Away from Home: Travelling and Leisure Activities among German Jews in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries

AwayfromHome:TravellingandLeisureActivities

among GermanJews in the Seventeenth and

Eighteenth centuries*

BY NIMROD ZINGER

[email protected]

In1784, the maskil Isaac Euchel (1756-1804) wrote the following while describing hisjourney from Ko« nigsberg to Copenhagen in a letter to his disciple MichaelFriedla« nder:

Know this, my son ^ may God have mercy on you! Not all travellers have identicalreasons for taking to the roads. Some do so to see [the sights], someçto be seen; sometravel to acquire their fortunes, othersçto consume theirs.There are those who searchfor enlightened men from whom to hear words of wisdom in order to learn from them,while others seek this same company in order to show that they are as wise as theenlightened souls . . .This one seeks the tailors’ rates and the peddlers’ market to payattention to the changes in clothing [styles] . . .One inquires into the characteristics ofeach and every city, its peoples and schemes in order to bring blessing to their homes,while the other fellow seeks the company of drunks and the houses of laughter in orderto know where to squander his wealth.1

As we can glean from Euchel’s words that were published in the Hame’assef

periodical, as well as from other sources, numerous people travelled the roads atthe beginning of the Early Modern period for assorted reasons. Merchants,messengers, sailors, craftsmen, soldiers, beggars to whom the road was home, andothers, moved relentlessly from place to place along the routes of the Europeancontinent.2 Apparently, many Jews also travelled regularly. A signi¢cant

*This research was supported by The Israel Science Foundation as part of a project on ‘Free-TimeActivity in Early Modern German-Jewish Life’ under the direction of Robert Liberles [grant no.164/08]. The article was translated from the Hebrew by Sandy Bloom with a grant from the LeoBaeck Institute Jerusalem.1Isaac Euchel, ‘Igrot Isaac Euchel’ [Hebrew], in Hame’assef 2 (1785), p. 118; For more on Euchel’sjourney see Shmuel Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment, Philadelphia 2004, pp. 232-237; Moshe Pelli,‘The Epistolary Story in Haskalah Literature: Isaac Euchel’s Igrot Meshulam’, in Bikoret Veparshanot[Hebrew],16 (1981), pp. 85-101; I would like to thank Iris Idelson-Shein for referring me to this source.

2For more information about journeys in Germany at the beginning of the Early Modern period, seeHolger Th. Gra« f and Ralf Pro« ve,Wege ins Ungewisse. Reisen in der Fru« hen Neuzeit 1500-1800, Frankfurtam Main 1997; Antoni Maczak,Travel in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge 1995; Robert Ju« tte, ‘DailyLife in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany’, in Bob Scribner (ed.), Germany: A New Socialand Economic HistoryVol. 1 1450-1630, London 1996, pp. 341-343.

Leo Baeck InstituteYear Book 1^26 doi:10.1093/leobaeck/ybr015

� TheAuthor (2011). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Leo Baeck Institute.All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected]

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percentage of the Jews dealt in commerce or peddling and spent extended periodsaway from their homes in order to market their wares at fairs, in the centres ofcities, as well as in rural regions. But it was not only Jewish merchants who took tothe roads; Jewish youths travelled to study in yeshivas; melamdim (children’steachers) sought out work; cantors, rabbis and authors of books travelled to obtainhaskamot (approbations) for their writings; physicians travelled to provide medicaltreatment to their patients; and shadarim (emissaries) collected money on behalf ofJewish communities in the Holy Land.Typically, these travels extended for weeks,months and sometimes even over several years.3

Thus life on the road was a central part of the daily life for many Jews at thebeginning of the Early Modern era. While a growing number of important,ground-breaking studies have been carried out in recent years on many aspects ofthe daily lives of EuropeanJews, this important feature of their lives has not, untilnow, received thorough consideration. In this article I focus on one aspect of thetravel phenomenon among GermanJewry at the beginning of the Modern era, andexamine the daily routine of the traveller and the activities he or she engaged in topass the time while on the road far from home. Speci¢cally, I focus on those leisureactivities that characterized the Jewish voyager in the German states andprincipalities during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

As the late Jacob Katz has shown in his bookTradition and Crisis, and as ShmuelFeiner clari¢ed recently, the rabbinic Jewish elite frowned upon leisure activities;they felt that activities such as attending dances, the frequenting of co¡ee housesand inns, or wandering around without a speci¢c purpose, were likely to lead tobittul Torah (neglect of Torah study), since Torah study is supposed to ¢ll all theleisure time of the Jewish male.4 Finally, the rabbinical leaders felt that theseactivities could even lead to immoral behaviour.This world-view was expressed ina long line of sermons, books of morals and community takanot (ordinances) whichtriedçwithout much successçto limit these ‘‘detrimental’’ activities, andespecially when conducted together with Gentiles.5

My central argument is that while the Jews were subject to social control withintheir own small local communities (whether institutional or informal), when onceembarked on a journey they were liberated to a great extent from the watchful eyesof their peers. Far from home, sometimes completely anonymous in his newenvironment, the Jewish traveller could act more freely if he was so inclined and

3For information about journeys of Jews in Germany during this period, see Robert Liberles, ‘On theThreshold of Modernity: Jewish Daily Life in Germany 1618-1780’, in Marion A. Kaplan (ed.),Jewish Daily Life in Germany 1618-1945, Oxford 2005, pp. 19-23; Shlomo Berger,Travels Among Jews andGentiles: Abraham Levie’s Travelogue, Amsterdam 1764, Leiden 2002, pp. 1-53; Stefan Litt, ‘Mobilita« t undReisen in Selbstzeugnissen aschkenasischer Juden in der Fru« hen Neuzeit’, in Birgit E. Klein andRotraud Ries (eds), Selbstzeugnisse und Ego-Dokumente fru« hneuzeitlicher Juden in Aschkenas - Beispiele,Methoden und Konzepte, Berlin 2011. I would like to thank Stefan Litt for agreeing to show me hisarticle before publication.

4 Jacob Katz,Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages, NewYork 1993, pp. 136-137;Shmuel Feiner,The Origins of Jewish Secularization in 18th-Century Europe. Philadelphia 2010, pp. 42-43.

5 ibid.

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experiment in activities that, at home, would lead to frowns and even sanctions.Theroad represented a di¡erent space in which the boundaries between Jew andGentile, rich and poor, and even the permitted and forbidden became fuzzy andindistinct.6 In e¡ect, being on the road sometimes even compelled the Jewishtraveller to act di¡erently than he acted on the ‘‘Jewish street.’’7

Before we begin the discussion of leisure activities and journeys in the EarlyModern period, we must address a number of methodological problems involved.First of all, we ask:What constitutes ‘‘leisure’’? According to the modern de¢nition,leisure is ‘‘the state of having time at one’s own disposal, time which one can spendas one pleases, free or unoccupied time.’’8 Can we adopt this modern de¢nition forthe period under discussion, or is this anachronistic? The problem becomeseven more complex when we ask if it is even legitimate to use the concept of leisurewith reference to the beginning of the Modern era. In the past, historians of leisureinWestern society have emphasized that the very concept is modern in its essence.These researchers asserted that before the Industrial Revolution it is di⁄cult totalk about leisure time regarding the general public in its current meaning.According to this approach, the modern signi¢cance of the concept only tookshape after work was institutionalized in capitalistic society during the nineteenthand twentieth centuries.9 However, various scholars in recent years have ceased toview the Industrial Revolution as a de¢nitive boundary-line in the history of theleisure concept and, instead, claim that there is continuity in European societyregarding leisure time between the Early Modern period and modern times.10

Thus, Peter Burke argued in his important article, ‘The Invention of Leisure inEarly Modern Europe’, that the concept of leisure was not created suddenly inthe Victorian era, but began to take shape in earlier centuries as a reactionto the regulation process of Western culture, mainly among the higher classes.11

6Scholars have by now ceased to view space solely as a geographical concept expressing a physicalplace. Many scholars have demonstrated that this concept is rather the result of culturalconstructions a¡ected by changing social and economic factors. See Charles W. J. Withers,‘Place and the ‘‘Spatial Turn’’ in Geography and in History’, inJournal of the History of Ideas 70 (2009),pp. 637-658.

7 In the Meshulam letters written by Isaac Euchel, who posed as a Jewish youth from the East on avisit to Europe, one ¢nds the viewpoints of those who ¢rmly believed that travellers should notdevote time to recreation and other ‘‘frivolous’’ activities during the trip. Euchel has Meshulam’sgrandfather adopt the stance of the conservative nay-sayers as Euchel perceived them. Thus thegrandfather says, ‘‘When you reach the big city, don’t look at the beauty of its buildings and streets,that is sheer vanity and of no purpose.’’ See Isaac Euchel, ‘Letters of Meshulam Son of Uriah fromEshtamoah’, [Hebrew] Hame’assef, 6 (1789), pp. 38-43; I would like to thank Iris Idelson-Shein forreferring me to this source.

8 J. A. Simpson and E. S. C.Weiner,The Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford 1991, vol. III, p. 816.9For example, see Hugh Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution 1780-1880, London 1980,pp. 9-13. Although Cunningham points to continuity between the beginning of the Modern era andthe twentieth century, he also emphasizes the great di¡erences that he feels exist between the twoeras.

10See Peter Borsay, A History of Leisure:The British Experience Since 1500, NewYork 2006, p. 9.11Peter Burke,‘The Invention of Leisure in Early Modern Europe’, in Past & Present 146 (1995), pp. 136-150; For a similar approach, see Benjamin K. Hunnicut, ‘The History of Western Leisure’, in ChrisRojek, Susan M. Shaw and A. J. Veal (eds), A Handbook of Leisure Studies, NewYork 2006, pp. 55-74;

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In the light of Jewish sources from the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries it isappropriate to apply Burke’s approach to Jewish leisure even though it di¡eredfrom the modern concept of the term.

