Season 2: Episode 3 - The Power of Print

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You never really change things, says R. Buckminster Fuller, by fighting the existing reality. To change something, he says, you have to build a new model that makes the existing one obsolete. Well, I'd like to change some things around here, and I've chosen the method of telling a story. And it's a new way of telling a story. It may be about the past, but really, I'm focused on the present. I'm building a present that'll take us to the future that we want to live. I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and this is The Jewish Story. Episode 3, The Power of Print. So here we are, we're still exploring the transition between the medieval and the early modern era. And I could put the dividing line in one of any number of places.

We've already explored too, and frankly, since people write their PhDs on this, I don't want to spend too much time. Nevertheless, recall the fall of Constantinople in 1453, that final end to Eastern Rome, and the shift in the momentum of the thousand-year war between Islam and Christendom? That was one place. The guns that brought down the walls of Constantinople herald modernity. The other place we spoke of was 1492. Not only did the columnists sail the ocean blue and introduce to us at the age of the global empire, but of course, the Jews of Spain were scattered to the four winds, and we're still following the trails of their travels, and we will begin to get a little more careful with them as the episodes go on.

But in reality, we're not there yet, because I want to start this episode with a third launching point for the modern era. Because there are going to be a lot of revolutionary ideas and incredible inventions that will characterize the dawn of modernity, but no single one has had the same profound impact as the printing press has on the world in which we live. So in the mid-15th century, Johannes Gutenberg introduced movable type into Europe. The truth is, it's a technology that existed in Asia for quite some time, but he managed to master it in a way that is kind of beyond the scope of our discussion. And in doing so, he touched off what is known as the printing revolution. And of course, his first work was the famous Gutenberg Bible, printed in Latin around the year 1455.

And here's what David Gantz, famous Jewish historian of Bohemia, student of the Maharal, and Moshe Isserlis, that's the Ramah, for those of you in the know, who we'll talk about in his own right at the right time. But here's what he says in his work of history, Temech David, written in 1592. The printing of books, he says, began in the city of Mainz by a Christian man named Johannes Gutenberg of Strasbourg. and this was in the first year of the pious emperor Friedrich in the year 5200 or 1440 according to the Christians. Blessed is the one who grants knowledge and teaches wisdom to humanity. Blessed is the one who has strengthened us in his mercy in a great technology such as this for the benefit of all the inhabitants of the world.

There is none like it and nothing matches it in value amongst all the sciences and technologies since the day that God created man and set him in the world. So we see that Gantz was quite aware that this was a revolution. And if you want to get a sense of how rapid its rise was, well, like I said, the Gutenberg Bible, 1455. By 1480, there were over 110 printing presses scattered throughout Europe. And by 1500, less than 15 years later, there was an estimated 20 million volumes that had been printed throughout Europe. And of course, the Jews were never ones to lag behind in technology. Within 40 years of the invention of the printing press, Hebrew books began to roll off the press. Now, the first Hebrew presses were, of course, in the Iberian Peninsula.

It was, after all, the heart of Jewish culture, but they were destroyed together with the communities of Spain and Porcojo. But printing technology is going to be one of those critical tools that the Jews will bring with them as they're scattered abroad into the Ottoman Empire, North Africa, and throughout Europe. Though the origins of Hebrew printing are in Spain, it truly begins its thriving culture in Italy. And that was the home to the best-known printing houses of the 15th and 16th century. Because remember, as we began to discuss in the last episode, it's really Italy that in early modernity is geographically and culturally at the center of the Jewish world. And we're going to continue to see that.

Because the Jews of Italy were trading with the Jews from Germany and Poland, the Ottoman Empire, North Africa, and therefore the books printed in Italy could circulate throughout all of these areas, beginning to create a common literary culture on a scale which we haven't really seen since the Rambam published in Mishneh Torah in the end of the 12th century. And furthermore, not only do the books printed in Italy circulate outward, but Italy is a cultural magnet from these Jews from all over the world. And when they arrive in the peninsula, they'll bring with them their medieval manuscripts in the hopes to bring them to print. Now, without question, the most familiar name in Jewish printing is Sonsino, which is actually the name of a small town in northern Italy, from which the Sonsino family took its name, and of course, after which, they named their press.

