How to Become a Rabbinic Authority of all Jews? The Constantinopolitan Elijah Mizraḥi (c. 1450–1526) and Sephardic Immigration

• Applicant: Dr. Susanne Härtel
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 516660398

The objective of this project is a micro-historical study, dedicated to the question whether and how to become a rabbinic authority of all Jews in a specific historical context. This question is particularly relevant with regard to the period around 1500. With the expulsions of the Jews, which peaked with the expulsions from the Iberian Peninsula in the years 1492–1498, previous Jewish settlement structures were forcibly ruptured and dismantled. Thousands of refugees sought shelter in regions where, as in the Ottoman Empire, they encountered different native Jewish populations and their local authorities. Against this background, the project seeks to analyze the strategic activity of the Constantinopolitan Elijah Mizraḥi (c. 1450-1526) in five case studies, shedding new light on the intra-Jewish negotiation processes between the authorities of the native Romaniot and immigrant Sephardi Jews. As if in a compact instructive snapshot, it is here that the partially diverging traditions and intentions of the decisive actors in Judaism at the turn of the 16th century crystallize. Central to its cultural and social-historical orientation, the project focuses on the approximately 110 surviving legal opinions (responsa) of Mizraḥi. Their exemplary analysis aims, on the one hand, to shed new light on the concrete social networks and contexts of Mizraḥi’s actions. This is linked, on the other hand, to a sociological reading of the responsa. In contrast to a text-immanent understanding of the writings, it is assumed that extra-halakhic considerations significantly influenced the documented decisions. Concentrating on Mizraḥi as a historical actor and legal scholar who sought to make his decisions specific to relevant contexts will enable the researcher to reconstruct his strategies. Through this lens it will be feasible to elicit the possibilities and limits of his political agenda in the light of the heterogeneous Jewish population of his time. In this manner, the project essentially contributes to a better understanding of the functioning of rabbinic authority. It provides new insights into the ways, circumstances and factors underlying how different Jewish groups (inter)acted locally at the turn of the modern era, eventually constituting themselves in new forms. The project questions the scholarly assumption of a supposedly smooth ‘Sephardization’ of the local Jewish population in the Ottoman Empire under the influence of the Iberian immigrants. The research aims to achieve a fundamentally new understanding of intra-Jewish and intra-religious relations and dynamics. The findings of the project will be published in a monograph in English. In addition, partial results will be examined in lectures, conference presentations and discussed in a planned workshop to be organized by the applicant.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants