Joan S. Friedman
ish Law: History Sources. Principles, trans. Bernard Auerbach and Melvin Sykes, Philadelphia, 1994, vol. II, p.885
Freehof, p. 11..
Freehof, pp. 13.
Freehof, pp. 14-15
Salo W. Baron , A Social and Religious History of the Jews, New York , 1958, vol
II, p. 277.
See e.g. Shaye J.D. Cohen ,“Roman Domination,” in Shanks, ed., Ancient Israel, Washington, DC , 1988, p. 235:“The absence of other organized groups in post-70 Judea] does not of course mean that all Jews everywhere instantly became pious followers of the rabbis. The contrary was the case. In Second Temple times most Jews did not belong to any sect or group but were content to serve God in their own folk way This pattern continued in the rabbinic period as well, as the rabbinic texts themselves make abundantly clear But in the end the masses recognized the rabbis as the leaders and shapers of Judaism .” Neusner ’s work underscores the extent to which the rabbi’ view of a proper Jewish life did not match the people's view see, e.g., c h. 1,“The People and the Law,” in Jacob Neuser, The Wonder- Working Lawyers of Talmu
dic Babylonia, Lanham , MD , 1987, but his perspective only further undermines Freehof ’s argument, since in the end the rabbis succeeded in imposing their form of Judaism on the entire Jewish people. Shmuel Safrai offers a more conventional picture in which the rabbis and their institutions quickly emerge as the“backbone” of Jewish existence after 70, but he also states that “the people[were] led by the sages.” S. Safra,“1 he Era of the Mishnah and Talmud ” in H. H. Ben-Sasson , ed., A History of the Jewish People, Cambridge, 1976, pp. 309-311.
In the wake of the Chmielnicki uprising a rabbinical synod met in Lublin in 1650 and found ways to free many agunot and otherwise regularize devastated Jewish family life. Heinrich Graetz , Geschichte der Juden, Leipzig , 1882, vol. 10, p. 75.
“When religious leaders, familiar with the theory as well as the practice of the Reform movement in Germany , came to America they found a lay impetus for religious reform already present. The task the laymen assigned them—and they to themselves—was to give it an intellectual foundation and to direct its course.” Michael Meyer , Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism, New York , 1988, p. 236. See also Leon Jick, The Americanization of the Synagogue , Hanover , NH , 1976.
Freehof, p. 13.
Whether and to what extent Freehof ’s model of popularity initiated change in fact holds true for any other peiod of“religious crisis” in Jewish history, or
whether he was grossly overgeneralizing on the basis of his own time and