1. On the origins and development of the Kaddish prayer prior to the twelfth century, see for example: De Sola Pool, David, The Old Jewish-Aramaic Prayer: The Kaddish, (Leipzig: Rudolph Haupt, 1909)Google Scholar; Heinemann, Joseph, “Prayers of Beth Midrash Origins,” Journal of Semitic Studies 5 (1960): 264–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weitzman, Michael, “The Origins of the Qaddish,” in Hebrew Scholarship and the Medieval World, ed. de Lange, Nicholas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 131–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lehnardt, Andreas, Qaddish: Untersuchungen zur Entstehung und Rezeption eines rabbinischen Gebetes (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002)Google Scholar; Blumenthal, David, “Observations and Reflections on the History and Meanings of the Kaddish,” Judaism 50, no. 1 (2001): 35–51Google Scholar; Hoffman, Lawrence A., The Canonization of the Synagogue Service (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), 56–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ullendorff, Edward, “Some Notes on the Relationship of the Paternoster to the Kaddish,” Journal of Jewish Studies 54, no. 1 (2003): 122–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Graubard, Baruch, “The Kaddish Prayer,” in The Lord's Prayer and Jewish Liturgy, ed. Petuchowski, Jakob J. and Brocke, Michael (New York: Seabury, 1978), 59–72Google Scholar; Idelsohn, A. Z., Jewish Liturgy and Its Development (New York: Henry Holt, 1932), 307–308Google Scholar; Elbogen, Ismar, Jewish Liturgy: A Comprehensive History, trans. Scheindlin, Raymond P. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1993), 81–84Google Scholar; Gartner, Yaakov, “Ha-me‘aneh ba-Kaddish yeheh shmeh rabbah mevorakh,” Sidra 11 (1996): 39–53Google Scholar; Karl, Zvi, “Ha-Kaddish,” Ha-shiloaḥ 35 (1918): 36–49Google Scholar, 426–30, 521–27. On the lack of reference to death in the Kaddish, see the comments of Blidstein, Gerald, “Kaddish and Other Accidents,” Tradition 14, no. 3 (1974): 80–85Google Scholar. Also notable is Wieseltier, Leon, Kaddish (New York: Knopf, 1998)Google Scholar, a “meditation” on Kaddish that is equal parts historical exploration and personal memoir.

2. Eleazar b. Judah of Worms, Perush siddur he-tefillah la-Rokeaḥ, ed. Herschler, Moshe (Jerusalem: Makhon ha-Rav Herschler, 1992), 602Google Scholar (and cf. 580); Isaac b. Moses of Vienna, Sefer ’or zaru‘a, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushalayim, 2010), 62Google Scholar; Simḥah of Vitry, Maḥzor Vitry , ed. Goldschmidt, Aryeh, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: ’Oẓar Ha-poskim, 2004)Google Scholar, 223 (this latter text is a later German addition to the originally French compilation).

3. Discussion of the Mourner's Kaddish appears in Sefer Ḥasidim, ed. Margaliyot, Reuven (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1957)Google Scholar (henceforth SHB), §722; Sefer Ḥasidim, ed. Wistinetski, Judah (Frankfurt: Meikiẓe Nirdamim, 1891)Google Scholar (henceforth SHP), §314; the excerpts from Sefer Ḥasidim preserved in MS Vatican 285 (published by Hershler, Moshe, “Sefer Ḥasidim le-Rabbenu Yehudah he-Ḥasid: Mahadurah ve-nusḥah ḥadashah mitokh ketav yad,” Genuzot 1 (1984): 129Google Scholar; Eleazar b. Judah of Worms, Sefer ha-Rokeaḥ ha-gadol, ed. Schneersohn, Barukh Shimon (Jerusalem: n. p., 1967)Google Scholar, §53; R. Meir of Rothenburg's views are recorded by R. Shimshon b. Ẓadok, Sefer Tashbeẓ, ed. Engel, Shlomo (Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushalayim, 2011)Google Scholar, §427; Molin, R. Jacob, She'elot u-teshuvot Maharil (Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushalayim, 1980)Google Scholar, §36, 64; Molin, , She'elot u-teshuvot Maharil ha-ḥadashot, ed. Sats, Yitshak (Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushlayim, 1977)Google Scholar, §28; Molin, , Sefer Maharil: Minhagim, ed. Spitser, Shlomo (Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushalayim, 2005), 446–47Google Scholar, 608.

4. See for example the responsum of R. Isaac of Corbeil, preserved in the sixteenth-century responsa collection of R. Benjamin ben Matityahu, She'elot u-teshuvot Binyamin Ze'ev (Jerusalem: Wolf and Stitzberg, 1959)Google Scholar, §161.

5. R. Aharon ha-Kohen of Lunel, 'Orḥot ḥayim, ed. Schlesinger, Moses, vol. 2 (Berlin: Mekiẓe Nirdamim, 1902), 601Google Scholar; Sefer kol bo (Lemberg: S. L. Flecker, 1860)Google Scholar, §114. See also Shatzmiller, Joseph, “Tumultus et Rumor in Synagoga: An Aspect of Social Life of Provencal Jews in the Middle Ages,” AJS Review 2 (1977): 227–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on a communal dispute in Manosque; according to Israel Ta-Shma, M. (Minhag ’Ashkenaz ha-kadmon [Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999], 309)Google Scholar at issue was the suitability of a minor orphan to recite Kaddish during the evening prayer service.

