The Writings of R. Hayyim Dov Ber Gulevsky – Part I

The Writings of R. Hayyim Dov Ber Gulevsky – Part I

Marc B. Shapiro

In honor of Dan Rabinowitz, in appreciation of his commitment to the free and open exchange of ideas.

In a previous post I mentioned the new writings of R. Kook and also the works of R. Hayyim Dov Ber Gulevsky. I would like to speak about both of them before returning to my discussions of Judaism and Christianity.

Let me begin with R. Gulevsky, who obviously is not as well known as R. Kook, although he does have his own important yichus. He was born in Brisk where his grandfather was the famous R. Simcha Zelig Rieger, who served as dayan in the city. (Professor Sara Regeuer of Brooklyn College is also a descendant.) R. Simcha Zelig was descended from R. Hayyim of Volozhin’s brother, R. Simcha, for whom Gulevsky’s grandfather was named. Gulevsky is also descended from R. Hayyim of Volozhin.[1] A picture of the young Gulevsky and R. Simcha Zelig is found in the recently published Iggerot Maran ha-Griz, p. 174.

Stories of R. Simcha Zelig’s relationship with R. Hayyim Soloveitchik and R. Velvel are legendary. While R. Hayyim and R. Velvel focused on theoretical Torah study, R. Simcha Zelig was an expert in practical halakhah. It was because of this that R. Hayyim brought him from Volozhin to Brisk. Unfortunately, his many responsa were lost during the Holocaust, in which he was also killed. One interesting point about R. Hayyim and R. Simcha Zelig is that neither of them wore rabbinic garb. Here is a painting of both of them (made from famous pictures) found in Gulevsky’s home.

Gulevsky’s parents were also killed in the Holocaust, as was the rest of the city of Brisk. Fortunately, he was not there when the Nazis arrived, and was able to make it to Japan with R. Aaron Kotler and around fourteen other Kletzk students, where he spent the war years. (Before studying in Kletzk, Gulevsky was in Kaminetz.) On the slow journey by train across the Soviet Union, four people slept in a compartment, and Gulevsky shared one with R. Aaron and his wife and daughter. He is also mentioned in one of the letters R. Aaron sent from America to the Kletzk students in Shanghai.[2] Following the War Gulevsky came to the United States where he studied in Lakewood. One can hear his recollections (in Yiddish) of R. Aaron Kotler here. For his eulogy of R. Aaron, see Ha-Darom (Nisan 5723), pp. 40-42.

Gulevsky taught at Yeshiva University’s Teacher’s Institute for a number of years, as well as at the religious Zionist Bachad (Berit Halutzim Datiyim) school in Jamesburg, N. J. This school existed in the early 1950’s and combined Torah study with preparation for agricultural settlement in the Land of Israel (hachsharah). Incredible as it sounds, Gulevsky might be the only living native of Brisk in the United States who was part of the city’s Torah community. (I am not referring to those who left Brisk as children and have no real memories of it. In Israel some of the children of R. Velvel are still alive, and R. Aharon Leib Steinman was born in Brisk.)

Here he is, in a picture that could be used if anyone wants to make a gadol card.

Here he is with the indefatigable Menachem Butler.

Gulevsky’s writings are quite interesting and reveal information not found elsewhere. Before looking at them, however, I should note that some readers might recognize his name, without knowing who he is. He is the rav ha-machshir on two Indian vegetarian restaurants in Manhattan, Madras Mahal and Chennai. I first ate at Madras Mahal not too long ago, at a surprise birthday party for Sharon Flatto. Sharon is a professor at Brooklyn College whose doctoral dissertation on R. Yehezkel Landau, the Noda bi-Yehuda, will soon be published by my favorite press, Littman Library.[3]

She is married to my good friend, Rabbi Ysoscher Katz, who teaches at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. I believe R. Ysoscher has the distinction of being the youngest maggid shiur ever to complete the daf yomi cycle. This happened a number of years ago when he “said the daf” at the Agudas Yisrael shul in Boro Park. This was also the largest daf yomi in the country, with some seventy-five people in attendance. He took over the shiur of R. Simcha Elberg, who taught it for many years. Although R. Ysoscher no longer teaches there, the shiur continues and I am told that it is the longest running daf yomi in the country.

Returning to Gulevsky, over the years he has published a good deal, and much of his writings have been collected into two volumes. Here are the title pages of these books.

Although not noted on the title page, included in the Arba’ah Sefarim Niftanim is his Lahat Herev ha-Mithapekhet, first published in 1976. Here is the title page.

This volume is significant as it the first detailed defense of R. Hayyim Soloveitchik against the criticisms of the Chazon Ish. As should be expected from one who grew up in Brisk and whose family is so connected to the Soloveitchiks, Gulevsky views the defense of R. Hayyim as a holy task. However, I wonder if there any truth to the following statement he makes:

והנה בשלהי קיץ שנת תשל”ה, שמוע שמעתי שיצאו אנשים בלתי הגונים, ולא שמעו לקול הורים ומורים, ולמשפחת הגאון החסיד צדיק יסוד עולם בעל החזון איש, והוציאו במרמה נגד רצונם את ההשגות שהחסיד הנ”ל רשם על ספר חדושי רבינו חיים הלוי והדפיסו את זה יחד עם הספר חדושי רבינו חיים הלוי.

Even if it is true that the Chazon Ish never intended to publish his notes, is that any reason for them not to be printed? Didn’t the Netziv tell the Wuerzberger Rav’s son not to pay attention to his father’s wish that his writings not be published, since the Torah thoughts that he developed were not to be regarded as his personal possession to the extent that he could prevent others from studying what he wrote?[4] Furthermore, is there any evidence that the Chazon Ish was opposed to his criticism of R. Hayyim appearing in print? (The selections of the Chazon Ish’s Emunah u-Bitahon that were embargoed for so long are now widely available, and are even included [but not translated] in the new translation of the book that just appeared.)

The problem confronting anyone who studies the Chazon Ish’s life is that there are so many contradictory stories about him and what he said that one must be skeptical of much of what is reported. For example, how many different versions are there of the famous meeting between him and Ben Gurion, with some even describing how he never looked directly at Ben Gurion so as not to state at the face of a wicked one? Yet in all the descriptions of the meeting it never mentioned that the only people in attendance were Ben Gurion, Chazon Ish, and Yitzhak Navon. In other words, many of the descriptions of what was said are based on wishful thinking and fantasies, and no doubt there are some intentional falsifications as well. For Navon’s recollection of the meeting, see Binyamin Brown’s doctoral dissertation,[5] appendix, pp. 1-5.

In my last post, I mentioned Gulevsky’s negative comments about Samuel Belkin. I have to say that, unfortunately, one also finds passages in his writings that are disrespectful of gedolim. For example, although Gulevsky sometimes refers to R. Kook as a gaon, elsewhere, in his discussion of shemitah, he writes as follows (Shabbat Shabbaton, p. 100):

והנה החכם קוק כאשר יצא להוריד קדושת דברי קבלה (כדי שזה יעזור לו להוריד החשיבות של המצוות שקבלו בשטר האמנה, שנאמרו בנחמיה).

R. Goren gets even harsher treatment (Mi-Meged Givot Olam, p. 285):

ההגהה הזאת קץ וסוף לקונטרס מהדורא קמא סתירת ההיתר של הגאון החסיד גדול הקבלה מרן נפתלי הירץ מיפו. תחילה וראש לקונטרס על קדושת הר הבית והמקדש בזמן הזה. ולהבדיל רבבות ומליונים הבדלות בין איש קדוש וטהור מיפו, ובין משוקץ ומתועב נשמה טמאה במ”ט פעם מ”ט שערי טומאה וזוהמא הצנחן והצחנן ר”ל.

R. Moshe Feinstein also does not escape unscathed (Mi-Mekor Yisrael, p. 58):

ומפני שרב ישיש אחד פה במדינה הזאת שגה ברואה ופרץ גדרו של עולם להבדיל בין ישראל לעמים מפני שאינו יודע להבדיל וכו’. ורצה להתיר להזריע זרע נכרים ברחם רחמתים בנותיו של אברהם אבינו ר”ל.