And in 1484, Yeshua Shlomo Sonsino issued the first work from his press, which was, in fact, the first tractate of the Talmud ever printed, and of course, was Brachot from the Babylonian Talmud, the first tractate. And together with his Nefu Gershom, Yahushua Sonsino pioneered many of the aspects of the Hebrew book that we take for granted today. For instance, his family were themselves descendants of the 13th century Tosevists, Rav Moshe Mispair. And therefore the Sonsinos took it upon themselves to be the first to place the commentary of the Tosevists together with their both lineal and intellectual ancestor Rashi on the page of the Gemara itself, something which, to this point, had not been done.

And because of this bold move of placing a text and its commentaries together on the same page, the Sensinos were forced to originate a whole new printing tradition, the tradition of using a semi-cursive script in order to distinguish the commentaries from the main Talmudic text. This gave birth to what we know today as Rashi script. And if you're a yeshiva guy, listen to this now. I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but Rashi did not write in Rashi script. He was an inventor of the printers of the late 15th century. But, it's also important to know that when the Talmud existed only in handwritten manuscripts, it was already broken in clear tractates and chapters, without any definitive pagination. I'm sure you've had the experience, if you're sitting in yeshiva and listening to this, of a Rishon, an early medieval authority who told you to look it up and gave you the chapter, but not the page.

this is why they weren't working in uniform pagination. It was the Sincino press that began the process that quickly resulted in a universal pagination of the Gemara, which exists to this day and makes our learning oh so much easier. So, the Sincinos are definitely the best known. But in reality, perhaps the most influential of all early Hebrew printers was actually a Christian named Daniel Bomberg. Born and raised in Antwerp, Bomber settled in Venice, where he established his printing press, and there he put to work a team of rabbis, scholars, and even apostates who together built on the pioneering work of Sensino and finalized the form of the Jewish book. Bomber was the first to print the Mikrot Gedolot, the collection of the Hebrew Bible together with its main rabbinic commentaries, and he put out the first complete editions of both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud.

Together with the earlier Sensino tractates, These works finalized the standard format for the Talmud page, which we use unto this day. Bamber also affected another important revolution in Hebrew text. All the way back in the 13th century, it was the Christian monks who first introduced the structure of chapter and verse into the Hebrew Bible, something which is actually not organic to the Hebrew Bible, and it was introduced largely in order to facilitate disputation. It's hard to argue chapter and verse between Jews and Christians if you're not pointing at the same page. So they introduced the idea, but it was Bamberg's edition of the Mikruk Gedolot, again, of this Hebrew Bible, together with the medieval rabbinic commentaries, which made that division universal, to the point where you cannot find a Hebrew Bible today that doesn't have chapter and verse.

Now, though Suncino was driven by his excitement as a Jew and his commitment to bringing rabbinic texts to light, Bamberg's motive as a Christian was primarily financial, which is not bad. The printing business, after all, is one of the prime examples of early capitalism, and the high literacy rate of the Jews does make them a prime target. But there were other reasons that could bring a Christian into the business of printing Hebrew books. Paulus Vegas was a professor of Hebrew at Strasbourg, and later at Cambridge, and he is the archetype of the Christian Hebraeus, a phenomenon that we actually encountered last episode in the person of Pico della Merondola. If you recall, I hope. If not, go back and listen up.

So Christian Hebraism was an outgrowth of general Renaissance humanism. During the Renaissance, and particularly in the late 15th century, we find scholars, theologians, physicians, scientists, philosophers, all began to discover Hebrew texts. And they discovered them as part of their quest to meet their own cultural and religious needs. in the knowledge that the Jewish tradition, in its antiquity and its origins, had something to offer. Now at first, the challenges these Christians face in mastering the Hebrew language was far from small. It wasn't something that they exactly grew up with. And as early as 1506, one scholar complained that the German Jews in particular, either out of hatred or ignorance, he says, refused to teach Christians their language.