6. R. Israel of Brno, She'elot u-teshuvot Mahari mi-Bruna, ed. Herschler, Moshe (Jerusalem: n.p., 1960)Google Scholar, §193; R. Shalom of Neustadt, Hilkhot u-minhagei Rabbenu Shalom mi-Neustadt, ed. Spitser, Shlomo Y. (Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushalayim, 1997), 39Google Scholar; Tyrnau, Yiẓḥak Isaac, Sefer ha-minhagim, ed. Spitser, Shlomo (Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushalayim, 1979)Google Scholar, esp. 171 ff; R. Israel b. Isserlein, Petaḥiyah, Sefer terumat ha-deshen, ed. Avitan, Shmuel (Jerusalem: n. p., 1991)Google Scholar, §294; R. Joseph b. Moses, Leket yosher, ed. Freimann, Yaakov (Berlin: H. Itzkowski, 1903)Google Scholar, I:56; II:97. In She'elot u-teshuvot Maharil §36, Jacob Molin reports on the status of the custom both in his own native Mainz, as well as in Austria, singling out for mention the views of R. Avraham Klausner and R. Barukh b. Meir ha-Levi of Fulda.

7. See for example the commentary of R. Bahya ben Asher ibn Halawa to Deut. 21:8; R. Isaac b. Sheshet Perfet, She’elot u-teshuvot le-Rabbenu Yizḥak bar Sheshet, ed. Meẓger, David, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushalayim, 1993)Google Scholar, §115. The views of R. Yosef Abudraham, R. Yiẓḥak de Leon, and R. Shem Tov ibn Shem Tov are reflected in a responsum published by Spiegel, Yaakov, “Teshuvat R. Yiẓḥak de Leon ’el R. Yosef ’Abudraham,” Sinai 83 (1978): 181–83Google Scholar (and cf. Beit Yosef to Tur ’oraḥ ḥayim 53).

8. R. Yosef Colon b. Trabotto, Shlomo, She'elot u-teshuvot Maharik (Warsaw: Joseph Unterhandler, 1884)Google Scholar, §30; Trabotto, Piske Maharik §290; Landau, R. Jacob, Sefer ha-'agur ha-shalem, ed. Hershler, Moshe (Jerusalem: Kiryat No‘ar, 1960)Google Scholar, §334, 335; Mintz, R. Judah, She'elot u-teshuvot Mahari Mintz (Krakow: Yosef Fischer, 1882)Google Scholar, §9.

9. See for example Sefer Maharil, 608; Tyrnau, Sefer ha-minhagim, refers in passing to the Mourner's Kaddish as part of the liturgy in the context of weekday, Sabbath, and holiday services.

10. Among the questions dealt with in the sources cited above: How long should the Mourner's Kaddish be recited following the death of a parent? Must the Kaddish be recited for a longer time span than usual during a leap year (when a thirteenth month is added to the calendar)? May one recite the prayer on behalf of one's deceased mother while one's father is still alive? One of the most contentious issues had to do with whether orphans below the age of legal majority (i.e. thirteen) could lead the Kaddish, which, as a davar she-bi-kedushah ought to have been off limits to them (Soferim 16:12). That many authorities allowed minors to lead the congregation in this prayer may have been owing to the precedent set by a preexisting French custom, which had a child below the age of majority recite Kaddish at points during the Sabbath prayer service; Maḥzor Vitry explains that “this Kaddish is only in order to teach the children, but doesn't count [as one of the seven Kaddishes to be formally recited each day]”; see Maḥzor Vitry, vol. 1, 130, 155, 266; and cf. Siddur Rashi, ed. Buber, Solomon (Berlin: Mekiẓe Nirdamim, 1912)Google Scholar, §216. By the fifteenth century, Leket yosher (vol. 1, 56) still refers to the Kaddish katan (“children's Kaddish”), though it is clear that he has the Mourner's Kaddish in mind. Less clear is the view of R. Natan b. Yehudah, who refers rather vaguely to the Kaddish shel katan throughout the Sefer ha-mahkim, ed. Freimann, Yaakov (Krakow: n. p., 1909)Google Scholar.

11. Among the solutions proffered: giving communal residents priority over visiting guests; giving the recently bereaved priority over those whose relative died longer ago; and simply drawing lots to randomly decide which mourner would take precedence.

12. Molin, She'elot u-teshuvot Maharil ha-ḥadashot, §28.

13. Isserlein's view is recorded in Leket yosher, 56.

14. Molin, She'elot u-teshuvot Maharil ha-ḥadashot, §28.

15. Tyrnau, Sefer ha-minhagim.

16. See for example: B. Berakhot 57a; B. Shabbat 119b; B. Sotah 49a; B. Berakhot 3a; ’Otiyot de-Rabbi ’Akiba in Batei midrashot, ed. Wertheimer, S. A. (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1953), 367–69Google Scholar; Seder ’Eliyahu Zuta 20, and Yalkut Shim‘oni Isaiah 247.429. The most thorough discussion of the early history of the Kaddish is Lehnardt, Qaddish.

17. Indeed, commentaries on the meaning of the Kaddish prayer, often focused on its underlying eschatological resonance, were a mainstay of high medieval halakhic and liturgical works. See for example: Siddur Rashi §11; Sefer ha-pardes, ed. Ehrenreich, H. L. (Bnei Brak: Yahadut, 1980)Google Scholar, §5; Siddur Rabbeinu Shlomo b. Shimshon mi-Germayza ve-siddur ḥasidei ’Ashkenaz, ed. Herschler, Moshe (Jerusalem: Ḥemed, 1971), 76–82Google Scholar; Tosafot, B. Berakhot 3a, s.v. ve-‘onin; R. Avraham b. Natan ha-Yarḥi, Sefer ha-manhig, ed. Rafa'el, Yiẓḥak (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1978), 56–57Google Scholar. See also Kanarfogel, Ephraim, Peering through the Lattices: Mystical, Magical, and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000), 142Google Scholar, 153, 189; Goldschmidt, Aryeh, “Perush ha-Kaddish le-ba‘al Maḥzor Vitry,” Yeshurun 3 (1997): 5–14Google Scholar; Sperber, Daniel, “Yehe shmeh rabbah,” in Minhagei Yisra'el: Mekorot ve-toledot, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1990), 71–77Google Scholar; Pedaya, Ḥavivah, Ha-shem ve-ha-mikdash be-mishnat R. Yiẓḥak Sagi Nahor (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2001)Google Scholar.

