The Jewish Alchemists: A History and Source Book.

• Author: Langermann, Y. Tzvi

This is a work of antiquarianism, not one of professional scholarship. The positive implications of this characterization are the following: Patai has invested considerable energy in tracking down a wide range of materials, both published and unpublished; he has employed considerable linguistic and chemical expertise in translating and interpreting the documents that have come to his attention; and he has displayed some erudition in describing the immediate historical circumstances surrounding their composition. The negative implications - setting aside for the moment certain errors and omissions which may also be found in academic publications - radiate from the basic contextual questions that Patai does not even bother to ask. Jews have participated in many, many cultures over the ages - and by that I include cultures defined by research interests, such as science, and not just those based on common language and territorial settings; and of course Jews have developed many cultures of their own. How does alchemy tie into any of these cultures? Is there anything intrinsic in the values and traditions of Judaism that can help us understand Jewish interest, or lack thereof, in alchemy? How does the interest in alchemy displayed by the figures portrayed in Patai's book connect to their Jewishness, if at all? These questions are entirely ignored. There are a few general observations, added almost in passing, by way of suggested explanations of specific occurrences, but these are not developed, and, indeed, are buried within the book in a manner which indicates that they are of only marginal interest to the author. I do not mean to delegitimize Patai's effort; there is nothing wrong with an anthology of texts relating to alchemy, written by authors who were, or are reputed to have been, Jewish by birth or by ancestry, if not in practice. This sort of undertaking assuredly has its own audience, and its antiquarian investigations may be of value to historians. But it is not history.

It emerges from the introduction that Patai is, to say the least, highly unsatisfied with academic treatments of the subject, which, he asserts, have consistently downplayed Jewish interest in alchemy for apologetical reasons. By contrast, Jewish historical consciousness, stretching over "some fifteen centuries" has "generally emphasized the seminal role Jews played in alchemy" (p. 10). Some recent "revisionist views" (Patai is quite murky on this point) have sought to...