An additional methodological issue is whether we can be allowed to view theactual journey or trip as a form of leisure activity. I will attempt to clarify this issuein the last section, but I will say here that though people travelled mainly forspeci¢c objectives and did not take to the roads for pure tourism, it seems that theydid not remain indi¡erent to the sights they saw while travelling. Some of themincorporated visits to important sites and markets while on the road in order toabsorb local colour of the foreign cities and districts they passed through. 12

PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF TRAVEL

The conveniences of modern travel make it di⁄cult for us nowadays to understandthe nature of travel at the beginning of the Modern era, which often did not lead topleasant experiences. Sources from the period present a somewhat grim picture oftravel as a di⁄cult experience involving exposure to many dangers. Firstly, theroads, where they existed, were gruelling, especially in mountainous regions, thustransforming travel in a horse-drawn coach to a physically uncomfortable, evendangerous, a¡air.13 This was even more true for those who travelled on foot, whichwas the prevalent ‘‘mode of transportation’’ for those who were indigent. Oneexample of this can be found in the Megillat Sefer treatise of the famous RabbiYaakov Emden (1697-1776). In that work, he describes how on one of his manytravels, from Prague to Bern in a wagon which he shared with a number of Jews, apriest, an Italian merchant, and others, the Jews were victims of curses, bullyingand molestation by the other passengers.TheJews were forced to get o¡ the wagonat problematic junctures, to make it easier for the others. Emden was barely able toconceal his joy when, at one such juncture, the wagon turned over on its passengersand the abusive merchant was severely injured. Emden’s joy did not last longbecause a short time later one of his own feet was injured when he travelled inwinter on a sled full of passengers.14

For criticismof Burke’s stance in relation to the‘‘invention’’of leisure, andviewing it insteadas a‘‘naturalconcept,’’ see Joan Lluis Marfany,‘Debate: The Invention of Leisure in Early Modern Europe’, in Past

and Present 156 (1997), pp. 174-191. For discussions on defining the concept of leisure, see Rudy Koshar,‘Seeing, Traveling, and Consuming: An Introduction’, in Rudy Koshar (ed.), Histories of Leisure, NewYork 2002, pp.1-26; Borsay, pp.1-15.

12See: Borsay, pp. 170. For an expanded discussion see this paper, on pp. 18^26.13For information about the state of roads in Early Modern Europe, see Gra« f and Pro« ve, Wege insUngewisse, pp. 75-109; Maczak, pp. 4-14.

14Yaakov Emden, Megillat Sefer [Hebrew], Avraham Bick (ed.), Jerusalem 1979, pp. 110-111; Forinformation about this work, see J. J. Schacter, ‘History and Memory of Self: The Autobiography ofRabbi Jacob Emden’, in Elisheva Carlebach, John M. Efron and David N. Myers (eds), JewishHistory andJewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef HayimYerushalmi, Hanover 1998. On Emden and hisimportant writings, see J. J. Schacter, Rabbi Yacob Emden: Life and Major Works, Ph.D. dissertation,Harvard University 1988.

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Weather conditions, especially during the winter, certainly contributed towardsmaking travel an unpleasant a¡air. Glikl daughter of Leib (1645-1724) ofHamburg, better known by her appellation of Glikl of Hamelin, narrates in hermemoirs how she and her children were soaked to their very bones in the snow andrain, while still sitting in the mail carriage as they waited for the mail clerk at thecustoms station.15 An even more dramatic description is provided by ananonymous writer who lived in Bohemia in the second half of the seventeenthcentury. He writes that when he was a youth, his father yielded to his entreatiesand took him to a melamed in the nearby town in the snow. Despite the fact that hewas dressed warmly, the boy found it di⁄cult to endure the march on foot inthe snow.‘‘The cold was so ¢erce that several times, I thought I was going to die inthe cold because snow fell and the wind dispersed it into our faces. My fathersu¡ered terribly, it seemed like Akedat Yitzhak when father and son walkedtogether and the midrash says that Satan led them into water up till their necks.’’16

Another danger faced by Jewish travellers, apart from inclement weather andprecarious and often dangerous modes of transportation, was posed by the hostilelocal populations and other travellers; sometimes, they posed a real physicaldanger to the Jews. The well-known Rabbi HayimYosef David Azulai (known asthe Hida, 1724-1806) was appointed shadar (emissary) for the congregation ofHebron in the Land of Israel, and travelled the length and breadth of Europecollecting money for the Hebron community. Rabbi Azulai describes hisencounters with hostile populations in various regions of Germany, and how heand his servant managed to escape from an enraged local mob that intended tobeat them up.17 A point that repeats itself over and over in the various sources isthe fear of road robbery by brigands and soldiers, especially during time of war.For example, the merchant Asher ha-Levi of Reichshofen tells how, during1632, inthe midst of the Thirty YearsWar, he and his father-in-law narrowly managed toescape from twenty-six ‘‘ignorant and reckless’’ Swedish soldiers by their skin oftheir teeth.18 However, travel was not only dangerous during time of war; robberywas commonplace even in peacetime and murders were not unknown. Magicalliterature of the period provides us with testimony to the widespread fear of travel.

15Glikl, Memoirs 1691^1719, edited and translated from theYiddish by ChavaTurniansky, Jerusalem 2006,pp. 187-197. In this article I use ChavaTurniansky’s latest Hebrew-Yiddish scienti¢c edition of Glikl’smemoirs. For more on Glikl, see Natalie Zemon Davis,Women on the Margins:Three Seventeenth-CenturyLives, Cambridge, MA 1995, pp. 5-62; also, ChavaTurniansky, ‘Demut ha’isha be-zikhronoteha shelGlikl Hamel’, in Yisrael Bar Tal and Yeshayahu Gafni (eds), Eros, Irusin ve’Issurim [Hebrew],Jerusalem 1998, pp. 177-191; Robert Liberles, ‘She Sees that Her Merchandise is Good, and HerLamp is Not Extinguished at Nighttime: Glikl’s Memoir as Historical Source’, in Nashim 7 (2004),pp. 11-27.

16Alexander Marx,‘A Seventeenth CenturyAutobiography’, in Studies inJewish History and Booklore, NewYork 1944, p. 283; also see Litt, p. 10.

17HayimYosef David Azulai (theHida), Sefer Ma’agalTov Hasalem [Hebrew], Berlin 1921, pp.19,16, 40; onthis treatise, see Matthias B. Lehmann, ‘Levantinos and Other Jews: Reading H.Y.D. Azulai’s TravelDiary’, inJewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society 13 (2007), pp. 1-34.

18Asher ha-Levi of Reichshofen, Memoirs, Berlin 1913, p. 34. For more about this work, see DebraKaplan, ‘The Self in Social Context: Asher ha-Levi of Reichshofen’s Sefer Zikhronot’, inTheJewishQuarterly Review 97 (2007), pp. 210-236.

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The series of Remedies andMedicines books included magical techniques for all kindsof problems as well as di¡erent formulations of the Traveller’s Prayer, numerousincantations and amulets that o¡ered protection to the traveller from‘‘thieves’’and‘‘weapons of war.’’ The demand for these techniques was so great that entire bookswere dedicated to this one subject, such as Sefer Derech HaYashar (The Book of theStraight Path) of Chotsh Zvi Hirsh benJerahmeel, published in Fu« rth in1703.19

In light of the great di⁄culties and dangers faced by the typical traveller in thebeginning of the Modern era, we can question if it is possible at all to link leisureactivities with such arduous journeys. But leisure activities are not only associatedwith comfort and luxury. Even under the harshest conditions, people engaged invarious activities in order to divert themselves from the hardships and monotony ofthe journey.Travelogues (descriptions of journeys) not only describe su¡ering andhardship, but also moments of happiness and enjoyment. In addition, thedi⁄culties involved in travel were often directly connected to the economic statusof the traveller. While penniless travellers endured great discomfort and squalidconditions, their wealthier counterparts had an easier time. Glikl phrased thissituation in her usual pithy, brief way when she described her journey fromLeipzig to Lemberg.‘‘I su¡ered terribly because the road was so bad, and I am awoman and my son Moshe was still very young, a child of ¢fteen years.Nevertheless, when you have money you can manage under all conditions.The tripcost us a great deal of money.’’20

A critical factor in a journey, which determined its nature to a large extent, werethe stopping-points and sleeping sites where travellers rested from the daytimetravel hardships and recovered the strength to continue. The traveller faced anumber of sleeping options with various levels of comfort and attractiveness. TheJewish traveller generally preferred the hospitality of relatives, or even just otherJews. Sources from this period show that many Jews did not hesitate to open theirhomes to host acquaintances or even Jews they had never met before. Thus, forexample, when Glikl and her family reached Delfzyl from Amsterdam after adi⁄cult voyage, several hours after nightfall, her husband Chaim turned to a Jewwhowas related by marriage to an acquaintance of his, and asked for shelter for hisfamily for the night. The Jew did not hesitate but said,‘‘Come, in God’s name, myhouse is open to you.’’21 Lodging with other Jews was of great importance to theJewish traveller who wanted to observe a Jewish lifestyle and eat kosher food; thiswas especially important during Sabbaths and festivals. Stephan Litt hascommented that Jews planned their trips di¡erently than their Christiancounterparts: the Jews tried to plan their travel itinerary so as to pass throughJewish communities on the way.22 Another signi¢cant advantage to lodging in the

19Chotsh Zvi Hirsh benJerahmeel, Sefer DerekhYeshara, Fu« rth 1703; for actual use of magic as a means ofprotection from robbers, see Azulai, Sefer Ma’agal Tov HaShalem, p. 47; for dangers and obstacles onthe way, see: Gra« f and Pro« ve, pp. 193-242; Maczak, pp. 158-182.

