中世纪世界生活手册（二十四）
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政府和税收
民选领袖以整个社区的名义行事，代表社区的利益与基督教或穆斯林当局交涉。他们负责确保按时缴纳伊斯兰世界的人头税（jizya poll tax）或王室税，以及基督教国家的封建税（tallage）或“犹太税”（tallia judeorum）。犹太人可以通过超地域组织起来，定期召开宗教会议，讨论超越任何特定社区的事务，从而为自己的利益服务。施派尔、美因茨和沃尔姆斯的阿什肯纳兹社区委员会每年定期举行两到三次会议，并通过对每个城市都具有约束力的“改进”（takkanot）。在伊斯兰世界和东欧，犹太人在某一特定领土上由一位Nasi（希伯来语，含义是“王子”）或nagid（希伯来语，含义是“宗教领袖”）领导，而nagid又对宫廷拉比负责，这是一种常见的做法。到 11 世纪，伊比利亚和西西里的基督教王国采用了穆斯林统治时期的宫廷拉比形象，13 世纪中叶，德国、法国和英国也出现了类似的机构。
Elected leaders acted in the name of the entire community and represented its interests to the Christian or Muslim authorities. They were responsible for ensuring the timely payment of the jizya poll tax in the Islamic world or the taxes to the Crown, as well as the county or feudal tallage, or tallia judeorum, in the Christian lands. Jewish interests could be served by organizing themselves supraterritorially and holding synods at regular intervals to discuss matters that transcended any one particular community. The committees of the Ashkenazic communities of Speyer, Mainz, and Worms met regularly two or three times a year and passed takkanot that were binding on each city. It was common practice in the Islamic world and in eastern Europe for Jews in a given territory to be centrally organized under the leadership of a nasi (prince) or nagid (speaker) who, in turn, was answerable to the rabbi of the court. By the 11th century the Christian kingdoms of Iberia and Sicily had adopted the figure of the rabbi of the court from the period of Muslim rule, and similar institutions were found in Germany, France, and England in the mid13th century.
犹太人领袖联合会定期举行会议，也可能由宫廷召集，处理社区事务。1432 年，卡斯蒂利亚王国巴利亚多利德的宫廷拉比亚伯拉罕·本维尼斯特 (Bienveniste)受命召集卡斯蒂利亚所有王公（nasim）召开会议，向王国的每个社区征收塔木德-妥拉基金税，以资助小学阶段的妥拉教学（妥拉的字面意思为指引，它指导犹太教徒的生活方式，因此，所有的犹太教律法与教导，通通都可以被涵盖到妥拉中），支付提供犹太法教学的拉比的薪水，并维持一所塔木德学院。一般来说，在伊斯兰世界和南欧，初等和高等教育是塞法迪犹太人的社区事务，因此需要征收地区社区税。此外，犹太学校和主要图书馆都设在领地的主要社区，必须得到周围犹太社区的支持。
Confederations of Jewish leaders met regularly at their own initiative and might also be convened by the court to deal with communal matters. In 1432 Don Abraham Beneviste, the rabbi of the court at Valladolid in the Kingdom of Castile, was commanded to convene a council of all the Castilian princes (nasim) to impose a Talmud Torah fund tax on each of the communities of the kingdom to finance primary school level Torah instruction, to pay the salary of a rabbi who would provide instruction in Jewish law, and to maintain a Talmudic academy. Generally speaking, elementary and higher education were a community affair among Sephardic Jews in the Islamic world and southern Europe, hence the need for territorial community taxes. In addition, the yeshiva and the major library would be located in the main community of a territory and had to be supported by the surrounding Jewish communities.
另一种组织形式是“hevrot”或“cabarim”，相当于犹太教的基督教联合会。犹太会社最早出现于 13 世纪的西班牙和法国，其目的是安葬死者、帮助贫困家庭支付安葬费用以及救助临终病人。有些兄弟会募集资金为贫穷的新娘筹集嫁妆，或为穷人购买衣物和其他物品，而其他一些兄弟会则关注明确的宗教功能，如点亮犹太教堂的蜡烛，或只是聚在一起祈祷。
Another form of organization was the hevrot or cabarim, the Jewish equivalent to the Christian confraternity. Jewish confraternities first emerged in the 13th century in Spain and France for the purposes of burying the dead, helping poor families finance the cost of burial, and providing succor to the terminally ill. Some confraternities collected money to raise dowries for poor brides or to purchase clothing and other items for the poor, while others concerned themselves with explicitly religious functions such as lighting the candles of the synagogue or simply gathering together to pray.
男女性角色
由于犹太教鼓励任何有智慧的男子成为研究神圣经文的妥拉学者，许多妻子成为家庭的经济支柱，以便丈夫有闲暇学习。这种做法促使犹太女性在城镇或国家的经济生活中担任重要职位并承担责任。
Since Judaism encouraged any man to become a Torah scholar who had the intellect to study sacred texts, many a wife became the family’s breadwinner so that her husband had leisure to study. This practice promoted Jewish women to positions of authority and responsibility in the economic life of the town or country.
