{"id":3293,"date":"2024-03-25T07:32:18","date_gmt":"2024-03-25T15:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=3293"},"modified":"2024-03-25T03:24:45","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T11:24:45","slug":"tradition-and-cholent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2024\/03\/25\/tradition-and-cholent\/","title":{"rendered":"Tradition and cholent"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019<\/span>ve been looking at maps this week in my spare time <\/span>and it was Purim over the weekend. Purim is an historical festival, not so much a religious one, so I always try to make sense of a bit more Jewish history as my learning for the celebration. I was perplexed as a child when non-Jewish families didn\u2019t do learning as part of their celebration. <\/span>This is a tradition. My tradition is not that of <\/span>Fiddler on the Roof!<\/i><\/span> and the song \u201cTradition\u201d.\u00a0 It is learning and food, much food. There are many Jewish cultures. Learning is one of my favourite bits. It ranks as high as chicken soup.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I was a teen, I had this conversation.\u00a0 It began with me asking, \u201cWhat did you learn for Christmas?\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI got these presents, let me show you. You show me your presents, too.\u201d Chanukah collided with Christmas that year, as it did from time to time, but my friend was totally baffled when I showed her my present for fifth night, which was a small box of Smarties <\/span>(Australian M&Ms)<\/span>. Me, I had present-envy. I didn\u2019t get presents such as hers even for my birthday.<\/span><\/p>\n

I am a slow learner. The next Easter I asked a Greek Orthodox friend.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat did you learn for your Easter?\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t learn. We d<\/span>y<\/span>ed eggs red and cracked them.\u201d She had some dye left over and we totally messed up my mother\u2019s kitchen and destroyed many candles making <\/span>decorated <\/span>eggs. We didn\u2019t <\/span>c<\/span>rack them, because Easter was over. We put them in a bowl and left them on the counter until my father complained about the smell.<\/span><\/p>\n

Later I found that not all Jews <\/span>learn every festival<\/span>. But <\/span>it\u2019s my tradition and I love it.<\/span><\/p>\n

This year\u2019s choice for Purim was propelled by the sad fact that <\/span>historical <\/span>research and <\/span>research for <\/span>novels all take planning. <\/span>I was considering actual Jewish populations along the Rhine at different times for something I\u2019m looking into later in the year. <\/span>I had a crashing thought that <\/span>had me<\/span> investigating<\/span> maps <\/span>last week<\/span>. <\/span>I used Purim to give me the time to make everything make sense. <\/span>Tomorrow I\u2019m back to my regular resaerch, which is currently wholly in literary studies<\/span><\/p>\n

For all this <\/span>(except the literary studies)<\/span>, <\/span>I blame cholent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cholent, the dish, is a Jewish slow-cooked casserole from (mostly) Eastern Europe. Its name, however, most likely comes from French. We talk a lot about <\/span>European <\/span>Jews migrating east, but the most popular explanations and timing don\u2019t fit Western European history. <\/span>Yiddish is a lot more recent than the first migrations, and\u2026 it\u2019s complicated. I made it understandable using m<\/span>aps. <\/span>The maps themselves don\u2019t explain things \u2013 they triggered the explanations, which is why there are no maps in this post <\/span>and only one link to one<\/span>. <\/span>I answered a lot more questions that night and this weekend than I could give in a post \u2013 the question of Jewish movement eastward, for instance, must wait.<\/span><\/p>\n

I began with a map of the Roman Empire at its <\/span>p<\/span>re<\/span>-Christian<\/span> peak. <\/span>T<\/span>here were millions <\/span>of Jews<\/span> distributed throughout the Roman Empire <\/span>as citizens, as non-citizens, and as slaves<\/span>. I\u2019ve seen <\/span>estimates of <\/span>numbers ranging from one million to <\/span>ten<\/span> million, and I usually use four million as a compromise number to work with. <\/span><\/p>\n

Four million is over a quarter the size of <\/span>the modern <\/span>world <\/span>Jewish population so, a<\/span> while back I calculated how many Jews we would have around today if history <\/span>had been kinder<\/span>. <\/span>I<\/span>t was in the vicinity of 320 million. Eighty million if you take the <\/span>minimum<\/span> number of Jews in the Roman Empire and <\/span>over a billion <\/span>using the largest estimate. We would not be such a tiny minority, in other words, i<\/span>f we had progressed simply because the world population has expanded and we <\/span>had<\/span> not <\/span>been<\/span> forcibly<\/span> converted, mass murdered, exiled, enslaved, enthusiastically convert<\/span>ed<\/span> to other religions and so forth. <\/span><\/p>\n

Populations follow trad<\/span>e <\/span>routes and you can see evidence Jewish life along all the Roman trade routes. Well, all those where anyone has looked. Antisemitism is so deeply ingrained in our societies that many experts demand far more evidence for a Jewish burial than, say, a Christian one. There is a lot that probably needs to be re-evaluated in the archaeological record if we want to know actual Jewish populations in most areas. <\/span><\/p>\n