Gulevsky’s writings are full of points of historical interest, especially about the teachings of his grandfather. Just to give some examples, he reports that his grandfather refused to void the herem of R. Gershom even when dealing with a moredet, as long as all that was required to get her to agree to a divorce was a significant monetary payment (Shabbat Shabbaton, p. 294).

In Shabbat Shabbaton, p. 307, he tells us that the great rabbis of Brisk, from early days, were supporters of Torah im Derekh Eretz, not of the Hirschian variety, but that people should work for a living. They didn’t like the kollel system in Eretz Yisrael where everyone was supported by charity, as it led to corruption and thievery.

In an article on Hasidic shehitah [6] he tells us that that last two shohetim in Brisk (appointed by his grandfather) were hasidim. One was a follower of the Kotzker and the other was a Lubavitcher. Yet they were obligated to follow R. Simcha Zelig’s instructions. He also writes as follows, with reference to an earlier era:

בבריסק דליטא שחטו רק בשני צדדים. וזה היה אחת מהסיבות שחסידי קוצק יצאו במחלוקת נגד בעל בית הלוי. הלכו ועשו סעודה בעיר טערעספוליע מעבר לנהר בוג, ובגאוה וגאון לקחו שוחט מביאלא ששחט עם חלף מצד אחד ועשו סעודה גדולה. וכבר נדפס בהרבה מקומות, ואני בעצמי שמעתי את זה מהגרי”ז רבה האחרון בריסק דליטא, שכאשר התחילו לברך שיר המעלות לפני ברכת המזון, בא רץ מיוחד על סוס שנתחלפו הבשר וזה היתה טריפה.

With regard to hasidim, it is quite unusual that a Litvak like Gulevsky has such knowledge of the hasidic world and its personalities. A number of his articles dealing with the Ruzhin dynasty have appeared in the journal Mesilot. As with most such studies, there is a great deal of oral history (including from R. Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Kapitchenetzer Rebbe,[7] and R. Yohanan Perlow, the Karlin-Stolin Rebbe.[8]).

Gulevsky states that R Simcha Zelig ruled that if a child has a fever of 39 degrees Celsius (which equals 102.2 degrees Fahrenheit) one should immediately violate Shabbat to do whatever needs to be done (Nishmat Hayyim, p. 60). This is very much in line with how R. Hayyim ruled in similar cases. The Rav himself told the following story: As a child he was visiting R. Hayyim and on Friday night there was a problem with his throat. A doctor was summoned and little Joseph Baer opened his mouth. R. Hayyim asked the doctor if he needed more light to see better. The doctor replied “that is not a bad idea.” Immediately R. Hayyim ordered the Rav’s father, R. Moshe, to raise the flame on the light. R. Moshe hesitated. After all, it was Shabbat and the doctor didn’t actually say that he needed more light. R. Hayyim turned to R. Simcha Zelig and said, about R. Moshe, “He is an am ha-aretz.” R. Hayyim asked R. Simcha Zelig to turn up the flame, and he did so without hesitation.[9]

Gulevsky also tells the following story of his grandfather and R. Velvel (Nishmat Hayyim, p. 144):

זכורני שאאזמו”ר הגאון החסיד קדוש ישראל אביר הרועים בכל גלילותינו ועמוד ההראה מרן שמחה זליג זצוק”ל הי”ד היה מספר, שהרופא ומנתח המפורסם דר. אהרן סאלובייציג שאל את רבינו הגדול מרן אור החיים מבריסק דליטא, כיצד מותר לאכול כל הדברים החמוצים כחלב חמוץ וחומץ, הלוא ידוע שתהליך של החמצה, זהו על ידי תולעים שקצים ורמשים שרואים אותם במיקרוסקופ. והשיב לו רבינו הגדול שהתורה אסרה רק שקצים ורמשים שנראים בעינים. ואאזמו”ר זצוק”ל הי”ד הוסיף באותו מעמד, שאסור להתחשב במראות דמים עם המיקרוסקופ, והסכים לזה רבינו הגדול. שוב זכורני שמרן הגרי”ז הלוי הביא מיקרוסקופ עם מודד, שמדדו את הרבוע של תפילין. הגרי”ז שאל את אאזמו”ר זצוק”ל הי”ד מה דעתו על זה. והשיב לו אאזמו”ר זצוק”ל הי”ד שרבוע של תפילין צריך להיות נראה לעינים, ומה שפחות מזה אינו מעלה ואינו מוריד.

Let me quote at length the following, which is also mentioned by the Rav. Interestingly, the Rav is more sympathetic to the gedolim who opposed R. Hayyim. He states that “from a political and practical perspective, and as an emergency measure, no doubt the majority was correct.”[10] Gulevsky completely disagrees with this evaluation. Also, notice how the Habad rabbi responded to R. Hayyim – how times have changed! (Mi-Mekor Yisrael, p. 33):

ושמעתי מאאזמו”ר הגאון החסיד זצוק”ל הי”ד, שבשנת תר”ע באסיפה הגדולה שהיתה בעיר הבירה פטרבורג, שר הפנים הרוסי רצה שהיהודים יתקנו תקנות לעצמם. ועמדה שאלה על הפרק שרצו לתקן מי שלא נמול בין שאביו לא מל אותו ובין שהוא לא מל את עצמו, שאינו שייך לעם ישראל ואסור לקבור אותו בקבר ישראל. והרבה מגדולי ישראל (ואני חושב שהיום פשוט חרפה ובושה להזכיר את שמם, כי זו היתה מזימה מהממשלה הרוסית, ששכבה הקטנה של המתבוללים ביותר, והרבה מהם היו אינטלקטואלים, שפשוט ימירו את דתם כי אין להם בית הקברות בין היהודים. אולם רבינו הגדול שהיה חכם החכמים ונבון הנבונים עמד על זה גם מצד ההלכה וגם מצד פקחות) תמכו בזה. ורבינו הגדול לחם נגדם כארי, ולא נתן בשום אופן לבצע את זה. ואחד מרבני חב”ד טען לרבינו הגדול הלא הערלים רובם דרובם מחללי שבתות בפרהסיא ודינם כנכרים בין כה ובין כה. והשיב לו רבינו הגדול במקרה שמחללי שבתות בפרהסיא רוצים להמיר את דתם או שמסיתים למחללי שבתות להמיר את דתם, אנחנו חייבים למסור את נפשנו כדי למנוע את זה. ודבריו פשוטים שמחלל שבתות בפרהסיא עוד אינו מומר לכל דיני תורה, וכן מין גמור וכופר בעיקר ר”ל.

והנה לפני מלחמת העולם השניה ראש הבונדיסטים בפולין מר וו. א. שם רשעים ירקב, התחתן עם יהודיה נתינת צרפת ולא רצה למול את בנו והקהילה קדושה בווארשא לחמו בכל כוחותיהם שלא להכיר בבן הערל כחלק מהקהל היהודית, והטעם שפחדו שמאות בונדיסטים חס ושלום יפסיקו למול את בניהו. . . והשיב לו אאזמו”ר זצוק”ל הי”ד, שאנחנו חייבים למסור את נפשנו גם בזה שמינים וכופרים בעיקר לא יפסיקו חס ושלום למול את בניהם.

Here is his description of Shanghai, which I don’t think will appear in any of the popular histories designed to appeal to the haredi world (Perah Shoshanah Adumah, p. 186):

ובשנות ראינו רעה בזמן המלחמה, בני הישיבות נצלו ממות ר”ל, על ידי שהוגלו בדיוטא התחתונה של הטומאה בגלות שאנגחיי ר”ל. עיר הזאת היתה שיא וראש הפסגה של ניאוף וטומאה ר”ל. ובכלל לא היה שם חוקי משפחה, בבחינת איש כל הישר בעיניו יעשה. וזה כפי הנראה היה הגלות מכפרת עלינו ר”ל.