And they refused because of the influence of what a certain Rabbi Amos, who wrote in the Talmud in Chagiga 13a, you can look it up, the words of the Holy Scripture may not be explained to unbelievers. But as we saw in the last episode, men like Eliad del Medigo and Yohan el Amano, who are Mirandola's teachers, had no such compunction about teaching Hebrew to non-Jews. And it was Elijah Levita who first taught Phagius Hebrew Apparently he wasn bothered by a shallow reading of the Gemara and Chagiga either In his opinion the real question was how could the Christians possibly learn the seven commandments of Noach if they knew no Hebrew? Now, I don't take this as a purely rhetorical question. It's actually a sentiment that's deeply symptomatic of the universalist elements in humanist culture, which themselves brought about a mingling of the Jewish and Christian traditions.

This mingling is going to have a profound impact on another revolution, which is just appearing on our horizon, and that's the Protestant Reformation. We're not there yet. So meanwhile, the mastery of Hebrew texts, which Fagius gained through Elijah Levitas' assistance, allowed him to ascend to the professorship at Strasbourg, like I said. And he, in turn, appointed his former Hebrew teacher as a supervisor of a new Hebrew press, which he founded in Bavaria, because now we're in Germany and not in Italy any longer. And the Fagus Press was responsible for spreading Hebrew books throughout the Rhineland. And in addition to the traditional offerings, rabbinic texts, and the classic works, he released numerous Hebrew texts together with a Latin translation and a commentary in hope that he could make them available to Christian scholars.

It was likely through the Phagius Press that Levitas came to know the most famous Christian Hebraist of his generation, Johannes Ruchlin. Ruchlin was the elder statesman and master scholar of the Christian Hebraists. And how did he become so? Well, it seems that during a visit to Rome in 1490, Ruchlin became acquainted with Pico de la Merandola, and he learned from him about the Kabbalah, Right? That mystical system of Jewish thought that Merondola was convinced was an expression of the ancient wisdom which was universally underlying all religion. And Ruchlin became interested in the Hebrew language as well. However, it took him a full two more years until he could find any opportunity to learn the language.

In 1492, as the Jews were scattering to the four winds, he was employed on an embassy to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick at Linz. And it was there that he met the emperor's Jewish physician, Yaakov ben Yechiel Luns, who helped him begin to study Hebrew. Now, Ruhl's interest may have been piqued by the states of Kabbalah he received from Rendola, but his initial drive to master the Hebrew language was in order to acquire a proper understanding of the Hebrew Bible, freed from the constraints of the Latin Vulgate. Remember, it's important that when the Catholic Church made the decision To include the Hebrew Bible as part of its canon, it bound together the destiny of the Jewish and the Christian people, at least in an exegetical sense, in the sense that there is a text whose interpretation matters to us both.

And the primary translation of the Hebrew Bible, which was used by the Catholic Church, was the Vulgate. It was a 4th century translation of the Hebrew Bible into Latin, undertaken primarily, if you recall, way back when we spoke about the Church Father, Jerome. And by the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church wielded considerable power through its mastery of this text, because most people, most Christians in Europe were illiterate, and even those who were literate didn't have a mastery of Latin per se, and yet they looked at this text as sacred. Therefore, if they wanted access to the text, they really needed to have access to the Church. It's not for naught that Luther's break with the Church hierarchy would come together with his German translation of the Bible.

But that's a story that lies a bit further ahead as well. So, Ruchin quickly realized that in order to understand the Hebrew Bible in its original, he needed the grammatical and exegetical tradition of the medieval rabbis, in particular of David Kimchit, that 13th century Pavankol rabbi, who's also known as the Redak. We spoke of him long ago. And even Martin Luther, at his height of Jew hatred, would praise the Radak in the 1530s when he called his work the purest and best grammar of all. Now once Ruchan had mastered this tradition for himself, he became determined to open it up to other Christians. And in 1506, he published a Hebrew to Latin grammar and lexicon, mainly based on the Radak's Hebrew grammar, Sefer Michlol, and his lexicon, Sefer Ashol Shem, although with considerable work of his own.

