Susan Weissman | Liverpool University Press | 2020

Reviewed by Rabbi Dr. Stu Halpern

Susan Weissman's Final Judgement and the Dead in Medieval Jewish Thought is a fascinating examination of ghost tales in Sefer Hasidim. As Weissman, the chair of Judaic Studies at Lander College for Women and a former guest on Twice Blest, the Straus Center's podcast on Shakespeare and the Bible, comprehensively details, Rabbi Yehuda HeHasid's seminal pietistic work presents a conception of the dead that diverges greatly from biblical and rabbinic texts.

Weissman traces the origins of these tales of frightening and threatening wandering spirits to pagan, Icelandic myths and ancient Germanic sagas, which were adapted by Christianity and subsequently absorbed by Yehuda HeHasid, also known as Judah ben Samuel of Regensburg. As Weissman notes, Sefer Hasidim was unique in its adaptation of the ethos of these tales. Rabbi Judah's "unique views on the ubiquitous nature of sin and on the harsh character and inescapability of posthumous punishment were totally at variance with those held in the tosafist academies."

Emphasizing again and again that in Talmudic tales of the dead, spirits are usually friendly and didactic (see, for example, the many tales of Elijah appearing to the rabbis and appearances by Moses' spirit), Weissman stresses how striking it is that in Sefer Hasidim, the appearance of the dead and cemeteries are fear-inducing sources of evil and sin. There are no tales of dead matriarchs, patriarchs, or Moses. Rather it is "the ordinary dead" who appear and roam the earth, stricken by sin and in search of purgation. "The notion that the dead return to Earth in order to suffer punishment," Weissman writes, "is rooted in pre-Christian beliefs surrounding the return of the dangerous dead."

Additionally, the conception that Christian saints' burials marked holy ground inspired the belief, Weissman argues, that Jewish cemeteries are holy as well. "Jews would venerate their holy dead no less than the Christians venerated theirs," she writes. Other concepts inspired by the surrounding milieu included the hooded tallit adapted by German pietists, which resembled a similar garment that pagans, and then later Christian monks, believed helped ensure protection in the afterlife.

Weissman posits that Rabbi Judah must have been exposed to the Christian beliefs of his neighbors. The monastery of St. James, she notes, was situated 700 yards from the Jewish area of his city. He might have heard tales of the dead from Christians who read them aloud during saints' feast-day celebrations or from the mouths of monks. Christian converts to Judaism, she suggests, might also have been a possible conduit.

Rabbi Judah's very conception of God, Weissman strikingly suggests, was that of a feudal lord. Lords, in his time, operated within a "society of vengeance," in which punishments were strict and harsh rather than retributive. (Vengeance-based punishment often exceeded the degree of the crime.) Thus HeHasid's harsh, ascetic, and fearful conception of how sin and punishment worked and why the dead often remained in search of final forgiveness.

Though the manner in which Sefer Hasidim seems to have been impacted by non-Jewish sources is surprising, Weissman stresses how crucial it was, amidst the medieval marketplace of ideas, not to be outshined by your neighbors. Devotion to God, she writes, was crucial to medieval Jews' self-image. "Psychologically speaking, they could not allow themselves to be outdone by their religious competitors."

To read more Straus Center book reviews, click here.

To listen to Twice Blest, click here.

You can learn more about the Straus Center and sign up for our newsletter here. Be sure to also like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram and connect with us on LinkedIn.