He then describes an unusual case that came up:

פעם אחת מאוחר בליל מוצאי שבת, לפתע פתאום, האמריקאים חדרו יותר מאלף וחמש מאות קילאמטר באויר, וזרקו פצצה חזקה מאד, והפציצו באי מעבר השני של הנהר, ונהרגו הרבה אנשים. אחד מהאברכים, שהיה תלמיד חכם, וזה היה אחרי חצות, היה עם אשתו לקיים מצוה עונה. הפצצה הזאת נפלה לפתע פתאום, והפציצה מחסן נשק עצום באי מעבר הנהר ממולנו. וכבין רגע נשמע התפוצצות איומה. מרוב פחד אשתו נעשית נדה מיד, והבעל התבלבל לגמרי, וכפי הנראה עבר באונס על עשה שבנדה, שפרש באבר מקושה ר”ל. אשתו מרוב פחד ומהרגשת האיסור התעלפה כמה פעמים. מחוגי הליטאים והרב מ”ר [11] שהיה מלפנים אב”ד דסיניי, פסק בפשיטות, שלא עברו על שום נדנוד איסור, כי אונס כזה ברור שרחמנא פטריה. אבל מחוגי הקבלה והחסידים, ראו בזה שירדנו לעומק הקליפה ר”ל בכל המשורים ח”ו.

There are lots of other interesting comments strewn throughout his book. For example, in Shabbat Shabbaton, p. 110, he characterizes R. Ben Zion Sternfeld of Bielsk as הפוסק הזקן בכל מדינת ליטא. I believe that this is an exaggeration, but I call attention to it since I daresay that most people, including those who have learnt for many years in yeshiva, have never even heard of R. Ben Zion. This is a good example of how great figures in one era can become unknowns in a future generation. Rare indeed is the scholar whose books are still studied one hundred years after his death. As to R. Ben Zion, in a German article by R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg he records a conversation he had with him. This article has not yet appeared in English (or Hebrew) and translating it is one of my future projects. (For another example of how a great scholar can be forgotten, I vividly recall how I once mentioned R. Joseph Zechariah Stern to my havruta, a man who had learnt for many years in Lakewood. He had never heard of Stern, and because he never heard of him, he simply did not believe me when I told him that Stern wasn’t some average rabbi, and not even a “regular” gadol. Rather, he should be regarded as a gadol she-bi-gedolim.)

When reading Gulevsky I often wonder whom he thinks he is writing for when he goes off on his historical tangents. For example, how many people today really care that R. Abraham Bornstein of Sochachev (the Avnei Nezer) שנא בתכלית the rabbi of Radom (Shabbat Shabbaton, p. 136). In Shabbat Shabbaton, pp. 81-82, Gulevsky goes into detail about R. Jonathan Abelman. Abelman was another great scholar yet today who has even heard of him? He was a dayan in Bialystok and author of the responsa work Zikhron Yehonatan (Vilna 1905). Tragically, he died at the age of 49 in 1903. He was also among those who defended the halakhic permissibility of the heter mekhirah. (See his Torat Yehonatan [Vilna, 1889]). Zikhron Yehonatan has a nice introduction where Abelman’s sons describe their father, and from this one would assume that he was a great talmid hakham, like so many similar talmidei hakhamim in Lithuania. (Incidentally, Abelman’s wife was R. Israel Salanter’s niece.) Zikhron Yehonatan was recently reprinted and the publisher informs us that the Chazon Ish “held of it,” as did R. Hayyim Shmulevitz who was an expert in the book.[12] So what could possibly be wrong about this great Torah scholar of a previous generation? Gulevsky tells us.

According to Gulevsky, Abelman served the maskilim and the rich people. Gulevsky even refers to him as השופר הגדול של הסטרא אחרא, and tells us that his house was a center for Haskalah and that daughters studied in Russian schools and even went to Berlin! (As far as I know, Gulevsky is the only source for all this, as well as for many of the other stories he tells, which obviously creates a problem of reliability. [More about this in part 2 of the post.] Yet in terms of Abelman having a “modern” house, this was not unique, even among the great rabbis. To give one example, R. Avraham Shapiro of Kovno also had a “modern” house, and because of this some of the yeshiva world looked upon him as a quasi-Maskil.)

Gulevsky then tells us about a Chabad chasid named Shabsai Berman from Bendery, Bessarabia, who was very rich and whose house was “a university in the full sense of the word.” Berman’s daughter married Abelman’s son (this is also mentioned in the introduction to Zikhron Yehonatan.) Another of Berman’s daughters married R. Menahem Mendel Chen, soon to become rav of Nezhin. The future rebbe, R. Joseph Isaac Schneersohn, was the shadchan. Chen is described as being the right-hand man of his rebbe, R. Shalom Dov Baer Schneersohn, and he was also close with R. Chaim Soloveitchik. See Moriah, Sivan-Tamuz 5732, p. 9. Unfortunately, he was killed in 1919 by members of the anti-Soviet White Army. See Bitaon Habad, Tamuz-Elul 5724, pp. 16ff. His grandson is R. David Zvi Hillman, whom we have discussed in the past (and will return to in the future).

Although Berman was Chabad, he was also a Zionist, and R. Yehudah Leib Fishman and Eliezer Steinman spent time with him in Bendery. Gulevsky writes:

למרות שרבי שבתי בערמאן היה “חבדנק” ובי”ט כסלו היו משתכרים הרבה, אבל “השלטון של ספרי כפירה היה גובר על התניא וליקוטי תורה”. בנו של רבי שבתי, משה ברמאן, עלה לארץ ישראל. אנשי מזרחי שמו אותו בין הקבלנים לבניני בתים . . . “זכה רבי שבתי ברמאן” שבנו היה ראש וראשון לבניני אוניברסיטה בר אילן. הי’ תומך ביד רחבה כל אנשי התיאטרו, והסופרים והכופרים של הסאראדים, למרות שרבי משה ברמאן היה נוסע לליובאוויץ הרבה פעמים, וגם פה אצל הריי”צ, גם משפחת אשתו מרבנים ואדמורי”ם גדולים. אבל רבי משה ברמאן רצה להיות קבור אצל החכם פ.ח. ושם קברו.

Who is פ.ח.? None other than Pinchas Churgin, first president of Bar-Ilan University. I love this sort of story, which reveals a past that would have remained lost forever, as I don’t think there is anyone else in the world who can tell us the things that Gulevsky’s books are full of. Gulevsky has obviously collected these stories since his youth, and unless I have reason to doubt them, I assume that what he tells us is fairly accurate. But I wonder, isn’t it a lot of “weariness of flesh” (Eccl. 12:12) on Gulevsky’s part to record all this? Other than me and a few others, does anyone really care? Since not many have even heard of Abelman, do even a handful want to hear about his mechutan, or his mechutan’s son and where he was buried. Gulevsky is no doubt reflecting controversies that were still in the air when he was growing up. Yet today when people see Abelman’s seforim they assume that he was just another one of the gedolim (which I am sure he was), without knowing anything about the controversies he was involved in, much like future generations will forget about most of the controversies we know well.

If you read on in Gulevsky you can see what I think is really driving him. When Abelman wrote about the status of shemitah in contemporary times, he disputed with the Beit ha-Levi. The two of them actually had a back-and-forth on the topic, all of which is reprinted in the new edition of Torat Yehonatan, published in 2007. This, I believe, is Abelman’s great sin, since for Gulevsky Brisk and its rabbis are basically “untouchable.”

Despite Gulevsky’s strong criticism, it be must be noted that Abelman’s support for the heter mekhirah was really only theoretical. He made it clear that land in Eretz Yisrael can only be sold to a ger toshav, and Muslims don’t have this status (Torat Yehonatan, ch. 8). It was only after R. Yitzhak Elhanan ruled that the land could be sold to Muslims that Abelman backed off his contrary opinion. (ibid., end of ch. 10).

What about the Chazon Ish, who while opposed to the heter mekhirah nevertheless quoted from Abelman’s sefer and held it in high regard? To this, Gulevsky writes (p. 82):

מה עשה בעל חזון איש? הוא בתמימותו ובכנותו שלא ידע מה זה האיש הזה, ואיזה סם המות בסיר שלו ר”ל, שתה בעל חזון איש ממים המרים המאררים מים הרעים האלו. ובענותינו הרבים כמו שנותנים סוכריה או גלידה לתינוק והוא מלקק את זה ונהנה בתכלית ההנאה, כך בעונותינו הרבים נהנה בעל חזון איש “מסברותיו, מידיותיו ומלומדות” שלו, וברך ברכת הנהנין ר”ל. אולם תכלית הספר הזה להתרחק מן האמת . . ושמעתי שהגאון המובהק רבי חיים הערץ אמר להתרחק ממנו [מאבעלמאן], וכן החסידים שבעירו התרחקו ממנו. ואם בארז הגדול נפלה שלהבת, עד כמה אנחנו צריכים להזהר ולההתרחק מדברי שקר ומאנשי שקר ר”ל.