18. A representative example is Avenary, Hanoch, “Kaddish,” Encyclopedia Judaica, 2nd ed., vol. 11 (Detroit: Macmillan, 2007), 696Google Scholar. For a survey of earlier scholars who adopted this approach, see Lehnardt, Qaddish, 279–80. More recent adherents of this view include Marcus, Ivan, “A Jewish-Christian Symbiosis: The Culture of Early Ashkenaz,” in Cultures of the Jews: A New History, ed. Biale, David, vol. 2 (New York: Schocken, 2002), 163Google Scholar; Marcus, , The Jewish Life Cycle: Rites of Passage from Biblical to Modern Times (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004), 241Google Scholar; Wieseltier, Kaddish, 81; Kushelevsky, Rella, “Ha-tanna ve-ha-met ha-noded: ha-’omnam ’aggadah lo yehudit?,” Bikoret u-farshanut 30 (1994): 53Google Scholar (though cf. Kushelevsky, , Sigufim u-fituyim: ha-sippur ha-‘ivri be-’Ashkenaz ‘al pi ketav yad Parma 2295 (De Rossi 563) [Jerusalem: Magnes, 2010], 260–61Google Scholar). For other approaches, see for example Avraham Naftali Tsvi Roth, “‘Azkarah ve-haftarah ve-kaddish yatom,” Talpiyot 7 (1961): 369–81Google Scholar, who argues that Ashkenazic discomfort with minors receiving ‘aliyot in synagogue led to a shift from Torah reading to Kaddish as the intercessory prayer par excellence; Ta-Shma, (Minhag ’Ashkenaz ha-kadmon, 299--310) has argued that the place of the Mourner's Kaddish derived from the preexisting link between Kaddish and Barkhu; Lehnardt, Qaddish, suggests that the eschatological meaning of Kaddish itself made it an appropriate choice for recitation by mourners.

19. Urbach, Ephraim E., Sefer ‘arugat ha-bosem, vol. 4 (Jerusalem: Mekiẓe Nirdamim, 1963)Google Scholar, 49. See also Kanarfogel, Ephraim, “‘Al nusḥah u-mekorah shel tefillat ’av ha-raḥamim,” Yeshurun 27 (2012): 871–78Google Scholar, who has argued that the prayer might have originated in response to later (thirteenth-century?) episodes of persecution.

20. A sampling of relevant piyyutim can be found in Habermann, Avraham, Gezerot ’Ashkenaz ve-Ẓarfat (Jerusalem: Tarshish, 1946), 61–71Google Scholar, 89–92, and see Einbinder, Susan, Beautiul Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in Medieval France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For additional prayers that have been linked to the martyrological climate of medieval Ashkenaz, see also Hoffman, Jeffrey, “‘Akdamut: History, Folklore, Meaning,” Jewish Quarterly Review 99, no. 2 (2009): 161–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Marcus, Ivan G., “Kiddush ha-shem bi-’Ashkenaz ve-sippur R. ’Amnon mi-Magenẓa,” in Kedushat he-ḥayim ve-ḥiruf ha-nafesh, ed. Gafni, Isaiah M. and Ravitzky, Aviezer (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1992), 131–147Google Scholar. The Yizkor prayer has often been linked to the 1096 martyrs as well; see for example Lévi, Israel, “La commémoration des âmes dans le Judaïsme,” Revue des études juives 29 (1894): 43–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Freehof, Solomon, “Hazkarath Neshamoth,” HUCA 36 (1965): 179–90Google Scholar. This linkage was convincingly refuted by Yehuda Galinsky in a lecture at the 16^th World Congress of Jewish Studies in 2013 (“‘Al ha-ẓedakah bein kotlei beit ha-knesset ha-’Ashkenazi bi-yeme ha-benayim”).

21. See the discussion below.

22. See for example Soloveitchik, Haym, “Religious Law and Change: The Medieval Ashkenazic Example,” AJS Review 12, no. 2 (1987): 205–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “The Franco-German community was permeated by a profound sense of its own religiosity, of the rightness of its traditions, and could not imagine any sharp difference between its practices and the law that its members studied and observed with such devotion.”

23. See for example Shepkaru, Shmuel, “From after Death to Afterlife,” AJS Review 24, no. 1 (1999): 1–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shepkaru, , “To Die for God: Martyr's Heaven in Hebrew and Latin Crusade Chronicles,” Speculum 77 (2002): 311–341CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24. In She’elot u-teshuvot Maharil §99, Jacob Molin is asked whether Kaddish must be recited on behalf of martyrs, and his interlocutor attributes to the thirteenth-century R. Meir of Rothenburg the opinion that Kaddish should not be said. Molin maintains that Kaddish should indeed be recited, but the exchange illustrates that the question was still unsettled by the fifteenth century. Indeed, Molin reports in the course of his response that the Jews of Prague had not wanted to mourn the martyrs of that city's 1389 massacre, lending credence to the presumption that Kaddish might not be necessary. Other contemporaneous discussions of the propriety of mourning for martyrs can be found in She’elot u-teshuvot Maharah ’or zaru‘a (Leipzig: K. W. Vollrath, 1860)Google Scholar, §14; She’elot u-teshuvot Mahari Weil (Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushalayim, 2001)Google Scholar, §114; Hilkhot u-minhagei Rabbenu Shalom mi-Neustadt §401.

