Shaul Stampfer.  Families, Rabbis and Education: Traditional Jewish
Society in Nineteenth-Century Eastern Europe.  Oxford  Littman
Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010.  xii + 414 pp.  $64.50 (cloth),
ISBN 978-1-874774-85-3.

Reviewed by Marc B. Shapiro (University of Scranton)
Published on H-Judaic (November, 2010)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

All about Jewish Eastern Europe

For many years, Shaul Stampfer has been recognized as an authority in
all things dealing with nineteenth-century Jewish Eastern Europe. In
his newest book, we have a collection of numerous essays representing
more than twenty years of his scholarship, including one essay
published for the first time ("The Missing Rabbis of Eastern
Europe"). Stampfer's focus is not on the purely intellectual debates
between rabbinic elites. He is more interested in social history, how
average people and in particular women lived. Even his discussions of
rabbis emphasize such matters as inheritance of rabbinic positions
and the rabbi's role in communal life. His sources are quite broad:
traditional rabbinic works as well as Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian
texts and newspapers.

I could write extensively about every essay, each of which taught me
a great deal. (And I never imagined that an entire essay could be
written on the _pushke _[charity box] and its development.) Yet to
remain within the word limit for this review, let me just mention
some of Stampfer's most important points, the major theses of the
book.

People have generally assumed that marriages in Jewish Eastern Europe
were very stable, with divorce being quite rare. Stampfer, however,
provides evidence to demonstrate that divorce was common and not
shameful. Based on his evidence, he is fundamentally correct. In
addition to citing statistics, Stampfer also refers to memoir
literature that mentions divorce. Yet I also think that Stampfer (and
ChaeRan Y. Freeze before him) exaggerates the frequency of divorce.
For example, one of his statistics of marriage and divorce is from
the 1860s in the city of Berdichev where for every three to four
marriages, there was one divorce. He cites similar statistics for
Odessa (p. 46). Stampfer goes so far as to claim that "it may well be
the case that there were thirty divorces for every hundred weddings
in the nineteenth century" (p. 128). However, these numbers are
certainly skewed for the simple reason that while marriages took
place in every town, to obtain a divorce couples had to travel to a
larger city where there was a _beit din _(rabbinic court) and scribe.
Thus, divorces from any one city do not reveal a ratio of marriage to
divorce. The situation is identical to what happens today. Couples
get married anywhere they want, but must come to a central location
for their divorce.

Stampfer also argues that contrary to another popular stereotype,
early teenage marriage was not at all common in traditional Jewish
society. While it occurred among the economic and intellectual elite,
and is immortalized in memoirs of the latter, early teenage marriage
does not reflect the life experience of the average young Jew.
Similarly, the lower class, which encompassed most Jews, did not have
much use for matchmaker services, and indeed, romance was a factor in
their marriages.

Tied to the points made so far is the place of women in society. Many
of us are accustomed to think of traditional society as one in which
men had all the power and made all the decisions, and in which the
husband went out to work while the wife served as a homemaker. Yet
Stampfer shows that while this perception fits in very well with
contemporary "family values," it is not how East European Jewish
society functioned. Women generally worked, were involved in business
ventures, and were thus "out of the home." Unlike today, the
stay-at-home wife and mother was not necessarily an ideal. Stampfer
also notes that many Jewish names were created from women's names,
which he thinks "reflects a reality in which both men and women could
be in the centre" (p. 133). Adding to these arguments, Stampfer
includes the following suggestive comment: "Another indication of the
place of women in Jewish society can be found in the aesthetics of
Jews in Eastern Europe. Males were regarded as attractive if they
were thin, had white hands, and wore glasses. These were all
reflections of lives devoted to study and perhaps to asceticism. On
the other hand, attractive women had full bodies and were strong and
active. Their appearance promised work and support. Different ideals
are expressed here, but the image of the ideal woman is not one of
weakness" (p. 133). In short, East European Jewish society was not
what we would regard as a patriarchy. Conservative views on the
importance of women staying in the home to raise children might be
sound social policy, yet we should not assume that this is how East
European Jews ever actually lived.

Another fact noted by Stampfer, which will no doubt be surprising to
readers, is the existence of coed heders. This is certainly not the
image that people have of this institution. Yet while the coed aspect
is interesting, especially, as Stampfer states, "given the
contemporary concern (or obsession) in certain very Orthodox Jewish
circles regarding co-educational education even in elementary
grades," even more significant is what this says about education for
girls (p. 169n11; see also p. 32). Contrary to what many think, there
were East European Jewish girls who were educated just like their
brothers, and Stampfer thinks that the ratio of girls to boys in
heder was approximately one to eight (p. 170). As for education in
general, while some people like to imagine Eastern Europe as a place
where Torah study always thrived, Stampfer notes that "one can safely
conclude that by the mid-1930s there were far more young Jewish males
in secondary schools than in yeshivas" (p. 272). Also worthy of note
is Stampfer's point that the _kollel _(a school of rabbinic studies
for married men) system developed because there were no longer many
rich fathers-in-law willing to support a son-in-law who was studying.
In addition, he argues that the shrinking of the job market for
rabbis also had a share in the development of the _kollel_.

Let me conclude with some minor comments and corrections. On page 69,
note 39, the proper reference in _Pithei Teshuvah_ is _Even ha-Ezer_
9:5, and the rabbi cited should be R. David Ibn Zimra (Radbaz), not
R. Jacob Willowski (Ridbaz).On page 181, Stampfer discusses the
famous description by R. Barukh Epstein of his aunt, Rayna Batya, the
wife of R. Naphtali Zvi Judah Berlin. While acknowledging that some
have doubted the veracity of Epstein's story, Stampfer states that
"the account seems plausible." Here I must disagree. While there can
be no doubt that Batya was an unusual woman, Epstein's account of his
conversations with her, as with much else in his autobiography,
cannot be relied on. I have discussed this at length elsewhere, and
readers can examine my arguments at the Seforim Blog from January 16,
2008 (http://seforim.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html). On page
285, Stampfer refers to the Moscow chief rabbi Jacob Mazeh
(1859-1924) as having been martyred. Yet this is incorrect as Mazeh
died a natural death. On page 326, note 6, regarding the Vilna Gaon's
attitude toward R. Jonathan Eibeschuetz, see Sid Z. Leiman, "When a
Rabbi Is Accused of Heresy: The Stance of the Gaon of Vilna in the
Emden-Eibeschuetz Controversy," in Ezra Flescher, et al, eds., _Meah
Shearim_ (2001). Finally, on page 327, Stampfer offers evidence of
criticism of the Vilna Gaon during his lifetime. In my September 12,
2009, post at the Seforim Blog, I offer another example of such
criticism
(http://seforim.blogspot.com/2009/09/writings-of-r-hayyim-gulevsky-part-2.html).
This is reported by R. Hayyim Dov Ber Gulevsky who heard it from his
grandfather, R. Simhah Zelig Rieger, the dayan of Brisk.
(Incidentally, Gulevsky is quoted by Stampfer on page 353.)

As mentioned at the beginning of this review, there is much more that
can be said about Stampfer's careful scholarship, which is a treat
for all readers. I know that many share my wish to soon see in print
the English edition of his classic work on the Lithuanian yeshivot.

Citation: Marc B. Shapiro. Review of Stampfer, Shaul, _Families,
Rabbis and Education: Traditional Jewish Society in
Nineteenth-Century Eastern Europe_. H-Judaic, H-Net Reviews.
November, 2010.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=30034

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License.

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