Gulevsky’s allegiance to Brisk is seen in how he relates to the Rav. While Gulevsky can be harsh in his descriptions of Torah scholars with whom he disagrees, he describes the Rav in grandiose terms. See e.g., Du Yovlin, p. 36:

שמעתי מידיד נפשי וידיד אבותי קדישי עליון מרנא ורבנא יוסף דובער הלוי מבאסטאן שליט”א . . . עוד הסביר לי רב הונא ורב יהודה שבדורינו, מרן הגאון האדיר גאון הגאונים מבאסטאן שליט”א . . . רוב רובם של הדברים האלו שמעתי מרב רבנן הגאון המובהק והמופלג בחכמה ותבונה ודעת הגאון שליט”א מבאסטאן.

Let me give another example of the arcane stuff Gulevsky writes about. While reading it, ask yourself who, today, knows enough about the Lithuanian Torah world that he can make sense of the following story that Gulevsky tells in the name of his grandfather? Supposedly, the Netziv said as follows to R. Simcha Zelig (Shabbat Shabbaton, p. 79):

אחד מהתלמידים הקרובים אלי שלחמו במסירת נפש וכו’, היה הרב מהעיר ט. ראיתי עכשיו את הקונטרס שלו בספר עדות ביהוסף בענין תרומות ומעשרות בזמן הזה שהדפיס לפני עשרים שנה, ונעשה לי ממש שחור בעינים, באיזה קלות ראש הוא מביא ראיות שכל הראשונים סוברים כהרמב”ם שתרומות ומעשרות אפילו בזמן עזרא היו מדרבנן. איך שהוא מפרש דברי רבי יוסי וכו’. עיינתי בקונטרסים אחרים, ונעשה לי שחור ר”ל. אחר כן אמר לכן זה לחתן וכו’. השיב לו אאמו”ז החתן שלו בטח יביא כל מיני ראיות על השמיטה בעוד שנה ושליש, שזה היתר גמור.

In this case Gulevsky makes it easier to break his code because he gives us the name of a book. The author is R. Joseph Raisin who was rav of ט, namely, Telz, and the kuntres referred to appears as responsum no. 14. His son-in-law was none other than R. Isaac Jacob Reines. There is something quite strange about speaking in this sort of code about events that happened at least one hundred twenty years ago, and yet throughout Gulevsky’s writings one find similar things, a number of which I haven’t been able to figure out. The only way I could decipher this story was because he gives the name of the book, but he often isn’t so generous in dropping clues.

Here is another example from Shabbat Shabbaton, p. 74. In speaking about the first heter mekhirah (and speaking very negatively about it!) Gulevsky describes how the rav of Bialystok (R. Samuel Mohilever) organized it:

ועכשיו נבוא לרב השני שכתבנו לעיל, שנפל בפח בידי הרב מביאליסטאק. הרב ש.ז.ק. היה עילוי עצום, והיה תלמיד מובהק של בעל זית רענן. אחרי זה מטעם הנגידים העשירים נעשה מו”צ בווארשא. ובגלל זה הוא נעשה המנהיג ולא הרבה אחרים שהיו גדולים וטובים ממנו בכל המסורים. . . . הבית של המו”צ ש.ז.ק. היה מודערני מאד, עם העינים אל תרבות פוילן וגם גרמנית, לרבות תרבות הרוסית.

How many people today will know that this refers to R. Samuel Zanvil Klepfish. How many people have even heard of Klepfish? Would it have been so terrible to spell out the name? As for Gulevsky’s criticism of Klepfish for being too “modern,” let me simply remind him to open up the beginning of the Mishneh Berurah, because there one will find a haskamah from Klepfish. If he was good enough for the Chafetz Chaim, I think he should be good enough for all of us.

On the same page Gulevsky tells a story he heard from R. Chaim Heller that elaborates on how the heter mekhirah,, later signed by R. Yitzhak Elhanan, came about. One point added by Gulevsky, which I don’t know if it is true, is that R. Yitzchak Elhanan insisted that the heter not be made public until the sages of the Land of Israel were consulted. Yet this condition was not kept, and as soon as the heter was signed by four gedolim, with R. Yitzhak Elhanan the most significant, the heter was publicized. Gulevsky notes that after the heter was made public, R. Yitzhak Elhanan refused to discuss his reasoning with other gedolim or debate his decision. In Gulevsky’s words:

הוא פשוט לא השיב כלום, ולא רצה לדון בזה כלל עם שום אדם בעולם. כמעט אותו הדבר עשה הגאון רשכבה”ג מקוטנא, וזה צועק עד לשמים דורשני.

Gulevsky assumes, and I think he is correct, that two particular points in the reports R. Yitzhak Elhanan got from those who supported the heter moved him. 1) The rabbis in Jerusalem who opposed the heter had little concern with the farmers and the difficulties they faced. 2). These rabbis, who were supported by donations from the Diaspora, felt threatened by the creation of the settlements, and as such were nogea be-davar and could not deal with the halakhic issues of the heter mekhirah in a fair manner.

One question that a number of people have asked is why R. Yitzhak Elhanan never published his responsum in support of the heter. (This responsum, referred to as a kuntres by R. Yitzhak Elhanan, is mentioned in his letter to Abelman, Torat Yehonatan, end of ch. 10) The answer is found in a letter from R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg to R. Yitzhak Unna. This letter deals with R. Hayyim Ozer’s pressure on Weinberg not to publish his lenient opinion regarding stunning animals before shehitah.[13] (The letter appears in my doctoral dissertation, p. 307):

במשך הדברים אמר לי שאין לי להדפיס את קונטרסי הנ”ל כדי שלא ילמדו מתוכו להתיר, וסיפר לי שהגאון ר’ יצחק אלחנן ז”ל כשכתב בשעתו תשובה ארוכה ע”ד ההיתר לחרוש ולזרוע בשביעית בא”י ע”י מכירה לעכו”ם לא הכניס תשובתו זו בספרו שו”ת שפירסם אח”כ בדפוס.

In other words, R. Yitzhak Elhanan’s heter was an emergency measure, designed for that time alone. If he put it in his volume of responsa it would have assumed a more permanent significance, and he wished to avoid this. Along these lines Gulevsky states (p. 75):

חז”ל הקדושים אמרו איזהו חכם הרואה את הנולד. ההיתר הזה, שבפירוש חכמי ירושלים פה אחד התנגדו לזה במסירת נפש, ומהיתר “חד פעמי” משתמשים בהיתר אחרי שממדינת ישראל מוכרים חקלאות תבואות ופירות מאות מיליונים דולרים לשנה. מי יגלה עפר מעיניכם רבינו יצחק אלחנן ורבינו י’ מקוטנא וכו’, מי ראה את הנולד, חכמי ירושלים ובריסק וואלאזשין וכו’ ראו את הנולד.

In discussing the heter mekhirah, Gulevsky apparently believes that he has a form of clairvoyance. Thus, he writes as follows in Shabbat Shabbaton, p. 115:

ואין שום ספק בדבר [!], שבגלל שמיפו פתחה הרעה להתיר חניה לנכרים ר”ל, משם פתחה הרעה עם פוגרומים עצומים ר”ל, “מגרי תושב” של החכם קוק, ומפני שהוציאו קול על בעל שמן המור שהתיר בחברון וכו’, “זכינו בשנת תרפ”ט לשחיטת ‘גרי תושב’ ששחטו יהודים בחברון” ר”ל.

With regard to shemitah and R. Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, there has been a lot written recently, including on this blog, because there is now an attempt to entirely rewrite the history of R. Shlomo Zalman’s relationship to the heter mekhirah. Gulevsky, however, sees matters clearly when he writes, Shabbat Shabbaton, p. 124, that according to R. Shlomo Zalman:

דברי הגאון קוק והגאון פראנק “כמו ששאלו באורים ותומים”.