But Ruchlin's journey into Jewish text didn't stop with the mastery of Hebrew grammar. Remember what had started him off in the first place. Following Dele Merondola's lead, he saw in the Kabbalah a system which could be of great service in uncovering the deep truth of Christianity, and ultimately in reconciling it with the budding science of early modernity, which was beginning to be a challenge to the mysteries of faith already. His first work on Kabbalah, De Verbo Merifico, and I apologize for my horrible Latin translation, is known as The Wonderworking Word in English, was actually published almost immediately in the wake of his meeting with Mirindol in 1494, and it was a full-on attempt to synthesize Christian and Jewish mysticism in the spirit of Mirindol, who was after this ancient, pure, mystical tradition.

But his major work on the topic, The Kabbalistic Art was published in 1517, structured as a conversation between a Jew, a Pythagorean philosopher, and a Muslim, oddly enough. And content aside, this work was a clear attempt to justify the study of Kabbalah and Hebrew text in general by Christian. And this is where our plot thickens. Because I only mentioned one of the motives which brought Christian Hebraists to study the Jewish text, their desire to deepen their understanding of their own faith of Christianity. But there was another, and that was the desire to convert the Jews. You know, the rise of the Jewish printing press may have been good news for the Jews, but it didn't exactly please the lingering forces of medieval Christianity in its day.

Because the notion that the text of the Talmud was integral to the obstinacy of the Jews, to the refusal to accept the Christian Savior goes way back, if you recall, the apostate Nicholas Donnan and the burning of the Talmud in Paris in 1242. That's what it was all about. And at this point in our story, as Hebrew texts are beginning to multiply throughout the land, some Christian thinkers are beginning to see the key to the conversion of the Jews as taking away their books. And you can imagine then that they didn't love the Christian Hebraists and the praise they heaped on medieval rabbinic literature. One particularly vehement supporter of this view was Johannes Pfefferkorn, a German Catholic theologian and writer who, you guessed it, began his life as a Jew.

Another apostate arose to plague the Jews. Pfefferkorn was convinced that the stubbornness of the Jews in refusing conversion was rooted in their books, and he made it his personal mission to have them all seized and destroyed throughout the Holy Roman Empire. Toward this end, he worked together with the Dominican Order in order to gain recommendations to Cunegunde, the sister of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, and through her influence, he actually achieved an audience with the Emperor himself. And apparently, Pfeffercorn was either quite persuasive, or Maximilian was inclined to erase the Jews. Either way, on August 19, 1509, the emperor ordered the confiscation of any Hebrew book in his empire, except for the Bible.

Now it's at this point of our story, this moment of crisis, that we first encounter a new and critical character in Jewish history, Rav Yosef of Roshheim. Yosef ben Gershon Miroshheim was the great Stadlan of German and Polish Jewry during the reigns of Emperor Maximilian and Charles V. Now, eventually, Maximilian actually appointed him as governor of all the Jews of Germany. But at this point, he was simply a humble Stadlan. Now, what's a Stadlan? This is a model of leadership, which really has its origin in the Middle Ages, but will carry all the way through to modernity. In fact, it's not uncommon in the Knesset today, when somebody wants to wipe another politician's face in their subservient posture toward power, that they'll call him a Stadlan.

Because a Stadlan is essentially a lobbyist. He's a person, a Jew, who has no official capacity, but nevertheless has been chosen, or appointed himself, to represent the whole Jewish community. And by using his wealth and personal influence, he worms his way into the corridors of power in order to defend his people. And Estadlan is always pictured with a stooping posture. He's not someone who negotiates from a place of strength. He's the wheeler and dealer who's willing to do whatever it takes to save his flock. so Rav Yosel is not only the original Stadlan but he's also the source of the idea of a court Jew a phenomenon of the German lands that we're going to discuss as we come into the 17th century but for now, you just know he was in place for all these events in fact, if you recall from the last episode the story of the messianic pretender of Shlomo Mocho who was executed by the emperor in 1532 it was Yosel of Roshheim who actually attempted to dissuade him from his foolish attempts.

