and revulsion against Judaism as the representative of Mammon. In his Christian environment Benjamin Disraeli developed a kind of pride in what he considered the destiny and genius of the Jewish "race." The heroine of his novel Tancred, Eva, sarcastically asks Tancred: "Pray are you of those Franks who worship a Jewess; or of those others who revile her, break her images, and blaspheme her pictures?" When the Christian refers to the punishment of the Jews for crucifying Jesus, Disraeli's Jewess answers with the ancient argument used by Jews in disputations: "Suppose the Jews had not prevailed upon the Romans to crucify Jesus, what would have become of the Atonement?" When the Christian answers that the Crucifixion was preordained," 'Ah,' said the lady, 'preordained by the creator of the World for countless ages! Where then was the inexpiable crime of those who fulfilled the beneficent intention? The holy race supplied the victim and the immolators…. Persecute us! Why if you believed what you profess, you should kneel to us! You raise statues to the hero who saves a country. We have saved the human race, and you persecute us for doing it.'"

Benjamin Disraeli was representative of a group of apostates who considered themselves deeply Christian in a mythical and social sense and in consequence Jewish in a racial and spiritual sense. In the 19th century they were often active in missions to the Jews, like Bishop Michael Solomon *Alexander in Jerusalem, while at the same time being very responsive to Zionism and its aspirations.

With the granting of emancipation to Jews in most of Western and Central Europe the brutal social pressure for the "visiting card of baptism" moderated. On the other hand, many Jewish scholars and scientists, in particular in Germany and Austria, became baptized for the sake of a university career, which was usually closed to a professing Jew. Some deeply committed apostates like the *Ratisbonne brothers in the 19th century founded special religious orders or groups for the propagation of Christianity among Jews. According to statistics available there were 21,000 aspostates in Poland in the 18th century, and 204,500 throughout the world in the 19th. However these figures are exaggerated since they include the Frankists in Poland and the *Cantonists in Russia.

In czarist Russia, up to 1917, there was relentless pressure for social acceptance through baptism. However, Jewish social and moral cohesion was strong and undeniable, and to a certain degree the Jewish cultural level was superior to that of the surrounding population. Here apostasy of a different type developed: people who accepted Christianity for the sake of a government or university career (a number of apostates were employed for *censorship of Hebrew books) but still retained their ties with Jewish society, and a pride in their Jewish origin, like the orientalist Daniel *Chwolson. Apostates like Jacob *Brafman, however, did much to bring discredit on the institutions of Jewish self-government and to provide fuel for antisemitism.

In the 20th century the phenomenon of apostasy became more complex, with deeper implications. While its effects were more subversive for Judaism, it aroused problems of Jewish nationality and culture which were less prominent previously. Boris *Pasternak is representative of the type of apostate who left Judaism because he rebelled against historical and social realities and obligations. After describing the beatings and humiliations to which the Jews were subjected by the Cossacks of the Christian Russian army in his novel Dr. Zhivago, he states concerning the incident he has described, "that, and other incidents like it – of course none of that is worth theorizing about." Having disposed of pogroms and antisemitism by refusing to face them on the intellectual level, he continues that, in regard to "the Jewish question as a whole – there philosophy does enter." The philosophy he perceived – his theory was formulated when World War II was raging and the Jewish people was being systematically destroyed in the *Holocaust – was that Jewish history is a self-inflicted punishment through refusal to heed that in "this new way of life and of communion, which is born of the heart and is called the Kingdom of God, there are no nations, only persons." Having denied the existence of the question of nations and nationality around the year 1941, Pasternak goes on to accuse "the ordinary run of politicians" who like to have "a nicely restricted group" so that they can deliberate and continue "settling and deciding and getting pity to pay dividends. Well now, what more perfect example can you have of the victims of the mentality than the Jews? Their national idea has forced them, century after century, to be a people and nothing but a people – and the extraordinary thing is that they have been chained to this deadening task all through the centuries when all the rest of the world was being delivered from it by a new force which had come out of their own midst… In whose interests is this voluntary martyrdom?… Why don't the intellectual leaders of the Jewish people ever get beyond facile Weltschmerz and irony? Why don't they – even if they have to burst like a boiler with the pressure of their duty – dismiss this army which is forever fighting and being massacred, nobody knows for what? Why don't they say to them: 'That's enough, stop now. Don't hold on to your identity, don't all get together in a crowd. Disperse. Be with all the rest. You are the first and best Christians in the world. You are the very thing against which you have been turned by the worst and weakest among you'" (Dr. Zhivago (1958), 116–8). Facile antisemitic allusions to the character of the Jewish intellectual, and his looking for gain, are mingled here with a self-righteous denial of Judaism as a religion and an imputation that nationalism is the original and abiding sin of Judaism. Pasternak's resentment toward the religion and community he has abjured is expressed in his poetry on the basis of ancient Pauline symbols, rejecting the "barrenness" of Judaism and substituting another tree for the fertile olive:

Near by stood a fig tree. Fruitless, nothing but branches and leaves. He said to it:

