Download PDF | Jews And Other Minorities In Byzantium Bar Ilan University Press ( 1995)
342 Pages
MEMOIR OF ANDREW SHARF
To have been born in Imperial Russia in 1915 could hardly be regarded as a recipe for a happy or successful life. For the approximately 100,000 Jewish infants born in Russia in that year, life itself was at issue, not happiness or success. How many of them were still alive by 1920? By 1941? By 1945?
An ex-colleague of ours, well known to Andrew, recently published some fascinating chapters of autobiography entitled Memoirs of a Fortunate Jew. It may perhaps comfort us a little on this sad occasion that the same title would have been no less appropriate for a work which Andrew himself could have written...
The city of Rostov-on-Don, where Andrew was born, belongs essentially — if remotely — to our Mediterranean world, the Biblical Great Sea, an area which was to become the principal field of his historical research. Rostov abuts on the ancient boundaries of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires. It was home to thousands of Armenians. It cannot be mere coincidence that, in his later years, Andrew published the results of basic researches on the history of the Armenians and the singular form of Christianity practised by them.
As for the Jews of Rostov, they were distanced both legally and spiritually from the Russo-Jewish heartland. The city had been excluded from the Jewish Pale of Settlement. The Russification of the Rostov Jews proceeded apace, which did not prevent a progrom in 1883. Some five years later an order was issued for the expulsion of the Jews. After much petitioning, supported even by the Don Cossacks and, doubtless, judicious bribery in appropriate places, the Jews were permitted to remain, but no more of them were to be allowed to settle in Rostov.-
It is not surprising that Judaism in Rostov was at a low ebb, but probably no lower than in Liverpool, its English counterpart, at a later stage in Andrew’s career.
Even in: the Pale of Settlement it was taken for granted that Jewish professional men, for the most part physicians and lawyers, would disburden themselves of the weight of Jewish tradition and refuse to converse in the despised “Jargon” (Yiddish). Whether this can be called “assimilation” or not is open to question. In Russia, as in medieval Europe, the sole road to true assimilation was baptism, possibly effective in the second or third generation.
I should guess that in early twentieth-century Rostov, unlike Minsk or Pinsk, there must have been a fair number of Jews who were utterly ignorant of the “Jargon”. Andrew’s father was a lawyer, and a Leftist to boot. So far as I can gather, he did not pass on to his children much idea of Judaism, if he had any at all himself. It.is written: The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord.” Andrew’s lamp was never totally extinguished. After many years, and with much effort, he succeeded in recovering the Jewish heritage of which he had almost been robbed, also in rewarding his parents with Kaddish on the anniversaries of their deaths. His mother spent her last years with Eva and Andrew, and is buried in Holon. But Andrew firmly drew the line at “Jargon”, which for him included such vestiges of Aramaic which had not been weeded out of modern Hebrew.
Rostov changed hands several times after the 1917 Revolution, from the Germans to the Whites, from the Whites to the Reds. But Andrew’s father was definitely not the right shade of red. In fact, it was Andrew who saved the family from an unpleasant fate. He suffered from a serious eye infection, and his parents succeeded in obtaining permission to leave for the West to seek specialist treatment.
Eventually they reached London (other members of the family remained in Paris). Unfortunately, Andrew’s father never succeeded in establishing himself in London. For the most part they lived in the East End among the proletariat. — It was there that Andrew made a number of good and loyal friends, friends for a lifetime. In spite of all difficulties, he received secondary education at one of the best schools in London, the City of London School. He showed great ability in Classics, which ultimately gave him the key to the Byzantine treasure-house. But university studies had to be postponed indefinitely. Instead, he was thrown onto the employment market during the Great Slump and made an exiguous living from odd jobs and the dole.