Unfortunately, he failed. So for now, Rabbi Yossam rallied the Jews against Pfefferkorn's threat to have all of their books confiscated and destroyed, and through the agency of the Archbishop of Mainz, they requested that the emperor appoint a commission to investigate Pfefferkorn's accusations about books as the source of stubbornness of the Jews. So here he was, the emperor, caught between opposing opinions, and therefore he gave orders to get the opinions of other peoples on the question of whether Hebrew books should be destroyed. There were several universities that were asked. He reached out to inquisitors and priests and of course he had to get the opinion of the uncontested master of Hebrew literature, Johannes Ruchlin.

So while all the other experts submitted enthusiastic endorsements of Peppercorn's plans, Ruchlin argued against. He contended that the book confiscation not only was a violation of imperial law but also that it lacked any justification on religious or theological grounds He submitted his arguments to the emperor in a private pamphlet entitled Oggenspiegel, The Eyeglass. And although his conclusions stood alone among seven other written evaluations, Wilhelm's defense was so powerfully argued, and his status was so great in the eyes of the academic community, that it put a stop to this new and dangerous type of persecution. but Peffercorn's hatred and the church behind him were not so easily thwarted.

Once the official path had been blocked, it became a war of pamphlets, and with the backing of the Dominican Order, Peffercorn refuted Ruchlin's argument in a work entitled The Magnifying Glass, which he distributed publicly at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1511. And though on his title page he attacked both the Jews and the several Christians who defended them, The bulk of Peppercorn's hatred was not directed to Ruchlin personally, as he himself said later in 1512, and had not published the magnifying glass against him, but rather against the Jews. And in this hateful work, Peppercorn portrays the Jews not only as blasphemers and heretics who refuse to accept salvation, but also as murderous enemies of all Christians.

And in order to do so, he summoned up the evil of the blood libel and the hostess creation. The pamphlet cites four recent cases of host desecration, all of which, of course, were false, but nobody cares then, and furthermore provided, quote-unquote, breaking news, at least in the timescale of early modern media, about a major incident, the Berlin host desecration of 1510. And just to give you a sense of scale, that case resulted in the execution of 38 Jews, as well as the banishment of all Jews from Brandenburg. So this was not a joke. He's playing with fire. And it was this book that actually initiated what is known in the history books as the Reuchlin Affair. Because it was only in response to magnifying glass that Reuchlin decided to go public with his defense of Jewish books for all the world to read.

And when he did so, it only took until 1512 until the Inquisition brought forward formal charges of heresy, alleging on the basis of 43 statements that Ruchlin's eyeglasses was, I quote, impermissibly favorable to the Jews. And it was during the resulting trials, which lasted for almost a decade, that Ruchlin published his Kabbalistic art. Okay, so, by 1513, this controversy was the talk of every learned circle throughout Europe. Part of that was simply because of the power of this new publication and pamphlets. the printing press allowed their words to have a reach which they could never have dreamed of even a hundred years before. It was also because it involves the champion of Renaissance humanist methodology for biblical studies.

And because the annihilation of Drury from all of Western Europe was actually a live-burning issue at this point. Don't forget, in 1513, we're less than 20 years from the expulsion from Spain. so Ruchlin's opponents however weren't just motivated by desire to eradicate the Jews they were also concerned about what was happening within Christianity itself and where Renaissance humanism and Christian Hebraism might lead because the new approaches to Christian theology that these men were proposing seemed to be leaning toward a different conceptualization of Christianity altogether however Ruchlin's path-breaking work in Hebrew literature had a lot of enthusiasts within the humanist movement and these were powerful people.

