Jewish Ideas about the Papacy 35
wealth, he remained a Jew at heart and returned to his faith in the end—without,
of course, losing out financially. He therefore had the best of all worlds: wealth,
spiritual authority over Christian Europe, but ultimately also his Jewish faith.34
Secondly, while recognizing the power and authority of papal decrees, and the fact
that these decrees might well be a source of concern for Jewish communities, it
depicts the pope and his cardinals in rome with humour and in a positive light.
Thirdly, it portrays both Jews living in rome and the Jews of germany as immensely
desirous of and grateful for papal protection, indicating that, since there was no
authoritative equivalent to the pope in Judaism, even rabbis might look to the
papacy for the safeguarding of their communities. Such appropriation of the pope
and insistence on his protective role doubtless reflected the desire of Jewish com-
munities to ensure that papal protection should continue in the future.
Most importantly, by exploring the psychology of the universal father–son rela-
tionship, the tale makes a profound theological point: although popes and rabbis
are both archetypal father figures—pope means father, and rabbi means teacher—
Elhanan, the son, beats his father at chess, inverting the father–son relationship.
in winning the game Elhanan symbolizes the papacy’s claim to ultimate spiritual
authority in Christian Europe, but the tables are turned because he knows that he
is Jewish and abandons papal authority to return to the land and religion of his
rabbi father. The message is clear: Judaism is the father of Christianity; it is also
the true Faith.35
There exists also a grimmer version of the same tale in which Christians and the
papacy are portrayed in a much less favourable light.36 This time Elhanan became
perturbed that he did not know who his father was and enquired of his cardinals
that they should reveal his origins on pain of death. when they replied that he was
a Jew and that his father was rabbi Simeon, he ordered Simeon to appear before
him. Although the rabbi was afraid that he was being summoned to answer a false
charge, he braced himself and came before Elhanan for questioning. Simeon told
him that he had a son who had been stolen from him as a small boy, but he did not
know whether he was alive or dead, whereupon Elhanan asked him whether the
boy had birth marks on his body. when Simeon replied that he had marks on his
back and hand, Elhanan realized he was the rabbi’s son. Having revealed himself to
his father and assured him that he rejected the claims of Christianity, he asked
what he should do:
His father told him, ‘You have desecrated the name of the Lord in public. Make his
name holy in public and i shall accept you and you shall be a “son of the next world”’.
And he told him ‘in what way shall i act?’ He told him, ‘invite all your government,
the kings, the dukes, and the bishops and then you shall make the name of god
holy’.3734 For the tradition of Jewish folktales ending on a happy note, see Yassif, The Hebrew Folktale,
p.253.
35 Yassif, The Hebrew Folktale, pp.306–8.
36 Adolph Jellinek, Bet ha-midrasch ( Jerusalem, 1967), Vol. 6, pp.137–9.
37 Jellinek, Bet ha-midrasch, Vol. 6, pp.138–9.