PETER J. HAAS

sayings and lessons in the form of last wills and testaments from ! Tmudic times all the way up to the nineteenth century. In so doing, he created the sense of a single genre. Although Abrahams probably went too far in including Talmudic and midrashic stories like the one |[cited at the beginning, he was certainly right in bringing to our atten­ton the fact that there was such a distinct genre, at least in the Middle Ages.”

With this background in mind, let us turn to the material itself What we find in Abrahams’ collection from the medieval period, as| said, are really nothing more than moral treatises. These are works meant to instruct the reader on how to lead the proper moral life. As such, they represent in Judaism a middle stream of literature that stands between Halakhah on the one hand and philosophy on the other. The Halakhah defines norms of behavior, but only rarely, and then only obliquely, deals with matters of intent and emotion. It is concerned in the end with proper behavior in the concrete world. The | philosophical literature, on the other hand, is less concemed with behavior than with proper conceptualization. It addresses the rational part of our souls but, again, not the intentional or emotional side. It is here that the ethical literature, be it Pirkei Avot , Musar, or ethical wills, finds its unique place. It is not concerned with sheer conduct on the one hand, although it usually assumes this, nor is it concerned with the philosophical underpinnings of its content, although this is often assumed as well. Rather, it is a literature addressed to the reader’s | emotions, intentions, and feelings. It may be for precisely this reason

that it takes the form of a will, a point I will return to in a moment. In all events, it thus covers the religious ground between philosophy on the one hand and Halakhah on the other.

: But why should this literature be in the specific form of ethical wills? After all, other ancient literary paradigms are available

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