25. She'elot u-teshuvot Maharil §99.

26. Most famously in B. Berakhot 104a: “A son confers merit upon his father.”

27. The discussion of the Mourner's Kaddish appears in only one manuscript of Maḥzor Vitry—MS London - British Library Add. 27200-27201, which was the basis of Shimon Horowitz's first printed edition [Maḥzor Vitry le-Rabbenu Simḥah (Nuremburg: Mekiẓe Nirdamim, 1923)Google Scholar]. The London manuscript contains copious additions to the text, which are attributed to R. Abraham b. Natan ha-Yarḥi (d. 1204) and to R. Isaac b. Dorbelo (twelfth century). Because Abraham b. Natan never mentions the Mourner's Kaddish in his own Sefer ha-manhig, it seems likely that Isaac b. Dorbelo added the section on the Mourner's Kaddish. On the latter, see Taylor, Charles, Appendix to Sayings of the Jewish Fathers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900), 12–24Google Scholar; and Nahon, Gerard, “Isaac b. Dorbelo et le ‘Mahzor Vitry,’” in Ibrahim ibn Ya'qub at-Turtushi: Christianity, Islam and Judaism Meet in East-Central Europe, c.800–1300 A.D., ed. Charvát, Petr and Prosecky, Jirí (Prague: Oriental Institute, 1996), 191–206Google Scholar. On the dating and authorship of Maḥzor Vitry, and a survey of the various manuscript recensions, see Ta-Shma, Israel, Ha-tefillah ha-'Ashkenazit ha-kedumah (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2003), 15–29Google Scholar; Aryeh Goldschmidt, ed., Maḥzor Vitry, 19–56; Emanuel, Simḥah, “Le-‘inyano shel Maḥzor Vitry,” ‘Alei sefer 12 (1986): 129–30Google Scholar.

28. This tale has been the subject of a tremendous amount of scholarship, though rarely in direct connection to the Mourner's Kaddish. For discussions of particular attestations of the tale, see for example: Ginzburg, Louis, Ginze Schechter: Keta‘ei midrash ve-haggadah min ha-genizah she-bi-Miẓrayim (Jerusalem: Hermon Press, 1969), 235–37Google Scholar; R. Nisim b. Ya‘akov mi-Kairowan, Ḥibbur yafeh mi-ha-yeshu‘ah, ed. Hirschberg, Ḥayim Ze’ev (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1954), 55Google Scholar; Ish-Shalom, Meir, ed., Nisfaḥim li-seder ’Eliyahu Zuta (Jerusalem: Wahrman, 1969), 23–25Google Scholar; Higger, Michael, “Hakdamah,” in Masekhtot Kallah (New York: Moinester, 1936), 71Google Scholar; Lieberman, Shaul, “‘Al ḥata’im ve-‘onsham,” in Sefer ha-yovel li-khvod Levi Ginzburg, ed. Lieberman, Shaul et al. (New York: AAJR, 1946), 249–70Google Scholar; Weiss, Yehudit, “Shtei girsa’ot ha-Zohar le-’aggadat ‘ha-tanna ve-ha-met,’” Tarbiz 78, no. 4 (2009): 521–54Google Scholar. A number of studies approach the tale from a comparative perspective, attempting to philologically reconstruct a purported urtext on the basis of later witnesses; the most comprehensive example is Lerner, M. B., “Ma‘aseh ha-tanna ve-ha-met: gilgulav ha-sifruti’im ve-ha-hilkhati’im,” ’Asufot 2 (1988): 29–68Google Scholar. Other studies employ methodologies ranging from folkloric and thematological to psychoanalytic; see for example: Landa, Louis, “Ha-met ha-noded ve-ha-me’uyam,” Sadan: Meḥkarim bi-sifrut ‘ivrit 6 (2007): 157–72Google Scholar; Kushelevsky, Rella, “Ha-tanna ve-ha-met ha-noded,” in ’Enẓiklopediah shel ha-sippur ha-Yehudi, ed. Elstein, Yoav, Lipsker, Avidov, and Kushelevsky, Rella, vo1. 1 (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2004), 281–96Google Scholar; Kushelevsky, “ha-’omnam ’aggadah lo yehudit?,” 41–63. The most recent treatment of the tale, which focuses on its reception in medieval Ashkenaz in particular, is Kushelevsky, Sigufim u-fituyim, 253–71. Kushelevsky's methodology, which focuses on reception history, mirrors my own, though our conclusions vary considerably, as I shall explain below.

29. See the list provided by Kushelevsky in the ’Enẓiklopediah shel ha-sippur ha-Yehudi, 284ff.

30. R. Yoḥanan b. Zakkai is the protagonist in the versions of the tale found in Ish-Shalom, Seder ’Eliyahu Zuta, 22, and in a Genizah fragment (T-S C.2. fol. 144 c–d) published in Mann, Jacob, The Bible as Read and Preached in the Old Synagogue, vol. 1 (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1966), 128Google Scholar.

31. On this apparent conflation between Kaddish and Barkhu, see Ta-Shma, Minhag ’Ashkenaz ha-kadmon, 304–306.

32. Maḥzor Vitry, ed. Goldschmidt, 223.

33. Kallah Rabati, ed. Higger, Michael (New York: Moinester, 1936), 2:9Google Scholar.

34. B. Rosh ha-Shanah 17a.

35. Hildesheimer, Azriel, “Bishop ha-Yehudim,” Sinai 105 (1990): 159–61Google Scholar.

36. For the fiduciary responsibilities of parnasim in medieval Ashkenaz, see for example Marcus, Ivan, “Ha-dinamikah ha-politit shel ha-kehillah ha-Yehudit be-Germaniyah bi-yeme ha-benayim,” in Kahal Yisra'el: ha-shilton ha-‘aẓmi ha-Yehudi le-dorotav, ed. Grossman, Avraham and Kaplan, Yosef, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2004), 101–14Google Scholar.