20Glikl, p. 455.21 ibid. p. 279.22See Litt, pp. 4, 13.

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homes of otherJews was, of course, in saving money, since the alternative option ofsleeping in inns sometimes cost signi¢cant sums of money.This was of course evenmore critical to the indigent travellers. Ascher Lehmann (1769-1858) wrote thatduring his trip in 1786 from his house in the environs of Bamberg to Prague, he wasforced to lodge at inferior inns that drained him of all his money and caused him tobecome ill with scabies.This was because there were noJewish communities on hisroute.23

Another option open to Jewish travellers was sleeping in a hekdesh, or hostelusually run by the local Jewish community for the sick or in¢rm. The Jewishcommunity typically o¡ered the hekdesh to ill, poor travellers as an act of charity,and also to prevent unwanted elements from entering the community.24 Sometimespenniless travellers were forced to sleep in the open, under the sky. An example ofthis is Shlomo Maimon (1753-1800), a Polish-born philosopher and member of theHaskalah (Enlightenment) who wandered penniless throughout Germany in hisyouth. When he arrived in Berlin he lodged in the hekdesh founded by thecommunity near the Rosenthal Gate at the city’s entrance. Maimon wrote that hewas not allowed by the community to enter the city because they suspected him ofheresy, due to his commentary on Maimonides’Guide to the Perplexed. As a result, hewas stricken with anxiety and cried incessantly when they urged him to leave thehekdesh.‘‘Luckily’’ he was gripped with a burning fever, evidently due to his di⁄cultemotional state, so he was allowed to spend another night in the shelter. But thenext day he woke up healthy without fever, and was forced to leave. Maimondescribes the helplessness that gripped him.‘‘I was forced to leave. But where to go?I didn’t know myself. I turned and went where I went, and placed myself in thehands of fate.’’25 This was the start of a period of beggary and wandering thatlasted for half a year.

Another form of lodging during this era was, of course, the already mentionedinn. Some inns were run by Jews, but most were run by Christians. The inns inGerman areas went through a process of institutionalization and supervision bythe authorities during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. At the beginning ofthis period it was di⁄cult to make a distinction between home owners who put upguests in their own home, often without collecting payment in an organizedmanner, and between true inns. But, as time progressed, travellers were able to

23Monika Richarz (ed.), Jewish Life in Germany: Memoirs fromThree Centuries, Bloomington^Indianapolis1991, p. 51.

24For information about the hekdesh, see Jacob R. Marcus, Communal Sick-Care in the German Ghetto,Cincinnati 1947, pp. 160-197; Nimrod Zinger, Ba’al HaShem VeHaRofe [Hebrew], Ph.D. dissertation,Ben Gurion University of the Negev, 2010, pp. 35-40.

25Shlomo Maimon, Chayai Shlomo Maimon, trans. byY.L. Baruch, preface by P. Lachover,Tel Aviv 1942,pp. 154-156. For information about control over the entry of Jews, gypsies and poor people intoGerman cities at the beginning of the Modern era and especially into Frankfurt am Main, seeMaria R. Boes, ‘Unwanted Travellers: The Tightening of City Borders in Early Modern Germany’,inThomas Betteridge (ed), Borders andTravellers in Early Modern Europe, Aldershot 2007, pp. 87-112.

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choose from a greater variety of lodgings.26 The inns supplied travellers with alltheir basic needs: inexpensive food and drink, a place to sleep for the night,information about road and travel conditions, business opportunities and,sometimes no less important, a social setting in which to relieve the loneliness oftravel.27 Sources show that the quality of the inns was uneven; some wererespectable establishments that o¡ered their clients comfortable, clean rooms andlarge meals. Others, however, o¡ered only one large space in which all the guestsslept on straw, or o¡ered ‘‘problematic’’ rooms with sub-standard conditions, as inthe case of Ascher Lehmannwho was infected with scabies. Another example fromthe end of the eighteenth century is the story of MosheWasserzug, a shochet (ritualslaughterer) and melamed who later became manager of an inn in the Posen area.Wasserzug writes how he spent one night in the attic of an inn and su¡ered terriblyfrom the room’s foul odour. In the middle of the night he discovered the cause ofthe odour when he found that he was sharing a room with a he-goat.28 RabbiAzulai (the Hida) also had unpleasant experiences in an inn. He writes that whenhe lodged in Duesseldorf in a ‘‘Gentile inn,’’ the inn’s owner transferred him onFriday night to a room whose windows were shattered. He was forced to spend hisShabbat under these unpleasant conditions.29 It is true that some inns weremore prestigious than others and geared for the higher classes, especially towardsthe end of the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, lodgers came from diversebackgrounds and during their time spent in the inn often came into very closecontact with one another. For example, though Glikl was a wealthy woman shewas forced to lodge overnight (when she travelled with her children from Hanoverto Hamberg) in an inn with just one large open space in which the travellers slepton ‘‘straw beds’’ next to ‘‘wagon-drivers and other wayfarers’’ including drunkards,both Christian andJewish.30 This story of Glikl, which we shall refer to again lateron, demonstrates the breaking down of boundaries and divisions during travel andespecially in inns between members of di¡erent socio-economic groups andbetween Jews and Christians. Naturally, the blurring of these distinctions alsoa¡ected the leisure activities of theJewish traveller.

LEISURE ACTIVITIES ON THE ROAD

It is di⁄cult to determine whether Jews, while travelling, enjoyed leisure activitiesthat di¡ered from what they enjoyed at home, and how the activities di¡ered.Theavailable sources do not tell us about special activities while on the road. Since ‘‘theroad’’ is a space characterized by freedom from the powers of social regulation, it is

26Gra« f and Pro« ve, pp. 153-163.27Maczak, pp. 30-7128Heinrich Loewe, ‘Memoiren eines polnischen Juden’, in Jahrbuch der ju« disch Literarischen Gesellschaft 8(1910), pp. 95-96.

29Azulai, p. 26.30Glikl, pp. 193-195.

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reasonable to theorize that some travellers took part in activities that they feared todo at home. An example that demonstrates how travel involves di¡erent rules ofconduct that can lead to controversial behaviour is the story of Rabbi YaakovEmden’s visit to a ‘‘Gentile’’ co¡ee-house when he visited in London. He was thetarget of much criticism for this visit, and he admitted his mistake mainly overKashruth issues. His words leave the impression that although manyJews frequentedco¡ee-houses run by gentiles and there was no real reason to avoid drinking‘Gentile’ co¡ee, it was not proper for a man of his stature to visit such a placebecause this could lead the wider public to make light of prohibitions of a similarnature. Hence when he was distant from his community, in far-£ung Londonwhere Emden did not serve in any o⁄cial capacity, he felt comfortable in actingdi¡erently fromwhat was accepted and expected at home.31

DRINKING AND GAMBLING

Similar to the frequenting of gentile co¡ee-houses were other activities perceived asproblematic from a religious-ethical viewpoint. It was felt that these activitiescould cause the individual to degenerate into a pro£igate lifestyle that did notbe¢t the God-fearing Jew. One such example was imbibing alcohol, especiallygetting drunk on beer and wine. The average consumption of alcohol in Europe,especially in Germanic regions, at the beginning of the Modern era wassigni¢cantly greater than in modern times. The drinking of alcoholic beveragesserved an important function in the everyday lives of people, and not only whentravelling. The centres of alcoholic consumption, mainly all forms and variationsof pubs and taverns, played a large role in Europe in the Early Modern periodboth economically as well as culturally-socially. These places of meeting andrecreation, relatively open spaces free of the various tools of social control, werecharacterized by more uninhibited behaviour, and sometimes were focal points forthe expression of opposing and even subversive opinions.32 As shown by AzrielShohat in his book Beginnings of the Haskalah among GermanJewry, numerous GermanJews visited pubs and taverns during the Early Modern period as an acceptable

31Yaakov Emden, She’eilat Ya’avetz [Hebrew], Altona 1759, Part B Siman 142. Regarding objections tositting in a co¡ee-house run by gentiles, see Yaakov Reischer, Shvut Yaakov [Hebrew], Jerusalem2004, Part A Siman 12.

32For information about drinking (of alcoholic beverages), bars and inns in Europe during thebeginning of the Modern era, see Beat Ku« min and B. Ann Tlusty (eds),TheWorld of Tavern: PublicHouses in Early Modern Europe, Aldershot 2002; B. AnnTlusty, Bacchus and the Civic Order:The Cultureof Drink in Early Modern Germany, Charlottesville 2001; Peter Clark, The English Alehouse: A SocialHistory 1200-1830, London 1983; Martin A. Lynn, Alcohol, Sex and Gender in Late Medieval and EarlyModern Europe, New York 2001; Patricia Fumerton, ‘Not Home: Alehouses, Ballads, and the VagrantHusband in Early Modern England’, in Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32 (2002),pp. 493-518; JessicaWarner and Frank Ivis, ‘Gin and Gender in Early Eighteenth-Century London’,in Eighteenth-Century Life 24 (2000), pp. 85-105.

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form of recreation. This was despite the overt disapproval of the rabbis andadmonishers who viewed these ethically dubious establishments as places wherefrequenters could be easily drawn into forbidden behaviours.33 The sources give usthe impression that the drinking phenomenon was even more prevalent whiletravelling on the road. There were many types of establishments catering totravellers that o¡ered intoxicating drinks for sale. In fact, most of the inns in thisperiod strongly resembled bars; in addition to o¡ering places to sleep, the inns alsoo¡ered alcoholic beverages to their guests.