犹太女性参与当地商业以及海外贸易和旅行。在地中海国家，犹太女经纪人很常见。与男性经纪人一样，女性商品经纪人为其代理人提供投资指导并提供资金。代理人通常是她们的儿子、兄弟、其他家庭成员或在海外担任信任和责任职位的亲密朋友。这些职业女性家庭中的男性从她们那里继承“姓氏”，这是一种早期的母系姓氏，姓氏来源于母亲的职业。以父亲的职业为姓氏则是父姓。例如，英国男性面包师的后代使用贝克（Baker）姓氏，而女性职业面包师的后代则使用巴克斯特（Baxter）姓氏。同样，酿造啤酒的男性姓氏是 Brewer，职业女性的传承人是 Brewster。织布工的男性姓氏是 Weaver 或 Webber。女纺织工的继承人姓韦伯斯特（Webster）。在开罗的geniza（指定用于临时存储破旧的希伯来语书籍以及在适当的墓地埋葬之前有关宗教主题的论文的储存地）文件中，男性被命名为“女商品经纪人的儿子”和“名叫羚羊女士（我查到的是“Sitt Ghazāl”，https://humancircuspodcast.com/podcastscripts/2023/5/1/medieval-lives-6-wuhsha-the-broker）的女经纪人的兄弟”。迈蒙尼德的兄弟戴维将他的旅行同伴命名为“我在马拉巴尔海的同伴将是女经纪人的儿子萨利姆、萨利姆兄弟的儿子马卡里姆·哈里里和羚羊女士的兄弟”（《回信和书信》37v）。另一个常见的“家族”名字 Ibn al-Hajja，意为“女朝圣者之子”。
Jewish women participated in local commerce and in overseas trade and travel. In Mediterranean countries Jewish women brokers were common. Women commodity brokers, as did men brokers, provided instructions to their agents and provided their money. Agents often were their sons, brothers, other family members, or close friends in overseas positions of trust and responsibility. Men in the family of such professional women took their “last names” from them, an early form of matronymic in which family name was derived from the mother’s profession. Family names derived from the father’s trade are patronymics. Progeny of an English male baker, for example, used the surname Baker, while the inheritor of a woman’s professional baking career was Baxter. Likewise for brewing beer the male family name was Brewer; the professional woman’s heritage was Brewster. For fabric weavers the male name was Weaver or Webber. Those tracing inheritance to a woman weaver had the family name Webster. In Cairo geniza documents men are named as “Son of the Woman Commodity Broker” and “Brother of the Woman Broker named Lady Gazelle.” Maimonides’ brother David identified his travel companions as “My company in the Malabar Sea will be Salim, son of the Woman Broker, Salim’s brother’s son Makarim al-Hariri, and the brother of Lady Gazelle” (Responsums and Letters 37v). Another common “family” name, Ibn al-Hajja, meant “Son of the Woman Pilgrim.”
Shelomo Dov Goitein出版的 geniza 信件显示，一些犹太妇女在贸易商队和海上航行中陪伴丈夫或兄弟。一些商人带着家人到巴勒斯坦定居，因为这里离他们近，而且生活费用相对低廉。一位名叫Nahray ben Nissim的海外商人在他 1046 年的账簿中记录了他妹妹的交通费和生活费，她可能是他的管家。付款人是他的雇主Barhun ben Ishaq，付款方式是常见的“里萨拉”（risala）商业安排。
The geniza letters published by Goitein show that some Jewish women accompanied their husbands or brothers in trade caravans and on sea voyages. Some traders took their family to settle in Palestine for proximity to them and for the city’s comparatively inexpensive cost of living. An overseas merchant named Nahray ben Nissim in his account books dated 1046 charged payments for transport for his sister and her living costs abroad with him, perhaps as his housekeeper. The person paying was his employer, Barhun ben Ishaq, via the common business arrangement of risala.
根据犹太律法，如果没有儿子，女儿可以继承父亲的全部财产。约瑟夫的兄长巴尔洪去世后，约瑟夫的女儿们有权分享（11世纪突尼斯）家族贸易生意。
In Jewish law daughters inherited the entire estate of their father if there were no sons. When Joseph Taherti’s older brother, Barhun had died, Joseph’s daughters were entitled to a share in the family trading business in 11thcentury Tunisia.
大量有关女性的杂文证实了中世纪犹太商人对等待他们归来的妻子、女儿、母亲和姐妹的尊重和敬意，以及他们常用母亲的名字或职业来识别男人的身份。一位名叫佩拉亚（Perahya）的男子尽管忙于生意，还是为母亲寄来了药方。一位男子向陪同他出国的妻子致以问候，他们两人都在家里孝敬他的祖母。另一位商人向拉结和她的母亲致以亲切的问候。一位商人与以撒（the son-in-law of Giovanna’s son，不知道是不是“那个意思”，不太好翻译）一起启程。迈蒙尼德的兄弟戴维向他的妻子致以亲切的问候，他用亲切的小短语“小家伙”来称呼他的妻子，他也向她的妹妹和自己的姐妹致以问候。
A copious miscellany of references to women corroborates the respect and esteem that medieval Jewish traders expressed for their wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters awaiting their return, as well as their common use of a mother’s name or profession for identifying a man. A man named Perahya sent a medical prescription for his mother, despite his preoccupation with business problems. A man sent greetings from his wife accompanying him abroad, and both of them honored at home his paternal aunts. Another trader sent affectionate greetings to Rachel and her mother. One merchant embarked with Isaac, the son-in-law of Giovanna’s son. Maimonides’ brother David sent loving greetings to his wife, whom he called by the affectionate diminutive phrase “the little one,” and sent affection also to her sister and to his own sisters.
