382 A History of Judaism
became rabbi of Worms and Friedberg and was particularly upset by
Isserles’ failure to give sufficient weight to German customs. Hayyim
laid out a raft of objections to the Mappah, beginning with the general
principles that it is wrong to oblige a rabbi giving a decision to decide
the halakhah according to the views of the majority, that the codes
cause neglect of Talmud study and lead to ignorance, and that individ-
ual rabbis will lose authority because people will rely on published
books. Hayyim noted that, in any case, if Isserles could disagree with
Karo, it must in turn be permitted for other rabbis to disagree with
Isserles.^5
Hayyim was correct in both his hopes and his fears. On the one hand,
the wide circulation of the Shulhan Arukh, with its glosses, in due course
led to a democratization of halakhic knowledge, which in turn encour-
aged observance of the laws through communal peer pressure within
Jewish communities in both Sephardi and Ashkenazi worlds. Indeed,
with easy access to printed copies of the texts, peer pressure by those
able to read the relevant sections of the Shulhan Arukh might lead to
interference in minutiae of life far beyond observance of halakhah, in
areas of life defined by the Talmud, and hence by Karo, as derekh erets,
‘the way of the land’, which stipulated what was decent behaviour. So,
for instance, the Shulhan Arukh contains a long section on table man-
ners, and another on behaviour when visiting the privy: ‘He should be
modest when in the privy by not exposing himself until he is seated.’
Isserles adds the gloss that ‘two men should not be there at the same
time and the door should be closed out of modesty.’ On the other hand,
independent rabbis retained sufficient authority to question the deci-
sions in the codes. Even in Poland, just a generation after the great
Isserles, the head of the Lublin academy, Meir b. Gedalyah (known as
Maharam), deemed the Shulhan Arukh no more than a collection of
rulings and reserved his right to make independent decisions.
Numerous communities took advantage of Isserles’ comments on the
authority of custom, which in general he asserted should be binding
even if there is no halakhic source. This approach was somewhat at
odds with Isserles’ occasional statement that a particular custom is
wrong or, ‘if I had the power, I would abrogate the custom. For it is
based on an error and there is no reason to rely on it.’ It was not in any
case possible for the codes to cover all eventualities, and local rabbinic
leaders inevitably retained a role in deciding particular issues. But it is
probably significant that it was the religious leaders of smaller commu-
nities who felt the need to assert the right to religious diversity. Thus in