37. On the office of the parnas in medieval Germany, and its close links to the position of gabba'i, see Reiner, Avraham (Rami), “‘Even she-katuv ‘alehah: to'arei ha-niftarim ‘al maẓevot bet ha-‘almin be-Wurzburg 1147–1346,” Tarbiz 78, no. 1 (2009): 137–40Google Scholar. Interestingly, the link between taxation and charitable giving would become even tighter by the end of the thirteenth century, when charitable tithes were increasingly collected and administered by the communal leadership as direct taxation; see Galinsky, Judah, “Custom, Ordinance or Commandment? The Evolution of the Medieval Monetary-Tithe in Ashkenaz,” Journal of Jewish Studies 62 (2011): 203–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38. See for example Isaac b. Moshe, ’Or zaru‘a, hilkhot ẓedakah, §3, Mordekhai to B. Bava Batra 8b; She'elot u-teshuvot Maharaḥ ’or zaru‘a §226. The notion that the duties of parnasim and gabba'im were identical seems to have been so self-evident that by the fourteenth century, Menachem ha-Me'iri explicitly describes a gabbai ẓedakah who performs his role improperly as “a parnas who instills excessive fear in the community” (Me'iri, Beit ha-beḥirah to B. Bava Batra 8b).

39. SHP §1343, 1346 (and c.f. §33); SHB §606.

40. SHB §145. On the section of the Bologna recension of Sefer Ḥasidim in which this passage appears, see Soloveitchik, Haym, “Piety, Pietism, and German Pietism: Sefer Hasidim I and the Influence of Hasidei Ashkenaz,” Jewish Quarterly Review 92, nos. 3–4 (2002): 455–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41. SHB §61, citing Vayikra Rabbah §30.1; and see Reiner, “‘Even she-katuv ‘alehah,” 139.

42. Indeed, in a later version of this tale found in the Zohar (Zohar ḥadash, ’Aḥarei mot, 49a–b), the sinner is also accused of not wearing phylacteries, in language that draws on the same sugya in Rosh ha-Shanah—confirming that the sugya was understood to be intertextually linked to the story by subsequent medieval narrators.

43. Matthew 27:31–33, Mark 15:20–22, Luke 23:26–32, John 19:16–18.

44. Matthew 27:29, Mark 15:17, John 19:2, 5.

45. Shinan, Avigdor, 'Oto ha-’ish: Yehudim mesaprim ‘al Yeshu (Tel Aviv: Yedi‘ot ’Aḥaronot, 1999)Google Scholar.

46. B. Berakhot 61b.

47. Cohen, Gerson D., “Esau as Symbol in Early Medieval Thought,” in Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. Altmann, Alexander (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 19–48Google Scholar; and cf. Yuval, Yisra'el Y., Shnei goyyim be-vitnekh: Yehudim ve-noẓrim, dimuyim hadadiyim (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘Oved, 2002)Google Scholar, who examines the functioning of this symbolism in medieval Ashkenaz in particular.

48. Rella Kushelevsky (Sigufin u-fituyim, 262–68), has also compared the medieval Ashkenazic version of the Akiva story with its earlier attestations, and has noted the introduction of Christological symbolism into the tale. (Indeed, she has gone further, linking other elements of the story—Rabbi Akiva's fasting, the role of a tax collector, etc.—to details of the life of Jesus and his disciples as recorded in the Gospels.) Kushelevsky argues that the attention to Jesus's crown of thorns and general suffering reflects the twelfth-century progression “from judgment to passion”—the increased attention to the gory details of Jesus's Passion, and the devotional meaning that was increasingly attributed to it. Whether or not Kushelevsky's reading of the story is compelling as far as it goes, it never accounts for the fact that the Jesus-figure in the tale is eventually redeemed—which is the crux of the internal logic of the story. The lack of attention to this element may be related to Kushelevsky's broader approach to the Mourner's Kaddish, and hence the Akiva story—namely that in the twelfth century the prayer and accompanying tale were geared not toward intercession, but toward ẓidduk ha-din, the public acceptance of God's judgment in the aftermath of tragedy; see ibid., 260, and Kushelevsky “ha-’omnam ’aggadah lo yehudit?” 54. This message would have been particularly resonant, she suggests, in the aftermath of the 1096 attacks.

49. B. Gittin 56b–57a. See for example the discussion in Schäfer, Peter, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 82–94Google Scholar, and Ram Ben-Shalom and Yuval, Israel J., “‘There is no Hatred in Polemics—And Liberty is Granted,’” Conflict and Religious Conversations in Latin Christendom: Studies in Honor of Ora Limor, ed. Yuval, Israel J. and Ben-Shalom, Ram (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 16 n. 35.

50. See the discussion in Zlotnik, Yehudah Leib, “Mi-’aggadot ha-shabbat u-minhagehah,” Sinai 25 (1949): 276–87Google Scholar, and 26 (1950): 75–89.

51. See the discussion in Cohen, Shaye J. D., Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised? Gender and Covenant in Judaism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 40–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Rami Reiner treated this subject comprehensively, and called attention to additional sources, in a lecture at the 16^th World Congress of Jewish Studies (“Milat nefalim: Bein halakhah le-’aggadah u-vein minhag le-’emunah ‘amamit.”)

