74 – Interpretation: reading and taking notes
stratification among late medieval Jews will provide the necessary
social grounding to strengthen and make more intelligible Castro’s
pioneering study of the Jewish presence in Spanish literature. Castro,
incidentally, wisely observed that class stratification among
Christians strongly affected the different relationships of members of
that caste to the Jews.
(9) In assessing the variety and range of cultural elements exchanged,
we must recognize that these did not merely include vocabulary,
techniques, or manners of speech, dress or diet, and that
acculturation involved conscious shifts of the most subtle and
intimate nature. For example, in northern Europe, Jews living among
Christians acquired from them a distinctive consciousness of self that
distinguished both groups from their coreligionists in the
Mediterranean world. Any notion that borrowing across cultural
boundaries is merely superficial is wishful thinking. The image of a
sealed, pristine, pure, and uncontaminated culture that ethnic
groups typically ascribe to themselves (even if only to lament its
loss) is contrary not only to all the evidence but to everyday
experience. There are no cultural isolates, not in remote
jungles, and much less in the cosmopolitan towns of medieval
Spain.
(10) In both al-Andalus and Christian Spain the dominant caste wanted to
isolate minorities religiously but not economically, creating an
inevitable tension in intergroup relations. This tension, however,
opened up avenues for cultural interchange by making the market a
place where ethnic distinctions mattered less than in other walks of
life. A similar tension is revealed in the ethnic exclusivity of
[craftsmen’s] guilds. Meyerson notes that Christian guilds in late
medieval Valencia feared revealing their technological secrets to
Muslim rivals, at least in periods when the rattle of war could be
heard from the frontier. Muslims conveyed similar fears: thus ibn
‘Abd¯ un, in his treatise on regulation of the market, warns Muslims
against selling books of science to Jews or Christians. Such
strictures, however, more than likely reflect the intensity of technical
and scientific interchange that attracted the attention of religious
zealots but was impossible to stop.
stratification among late medieval Jews will provide the necessary
social grounding to strengthen and make more intelligible Castro’s
pioneering study of the Jewish presence in Spanish literature. Castro,
incidentally, wisely observed that class stratification among
Christians strongly affected the different relationships of members of
that caste to the Jews.
(9) In assessing the variety and range of cultural elements exchanged,
we must recognize that these did not merely include vocabulary,
techniques, or manners of speech, dress or diet, and that
acculturation involved conscious shifts of the most subtle and
intimate nature. For example, in northern Europe, Jews living among
Christians acquired from them a distinctive consciousness of self that
distinguished both groups from their coreligionists in the
Mediterranean world. Any notion that borrowing across cultural
boundaries is merely superficial is wishful thinking. The image of a
sealed, pristine, pure, and uncontaminated culture that ethnic
groups typically ascribe to themselves (even if only to lament its
loss) is contrary not only to all the evidence but to everyday
experience. There are no cultural isolates, not in remote
jungles, and much less in the cosmopolitan towns of medieval
Spain.
(10) In both al-Andalus and Christian Spain the dominant caste wanted to
isolate minorities religiously but not economically, creating an
inevitable tension in intergroup relations. This tension, however,
opened up avenues for cultural interchange by making the market a
place where ethnic distinctions mattered less than in other walks of
life. A similar tension is revealed in the ethnic exclusivity of
[craftsmen’s] guilds. Meyerson notes that Christian guilds in late
medieval Valencia feared revealing their technological secrets to
Muslim rivals, at least in periods when the rattle of war could be
heard from the frontier. Muslims conveyed similar fears: thus ibn
‘Abd¯ un, in his treatise on regulation of the market, warns Muslims
against selling books of science to Jews or Christians. Such
strictures, however, more than likely reflect the intensity of technical
and scientific interchange that attracted the attention of religious
zealots but was impossible to stop.