Shaking the Pillars of Exile: "Voice of a Fool": An Early Modern Jewish Critique of RabbinicCulture. by Talya FishmanReview by: Dean Phillip BellThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), pp. 599-601Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2544576 .

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Book Reviews 599

the notes. For example, Callahan begins emblem 144, Princeps subditorum incolumitatem pro- curans: "Whenever the Titan brothers, the winds, are disturbing the sea...." Knott remains closer to Alciato's text with "Whenever the brothers of Titan churn up the seas...." She is able to explain the periphrasis in a note, while Callahan is constrained by the format of the edition where her translations were published to make the text do the work of a note, so she adds "the winds," an expression which is nowhere to be found in the Latin text.

But sometimes these notes do not go far enough in explicating the ambiguities of Alci- ato's Latin for the more or less specialist reader to whom this edition is directed. For exam- ple, in emblem 27, Nec verbo, nec facto quenquam icedendum, Knott translates the word "cubitum" as "measuring rod."The picture in this edition does not, however, show Nemesis holding anything but the "harsh bridles," and she seems to be supporting her outstretched arm with her other hand.This picture, or others like it, inspired early translators to choose another translation for the word "cubitum," as for example "coude" in French, or "cubito" in Italian, both of which mean "elbow," another meaning of the Latin "cubitum." And it is her elbow that Nemesis appears to be holding in the picture: this alternative meaning was dominant in the early understanding of the emblem, and it would seem to deserve a note, even though Knott's translation is, in itself, entirely unobjectionable (and makes more sense).

My other reservations about this edition are all very minor.The quality of the reproduc- tions pales in comparison to the Klincksieck facsimile of the 1551 edition; surely modern reproduction methods could have produced something better.And finally, the spelling of the publisher Guillaume Rouille's last name needs to be standardized in Alciato scholarship. Some writers still spell it "Roville," while in this edition we find the more standard "Rouill" that was, curiously, sanctioned by Baudier in his Bibliographie lyonnaise. Curiously, for in the introduction to that admirable work, Baudier makes it clear that the spelling was actually "Rouille" in the middle of the sixteenth century, and that remained the accepted spelling until the accent was added in the seventeenth.

But these are very minor quibbles with a fine edition that will do yeoman's service for grateful scholars in a variety of fields. It is handy; the translation is for the most part very reli- able and quite readable; and the annotation provides a useful guide for situating the emblems in relation to the classical tradition. Daniel Russell .......... .e.. . .. . . ..... University of Pittsburgh

Shaking the Pillars of Exile: "Voice of a Fool": An Early Modern Jewish Cri- tique of Rabbinic Culture. Talya Fishman. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. 362 pp. $49D50.

According to his own testimony Kol Sakhal ("Voice of a Fool") was brought to the famousVenetian rabbi Leone Modena (1571-1648) in the summer of 1622 by an acquain- tance passing throughVenice.The manuscript, asTalya Fishman presents it, offers a very crit- ical attack on rabbinic culture. Modena copied the provocative manuscript, which was supposedly composed in Alcala in 1500 by an otherwise unknown author by the name of Amitai barYedaiah ibn Raz, but paid it no further attention until two years later when he reexamined the text and discovered that its arguments were substantive. Modena himself began to write a refutation of Kol Sakhal, but only a few pages of that refutation (Sha'agat Aryei) exist.

In Shaking the Pillars of Exile: 'Voice of a Fool,' an Early Modern Jewish Critique of Rabbinic Culture, Fishman explores the possible authorship of Kol Sakhal, but more importantly seeks to contextualize the text.The result is an impressively complete presentation that includes a

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600 Sixteenth Century Journal XXIX / 2 (1998)

very readable translation of the original text and a number of superb appendixes, tables, and index materials. Fishman's own analysis of the text is rather short, numbering some sixty pages, but it is written powerfully and with conviction. Fishman begins her analysis by dis- cussing the various interpretations of the text that have been forwarded since it was first pub- lished in 1 852.The maskil Samuel David Luzzatto concluded that the manuscript which was copied in Modena's hand was indeed written by the rabbi himself. Fishman confirms this argument through internal philological evidence. As Fishman points out, many scholars have for a long time believed that Modena himself authored Kol Sakhal and so research on the text has never been able to overcome "anachronistic considerations and partisan debates." Schol- ars of the nineteenth-century "Reform," for example, praised Modena for writing the trea- tise and saw him as the "first modern Jew." Other, more "orthodox" opponents of the Reform viewed Modena as an unstable or "two-faced" individual. It is precisely at this point that Fishman makes a very important observation: that is, that "pre-modern Jewry" was flex- ible and permeable, tradition-bound, but inclusive of the lax as well as the religiously obser- vant. The modern category of "orthodox"-that has been supported wittingly by the modern orthodox (who have viewed their own brand of religious observance as simply a holdover from the premodern era) as well as unwittingly by the nineteenth-century reform- ers (who criticized premodern Jews as incapable of thinking for themselves and as com- pletely dependent upon rabbinic dictates)-cannot be applied to early modern Jewry. According to Fishman, there was a great degree of "tolerated dissent" within the rabbinic culture of the early modern period. As a result, Fishman urges that the premodern Jewish past was a complex system and that Kol Sakhal, like other texts, must be read as a product of its time.