52. See for example Cohn-Sherbok, Daniel, “The Jewish Doctrine of Hell,” Religion 8 (1978): 196–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and cf. Schäfer, Peter, “Die Lehre von den zwei Welten im 4. Buch Esra und in der tannaitischen Literatur,” in Studien zur Geschichte und Teologie des rabbinischen Judenthums (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 244–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53. Lieberman, Saul, “Some Aspects of the After Life in Early Rabbinic Literature,” in Harry Austryn Wolfson Jubilee Volume, ed. Lieberman, Saul, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1965) 495–506Google Scholar; Milikowsky, Chaim, “Gehinom ve-poshe‘i Yisra'el ‘al pi ‘Seder ‘Olam,’” Tarbiz 55, no. 3 (1986): 311–43Google Scholar; Milikowsky, , “Which Gehenna? Retribution and Eschatology in the Synoptic Gospels and in Early Jewish Texts,” New Testament Studies 34 (1988): 238–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54. See for example B. Rosh ha-Shanah 16b–17a; B. Shabbat 152b–153a; B. Bava Meẓi‘a 58b.

55. See for example B. Eruvin 19a and cf. M. Sanhedrin 10:1.

56. Brown, Peter, “The Decline of the Empire of God: Amnesty, Penance, and the Afterlife from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages,” in Last Things: Death and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Bynum, Caroline Walker and Freedman, Paul (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 44–45Google Scholar.

57. Many of these texts are treated in Himmelfarb, Martha, Tours of Hell: An Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the best recent treatment, which contains crucial updates to Himmelfarb's work, is Perry, Micha, Masoret ve-shinui: Mesirat yeda‘ bi-kerev Yehude ma‘arav ’Europah bi-yeme ha-benayim (Tel Aviv: Ha-kibbutz Ha-me'uḥad, 2010), 195–254Google Scholar. The Ashkenazic reception of some of these exempla is also treated by Kushelevsky, Sigufin u-fituyin, 25–77, and additional sources are presented by Yassif, Eli, The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 358–61Google Scholar.

58. The most fleshed out treatment is in Tosafot, B. Bava Meẓi‘a 58b s.v. ḥuẓ; cf. Tosafot, B. Eruvin 19a, s.v. poshe‘i, and B. Rosh ha-Shanah 17a, s.v. ki.

59. Sefer ketav tamim, in ’Oẓar neḥmad, ed. Blumfeld, Ignaz (Vienna: J. Knöpflmacher, 1860)Google Scholar, esp. 92ff.

60. As cited in Avraham b. ‘Azriel, Sefer ‘arugat ha-bosem, ed. Urbach, Ephraim E., vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Mekiẓe Nirdamim, 1947)Google Scholar, 259 (and see esp. n. 19); see also Urbach, , “Ḥelkam shel ḥakhmei ’Ashkenaz ve-Ẓarfat be-pulmus ‘al ha-Rambam ve-‘al sefarav,” Zion 12 (1947): 149–59Google Scholar. The first disputes over Maimonides's views concerning resurrection, which took place during the latter's own lifetime, should not be confused with the clashes of the 1230s, which also involved Ashkenazic interlocutors (e.g. Shatzmiller, Joseph, “Les tossafistes et le première controverse maïmonidienne: le témoignage du rabbin Asher ben Gershom,” in Rashi et la culture juive en France du Nord au moyen âge, ed. Dahan, G. (Paris: E. Peeters, 1997), 55–82Google Scholar). On the instability of the “numbering” of the Maimonidean controversies, see Visi, Tamas, “Ibn Ezra, a Maimonidean Authority: The Evidence of Early Ibn Ezra Supercommentaries,” in The Cultures of Maimonideanism: New Approaches to the History of Jewish Thought, ed. Robinson, James T. (Leiden: Brill, 2009)Google Scholar, 93 n. 8.

61. On Ashkenazic conceptions of the messianic era in particular, see Kanarfogel, Ephraim, “Ḥishuvei ha-keẓ shel ḥakhmei ’Ashkenaz: mi-Rashi u-vene doro ve-‘ad li-tekufat ba‘alei ha-tosafot,” in Rashi: Demuto ve-yeẓirato, ed. Grossman, Avraham and Yafet, Sarah, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2009), 381–401Google Scholar; Kanarfogel, , “Medieval Rabbinic Conceptions of the Messianic Era: The View of the Tosafists,” in Me'ah She‘arim: Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiritual Life in Memory of Isadore Twersky, ed. Fleischer, Ezra, et al. (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2001), 147–169Google Scholar. On changing terms for and views of heaven, see Reiner, Avraham (Rami), “Mi-gan ’eden ve-‘ad ẓror ha-ḥayim: Birkot ha-metim bi-maẓevot mi-’Ashkenaz bi-yeme ha-benayim,” Zion 76 (2011): 5–28Google Scholar. Shmuel Shepkaru has recently argued that the significance of the belief in the resurrection of the dead waned in medieval Ashkenaz; see his “Christian Resurrection and Jewish Immortality during the First Crusade,” Speculum 89, no. 1 (2014): 1–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62. Paris: Gallimard, 1981. Trans. by Goldhammer, Arthur as The Birth of Purgatory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

63. Such exempla have also been influentially treated by Schmitt, Jean-Claude, Les revenants: Les vivants et les morts dans la société médiévale (Paris: Gallimard, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; trans. by Goldhammer, Arthur as Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

64. See for example Gurevich, Aron, “Popular and Scholarly Medieval Cultural Traditions: Notes in the Margins of Jacques Le Goff's Book,” Journal of Medieval History 9 (1983): 71–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Edwards, Graham Robert, “Purgatory: Birth or Evolution,” in Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36, no. 4 (1985) 634–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar, both of whom argue that the scholastic recognition of purgatory was the final, not the first step in the doctrine's development. For studies of “proto-purgatories” in earlier periods, see for example Brown, “Decline of the Empire of God”; Rebillard, Éric, The Care of the Dead in Late Antiquity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; and Moreira, Isabel, Heaven's Purge: Purgatory in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65. Le Goff, Birth of Purgatory, 154 ff.

