Anger and Informing in Jewish Law in Thirteenth Century Ashkenaz

• In Event: Legalizing Emotions Across Jewish History

Abstract

During the second half of the thirteenth century a small legal revolution took place in German speaking lands. Jewish jurists in a number of communities began to exempt informers from the standard penalties for their crime in cases where they were the victims of violence. Informing on their attackers to non-Jewish courts was deemed justifiable because they were acting in “the time of anger.” As R. Meir b. Barukh of Rothenberg pointed out in a responsum, this exemption has no precedent in Jewish law. This paper traces the emergence of this anger exemption and its development through the latter half of the thirteenth century, placing it in the appropriate social/political context. The exemption is primarily attested in a series of responsa of R. Meir b. Barukh and his student R. Hayyim b. Isaac Or Zaruah, as well as in a group of anonymous responsa. This paper follows the development of the exemption from a local ordinance, backed by the communal authority of the courts that applied it, to its adoption by R. Hayyim Or Zaruah as a Talmudically justified, and consequently generally applicable, rule of Jewish law. It argues that the anger exemption emerged as a tool to domesticate the Jewish courts' lack of power to adjudicate cases of violent crime. As the courts had little power to stop their constituents from turning to non-Jewish courts for redress, they opted to tacitly permit the use of these courts after the fact by providing this specific exemption for cases in which the informer was a victim of violence. In addition, this paper will focus on the role that anger plays as a justification for what the sources see as the extreme act of informing to non-Jewish courts.

Author

• Jesse Abelman, Yeshiva University