Fishman argues that Kol Sakhal needs to be read within the context of various influences that were both external and internal to Judaism. For Fishman,Venice, with its tradition of opposition to Rome and its tolerance for Christian reformers from other cities, was a signif- icant environment for the creation of the text. Indeed, Fishman finds in Friar Sarpi, one of the city's major theologians, a relationship to orthodoxy and heresy that parallels that in Kol Sakhal. Fishman notes that there may have been a personal relationship between Sarpi and Modena, who refers to the former as "my friar." If there was a personal relationship between the two, Fishman proposes, then Sarpi's sharp attack against institutionalized religion and his support for the Reformation against papal tyranny find uncanny correspondence in the trea- tise ascribed to Modena.Kol Sakhal refutes the idea that the Oral Law was given to Moses on Mount Sinai and the notion that Scripture empowers and legitimizes the rabbis; and it fur- ther posits that the unchecked rabbinic lust for power has resulted in a proliferation of rab- binic legislation, perpetuating the Jewish exile.Kol Sakhal is not the only attack on aspects of rabbinic Judaism, however, nor is it alone in its attempts to identify the possible impediments to redemption.What does make Kol Sakhal unique, Fishman asserts, is that it presents a com- prehensive indictment of the "rabbinic enterprise," and subsequently calls for and outlines Jewish legal reform.According to Fishman, Kol Sakhal argues that a code of law should make clear the rational and moral reasons of specific commandments at the same time that it should make "clear distinctions between that which is legally required and that which is purely optional," calling for flexibility with regard to conditions of time and place. Further, Kol Sakhal "removes large areas of life from statutory legislation, and leaves them up to the interpretation of the individual." The author of Kol Sakhal favors biblicism, that is, biblical over rabbinic law.

Though Kol Sakhal may be indebted to Karaite influence (Karaites rejected the Oral Law), it does not consistently subscribe to a Karaite outlook, and, Fishman argues, seems to

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Book Reviews 601

adopt Karaite beliefs in a largely utilitarian fashion. Similarly, although Kol Sakhal seems to resemble in some ways the writings of the converso Uriel da Costa, da Costa's effectual rejection of revelation goes in a much different path than the author of Kol Sakhal. Kol Sakhal does attack rabbinic Judaism, but it is, simultaneously, indebted to rabbinic culture as well: "Even its most unorthodox passages are 'systematically referential,' dependent upon substantive and procedural perspectives expressed within rabbinic literature itself." In the end, Fishman suggests that Kol Sakhal reveals the unsuccessful early stages in the process of "secularization" which was halted prematurely "by developments within the host society that had overwhelming intellectual, political, and social ramifications for the Jews of Europe."

As with any book one could criticize the work for not offering a broad enough context or for not exploring particular issues as deeply as they seem to warrant. A more developed discussion of theVenetian and humanist environment is necessary to buttress Fishman's asser- tions, for example, and one suspects that a broader look at Modena's other writings would help explain, or at least balance in important ways, the ideas presented in Kol Sakhal. More substantive criticism of the book is that Fishman speaks of early modern Jewry as if it were one entity, downplaying the variety of regional and cultural differences within European Jewry. Similarly, although Fishman spends a fair amount of time arguing that the text should be read in its own context and shorn from more modern ideological notions, in the end one wonders if she has not in fact returned to the same ideological categories and questions (per- haps in this case, though, twentieth- and not nineteenth-century ones); this is particularly evident when she announces the "secularization" theme toward the end of her brief analyt- ical introduction. Finally, one might question the way that Fishman reads the text itself. In a number of cases the text, at least from this reader's perspective, does not seem to be as "crit- ical" or "revolutionary" as Fishman makes it sound in the introduction. Nevertheless, Fish- man offers a valuable translation of a provocative text and the issues that she raises about the nature of premodern Judaism deserve continued discussion. Dean Phillip Bell .. .. ........ . DePaul University

Spectacle, Pageantry, and Early Tudor Policy. Sydney Anglo. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. xxxiv + 375 pp., n.p.

Sydney Anglo's book, first published in 1969, may be said to have inaugurated the modern study of the meaning and implications of such early Tudor events as progresses, mar- riage processions, and royal entries, and more recent scholars (including those who disagree with him) have all acknowledged Anglo's seminal role.The Warburg Institute and the Oxford University Press thus should be congratulated for bringing out this increasingly scarce book in a second edition. However, the new edition is largely a photographic reprint of its prede- cessor, differing from it only in providing a detailed and updated bibliography of primary and secondary sources, together with a five-page bibliographical preface by Professor Anglo relating work published since 1969 to what he wrote then. In his final paragraph, Professor Anglo acknowledges his own changes of mind, largely in the direction of an increasing scep- ticism concerning the utility of the word "propaganda" in understanding these events. Admirers of Anglo's scrupulous attention to detail, and of his more recent writings, will thus not be surprised at his conclusion that the political influence ofTudor court and public spec- tacle has been exaggerated, nor at his reminder to keep in mind that such spectacles were primarily designed to entertain. F. J. Levy............................................ ........ . University ofWashington

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