His scholarship, and especially his push to bring Christianity back to its Bible in the original, mustered an elite group of supporters for his cause. A group of supporters who would be ready fodder for the coming Reformation. So the Ruchlin Affair actually became a public forum for debate not only on the proper Christian attitude toward Judaism but actually between the Christian currents of medieval scholasticism and Renaissance humanism and as such it prepared the public for the coming of Martin Luther but he's not here yet because there's one more personality that we need to touch on a personality actually who one would have expected to weigh in on Ruchlin's side in this conflict and that is Erasmus of Rotterdam So, if Erasmus Rodelin had weighed in on Reuchlin's side, this would have been a considerable victory, because he was known as the Prince of the Humanists.

And it was just at this point of his career, when Erasmus had used the most advanced humanist techniques for working on text, and had brought out a new Latin and Greek edition of the New Testament, that the Reuchelan affair exploded. Now you should appreciate, these editions of the New Testament were considered so important that the questions that they raised were going to be central to the arguments between the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. But Erasmus, despite his commitment to Renaissance Humanism, did not come to the aid of his fellow Humanists because he was categorically opposed to Christian Hebraism. In addition to being the Prince of Humanism, Rasmus was also the founder of the new ideological Jew hatred of the 16th century.

Judaism for Rasmus was the symbol of everything he hated in contemporary religiosity. In his philosophy, Christianity and Judaism are diametrically opposed principles which have nothing to teach each other. In fact, in his mind, Judaism is not an actual faith. It is the carnal embodiment. It's the flesh embodied in the law and in the evil focus on ritual. Now it's true, Erasmus' hatred was more philosophical abstraction than personal animosity. He was opposed to his conception of what Judaism was, more so than the actual Jews. But Judaism, in his mind, was the antithesis of the philosophy of Christ. Nevertheless, he laid the foundations for a linkage between progressive European thought and Jew hatred, which is alive and well to this very day.

Just you wait until we talk about Voltaire and the father of the Enlightenment, and we'll see this linkage grow and flower. And that's why he refused to side with Reuchlin against the Inquisitors, who hounded him in this battle over Hebrew books, which raged throughout Germany between, I don't know, 1518 and 1519 in particular. He despised Christian Hebraism lest it lead in some way to Jewish revival. So, how did it play out for Reuchling, reluctant defender of the Jews? Now, I say reluctant because it's important to recall that despite his love of Jewish texts, Reuchling wasn't necessarily a lover of the Jews either. He never departed from that cardinal principle that Christianity was the one true religion, and that Judaism therefore could never be its equal.

And Rav Yoselech Roshheim was fully aware of the oddity of this situation. After all the storms had passed, he describes Roshland's intervention as a nes betoch nes, a miracle within a miracle, expressing absolute amazement that a Christian scholar had defended the Jews, and what's more, had actually prevailed. So, in 1514, an Episcopal court in Spire pronounced Reuchlin innocent of all charges of having favored the Jews. Furthermore, an appeals court only two years later in the Roman Curia reached a similar verdict. Nevertheless, on June 23, 1520, Pope Leo X issued a verdict against Reuchlin. Now, what would cause him to overturn the judgments of these two previous courts? The answer is actually quite clear.

In the four years between 1516 and 1520, a different revolution had shaken the Catholic Church. And the Pope's verdict against Reuchlin came just eight days after he signed his first thundering condemnation of Martin Luther. So, toward the end of 1517, Martin Luther, professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg, finally reached the boiling point in his disgust with certain practices of the Catholic Church. And on October 31st, he mailed the list of 95 propositions for an academic disputation to the Archbishop of Mainz. These propositions were known as the Disputation on the Power of Indulgences, or simply as the 95 Theses. And legend has it that in addition to putting it in the mail, he also nailed these theses to the door of the All Saints Church as well.

And though there were far more serious disputes with the doctrines of the Catholic Church which lay ahead, this act is generally considered by historians to be the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Now, I have to make a caveat, one that I've actually made before. And that is, I'm neither a theologian nor a historian of Christianity. But there are elements of Luther's story, and in particular of his relationship with the Jews, that are going to be critical for us to understand in order to get the Jewish story. So I'll do my best. First of all, it's important to note that despite post facto 2020 hindsight, it wasn't exactly clear at first what lay ahead was a break with Rome. Remember, Erasmus of Rotterdam had already made his name as a critic of the Church, criticizing their behavior while maintaining his loyalty to the Pope.

