Reviewed by:

• After the Black Death: Plague and Commemoration among Iberian Jews by Susan L. Einbinder
• François Soyer

The great pandemic that swept across Europe in the fourteenth century and killed millions, earning itself the grim name of ‘the Black Death’, has been the object of many studies in recent decades. Those historians who have examined the effects of the plague on the Jewish communities scattered across Western Europe have tended to focus on the antisemitic accusation that Jews caused the plague by poisoning wells, and the massacres and trials that it provoked. The actual impact of the epidemic on Jewish communities has been neglected, and it is this significant oversight that Susan Einbinder endeavours to address in this book by using a variety of sources of information: documentary, literary, medical, and archaeological.

The first chapter (pp. 14–31) provides historical context that will be useful to readers unfamiliar with the history of medieval Jews in the fourteenth century prior to the outbreak of the plague in 1348, especially attacks on Jews in the 1320s. The [End Page 205] following four chapters all focus on a different type of primary evidence and seek to highlight what it can reveal about the impact of the plague on various Iberian Jewish communities. The second chapter (pp. 32–56) analyses the commemorative liturgical lament (qinah) of Emanuel ben Joseph, comparing it with other extant laments and noting the absence of calls for revenge and its emphasis on faith and penitence. Moving on, the third chapter (pp. 57–87) focuses on writings of a very different nature: a medical tractate on the plague authored around 1349 by Abraham Caslari. Beyond its medical nature, Einbinder argues that aspects of the work offer important evidence on religious and social reactions to the epidemic. Contrasting the work with similar Christian ones, Einbinder notes the absence of expressions of communal trauma in the work. The fourth chapter (pp. 88–116), appropriately entitled ‘Stone of Memory’, examines surviving tombstone epitaphs related to plague mortality in Toledo (Castile, central Spain). It notes the absence of evidence in these texts of anti-Jewish violence in Toledo itself and argues that ‘the range of imagery and narrative formats’ in them ‘maintain an individuality and elegance even as they grapple with multiple deaths among families and friends’. Once again, we are left not so much with a sense of a collective trauma but ‘a range of religious and cultural outlooks’. Finally, the fifth chapter (pp. 117–47) analyses the grisly evidence of an attack on the Jewish community of the town of Cervera (Catalonia) in 1348 found in a mass grave and self-perception in the ‘survivors’ literature’ that was produced in the aftermath of the outbreak of anti-Jewish violence. The book ends not with a conclusion but with a useful appendix, containing translations from Hebrew into English of the epitaphs carved in the tombstones of Jewish plague victims in Toledo.

In this volume, Einbinder has sought to argue that the great plague of the late 1340s was not as cataclysmic for the cohesion of Iberian Jewish communities as it might have been thought. Anti-Jewish violence was not a general phenomenon (it occurred in Aragon but not in Castile) and it did not cause a ‘crisis of faith’ amongst Iberian Jews. The variety of sources studied constitutes not only one of the major strengths of this book but also its principal weakness, since the quantity of evidence remains limited and this correspondingly limits the scope of Einbinder’s conclusions. The absence of a concluding chapter underscores the fact that this volume reads more like a collection of independent articles than an integrated work or monograph. Overall, the argument seems to remain tentative and more research will be needed to buttress it. Nevertheless, this book offers a valuable scholarly contribution to our existing knowledge of the impact of the Black Death on Jewish communities in the Iberian Peninsula. As the coronavirus pandemic...

审核人：

• 黑死病之后：苏珊·爱因宾德（Susan L. Einbinder）在伊比利亚犹太人中遭受瘟疫和纪念
• 弗朗索瓦·索耶（FrançoisSoyer）

十四世纪，席卷欧洲的大流行致死了数百万人，并因此得了“黑死病”之称，这是近几十年来许多研究的对象。那些研究过鼠疫对散布在西欧的犹太人社区的影响的历史学家倾向于把重点放在反犹太主义指责，即犹太人是由于井中毒造成了鼠疫，并引发了屠杀和审判。该流行病对犹太社区的实际影响已被忽略，正是苏珊·爱因宾德（Susan Einbinder）试图通过使用多种信息来源（文献，文学，医学和考古学）在本书中解决的这一重大疏忽。

第一章（第14-31页）提供了历史背景，对不熟悉1348年瘟疫爆发前的14世纪中世纪犹太人历史的读者特别有用，尤其是对1320年代对犹太人的袭击。在[尾页205]下面就不同类型的主要证据四章全部精力，寻求以突出它可以揭示瘟疫的各种伊比利亚犹太社区的影响。第二章（第32-56页）分析了纪念礼仪哀悼（qinah）的约瑟夫·伊曼纽尔·本·约瑟夫（Emanuel ben Joseph），将其与其他现存的哀叹相比较，并指出没有复仇的呼吁，也没有强调复仇和信仰。接下来的第三章（第57-87页）着眼于性质截然不同的著作：关于亚伯拉罕·卡斯拉里（Abraham Caslari）在1349年左右撰写的关于瘟疫的医学文摘。Einbinder认为，除了其医学性质之外，这项工作的各个方面还提供了有关对该流行病的宗教和社会反应的重要证据。与类似的基督教徒的作品相比，爱因宾德注意到作品中没有表达公共创伤的表情。第四章（第88–116页），题为“记忆石”，考察了与托莱多（西班牙中部卡斯蒂利亚）鼠疫死亡率有关的尚存墓碑墓志铭。它注意到在这些文本中没有证据表明托莱多本身存在反犹太暴力行为，并指出其中的“意象和叙事形式的范围”“在与家人和朋友之间的多处死亡作斗争的同时，仍保持着个性和优雅”。再一次，我们只剩下一种集体创伤的感觉，而是“一系列宗教和文化观”。最后，第五章（第117-47页）分析了1348年对切尔韦拉镇（加泰罗尼亚）犹太社区的袭击的严酷证据，该发现在“幸存者”文学作品中的万人冢和自我感知中发现，是在反犹太暴力爆发后产生的。这本书的结尾不是结论，而是有用的附录，

在这本书中，爱因宾德试图争辩说，1340年代后期的大瘟疫并没有像人们想象的那样对伊比利亚犹太社区的凝聚力产生灾难性的影响。反犹太暴力不是普遍现象（它发生在阿拉贡，但没有发生在卡斯蒂利亚），并且没有引起伊比利亚犹太人之间的“信仰危机”。研究的各种资料不仅构成本书的主要优点之一，而且是其主要缺点，因为证据数量仍然有限，因此相应地限制了爱因宾德结论的范围。没有总结性的章节强调了这样一个事实，即这本书读起来更像是一本独立的文章，而不是一本完整的著作或专着。总体而言，该论点似乎仍是试探性的，需要更多的研究来支持它。尽管如此，这本书为我们对黑死病对伊比利亚半岛犹太社区影响的现有知识提供了宝贵的学术贡献。由于冠状病毒大流行...