Strong ascetic tendencies and related interest in mysti-
cism and magic were demonstrated in both Germany and
northern France during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
once again, primarily on the basis of texts and fragments still
in manuscript. For these disciplines, the direction of influ-
ence extends from Ashkenaz to Provence and Spain (as was
the case for Talmudic studies). Tosafists display awareness
of and interest in ancient Jewish mystical texts, including
Sefer Yezirah and especially Hekhalot literature. They wished
to understand the secrets of the Divine Names, the use of
Divine Names for magical purposes, and the mystical func-
tioning of the heavenly realm. Although Rashbam and Rab-
benu Tam in northern France and R. Eliezer b. Nathan
(Raban) of Mainz (c. 1090–1170; who were aware of some
of these teachings as well) tried to play them down, they were
embraced by leading Tosafists (including Ri) in the second
half of the twelfth century and became even more prominent
through the thirteenth century, culminating in the figure of
Maharam of Rothenburg). The influence of the German pi-
etists in cultivating these disciplines also appears to have been
significant, although French figures such as Ezra the (ha-
Navi) of Moncontour (d.c. 1200 and other students of Ri
suggest that there was an independent core of influence as
well that perhaps extended back to Elijah of Paris (d.c. 1130)
in the early twelfth century.
All of this has implications for the way(s) that anthropo-
morphism was approached and understood in medieval Ash-
kenaz, which in turn impacts on the realities behind the Mai-
monidean controversy. In any event, rabbinic culture in
medieval Ashkenaz during the Tosafist period was clearly
broader and more variegated than has been thought, al-
though Talmudic interpretation and halakhic writings re-
mained the Tosafists’ most important areas of endeavor and
achievement.
SEE ALSO Ashkenazic Hasidism; Halakhah, article on Histo-
ry of Halakhah; Judaism, article on Judaism in Northern
and Eastern Europe to 1500; Rabbinate, article on The
Rabbinate in Pre-Modern Judaism.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Emanuel, Simcha. “The Lost Halakhic Books of the Tosafists” (in
Hebrew). Ph.D. dissertation, Hebrew University of Jerusa-
lem, 1993.
Emanuel, Simcha. “Biographical Data on R. Barukh b. Isaac” (in
Hebrew). Tarbiz 69 (2000): 423–440.
Emanuel, Simcha. “Rabbi Barukh of Mainz: Portrait of a Scholar
as Reflected in the Fragments of His Writings” (in Hebrew).
Issues in Talmudic Research. Conference commemorating the
fifth anniversary of the passing of Ephraim E. Urbach, Jeru-
salem, 2001.
Kanarfogel, Ephraim. Jewish Education and Society in the High
Middle Ages. Detroit, Mich., 1992.
Kanarfogel, Ephraim. Peering through the Lattices: Mystical, Magi-
cal, and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period. Detroit,
Mich., 2000.
Kanarfogel, Ephraim. “Religious Leadership during the Tosafist
Period.” In Jewish Religious Leadership: Image and Reality, ed-
ited by Jack Wertheimer, pp. 265–305. New York, 2004.
Reiner, Rami. “Rabbenu Tam’s Northern French Teachers and
German Students” (in Hebrew). Master’s thesis, Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, 1997.
Shoshana, Abraham, ed. Tosafot Yeshanim Eal Massekhet Yevamot
(in Hebrew). Jerusalem, 1994.
Sussmann, Yaacov. “The Scholarly Oeuvre of Professor Ephraim
Urbach” (in Hebrew). In Ephraim Elimelech Urbach: A Bio-
Bibliography, edited by David Assaf, pp. 7–62. Jerusalem,
1993.
Ta-Shma, Israel. Ritual, Custom, and Reality in Franco-Germany,
1000–1350 (in Hebrew). Jerusalem, 2000a.
Ta-Shma, Israel. Talmudic Commentary in Europe and North Afri-
ca (in Hebrew). Jerusalem, 2000b.
Ta-Shma, Israel. Collected Studies: Rabbinic Literature in the Mid-
dle Ages (in Hebrew). Vol. 1, Ashkenaz. Jerusalem, 2004.
EPHRAIM KANARFOGEL (2005)TOSEFTA SEE MISHNAH AND TOSEFTA
TOTEMISM is the systematic symbolization of social en-
tities (individuals, social units) through concrete phenome-
nal images, often natural species, and the development of
these symbols into relationships of identity, power, and com-
mon origin. The term totem derives from dotem, a term used
by the Ojibwa, an Algonquin people of North America, to
denote clan membership. As a concept, totemism has been
treated in two distinct senses, or phases, of anthropological
theory. In the first, or evolutionary sense, it was postulated
as an institution of primitive thought, a necessary stage of
religious conceptualization that all peoples must pass
through in the course of cultural evolution. This notion was
developed by such theorists as James G. Frazer and Émile
Durkheim, and it was the subject of a definitive critique by
Alexander A. Goldenweiser. The second, more modern sense
of the term might be called its “systematic” sense, one that
allows for a wide range of variance in culture-specific
schemes of symbolization and classification and that ap-
proaches the significance of totemism through its relation-
ship to these schemes. This modern sense informs the view-
point of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s critique Totemism (1963) and
forms the basis for his subsequent idea of a “science of the
concrete” (The Savage Mind, 1966).
The first sense of totemism tends to exaggerate its uni-
tary aspects and make of it something of a universal primitive
institution; the second tends to dissolve it into general issues
of denomination and symbolism and to underplay the dis-
tinctiveness of the term and the usages to which it refers.
Instances of the naming of clans for natural species
among North American peoples were known long before the9250 TOSEFTA