OF HONESTY

Reading a scholarly work ideally activates at least two minds, that of the author and that of the reader. Ideally, again, a dialogue of sorts ensues in which now the writer speaks, now the reader. But this stage of the process can no longer be influenced by the writer, dialogically, as it were – his part of the dialogue is a given – and it is an elementary requirement for the honest reader to keep the two minds apart. Unfortunately, Mr. Eoffe does not live up to this demand. I do not deny as a matter of principle that there may be in a book a void, a “heart of darkness”, around which it circles like in a solar system or into which it tends to fall like into a black hole; a void which appears as a true protagonist. Mr. Eoffe believes that he has found one in my text – the Kievan letter. My research, to believe him, is haunted by my unpreparedness to meet up to its challenges. I am surprised.
The reader learns for example that “Na protiazhenii mnogikh stranits knigi chuvstvuetsia nepoddel’naia grust’ avtora po povodu uzh slishkom ochevidnykh evreiskikh sledov v Kieve X veka. Peresvetov iskrenne ne znaet, chto s etim faktom delat’’’, “Khazarsko-evreiskaia dokumentatsiia X veka […] stol’ korennym obrazom narushaet ves’ smyslovoi pafos peresvetovskogo dvukhtomnika…” etc., etc. This is insolent. Among the reasons why I do not “discuss” it, “analyse” it, what will you, in my book is that I regard it as uncontrovertible evidence of a cultured Jewish presence with connections to other “holy communities” in the world. I quite simply find it unproblematic (as, incidentally, I find it unproblematic that there would have been pre-Christian Jewish-Slavonic liaisons – especially if we allow ourselves to accept, e.g., Torpusman et alii’s etymology of the br gwstt of the Khazarian letter as containing “Gostiata”). More important, of course, is that the 10th century (and the letter may even be 9th-century^[1]) is not within the scope of my text. But – and this relates to Mr. Eoffe’s recurrent question: should the 10th-century Jews really have disappeared without a trace – I have no problem seeing the “filiation” between 9th/10th century Jews and, for example, 11th-or 12th century Jews – in this respect I am only about as cautious or uncautious as was, e.g., Samuel Ettinger.^[2] The diatribes and the racy comparisons with ancient and modern Russian successions of monarchs are beside the point.^[3]
The main text of my second volume begins (and facing this page is a reproduction of the Kievan letter):

“The existence of a Jewish community, a qahal, /fn/ in Rus’ at least up till c.1240 has been demonstrated beyond doubt during the last three decades […] But the overall picture and almost all details of the inner and outer life of this qahal remains elusive in the extreme. /29-line fn/ Nonetheless the 1962 discovery of a Kievan letter from the Old Cairo (Fustat-Misr) genizah and its subsequent examination transubstantiated the shadowy and hard-to-date pieces of evidence of early Rus’ Jewry into something tangible, providing firm evidence of a Jewish community in the small 9/10 c. town of Kiev. /fn/” (GWAC 2. Pp. 9-10, transliteration somewhat simplified)

And we may go on:

“It is true that we cannot assert that Moses came from Kiev, but three independent sources corroborates his close association with the city […]; at any rate the “need” [I am referring to the attempts of some earlier scholars, among whom B. Weinryb, to “derussify” Moses I of Kiev] to explain away Moses’ having to do with Kiev has lost much of its justification with the corroboration of the Kievan qahal by the genizah letter.” (Ibid. P. 55 fn); Etc., etc.

Eoffe’s quotation from my text, “Evrei v Kieve desiatogo veka, sudia po vsemu, byli”, where of course the words between commas give away his message, I have not been able to trace.^[4] The only plausible source I can offer is that the three words represent a misunderstanding of the word “reasonably” in, “The fact is nonetheless that there was a reasonably thriving community, a qahal, at least at Kiev, from the 10 century onwards” (GWAC 1. P. 235), in which the reader might instead note the word “onwards”.
I draw together material on R. Moses I of Kiev, R. Moses II of Kiev and his school, R. Isaac (?, sc. Yts’) of Chernigov, Isaac of Russia, Asher of Russia and his friend Jonathan (of Russia?), Joseph (of Crimea), who visited Muscovy, his uncle hodja Kokos, Messer Leon of Venice (Mantua?), Theodore and Daniel the Neophytes; material on the anonymous Rus’ Jews visiting Palestine, Thessalonica and, possibly, Constantinople in the 10-11th centuries, on German and Hungarian Jews visiting Kiev, on comments about Rus’ Jews in R Eliezer b. Isaac of Bohemia and Isaac bar Dorbalo, etc. In no way do I deny the presence of Jewish communities on Rus’ soil; I deny the value of most uses of “the Jews” in Christian Rus’ treatises as a source of information on them.
Eoffe repeatedly claims that I ignore the continuing existence of the old qahal. Many scholars tend to do so; I do not. Is the gathering of the material mentioned above the action of a man desperate to hide away all living Jews in Old Rus’? On the real individuals, Mr. Eoffe does not waste one word; he burns for something else; he is busy hunting ghosts, simulacra.^[5]
The best way, I believe, to show the degree of misrepresentation here in Eoffe’s text to those who have read only his essay and not my work, is to cite what another writer has made of the book under review – a writer, furthermore, who has devoted much time to the question of “the Jews of Khazaria”.^[6] Thus, in his very recent paper on the “Origins of East European Jews”, Kevin Alan Brook bases his conclusions on my study, e.g., for the facticity of the 11th century Rus’ Jews convened at Thessalonica (probably in the 1060s); for the probability that Kievan Jews spoke East Slavonic; and, not least, for the conclusion:^[7]

