The Jews of Medieval France. The Community of Champagne by Emily TaitzReview by: Joseph ShatzmillerSocial History, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Jan., 1998), p. 127Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4286480 .

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SHORT NOTICES

Emily Taitz, The Jews of Medieval France. The Community of Champagne (I994), viii + 341

(Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn., $59.95). As the subtitle of Emily Taitz's book suggests, this is not a history of 'The Jews of medieval France', but rather of those who were living under the rule of the count of Champagne, whose county was attached to the French crown only in the thirteenth century. The 'golden age' of this community occurred in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, two hundred years for which very little documentation is available. Taitz, remarkably, has recovered every piece of information that is available, whether written by the Jews themselves - in Hebrew - or written about them, in Latin for the most part. At times she extrapolates from data drawn from neigh- bouring regions in order to reconstruct events in the county of Champagne.

The story unfolds in chronological order. Chapter I covers the four centuries that stretch between the fifth and the ninth and summarizes what is known about the Jews of France in this early period. Chapter 7, the final chapter, brings the history to its end with the expulsion of the Jews from the royal domain in I306. As expected, special attention is given to the eleventh century (chapter 3), a century which was marked by the writings and communal activity of Rabbi Salomon ben Isaac (acronym: Rashi) whose commentaries on the Bible and on the Talnud serve students to this very day. Rashi's grandsons, Samuel ben Meir and, more prominently, Jacob Tam, are at the centre of the next chapter. Recognized as leading scholars of their time - a period of material prosperity and intellectual effervescence - the two illustrious rabbis convoked regional synods in which efforts were made, among other things, to ameliorate the status of Jewish women.

The most successful chapter in Taitz's book, in my opinion, is the penultimate one which relies on material from the thirteenth century. Here the archives, as well as published legislation, enable the author to describe money-lending operations and to follow the process of the decline of the

community - politically and materially - prior to its expulsion. Rabbinic scholarship also comes to a virtual standstill: Champagne's scholars rely on past achievements and show less creativity and vivacity.

Emily Taitz thus joins an ever-growing number of historians who take into consideration not only previous Jewish scholarship (which is abundant), but also past and present works of 'general' scholar- ship. As she states in the opening paragraph of her first chapter: 'A study of Jewish history cannot be undertaken without the fullest understanding of general history.' As already noted, Taitz has access to documents both in Hebrew and in Latin, some of the latter as yet unpublished. Linguistically, Taitz's text would have benefited from a closer examin- ation by the readers assigned by the publisher. For instance, Pope Gregory's famous bull of AD 598 begins with the words 'Sicut judaeis' and not 'judaeus', as we have it three times on page I39.

Similarly, the Papal Constitution of I12I (ibid.) is 'pro judaeis' and not 'judaeus'. Page i6o has '60 solidis' instead of 'solidi'. Also, much more atten- tion should have been given to the transliteration of Hebrew terms and titles of studies. Grabois's article (315), to cite one example, should read 'Han- hagat ha-Parnasim bi-Khilot ... ba-Meah' and not 'HaNehagat HaPrinsim bekehilot ... beMeah'. And Albeck's study of R. Tam (308) should have read'Li-Ve'ayot' instead of'Leba'ayot', while Baer's famous study of the origins of communal insti- tutions (ibid.) should have had 'bi-Yemei ha- Beinayim' and not 'beyeme'. These and several other faulty transliterations will surely be corrected when the book is eventually reprinted. However, even at this stage, these errors do not cause much harm to the book, which is a significant contri- bution to the history of the Jews in the Middle Ages.

Joseph Shatzrniller Duke University

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