JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

exeter
havior for Jews in the Middle Ages. The corpus of historical
chronicles describing the massacres in Germany and northern
France during the Crusades, though written primarily as
historical works, served for centuries as exempla to any Jewish
community under threat of conversion or death. Contemporaries
of the expulsion from Spain repeatedly complain of
those who did not follow the example set by their Ashkenazi
brothers during the Crusades, but preferred conversion to exile.
History itself, or historical chronicles, served in this case
as exempla in the full sense of the term.
The largest body of exempla in medieval Hebrew literature
is to be found in Sefer Ḥasidim (see bibliography), the
main ethical work of the *Ḥasidei Ashkenaz in the 12th and
13th centuries. The book includes hundreds of exempla; however,
where generally the exempla tend to specify men whose
undoubted virtue should prompt emulation of their deeds,
the exempla in Sefer Ḥasidim are always anonymous. Where
the name is mentioned (e.g., “a certain Joseph or Mordecai”),
it has no associative meaning. Most of the exempla start with:
“There was a Jew who…” or “It is told about a Ḥasid who…”
The tendency toward anonymity was part of the ethical ideology
of *Judah he-Ḥasid, the author of most of the book. The
ideology based itself on the concept that if great deeds are told
about a person, he, or his family, might take sinful pride in
the fact (pride being regarded by the Ḥasidim as one of the
cardinal sins). Unlike the exempla influenced by Islam, the
exempla of Sefer Ḥasidim are concrete, reflecting everyday
life and everyday ethical problems. It is possible that many of
the episodes actually happened, the author using true anecdotes
to illustrate his ethical standards. Many of the exempla
describe the behavior of Jews during the persecutions of the
Crusades; these served as models of behavior to many communities.
Most of the exempla, however, describe the right,
ethical way to behave when tempted by pride, by the evil powers
lurking in man, how to conduct oneself toward women,
gentiles, etc.
In the Ashkenazi ḥasidic exempla there is a class of anecdotes
which expound ways of repentance involving the use of
extreme self-mortification. Exempla of the same sort are found
300 years later in 16th-century Safed when mystic sages (some
of them tried to remain anonymous) used the same type of
mortification as a means to repent for their own sins and for
the sins of the people of Israel.
In a sense, modern ḥasidic narrative literature served also
as exempla, but its purpose was different. The wonderful stories
told about the ẓaddikim were not models of conduct to be
followed implicitly by Ḥasidim. The ẓaddikim had a different
code of behavior from their believers, and the stories of their
behavior were intended to provoke meditation, to bring the
ḥasid into deeper understanding of the ways of the ẓaddikim
and the ways of God, and thereby to some extent to influence
the ḥasid’s own ethical behavior.
Bibliography: M. Gaster, The Exempla of the Rabbis
(Eng. and Heb., 1924, 19682 with introd. by Braude); J. Meitlis, Das
Ma’assebuch (1933); J. Wistinetzki and J. Freiman (eds.), Sefer Ḥasidim
(1924, repr. 1955); A. Jellinek (ed.), Beit ha-Midrash, 6 vols. (19382);
J.R. Marcus, Jew in the Medieval World (1960), 225–83. Add. Bibliography:
J. Dan, Ha-Sippur ha-Ivri bi-Yemei ha-Beinayim: Iyyunim
be-Toldotav (1974); A. Alba, Midrás de los Diez Mandamientos y Libro
precioso de la Salvación (1989); idem, Cuentos de los rabinos (1991).
[Joseph Dan]
EXETER, town in S.W. England. Before the expulsion of
the Jews in 1290, Exeter was the most westerly Jewish community
in England. The first mention of Jews there is in 1181.
Only one Exeter Jew, Amiot, is mentioned as contributing
to the *Northampton Donum of 1194, but subsequently
Exeter became the seat of one of the *archae for the registration
of Jewish debts. In 1275 the local chirographers, both
Jewish and Christian, were accused of forgery but were acquitted.
At an ecclesiastical synod held at Exeter in 1287,
the church restrictions regarding the Jews were reenacted.
On the eve of the expulsion of 1290, the community numbered
nearly 40 householders, who possessed considerable
debts and a large quantity of corn. At the beginning of the
18th century some Italian Jews were living at Exeter, including
Gabriel Treves and Joseph Ottolenghi (later of South Carolina).
The conversion of Ottolenghi to Christianity about 1735
caused considerable controversy. Exeter subsequently became
a center of peddling activities. The synagogue still standing
was built in 1763. In 1968, 20 Jews lived in Exeter, apart from
a number of Jewish students at the university. In the mid-
1990s and 2000s the Jewish population numbered approximately
150. There is an Orthodox synagogue, which today
holds monthly services.
Bibliography: Adler, in: Transactions of the Devonshire Association
for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art, 63 (1931),
221–40; Rigg, Exchequer, index; Roth, Mag Bibl, index; idem, Rise of
Provincial Jewry (1950), 59–61. Add. Bibliography: JYB, 2004.
[Cecil Roth]
EXILARCH (Aram. אתּול ָ ּג ָ שי ׁ ר, ֵ resh galuta), lay head of the
Jewish community in Babylon. (See Chart: Exilarchs of Parthian
and Sasanid Periods and Chart: Babylonian Exilarchs.)
Until the Arab Conquest
The government of Babylonian Jewry for the first 12 centuries
C.E. lay in the hands of the exilarch. Rabbinic traditions incorporated
in the *Seder Olam Zuta, trace the origin of the institution
to the last years of the exile of Jehoiachin, on the basis
of II Kings 25:27. Further data were derived from I Chronicles
3:17ff. Whether such an institution actually existed before Parthian
times is not known, and certainty is impossible. Sources
on Jewish life in first-century Parthian Babylonia, however,
leave little ground to suppose there was an exilarch then. Josephus’
account of the Jewish “state” of *Anilaeus and Asinaeus
suggests, to the contrary, that no state-sanctioned Jewish
government functioned at that time. Whatever the earlier
situation, Neusner has put forward the conjecture that the
Parthian government under Vologases I (d. 79 C.E.) probably
established a feudal regime to govern Jewry as part of its
600 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6