“For now, it is plausible to accept the hypothesis that many of the Jews of Brest and Grodno of the fourteenth-sixteenth centuries descended from Jews of the Rus’ principalities of the tenth-thirteenth centuries who, in turn, could have had ancestors who lived in Khazaria.”^[8]

HERESY

“Judaisers”, then.^[9] The Novgorodian “Judaisers” obviously constitute another void in my book that annoys Mr. Eoffe, and he consecrates several pages to the subject. True to his reading of me, he concludes the following: In my “little chapter” (glavka) on the “Judaisers” I say “NOTHING”. He informs us that he does not succeed in extracting from it the slightest scrap of information on the heretics or on my position as to their identity; instead of an analysis I merely present a dictum on Kievan Jewry, usury, and slavery without providing a single supportive note. The uppercase letters and the tone suggest a man shaking with indignation, and in order to understand his state of mind we turn to the page to which he refers us. This is in the subchapter “The Jews of Rus’”, a résumé of my supplementary volume for readers of the first volume who do not have the second at hand. The first sentence of the subchapter is followed by a note – three centimetres from the passage quoted by Mr. Eoffe – stating, “On the following points of Jewish history in Rus’ and for a refutation of suggested instances of Jewish-Christian more or less physical confrontation in Rus’, see the second volume of this study, passim.” (GWAC 1. P. 235.) Accordingly, in the second volume we find the corresponding six pages on slavery and three pages on usury (44-52, with notes). We know that Mr. Eoffe is aware of this, because I have already cited his misrepresentation of the passages. He cannot claim ignorance and I will not conjecture what induces him to make such plainly spiteful attacks.
He interestingly defines my concluding chapter as being on the heretics. It is not, and I believe that the actual form of the title, “Remarks in retrospect: texts, Jews, and ‘Judaisers’”, as well as its make-up as a concluding chapter with an outlook, makes that plain. It is a tripartite conclusion containing 1) a recapitulation of my findings on anti-Judaic texts in medieval, non-Ruthenian Rus’, 988-1504 (pp. 229-235); 2) a condensation of my findings on Jewish-Christian liaisons on the same territory and within the same time-span (“The Jews of Rus’”), i.e. a condensation of volume 2 (pp. 235-237); and 3) a juxtaposing of the two (subchapter “Texts and Jews: the silence on the Jews”) with some thoughts on possible paths for future scholarship (pp. 237-245). Here, among other things, I draw together some developments in the late 15th century use of anti-Judaic texts, which I suggest be further investigated in order to determine links, if any, with the increasingly prominent transient Jews and the heresy of the “Judaically philosophising”. Cf.:

“Having said as much, and having reached approximately the mid-15 c. in our recapitulation of texts vs realia, we become witnesses to some quite new developments – rather surprisingly for the present writer – which cannot be interpreted with any confidence until the text traditions of many separate works have been more precisely defined, a task which will require considerable efforts and minute textual study from future scholars. Let us, however, sketch some outlines of the new picture […] At the turn of the 15 c. there appear a small number of extracts from previously known texts but in which the words “against the Jews” are now added to the title. It seems quite certain that there is a heightened interest in such texts and they are occasionally transmitted together […] It can hardly be imagined that these developments were completely detached both from the new occurrence – be it ever so modest – of Jews on the Muscovite scene, and from the campaign against the Judaistically philosophising, even if final judgement on what the ties may have been must be postponed at least until we are in a position to retrace the separate text traditions. Some connexion with the heresimachs is, in fact, certain. […] From this short exposé it is clear that we cannot take for granted anything that the heresimachs attribute to the heretics once an identification with the Jews had been made; and it is even possible that this identification, which came upon the heresimachs only gradually, was not altogether unconnected with the set of exciting new anti-Judaic texts which Muscovy had acquired during the preceding century. This is conjectural. But a thorough examination of the antiheretical treatises in the light of anti-Judaic works will yield interesting results.”^[10]