Throughout his life he was clearly distinguishable as homo politicus. Even in his later years, when all available effort was concentrated on historical research, his approach to life was basically political. “Incorrect” political views aroused his ire. He believed that the human condition could be improved by political means. This belief is not exclusively Marxist — for instance, the anti-Marxist philosopher K.R. Popper held to it. Popper’s political philosophy had a considerable influence on Andrew’s thinking in the 50s. But twenty years earlier, a period of economic depression which saw the meteoric rise of dictatorships and the paralysis and betrayal of democracy, Popper was neither available nor necessary.
In those days Andrew belonged to the small MarxistTrotskyist wing of the English Left, which affected his future development in three ways: 1. His abiding interest in political theory and philosophy. For years he lectured at Bar-Ilan on the history of Political Theory to a packed lecture-hall, and I do not doubt that some of his auditors are present this evening. He contributed an important article on the subject to the Kurzweil memorial volume which appeared in 1975, following another article which had appeared in the 1969 Bar-Ilan Annual on “History and the Scientific Method”.
2. He acquired great expertise in the art of debating. The “Comrades” were prone to argue about anything or nothing at great length, much as the medieval scholastics in their day sharpened their command of dialectic and rhetoric. Needless to say, the “Comrades” enjoyed more freedom of expression than was allowed by the Leninist-Stalinist establishment, at the price of uncontrollable fission. When Andrew achieved membership and chairmanship of committees of the Senate at Bar-Ilan, it became abundantly clear that he was the only one to have any idea of parliamentary procedure. In the Senate itself he was universally accepted as the final procedural authority.
The law was firmly laid down on “points of order”, “points of information” and “the previous question”, none of which had ever been heard of at Bar-Ilan, and possibly nowhere else in Israel! When he was head of our Department, it was a pleasure to see him run the meetings, dispose of the agenda in due order and brush aside the more obstreperous speechifiers. He also knew exactly when to raise his voice, which had considerable power, to beat down the opposition when his case was perhaps not the strongest. I can reveal two pieces of advice he gave me on committee work: never boycott meetings for any reason and never resign.
3. Seeing that nearly all the “Comrades” were Jews, he was paradoxically maintaining his Jewish identity. I often think of this as his Dénmeh period. In later years I met one or two of them who were recalled to some form or other of Judaism. For instance, there was Jack Warman, who made a substantial contribution towards buying books for our Seminar Library which we were trying to build up. He also gave money for an Essay Prize for the Department, which was awarded to Chava Eshkoli.
On the outbreak of war in 1939 Andrew volunteered for the British Army, not waiting for the call-up, from which in any case he would have been _ exempted on account of his eye. He no longer saw the war as a capitalist ploy, a view which was fashionable in the political circles in which he moved, but rather as a moral necessity. The forces of Satan, i.e., Hitler, the most dangerous enemy the Jewish nation ever had in all its history, had to be vanquished. During his military service he saw many parts of the world, in particular India, which left an abiding impression upon him. He learned Hindustani, up to what point I am not competent to pronounce, and became something of an authority on Indian history. A useful by-product was the seminar he occasionally held at Bar-Ilan on the rise of Indian nationalism.
After the War, the demobilized forces were offered numerous concessions in the field of higher education. And so, comparatively late in life, at the age of 30+ he began a new career which was to lead him to distinguished scholarship and university administration, to Zionism and a worthwhile contribution to the new State of Israel. He completed his doctorate in Byzantine history under the supervision of that outstanding and supremely terrifying scholar Joan Hussey, of whom he always spoke with respect and not a little awe. It is not long since she celebrated her eightieth birthday, and of course Andrew contributed an appropriate article to her Festschrift. Other significant changes in his life and life-style were marked by his marriage to Eva in 1951 and his teaching appointment at Liverpool University in 1952.
Apart from Professor Hussey | could mention many other historians who may have influenced Andrew’s thought and development, but restrict myself to those he referred to most frequently. During his Liverpool period he was fortunate to serve under Geoffrey Barraclough, who was in charge of medieval studies. Barraclough was a great and entertaining scholar. He was full of ideas, not all of which have stood the test of time, and his interests transcended the most generous bounds which could be allotted to the Middle Ages.
