Review of Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight

by Eli Faber
Book Reviewed
Book Title
Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight
Book Author
Eli Faber
Book Publisher
New York University Press
Place of Publication
Year
1998
ISBN
Book Review Citation
Review Author
Ralph A. Austen
Year
2000
Publication
The Journal of Religion
Volume
80
Issue
2
Pages
358-359
Publisher
Language
English
License
Select License
URL
Updated
September 26th, 2012
Abstract

The Journal of Religion

rational verification: "In the end, Rabbinic authority is a matter of trust; tradi- tional Jews have faith that what the talmudic Sages said was either exactly what God told Moses orally (and in this case, the trust must extend as well to believing that the oral traditions have been transmitted in an unadulterated form) or was the precise and accurate application of valid hermeneutic principles to the divine text" (p. 95).

Berger turns to '"the other side' of the relational notion of authority, namely, the people" (p. 98) in part 3 in order to think about the ways in which the Sages exerted influence over later generations of Jews. Berger argues that what is called "Rabbinic authority" is best understood as "authority transformed," be it to the authority of Jewish tradition, of the practices instituted by the Sages and accepted as normative by the Jewish community, or to that of a text, the Babylonian Tal- mud. It is not, Berger suggests, the authority of the Sages as such that the term "Rabbinic authority" denotes but the authority of the traditions that they insti- tuted and the text that developed from their discussions and deliberations, and which became the locus for subsequent Jewish legal thinking.

Berger concludes with a discussion on the nature of authority within inter- pretative communities. Drawing on the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stanley Fish, Berger determines that authority "is really embedded in a form of life that has its own set of beliefs, assumptions, convictions, values, and practices. Rabbinic authority-or any authority of this sort-cannot exist outside this con- text; the effort to analyze 'authority' in some disembodied form is, in a serious sense, an ill-fated enterprise" (p. 150). In the end, Berger claims that what is needed is a description of the way authority is constructed within a religious com- munity rather than a justification of it. This, one realizes, is no longer a strictly philosophical exercise. The forms of life of Jewish communities that lived and continue to live according to their particular understandings of the Rabbinic tra- dition are what deserve to be studied in all of their complexity: social, economic, political, textual, legal, and religious. Such a project might well take advantage of the vast body of theoretical scholarship on the nature of authority, its relation to discourse, persuasion, and violence, which Berger, for the most part, avoids. This is a prescription for some difficult and complex historical work, a project for which Berger's often illuminating discussion might serve as a profitable overture. JEROMEE. COPULSKY,

Chicago, Illinois.

Eli Faber's book is a "study of the extent to which Jews in the British empire participated in the African slave trade and owned slaves" (p. ix). As indicated in the subtitle, Faber undertook this study in response to an earlier book produced by the Historical Research Department of the Nation of Islam (The Secret Relation- ship between Black and Jews [Boston, 1991]), which claims to uncover a dominant Jewish role in the Atlantic slave trade. Fortunately, Faber spends little time dis- cussing this already much-attacked work; his aim is rather to provide a level of quantitative documentation lacking in earlier critiques.

In its own terms, this effort is a clear success. Faber has thoroughly and inge- niously explored a huge body of documentation in England, the Caribbean, and North America. His researches reveal how very small (both proportionally and

Book Reviews

absolutely) the participation of Jews was in either slave-trading chartered compa- nies, individual voyages, slave brokerage, or slave ownership (whether on planta- tions or in urban households). The careers of the few prominent Jewish figures in the slave trade (e.g., Aaron Lopez of Newport and the Lindo family of Jamaica) are treated at length but do nothing to alter the larger picture, even within their own geographic areas of operation.

Faber's results should not surprise anyone, although it is useful to have them produced in such clear and compact form (the text runs only to p. 146, followed by extensive notes, bibliography, and thirteen appendices on methods and sources). In his conclusion (p. 145) the author himself raises a question that sug- gests that he may not have addressed the most serious historiographic issues about Jews and the slave trade: why did members of "an ethnolinguistic network that spanned the Atlantic" not participate more fully in such a rich commerce, against which they never expressed any moral qualms?