 'What joy have I of you?
Of what profit are you, standing there like a post?
'I thirst and hunger and you are barren,
And meeting you is comfortless as granite.
How untalented you are, and how disappointing!
Such you shall remain till the end of time!'
The doomed tree trembled
Like a lightning conductor struck by lightning,
And was consumed to ashes.
If the leaves, branches, roots, trunk,
Had been granted a moment of freedom,
The laws of nature would have intervened.
But a miracle is a miracle, a miracle is God (ibid., 497–8)

Like another apostate, Eugen *Rosenstock-Hussy (for his arguments, see *Disputations), a German of the generation of World War I, Pasternak expresses a categorical and hostile repudiation of Jewish nationalism as the evil archetype of all forms of nationalism. Both men are typical of the modern apostate who joins Christianity as an individual, rejecting communal solidarity as an unwonted yoke, and repudiating Jewish historical continuity, yearning for a mystic penetration of their individuum with the suffering Christian God. In his attitude to Jewish nationalism, Pasternak displays a considerably greater hostility than his German fellow apostate, logical in a man who left Eastern European Jewry in a period of revolution, distress, and annihilation of order.

Another trend in apostasy from Judaism in its modern form is represented by Oswald Rufeisen, who as Brother Daniel entered the Carmelite order in 1945. Born in Poland in 1922, and in his youth an active Zionist, he worked in the wartime underground and saved Jews during the Holocaust. He became a Christian in 1942, but continued to consider himself a Jew. After he became a monk, he wrote to the Polish authorities applying for permission to leave Poland for Ereẓ Israel: "I base this application on the ground of my belonging to the Jewish people, to which I continue to belong although I embraced the Catholic faith in 1942 and joined a monastic order in 1945. I have made this fact clear whenever and wherever it has been raised with me officially… I chose an Order and Chapter in Israel in consideration of the fact that I would receive the leave of my superiors to travel to the land for which I have yearned since my childhood when I was a member of the Zionist youth organization" (High Court Application of Oswald Rufeisen v. The Minister of the Interior (1963), 54–55). In 1962 Brother Daniel appealed to the Israel High Court to be recognized as a Jew under the terms of the Law of Return, which grants Jews settling in Israel automatic citizenship. This application raised the problem of "Who is a Jew?" in Israel in its full modern implications. For the majority, Judge Silberg refused his petition. The judge admitted that Brother Daniel was a Jew according to halakhah, but in rendering judgment stated that the Law of Return is not based on halakhah but on the Jewish national-historical consciousness and the ordinary secular meaning of the term "Jew" as understood by Jews. After referring to the "great psychological difficulty" facing the court due to the deep sympathy and sense of obligation felt for the petitioner, the spokesman for the majority stated: "I have reached the conclusion that what Brother Daniel is asking us to do is to erase the historical and sanctified significance of the term 'Jew' and to deny all the spiritual values for which our people were killed during various periods in our long dispersion. For us to comply with his request would mean to dim the luster and darken the glory of the martyrs who sanctified the Holy Name [*kiddush ha-Shem] in the Middle Ages to the extent of making them quite unrecognizable; it would make our history lose its unbroken continuity and our people begin counting its days from the emancipation which followed the French Revolution. A sacrifice such as this no one is entitled to ask of us, even one so meritorious as the petitioner before this court" (ibid., 1–2). The court stated that in order to be declared a Jew from the point of view of the modern Jewish secular conception of Jewish nationality, adherence to the Jewish religion is not essential. At the same time apostasy to Christianity removes that person from this nationality.

Between the two wings representing current tendencies in apostasy exemplified by Pasternak and Rufeisen stands the middle-of-the-road attitude displayed by the Anglican bishop of Kingston, Hugh Montefiore. The bishop acknowledges loyalty to the memory of his fathers and maintains contact with Anglo-Jewish society without adhering to his Jewish national identity. He and others like him would seem to continue in an attenuated form the attitude of Disraeli. On the other handone wonders if in the hostile attitude to Israel of other apostates there is not the direct continuation of the medieval Jewhating figure of the apostate.

The issues raised by the Rufeisen decision remain very much at the heart of public deliberation in Israel. Essentially the present time marks a return to the core of the historical Jewish position on unity of faith and nation and to consideration of the apostate from this standpoint. Shortly before the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Isaac b. Moses *Arama wrote that when "one of the gentile scholars, seeing that Jews were very eager for a letter of divorce to be given by an apostate and he refused… asked… 'Why do you want it from him? As he left his religion it would be proper for them to consider him as if he did not exist. Hence his wife should be considered a widow in every respect…' The answer was: 'Apostasy cannot be of the essence but only accidental, meaning only a change of name or the street where he lives. He cannot change his essence, for he is a Jew… This answer is true according to our religion. This is the meaning of the saying of our Sages, 'Even if he has sinned, he remains of Israel'" (akedah Yiẓḥak (Venice, 1573), 258b no. 97, Ki-Teẓe). The Jewish sage adds that the Christian will not accept this definition since for him religion is the sole criterion. Prevailing halakhic opinion throughout the ages has always considered the apostate a Jew for all purposes of obligations, ties, and possibilities given to a Jew, but denying him some specific legal rights, in particular in the economic sphere, and in the performance of certain honorary or symbolic acts. In terms of conscience and consensus of opinion Jewish society regarded the apostate up to the 18th century as "dead," as proscribed from the Jewish community, considering him as the very essence of desertion and treason.