For the precise technical details on the texts in question and the uses made of them I refer the reader to my book. This may appear as “NOTHING” to Mr. Eoffe; the fact remains that with our method we have unearthed some of the potentially clearest tangible pieces of evidence yet that some – at least – of the clerics fighting the new heresy thought that their opponents were in actual fact Jews or “Jewish”. (It is actually of some importance here that the turning to “Jewish” and “Judaic” themes does not coincide with outbursts against the heretics as such but may in a way be “unconscious” or “inofficial” – for “private” use. The words “Jew” and “Judaism” came easily to Orthodox bookmen qua rhetorical invectives when turning to Catholics, Protestants, and other heretics.^[11] Here, however, the theme “against the Jews” was probably highlighted for its own sake and in somewhat new ways, no matter that the texts treated literary Jews only. The copyists really searched for this material.) The problem is clearly understood by John Klier, of whose view of the heretics Mr. Eoffe largely approves:

“The direct sources [on the heresy, A.P.-M.] remain ambiguous and as yet no scholar has fully established whether ecclesiastical literature of the times displayed active hostility to Jews as physically present contemporaries rather than remote Biblical characters. The available evidence suggests that much of the Russian response derived from Byzantine models. […] Citations from Illarion’s “Sermon on Law and Grace”, utilized by one anti-Judaizer polemicist [viz. the monk Sabbas, A.P.-M.], suggest an identification of the Biblical Hebrews (NB!, A.P.-M.) and the modern Jews, but again filtered through a Byzantine sensibility.”^[12]

The gradual disentangling of evidence, addressed by Klier, is a by-product of the method I have chosen.
The actual chapter on “Judaisers” (“A note on the ‘Judaically philosophising’”. Vol. 2. Pp. 102-103), I regret to say, is even shorter than the one which so disappoints the reviewer, and I must again quote some words, which I invite the reader to compare to Mr. Eoffe’s definition of my stance on the heretics:

“The tremendous problem of the heresy of “the Judaisers” – or, more correctly: the “Judaically philosophising” /fn/ (“zhidov’’skaia mudrstvuiushchii”) – cannot be treated here. It is as certain that there were at least elements of Judaic influence in their teachings and that there were some Hebrew translations among “their books” as it is that no direct contacts between them and actual Jews can be proved on the signified sources, and that the certain Jewish elements were Ruthenian in origin and possibly already Christianised by the time they reached Novgorod. Thomas Seebohm pointed out in an excellent study that we stand before an enigma: a literature, which consists partly of translations from the Hebrew […] and which was to some extent read by the Novgorodo-Muscovite heretics, is plainly Ruthenian, and yet there is no evidence of a Ruthenian heresy that might be connected with the Novgorodo-Muscovite one; the only thing we can credibly surmise being some kind of contacts, cultural and economic, between Ruthenian Slavs and Ruthenian Jews and Jewish apostates /fn/. The opponent of the heresy claimed – although they raised this point only at a late stage of the persecution – that the heretics had first been misled by the Jew Scharija (surely the Kievan Jew R Zacharia b. Aaron haKohen), who visited Novgorod in 1471, but this was almost two decades before we have words of the heresy.
Information on the Jewish properties of the Judaically philosophising must be analysed together with all other material regarding their movement […] It seems clear, however, after the studies of Ettinger, Cavaion, and Taube that there was an increased Jewish influence in northwestmost Muscovy, specifically an influence on at least some of the people whom the Church described as adherents to the heresy /fn/. It also seems very probable that at least some contemporary opponents of the heresy believed it to be derived from or connected with actual Judaism /fn/. However, some observations in our study of texts Adversus Iudaeos in Rus’ suggest that even more of the evidence than has been signalled heretofore may be tainted by traditional material. /fn/.”^[13]

