REVIEW: Hakham Tsevi Ashkenzi

Yosie Levine, Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi and the Battlegrounds of the Early Modern Rabbinate (Littman Library), 296 pp.

The student of halakha will certainly be familiar with Hakham Zvi Ashkenazi (1656–1718) from his famed responsa She’elot u-Teshuvot Hakham Zvi, and particularly from various striking positions that he pioneered. Some of these continue to reverberate in halakhic literature, such as his championing the observance of a single day of Yom Tov for Diaspora tourists in Israel or a twelve-month limit on the persistence of non-kosher flavor in vessels. Other positions he staked continue to garner attention for their unusual subject matter, such as his consideration of counting a golem for a minyan or the theoretical viability of a chicken without a heart. Students of Jewish history are likely familiar in broad terms with his opposition to followers of Shabbetai Zvi in the decades following the false messiah’s apostasy and death, albeit often perhaps principally as a precursor to the explosive role played by Hakham Zvi’s son, R. Yaakov Emden, in later iterations of the controversy. Regardless of which of these aspects of the fascinating life of this rabbinic figure you are or are not familiar with, a new, sophisticated and holistic portrait emerges from Rabbi Dr. Yosie Levine’s Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi and the Battlegrounds of the Early Modern Rabbinate.

The book is a brisk and engaging read, leavening impeccable scholarship with colorful anecdotes, such as Levine’s description of the portrait of Hakham Zvi commissioned secretly by the Jewish community of London or of his communal opponent in Amsterdam who expressed umbrage by naming his dog for Hakham Zvi. The book is not biography, strictly speaking, although the first chapter offers a very thorough biographical sketch, nor is it a survey of his halakhic positions and method; rather, it tries to deeply understand and situate Hakham Zvi within the cultural and intellectual backdrop of the world, both Jewish and general, that produced him and in which he flourished. Levine accomplishes this while focusing on trends in his subject’s worldview and the controversies in which he engaged.

Levine develops the idea that critical to understanding Hakham Zvi is his Early Modern milieu, and particularly the port cities in which he lived, studied, and worked in for most of his life. These mercantile centers, such as Salonika, Constantinople, Hamburg, Amsterdam, and London were cosmopolitan hubs that by Hakham Zvi’s day were connected by a fairly advanced communication network facilitating the rapid transmission of responsa from around the Jewish world. (To better understand the sphere of influence of Hakham Zvi’s halakhic correspondence, the book opens with a detailed map of the locations to which his teshuvot were addressed.)

In addition to more general trade, many of these cities were centers of the burgeoning print industry, making newly published books and classical manuscripts more readily accessible and expanding the scope of material available to the creative rabbinic sage.

The very nature of these cities and the more diverse international cultures that they produced led to a relatively new phenomenon of Asheknazic and Sephardic communities living side by side (and occasionally in conflict). Hakham Zvi himself, born to Ashkenazi refugees in flight from Cossack attacks in Vilna, was raised and educated in the Ottoman Empire, making him uniquely poised to draw from both traditions. In addition to his adoption of the Sephardic title “Hakham,” he demonstrated a striking independence from the classical Ashkenazi reverence for ancestral customs, leading to his advocating for traditionally Sephardic practice in areas as diverse as choosing between yibum and halitza, administration of oaths, mourning practice on Shabbat Hazon, women’s recital of berakhot on time-bound mitzvot, and the dating of gittin.

Levine also treats the communal structure and dynamic of these port cities as a factor for better understanding the climate and backdrop to the halakhic struggles in which Hakham Zvi engaged. A particular issue was the expanding power of the wealthy lay leadership in these communities and the impact this had on rabbinic authority. In addition, these cosmopolitan centers featured new levels of laxity in compliance with halakhic norms, requiring Hakham Zvi to weigh in on complex queries involving intermarriage, apostasy, and public Sabbath desecration.

The book also treats Hakham Zvi’s career as an activist against the Sabbatian movement, and particularly his struggles against the notorious kabbalist Nehemiah Hayyon in Amsterdam. This analysis of the affair, described in the penultimate chapter, is not merely an account of heresy hunting. While there are new contributions to the study of Sabbatianism, per se, including the coining of the term “social Sabbatianism” to describe those who may have not been hard-core believers but who moved in heretical circles, Levine’s description builds on themes already demonstrated in the early chapters of the book. Among these are tensions between Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities, struggles between lay and rabbinic authority, and the influence of print culture in the port cities of Europe.

In addition to Levine’s eminently accessible prose, the footnotes deserve attention as well. Whether one’s interest is in fleshing out the halakhic details of the many sugyot treated along the way, Hakham Zvi’s oeuvre, the academic scholarship on the Jewish world of the time, or in exploring the more general scholarship on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe on such issues as the postal system or the parallel trends in Christian religiosity, Levine’s scholarly apparatus provides an excellent portal to any number of fascinating avenues for deeper exploration.

Yosie Levine, rabbi of Manhattan’s Jewish Center, reminds of the importance of having “rabbi-scholars” in our midst by delivering a valuable work for those interested in Hakham Zvi’s world and work.

Daniel Yolkut is the Rabbi of Congregation Poale Zedeck in Pittsburgh.