66. Le Goff, Birth of Purgatory, 46. See also Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages, 65–67, 75. Notably, the seventh day, the thirtieth day, and the twelfth month after death were seen as significant milestones for the endowment of memorial masses—as was the case in Jewish mourning rituals as well. See Binski, Paul, Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 115–16Google Scholar, 121; Paxton, Frederick, Christianizing Death: The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 134–38Google Scholar.

67. Berger, David, ed., The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of the Niẓẓaḥon Vetus (Philadelphia: JPS, 1979), 195–97Google Scholar.

68. Berger, ed. Jewish-Christian Debate, 197. The parable in question appears in Luke 16.

69. Berger, ed. Jewish-Christian Debate, 196.

70. MS Oxford Bodleian Library 2289, fol. 30a–31a, 36a, 44a. This text, whose German provenance is attested to by its copious use of German lo‘azim, survives in a manuscript from no earlier than the fifteenth century, but may well have been written centuries earlier. A much briefer extract from the text survives in MS Paris BN Heb. 1408, which was published by Rosenthal, Judah in his Meḥkarim u-mekorot, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Reuven Mass, 1967), 368–72Google Scholar. For a brief discussion of the text, including the assertion that portions of its contents are linked to the Ḥasidei ’Ashkenaz, see Shoham-Steiner, Ephraim, “Jews and Healing at Medieval Saints' Shrines: Participation, Polemics, and Shared Cultures,” Harvard Theological Review 103, no. 1 (2010): 124 n. 33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71. MS Oxford Bodleian Library 2289, fol. 36a.

72. Reuven, Jacob b., Milḥamot ha-shem, ed. Rosenthal, Judah (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1963), 49–52Google Scholar; Official, Joseph, Sefer Yosef ha-Mekane, ed. Rosenthal, Judah (Jerusalem: Mekiẓe Nirdamim, 1970), 42–43Google Scholar. Cf. the similar attacks in the Sefer ha-berit of the Kimḥi, Provençal R. Joseph; The Book of the Covenant, ed. and trans. Talmage, Frank (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1972), 30–31Google Scholar.

73. Hadar zekenim (Livorno: Moshe Yeshuah, 1840)Google Scholar, 17b, and Moshav zekenim (London: S. D. Sassoon, 1959)Google Scholar, 73.

74. Pa‘aneaḥ raza to Gen. 37:35 (Warsaw: I. M. Alter, 1932)Google Scholar (citing the Sefer ha-gan of Aaron b. Joseph ha-Kohen).

75. Abulafia, Anna Sapir and Evans, G. R., eds., The Works of Gilbert Crispin (London: Oxford University Press, 1986), 12Google Scholar.

76. Abulafia, Anna Sapir, “Jewish-Christian Disputations and the Twelfth Century Renaissance,” Journal of Medieval History 15 (1989): 112–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77. Abulafia, “Jewish-Christian Disputations,” 109.

78. Abulafia, “Jewish-Christian Disputations,” 113. By the later Middle Ages, awareness of this linkage would become explicit in Jewish polemical tracts: hence R. Eliyahu Ḥayim of Genezzano cites his Christian opponent Francesso de Acquapendento as follows: “I despair for you, Jews, for the loss of your souls, for you are all descending to the pit of destruction. And your ancestors, though they included prophets, priests, patriarchs and righteous men, all went to the land of darkness called ‘limbo’ on account of the sin of the first man, and could not save their souls from [Hell] until the redeemed, the messiah Jesus, arrived.” See Rosenthal, Judah, ed., “Vikuḥo shel R. ’Eliyahu Ḥayim mi-Genezzano ‘im nazir Franciscani,” in Meḥkarim u-mekorot, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Reuven Mass, 1967), 435Google Scholar.

79. J. P. Migne, Patrologia Latina 189, 631a–633a.

80. Trans. in Peter the Venerable, Against the Inveterate Obduracy of the Jews, trans. Resnick, Irven M. (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 264Google Scholar. See the discussion of this passage in Perry, Masoret ve-shinui, 195–254; on Peter's Tractatus adversus Judaeorum inveteratam duritiem, see Cohen, Jeremy, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 254–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81. See the Confession of Master Vivo and Master Judah, preserved in Lat. 16558, fols. 230c–231c, Bibliotéque nationale, Paris, ed. by Loeb, Isidore in “La controverse de 1240 sur le Talmud,” Revue des études juives 3 (1882): 55–57Google Scholar.

82. Donin's claims are detailed in Lat. 16558, fols. 211b–217d, Bibliotéque nationale, Paris, ed. by Loeb, Isidore in “La controverse de 1240 sur le Talmud,” Revue des études juives 2 (1881): 252–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar and 3 (1882): 39–55. For Yeḥiel's rejoinder, see Vikuaḥ Rabbenu Yeḥi'el, ed. Grunbaum, Samuel (Thorn: C. Dombrowski, 1873)Google Scholar; on the varying manuscript versions of Yeḥiel's text, see Galinsky, Judah, “The Different Hebrew Versions of the ‘Talmud Trial’ of 1240 in Paris,” in New Perspectives on Jewish-Christian Relations, ed. Carlebach, Elisheva and Schachter, Jacob J. (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 109–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83. On the situatedness of Jews in medieval urban space, see Haverkamp, Alfred, “Jews and Urban Life: Bonds and Relationships,” in The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages (Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries), ed. Cluse, Christoph (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 55–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haverkamp, , “‘Concivilitas’ von Christen und Juden in Aschkenas im Mittelalter,” in Jüdische Gemeinden und Organisationsformen von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Jütte, Robert (Vienna: Böhlau, 1996), 103–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Jewish exposure to cathedral art in medieval northern Europe, see Rowe, Nina, The Jews, the Cathedral, and the Medieval City: Synagoga and Ecclesia in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84. Teshuvah le-minim, in Bodleian MS 2289, fol. 34b–35a:

אמשול לך משל. למה הדבר דומה? למלך בשר ודם שכתב חרוזה בכותלי היכלו הוו תמים ולא תחטאו. והנה אמר בלבו יש המון עם ונשים וקטנים שאינם יודעים לקרות הכתב, והניח לצייר תחת החרוזה מת מונח על כליבה ואש שורף תחתיו. בציור הזה יבינו כולם החרוזה ושהחרוזה מורה שלא יחטא האדם שלא יהא נידון בגיהנם כמראה בציור הזה. כך הקב"ה כתב בעשרת הדברות לא תעשה לך פסל וכל תמונה ונתן הלוחות בארון. אמר יש נשים וקטנים ועבדים שלא יוכלו לקרות הכתב לא תעשה לך פסל. מה עשה? צוה לעשות ציור על הארון והם הכרובים ראו כזה שצויתי שלא לעשות בפרצופים אילו אם כן הציור והכרובים הם מונעים שעות (צ"ל עשות) עבודה זרה ואינן נחשבים ע"ז.

85. Wieseltier, , Kaddish, 194Google Scholar.

86. Greenblatt, Stephen (Hamlet in Purgatory [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001], 9)Google Scholar has disputed Wieseltier's conclusions somewhat more vigorously: “‘Yet this is, as I say, a coincidence’ … It is not my intention to dispute this flat claim, nor do I have the scholarship to do so, but if it were a coincidence, it would be an almost miraculous one, since many of the texts that Wieseltier cites bear a startling resemblance to the exempla and scholastic arguments of the medieval and early-modern Christians among whom the Jews were dwelling. I suspect, rather, that the long, twisting path that leads back from my father and forefathers passes through the Christianity that seemed to them the embodiment of otherness.” Cf. Raanan Boustan's review of Lehnardt, Qaddish, in Jewish Quarterly Review 97 (2007): 68Google Scholar: “One might have wished that Lehnardt had more explicitly addressed the significance of his study for larger problems in the history of Jewish liturgy. For example, Lehnardt's exclusive emphasis on inner-Jewish cultural processes seems to preclude comparative historical analysis. Might the ambient Christian culture of central Europe—especially the doctrine of purgatory and its attendant practices—account, at least in part, for the cultivation of the Mourner's Kaddish in Ashkenaz? And how might we determine the nature and extent of such influences?”

87. Recent examples include Cohen, Jeremy, Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memory of the First Crusade (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marcus, Ivan, Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Marcus, “A Jewish-Christian Symbiosis,” 448–516; Baumgarten, Elisheva, Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Shoham-Steiner, Ephraim, Ḥarigim ba‘al korḥam: Meshuga‘im u-meẓora‘im bi-ḥevrah ha-Yehudit be-’Europah bi-yemei ha-benayim (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2008)Google Scholar; Fishman, Talya, Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures (Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yuval, Shnei goyyim be-vitnekh.

88. Marcus, Rituals of Childhood, 12.

89. Fishman, Talya, “The Penitential System of the Hasidei Ashkenaz and the Problem of Cultural Boundaries,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 8 (1999): 221–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90. Kushelevsky, Sigufin u-fituyim; Perry, Masoret ve-shinui.

91. This case study may also speak to the relationship that so-called “halakhic” and “aggadic” sources had with one another in the eyes of medieval Jewish authorities. A number of recent scholars have debated the extent to which aggadic precedents played a role in medieval Ashkenazic jurisprudence, focusing their attention on the phenomenon of martyrdom in particular; see the discussion in Soloveitchik, Haym, “Halakhah, Hermeneutics, and Martyrdom in Medieval Ashkenaz,” Jewish Quarterly Review 94 (2004): 77–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But recent developments among scholars of rabbinics suggest that the very terms of the debate may need to be revisited. Drawing on the work of such legal theorists as Robert Cover, Ronald Dworkin, and others, a number of rabbinicists have begun to problematize the very distinction between law and narrative, arguing convincingly that the sharp dichotomy was a creation of later periods of Jewish history (particularly the Geonic era), which the rabbis of late antiquity would not themselves have recognized; see for example Lorberbaum, Yair, Ẓelem ’Elohim: Halakhah ve-’aggadah (Jerusalem: Schocken, 2004)Google Scholar; Barry Scott Wimpfheimer, Narrating the Law: A Poetics of Talmudic Legal Stories (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011)Google Scholar; and the articles collected in Dine Israel 24 (2007). A pioneering attempt to extend this line of inquiry into the medieval sources is Lorberbaum, Yair and Shapira, Haim, “Maimonides' Epistle on Martyrdom in the Light of Legal Philosophy,” Dine Israel 25 (2008): 123–169Google Scholar; Soloveitchik's response followed in Dine Israel 28 (2011): 163–72Google Scholar. Given the prevalence of exempla, theological disquisitions, and other characteristically “aggadic” elements in an array of medieval Ashkenazic works on liturgy and custom, it is worth considering whether the Geonic dichotomy was one that medieval Ashkenazic figures embraced unequivocally, or whether the boundaries between law and narrative might have been understood to be permeable. The fact that many of the early references to the Mourner's Kaddish appear in the writings of figures like Judah b. Eleazar of Worms and others associated with the Ḥasidei Ashkenaz—a group whose “work is replete with new religious dictates encoded in Scripture and aggadah” in general (Soloveitchik, “Halakhah, Hermeneutics, and Martyrdom,” 91)—makes it all the more noteworthy that the custom, and its “aggadic” rationale, spread well beyond Pietistic circles. Further analyses of specific Ashkenazic customs must seek to reconstruct the underlying analytic categories inductively, rather than imposing them a priori. Doing so will allow scholars of Jewish history, law, and folklore to shed further light on the undertheorized concept of “custom” more broadly, and on the intersecting roles played by Halakhah and Aggadah in constituting it.