In a footnote I supply a selective bibliography on the movement, consisting of twenty-five modern scholarly works, including the study by the late Samuel Ettinger, which Mr. Eoffe calls the “most adequate” (I too think that it is good) along with works by the other scholars referred to by Eoffe in this connection.^[14] I also inform the reader that the late Jacob Luria’s denial of all Jewish components in the heresy – to which I have never subscribed but which was long dominant – “has been criticised in several works in the West and, to a lesser degree, in Russia” (p.103 fn 271). It is absurd to characterise me in this respect as “an inveterate follower” of Luria’s^[15] only because I recognise the fact that signalled Jewish “genealogies” of the heresy point towards Ruthenia and that the exact Jewish factors in the heresy have still not been identified.^[16]
I do not deny the presence of (Ruthenian) Jews in the Muscovy of the 2nd half 15th century; quite on the contrary (see GWAC 2. Pp. 22-23, 26-29). Very few scholars hold that the heretics in general were Jews, although some hold that a small number of them may have become Jews.^[17] The 1997 essay by Klier, to which Eoffe confidently refers his readers as one which may be contrasted with the views of Halperin and of myself, plainly states that,

“It does seem fair to say, however, that none of the alleged heretics were practising anything that resembled normative Judaism derived from either the Sephardic, Ashkenazic or Karaite traditions. […] At least some of the “heretics” clearly considered themselves to be true Christians, while imputing the heresy to their opponents Gennadii and Iosif. (Klier. Pp. 342, 347)”

Klier’s general position, which is wisely non-committal on the unknowable, is close indeed to the one I outline but which I choose not to make a brick in my edifice. I have an argument only with very minor points. Eoffe alleges that I have a quite different view of the heresy, and this he develops at length by way of expanding on his interpretation of Luria’s views. This is, frankly speaking, one of the most tasteless examples of “scholarly” polemics I have seen to date.
But why such unmanly cautiousness on my part? Why do I not declare some firm position in my book on who the heretics really were? Let me recall what I am trying to do: evaluating the links between works of anti-Judaism and Jewish presence – particularly Jewish-Christian enmity – in medieval non-Ruthenian Rus’. As a result,

“^[18]o works declaring themselves exclusively anti-heretical have been considered […] It is a moot point whether the creed of the Novgorodian and Muscovite heterodox dubbed in historiography as “Judaisers” […] was to a determining degree “Judaic”. That problem cannot be addressed here. If any texts, purportedly being “against the Jews”, and thus highlighted in this study, were in fact used against the heretics, this may be of interest in heresiological scholarship, but that is another matter.” (GWAC 1. P. 22; cf. p. 25).

This is to do with a general principle in my work, formulated perhaps the most succinctly in the introduction to GWAC 2. P. 3:

“assumptions about interaction between Jews and East Slavs – and that is our main concern here – are mostly based on items of literary anti-Judaism of the kind which, as our method requires, has first to be separated from historically verifiable facts in order then to be juxtaposed with them.”

For the time being the two subjects must remain separated. In fact, this is related to Luria’s methodological principle of avoiding “the consumer’s approach to the sources”. This stands for a circular reasoning rephrased in this connection by Klier: “The appearance of texts of presumed Jewish provenance is linked to Judaizers, while the existing of a Judaizing movement is ‘proven’ by the existence of these selfsame texts.”^[19] Not only, then, do I not treat anti-heretical texts in my study of anti-Judaic texts, nor can I treat of the heretics in my study of the Jews if they are not known to be Jews and if I cannot reach a final verdict on the question of their degree of Judaism. Such an approach would contaminate the general results on antiiudaica and would, in addition, render them useless for the study of the heretics. However, after having analysed and acquainted him-/herself with the clearly anti-Judaic tracts and their textual history, the student may in future return to the anti-heretical tracts, attempting to gauge to which degree they are contaminated by, or unaffected by, traditional anti-Judaism. This might help her/him to get a clearer understanding by far of the true meaning of the anti-heretical texts and, then and only then,^[20] of the heretics. In addition the study of the “pure”, traditional anti-Judaic tracts and their use in the Rus’ of, say 1450-1500, promises to provide important new information on any other Judaic traits (or on the lack of such traits) in this period. This, however, is a thing for future scholarship. I have pointed to some exciting phenomena that may be faintly descried already along both of the two lines. Better that some good evidence must be added at a later stage than spoiling what we are building by introducing rotten material that will contaminate the entire construction from the beginning.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Eoffe is aware of the existence of my actual glavka on the “Judaisers”, where this is explained, for only there do I, however briefly, discuss Jacob Luria in connection with the heresy; but the author appears to have forgotten it since once again he falls into unseemlinesses when, in my recapitulation (NB!), I give no sources for my statements and provide no discussions. That I might have any reason not to treat the heretics the reader never learns. One remembers Mr. Eoffe’s convenient, but clearly premeditated, forgetfulness of relevant passages in connection with the discussion of slaving and geography among other things.
The chiones are treated by Mr. Eoffe on some four pages, with a long excerpt from a recent scholarly paper presenting a possible interpretation of the name of the Near East-Balkan chiones. I am not ignorant of the debate over their true ethnic and confessional identity. But in what way does Gregory Palama’s disputation with them figure in my work?
I mention the text in an appendix to my chapter on anti-Judaic disputations and write that,