His modern counterpart, Professor Thomson, apparently resented these incursions and much else. As we say in Israel, there was no “chemistry” between them; they had not been on speaking terms for years. If the History Department at Liverpool was able to function at all, the credit must be given to Hans Liebeschiitz, a real Lamed Vovnik, even if he was a pillar of the Reform Synagogue, who took upon himself the thankless task of mediator and gobetween. A humanist himself, Liebeschiitz was attracted to John of Salisbury, the greatest of the medieval humanists, on whom he was a leading authority. Andrew often spoke of the Liebeschiitzes (pere and fils) with warm affection.
I think Andrew’s experiences in the History Department at Liverpool enabled him to play a useful part during the “Great Schism” at Bar-Ilan in 1962, when two rival Senates claimed the undivided allegiance of the academic staff. When that particular storm blew itself out, Andrew found himself, in effect if not in title, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities.
Why did Andrew decide to emigrate to Israel? At that time I had friends who found life in England boring or dull and so departed for Australia. In his Liverpool days Andrew’s interest in Israel] developed and Eva had relatives in Israel who were among the founding fathers of Kfar Shmaryahu. At any rate, Andrew undertook fund-raising work on behalf of the English Friends of the Haifa Technion.
This experience stood him in good stead in 1963, when he was called upon to do similar work for Bar-Ilan in England. Hitherto the only extant Friends of Bar-Ilan were to be found in Detroit. His efforts to attract a substantial donor bore fruit, and, at least in part, the building of the Bar-Ilan Central Library may be attributed to him. Andrew and Eva arrived in Israel in 1958 without any firm prospects. It is true that he came equipped with a knowledge of Hebrew grammar which would not have disgraced a Gesenius. In time he became familiar with modern Hebrew literature — one of his favourite authors was Hazaz — but Hebrew always _remained for him a foreign language. Contrariwise, his attachment to his - Russian mamme loshen grew stronger.
The Sharfs settled in Jerusalem, where they attended a residential Ulpan, afterwards living in Kiryat Yovel. Bar-Ilan was a new university, very much a parvenu on the Israeli academic scene: it may be doubted whether Andrew heard much good of it in Jerusalem. All the same, I suppose faute de mieux, he submitted his name to Bar-Ilan.
There were two other candidates for the History Department, but Andrew’s qualifications were infinitely superior, with publications to his credit in the more prestigious journals. Strangely enough, one of his warmest supporters was Baruch Unterman, Secretary of the University (a fellow-Liverpudlian or a Jandsman, as he described himself), who normally took no interest in the academic side of the University, or in any other side if truth be told. At that time Unterman’s father was the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Tel-Aviv, having previously served in Liverpool, while his brother Maurice was in charge of the moribund Bar-Ilan office in Mayfair (!), London.
At first Andrew held a part-time job — Bar-Ilan was still- very small with about 300 students -— but after a couple of years he was appointed toa full-time post, with the rank of Senior Lecturer. Not long afterwards he was promoted to Associate Professor, and in 1971 achieved the rank of Professor. As the leading Byzantinist in Israel his services were requested by other academic institutions, and for a time he taught at Haifa University by request of Professor Grabois, head of the History Department. Strangely enough, when Agnon’s novel Shira was published in book form in 1971, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem was presented therein as a veritable hotbed of Byzantine studies. In practice, the subject was almost completely neglected there: the leading Byzantinist being found at Bar-Ilan!
Returning to the academic year 1958-59, we find Andrew trying to supplement his exiguous part-time income. He succeeded in obtaining a research post at Yad Washem (the English transliteration of the name of this Institution afforded him much amusement), where he met Nathaniel Katzburg, historian of Hungarian Jewry and an esteemed colleague at Bar-Ilan.
In London my parents had a neighbour called Joshua Podro (formerly Podrushnik) living a few doors away, who had one of the finest private libraries of Judaica in England. I often wonder what happened to it. Podro was a wide-ranging amateur scholar, completely undisciplined. He advised Robert Graves when the latter was preparing his historical novel King Jesus, and collaborated with Graves in their joint publication The Nazarene Gospel Restored.