并非所有妇女都依赖丈夫的支持。在 15 世纪的意大利和西班牙，犹太妇女从事手稿印刷和书籍装帧工作。在新印刷业中，女编译是这门技艺中“神圣工作的执行者”，使一个人可以“用许多笔写字”。一些妇女在葡萄酒、麦酒、面包和食品市场从事专业工作。
Not all women were dependent on their husbands’ support. In 15th-century Italy and Spain Jewish women worked in manuscript illumination and bookbinding. In the new trade of printing, women compositors were “performers of holy work” in the art, allowing one individual “to write with many pens.” Other women worked professionally in the wine, ale, bread, and food market trades.
中世纪犹太女性从事医学和外科手术的人数之多令人惊讶。许多人都是眼科医生。1349 年，拉比本·阿什在西班牙托莱多去世前，感激地讲述了他与两位犹太眼科医生的交往经历。第一位试图治愈他的医生失败了。然而，第二位医生治疗了他两个月后去世了。拉比感叹说，如果她还活着，他可能会完全恢复视力，但他感谢上帝至少让他恢复了部分视力。在美因河畔法兰克福的档案中，犹太医生（Juden-Ercztin）名单中出现了女眼科医生。这些神秘学女外科医生的技术很娴熟，据说她们的手术速度比人们描述的还要快。
Surprising numbers of medieval Jewish women practiced medicine and surgery. Many were eye surgeons. Rabbi Ben Asher before his death in Toledo, Spain, in 1349, gratefully recounted his experiences with two Jewish ophthalmologists who treated his near blindness. The first who tried to cure him failed. However, a second doctor treated him for two months before she herself died. The rabbi lamented that had she lived he might have fully regained his eyesight but gave thanks to God for at least permitting him to regain part of his eyesight. In the archives of Frankfurt am Main, women eye doctors appear among the lists of Jewish physicians, the Juden-Ercztin. So skillful were these female occultist-surgeons that they were said to operate more quickly than one could describe the operations.
无论是职业妇女还是不工作的犹太妻子，当丈夫外出经商时，留在家中的她们都间接参与了陆地和海上的商业活动。她们的两项习惯性法律保护是由亲戚或代表（wakil，商人的受托人）保管的货币基金。这取决于丈夫能否在合理的时间内以合理的健康状况返回。他的亲戚或受托人每月向妻子支付津贴，并处理不在家商人的一般商业事务。对商人妻子的第二项法律保护是丈夫在踏上遥远或危险的旅程之前签署的有条件离婚协议。无论夫妻之间的感情有多深厚，有条件离婚的前提是丈夫一去不复返，或因意外、战争、暴力而丧生，或因伤病而死亡，且没有证人证实他的命运。有条件离婚减轻了失踪丈夫生死未卜的痛苦，也避免了妇女陷入“agunah”（它被用作借用术语，指的是丈夫拒绝或无法准予离婚的妇女（犹太法）决定）这一脆弱的法律地位。
Both the working woman and the nonworking Jewish wife left at home while her husband traveled on trade indirectly participated in the commercial drama on land and sea. Her two customary legal protections were the monetary fund in the safekeeping of a relative or a wakil, the trustee of merchants. This was predicated on the husband’s returning in reasonable time in reasonable health. His relative or trustee paid the wife a monthly stipend and cared for general business affairs of the absent merchant. The second legal protection for a merchant’s wife was the conditional divorce that the husband signed before embarking on a distant or dangerous journey. No matter how great the love between the spouses, the conditional divorce was predicated on the husband’s never returning, the man killed by accident, war, or violence or dead from injury or disease, without a witness to confirm his fate. The conditional divorce mitigated the anguish of not knowing whether the missing husband was dead or alive and prevented the woman’s entrapment in the tenuous legal status of agunah.
来自远方的爱与离婚
一位印度商人的来信将犹太妇女在 13 世纪早期犹太法律中的地位表现得淋漓尽致。信中详细描述了一个特殊家庭的苦恼和这对夫妇的离婚，体现了犹太人的性、法律、道德、责任、选择、利益和乐观主义的社会背景。
The letter of a trader located in India dramatizes the status of Jewish women in early 13th-century Jewish law. Its details of a particular family’s anguish and the couple’s divorce exemplified the social context of Jewish sex, law, morality, responsibility, choice, profit, and optimism.
一位饱受饥荒和瘟疫肆虐埃及之苦的妇女写信给她的丈夫，责备他常年出差在外，并要求离婚。丈夫在 1204 年给她的回信与迈蒙尼德同时代，这封信现存于纽约犹太神学院图书馆的 E. N. Adler 藏品中。丈夫（出奇意料的）坦率地写下了他不在妻子身边的这些年里对妻子的思念和渴望。妻子的斥责让他感到受伤、羞愧和愤怒，他抗议自己的清白和永恒的爱，他说，没有一个男人的心会像他一样始终如一地离开妻子。他直截了当地表达了对妻子的性渴望。她在信中写道，他违反了他们的婚约，即克图巴 (Ketubah)，其中列出了双方的义务，包括她每周性交的法定权利，即“onah”礼（该词的字面意思是“适当的季节、时期、阶段”，丈夫对妻子的婚姻义务）。
A woman who had suffered the terrors of famine and plague that ravaged Egypt wrote letters of reproach to her husband for his many years of absence on business and asked for a divorce. His answer to her in 1204, contemporary with Maimonides, now rests in the E. N. Adler Collection of the Jewish Theological Seminary Library in New York City. With notable candor, the husband wrote of his feelings of longing and yearning for his wife during all the years of his absence. Hurt, shamed, and offended by his wife’s rebukes, he protests his innocence and his eternal love, saying that no heart of any man traveling away from his wife as long as he has remained as constant as his. Forthrightly, he states his sexual yearnings for her. She had written that he had violated their marriage contract, the ketubah, that listed reciprocal obligations including her legal rights to weekly sexual intercourse, the mitzvah of onah.