The story of Glikl’s trip with her children from Hanover to their home inHamburg (mentioned brie£y above), demonstrates how travel served to blur thedistinctions between di¡erent religious and social groups, and how alcohol couldbring Jews and Christians together. In her diary, Glikl records how her husbandhired a Jewish fellow called ‘‘Gunshot’’ Jacob34 to escort Glikl and her children sothat they would not travel alone. Glikl notes that although the fellow was a goodperson, he tended to drink too much at every opportunity. Just as they were readyto leave Hanover with the mail coach, Jacob became chummy with the mailo⁄cial, a Christian named Paterson (in e¡ect, the one in charge of the journey)and the two went o¡ on a drunken spree. Jacob and Paterson told Glikl and thehorse-driver that they were going to the nearby village of Langenhagen to runsome errands, and they would walk on foot to catch up with the coach at the nextcustoms station. Glikl and her children went o¡ in the carriage; Glikl says that shehad no illusions regarding the nature of the ‘‘errands’’ planned by the two men,since the village was known for its superior wheat-beer. After the coach waited fora long time in the snow and rain at the next customs station, with Jacob andPaterson nowhere to be seen, the driver acquiesced in Glikl’s pleading and thedirectives of the customs o⁄cer and drove them to the nearest inn. It was close tomidnightçby which time Glikl and her children were fast asleep after eating aheavy meal (Glikl had even enjoyed some of the high-quality local beer)çwhenthe mail o⁄cial burst into the inn. He was as drunk as the biblical Lot and tried tobeat up the driver for not waiting at the station, as he had been instructed to do.After some time, when Paterson had calmed down a bit, Glikl, who was wokenup by the disturbance, turned to him anxiously to ¢nd out Jacob’s whereabouts.Paterson replied that he had left his sodden drinking-partner Jacob stretched outon the side of the road, exposed to the pouring rain. The worried Glikl hurriedto organize a search party to ¢nd the man who had been hired to protect her. Ashort time later, Jacob was found, totally intoxicated, without his money andwithout his coat. The next day before they had to set out again, Glikl hoped thather ‘‘servant’’ had learned his lesson. Her hopes were quickly dashed. The twomen again started getting drunk in the inn even before the departure, whileGlikl, her children and the mail coach drivers had to wait in the coach for a long

33Azriel Shochat, Im Hilufei Tekufot [Hebrew], Jerusalem 1960, pp. 37-39; see also Feiner,The Origins ofJewish Secularization, pp. 32-35.

34Jacob received this nickname after robbers wounded him severely and killed two other Jews whilethey travelled to Bremervo« rde. See Glikl, pp. 115-117.

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time. Glikl narrates that a similar scenario unfolded at each of the inns wherethey stopped.35

Travellers at the beginning of theModern era did not usually spendmuch time intheir rooms when they arrived at an inn (if the inn actually had rooms at all), butinstead with other travellers or with locals. It was customary to drink in goodcompany, especially in Germanic areas, and fellow drinkers would invite oneanother to raise a toast. Usually, refusals to join in raising a toast were not lookedupon favourably.36 In order to make the drinking experience more interesting,many participated in drinking games, such as the Wirtschaft (housekeeping)card-game, in which the person who was unlucky enough to receive the Innkeepercard, had to treat everyone around the table to an additional round of drinks.Thisgame could incur the loss of signi¢cant sums of money to its less fortunateparticipants.37

An example of the important role played by drinking and card games duringtravel is found in a treatise by Shlomo Maimon who describes his sailing voyagefrom Hamburg to Amsterdam. Maimon writes how his fellow voyagersçbarberapprentices, a tailor’s apprentice and shoemaker’s apprenticeçengaged in songand drink throughout the voyage.When they were forced to wait for six weeks in asmall village near the Alba river estuary due to a change in wind direction, all thetravellers as well as the seamen visited the local drinking house every day, wherethey drank and played.38 Jews also drank, played cards, rolled dice and gambled inthe bars.39 Thus, for example, the merchant Asher ha-Levi of Reichshofen narrateshow he vowed to stop the ‘evil’practices, including drinking non-Jewish wine (yayinnesech, literally libation wine), and playing ‘‘balls called Kugel as well as cards calledKarten. Dice too. By myself as well as with others.With the circumcised as well asthe uncircumcised [Jews as well as non-Jews]. . ..When [playing with] money, andalso when it’s for free.’’40 Some Jews took cards and dice when embarking on ajourney, as we learn from the testimony of Judah Leib son of Avraham, whosucceeded in obtaining information from a Christian villager about the murder ofthree Jews from Nikolsburg after they got into an argument with a non-Jew whowanted his dice.41 Of course, the drinking phenomenon did not only characterizethoseJews who frequented the inns, but also some of theJewish travellers who werehosted by Jews in their homes (as well as within other frameworks); these, too,

35Glikl, pp. 187-197.36Tlusty, p. 3.37Maczak, pp. 144-145.38Maimon, p. 198.39For a number of examples see Shochat, Im HilufeiTekufot [Hebrew], p. 51; Feiner,The Origins of JewishSecularization, pp. 33-34, 81-82.

40Asher ha-Levi, pp. 30-31.41Menachem Mendel Krochmal, SeferTzemachTzedek [Hebrew], Jerusalem 1968, Question 42. I wouldlike to thank Rivka Sandik for referring me to this source. Regarding gambling among GermanJews in this period, see Herman Pollack, Jewish Folkways in Germanic Lands (1648-1806), Cambridge,Massachusetts 1971, pp. 181-183.

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often tended to drink a lot. For example, RabbiYair Chaim Bacharachwas asked bya host how to tackle a house guest who had caused a ¢re in the home of his hostafter getting intoxicated in a local drinking house and had forgotten to blow outthe candle in his room.42 Rabbi Azulai also writes about an embarrassing episodethat took place when he was in Amsterdam during one of his travels, regarding hiserrant servant Avraham. Avraham, who lodged with a respectable family inAmsterdam’s Spanish community, drank a great deal and ate gluttonously, shoutedin Arabic in the streets of the city and eavesdropped on the conversations of hishosts.43

RANDOM SEXUAL ENCOUNTERS

One activity that was considered an unbreakable taboo was casual, extra-maritalsexual encounters. Travelling o¡ered numerous sexual temptations to the voyagerfor a variety of reasons: the traveller spent an extended time far from home andenjoyed a large degree of anonymity in surroundings that included sharing spacewith single women or men during stagecoach travel, while lodging with hosts whohad daughters, and spending time in inns and bars frequented by prostitutes.44

Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of writers of travelogues andmemoirs were young men at the peak of their virility, the literature almost totallyignores this topic and certainly lacks descriptions of personal experience in thesexual domain. This is for obvious reasons: Jewish society strongly frowned oncasual extra-marital sexual relations and even unful¢lled erotic desires.45 Yet thereis less direct, and indirect, evidence of the many temptations on o¡er. RabbiYaakov Emden, in particular, severely castigated his generation for their sexualsins in numerous written works and sermons.46 In his autobiographical workMegillat Sefer, Emden con¢des his intimate experiences and sexual desires,including during his travels. Thus the rabbi writes about the time he went to a taxcollector’s house near the Eiger community in order to equip himself with a transitpass, and a Gentile woman propositioned him there. She turned to him and saidoutright, ‘‘The man is not home, let’s make love.’’ Emden resisted the bait andturned her down, later writing,‘‘then I realized that desire is a bear that lies in waitto lead us astray in all our paths.’’47 The young married Emden faced another,

42Yair Chaim ben Moshe Shimshon Bachrach, Chavat Yair [Hebrew], Frankfurt am Main 1699, para169.

43Azulai pp. 143-144.44Lynn Martin, pp. 66-70.45For information about extra-marital sexual activity among German Jews during this period andattempts by the rabbis to minimize it, see Shochat, pp. 162-173; Feiner, The Origins of JewishSecularization, pp. 52-57; Liberles, pp. 29, 34.

46 It is likely that the reason for Emden’s preoccupation with this issue was the war he waged against theShabbatean movement whose religious rituals included licentious sexual activity. See: YaakovEmden, Sefer Shimush [Hebrew], photocopied edition of the ¢rst printing, Jerusalem 1978.

47 ibid. p. 107.

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more di⁄cult, temptation in the form of a beautiful relative when he resided withfamily in Prague:

I was a young man at the time at the height of my prowess; I had been away from homefor a long time and was hungry for a woman. And there by chance a single woman wasthere for me, a very beautiful young girlça cousin, daughter of my aunt^ who isolatedherself with me. She was bold enough to show me special a¡ection, to come near me,almost kissed me. Even when I lay in my bed she came to cover me with bedding,showing kinswomanly a¡ection. And truly if I had given in to my impulses, she wouldnot have stopped me at all. Several times it came close to happening, like the [¢rst] ¢reof youth.48

Although most memoirs and travelogues are mute regarding sexual relations onthe road, we learn about the existence of sexual incidents from other, also indirect,sources. These sources show how anonymity on the road assisted adulterers tocover up their actions. Thus, for example, we learn from a Responsa submitted toR.Yaakov Reischer (1661-1733) from Paris about an interesting case wherein a maleand female servant travelled together, posing as siblings while they resided inMainz.

And now she is pregnant, andboth he and she admit that they are not brother and sister.They travelled together and he fornicated with her and was alone with her the entiretrip, traveling from place to place so that no one would notice them. [To cover up their]promiscuity they spread the word that they are brother and sister . . .