A possible answer to this query may be that Jews did play a more significant role in the slave trade than Faber's numbers indicate, but not in the places where he looked. This is because Faber focuses his primary research almost entirely on the British empire, which was unquestionably the largest market for slaves in the early modern Atlantic economy. Within this realm (as well as that of its major rival, France) Jews were a very small population and, as Faber shows, often sub- jected to discrimination that limited their economic opportunities. However, as Faber also notes (but almost entirely from secondary sources), Jewish refugees from Iberian persecution did play a more important role in earlier Dutch slave- trading and sugar-planting ventures in northern Brazil, Surinam, and Curacao. Moreover, we know from other sources (including an unpublished paper by Sey- mour Drescher) that Christian converts of Jewish descent played a dominant role in the still earlier Portuguese slave-trading system.

Even taken together, these Dutch and Portuguese slave trades did not equal the scale of later British commerce, but they did provide the basis for the latter, and it is possible that Jewish Atlantic connections were critical to this transition. However, the pursuit of such a question requires not only different data than that produced by Faber but also a different kind of analysis. Empirically, we need to know more about the role of the Dutch in encouraging British and French sugar planting ventures and what links, if any, there were between Portuguese-speaking Sephardi Jewish communities in Holland, the Dutch colonies (and even the Brit- ish colonies), and the New Christians involved in Portuguese slave trading and sugar cultivation (this may be, as one of my students has remarked, the real "se- cret relationship" or perhaps nonrelationship in this history). Finally, the slave- trading activities of New Christians, even if we assume that they had no connec- tions to their "ethnolinguistic" brethren in the Dutch empire, raise an issue par- ticularly appropriate to scholars of religion: on what basis should they be consid- ered Jews?

Between Farrakhan and Faber it is obviously the latter whose record of Jews and Atlantic slavery sets scholarship on a straighter path. However, the topic itself is somewhat circuitous, and its study must extend beyond the polemics of one side and the statistics of the other.

RALPHA. AUSI-EN,University of Chicago.

FABEK,ELI.Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight. Reappraisals in Jewish Social and Intellectual History. New York: New York University Press, 1998. xviii+367 pp. $27.95 (cloth).

Set your country here to find out accurate prices
Country:

Seller Condition Item Price Shipping Total Cost
AmazonNewUS$ 22.50 US$ 3.99US$ 26.49
AlibrisUS$ 12.92 US$ 3.50US$ 16.42
AlibrisGood Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy!US$ 13.94 US$ 3.50US$ 17.44
AlibrisGood 0814726380 X-library in mylar with the usual marks. Minimal wear present.US$ 13.95 US$ 3.50US$ 17.45
AlibrisLike New NYU Press, 08/01/1998, Hardcover, Like New condition. Very Good dust jacket.US$ 17.50 US$ 3.50US$ 21.00
AlibrisFine in Near fine jacket First printing, 1998. Hardcover, in a dust jacket, 366 pp. A fine copy in a near fine jacket.US$ 21.00 US$ 3.50US$ 24.50
AlibrisUsedGood Good Condition item. We strive to provide the best shopping experience with every item we sell. Satisfaction guaranteed! ! Ships from US. Please allow 1-3 weeks for delivery outside US.US$ 24.57 US$ 3.50US$ 28.07
AlibrisFair Buy with confidence. Excellent Customer Service & Return policy.US$ 25.39 US$ 3.50US$ 28.89
AlibrisGood Expedited shipping is available for this item!US$ 31.50 US$ 3.50US$ 35.00
AlibrisGood Expedited shipping is available for this item!US$ 35.45 US$ 3.50US$ 38.95
AlibrisUS$ 82.80 US$ 3.50US$ 86.30
AlibrisUS$ 104.47 US$ 3.50US$ 107.97
AlibrisUS$ 131.06 US$ 3.50US$ 134.56
AlibrisUS$ 152.24 US$ 3.50US$ 155.74
  • Recommend Us