作为商人，丈夫在国外逗留，通常不是因为计划、愿望或无能，而是因为灾难。这位写信人显然是遭遇了海难。为了挽回损失，赚取利润以支付远航的费用，这位丈夫选择了许多geniza通信者的路线。他尽可能地远行，尽可能地长途跋涉，尽可能地艰苦奋斗，以进行贸易和价值交换来获取利润。此人绕过印度周边，来到印度大陆东南部的科罗曼德海岸，这是在 geniza 文件中提到的 1000 多名犹太印度商人中最远的一次航行。
Trader husbands tarrying abroad usually stayed away not by plan, desire, or incompetence but by disaster. This letter writer apparently had been shipwrecked. To recoup losses and make a profit to justify expenses of distant voyaging, the husband elected the route of many geniza correspondents. He traveled as far, as long, and as hard as necessary to trade and to exchange value for profit. This man had traveled around the perimeter of India to the Coromandel coast in the southeastern sector of the continent, one of the farthest voyages of the more than 1,000 Jewish India traders referred to in the geniza documents.
他的旅行范围之广，广为人知，只是因为他在家中的妻子对丈夫从远方带来的香水礼物（珍贵芳香的龙涎香）极为挑剔。她不知道寻找或寄送香水的危险。他气愤地说，如果她知道他为购买龙涎香礼物所付出的艰辛和代价，她一定会忍住不说。他接着讲述了他如何获得龙涎香的冒险经历，他说他遇到了海难，被遗弃在船上。由于失去了一切，他被迫贷款，并远渡重洋，来到了 al-Mabar 以外的地方。
His prodigious scope of travel became known only because his wife at home was hypercritical of her husband’s gift from afar of perfume, valuable fragrant ambergris. She did not know the perils of its finding or sending. He remarked with exasperation that had she known the trouble and expenses he had to incur to purchase the gift of ambergris, she would surely have held her tongue. He then went on to relate the adventure of how he acquired it, saying that he had shipwrecked and been left for dead. Having lost everything, he was forced to take out a loan and to travel the distance beyond al-Mabar.
他理解妻子对自由的渴望，于是允许妻子与自己离婚。在之前的一次航行中，他的妻子拒绝了有条件的离婚。丈夫给妻子送去了肉豆蔻、上好的高良姜、白屈菜、芳香的木材和孩子们用的布匹。他承认，根据犹太法律，她有权决定接受或拒绝离婚。他在离婚信中写道，他不能责怪她的离开，但在等待了这么久之后，他不想空手而归。他把决定权交给妻子，说无论如何他都会接受，只是请她慎重考虑，因为她可能会后悔自己的决定，到时可能就无济于事了。最后，他庄重而温柔地祝愿妻子无论如何决定，都能在雅威（上帝）的启示下做出决定。
Understanding his wife’s desire for freedom, he granted the writ of divorce she craved. Before a previous voyage his wife had refused a conditional divorce. Now he sent her nutmeg, good galingale, celandine, fragrant woods, and cloth for the children. He acknowledged her contractual right of decision under Jewish law to accept or reject the offer of divorce. In resignation he wrote that he could not blame her for leaving him, but at this point after waiting for so long, he was loath to go home empty handed. He left the decision up to her, saying that he would accept it, no matter what, only asking that she consider carefully since she might regret her decision, which then might be of no avail. He concluded with dignity and tenderness, wishing that however she may decide, she reach her decision with the inspiration of God.
奴隶制
苏丹艾德哈布（Aydhab）港口大约于1144 年发生的一起法庭诽谤案引人注目，它让我们得以一窥中世纪犹太人、基督徒和穆斯林生活中司空见惯的奴隶制度。根据 12 世纪的穆斯林法律，男子可以将自己的女奴纳为妾。基督教和犹太教法律规定，自由人之间的婚姻是发生性关系的先决条件。据说，一个名叫Abu Said ibn Jamahir的犹太商人在他的女奴生下儿子后将她遗弃在非洲。他以诽谤罪起诉了指控他的人。他有女奴吗？他抛弃了她吗？这段关系的真相被永远埋葬在时间的尘埃中，无人考证。然而，其他的 geniza 文件则涉及获得自由的妇女与非其主人的犹太男子结婚的婚约，这表明爱上女奴的犹太人有义务释放她并娶她为妻，或者反过来说，释放她并提供嫁妆使她能够嫁给另一个男人。
A fascinating 12th-century court case for slander dated around 1144 from the Sudanese port of Aydhab permits a glimpse of slavery, a familiar institution in medieval Jewish, Christian, and Muslim life. Under 12th-century Muslim law a man could make his slave woman his concubine. Christian and Jewish law required marriage between free people as a prerequisite for sexual relations. A Jewish trader named Abu Said ibn Jamahir was said to have abandoned his slave woman in Africa after she had given birth to their son. He sued his accuser for slander. Did he have a slave woman? Did he abandon her? The truth of that relationship is buried forever in time’s unexamined detritus. Other geniza documents, however, pertain to marriage contracts for freed women marrying Jewish men who had not been their masters, suggesting that a Jew in love with a slave woman was obligated to free her and marry her or, conversely, free her and provide a dowry to enable her to marry another man.