“In some respects the “chiones”, who have not been unequivocally identified, evidently occupy a position between Jews and Christians; it has been opined even that they were Christian reprobates to Judaism./fn/ In an article […] Gelian Prochorov proposes that the chiones were in fact Karaites and that the Rus’ sects of the Strigol’nici and the Juda[ic]ally philosophising had Karaite elements in their teachings […] Gregory [Palamas] expressedly states that his opponents do not honour the Jewish Sabbath and Passover,^[21] and even though some arguments and lists of prophecies are reminiscent of anti-Judaic texts, it is not very likely that a Rus’ reader would identify the chiones with Jews. Even today, scholars are quite uncertain as to who they were, and it has, for example, been proposed that they were Muslims. Whatever the work may be, and irrespective of whether in the end it concerns Jews, it is not a manifestly anti-Judaic tract.”^[22]

It is thus by definition and for general methodological reasons excluded from my discussion of texts adversus Iudaeos (cf. the principles given above); and whether or not it concerns heretics known to Muscovite bookmen (and I am far from convinced of this), it must be treated in a discussion of antiheretical literature in order not to contaminate our results on adversus Iudaeos texts proper or on known Jews. The ongoing debate referred to by Mr. Eoffe only underlines the fact that the ordinary Muscovite reader would have been hard put to refer it to Jews. This reasoning, of course, Mr. Eoffe forgets to mention.
I might have stopped there, but there is some reason to make a few additional comments on this interesting text, which Mr. Eoffe has taken to his heart. First, he alleges that the dialogue was a “drevnerusskii” translation, thus making it appear more immediately relevant for Rus’ conditions.^[23] Translating a work tends indeed to indicate more than a passing interest in its content or some considerable respect for its authority. However, as Mr. Eoffe might have read in my book or in G. M. Prokhorov’s study, this text was probably translated in some Athonite monastery;^[24] the orthographical traits are very suggestive of a Middle Bulgarian exemplar for the Rus’ protograph. In fact, anything else would have been highly unlikely: we know positively that most Palamite works (in a broad sense) were translated in South Slavia, and it is furthermore questionable whether any Greek texts were translated in Rus’ at this time.^[25] It was a minority of the works translated in South Slavia in these centuries that were not imported to Rus’, and in view of the great quantity of anti-Judaic, anti-heretical, and other South Slavonic translations apparently automatically imported to Rus’, I am generally less willing than Gelian Mikhailovich Prokhorov to presuppose an interest in the imported texts which would be peculiar to Rus’.^[26] This I truly regret, because I respect his scholarship much. Many of the ideas and suggestions made in his 1972 paper on the chiones are interesting, but it appears to me that several are far from being confirmed, especially as concerns the East Slav stage of the chain of events.^[27]
At any rate, Mr. Eoffe believes that we must “po pravu” regard the Palamite text as one of the catalysts of the Russo-Jewish cultural contacts,^[28] the peak of which was the Bible of Gennadios, “plod sovmestnykh russko-evreiskikh perevodcheskikh usilii” (!). At the same time it is in some unspecified way salient that the text made its entry “neposredstvenno” (i.e. at least half a century) before the coming of R. Zacharia to Novgorod. This is extraordinary and arbitrary. Why is the “chionic” dialogue such a catalyst, thus providing a connection with uncertain Balkan movements? Why not, for example, the seventh-eighth century Byzantine texts entering Rus’ letters at the same time (e.g. The Doctrine of Jacob, The Jerusalem Disputation, The Dialogue of Gregentios and Herban), which might provide, perhaps, an immediate link with fully-fledged Jews, perhaps Romaniotes? Why not the equally imported Tale of Twelve Fridays with its implications of an ancient Jewish world conspiracy? Etc., etc. Why, on the evidence adduced, choose any one text? What does Eoffe mean, when he links this with the “joint Russian-Jewish translatory efforts” “producing” the Bible of Gennadios? And what on earth are the Jewish contributions to the latter, if it is to have some relevance here? Does he have in mind the translation of Esther? But that was translated by the beginning of the 15th century; furthermore it has a Ruthenian text tradition. Have the Palamite texts also passed over Ruthenia? There appears to be nothing textual to imply that. Why was the dialogue part of the “heretical literature” in Rus’, as Eoffe asserts, and not the Christian apologetical corpus? Why, in Eoffe’s view of things, should we connect the Palamite “Judaisers” (Karaites?, semi-Muslims?, rabbanite-like Judaisers?) of Asia Minor with the Ashkenazi, apparently anti-Karaite, visitors from Kiev, with the Bible of Gennadios, with…? Mr. Eoffe mixes everything in a cavalier fashion. Geography, chronology, identity… Who cares about such details as long as everything is/can be called Jewish, Judaic or “Judaiser”?
