Eruv Tavshilin: A Scribal Error or Deliberate Reformation?

Eruv Tavshilin:  A Scribal Error or Deliberate Reformation?

by: Dan Rabinowitz

The Washington Haggadah was written by the scribe Joel ben Simon, and is currently housed at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and is available online in a beautiful digital copy. Joel produced the Haggadah in the late 15th century. As so much of the core Hebraica collection at the Library of Congress, the manuscript was sold by Efraim Deinard to the Library probably around 1916. (Deinard was one of the most interesting bookmen in the early 20th century, and we will return to him and his biography in the near future).

In 1965, this haggadah was first printed as part of the Diskin Orphan House Haggadah series. The Library of Congress didn’t publish its facsimile edition until 1991, and last year another facsimile edition of this haggadah was published. Although this haggadah was written close to 300 years before Diskin published it, a significant scribal error escaped notice until that time. Specifically, in the text for eruv tavshilin rather than just saying “with this eruv I am allowed to cook from Yom Yov for Shabbat,” it continues and says “and on Shabbat for Yom Tov.” Eruv tavshilin is designed to permit cooking on the holiday for Shabbat. Of course, cooking is always prohibited on Shabbat, whether or not it follows a holiday. The Washington Haggadah seems to permit what is otherwise prohibited.

This did not escape the eagle eyes of some. They feared that someone might use this haggadah (we note that contrary to the other reproductions mentioned, the Diskin version is a poor copy) and inadvertently think it is permissible to cook on Shabbat. The Agudath Harabbonim took out ads in the Yiddish daily, Der Tag, and the Forward to let its readers know of this error.

The publishers countered the Agudath’s claim and mailed out a letter, with the provocative title, “Heresy or Blunder,” after Passover indicating the error and included a letter from Cecil Roth, who had written about manuscript haggadot.

In his letter, he indicates that, indeed this was most likely unintentional and that Joel did not have a different tradition regarding eruv tavshilin. Indeed, we know from Joel’s other manuscripts, where he records the correct blessing, that the Washington 

Haggadah’s version was simply a scribal error.

NOTE: In 1991, the Library of Congress (where the manuscript resides) published an (expensive) facsimile edition of Washington Haggadah. Myron Weinstein, ed. The Washington Haggadah: A Facsimile Edition of an Illuminated Fifteenth-Century Hebrew Manuscript at the Library of Congress Signed by Joel ben Simeon (Washington, D.C., Library of Congress, 1991). In that volume, the text of the eruv tavshilin is discussed by Mordechai Glatzer, “The Ashkenazi and Italian Haggadah and the Haggadot of Joel ben Simon,” 157. The Washington Haggadah was recently republished in a much more affordable format and includes articles by David Stern and one, if not the foremost expert on illustrations in Haggadot, Katrin Kogman-Appel see here for her Academia page). The Washington Haggadah: Copied and Illustrated by Joel ben Simeon (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011). See here for a video presentation by Kogman-Appel and Stern delivered at the Library of Congress.