感性与虔诚的情色
作为读书人，犹太人崇尚思想。但同样重要的犹太传统是赞美身体的性感与性欲。对一些中世纪犹太人来说，身体就是书。摩西·本·纳贺蒙（Moses Nachmanides，1194-1270 年）和法国塔木德学者阿夫拉姆·本·戴维（Abraham ben David，又称拉瓦德（Raavad，1125-98 年），这两位 12 世纪与迈蒙尼德同时代的犹太哲学家都写过美化人体感官的文章。学者们敏锐地欣赏人体，将其视为一本书来研究、珍视和解读，并像其他灵感圣典一样，将思想和精神引向上帝。
Jews as people of the book cherished the mind. But an equally potent Jewish heritage celebrated the body’s sensuality and sexuality. For some medieval Jews the body was the book. Respected medieval Jewish philosophers such as Moses Nachmanides (1194–c. 1270) and the French Talmudist scholar Abraham ben David, also known as the Raavad (1125–98), both 12th-century contemporaries of Maimonides, wrote texts glorifying human sensuality. Scholars sensitively appreciated the human physique as if it were a book for studying, cherishing, interpreting, and, as do other inspirational holy texts, directing the mind and spirit to God.
人们认为，婚内性交的神圣义务，即“onah”礼，是对虔诚的肯定。维多利亚时代的审慎主义将中世纪的性斥之为弥天大罪，那些只从这一黑暗的视角来了解中世纪的人，会被这一闪亮的定义所震惊：性交是成人礼，是神圣的义务，是必须接受并快乐使用的礼物。性爱不仅是生育，而且是一种神圣的方式。它是一种深刻“了解”爱人的方式。对于一些犹太思想家来说，性高潮是真正的信徒与上帝之间激情神秘结合的世俗预示。
The blessed obligation of sexual intercourse in marriage, the mitzvah of onah, was thought to affirm piety. Those who know the Middle Ages only through the dark Victorian lens of prudery that castigated medieval sex as mortal sin are startled by this shining definition of sexual intercourse as mitzvah, a divine imperative, a gift obligatory to accept and joyous to use. Sex was consecrated as more than procreative. It was a way of profoundly “knowing” a beloved. For some Jewish thinkers, sexual orgasm was earthly prefiguration of passionate mystical union between true believer and God.
中世纪犹太人的婚礼仪式和象征中充满了性的意味。《圣经》中关于生育的禁令为最初的“天篷”（chuppah 代表犹太家庭，以布顶篷和四根柱子为象征；chuppah也代表着对客人的热情款待，这个“家”最初缺乏家具，提醒人们犹太家庭的基础是里面的人，而不是财产；从精神意义上讲，chuppah的覆盖代表上帝在婚姻之约上的临在）增添了活力，在“天篷”中，一对新人在婚礼当天完成了他们的结合。新郎在鞋底踩碎的玻璃杯最初是民间传说中的生育子宫符。克图巴 (Ketubah)婚约列举了夫妻双方的性义务。违反性义务是离婚的原因。挑逗性的婚礼食品和饮料是婚庆感官享受的顶峰。食谱规范了性感，膳食、菜单和节日食品都是为了刺激或抑制肉欲以及治愈渴望的身体而精心制作的。
Sexual implications graced medieval Jewish wedding ceremonies and symbols. Biblical injunctions to fertility animated the original huppah, in which the couple sexually consummated their union on the wedding day. The glass that the groom crushed beneath his shoe originally was a folklore fertility womb charm. The ketubah marriage contract enumerated the couple’s mutual sexual obligations. Violation of sexual obligations was cause for divorce. Provocative wedding foods and drinks were the culmination of the sensuality of nuptial celebration. Recipes regulated sensuality. Meals, menus, and festival foods were crafted to stimulate or suppress carnality and to heal the yearning body.
在中世纪的犹太歌谣、动物寓言、讽刺诗、爱情诗和战争诗，以及在哲学性爱手册中，犹太人的性欲得到了热情和智慧的满足。令人捧腹的《森德巴尔的故事》（Mishle Sendebar）包括性冒险、对人体的赞美以及对女人床上智慧的颂扬。罗马的讽刺作家以马内利在他的《Mahberot》中所写的骚动诗歌既优雅放肆，又粗俗不堪。
In medieval Jewish song and story beast fables, satires, poems of love and war, and in philosophical sex handbooks, Jewish appetite for sex was satisfied with enthusiasm, and intelligence. The hilarious Tales of Sendebar (Mishle Sendebar) include sexual adventures, exaltation of the human body, and celebrations of woman’s wit in bed. The satirist Immanuel of Rome’s riotous poems in his Mahberot were elegantly insolent and imperially vulgar.
早先在穆斯林安达卢西亚，犹太朝臣、将军和诗人塞缪尔·伊本·纳格里拉（Samuel ibn Nagrela，约 990-1056 年）写下了充满神秘色彩的、得到上帝“保证”礼仪诗和战歌。他还写了希伯来文、阿拉伯文和西班牙文的情诗，这些诗歌都带有明显的性色彩。后来在 12 世纪的西班牙，诗人犹大·哈列维（Judah Halevi，约 1080- 1141 年）也写过火热的情歌。塞缪尔·伊本·纳格里拉（Samuel ibn Nagrela）、犹大·哈列维（Judah Halevi）和诗人兼音乐家罗马的以马内利（Immanuel of Rome，约 1261 年至 1328 年），以及他们同时代最好甚至最差的人都有写过性色彩作品。他们的性色彩作品坦率且露骨。他们以惊奇和尊重的态度描述了男性和女性身体的感觉和快感能力。
Earlier in Muslim Andalusia, the Jewish courtier, general, and poet Samuel ibn Nagrela (c. 990–1056) wrote mystically inspired, God “assured” liturgical poems and battle songs. He also wrote Hebrew, Arabic, and Spanish love poetry that was blatantly sexual. Later in 12thcentury Spain, the poet Judah Halevi (c. 1080– 1141) also wrote fiery love lyrics. Samuel ibn Nagrela, Judah Halevi, and the poet and musician Immanuel of Rome (c. 1261–c. 1328), and none of their best or even their worst contemporaries wrote pornography. Their erotica was candid and explicit. It described with wonder and respect the male and female bodies’ capacities for sensation and pleasure.