The legal religious question submitted to the rabbi was whether to allow them tomarry, as they desired.49 In another incident, RabbiYair Chaim Bacharach (1638-1701) was asked to render a religious law judgment regarding whether a beautifulfemale servant needed a get (Jewish writ of divorce) from a man, after she hadposed as his wife. After her impersonation was revealed to the community, thewoman, who had many suitors, admitted that she had received payment from her‘‘husband’’ for accompanying him on one of his travels. Despite the fact that it wasknown that the two slept in the same room and that ‘‘she agreed to the villain’sdesire to ful¢ll his lust throughout the journey with all kinds of hugging andkissing,’’ the woman insisted that ‘‘he never succeeded in violating her, whether byrape or in acquiescence, she gave him her body but not the act itself . . . sheguarded her virginity.’’50 Yaakov Emden, in one his many treatises written in hisstruggle against Rabbi Yonatan Eibeshutz whom Emden accused of

48 ibid., p. 109; for Emden’s two tests (temptations), see Feiner, Origins of Secularization, pp. 53-54; anotherinteresting episode took place in a slightly di¡erent era, in 1859, in the Gergen community. Atraveller was hosted by a woman whose husband was not home; he had sexual relations with herafter he convinced her that he was none other than Elijah the Prophet who had been sent totransform her into the mother of the Messiah. See Yaakov Aharon Ettlinger, Responsa Binyan Zion,Jerusalem 1983, Siman 154. I thankTamar Shimshi-Licht for bringing this source to my attention.

49Reischer, Part C Siman 109; about male and female servants at the beginning of the Modern era inGermany, see: Tamar Shimshi-Licht, Meshartim VeMeshartot Yehodiem BeGermania BeReshit HaEtHaChadasha [Hebrew], Ph.D. dissertation, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, 2006.

50 HavatYair, Siman 138.

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Shabbateanism, writes in Sefer Hitavkut (Altona 1762) about a ‘‘well-known’’community leader from Altona ‘‘who also went to the city of [Copenhagen] as anemissary of the community to obtain a Charter from the new King His Majesty,and stayed there a long time and engaged in promiscuous sexual activities thussquandering several thousands from the community’s purse.’’51

Rabbi Azulai, in his travelogue, makes mention of the sexual sins of Jews at hisvarious stopping places and of other travellers he met on the way. Thus when heresided in Lyon he met a young Jewish fellow fromTurin who immediately createda bad impression on the emissary.

The fellow holds himself highwith bare arms in embroidered clothes and curly hair likesome kind of wig . . .miserly with the commandments, permissive with regard toreligious transgressions. He belittles Torah scholars, but with all his heart he respectstransgressing women. He gives womençhis virility; merrimentçhis money . . . 52

While residing in Amsterdam, Rabbi Azulai heard about a Jew who, in his travelsacross the ocean to America, met a ‘‘mulatto, a Gentile woman born of a blackwoman and a white man,’’ and turned her into his mistress and brought her toAmsterdam, where he continued to commit adultery with additional women.53

CONVERSATIONS

Although the ‘‘road’’ was a freer space that ‘‘lured’’ travellers to forbidden orcontroversial activities, of course not all Jewish travellers yielded to temptation. Itis also reasonable to assume that even the ‘‘sinners’’ among them also dealt withother, more neutral activities from the religious-ethical standpoint. In fact, we aretold that many travellers immersed themselves in activities regarded as positive,such as the study of Torah.54 Common, trivial forms of entertainment includedstriking up conversations and exchanging important information; the inns had animportant role in this since they served as meeting places. Ascher Lehmann tells ushow aJewish woman, proprietor of an inn and restaurant in Pilsen, gave him veryimportant information regarding the next leg of his journey to Prague and eveno¡ered him work as a messenger. Furthermore, Lehmann who was looking forwork as a melamed in Prague, tells us that aJewish traveller from Prague, whom hemet at the same inn, advised him not to go Prague yet since the heads ofhouseholds did not hire ‘‘young fellows’’ before Passover. The guest advisedLehmann to remain in Pilsen until the fair, because the local Jews look formelamdim for their children at the fair’s conclusion.55 Another time, Lehmann

51Yaakov Emden, Sefer Hitavkut [Hebrew], Altona 1762, p. 89; see Schohat, p. 173.52Azulai, p. 167.53 ibid., p. 137.54R. Azulai writes that he had several opportunities to studyTorah with other travellers. See Azulai,pp. 103, 160.

55Richarz, p. 52.

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wrote on how the owner of a Jewish inn in Prague advised him to approach therepresentative of the community on the main street in order to obtain a ‘‘ticket,’’that is a referral to the community’s institutions, in order to receive free food andlodgings, something that saved him a great deal of money.56

In the inns and taverns the travellers not only exchanged technical informationabout their trips, but also held casual conversations to dispel their loneliness andexchanged anecdotes and hair-raising tall tales. Rabbi Pinchas Katzenelnbogen(1691^1764), who served as rabbi in a string of communities in southern Germanyand Moravia, writes about such a conversation. During the course of one of hisvoyages in 1722, he had to wait in Bern for the coach in which he had ordered aplace in advance. Meanwhile he resided at an inn under the ownership of a Jewcalled Itzak Gorkocher. Katzenelnbogen describes how he noticed that two ¢ngersof the inn proprietor were stuck to the palm of his hand, and asked how such athing had happened to him. Gorkocher told him that a number of years earlier,while a fair was being held in the city, more than a hundred Jews and manyChristians were lodged in the inn. On Saturday night, an unusual and enigmaticevent took place. A mysterious woman suddenly appeared at the entrance to thehall in which throngs of Jewish travellers resided. The woman was ‘‘wrapped inshrouds,’’and one of the guests claimed that it was in fact his departed mother.Theinn proprietor said that he thought this was some kind of fraudulent trick, so heused his hand to try and push the woman aside. But when his hand touchedthe woman, his ¢ngers twisted back and remained in that position permanently.57

We ¢nd an additional record of social interaction in the memoirs of ShlomoMaimon. He describes how after he was chased, penniless, from Berlin’s hekdesh, hearrived at an inn during the evening and there he joined a professional Jewishbeggar. Maimon writes that ‘‘I was very happy indeed to meet up with one of myfellowJewish brothers, someone with whom I could talk and who was familiar withthese lovely places.’’ Maimon describes how he joined the beggar who taught himthe secrets of the trade during their wanderings on the roads.58 Another exampleof a social encounter (though one of a completely di¡erent nature) is told by thewealthy Jewish-Italian jewelry merchant Moshe Cassuto who travelled frequentlyin the East and theWest. He wrote that in 1744 he stayed in a high-class inn inTheHague named St. Mark, whose guest-list included a long line of high-rankingpersonalities. Cassuto explains how he created contacts, and associated with manyJews and Christians as well, including the Duke of Arembergh, the general of‘‘MariaTheresa, Queen of Hungary’’; Arembergh invited him to a meeting in hischambers.59 Another example that points to dialogue and closeness between Jewsand Christians on the road is Glikl’s story of the exhausting, danger-¢lled voyage

56 ibid., p. 55.57Pinchas Katzenelnbogen,Yesh Manchilin, Jerusalem 1986, Siman 173.58Maimon, p. 156.59See Richard Barnett,‘TheTravels of Moses Cassuto’, inJohn M. Shaftesly (ed.), Remember the Days,TheJewish Historical Society of England 1966, p. 108.

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fromtoCleve toHamburg. Shewrote that when they reached a small village close toOldenburg, she, her husband Chaim and their children sat at night next to the¢replace together with the ‘‘proprietor and the rest of the villagers also sitting nearthe ¢replace and smoking tobacco. Meanwhile we have the chance, here and there,to talk about di¡erent places and about this and that.’’60

WRITING AND READING

In addition to activities conducted publicly such as card-playing, drinking andconducting conversations with other travellers, there were private activities aswell, such as writing. Quite a fewJews dabbled in writing, and we have a number oftravelogues written byJews of the period such as the writings of Rabbi Azulai andMoshe Cassuto. During some parts of his trips, Rabbi Azulai was careful to writealmost every evening a short summary of the events of that day. However, RabbiAzulai did not write in his diary on a daily basis when he made extended stops invarious cities. Thus, his stay of several months in Frankfurt is summed up in just afew lines. Isaac Euchel, during his travels from Ko« nigsberg to Copenhagen,acquired a ‘‘Travel album’’ for collecting various poems and writings. Parts ofhis travelogue were published (as mentioned above) as letters directed to hisstudent, Michael Friedla« nder.61 In the eighteenth century, the travelogue genrebecame more developed and it especially characterized Christian young men ofaristocratic or wealthy families who went on study and maturation voyagesthroughout the continent called the GrandTour. Many of them wrote travelogues,some intended for publication. The phenomenon was so widespread thatinstruction books on how to write travel books were published. Finally, ¢ctionaltravelogues were also written; these described voyages that never took place.62

One Jewish work that closely approximates the tradition of the Grand Tourtreatise is that of Abraham Levie (1702/3-1785), scion to aJewish court family. Leviewas born in north-west Germany, south of Lemgo. He travelled through centralEurope and Italy when he was seventeen years old. He wrote his work only later, in1764, when he resided in Amsterdam, but it was carefully based on the reports hehad written during the trip. In the introduction, Levie wrote that he decided towrite for his own personal enjoyment and so that his friends would be able to learnabout his journeys.63

We can safely assume that the majority of Jewish travellers did not writetravelogues. Yet some of them did engage in another type of writing, since they

60Glikl, p, 287. For information about Jewish autobiographical works in this period, see J. H. Chajes,‘Accounting for the Self: Preliminary Generic-Historical Re£ections on the Early Modern JewishEgodocuments’, inThe Jewish Quarterly Review 95 (2005), pp. 1-15; Marcus Moseley, Being for MyselfAlone: Origins of Jewish Autobiography, Stanford 2006; Michael Stanislawski, Autobiographical Jews:Essays inJewish Self-Fashioning,Washington 2004.

61Feiner,TheJewish Enlightenment, p. 232.62Percy G. Adams,Travelers andTravel Liars 1660-1800, Berkeley-Los Angeles 1962.63For information about this treatise, see Berger, pp.1-53; Litt, pp. 11-13.