[1] For more on his genealogy see his “Al Toldot ha-Gaon Ba’al Semikhat Hakhamim,” Beit Aharon ve-Yisrael (Tamuz 5765), p. 168.

[2] A. Bernstein, et al., eds., Yeshivat Mir: ha-Zerihah be-Faʾatei Kedem (Bnei Brak, 1999), vol. 2, p. 609. All information about Gulevsky’s life for which no source is given comes from Gulevsky himself. When he was in Japan, before travelling to Shanghai, Gulevsky followed his grandfather’s pesak and observed Shabbat on Sunday while on Saturday he avoided melakhot de-oraita.

[3] See here.

[4] Meshiv Davar, vol. 1, no. 24.

[5] “Ha-Hazon Ish: Halakhah Emunah ve-Hevrah bi-Pesakav ha-Boltim be-Eretz Yisrael (5693-5714),” (Hebrew University, 2003). The title does not reflect all that is in this work, which will be a real blockbuster when it finally appears in print.

[6] Yagdil Torah (5741), pp. 114-117.

[7] See “Ke-Tzet ha-Shemesh bi-Gevurato,” Mesilot, Nisan 5758, pp. 13ff.

[8] See “Hityahasuto shel ha-Saba Kadisha Me-Ruzhin la-Memshalto shel ha-Czar Nikolai ha-Rishon (2),” Mesilot, Nisan-Iyar 5758), pp. 30ff.

[9] R. Herschel Schachter, Nefesh ha-Rav (Jerusalem, 1994), p. 27.

[10] Halakhic Man, tr. Lawrence Kaplan (Philadelphia, 1983), p. 90.

[11] This is R. Mordechai Rogov, who would later teach in Skokie.

[12] See here.

[13] Regarding this issue, R. Herschel Schachter writes as follows (Mi-Peninei ha-Rav [Brooklyn, 2001], p. 151):

בנידון הימים הבהמות קודם השחיטה, אשר האריך בזה טובא בחלק א’ משו”ת שרידי אש, ויש שמה תשובות מכמה מגדולי ישראל, שאלו פעם את רבנו האם דיבר אתו הגרי”י וויינברג, ז”ל, בזה, כי הלא באותה בתקופה היה רבנו בברלין, והשיב רבנו שבודאי דיברו יחד בנושה הזה, ושזאת היתה העצה שלו להגרי”י וויינברג, שהוא צריך לקבל הסכמת גדולי ישראל מכל המקומות בכל מאי דאפשר, כי דבר שכזה אי אפשר להניחו לכל רב עיר ומורה הוראה לפסוק לעצמו לקהילתו, כי השאלה כל כך גדולה היא, היא נוגעת לכלל ישראל כולו בבת אחת (שמעתי)

This type of report (שמעתי) that R. Schachter sometimes depends upon is often very unreliable. In this case, it is absolutely false. The Rav left Berlin before the Nazis came to power and before Weinberg or anyone else could even imagine that shehitah would be banned.

Rabbinic Insults and Bibliographical Errors

One of the more interesting pioneers of the haskalah movement was R. Shelomo Zalman Hanau (Katz). Hanau’s works mainly concern grammar and, in that vein, corrections to the siddur. Hanau’s first book, Binyan Shelomo, Frankfort A.M., 1708 was published when he was 21. This book focuses on grammar, but, as we have already discussed, was important in the development of the Siddur. (Additionally, see S.’s recent post on Hanau here.) This book is now up for auction, however, I must note that there seems to be an exaggeration regarding the scarcity of a particular page.

The catalog describes the book as follows:

The author was born in 1687 and was noted for his many books regarding the foundation of the Hebrew language . . . The author corresponded with many Torah luminaries regarding his subject of expertise. His first book, Binyan Shlomo . . . [a]s a young scholar he spoke sharply against many sages who preceded him by hundreds of years. As the years passed, the author regretted his sharp language and printed a unique apology in which he notes the names of the sages whom he did not properly honor. This list features at least five leading Torah scholars from previous generations. To the best of our knowledge, this leaf is not extant today and is not listed in the C.D. of the Bibliographic Project. The book itself was never reprinted and is very rare today. To the best of our knowledge, this is the only known copy with the apology leaf.

Judaica Jerusalem, Elul 2009, lot # 144, (emphasis in original). There are a number of corrections in order. First, the description states that there was only one edition of Binyan Shelomo “and it was never reprinted.” That is incorrect. Aside from two photo-reproductions done by Copy Corner and Guttman, Binyan Shelomo was reprinted in 1723. Vinograd, in his bibliography, Otzar Sefer ha-Ivri, lists this book as extant the Annenberg Library, which, according to their online catalog, the book can still be found.[1] Turning now to the “apology leaf.” It is correct that the leaf is rare, however, it is an overstatement to say this is the only known copy with the leaf. Indeed, the existence of the leaf is not mentioned in Vingrad’s Otzar ha-Sefer ha-Ivri, Jersusalem: 1994, vol. II, Frankfort A.M. # 218. But, the leaf was mentioned already in 1865 and the fact that Hanau issued an apology was mentioned as early as 1715. The first mention that Hanau issued an apology (although there is no mention of a special leaf) was in Johann Christoph Wolf’s Bibliotheca Hebraea, Hamburg: 1715. (S. has kindly translated the relevant passage here.) Shadal in Prolegomenon, Grimmae: 1838, 61-2 n.1, also records Wolf’s comments. (See S.’s comments regarding the use of Prolegomenon here.) The first to republish the apology leaf was Meir Wiener in Ha-Maggid, May 17, 1865, Ha-Tozfeh le-Maggid. Wiener decided to republish the text of the entire leaf “due to its rarity.” Wiener obtained a copy from the Rosenthal library and in the catalog for the library by Roest, Yodeah Sefer, he says “that in my copy I have an extra page at the end.” Yodeah Sefer, letter Bet, # 304. This notation was then recorded in Wiener’s bibliography of St. Petersberg library, Kohelet Moshe. Wiener says “that the extra page at the end, which Roest records and where the author asks for forgiveness for insulting various authors, is not in this copy.” While it wasn’t in these copies, nor is it in the copy on Hebrewbooks.org, it is in the JNUL’s copy which is online here. Additionally, we have a copy which has this leaf, making it at least two others in existence.

We now turn to what precipitated the inclusion of this leaf. According to the auction description, R. Hanau did this on his when “the years passed” and he “regretted his sharp language.” According to Roest, however, “it is without a doubt that Hanau was forced by the Rabbis to print this apology, just like R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzato.” Roest, op cit. Thus, according to Roest, the apology was not brought about from Hanau’s own introspection but because of the Rabbis. Indeed, Friedberg in Bet Eked, says “that the author [Hanau] was forced by the Rabbi of Frankfort A.M. and his bet din to print a special page, in a smaller format, which was appended to the work, in which the author asks for forgiveness from the authors which [Hanau] insulted in his book.” Bet Eked, letter Bet, # 1238. Similarly, Wolf states “Rabbis of Frankfurt were going to destroy it by flames” had Hanau not agreed to print the apology. So according to these sources, Hanau was forced to print this apology. According to a contemporary source, we can place the retraction before 1713. This is so, because in Siddur of R. Azriel and R. Eliah of Vilna, published in 1713, they note that Hanau printed a page “asking for forgiveness.” Additionally, according to this source, the request for forgiveness was at the behest of the Frankfort bet din. R. Azriel and R. Eliah say that the page was printed “due to the decree of the head and leaders of the holy city Frankfort A.M.” R. Azriel and R. Eliahu then continue, and mention the possibility that R. Hanau deserved to be placed under the ban due to his disrespectful words. David Yitzhaki appears to have misunderstood R. Azriel and R. Eliah’s words as Yitzhaki says “that Hanau was almost placed under a ban.” D. Yitzhaki, “The Editors of the Ashkenzi Siddur & R. Shelomo Zalman Hanau and his Forgeries,” in Luach Eres, Toronto, 2001, 32. If, as it appears, Yitzhaki’s source is the quote from R. Azriel and R. Eliah, that quote merely says that it was R. Azriel and R. Eliah’s opinions that Hanau “should” have been placed under the ban, they never say that there was a serious consideration of actually placing Hanau under a ban.[2] Of course, according to Wolf’s version, Binyan Shelomo was to be consigned to the flames, also implying a ban. Wolf, however, provides no source for this assertion, and it seems unlikely that R. Azriel and R. Eliah would fail to mention the fact that Binyan Shelomo was almost destroyed.