He seemed to be arich man and probably was a very rich man. Back in the ‘20s or the early ‘30s he invented the idea of a press-cutting agency, and his was the leading firm in London which supplied public figures, who subscribed in increasing numbers, with newspaper cuttings in which their names appeared. But at the same time, on his own account, he extracted every reference to Jews in the British Press. Eventually he sent this mass of material to Yad Washem. Andrew took it upon himself to bring order to this tohu-bohu, and it soon became obvious to him that a book was here in the making. The press-cuttings indeed yielded a very good book (together with a useful offspring of articles, lectures, etc.) entitled The British Press and the Jews under Nazi Rule (Oxford University Press, 1964). This important work has been frequently cited down to the present.
Andrew’s other books, although devoted to his field of specialization, are distinguished by a wholesome broad-mindedness and lack of pedantry. One doesn’t need to be a Byzantinist to enjoy them. In short, they are much easier for us to read than they were for him to write. In many historical works the
reverse is true. His classic work of synthesis, which Samuel Krauss and Joshua ~ Starr never succeeded in accomplishing, is Byzantine Jewry from Justinian to the Fourth Crusade. This volume won universal acclaim. A more specialized monograph is his book on the medieval Jewish physician Shabbetai Donnolo, which brought Andrew to the western borders of Byzantium and illustrates his capacity to produce original work in the less familiar fields of medieval mathematics, astronomy and medicine. He books received international recognition, naturally in England where he carried out and published most of his research, but no less in Greece, where he won the warm regard of Professor Stratos, the Byzantinist doyen. After the latter’s death, Andrew was presented with a medal in memoriam.
It is regrettable that at Bar-Ilan nobody was able to follow in Andrew’s footsteps. Owing to his sedulous care, the university and department libraries were equipped with the necessary books and journals, but no research students were forthcoming. The main difficulty was Greek. No history student would learn the language; the few students at Bar-Ilan who did learn Greek were drawn towards the Bible Department. Andrew did supervise students for higher degrees, but only in American and Russian history.
Unlike others, Andrew did not allow his research interests to cause him to neglect his other duties at the University. He was head of our Department three times, eight years in all. He did everything he could for the benefit of the Department, and was constantly on the look-out for promising young historians who could be recruited. As I look around me, I see — among others — the two Cohanim, who have now been at Bar-Ilan for 18 years.
As departmental head he was punctilious in enforcing discipline, and woe betide the slackers! He demanded no less from himself than from others. He never cancelled lectures for any reason and never cut them short. The lectures themselves were always meticulously prepared. He always returned examination papers without delay, even from abroad, where he generally spent the summer vacation. He never missed a meeting of any kind. I have been informed by Mr Ralbag, co-ordinator of professional committees for academic promotions etc., that it is almost impossible to get five professors to agree ona time for a meeting, but that “Sharf was unique in never making trouble”. For several years he was chairman of the “committee of ceremonies” and, in that capacity, efficiently organized the so-called “Commencement Exercises”. In brief, he behaved in these matters less like a Russian and more like a Yekke.
After his retirement he continued part-time teaching at a very nominal salary. It was his pleasure to attend the departmental meetings, seminars and other events and to take an active part in the deliberations.
Our dear colleague maintained reasonably good health during the years of full employment and, on his retirement, received a bonus for never having taken a day’s sick-leave. Lately, however, he appeared to have weakened, but he didn’t like to discuss his health. For the first time he looked his age, or even older. For all that, he was full of optimism and determination and spoke of his intention to visit the Far East. His final illness and death in England came to us all as a great shock and surprise.
It is no idle formality to state that without Eva’s support he would not have attained what he did, but I feel she would not like me to enlarge on the subject. Andrew’s old pupil Professor Haim Genizi will now learn Mishnayyot in his memory. 8 n
Avrom Saltman
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