Judah he-Ḥasid and the Tosafists of Northern France

Abstract

Recent scholarship has suggested that teachings and practices of the German Pietists permeated Tosafist circles in the Rhineland and elsewhere in Germany. This study demonstrates that there were intellectual and methodological contacts between the Pietists and the Tosafists of northern France as well, in the areas of talmudic studies and Jewish law. Judah he-Ḥasid offered interpretations that were known in the study hall of Isaac (Ri) of Dampierre (d. 1189); passages found in northern French Tosafot parallel other interpretations and derivations associated with Judah; Judah’s main Pietist student commented and critiqued Tosafot to tractate Bava Qamma that were produced in Ri’s study hall; and halakhic rulings and traditions put forward by Judah are cited and followed by thirteenth-century Tosafists in northern France such as Isaac b. Joseph and Perez of Corbeil. All of this suggests that what separated the Pietists and Tosafists even in northern France has to be formulated in a more nuanced fashion.