At the present time extreme individualism or mysticism are the main paths leading some people away from Judaism. Snobbery and careerism, missionary blandishments and promises, still play some role in bringing about apostasy, but this is diminishing. The passive attitude of the majority of believing Christians at the time of the Holocaust, and even more, the conception of many of the courageous minority who risked their lives to save Jews but insisted on "saving their souls" at the same time, often souls of children in their care, threw into relief the harsh and ugly implications in apostasy. The concept of a multi-religious Jewish nation now facing the people of the State of Israel is tied up with and intersected by the problems and phenomena of historical continuity, mutual toleration, and social cohesion of the unique concept of the people of Israel as "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation," forming the cohesive religio-national entity that has united Jews and carried their specific message through the ages.

Bibliography:

HISTORY: Graetz, Hist, 6 (1949), index; A.D. Nock, Conversion (1933); S.L. Zitron, Meshumodim, 2 vols. (1923); S.M. Ginsburg, Historishe Verk, vol. 2 Meshumodim in Tsarishen Rusland (1946); Baer, Spain, index; H. Heine, Confessio Judaica (Ger., 1925); J. de le Roi, in: Nathanael, 15 (1899), 65–118 (Ger.); N. Samter, Judentaufen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (1906); P. Browe, Judenmission im Mittelalter und die Paepste (1942). APOSTASY TO ISLAM: I.J. Benjamin, Acht Jahre in Asien und Afrika (1858), 74f.; I. Goldziher, in: REJ, 43 (1901), 1ff.; Samauʿal al-Maghrībi, Ifḥam al-Yahūd, ed. and tr. into Eng. by M. Perlmann (1964), 115f./85f.; Revista degli Studi Orientali, 4 (1911–12), 495; W.J. Fischel, in: Zion, 1 (1936), 49–74; idem, in: Commentary, 7 (1949), 28–33; I. Ben-Zvi, in: Zion, 4 (1939), 250–7; Ashtor, Toledot, 1 (1944), 279–91, 303ff.; 309f.; 2 (1951), 88–95; H.Z. Hirschberg, Yisrael be-Arav (1946), 142f., 151f., 174, 176; A.S. Halkin, in: Joshua Starr Memorial Volume (1953), 101–10; S.D. Goitein, Jews and Arabs (19642), 77–84; Baron, Social, 3 (1957), 76ff., 96, 111f., 122ff., 290ff.; A. Ben-Jacob, Yehudei Bavel (1965), index S.V. Hitaslemut, D. Corcos, in: Zion, 32 (1967), 137–60. JEWISH LAW: Levi, in: REJ, 38 (1899), 106–11, 114–6; Weinberg, in: No'am, 1 (1958), 1–51; Benedikt, ibid., 3 (1960), 241–58; ET, 1 (19623), 202; 8 (1957), 443–4; 12 (1967), 162–6; B. Schereschewsky, Dinei Mishpaḥah (19672), 80, 229, 333; M. Elon, Ḥakikah Datit… (1968), 52–53; idem, in: ILR, 4 (1969), 128ff.; Eisenstein, Dinim, 23, 206ff.; S.B. Freehof, Reform Responsa (1960), 192–9; idem, Recent Reform Responsa (1963). 120–37. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: M. Elon, Ha-Mishpat ha-Ivri (1988), 92, 542, 546, 633, 1111, 1405, 1418; idem, Jewish Law (1994), 1:103, 2:660, 664, 784, 3:1674, 1690; M. Elon and B. Lifshitz, M. Elon, B. Lifshitz, Mafteah ha-She'elot ve-ha-Teshuvot shel Ḥakhmei Sefarad u-Ẓefon Afrikah, 1 (1986), 247–48, and general index, B. Lifshitz, E. Shohetman, Mafteah ha-She'elot ve-ha-Teshuvot shel Ḥakhmei Ashkenaz, Ẓarefat ve-Italya (1997), 179–81, and general index; O. Ir-Shay, "Mumar ke-Yoresh bi–Teshuvot ha-Ge'onim," in: Shenaton ha-Mishpat ha-Ivri, 11–12 (1984–1986), 435–61; T. Regev, "Ma'amadam shel Kiddushei Mumar bi-Gezerot Tatnu u-be-Gerush Sefarad," in: Geranot, 1 (2001), 97–108; M. Corinaldi, Dinei Ishim, Mishpaḥah ve-YerushahBein Dat le-Medinah (2004), 264–70. FOLKLORE: Schwarzbaum, Studies in Jewish and World Folklore (1968), 341–2 and index.


Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.