This masterful monograph is based on extensive archival research, including research on forty-six manuscripts that belong to a distinctive family of texts. Members of this medieval and early modern family share several traits: their original authors remain anonymous; their scribes or illuminators may be identifiable; their content offers an exposition of both theory and actual practice in the construction of Jewish calendars; and their arguments draw upon three twelfth-century authorities, Abraham bar Ḥiyya, Abraham ibn Ezra, and Moses Maimonides, whose calendrical treatises (Sefer ha-‘ibbur, Sefer ta‘amei ha-luḥot, and Hilkhot kiddush ha-ḥodesh) are neatly sketched in Chapter 2 of this monograph. The collective, generic title for this body of literature is sifrei evronot, which derives from the Hebrew term ‘ibbur, or intercalation. The term refers to the rabbinic procedures by which the twelve months of the shorter lunar year are periodically augmented to preserve synchronicity with the longer solar year. Augmentation is necessary for maintaining correspondence between cultural time, or the cycle of holidays, and natural time, or the cycle of seasons, astronomically marked by solstice or equinox (tekufot). Other adjustments to the calendar are necessary for fixing the days on which Jewish festivals and fasts fall so as to avoid awkward conflicts with other sacred Jewish times. (Caveat lector: It is not the mission of this monograph to explicate the technical and mathematical details of these rabbinic procedures; nevertheless readers without this arcane knowledge will suffer no handicap in comprehending the text.)
In addition to investigating these forty-six manuscripts, Elisheva Carlebach explores twenty-nine other manuscripts and more than eighty artifacts, most of them calendars (luḥot) that were mass-produced using the new technology of printing between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries in two popular formats: wall-hanging broadsheets and pocket-size miniatures. Excerpts from and references to all these medieval and premodern texts together with their historical analysis compose the monograph, and no fewer than fifty-three images in full color are handsomely reproduced and assigned a plausible iconographic identification.
In this monograph, historical analysis and iconographic identification are guided by the intriguing premise that calendars and maps are similar, being simultaneously agents and products of culturally inflected ideology. The author, a social historian, formulates this principle in the monograph's introduction: “No calendar serves as an objective instrument for marking the passage of time just as no map represents an unfiltered view of the natural landscape. Both incorporate political agendas, and often religious worldviews, into their representations” (2). Skeptics who resist attuning to political and ideological undertones may be persuaded to drop their objections by considering the Jewish calendars used today by American Jews who inhabit dual temporalities and are therefore accustomed to seeing the graphic coincidence of Jewish and American dates. On many of these calendars, for example, on the square marking the coordination of 29 Kislev AM (anno mundi) 5772 and 25 December 2011 CE, two facts are dutifully noted and one is conspicuously missing: it is the fifth day of Hanukah and the day of blessing a new moon, but Christmas goes unremarked. On that same calendar, by contrast, the apparently neutral or civic Thanksgiving in November and Independence Day in July are acknowledged. The early modern Ashkenazic calendars examined by Elisheva Carlebach differed: they were not oblivious to Christian realities. That Jewish calendars, both as artifact and in constituent parts, change over time in response to social needs is one of the major points eloquently made throughout the monograph.
When applied to the textual and visual evidence of Ashkenazic Jewish calendar literature originating in early modern Europe—a literature that evinces acute sensitivity to the contemporary turbulence of Protestant Reformation and Catholic reaction, including the contentious and divisive Gregorian reform of the calendar promulgated in 1582—the principle of “political agendas” and “religious worldviews” leads to these conclusions: “[Jewish] [c]alendar literature…embodied the need to understand, internalize, and instruct in the culture of the [Christian] other. Yet precisely because it acknowledged the calendar of the other in all its intricacy, the Jewish calendar advanced strategies to counter the power of that culture.… While Jewish calendar literature might seem at first glance to reflect and mandate Jewish separation and distinctiveness, a closer inspection reveals a complex story of cultures so deeply intertwined that they could never be completely unraveled.… Virtually every European Jewish calendar carried a full Christian calendar in its core section; sifrei evronot, too, contained information about how to construct and observe the Christian calendar. The reasons for including this information are obvious: the rhythms of economic activity in European culture were tied to its calendar, not only to the seasons of nature, but also its feasts and holy days” (116). We therefore now know that among the bits of information conscientiously included in early modern Jewish calendars of Ashkenazic provenance were the dates of Christmas (nittel), Easter, and other saints’ days, along with the dates of all the important markets and fairs.
These socioeconomic conclusions, subordinate to the overarching theme of inextricably intertwining cultures, are elaborated in Chapters 5 (“Keeping Christian Time in Jewish Calendars”) and 6 (“Church Time and Market Time”). By way of introducing these chapters, the author wittily observes that “even had they wished to remain ignorant of these dates [e.g., New Year's Day and other Christian holidays], Jews could not afford to do so” (116). Chapter 4 (“A New Jewish Book in Christian Europe”) also emphasizes the pervasive entanglement with Christianity by examining the visual evidence of illuminations. The key to understanding their iconographic significance, Carlebach argues, is to perceive them as visual forms of anti-Christian polemics that complement the grotesque mockery of derisive wordplay directed against Christian dogma and practice. Chapter 8 (“Imagining the Beginning of Time: Jewish Chronology”) explores the various systems used by Jews throughout history both to mark time and to enshrine a localized “collective memory.” The chapter judiciously suggests that the emergence in the tenth century of a preference for privileging the year of cosmic creation, anno mundi, may have been a Jewish polemical reaction to competing systems in surrounding societies and cultures. Chapter 7 (“Calendar, Ritual, and the Turn of the Seasons”) is strictly ethnographic and dazzling. It describes an early modern practice of not drinking from containers of water that were left unattended or without an apotropaic metal pin at the exact moment of solstice or equinox (tekufah). Much of what is known about the practice, now fallen into disuse, is gleaned from texts written by early modern Jews who converted to Christianity and were anxious to make manifest the defects of their former religious community. The chapter nevertheless serves the overarching theme of the monograph by revealing the inescapable reality of Jewish-Christian interaction and its impact on the calendar.
I missed a table of illustrations, which would have facilitated a study of the images discussed in this volume. I was also somewhat befuddled by the discussion of anti-Ursuline polemics (129). While these or other minor editorial lapses may disturb other readers, all will find ample compensation, and all of us are indebted to Professor Carlebach for making this superb contribution to historical scholarship. Among the many nuggets I will cherish for their insights into the motive for bookish activity and scholarship among the faithful is the citation of a text explaining why the initial word in calendar books, Ẓiva (He commanded), is so ornately decorated. As Elisheva Carlebach explains, “the word emphasized the sense among the scribes that copying, calculating and preserving this [calendrical] knowledge fulfilled a mitzvah, a religious precept. It also illustrated the notion that the only way to fulfill the mitzvah of qiddush ha-ḥodesh (sanctifying a new month), after the Jewish calendar had been set and publicized for all future time, was by learning how to construct the Jewish calendar and writing one's own sefer evronot” (85).