There is one more version of the story behind the retraction that is worth noting because it contains a major error. This is a real honker.* Moshe Carmilly-Weinberger, in Sefer ve-Seif, apparently confused R. Hanau’s Binyan Shelomo with another book that has the same title. Carmilly-Weinberger writes (172-73):

R. Yehezkel Landau the Noda be-Yehuda, stood with R. Yisrael Lifschitz [regarding the controversy surrounding the infamous Get of Cleves], who was in conflict with the head of the Frankfort bet din, R. Nathan Maz and R. Shelomoh Hena [sic] the author of the Binyan Shelomo. Since R. Landau agreed with R. Yisrael Lifschitz, the enemy of R. Shelomoh Hena, [Hena] banned the work of the Noda be-Yehuda.

Carmilly then quotes a passage from the Hida’s work Shem ha-Gedolim in support of the above statement:

And because of this [fight about the Get of Cleves], when the book Noda be-Yehuda was published the Goan, author of Binyan Shelomo and his bet din prohibited anyone from reading [the Noda be-Yehuda]. The Noda be-Yehuda, however, took the opposite view and he said I tell anyone who is reasonable to go ahead the Binyan Shelomo, to look and see ערות האר”ש השמנה הוא אם רזה (a word play implying that there isn’t much in the Binyan Shelomo).

Carmilly then continues, and he links the extra leaf in the Binyan Shelomo, to these statements explaining that Hana asked forgiveness for all those people he insulted. Carmilly implies that the forgiveness related to the controversy about the Get of Cleves! This is wrong. First, and foremost, the controversy regarding the Get of Cleves occurred in 1766, Hanau died in 1746. Moreover, Hanau could not have counseled people not to read the Noda be-Yehuda as that was published in 1776 some thirty years after Hanau died. Additionally, it is clear that Carmilly never saw this leaf as we will soon see, this leaf requests forgiveness from rishonim and doesn’t mention anyone involved in the Get of Cleves controversy.

Carmilly confused two books with the same title, Binyan Shelomo. The first, by Hanau on grammar which is the subject of our discussion, and the second one, is written by R. Nathan Maz, and was published in 1784. R. Nathan Maz [3] who was involved in the Get of Cleve controversy and who was on the Frankfort bet din (something that Hanau was not), was the subject of the above discussion. What makes this error even more ironic is that Nepi-Ghirondi, in his Tolodot Gedolei Yisrael, correctly notes that R. Maz authored a work titled Binyan Shelomo. Carmilly, however, faults Nepi-Ghirondi “incorrectly associating Binyan Shelomo with R. Maz and, instead, the correct author is R. Hanau!” Id. 172 n.297. Of course, if one looks at the Hida in the original, it is also apparent that he is not referring to Hanau but to a different book with the same title.

Turning to the text of the “request for forgiveness.” This text reminds me of a story I heard regarding a relative. According to the story, A. calls C. “stupid.” A’s mother then tells A. to apologies, to which A. turns to C. and says, “I am sorry you are stupid.” Hanau’s request for forgiveness is similar as after offering a general request for forgiveness, Hanau then goes ahead and records every objectionable thing he said. For example, Hanau says

I erred in my ways when I disagreed with the authors. I was too verbose and, at times, I insulted the authors . . . therefore I come to ask forgiveness: from the prince Don Isaac Abarbanel when I wrote that “he speaks without logic and his words make no sense,” and in another place I wrote about him that “this statement [of the Abarbanel] is because of his lack of knowledge and that he didn’t understand what was being said” . . . Regarding the Ibn Ezra I wrote “he didn’t subject this statement to logic”

While this apology my be tongue in cheek, it seems to have appeased many or, at the very least, many thought Hanau’s next book didn’t suffer from the same lack of respect. In R. Yehezkel Katzenellenbogen’s approbation to Sha’arei Torah, Hamburg 1717, he notes that while Hanau had in his prior work been too harsh with his language in “Sha’arei Torah, [Hanau] speaks with the appropriate measure of respect as I [R. Katzenellenbogen] have carefully checked.”[4]

Notes:

[1] Wiener, in his article in Ha-Maggid (17 May 1865), questions the existence of this edition. He claims that there is no such edition and that the abbreviation used for the date was misinterpreted.

[2] It should be noted that R. Azriel and R. Eliah were not dispassionate observers. Part of the reason that Hanau wrote Binyan Shelomo was to disagree with R. Azriel and R. Eliah’s opinions regarding proper punctuation of the Siddur. See Jacob J. Schacter, “Introduction,” in Luach Eres, op cit., 11-12. R. Azriel and R. Eliah derogatorily refer to Binyan Shelomo as “Hurban Shelomo.”

[3] For more information on R. Maz see M. Horovitz, Rabbanei Frankfort, Jerusalem:1972, 134-43.

[4] This did not appease everyone. R. J. Emden really disliked R. Hanau’s positions. See Jacob J. Schacter, Luach Eres, op cit., 14-25.

* I would like to thank A. Rottenberg for calling this error, as well as numerous other errors in Carmilly-Weinberg’s book, to my attention.

Twenty-Five Years at the Valmadonna Trust Library

Twenty-Five Years at the Valmadonna Trust Library

by Pauline Malkiel

Librarian – Valmadonna Trust Library (London, England)

When I first walked into the library in May 1982 I was struck initially by the smell of leather, then by the rows upon rows of fine bindings in burgundies, browns, beiges and creams packed neatly and tastefully on elegant open wooden shelves. Looking more closely I began to identify groupings: 16th century Italian locations with exciting names like Riva di Trento, Sabbionetta and Ferrara; whole areas of early Venetian printers – Bomberg, di Gara, Zanetti, each in its own space; a whole wall devoted to early Mediterranean printing in Salonika, Constantinople, and Prague, Lublin and Cracow. Then there were vast ranges of small liturgies of many different rites – Italian, Spanish, Roman, Ashkenazic, Aleppo, Karaite – sitting chronologically on shelves in beautiful bindings. Another area was devoted to Bibles printed in Venice starting in the year 1517. Placed in their own taller alcoves were stately volumes of Rabbinic Bibles and Maimonides Commentaries, Mishneh Torahs, Alfassi Commentaries in different editions, and, on closer inspection of the spines, many recurring titles such as ‘Semag,’ ‘Mizrachi,’’Rabenu Bechai,’’Perush HaTorah’ and endless Responsa. It was a thrill to see the word ‘unicum’ or ‘unique copy’ on a spine, and there were numerous slipcases containing ‘Variant 1’ and ‘Variant 2’ copies, promising intriguing revelations. Examining the spines one could decipher an exotic array of practically unheard-of place names: Kuru Tschesme, Prostitz, Isny, Constanz, Trino, Dordrecht, Pforzheim, Alcala de Henares and then, tucked away in a corner, all the very early 16th century Latin works printed by the Soncinos in Fano, Ortona, Pesaro, Cesena and so on. In various parts of the Library was the vast, ever-growing collection of Amsterdam printing, with a core collection of Menasseh ben Israel and Spanish printing. In a centre cupboard was the luxurious six-volume set of the Complutensian Polyglot, and in a place of honour of its own, stood the precious 9-volume set of the Westminster Abbey Talmud, acquired 2 years before I came. Behind the study door was a collection of books on blue paper. In another area was the Indian collection, consisting mainly of dozens of small and even smaller delicate, fragile books.

My duties in the first few years consisted in the main of checking auction catalogues, dealing with binders and restorers and keeping very careful track of the books going in and out of the library for binding, titling and refurbishing, as well as cataloguing, ordering photocopies of missing pages and correspondence – much of it in Hebrew. When a delivery came from our binders Bernard Middleton or Aquarius it was an occasion to rejoice. A book might have disappeared for months or even years – the record being the Yosippon, Mantova which celebrated its 12th anniversary at the binder’s – and been meanwhile forgotten, then it would reappear spruced up and in a magnificent new binding, hailed as a long-lost friend and be given pride of place on the shelves.

