While teaching my undergraduate course on The Ten Commandments this semester, I came upon the following passage in a sermon that Augustine preached in Carthage in 401:
And you, you despise him who is equal to the Father and one with the Father. You are told to observe the sabbath spiritually, not in the way the Jews observe the sabbath in worldly idleness. They like the free time to spend on their frivolities and extravagances. The Jew would do better doing some useful work on his land instead of joining in faction fights at the stadium. And their women would do better spinning wool on the sabbath than dancing shamelessly all day on their balconies. (Sermons on the Old Testament, 9.4)
The twin accusations at the heart of this passage – that Jewish abstention from work on the Sabbath was lazy and that the Jews observe the law in a fleshly rather than spiritual manner – were common in antiquity. As I am now (hopefully) finishing up my book on lived religion in Late Antiquity, though, the specifics piqued my interest: On the Sabbath, the Jewish men would go to the stadium and the women dance on balconies. How are we to understand such testimony?
In her comments on this passage in her magisterial book, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism, Paula Fredriksen observes that here, as elsewhere, it is difficult to know whether Augustine is mentioning something true about the local Jewish community or whether he is simply fabricating or repeating slanders (pp. 306-12). He repeats both observations elsewhere in his writing (On Psalms, 32.2; 50.1; 91.2). On the one hand, by depicting Jews as doing things that Christians would have regarded as shameful (especially the women exposing themselves, even properly dressed, to public eyes), the reports perhaps too conveniently support his charge that Jews are carnal, as opposed to the more spiritual Christians. On the other hand, it is reasonable to think that at least some Jewish men did go to watch the fighting at the stadium. (This reminds me of funny piece by Shalom Auslander some years ago about going to a hockey game on the Sabbath.)
The dancing women are more puzzling. At least later, in Morocco, Jewish houses were distinguished by their windows and balconies; Muslims tended to avoid windows in order to maintain privacy. I wonder if there is a hint of that practice from much earlier, complete with a whiff of scandalous behavior. This would not account for the dancing, of course. Could Jewish women have gathered on their balconies on Shabbat and danced, out of joy or in order to pass the time? Why not?
