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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 October 2009
The impact of Salo Wittmayer Baron on the study of the history of the Jews during the Middle Ages has been enormous. This impact has, in part, been generated by Baron's voluminous writings, in particular his threevolume The Jewish Community and–even more so–his eighteen-volume Social and Religious History of the Jews. Equally decisive has been Baron's influence through his students and his students' students. Almost all researchers here in North America currently engaged in studying aspects of medieval Jewish history can surely trace their intellectual roots back to Salo Wittmayer Baron. In a real sense, many of Baron's views have become widey assumed starting points for the field, ideas which need not be proven or irgued but are simply accepted as givens. Over the next decade or decades, hese views will be carefully identified and reevaluated. At some point, a major study of Baron's legacy, including his influence on the study of medieval Jewish history, will of necessity eventuate. Such a study will have, on the one hand, its inherent intellectual fascination; at the same time, it will constitute an essential element in the next stages of the growth of the field, as it inevitably begins to make its way beyond Baron and his twentieth-century ambience.
This paper was originally delivered as part of a plenary session devoted to the historical egacy of Salo Wittmayer Baron, held at the 1990 conference of the Association for Jewish studies. 1 have made modest changes in the original, but have decided to retain the lecture format.
1. Baron, Jeanette Meisel, “A Bibliography of the Printed Writings of Salo Wittmayer Baron,” Salo Wittmayer Baron Jubilee Volume, 3 vols. (Jerusalem, 1974), 1:1.Google Scholar
2. Baron, Salo Wittmayer, “The Historical Outlook of Maimonides,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 6 (1934–1935):5–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3. It is somewhat unfortunate that Baron chose to designate his magnum opus a second edition of A Social and Religious History of the Jews.He did so because of his original view of the proposed new work. In fact, as noted shortly, the new work turned in unexpected directions. The end result has been considerable and unfortunate neglect of the first edition of A Social and Religious History of the Jews, which deserves a better fate. It is a remarkably balanced overview of major themes in Jewish history, in many ways far more accessible to students and the general reading public than the massive eighteen-volume second edition.
4. There is widespread agreement that this was Baron's original plan. Note the clearcut statement by Lloyd Gartner in his full and excellent memorialization of Baron, in Zion 55 (1990): 325. I have spoken with a number of Baron's students, who similarly recollect the original plan. To be sure, I have found no written statement of Baron's intentions. The preface to volume 1 of the second edition of A Social and Religious History of the Jewsdoes not spell out the overall plan of the revised edition. The preface to volume 3 does acknowledge a change in approach and attempts to explain it. Baron's acknowledgment of the shift is bland: “Although generally adhering to the historical approach of the first two volumes, the author found it necessary to devote to the High Middle Ages, a period of but seven centuries (500–1200), much more space than he had to the treatment of the preceding two millenia.” Some of the considerations that Baron advances for the shift are not terribly convincing. Perhaps the most persuasive is his last claim, which points to the availability, for the ancient period, of “much secondary literature of high quality and recent vintage,” and the lack of a parallel literature on the Middle Ages. For students of the career and creativity of Salo Baron, perhaps the most intriguing question of all is the shift that took place in his revised edition of A Social and Religious History of the Jewsduring the 1950s. That shift set him on the course that would endure for the remaining three and a half decades of his life.Google Scholar
5. Baron, Salo Wittmayer, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 2nd ed., 18 vols. (New York, 1952–1983), 9:3–4.Google Scholar
6. While recent historians of the Jews have not overtly attacked Baron's emphasis on medieval nationalism, they have in fact indicated their negative reaction by their failure to feature this line of thinking and to pursue it. It seems to me that recent work on the growing repressiveness of medieval western Christendom suggests that Baron's emphasis on nationalism per se may be exaggerated, but that his sense of a new spirit that increasingly tended to isolate the Jews and other outgroups finds considerable support. For a striking formulation of this new particularistic and xenophobic spirit, see for instance Heer, Friedrich, The Medieval World: Europe 1100–1350, trans. Sondheimer, Janet (London, 1961). I deal with these issues at considerable length in chapter 7 of my forthcoming The Decline of Early Ashkenazic Jewry.Google Scholar
7. Baron, Salo Wittmayer, Modern Nationalism and Religion (New York, 1947).Google Scholar
8. An emphasis on the role of the Church in medieval Jewish fortunes continued to be prominent in the work of many Israeli historians, including Yitzhak Baer and Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson.
9. Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden von den ältesten Zeilen bis aufdie Gegenwart,7:4. Because of the well-known problems with the standard English rendition of Graetz, I have chosen to provide my own translation, based upon the second edition (Leipzig. 1873).Google Scholar
10. Baron, Salo Wittmayer, “The Israelite Population under the Kings” (Hebrew), Abhandlungen zur Erinnerung an Hirsch Perez Chayes (Vienna, 1933), pp. 76–136.Google Scholar
11. Baron, , A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 4:89–91 and 147–149. This view of Baron's has met with limited acceptance, as the older notion of 1096 as a dramatic turning point continues to be presented more regularly. I attempted to argue the Baron view in some depth in the closing chapter of my European Jewry and the First Crusade(Berkeley, 1987).Google Scholar
12. Graetz, , Geschichte der Juden,4:2. Again, I have provided my own translation, based on the second edition (Leipzig, 1865).Google Scholar
13. I shared a copy of my lecture with Lloyd Gartner, whose full essay on Baron has already been noted. He was supportive of my thesis and further suggested the importance of understanding Baron's upbringing. Gartner notes Baron's upper-middle-class roots and his immersion, from childhood on, in the world of business and affairs. This gave Baron, according to Gartner, a perspective significantly different from that of most Jewish historians, recruited from the world of the yeshivot and the intelligentsia. Gartner's observations seem to me very important. As noted at the outset and the conclusion of this essay, much work remains to be done on the historical oeuvreand thought of Salo Wittmayer Baron.