As noted by Eleazar of Worms, Yehuda ha-Hasid’s Sefer Ha-Hasidim(The
Book of the Pietists), the central text and one of the few extant texts of this
movement, shows that the pietists were critical of conventional Judaism in
two respects. First, they regarded it as minimalist – that is, as a body of
beliefs and practices that demanded little beyond the fulfillment of the mini-
mum requirements. For example, mainstream Judaism required Jews to pray
three times a day. Pietists, while observing this requirement meticulously,
composed and recited additional prayers for other occasions, such as midnight
meditations and all-night recitations of psalms.
In addition, the pietists regarded mainstream Judaism as too theologi-
cally passive, with little or no active attempt to understand and carry out
the will of the Creator (Rezon ha-Bore). Ordinary Jews, for example, rarely or
never engaged directly the evil inclination that resides in the heart of every
individual. The pietists would stare temptation in the face by placing
themselves in the midst of overwhelming temptation and then resisting the
urge to transgress. Notoriously, according to Sefer Ha-Hasidim, some
pietists would spend the night in a brothel in order to resist partaking of
the available pleasures. The number of pietists who participated in this
movement was never very large. Some historians have speculated that the
mentality of this movement was eventually carried eastward to Poland and
left an imprint on the religious outlook of Polish Jewry during the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries.
More significant in terms of impact were the Tosafists (Hebrew: Tosfot),
a highly skilled group of biblical and talmudic exegetes. Derived from the
Hebrew term tosefet(gloss), the Tosafists were the intellectual progeny of
Rashi and his school (and in some cases his actual progeny) who expanded or
critiqued (or both) Rashi’s interpretation of the Talmud. Most of the Tosafists
are known only from their commentary. Some, such as Rashi’s grandson, Tam
ben Meir (also known as Rabbenu Tam), were also communal leaders.
As exegetes, the Tosafists faced the problem of adapting existing rabbinic
laws and customs, which had been fashioned centuries earlier in the Land of
Israel and Babylonia and then adapted by the geonim to life under Islam, to
the particular circumstances of twelfth- and thirteenth-century central
Europe. To this end, the Tosafists brought to bear an impressive intellectual
arsenal that included all extant facets of rabbinic literature: the Babylonian
and Jerusalem Talmuds, commentaries and responsa of the geonim, commen-
taries from Muslim Spain, works of Italian rabbis such as Gerson ben Meir,
and of course the writings of Rashi. With this vast corpus in hand, they
employed a dialectical process called pilpul(casuistry), an intense and rigorous
analysis of existing rabbinic texts. Moreover, they were confident enough to
second-guess earlier authorities such as Rashi, the geonim, and even the
Talmud. In this way, they were able to apply talmudic and other dicta to their
86 The Jews of medieval Christendom