Mr. Eoffe indicates that the occurrence of the Novgorodian heresy is only the tip of an iceberg, which I choose to ignore. There may be an iceberg – I cannot disprove such a claim; no one can. There may be icebergs everywhere. But what might make us believe that there was a Jewish one in this particular case? Never in the half millennium of recorded Novgorodian history before the 15th century do we hear of Jews;^[29] and the documented traces of Judaic influences in the heretical circles go west towards the “newly”-arrived Ashkenazim (together with earlier Jewries gone Ashkenazi), including the alleged initiator, R. Zacharia, no doubt the student of R. Moses II “the Allemano” of Kiev.^[30] Had there been a (completely submerged!) “iceberg” presence of old it would surely have been one of pre-Ashkenazi Jews. Not only is there nothing to suggest such an older Jewry in the northwest; even if there had been one there at some point (in the Kievan era??) this would be a far cry from suggesting a continuity with possible developments in the 15th century, stemming, most probably, from another Jewish environment. Continuity of what with what? You cannot just shuffle and deal whatever Jewish cards you may imagine (and I stress the word “imagine”) from the 600-700-year history of a gigantic space made up of rows of changing polities (and Jewish cultures) if you do not posit that all Jews are always alike and always affect their milieux in the same way.
We may be fairly sure that Rus’ Judaism was not unaffected by demographical change. Only rarely do we know with any certainty, however, which elements and which impulses may have had the upper hand at specific points of time, even though some traces of changes in cultural orientation may be gleaned from the sources; changes which largely appear to follow the vicissitudes of cultural centres in Eurasian Jewry as a whole.^[31] In different periods within the timespan treated in my book there may have been different blends of Khazarian, Romaniote, and Ashkenazi Jewish culture (of the first component we know precious little) and perhaps of other, southern, sources too.^[32] At times even Karaite or (at a very late stage) Sephardic influences may have made themselves known, no matter that any actual traces there might be of this are faint and oblique. (Parallelly, the literary centres of the East Slavs changed several times during the middle ages, compromising any continuity in the “realistic” attitudes to surrounding Jews in native Slavonic literature.) How then are we to make analogies with better-known Jewish cultures in order to examine the cultural outlook of Rus’ Jewry/Jewries? Perhaps something may be done here too by future scholars; it will most certainly not be a simple task, even though in some areas, not least linguistic ones, some firm evidence may be recovered. References to practices within communities which may have had little to do with Rus’ Jewry must for the time being be made with much circumspection. References to continuities must be done with equal circumspection.
For want of space I shall not respond in detail to Mr. Eoffe’s representations and misrepresentations of my views on East Slavonic translations from the Hebrew (the existence of which I do not deny for the Ruthenian space^[33] – Mr. Eoffe might have informed the reader that observations made by Irina Lysén in her recent edition of the text^[34] make me inclined to believe that the scroll of Esther was translated into Slavonic from the Hebrew, and that in this I differ from some colleagues with whose position Mr. Eoffe link me with much right), but I invite the reader to peruse my discussion of the subject, GWAC 2. Pp. 70-80, with references. As always, Mr. Eoffe will only provide us with insinuations. I am happy to note, however, that his most deferential poklon here is to Francis J. Thomson, whose views in these matters I largely share.

