own circumstances. At times this meant invoking the talmudic principle
such as Ha Lan ha lehu(Is this really so?) to legitimize distinct Ashkenazic
customs in the face of older existing customs elsewhere. This was instrumen-
tal in the appearance of the first Ashkenazic prayer book, the Vitri Mahzor.
More than anything else, this exegetical method allowed the Tosafists to
address immediate problems. For example, biblical and talmudic law pro-
hibited Jews from lending money to other Jews at interest. The economic
reality of the twelfth century required it, however; Jews needed money from
lending at interest to pay taxes. The Tosafists fashioned a loophole, allow-
ing Jews to use Christians as middlemen in credit transactions. Another
major source of income for Jews in the Champagne region was from the sale
of wine. The Talmud forbade Jews to handle or derive benefit from wine
produced by non-Jews on the chance that it might have been consecrated to
a foreign god or used for ritual purposes. The Tosafists distinguished
between wine made by Christians and wine made by pagans, arguing that
the earlier taboos referred only to the latter, thus allowing Jews to sell
Christian-produced wine.
The upshot is that after Rashi made rabbinic literature accessible, the
Tosafists made it applicable to their own day. Often, as Haim Soloveitschik
noted about two decades ago, “the prevalent would not only expand the nor-
mative; it would become the normative.” Under the religious and intellectual
leadership of the Tosafists, Ashkenazic Judaism became an all-encompassing
way of life, regulating all aspects of Jewish existence. Emblematic in this
regard were the responsa of Meir of Rothenberg, which cover virtually every
facet of life, from the sublime to the mundane; and the publication of the Tur,
an easily accessible code of Jewish law, which was as user-friendly as Maimonides’
Mishneh Torah.
To be sure, the Ashkenazic Jewish community was not hermetically sealed
from the neighboring non-Jewish world. While most Jews resided in the
Jewish quarter of the city or town, the market square was typically an arena
for interaction between Jews and non-Jews. Moreover, there were often con-
tacts between Jewish and Christian women. In England, for example, less
affluent Christian women tended to borrow money from small-scale female
Jewish moneylenders. What is more, historian Elisheva Baumgarten
discovered in the medieval Ashkenazic world a camaraderie and extensive
interaction between Jewish and Christian wet nurses and midwives. This sug-
gests that the image of the Ashkenazic Jewish community as insular and
isolated may be largely exaggerated. Given the small size of the Jewish
community, and despite the social barriers between Jews and non-Jews
erected by Jewish law and Christine doctrine, it was virtually impossible for
Jews to function on a daily basis without extensive interaction – economic
and social – with non-Jewish people.
The Jews of medieval Christendom 87