And in fact, in the early days, he described Luther as a mighty trumpet of gospel truth, acknowledging that it's clear that many of the reforms for which Luther calls are urgently needed. So you might think that Luther would have been drawn into Erasmus' circle and become a reformer from within. But the truth of the matter is, humanism and Christian hebraism, along with certain sociopolitical forces that we'll explore in coming episodes, had made too many cracks in the foundations of a monolithic church for Luther attack to thus simply be absorbed and contained And in 1520 Pope Leo X issued a papal bull outlining 41 errors that he found in the 95 Theses and other works by Luther And Luther was summoned to appear before the Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms.

Now, fortunately for Luther, he knew a little bit of history and negotiated safe passage to and from the meeting, although he knew that the risk was still high. You may recall from an earlier episode, the reformer Jan Hus. He was the founder of the Hussites, the wars of the Hussites with the last continental crusade that the Catholic Church fought, which had such a devastating effect on the Jewish communities of Western Europe. But when Jan Hus was summoned to appear in a similar manner at the Council of Constance, even though he was given also safe passage, he ended up being burned at the stake in 1450. And though Luther escaped alive, the diet didn't exactly go well for him. After a brief lead-up, he was asked to recant his statements in the 95 Theses and other works, but Luther refused.

And the closing words which he chose embody his foundational attitude in which he sought to replace the authority of the Church with that of the text. He said, Unless I am convinced by the testimony of scriptures, or by clear reason, for I do not trust either in the Pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves. I am bound by the scriptures I have quoted, and my conscience is captive to the word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen. The response of the Emperor and the Pope to these harsh words was swift, but not fast enough, because during the ensuing deliberations, Luther managed to slip out of Worms.

Any people think that even though Charles V, the emperor, was all but all-powerful throughout Europe at the time, he let Luther go, knowing that devout Catholic he was, nevertheless the Pope was his only competitor for political power. But either way, the following edict of Worms was decreed in Luther's absence. For this reason we forbid anyone from this time forward to dare, either by word or deed, to receive, defend, sustain, or favor, the said Martin Luther. On the contrary, we want him to be apprehended and punished as a notorious heretic. Those who will help in his capture will be rewarded generously for their good work. Unfortunately for the Pope and the Emperor, it didn't work out that well.

And as we'll see, Luther found plenty of protectors within the German states, and the split he represented as a religious phenomenon became quickly a political one as well. Now, in the early stages of his break with Rome, Luther seemed to follow in the footsteps of the Christian Hebraeus in breaking with Rome's attitude toward the Jews as well. In his 1523 treatise, That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew, he described the Jews as models of common sense. I quote, If I had been a Jew and had seen such oaths and numbskulls governing and teaching the Christian faith, I would have rather become a sow than a Christian. But unfortunately for our story, Luther, like Muhammad before him, assumed that his reformed vision of religion would be hailed by the Jews, and that they would flock to the banner of the new Christianity, cleansed of all papism, as he called it.

But instead, a whole new era of conflict emerged between the Jews and this new brand of Christianity. and in particular conflict over text because the Reformation had staked their claim to power, to authority, on their ability to properly read the Bible. Luther wanted to take authority away from the church hierarchy and ground it in scripture. And it's toward this end, as I mentioned, that he worked diligently to publish his German translation first of the Christian Bible in 1522 and later, by 1534, the Hebrew Bible as well. What's amazing is that the sensational nature of Luther's struggle and its popular recognition, together with the technology of the printing press, actually made Luther's Bible sell like hotcakes and made him arguably the first best-selling author in history.

Now, Luther believed that the true subject of all Scripture, including the Hebrew Bible, was Christ. and therefore he disagreed with Reuchlinger and the Christian Hebraists about any exegetical help that could be gained from Jewish commentaries. He argued that the rabbis didn't even know the actual subject matter of their own Bible, and therefore they couldn't possibly have understood it properly. Nevertheless, when it came to grammar, and even perhaps exegesis, even Luther couldn't ignore the Jews. It's believed that he himself owned a copy of the Bomberg Bible, that Mikrok Gedolot that we mentioned in the beginning, which he was forced to use to assist his German translation. And this conflict within the text is actually a new round of the hermeneutic battle that we've discussed so many times before.