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wrote letters to their loved ones at home, or about business matters. In fact, letter-writing during a journey was a fairly routine activity. For example, when theproprietor of the inn described to Rabbi Katzenelnbogen the events leading to thedeformation of his ¢ngers, he said that before the ‘‘ghost’’ appeared, the Jewishguests were busy with their own private a¡airs. Some counted their money andsome were busy writing.64 Glikl writes that Chaim wrote her a letter on his wayto the fair in Frankfurt; in this he comforted her and encouraged her after theyhad lost a great deal of money.65 On another occasion, Glikl wrote that anacquaintance, who had traveled with Chaim, sent her a letter after her husband fellill on the way back from the fair in Leipzig. The acquaintance reported to herabout her husband’s condition.66

Another activity sometimes connected to writing, was that of reading booksduring a trip. In the seventeenth and, especially, eighteenth centuries, a greatchange took place in the reading habits of Europeans as they began reading moreand especially as the new genres appeared.67 Books had an important function inthe daily life of manyJews even when they travelled, and some took books in theirrucksacks and baggage when they went on a journey.68 A considerable percentageof these books were holy texts that enabled travellers to observe religiousrituals and rites on the road, or were holy books to study. Travellers also readother, non-religious, texts such as travel guides that provided importantinformation regarding their trips, such as Shabtai Bass’ bookMassechet Derech Eretz

(Amsterdam, 1680). This guide, which was written inYiddish, included a numberof traveller’s prayers and remedies for protection on the road, as well as the rates ofexchange for European currencies, the weight units used in the various sectors ofthe continent, and recommendations for travel routes from one place to another.69

In addition to holy texts and functional literature, travellers also read other textssolely for enjoyment.70

64Yesh Manchilin, Siman 173.65Glikl, p. 305.66 ibid., p. 327.67 James van Horn Melton,The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe, Cambridge 2001, pp. 81-122.68An example of this can be seen in the Jewish religious question (Responsa) sent to R.Yaakov Reischerregarding an agunah (‘‘chained’’ wife). The letter recounted the story of a husband who wasevidently murdered, and his few possessions were found that included books. See Reischer, ShvutYaakov, Siman 117.

69Shabtai Bass, Massechet Derech Eretz, Amsterdam,1680. I would like to thank Shalhevet Dotan Ophirfor informing me of the existence of this work.

70For information about ‘‘reading’’at the beginning of the Modern era there is a great deal of literature.See, for example, Roger Chartier, ‘Reading Matter and ‘‘Popular’’ Reading: From the Renaissanceto the Seventeenth Century’, in Gugliemo Cavallo and Roger Chartier (eds), A History of Reading inthe West, Amherst 1999, pp. 269-283; Robert Darnton, ‘History of Reading’, in Australian Journal ofFrench Studies 23 (1986), pp. 5-30. For information about reading in the Jewish world of theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Zeev Gris, HaSefer KeShochenTarbut 1700-1900 [Hebrew], TelAviv 2002; Iris Porush, Nashim korot; Yitronah shel Sholiut [Hebrew], Tel Aviv 2001; Natalie Naimark-Goldberg, ‘Reading and Modernization: The Experience of JewishWomen in Berlin Around 1800’,in Nashim: AJournal of JewishWomen’s Studies & Gender Issues 15 (2008), pp. 58-87.

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In many cases, books ceased to serve as the means by which the traveller couldobserve the commandments or pass the time, but turned into the goal of the entiretripçor at least one of its major objectives. For educated travellers, Jews andChristians alike, a journey was an excellent opportunity to acquire new and rarebooks to enrich their collections at home. Many book-lovers £ocked to book-sellingcentres, especially Frankfurt am Main which was the European trade centre forbooks, especially during the time of the fair.71 Rabbi Azulai writes that when heresided in Frankfurt for three months, he and his servant acquired so many booksthat they had to pack them into boxes and send them separately to Amsterdam,which they planned to visit later on in their journey.72 Rabbi Azulai had anexceptionally strong a⁄nity and desire for books. At almost every stop and stationof his many journeys, he kept meticulous records in his journal of whatmanuscripts he had found, which ones he copied, and listed the books he bought.73

In addition to researching books in privateJewish libraries, Rabbi Azulai visitedthe largest European libraries during his travels. He paid visits to the libraries inTurin, Venice, Mantua and Florence. But these were, in his words, almostinsigni¢cant in comparison to the huge library in Paris.74 Rabbi Azulai visited theParisian library several times during his travels, he read and copied many booksand manuscripts and wrote that in the manuscript collection ‘‘there are entirerooms ¢lled with writings in all the [world’s] languages, wisdoms and religions.’’Also, the library contained ‘‘about ¢fty thousand collections of manuscripts, andmore.’’ Regarding the ‘‘print bibliotheca [book collection]. . .[it] o¡ers copiousmarvels.They say that Paris’ bibliotheca is the largest and most outstanding in theentire world.’’75 The library in Paris also impressed Moshe Cassuto, the merchantfrom Florence, who wrote that he perused an ancient copy of theTalmud there andold Greek science books that, he was embarrassed to admit, he was not able toread.76

TRAVEL AS A LEISURE ACTIVITY

The travels of Rabbi Azulai and Moshe Cassuto lead us into a discussion of animportant issue: whether we can view travel as a leisure activity in and of itself ? Inour own age of mass travel and tourism this question may sound trivial, but whenwe place it at the beginning of the Modern era, the answer is both problematic andcomplex. In recent research on the history of tourism, it is accepted to view mass

71Maczak, pp. 183-184.72Azulai, p. 25.73Thus, for example, when he resided in Amsterdam he saw the book ‘Zizat Nobel Zebi’ by YaakovSasportas, inWorms he saw manuscripts dealing with practical kabbala, in Lippiano, Italy, he foundthe ‘Sefer Torat Chacham’ by R. Chaim son of Abraham (1585-1655), and on his visit toVenice saw anumber of books including those of R. Moshe Zechut (1620- approx. 1697), ibid., pp. 27, 23, 58, 123.

74 ibid., pp. 40, 84, 91.75 ibid., p. 124.76Barnett, p. 101.

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tourism as amainly modern-day phenomenon.Many scholars claim that before theend of the eighteenth century, travelling for recreational purposes was considereda luxury that was the lot of only the European elite. Most of the travellers lackedthe ¢nancial means that allowed them to dedicate their attention to ‘‘leisure’’ whileon the road, and thus most of the journeys at the beginning of the Modern era hadde¢nite objectives. Only during the course of the eighteenth century did travel forenjoyment’s sake become available to growing sections of the middle-classpopulation. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the phenomenon began totrickle down to other socio-economic levels of the population.77

Most of the Jews who travelled during this period did so to accomplish clearobjectives, as was true for other travellers. Jews took trips for business purposes, tostudy Torah in a di¡erent city, to negotiate marriages and attend weddings and,like other Europeans, did not view travel as a goal in and of itself but only as ameans to an end. Nevertheless, a close reading of the sources shows us that formany travellers, the avowed objective of a journey was only an excuse for travel.One example is Yaakov Emden whose o⁄cial reason for an extended tripthroughout Europe was to take care of the inheritance of his departed father, theChacham Zvi. But the impression we get from Emden’s writings is that he mighthave had other reasons for such a long trip, a trip which turned out to be highlyunpro¢tableçthese reasons being the young Emden’s interminable quarrels withhis ¢rst wife and her parents.78 Furthermore, we learn that travellers tookadvantage of their trips to visit interesting sites on their routes. Thus, for example,Glikl narrates how she went on ‘‘an enjoyable outing’’ in Fu« rth in order to ‘‘see andbe seen’’ with her son and in-laws, after she travelled to the area for the wedding ofone of her children.79 Regarding the Italian merchant Moshe Cassuto, it appearsthat he was more interested in describing the many cities he visited and their localcustoms than writing about his business dealings, selling jewelry and preciousstones, on his trips to Europe and the East. Sometimes Cassuto managed tocombine business and pleasure, as when he was invited by none other thanFrederick IIKing of Prussia to attend an Italian opera in Berlin after Cassuto triedto interest the King in purchasing an expensive ornament.80 But the traveller whomost intensively combined his work with touring the sights was Rabbi Azulai, theemissary (shadar) from the Hebron community in the Land of Israel, who was sentto Europe to raise money.

Rabbi Azulai went on two extended trips in which he extensively combed theEuropean continent for contributions. The ¢rst journey took place in 1753-1757

77See, for example, Shelly Baranowski and Ellen Furlough (eds), Being Elsewhere: Tourism, ConsumerCulture, and Identity in Modern Europe, Chicago 2001, p. 11;JohnTowner, ‘What is Tourism‘s History?’, inTourism Management 16 (1995), pp. 339-343; JohnTowner and Geo¡reyWell, ‘History and Tourism’, inAnnals of Tourism Research 18 (1991), pp. 71-84. I would like to thank Kobi Cohen-Hatav for referringme to JohnTowner’s important articles.

78Emden, p. 97.79Glikl, pp. 457-463.80Barnett, p. 111.