TWO PREACHERS

What Slavist today supports a Jewish etymology of Luke of Novgorod’s nickname Zhidiata? Not only are Novgorod aristocrats known by the name Zhidiata/Zhidislav in the 12th century; they are also revered and made chiliarchs (tysiatskie) this late in a society so inimical to Jews as not to let a single piece of evidence of their (rich?) history on Novgorodian soil survive before the reports of visiting Jews in the late 15th century. Is it believable to claim without further support that they and the 11th century bishop were Jews? Must we not, with no other evidence at hand, prefer the much simpler, perfectly accommodating, solution that the root here is not /zhid-/ but /zh’d-/ (cf. zh’dati, ozhidati…), which semantically couples so well with the -slav of Vladislav and Yaroslav or the -mir of Vladimir and Velemir?^[35] I write of this in my book. Eoffe does not even suggest that I mention Luke; the only thing the reader learns of the matter in his text is that Ivan Malyshevskii thought that Luke was Jewish and I generally do not take Malyshevskii seriously. Eoffe does not let us know what in Malyshevskii’s gratuitous musings on the person of Luke is worthy of note. Making references to “persons like Luke Zhidiata” does not help.
The only time Eoffe enters into anything resemblant to the main subject of my book is when he discusses Hilarion of Kiev’s sermon “On Law and Grace”. (The sermon, it is true, is not an anti-Judaic work proper, but at least I treat it in an appendix to my book.) Mr. Eoffe calls my analysis “svoeobraznyi” – I would say that it is perfectly in line with the view-points of a considerable part of modern “Hilarionic” scholars conversant with Byzantine homiletics and aware of its dreadful tradition of anti-Judaic imagery. Eoffe does not adduce any evidence from the text or tell us in what specific ways it is relevant, so I am uncertain as to what I should counter. (Incidentally, Mr. Eoffe’s rhetorical courtesies as concerns my knowledge in Rus’ pis’mennost’ and “unprecedented” study of “relevant patristic material” are very far away in his appreciation of my judgement here, which counts for nothing in face of the fantasies of Ivan Malyshevskii.) But he adduces the livelihood argument of Malyshevskii, which that scholar has in common with several predecessors. What does it tell us then when the “realistic” extracts traditionally quoted, from the mid-19th century onwards, as supporting direct contact with Jewish polemicists in the sermonist can be found within some four printed consecutive lines of the Acts of Pilate,^[36] of which several Slavonic translations are known? When Hilarion adds nothing of his own on the Jews (whom, incidentally, he knows by the at the time almost exclusively biblical name iiudei)? When the homiletic literature on which he was nurtured is replete with the very same images that he conjures up here,^[37] which furthermore have a very concrete and quite traditional purpose to fulfil? Whilst the subject matter itself – opposing Law and Grace in the guise of Jews and Christians (or is it the other way round?) – is well known from imported texts, including sermons popular among the Orthodox Slavs from very early times? What is Hilarionic in Hilarion’s description of Jews? What is Rus’??
Who might dispute for instance that Hilarion’s sermon is closely indeed linked to the tradition of pseudo(?)-Epiphanios of Salamis’ homily for Holy Saturday in divina corporis sepulturam, which was very popular in its first Slavonic translation – and I do not even dare to claim a direct filiation here, so common is the theme:

“slyshi i propovezhd’ b(o)zhie vel’e chiudesa . kako zakon ostupaet’’, kako blagodet’ protsvitaet’’, kako obrazi mimokhodiat’’, kako istina propovedaet’’ sia, kako sen’ mimokhodit’’, kako sl’’n’tse v’selenuiu ispl’’neet’’, kako vet’’kh’’i zakon’’ obet’’sha, kako nov’’i izveshtaet’’ sia, kako drev’nea preidu, kako novaa protsvi sia. d’’voi liud’e v’ sione v’’ vremia kh(r’sto)v’’nei mutse pridu, evreistsii, koup’’no zhe i pogan’stsii.”^[38]