Originally, it was simply an argument about the story. Who is telling a story of the past that can create a religion in the present that will bring the redemption of which we dream? We spoke about it in terms of who could lay claim to being the elder or younger brother. But now, with the rise of Protestantism, suddenly the claim of the Jews that only the Hebrew Bible was the authentic word of God, and furthermore, that it was only with the commentaries and the Gemara that it could be understood properly, was no longer simply an affront to Christianity in general. It was a direct challenge to the basis on which Protestants claimed religious authority. and by 1526, Luther had already changed his tune toward the Jews and was complaining vehemently of their stubbornness in refusing conversion.

Nevertheless, ironically, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, Luther's focus on scripture and his rejection of the papal authority made him just another Judaizer, and in a strange twist to the story, Rav Yosef Roshheim was actually forced to defend the Jews in front of the Holy Roman Emperor against the accusation that they had instigated this Lutheran heresy. So, in light of the Jews' refusal to accept his new religion, Luther began to urge Christians that it was their religious duty to be political, doctrinal, and physical foes of the Jews. And the situation of the Jews in the German lands began to deteriorate as the Protestant movement began to spread. In 1536, Luther's chief protector, the elector of Saxony, John Frederick, actually issued a decree prohibiting Jews from living in, engaging in business, or even passing through his whole realm.

And when Yosov Roshheim tried to get Luther to intercede on the behalf of the Jews, thinking that he was their friend, Luther refused, and all the Jews were expelled from Saxony. Later, Yosov wrote in his memoir that the evil of their situation was, quote, due to that priest whose name was Martin Luther, may his body and soul be bound up in hell, who wrote and issued many radical books in which he said that whoever would help the Jews was doomed to perdition. The situation progressed, and by 1543, Luther had published his famous treatise On the Jews and Their Lies. There, he changed his tune entirely, and described the Jews as a base, whoring people, that is, no people of God. They are full of the devil's feces, which they wallow in like swine.

and the synagogue is an incorrigible whore and an evil slut. There's a lot more, and we will explore further how the Reformation and the Jewish people in Christian European society developed together. But for now, we'll just end with this. The Reformation marks the beginning of the end of the idea of a unified political and religious world that had dominated Christian European society basically since Augustine wrote The City of God back in the 4th century. No longer will a secular sword at the emperor on one side and the religious power of the church on the other hold sway. And gradually, no longer will people even imagine that the ideal world is one in which they do. The era that lies ahead is going to be marked by the rise of strong autonomous states and independent religious sects, each one struggling against the other for dominance.

and the ideal will slowly become a balance of power. Of course, only after a lot of blood is shed. In Europe, the ideal of universal monarchy and universal church is going to be supplanted by raison d'etat, the interest of the state. And divine law will slowly give way to natural law. The power of revelation will begin to fade in the light of reason. All of these shifts in European society will open up new spaces and new challenges for the Jew in his relationship to Christian society. And these intellectual, social, and spiritual revolutions will also sow their seeds within the Jew's story itself. But their story will be in a chapter to come. I just want to thank a few people. First, I want to thank all the people who give their hard-earned money to make this show happen.

I wanted to ask you to join them. Right now, we're doing a push. Over the next month, I want to hit 100 patrons. Please, send me an email at robmikefoyer at gmail.com, or you can find me at Facebook at robmikefoyer, or you can go directly to www.patreon.com, and you can hit the Donate Now button for a little bit of per-podcast support. I also want to thank the folks at the Land of Israel Network for giving me a platform to reach so many people. I want to thank the Pardes Institute P-A-R-D-E-S dot org dot I-L for giving me the opportunity to speak to the hearts and minds of so many Jews I want to thank Suomiakov because it's my home and I want to thank you for listening I'm Rav Mike Foyer and this is The Jewish Story