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when he visited the following countries: Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Holland,France, England andTurkey. On his second trip of 1772-1778 he visitedTunis, Italy,France and Holland before settling in Livorno where he lived until his death in1806. Although Rabbi Azulai was forced to cope with extreme, harsh travelconditions and physical su¡ering on his trips, and faced actual danger, he alsoenjoyed touring the famous sites of the continent and the comforts of life thatEurope could o¡er. One example is the description of his visit to London in 1755,where he was taken by one of the distinguished community members for a tour ofthe city:

I was taken to a tower called the Tower of London where I saw lions and an eagle ahundred years old, an Indian cat as large as a dog, another cat that had been cross-bredand other frightening creatures tied up in iron chains.81 I also saw there a long line ofrooms; the walls between the rooms were ¢re barrels. All kinds of weapons of war areorganized beautifully . . .a wondrous sight with war weapons in the thousands and tensof thousands, organized marvellously according to their qualities, their characters,their heights. I also saw exact replicas of all the Kings of England [in the form of ironstatues], riding on horses of iron. It almost seems, when you observe with your veryeyes, that these [statues] incredibly have the spirit of life. And [a collection of] armour-plated garments, organized by types, properly set up and ¢xed, each type by itself. Andsome very large weapons of war . . .They showed us a royal crown with brilliant stonesthroughout, glittering and sparkling with splendour, and a gold cup used for the King’scoronation, [and] other precious utensils with regal quality from precious stones andjewels. I saw all these with my very own eyes, peering through the lattices.’’82

This visit was not unique to Rabbi Azulai; many of the descriptions in histravelogue could have been lifted directly from a modern tourist’s diary. Thus, forexample, he wrote that when visitingVenice he went to St. Mark’s Square (PiazzaSan Marco), where he was awed by the St. Mark Basilica; he climbed to the top ofthe bell tower in the square for a panoramic view of the entire city. Azulai writesthat he spent much leisure time with his Venetian hosts and toured the VenetianArsenal as well as markets and sites with them over a number of days.83 He visitedother ‘‘tourist sites’’ in his many stops, such as Florence, Pisa, Amsterdam andParis; in Paris he visited the nearbyVersailles Garden and was even presented toLouis XVI of France. Rabbi Azulai went on many sightseeing excursions,including to beaches, gardens and museums, during his fund-raising campaign forthe Hebron community. This demonstrates that even when a trip did includeintensive leisure activities, it generally had an additional, overall objective quiteapart from enjoyment.

Another example of the blurred distinction between trips for recreation and tripswith de¢ned goals is the excursion of Azulai to the springs (spa) in Lyon, France.Azulai had felt unwell for an extended period of time, and his physician sent him

81As far back as the time of Henry I (King of England), exotic animals were put on display in theTower of London. Commercial exhibitions were held from the era of the Tudor dynasty. See Borsay,p. 169.

82Azulai, pp. 32-33.83 ibid., pp. 82-83.

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for treatment to the city’s health springs. Azulai’s detailed description of themagni¢cent springs and the pleasures o¡ered by the spa shows us why going tospas was such a popular form of medical treatment during this period:

In the [spa] is a large building with numerous rooms, and in each room is somethingresembling a large cradle . . . they put a sheet on it and the person sits in an inclinedposition, legs spread out. On it are two spigots, one with hot water and one with cold.They ¢ll it and you sit naked up to your neck in the lukewarm water, each personaccording to his nature, and remain there an hour or more.When the water gets cold,there is a spigot in a vessel underneath to pour out the old water and then you pour newwater, hot or cold as you so desire. And there you must ring a bell and a servant comes[with] sheets and clothes and towels, you dry yourself and leave. Everything is donecleanly and swiftly, the water comes from the spring and it is heated in anotherbuilding and it comes to you through the spigot. There are twelve places, each hasrooms and windows. And there is a small window between rooms, the window is closedon both sides. But if two friends are on both sides, they each may open the window totalk from one room to the next while sitting in the water, and everything is done ingood taste.The fee for each visit is 30 solidus [French currency], and six for the servant,and when you go out there is a co¡ee house and you send for co¡ee or lemonade orwhatever you want. Everything is neatly ordered and clean and perfect, and I went inthe morning and at night.84

The rabbi’s visit to the pampering springs in Lyon (which he returned to on thefollowing day) was not unusual for this era.We ¢nd testimony in various sourcesthat quite a few Jews visited the curative springs, especially at the end of theeighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth century.85 This practice ofpilgrimages to spas conformed to trends in the general non-Jewish society.Throughout the eighteenth century and particularly in the last third of thecentury, the various European spas £ourished. They began to attract increasinglylarge numbers of visitors beyond their original clientele of aristocrats, whocontinued to visit such places as well. Unique medicinal, healing qualities wereascribed to bathing in spa waters and even to drinking spring waters; physiciansoften advised their patients to bathe in the springs in order to alleviate medicalproblems. But healing powers were not only ascribed to the waters alone but also tothe change in environment, the relaxed atmosphere, the detachment from thestresses of daily lifeçall these were believed to improve the human condition.86

The leading curative spas thus also functioned as leisure and recreational centres.In addition to medical treatments, spas o¡ered dance halls, theatres and concerts

84Azulai, p. 169.85Evidence that Jews frequented spas is found in Responsa literature. This literature demonstrates thateven important rabbis (especially at the beginning of the nineteenth century) such as EliezerFlekles and the Chatam Sofer visited these kinds of sites on a regular basis. For a few examples outof many, see Menachem Krochmal,TzemachTzedek, Siman 92; Reischer, ShvutYaakov [Hebrew], PartB Siman 7, Part C, Siman 106; Eliezer Flekles, T’shuva M’Ahava [Hebrew], Prague 1809, Part ASiman 26, 57, 68, 208; Moshe Sofer, Chatam Sofer Responsa [Hebrew], Part A Siman 91, Siman 129,Part B, Siman 185. I would like to thank Rivka Sandik for locating these references.

86For treatments in curative springs at the beginning of the Modern era, see Anne Digby, Making aMedical Living: Doctors and Patients in the English Market for Medicine, 1720-1911, Cambridge 1994,pp. 208-223.

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andparty games.We can safely say that contemporaries of the EarlyModern periodviewed a visit to the local spa as a combination of medical treatment andrecreational activity. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, members of theupper-middle class began to imitate the leisure patterns of the aristocracy, andyearly visits to spas for extended periods of time became more and more prevalent.As Natalie Naimark-Goldberg notes, the ability to justify excursions to spas as tripsfor medicinal-health purposes provided an excuse for spending money and time inan activity of leisure and personal consumption.87 This was the type of activitythat, as explained above, had not been accepted previously by most strata of thepopulation. Thus, it appears that the ‘‘medicinal’’ spa phenomenon was animportant link in the development of modern-day tourism.88

Another phenomenon that is considered by historians to be an importantmilestone in the development of mass tourism is that of the aforementioned GrandTour.89 This phenomenon was especially prevalent in the period 1650-1830; youthsbelonging to aristocratic or moneyed upper-crust families of Western Europe weretypically sent on a long expedition throughout the continent. Though the GrandTour was especially popular in Great Britain, it also took root in other regions,such as Germany, and was viewed as an important component in the educationalprocess of the young upper-class man prior to commencing on his adult life.The trip usually extended from two to ¢ve years, and the sites visited were more orless standard throughout this period. The typical route included a visit to Paris,then southward through the Alps towards Italy; the apex of the trip was thesojourn in Italy. Many visited Italy’s northern cities and especially Venice, andcontinued from there to Florence, Rome and Naples. The route back (for Britishtravellers) included transit through the Rhine areas towards the Netherlandsand a visit toAmsterdam.90

In the course of the trip, which involved visits to the famous sites of the continent,the young men and youths (sometimes accompanied by teachers) studied thedi¡erent countries’ customs, local architecture and history, as well as foreignlanguages. Special guidebooks for those embarking on these tours became awidespread literary genre; some of the guides included, as mentioned earlier,instructions for composing a travel diary appropriate for a young, educatedgentleman. During the beginning of the Modern era, changes took place in thenature of the Grand Tour in terms of the socio-economic makeup of its

87Natalie Naimark-Goldberg, ‘Health, Leisure and Sociability at the turn of the Nineteenth Century:JewishWomen in German Spas’, in LBI Year Book, vol. 55 (2010), p. 4. For information about socialactivity and mainly socializing of women at spa sites during this era, see Amanda E. Herbert,‘Gender and the Spa: Place, Sociability and Self at British Health Spas 1640-1714’, inJournal of SocialHistory 43 (2009), pp. 361-383.

88Towner,‘What isTourism‘s History?’, pp. 339-340.89There is an extensive literature on the ‘‘Grand Tour’’ phenomenon. For a few examples, see JohnTowner, ‘The Grand Tour: A Key Phase in the History of Tourism’, in Annals of Tourism Research 12(1985), pp. 297-333; Chloe Chard and Helen Langdon (eds),Transports:Travel, Pleasure, and ImaginativeGeography 1600-1830, New Haven 1996; Bruce Redford, Venice and the Grand Tour, New Haven 1996;LynneWithey, GrandTours and Cook’sTours: A History of LeisureTravel, 1750 to 1915, NewYork 1997.

90Towner,‘The GrandTour’, pp. 300-301.