虽然《森德巴尔的故事》等是由民间传统发展而来，但它们的作者和读者都是聪明人，而且往往是博学的思想家和读者。在层层叠叠的性暗示之间，隐藏着引用或转述《圣经》和《妥拉》的双关语和文字游戏。有些性文字游戏隐藏在明显的圣经注释之中。这种 “大众的文学”而非“律法的文学”的阿加达写作（犹太教古典拉比文学中出现的非法律解释，特别是《塔木德》和《米德拉什》），让各个社会阶层和各种教育程度的人都乐在其中。感性的赞美并不是常规的例外，而是中世纪犹太人欣赏身体的常规表现。
Though stories such as the Tales of Sendebar developed from folk tradition, nevertheless they were written by and for intelligent, often learned thinkers and readers. Hidden between layers of sexual allusion were puns and wordplays quoting or paraphrasing the Bible and the Torah. Some sexual wordplay was hidden amid apparent biblical exegesis. This aggadic writing, a literature of the people, not halachic literature of the law, delighted all social classes and all degrees of education. Sensual praise was not an exception to the rule but expression of a routine medieval Jewish appreciation of the body.
身体与道德
是什么导致了中世纪犹太文化中对性的公开、强烈的尊重？犹太艺术家至少赋予了性六种尊严，高扬其精神力量。首先，上帝以其无限的慈悲赋予了人们强大而敏感的身体，以补充强大而敏感的心灵。如果上帝不希望我们使用生殖器并产生快感，他就不会赐予我们生殖器及其在性爱中产生快感的能力。13 世纪伟大的哲学家和医生纳贺蒙尼德（Nachmanides）如是说。乔叟的《坎特伯雷故事》中的淫妇巴斯也在一个世纪后表达了同样的观点。
What caused open, exuberant respect for sexuality in medieval Jewish culture? Jewish artists ascribed at least six dignities to sex, exalting its spiritual potency. First, God in his infinite compassion gave people powerful, sensitive bodies to complement powerful, sensitive minds. God would not have given us genitals and their capacity for pleasure in sex if he did not expect us to use them and to generate pleasure. Certainly, if God wished us simply to purge urine from those orifices, he would have made them simpler and less exquisitely sensitive, so said the great 13th-century philosopher and physician Nachmanides. Chaucer’s lusty voluptuary, the Wife of Bath in the Canterbury Tales, voiced that same argument a century later.
上帝创造的性工具本身并不邪恶。但身体使用它们的方式却可能是邪恶的。上帝创造了手，让它可以完成最崇高的行为。手可以书写《圣经》。手可以在艺术中塑造图案。然而，同样的手也可以偷窃和谋杀。那么这只手就是可憎的、邪恶的。
No evil is inherent in the sexual instruments that God has made. But there can be evil in the way the body uses them. God made the hand an instrument that can perform the most exalted acts. A hand can write a Torah. A hand can shape designs in art. Yet that same hand also can steal and murder. Then the hand is loathsome and evil.
同样，如果使用和滥用不当，比如使用时的意图和想法是错误的，生殖器也可能成为堕落、恶心和罪恶的工具。上帝赋予人类的器官和能力本质上并不坏。它们是有用且重要的，而不仅仅是用来生儿育女。正如人的手在书写《圣经》或装饰书卷时是高尚和精致的，但在偷窃或谋杀时却是邪恶和可憎的，性行为也可以是有辱人格和令人厌恶的。对于真正有思想、有道德的男人和女人来说，性行为也可以是一种圣洁而伟大的精神活动。
Likewise, genitals can be instruments of degradation, disgust, and sin if inappropriately used and abused, as when the intention and the thought accompanying their use are wrong. God endowed people with organs and capacities that by their nature are not bad. They are useful and important and not only for making children. As can the human hand, exalted and exquisite when writing a Torah or decorating a scroll, but evil and detestable when it steals or murders, so sex acts can be degrading and disgusting. Or sexuality can be an exercise of sanctification and spiritual magnificence for the truly thoughtful, ethical man and woman.
“Onah”成人礼
其次，为了赞美身体及其创造者，人们必须履行“onah”礼，即例行和频繁的性交。亚伯拉罕（Raavad）在 12 世纪出版的《圣洁之门》（Shaar ha kadushah）一书中描述了根据健康、工作和社会需要而适当安排的“onah”义务。
Second, to celebrate the body and its creator one must perform the mitzvah of onah, routine and frequent sexual intercourse. The Raavad’s 12th-century book Gates of Holiness (Shaar ha kadushah) described the appropriate schedules for onah obligations according to health, work, and social necessities.
亚伯拉罕（Raavad）直接引用了《妥拉》中的一个时间计划。一个身体健康、在家附近工作的男人应该与妻子每晚都行“onah”礼。从事繁重体力劳动且离家较远的男子，如果每周只做两次，则可以免去其“onah”的义务。妥拉学者在学习和辩论中耗费了大量精力，以至于他们每周只有一次“onah”的时间。
The Raavad quoted a time scheme directly from the Torah. A man who was healthy and worked close to home should indulge his wife in onah nightly. A man who performed strenuous manual labor and worked at a distance from home was excused if he performed onah duty only twice a week. Torah scholars expended so much energy in study and debate that they had energy for onah only once weekly.
犹太教法律对经期和生育期妇女的性行为做出了规定。在妻子的月经期（niddah），丈夫不得与妻子发生性关系。同样，丈夫和妻子必须在分娩后的规定期限内禁止性交。在被称为“mikvah”的犹太公共浴室或温泉中，宗教仪式与卫生习惯相结合。在禁欲后恢复性关系之前，仪式性沐浴是妇女的义务。有些妇女在星期五晚上性交前后都要沐浴。
Jewish laws regulated sex for menstruating and childbearing women. A husband was not to approach his wife sexually during her monthly menstrual period, called niddah. Likewise, a husband and wife must abstain from intercourse until after a prescribed period postchildbirth. Religious ritual united with hygiene in the Jewish communal bath or spa called the mikvah. Ritual bathing was a woman’s duty before resumption of sexual relations after abstinence. Some women bathed before and after Friday night intercourse.
性权利既属于女性，也属于男性。妇女对“onah”的权利尤为重要。如果丈夫出差或更换工作影响了她在“onah”上的可能性和乐趣，她可以阻止丈夫出差或更换工作。纳贺蒙尼德和亚伯拉罕（Raavad）描述了犹太丈夫必须对妻子温柔体贴，保证妻子的性快感，并建议用诱惑的语言唤起妻子的性快感。
Sexual rights were women’s as well as men’s. A woman’s rights to her onah were especially important. She could prevent her husband from traveling afar on business or from changing his job if it interfered with her possibilities for and her pleasures in onah. Nachmanides and the Raavad described the Jewish husband’s mandatory tenderness and assurance of his wife’s sexual pleasure and suggested language of seduction to arouse her to sexual delight.
“Onah”作为成人礼，既是祝福也是义务，它鼓励真正、深刻而又崇高的相互理解。希伯来语中“性关系”的意思是“yediah”，即知识、理解。当他“了解”她（或她“了解”他）时，他们所了解的不仅仅是彼此身体的构造。他们的知识渊博而高深，他们的理解力超越了单纯的书本知识，最好的性爱是一种教学、一种灵魂的升华、一种终极的祈祷。
Onah as mitzvah, both blessing and obligation, encouraged a true, deep, yet exalted mutual understanding. The Hebrew word for sexual relations was yediah, knowledge, understanding. When he “knew” her and she “knew” him, they knew more than simply the anatomy of one another’s bodies. Their knowledge was profound yet soaring. A comprehension beyond mere book learning, best sex was anagogical, soul-uplifting, and the ultimate prayer.
身体的狂喜是天堂的预言
这种大胆的身体观并不否认心灵的荣耀。身体和心灵具有同等的力量，两者相互影响。犹太教迷恋感官和性行为的第三个原因是，他们相信最狂喜的性行为预示着天堂的狂喜。与其他 11 和 12 世纪的作家一样，医生、哲学家和诗人犹大·哈列维从身体的奇迹中看到并感受到了与上帝合一的奇迹。与追求理解上帝的迈蒙尼德不同，犹大·哈列维激发的是对上帝的爱。有时，他在写作时仿佛沉醉于上帝的荣耀之中。他的狂喜扩大了单纯思维的局限性。在犹大·哈列维的诗歌中，很难分清主题是他深爱的女人还是他崇敬的上帝。他沉醉于上帝的伟大，使他摆脱了许多单纯理性的束缚。
Such a bold view of the body did not deny glory of the mind. Body and mind were equivalently powerful, each influencing the other. The third reason for Judaic fascination with sensuality and sexual acts was the belief that the most ecstatic sex forecasted ecstasies of paradise. As did other 11th- and 12th-century writers, the physician, philosopher, and poet Judah Halevi saw and felt in the miracles of the body predictions of the marvels of unity with God. Unlike Maimonides, who sought understanding of God, Judah Halevi inspired loving God. Sometimes he wrote as if drunk with the glory of God. His ecstasy expanded limitations of mere mind. It was hard to tell in Judah Halevi’s poetry whether the subject was his deeply beloved woman or his exalted God. His intoxication with God’s grandeur freed him from many restrictions of mere rationality.
模仿创造
中世纪犹太人热衷于性的第四个原因是《旧约全书》对性的政治权威的证明。毕竟，在《创世纪》中的犹太原始神话中，上帝的愤怒很可能就来自于性的力量。在伊甸园中，亚当和夏娃被禁止吃知识之树的果实。亚当和夏娃是如何表现出他们的知识的呢？他们发现了自己的裸体、生殖器、在性交中的用途以及创造能力。这种创造生命的能力是对上帝创造世界和人类的喜悦和力量的模仿。在夏娃大胆地咬下果实之前，她和亚当都不知道上帝创造的秘密。当亚当和夏娃知道如何创造生命的奇迹时，上帝似乎对他们的新知识感到愤怒，因为他们违背了上帝不让他们知道的意图。性交不仅赞美了上帝，还模仿了上帝创造力的崇高荣耀。
A fourth reason for medieval Jewish preoccupation with sex was the Old Testament’s attestation to the political authority of sex. This power of sex, after all, probably was behind God’s anger in the Jewish primal myth in the Book of Genesis. In the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve were prohibited from eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. How did Adam and Eve manifest their knowledge? They discovered their nakedness, their genitalia, their uses in sexual intercourse, and their capacity for creation. This ability to create life was an imitation of God’s joy and power in creating the world and its people. Until Eve boldly bit the fruit, neither she nor Adam knew God’s secret for creation. When Adam and Eve learned how to perform the miracle of creating life, God seemed as furious at their new knowledge as at their disobedience of his attempt to keep them ignorant of it. Sexual intercourse not only praised God but imitated his high glory in creativity.