What besides traditional exegesis may have been in Hilarion’s head, or in that of Yaroslav the Wise and the rest of the audience, we cannot say. Nothing suggests that the sermon would have been any different had there not been Jewish shops at Kiev or a community conversant with literary Hebrew. Mr. Eoffe’s criticisms here appear to hinge on the notion that if there were Jews in Rus’ then there was also anti-Judaism and that, in turn, was the same anti-Judaism which we find in texts such as Hilarion’s. I beg to differ. But, on the other hand, if the co-existence of Jews and Christians always and invariably leads to clashes – and Mr. Eoffe’s discussion of Hilarion suggests such a view – then what is Mr Eoffe’s problem? Why at all bother with the sources and my text? In that case he knows what it was like whether it was reported or no, and he should not feel threatened by my inconsequential meditations on scraps of evidence. He might conclude in a single sentence and with full force that I am wrong, using a fact on which we agree: There was in Kievan Rus’ a thriving Jewish community. Ergo: it attacked and was attacked.^[39]
“But, – someone who has not read my book is bound to ask me – if there was no (verifiable) conflict underlying the Sermon on Law and Grace, why then write that dreadful anti-Jewish piece in the first place?” And my comment would be simple: The question is not correctly phrased, because the sermon is not a basically anti-Jewish or anti-Judaic text in the sense that it was written mainly in order to refute Jews or Judaism. Indeed, the reader will search in vain for references to contemporaneous Jews.^[40] Instead it is a text telling us of Christians and Christianity – the author’s ‘truth’, istina – which in accordance with an old tradition going back to the church fathers he defines and lauds with the help of its “shadow”, sten’ – prettier as the antithesis is in Slavonic. The shadow was the abandoned stage in God’s plan, Judaism, of whose transiency all Christians and all Christian writings were firmly convinced – this was a given. It needed to be continually explained, however, how a major part of the “Christian Bible”, read as such by the believers, spoke of the Law (zakon’’) given by the Lord exclusively to the Jewish people, whereas now the gentiles partook of the heavenly kingdom by way of divine Grace (blagodet’). How could it be that Grace had superseded Law: what acts might have lead to the abolition of the latter. And in his exegesis of Galatians 4, which contains most of Hilarion’s “information” on Jews, the homilist made rather few changes in Paul’s exegetical scheme, which spoke of the inheritance of the younger son (the Christians) and the disinheritance of the older (the Jews).^[41] The newly-baptised Rus’, like earlier Christians, were now moving towards state-of-the-art salvation in accordance with God’s final plan for mankind. The Rus’ neophytes were the gospels’ labourers of the eleventh hour (apostrophised in the title of Toporov’s study), as though hearkening to the words: “Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.” (Matt. 20.7)
On one vital point regarding Hilarion’s sermon I stand corrected, however, and here I must thank Mr. Eoffe. I ought to have discussed in my book the 1999 article by A. A. Alekseev on the question when Hilarion’s sermon was first pronounced.^[42] Unfortunately, this three-page note came to my attention only after my book was finished, even though the pertinent tome of the Trudy Otdela drevnerusskoi literatury stood on my shelves at the time. As the reader of my work will recognise, I was aware of the Apostolos derivation of the pericopes to which Professor Alekseev refers,^[43]but I did not then draw the same conclusions as Alekseev. In the end, however, I do not believe that his proposition changes my thesis much, whether or not there is a paschal connection.^[44]The calendrical connection and the “paschality” of the lections are not central to my thesis and need not be elaborated on here. My reference to “paschal sermons” is a convenient shorthand indicating the anti-Judaic sermons I have in mind. I might for example have talked of “paschal sermons and other sermons on lections topicalising the opposition of Judaism and Christianity”,^[45] for this would describe the biblical text – predefined from without! – on which Hilarion built his sermon, if, as Alekseev proposes, it was pronounced on the feast of the Nativity of the Holy Virgin. In this lection the anti-Judaic thematics are even more marked and plain to be seen than on Holy Saturday, and Hilarion’s choices are then even less dependent on personal choices or orally transmitted^[46] traditions of expanding the Gospel. Eoffe has in effect pointed out a fact which seems to strengthen my case.

* * *

Mr. Eoffe would like to see before him a living Rus’ Jewry, and to me he ascribes a diabolical wish again to turn “drevnerusskoe evreistvo v ‘figuru umolchaniia’, v simuliakr nenavisti”. Nothing could be further from the truth. In my first works within this field I expected to find true reflections of contemporary Jews in the Rus’ anti-Judaic literature,^[47] but I gradually found the evidence illusory and spurious until it was clear to me that none of the signalled pieces of evidence before the second half of the 15th century could be built on. If there is evidence left to find either of such traces or of other traces of “intervening” resident Rus’ Jews, let us retrieve them, whether we are Slavists, Hebraists, or general historians. Then let the Jewries of Rus’ regain some well-deserved life in our work. But let us not dig out appearances of evidence and false evidence from traditional patristic or Byzantine texts; rather let us identify it and discard it. With it the Jews of Rus’ may appear to live, as though inhabiting the proverbial villages of prince Potemkin, but they would then indeed be simulacra.
There is little point in writing another ten pages in response to minor points in Mr. Eoffe’s theses. The book he allegedly refers to is there for everyone to read.^[48] If this note may suggest that that book says “nothing about nothing”, this is because Mr. Eoffe’s essay treats little in depth that is relevant to its actual subject matter, and that forced me to waste most of my ink on explaining what should not have needed explaining. If the reader should still choose to turn to the real thing, let him be wary! – for he will have learnt by now that these are two empty, ideologising, over-priced volumes from that “house of good form”, the small Swedish university town of Lund. Or will he?