There was always great excitement when a special or rare book purchased at auction or from a dealer arrived on the table. It had to be assessed physically to decide who would restore it and which binder would rebind or refurbish it before it would take its place with its companions. Or the new arrival might complete a set, or help complete our holdings of specific printers (Bomberg, di Gara, dei Farri), places (such as Bombay or Calcutta, or Riva di Trento where we have all the books printed except one), or fall within certain dates (such as our collection of Jerusalem printing between the years 1840 and 1890, as recorded by the bibliographer Shoshana Halevi).

Hebrew books were beloved objects which were passed down from generation to generation, and heavily used by their owners. In addition, due to the vicissitudes of Jewish life over the centuries, they were frequently subjected to censorship and destruction, and the surviving copies are therefore damaged or incomplete. Our aim was always to complete these books and make them whole again. If a book lacked pages, it would be a challenge to see if it could be located in other libraries. Sometimes there would be no other copy so the book must remain incomplete, giving it an unfinished air, a question mark for the future, an aura of speciality like the Venice Siddur with the large type and without a title page which has been around as long as I can remember and remains an unsolved mystery. Such books may even turn out to be unique copies (of which we have several). In the case of odd fragments, such as pages of rare tractates and liturgies, I have always been amazed by the ability of certain dealers (Mr. Weiser and Mr. Fekete, for example) to take one look at a page and recognise exactly where it comes from. In this way Mr. Weiser managed to identify and piece together 2 fragmentary pages of an Incunable with Rashi’s commentary printed in Rome, which had been used to patch up torn pages of the Constantinople Pentateuch of 1522.

A rare but ravaged book may come back from restoration almost unrecognisably restored, and this is a delight. An incomplete book may be reunited years later with its second half, or we may be able to add another 100 pages from a different source. Examples that come to mind are the Mahzor Aleppo Rite, Bomberg, Venice 1527, the Karaite Mahzor, Bomberg, Venice 1529, the Constantinople Pentateuch of 1522 with the 2 variant rites of the Haftarot (Spanish rite and Karaite rite), the Cracow Talmud of 1602-5 and the Salonika 1520 Pentateuch. I remember the restorer Stephanie being brought down from Scotland to discuss restoration of the Constantinople Pentateuch and then taking it back by train in a suitcase.

It is most exciting to identify a book that has mystified us for years by locating another copy. For many years I tried to find the first 10 pages of a Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim, di Gara, Venice 1574 for our set but the nearest I could get were the imperfect facsimiles taken from the JNUL copy, which also lacked the title page. Then suddenly one day there appeared on the table a perfect, complete copy of the Shulchan Aruch which had come from somewhere in the Crimea and had been brought to us by a dealer. The Avudraham, Fez 1521, which we bought at the Schocken sale (December 1993), was beautiful but lacking the first leaf and a few pages at the end. Again I went on the hunt and wrote to the Rosenthaliana where, to their great dismay, they found that their copy, which was supposed to be complete, was lacking at the beginning. Eventually I tracked down the only surviving first page at JTS. Another little book, Yichus Kol ha-Zaddikim, printed by Soncino in Salonika in 1527, is almost unique. Our copy was perfect except it lacked the first page – the HUC copy, described as the ‘only known copy’ was missing the last page! Our Incunable Perush al Neviim Acharonim, Guadalajara 1482 lacked one page in the middle but had 2 duplicated pages. The Merton College, Oxford copy had the page we needed but lacked 3 others. How hard we tried to do an exchange, but we didn’t succeed!

For years we tried to acquire a copy of the Cremona Pentateuch in Yiddish – then, suddenly, two copies turned up in the same year. Dealers would occasionally surprise us with great discoveries. In the eighties Chaim Schneebalg would make a grand entrance on a Sunday morning in full Vizhnitzer regalia holding a scrappy plastic supermarket bag containing some new treasure. He was also known to have pursued the custodian in similar fashion to a health farm in Sussex, and a holiday resort in St Moritz, with an important item that just couldn’t wait. An Italian dealer once turned up with a bundle of wall calendars which were starting to decay, but these turned out to be a unique collection of Venice and Mantova wall calendars of almost consecutive years from the mid-16th century, practically unknown. They were sent instantly to the paper restorer in Scotland and treated with the utmost respect and care, each one encapsulated on its return and recorded for posterity.

Another major acquisition was the Prague Mahzor on vellum, 1605-6, which belonged to the Taz Synagogue, Lemberg, destroyed in W.W.2. Although there was a problem with the dealer on account of precious manuscript notes it was acquired without hesitation, as was the Prague Haggadah of 1590 with its beautiful print and layout. The Indian collection was and is a source of great pride. We bought some Bombay and Calcutta rarities from a private collector in Belgium in 1991. Then our already outstanding collection was greatly enriched by the acquisition in 1999 of the Sassoon Indian and Baghdad collections, whereby we improved on existing copies, adding many variants as well as the unique collection of Indian journals and single leaves.

The most important sales in which Valmadonna was involved took place before my appointment, but it is necessary to highlight that some of the greatest treasures of the library emanated from the Sassoon and other sales that took place at Sotheby’s, London in 1970-71, in Zurich in 1975 and 1978 and in 1981 in New York. Subsequently the Custodian and I attended various auctions, in London, Israel and New York. I remember well the unusual atmosphere at the Judaica Collectors auction in late autumn of 1989. It was like a club, exclusive to book enthusiasts some of whom had travelled from London, Manchester, New York and Holland, many of them ‘characters.’ They all knew each other, coffee and refreshments were on the hob, and various family members and curious onlookers were wandering in and out. Occasionally a shouting match broke out during the bidding when somebody was overlooked, or somebody else failed to keep his promise to stand down on a coveted item. A noisy controversy arose over a place of printing which was said to be on the Russian border, disputed by a professor at another table. Another argument took place over the pronunciation of the Jerusalem printer ‘Bak’ or ‘Be’k.’ Throughout the auction there was pervading noise, cigarette smoke, eating, drinking, discussions, interruptions, a black mass of eager Chassidim in the corner, the auctioneer joking, Jack Lunzer wise-cracking and merrymaking. When Jack Lunzerfailed to get an item he really wanted, after putting up a good fight and our next bid was soon to come up, he got up, walked up to Toperovich who, it was said, was bidding for Friedberg in Canada (who had given him a free hand to bid up to $30,000 for an Incunable estimated at $9-12,000) and told him to go for a walk – he needs some fresh air! All these comments were going on in faltering Hebrew, or Yiddish, or English, or French (to Sara Frankel). At one point Jack Lunzer sang a Sephardi melody across the room to Meir Benayahu and later pretended to indulge in a fist-fight with him. The informality was overwhelming.

Sometimes we couldn’t make it to an auction and had to bid over the phone from London. I remember one occasion when the phone lines were open for three hours and Mr. Dzialowski senior and 2 other dealers came along to join in the excitement, cheering us on or commiserating as the case may be. There were one or two major auctions which were anticipated for months in advance and much work went into their preparation. Perhaps the most memorable of these was the Schocken sale at Sotheby’s, London in 1993, where we acquired some very important items. Others were the Mehlmann Auction in Tel Aviv (which included a delightful side-trip to Bill Gross to see some of his treasures), the Shane sale at Christie’s, New York in June ’98 and the Christie’s Bet Din Sale, again in the sweltering heat of New York in June ‘99. On these occasions intense concentration was maintained, and our catalogues are full of exclamation marks and heavily underlined notes like ‘Want,’ ‘Need,’ and ‘Must Have!’ On rare occasions Jack Lunzer has been known to greatly exceed his mandate. This happened at an auction in Geneva in the late eighties where we bought a unique little Bomberg liturgy at twice the estimate and three times the price the Trustees had authorised. But he didn’t regret it and fortunately managed to persuade the Trustees to back his decision.