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participants. As we advance chronologically, and especially towards the second halfof the eighteenth century, the GrandTour began to include members of the uppermiddle class, and not only youths from European society elites.The average age ofthe young travellers rose, and sometimes women and families joined the journey.The change in the socio-economic level of the participants also led to a change inthe purported objectives of the tour; instead of the tour being an educationalexperience, it came to be viewed as a leisure or recreational activity. 91

It is di⁄cult to assess the scope of the GrandTour phenomenon among theJewishpopulation at the beginning of the Modern era. Since the Jewish masses did notbelong to the elite of European society, we can assume that not manyJewish youthstook part in Grand Tours. Thus it is not surprising that the author of the onlyJewish treatise written about a GrandTour (to the best of my knowledge) belongedto a member of the circle of ‘‘Court Jews.’’ In 1719, seventeen-year-old AbrahamLevie (mentioned above) left his home in the village of Horn in southern Lemgofor a ¢ve-year expedition throughout Europe. On his journey Levie travelled tovarious cities in Germany such as Frankfurt,Worms, Mainz and Nuremberg andcontinued to Bohemia, Prague and Moravia,Vienna and Italy. In Italy he visitedvarious cities such as Venice, Padua (where he learned Italian), Florence, andRome where he remained for two and a half years. He continued his travels andvisited southern Italy and Naples, then Pisa and Livorno. Before returning toLemgo in1723, he also visited Amsterdam. 92

As he wrote in his travelogue, Levie tried to learn about the characteristics andhistory of the di¡erent places he visited and also about the local Jewishcommunities. Furthermore he visited the leading ‘‘tourist’’ sites. In Venice, forexample, Levie visited St. Mark’s Square and theVenetian Arsenal (like Azulai); inPisa he observed the Leaning Tower; in Rome, the Coliseum; in the Vatican, St.Peter’s Square, as well as other sites too numerous to list. Levie’s description ofVienna is typical of his style. Here he described the city’s towers; he visited variousmarket places and described them. He visited gardens and parks, the municipalzoo and the central cathedral. He visited the Emperor’s palace together with othertourists and described it in detail, including the Emperor’s stables with its famousSpanish horses. Levie told his readers about the founding of the city andtransmitted important political news such as the visit of theTurkish ambassador tothe city. He also described the state of the Jews inVienna, and claimed that theywere the richest of all of Europe’s Jews. Levie described the entertainments o¡eredby the city to its visitors, such as theatres playing Italian comedies which attractedlarge audiences, an opera house and also the prostitutes. While it is hard todetermine if Levie actually visited the institutions he describes (due to hisgeneralized wording), his description of the spas along the Danube river shows thathe probably visited those spots personally. He wrote that visitors to the spas satnaked in the water, and the customers could choose between either a man or

91 ibid., pp. 306-313; Berger, pp.12-13.92Berger, pp. 37-41.

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woman to treat them, including being bathed from head to foot. Levie describedhow one could sit in the spa for two hours while smoking tobacco, and that thetreat only cost seventeen Kreutzers.93

As mentioned earlier, the historiography of tourism views trips to spas and theGrand Tour as important links in the evolution of modern tourism. Accordingto this approach, the spa and Grand Tour phenomenon typi¢ed Europe’s rich,until it slowly, gradually ¢ltered down the social ladder to other elements ofthe population. These other elements began to view a trip or outing as a sourceof enjoyment and entertainment, without a ‘‘serious’’ goal, as a legitimate andaccepted activity. As seen above, these processes permeated Jewish society as well.An important contribution to our discussion regarding whether or not the tripitself could be considered a leisure activity is a¡orded by John Towner, whocriticizes the viewpoint in which recreational tourism is considered a ‘‘prestigious’’phenomenon which moved down the social ladder and claims that this historicalviewpoint is an adoption of the Western tourism model. Towner describes it as acolonialist model that views tourism as the result of geographical di¡usion fromtheWest to the rest of the world and, more important for our discussion, ignoreslocal, less highbrow tourism models that existed in other cultures and in a widercross-section of the European population as well. These other forms of localtourism included travel to a nearby city or village for short visits, or moving inwith relatives for the summer. Though these were less costly and less time-consuming than prestigious tourism, often they played just as important a role inthe history of the participants.94

Aswehave seen, recreational tourismwas uncommon inJewish societyduring theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Even when the trips involved leisureactivities, they generally had a speci¢c objective that lent an ‘‘alibi’’ to the traveller.It seems that ‘‘wasting’’ so many resources for enjoyment purposes was not yetperceived as legitimate. But what about the ordinary and routine forms of tourismthat Towner mentions? It seems that here the picture di¡ers and many Jews didengage in short outings outside the cities and to nearby villages for rest andrecreation; alternatively, they visited friends and relatives. Thus, for example,Glikl writes about a trip the family took to Hildesheim to visit her husbandChaim’s parents, where they resided for three weeks.95 Another example isprovided by the merchant Asher ha-Levi who wrote about how he walked from hisnative village of Alesheim to nearby Ellingen in order to visit ‘‘my brother andclose friend, Shmuel son of Eliya may he rest in peace.’’ ha-Levi wrote that ‘‘Iwalked to him in the middle of the night from Alesheim and we had a wonderfultime together.’’96 ha-Levi also described a recreational trip he took during theintermediate days (Chol Hamoed) of Passover in1630,‘‘I rode with my brother-in-lawMoshe the bridegroom to the city of Tenbach (‘to see and be seen’ and entertain

93Berger, pp. 81-75.94Towner,‘What isTourism‘s History?’, pp. 339-343.95Glikl, pp. 261-263.96Asher ha-Levi, p. 7.

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ourselves) with his ¢ance¤ e, Carline. We enjoyed ourselves for eight days andreturned to our home, and on Sunday, 25 Nisan, I was in Benhold and touredaround the place and saw all kinds of wonders.’’97

Another everyday form of ‘‘local tourism’’ that did not involve leaving thecon¢nes of one’s city was walking or strolling about on the city streets without anyde¢ned objective other than enjoyment from the walk itself. This was a rathercommon practice in theJewish public, as is evident from a large number of sources.One example is found in a Responsa of Rabbi Shmuel ben David Moshe (1625-1681)Who was asked to render a religious judgment for the following question: Whenhusbands and wives go for a walk together while the wives are nidot (rituallyimpure), are they allowed to sit on the beams that are scattered throughout thestreets.98 In another example, Rabbi Emden censured the custom of walking onthe Sabbath to the site of the stock exchange in order to check out the local newsand to enjoy the outing.99 Shlomo Maimon described how he strolled along thestreets of Berlin with Moses Mendelssohn, while discussing the necessity ofpoetry.100 Maimon also described how he associated with ‘‘shady characters’’ wholed him to‘‘merry parties,’’drinking-houses, and took him on outings.101

The connection between walking around aimlessly and between pro£igacy andsin that Maimon alludes to appears in additional sources. One example is a book ofmorals (mussar) called Igeret Shlomo which includes the confessions of a dissoluteyouth who repented his sins. His sins included frequenting bars, playing games ofchance, listening to words of heresy, and also ‘‘hanging around all night until dawnwith a group of travellers.’’102 The rabbis and preachers of the generationdisapproved of the growing trend of their day: the recreational outings andexcursions, and there are quite a few books of morals from that period thatcensured ‘‘pointless wandering around.’’103 Thus, for example, Juspa HanNoyrlingne, in his bookYosef Ometz, criticized the custom of the Jews of Frankfurtwho went on outings along the length of the river, while conversing with all kindsof vagrants they encountered.104 Noyrlingne was concerned (like the otherchastisers) that this custom would lead to transgression of religious laws (halacha).He quoted Maimonides when proposing to appoint ‘‘policemen’’ to conduct patrolsin the parks, orchards and rivers to ensure that ‘‘men and women should not beallowed to gather together to eat, leading them to commit transgressions.’’105

The road was a space in which social, religious, and gender-related barriers wereless clear and unequivocal. Due to the conditions and circumstances of travel,norms of behaviour di¡ered from what was accepted and normative in the Jewish

97 ibid., p. 28.98Shmuel ben David Moshe, Nachalat Shiva, Amsterdam 1667, Siman 7.99Emden, She’eilatYa’avetz, Part A, Siman 117.100Maimon, p.192.101 ibid., p. 194.102 In Feiner,The Origins of Secularization, p. 34.103For a few examples, see Shochat, pp. 36-37, 41.104 Juspa Han Noyrlingne, SeferYosef Ometz, Frankfurt 1928, pp. 71, 141.105 ibid., p. 179; MishnehTorah, zemanim, halachoth yom tov, 6, 21.

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community. AJewish traveller might ¢nd himself sleeping on a pile of hay next to aGentile, or sitting for extended periods of time in a coach, cheek by jowl with ayoung lass or lad. While these were unacceptable behaviours within the Jewishcommunity, they were more accepted in the open space of the travel experience.Furthermore, the Jewish traveller was freer of the shackles of social control andenjoyed a measure of anonymity when on the road. Thus, for those Jews whowanted to, they were more easily able to engage in behaviours that were forbiddenor controversial ‘‘back home.’’ Today, the prevailing research demonstrates clearlythat Jews did not conduct their lives in total isolation from their Christiansurroundings.106 This viewpoint receives corroboration from evidence of leisureactivities and travel conducted by Jews. It is hard to talk about a separate Jewishlife ‘‘within the walls of the ghetto’’ when we read about Glikl’s Jewish servant‘‘Gunshot’’ Jacob and Paterson the Christian post-o⁄ce clerk, drinking themselvesinto a drunken stupor together in the local tavern.

The discussion regarding whether Jews at the beginning of the Modern eraembarked on travel for purposes of recreation and leisure teaches us an importantlesson about the consolidation of the concept of leisure in European society ingeneral, and speci¢cally in Jewish society.We have seen that even when a journeyinvolved recreational activities such as visits to tourist sites, the journey still had aclear, de¢ned and ‘‘serious’’ goal. Until the conclusion of the eighteenth century,most socio-economic segments of the population did not consider it legitimate toallot resources for the sole goal of recreation and enjoyment, particularly withregards to travel. However, the picture is di¡erent regarding short expeditions orjaunty walks and tours that did not involve high ¢nancial expenditure, and manyJews often strolled together on the streets of the city or in rural areas. However,even these latter activities were not considered fully legitimate in Jewish society.The rabbis and moralizers of the generation drew parallels between recreationaloutings for personal grati¢cation, and the slippery slope of moral decline andtransgressions of the Torah’s commandments. However this was an unsuccessfulrear guard action; there is no doubt that times had changed. Throughout theperiod under discussion, we are witness to an essential change in the legitimacyaccorded to journeys for recreational purposes. These changes were brought tofruition in a later period, beyond the chronological boundaries of this essay.

106For this ‘‘new’’ approach regarding Jewish-Gentile relations in Early Modern Europe, see forexample David Ruderman, JewishThought and Scienti¢c Discovery in Early Modern Europe, New Haven1995, pp. 60-66; Liberles, pp. 86-90.

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Documents

Away from Home: Travelling and Leisure Activities among German Jews in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries