MODERN EXCOMMUNICATION

Changing Community

In 1848, the leaders of the Jewish community in Izmir, Turkey faced the complex challenge of adapting to modern times. The Tanzimat reforms that had begun in 1839 had, on the one hand, stripped the community of its enforcement powers. It could no longer compel people to follow communal rules. On the other hand, the failed tax reforms had caused great difficulties in funding the community’s services, requiring a tax increase. How could the community raise much-needed funds from angry members?

To add to this challenge, Christian missionaries were using the anti-establishment sentiments to convert Jews. They held services on Saturday in which the sermons regularly denounced the rabbis and leaders of the community. They handed out missionary literature and paid Jews to attend. They also assisted Jews in suing communal leadership to free themselves of the tax burden. The newfound autonomy combined with outside opportunists posed a serious danger to the community.

Harsh Punishment

In response, Rav Chaim Palaggi — an outstanding Torah scholar who, at the age of 60, was mature but not yet a communal elder — issued an excommunication against any Jews who attend Christian services, enter the homes of missionaries or invite missionaries into their own homes. Rav Palaggi published a responsum providing detailed sources for his excommunication and obtained written agreement from Rav Yehoshua Avraham Crispin, an elderly scholarly in Izmir (Both letters are published in Rav Nissim Avraham Ashkenazi, Ma’aseh Avraham (Izmir, 1855), no. 27).

Rav Palaggi’s arguments are straightforward. These Jews attend what is effectively a church on Saturday, where they take money and missionary material. They listen to missionary sermons, send their kids to Christian classes and kiss the missionary’s hand after he praises Jesus. Additionally, they encourage defamation of communal leadership and sue them in secular court rather than in a beis din, Jewish religious court. His arguments are quite compelling.

Leading in Silence

And yet, despite all that, a local beis din objected to the excommunication. Leading the dissent was Rav Nissim Avraham Ashkenazi. Rav Ashkenazi wrote a response to Rav Palaggi’s explanation of the excommunication, nearly five times as long. Most of the response consists of analyzing at length, sometimes quibbling with, each of Rav Palaggi’s arguments. Sometimes, Rav Ashkenazi points out dissenting views while still agreeing with Rav Palaggi’s conclusions. However, he quotes Rav Chaim Benveniste, the great 17th century Izmir scholar (author of the classic work, Kenesses Ha-Gedolah), who wrote that people cannot be excommunicated for following a minority opinion.

Other times, Rav Ashkenazi disagrees with Rav Palaggi. For example, he argues that some of the prohibitions against associating with missionaries apply only to missionaries of Jewish lineage, not to gentile missionaries. He also points out the impossibility of suing the communal leadership in religious court. The judges inherently have a conflict of interest. Therefore, Rav Ashkenazi argues, there are no possible religious judges and the people can take the matter to a secular court.

However, the real disagreement lies at the end of the treatise. Despite all of his argumentation about specific points, Rav Ashkenazi agrees that these Jews deserve excommunication for their flagrant violation of Shabbos in taking money from missionaries and for kissing the missionary’s hand in approval of his blessings in the name of Jesus. While excommunication is appropriate, it is impossible. The Tanzimat reforms stripped the community of its ability to enforce excommunication. Since the community cannot punish these sinners, the rabbis should refrain from condemning them. While, of course, their acts are forbidden and they should repent, they should not be subject to condemnation or repercussion. Without power of enforcement, rabbis should remain silent to public transgressions.

Active Leadership

A number of years later, after Rav Ashkenazi published his treatise, Rav Palaggi wrote a rebuttal, which he included in his 1873 collection of responsa, Chaim Be-Yad, no. 35). Rav Palaggi takes strong issue with many of Rav Ashkenazi’s arguments. Even if we differentiate between Jewish and gentile missionaries, in this case the missionaries were Jews, and therefore demand strict treatment. Taking agreement of all the rabbis to a communal policy as permission to challenge it in a secular court is absurd. It undermines all communal decisions.

More importantly, these sins are so troubling that they cannot be ignored. When Jews flirt with foreign religions, communal leaders must protest. If they do not lead in crisis, how can they be considered leaders? Rav Palaggi says that we should respect the Jewish public. When their rabbinic leadership objects wholeheartedly, people take notice and respond accordingly.

Rav Ashkenazi had argued that the excommunication did not work because the people affected maintained their normal status in the community. Rav Palaggi responded that, despite the unenforceability of the excommunication, it worked. After the rabbis protested, all but two of the Jews stopped attending the missionary church and the two who continued followed rabbis who refused to object.

When strong condemnations such as excommunication are used as an everyday tool, they lose their power to shock people into reconsidering their actions. Sadly, we see this too often in our pashkevil-filled world. However, when used judiciously, rabbinic condemnations can penetrate even the hearts of cynics operating in the shadow of communal politics and tax burdens. Sometimes the nuclear option is necessary and effective, not as a punishment, but as a cry of pain.