Assessing t<\/span>he written record is easier, <\/span>but not in a good way<\/span>. The vast majority of Jewish records have been destroyed, and we\u2019re reliant on surprising survivals such as the Cairo genizah. This means our knowledge through writing is patchy from anyone Jewish, because of <\/span>the <\/span>destruction, and biased from anyone else. Occasionally the bias is positive. Occasionally.<\/span><\/p>\n

This means we really don\u2019t know a lot about how many Jews lived in the Roman world, where they lived and how they lived. We know a lot more than we did, but we still have big gaps. We do know, <\/span>however<\/span>, the geographical limits of Jewish life and the trade routes <\/span>related<\/span> to much of the Jewish everyday.<\/span><\/p>\n

The <\/span>next<\/span> map I thought of, then, was of Charlemagne\u2019s empire at the time of its division into three, <\/span>843<\/span>. <\/span>I was thinking of places that were more antisemitic and less antisemitic and they pretty much follow this divide. It was easier to be Jewish in the central band of the empire (the one with Charles\u2019 capital<\/a> \u2013 which makes sense, because his personal confessor converted to Judaism and this does not seem to have ended the world) and a few key places nearby. These are all, in modern day Europe in eastern France (usually the parts that also speak German), the Saar, Italy, Provence and Burgundy. This <\/span>became<\/span> the Jewish heartland of non-Hispanic Europe in the Middle Ages. <\/span><\/p>\n

It is the original Ashkenaz. <\/span>It\u2019s the Ashkenaz that made European Jewish marriages one husband to one wife, but refused to relinquish divorce despite enormous pressure from local Christians. Rashi, one of the great Medieval scholars, used the word \u2018akitement\u2019 for divorce: marriage in Judaism was and is a contract that can be acquitted, it\u2019s not a covenant. European Jewish was both Jewish and European and that wide strip of territory that formed that heartland explains a great deal about us.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ashkenazi culture spread east and changed and that\u2019s a story for another time. It <\/span>began to<\/span> spread early enough so that \u2018cholent\u2019 could have a French name: it came from the Carolingian Empire after French developed as a language. Not before the eleventh century. Which is interesting because\u2026 I have another mental map for that.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the late 8<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span> century, a Jewish trade network operated from that region (and possibly Champagne). We don\u2019t know a lot about it, but when I looked at its most <\/span>known<\/span> route, <\/span>Jewish traders used<\/span> those ancient fairs, with a special focus on Medieval fairs. I have a book with maps of every town in that region that had a fair in the Middle Ages and the dates we know those fairs operated and I cannot find it! So this is work for my future, after my thesis is done. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Rhadanites were gone about the time that the Khazar Empire declined and fell, and one of their trade routes led to the heart of the Empire, so that\u2019s something else to explore one day. About the time both faded from view, the Crusades began in Europe and persecution of Jews became far more severe. But\u2026 right until the mid-20th century, those towns were <\/span>part<\/span> of larger trade routes and had Jewish communities. <\/span><\/p>\n

E<\/span>very trade fair needed a route to the fair, and each stop was <\/span>a town <\/span>usually between 15-20 miles from the <\/span>previous<\/span> and also served as fairs for local farmers. <\/span>In the Middle Ages, prior to all the murders and expulsions, so many of these towns had Jewish traders and craftspeople. And so many of those families would have cooked cholent or an equivalent.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is a small fraction of what I spent one night and one Purim sorting out. I have to leave it now until September. I\u2019ll write it up more accurately and less improperly when I\u2019m actually working on it. In other words, these are my early thoughts. <\/span><\/p>\n

Why did I share them with you, then? Part of the family tradition of learning includes talking about things. If anyone wants to talk about these subjects, this is a good place and a perfect time. Why perfect? Because all my thoughts are halfway right now. I could be very, very wrong <\/span>in how I see things<\/span>. <\/span><\/p>\n

There is a tradition to this learning. <\/span>The tradition is that you have to prove anything you want to challenge. <\/span>Evidence! When I was a child and we argued without evidence it occasionally led to very sophisticated behaviour, such as the sticking out of tongues, <\/span>which got us into trouble. Evidence is safer than the sticking out of tongues<\/span>. <\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s the aim of challenging and providing evidence? Th<\/span>at th<\/span>e learning m<\/span>a<\/span>y continue\u2026 (kinda like the spice must flow).<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been looking at maps this week in my spare time and it was Purim over the weekend. Purim is an historical festival, not so much a religious one, so I always try to make sense of a bit more Jewish history as my learning for the celebration. I was perplexed as a child when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,6,406,636,56,15,14,20,18],"tags":[860,861,858,859,865,70,580,856,862,857,864,863],"class_list":["post-3293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","category-fiction","category-food","category-life","category-life-experiences","category-memoir","category-nonfiction","category-process","category-writing","tag-ashkenaz","tag-ashkenazi","tag-charlemagne","tag-cholent","tag-fairs","tag-history","tag-jewish","tag-judaism","tag-maps","tag-roman","tag-towns","tag-trade"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3293"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3298,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3293\/revisions\/3298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}