人在存在计划中的位置
上帝赋予人们性特权，是为了让人们真正理解上帝的宇宙秩序以及人类在其中的位置。性行为的第五个原因是教导人们自己的凡人地位。性教导人们，人可以模仿上帝作为创造者，但却不是上帝。人们虽然理解创造生命的概念，但只是偶尔、缓慢、费力地创造，通常一次只创造一个微不足道的生命，而且永远不确定创造的是什么。九个月的孕育可能造就一个新的男人或女人，一个美人或怪物，一个睿智或有缺陷的头脑。因此，“性”告诉我们，人的本性是什么：人类脆弱而强大，孱弱而持久，壮丽而平凡。
God gave privileges of sex to enable people truly to understand God’s order of the universe and the human place in it. The fifth reason for sexuality was to teach people their mortal place. Sex taught the lesson that people may imitate God as creator but are not God. Apprehending the idea of creating life, people do it only occasionally, slowly, laboriously, usually one paltry creature at a time, ever uncertain of what has been created. Nine months of gestation might make one new man or woman, a beauty or a monster, a magnanimous intellect or defective mind. Sex, therefore, taught that people are what they are: humanly frail yet powerful, feeble yet durable, magnificent yet mortal.
犹太人在世界政治中的地位
身体还教导人们，犹太人与世界上其他民族不同。犹大·哈列维称犹太人是世界上受苦受难的心灵。以色列之于其他民族，就如同心脏之于身体的其他部分：它为整个身体受苦受难，比任何其他成员都更容易被悲伤刺伤。一个世纪又一个世纪的大屠杀、驱逐和战争，使一些国家的犹太人除了身体之外，再也没有任何有价值的东西可以献给上帝。在 12 世纪德国的《虔诚者之书》（Sefer hasidim）中，Judah Kalonymous坚持认为，除了犹太人，世界上没有其他民族受命为上帝的圣名献祭自己。当然，犹大深知其他民族也曾遭受迫害和殉难。然而，他重新定义了“天选之民”一词，因为在第二次十字军东征和那个暴力时代的血腥袭击之后，犹太人受到了残暴对待。
The body also taught that Jews were different from the world’s other people. Judah Halevi called Jews the world’s suffering heart. Israel was to other peoples as the heart was to other parts of the body: It suffered for the whole and was more acutely pierced by grief than any other member. Century after century of pogrom, expulsion, and war left some Jews in some countries with nothing valuable left to sacrifice to God other than their bodies. In the 12th-century German Book of the Pious (Sefer hasidim) Judah Kalonymous insisted that no other of the world’s people but the Jews were commanded to sacrifice themselves for the sanctification of God’s name. Judah, of course, knew well that other peoples were persecuted and martyred. He redefined the phrase “the Chosen People,” however, because of the brutality to Jews after the Second Crusade and the bloody attacks of that violent age.
如果每个犹太人都要为上帝的话语成为殉道者，那么犹太人就有义务爱上帝胜过爱自己的生命，爱上帝的话语作为来生的密码。当憎恨犹太人的人给犹太人带来难以言表的恐怖和痛苦，以至于只剩下赤裸的身体而没有书籍时，身体就成了赞美上帝的圣书，因为上帝赐予了他们所剩无几的生命。用残存的生命进行祈祷，微不足道但却具有实质意义的躯体用它残存的任何意义进行祝福。他们的思想或灵魂在死后以另一种状态存在，他们的身体是其留给上帝的全部。
If each Jew was required to become a martyr for God’s word, then the Jew was obligated to love God better than he loved life and love God’s word as the password to the next life. When people who hated Jews inflicted terror and pain so unutterable that only naked bodies remained and no books, then bodies became holy books praising God for whatever life was left. Praying with the residue of being, the paltry yet substantive body made benediction with whatever sense remained to it. With minds or souls persisting in some other state after death, their bodies were all that they had left to give back to God.
犹太人的这种感性遗产表明，犹太人长期以来不仅是智力的创造者，也是激情的创造者。中世纪的犹太人以心灵和身体为荣，以上帝的名义承受痛苦，同时也享受情欲的快乐。从理论上讲，中世纪的犹太人追求的是综合的生活：身体与心灵同等重要，日常生活与精神生活息息相关，凡人的身体拥有不朽灵魂的光辉。
This Jewish sensual heritage demonstrated that Jews long have been creatures not only of intellect but of passion. Medieval Jews were proud of mind and of body, grateful to suffer pain in God’s name but also to enjoy erotic pleasure. Theoretically, medieval Jews strove for the integrated life: body as important as mind, daily life connected with spirituality, and mortal body possessing intimations of the glory of an immortal soul.
《Handbook To Life in The Medieval World》（2008）
By Madeleine Pelner Cosman and Linda Gale Jones
资源推荐：雷丁博物馆（贝叶挂毯）：https://www.readingmuseum.org.uk/edward-and-harold-westminster-followed-harold-heading-for-bosham（不用梯子）