A Sotheby auction in New York in the summer of 1984 produced 8 exciting Incunables for the library. I remember taking them all one day to the British Library for checking. On another occasion I had to make a special trip to Oxford to have a newly-acquired Franco-German manuscript carbon dated. The verdict was 10th-11th century. In the eighties I had the responsibility of bidding at London Auctions, such as Mr. Schwarz’s Anglo-Judaica Book Exchange at Hatton Garden and at Bloomsbury Book Auctions, occasionally for the odd item at Christie’s, and at Judaica and Asufa Auctions in Jerusalem, the latter continuing right through the nineties.

I would make regular journeys to the British Library first in Store Street, then at the India Office near Blackfriars from 1991 until they moved to St. Pancras in 1997, and occasionally to the Bodleian for checking. During these years we also made a number of trips to other libraries. We looked at rare items at Merton College, Oxford in 1994 and had a delightful visit to Eton College Library. We went to Westminster Abbey Library in October 1996 to see their copy of ‘Akedat Yizhak’ whose wrongly titled spine ‘Talmud Babylonicum Bomberg’ had set Jack Lunzer on the original trail to the discovery of the Talmud. After Brad Sabin Hill discovered another Talmud set at Sion College in the early nineties I went there to make a detailed analysis of their edition. I did the same in Vienna in the winter of 1996 when the temperature inside and out was close to zero. I was shown some treasures in Prague by the head of restoration when I brought the precious Constantinople 1522 Pentateuch and 2 other items to be expertly restored there. Finally we had two very special trips – first to Parma in January 2000, where under the guidance of Chimen Abramsky and with special permission of Nice Ugolotti we examined the treasures of the Biblioteca Palatina, and then in February 2001 to the Royal Library, Copenhagen in the company of Christopher de Hamel – a rare privilege indeed.

During the mid-nineties we went on a rather exotic mission to the south-eastern corner of Europe to rescue a few thousand Hebrew books. Our task was to select the most important of the remnants that had survived and to create a new library in Sofia, arranged and stored for future generations. They had survived untouched in a village outside Sofia for 30 years and were in danger of being destroyed by the damp conditions of winter. In the course of several visits to Bulgaria, with the help of the State Archives and with the constant assistance of Becca Lazarova, Jack Lunzer organized truckloads of these books to be brought from the village to the Municipal Archives in Sofia where we sat and spent hours and hours sorting them by condition, by type and by place of printing. They were mostly printed in Salonika, Constantinople and Izmir, with a fair number from Venice, Amsterdam and Vienna and parts of Bulgaria. Most were incomplete, some were in tatters, but the excitement consisted in seeing what each new dusty black box would reveal. Amongst the battered Mishnayot, endless Zohars and Chok l’Yisraels and fragments of Tractates and Responsa missing at both ends we might discover a rare liturgy with the first page torn out and replaced with something else. Or the dried-out splitting old bindings could be stuffed with pages of an incunable or early fragments of Rashi’s Commentary on the Pentateuch. It became a fascinating task to try to recognize a book that had lost its title page by its type, or by emblems and small illustrations. We had to determine whether the printing was late or early, whether a tall section belonged to an Alfassi printed in Sabbionetta or by Bragadin in Venice, whether it was part of a tractate or the Mishneh Torah. Our work was very intensive and if we got tired of sorting and needed a break, Jack Lunzer would stop and pick up a liturgy and try to decide if it was Sephardic or Ashkenazic. Or he would start reading a familiar opening passage from a tractate. Sighs of approval would accompany the discovery of something interesting or special, such as a uniformly bound set of a periodical in Ladino dating from about 70 years back, which was then put in one of the special purpose-built cupboards of Ladino and Bulgarian imprints. Sometimes there were owner’s signatures and inscriptions, well-known family names, even photos pasted inside the covers, testifying to centuries of history of the Jewish communities of the Balkans, particularly that of Salonika which, so tragically, was almost entirely annihilated in the Holocaust. As we sorted through hundreds of books a day thoughts would go through my mind that we were paying tribute to those who had prayed and studied from them so that their memory should live on through the books they had possessed, inscribed and used.

Another part of my work has been the careful preparation of books for exhibitions. The first of these consisted of the highlights of Valmadonna exhibited at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York in February 1989, with its special catalogue prepared by Brad Sabin Hill. This involved much work and thought and it was quite painful having to eliminate some of the most beautiful imprints from the final choice of 50 exhibits. We were flown out, together with Margaret and Myra (two of Jack Lunzer’s daughters), Bernard Middleton, Brad, George from IDC and myself, and met by a limousine that sped through the night to the Pierre Hotel, Manhattan, for a short but glittering trip to the opening. This was followed, in the early nineties (June ’92) by a smaller exhibition at University College London organized by Myra. Every so often we loaned out books for other exhibitions – a Soncino printing exhibition in Soncino in 1995, an exhibition of Yiddish printing in Italy in Milan in 1996, a Baghdad exhibition at the Jewish Museum, London, and exhibitions at the Israel Museum. Finally there were two major exhibitions in London for which 100 books and manuscripts were specially selected by Christopher de Hamel, first for the International Society of Bibliophiles at the Guildhall in September 2003, and then again at Sotheby’s for Jack Lunzer’s 80th birthday in September 2004.

There were a number of changes in the library during the eighties and nineties. First, having obtained permission to build a brick surround for the three oil tanks in the garden during an oil crisis, permission was subsequently granted to convert this out-building into a book store known as Chatterley. All the books stored in vaults in the City, including the many duplicates, were gradually brought to Fairport, the Incunables, manuscripts and books printed on vellum put in a vault, and the Livorno, Jerusalem, latter Constantinople and Salonika and Indian and Baghdad collections housed in Chatterley. With the reinforcement of our Byzantine holdings and the acquisition of the Sassoon India and Baghdad collections, the latter became greatly augmented and the Indian journals had to be kept on new bookshelves, as were latter Salonika and Constantinople. There was now a large collection of books printed in Marathi only – for the use of the Bene Israel community in India – and these had to be identified with the help of staff at the Oriental section of the British Library. There were large numbers of newly acquired books to be indexed, and a hundred and twenty new slipcases were made for the variant copies by a retired old gentleman who lived nearby. New cupboards were built on a separate floor for the coloured paper collection and for the less valuable manuscripts. We also decided to give special attention to the broadsheets, comprising 650 or more, and each was carefully restored, encapsulated, put in folders and subsequently indexed at the JNUL.

Around this time we decided on cut-off dates for Jerusalem (1920) and to dispose of London, Paris, Metz, latter German and eastern European and Yiddish printing. A great deal of time was therefore spent with dealers and sending boxes of books to various auction houses. Concurrently parts of the collection were growing through the acquisition of significant items either privately (the Mehlmann and Sassoon collections in Jerusalem, the Perlberger collection in London, a Gibralterian lady in Maida Vale, Toperovich in Bnei Berak, Chaim Dzialowski and Mr Schwarz in Jerusalem) – all of which entailed visits to their homes (where in Mr Schwarz’s case, I would leaf through books with delicious Hungarian cooking smells wafting in the background), or through dealers who came to Fairport, or by auction. During the eighties we made acquisitions at Bloomsbury Book Auctions, Swann Galleries, Christie’s (Amsterdam), Sotheby’s (London, New York & Tel Aviv) and Judaica, Jerusalem. Gradually others came on the scene – Kestenbaum (New York), Baronovich (New York) and Asufa, Jerusalem. The Jerusalem catalogues would appear three times a year sometimes comprised over 600 Lots, but each item had to be carefully checked. I would be kept busy by an array of binders, some of them short-lived, others like Bernard Middleton and Kerry Bate who have been with us for over 30 years, and meticulous records had to be kept of all items which left Fairport.

Occasionally there was a great panic when we couldn’t find a book. There might be a breathless telephone call in very serious tones late at night about a rare book that had disappeared, which would cause us both very disturbed nights until it turned up – usually having slipped behind or been mis-shelved during the annual Passover dusting. Many years ago Jack Lunzer was in a frantic state for days about a tortoiseshell binding that had gone missing. He phoned every binder and paper restorer we knew, including those we had stopped using, to search their workshops, turned the library upside down and made everybody feel worried and guilty. He finally gave up the search and claimed insurance. About 3 years later, while checking something in his late wife’s safe, he found the precious tortoiseshell binding! Of course, the insurance money was returned. Another time we were searching high and low for a rare miniature Venice Psalter and eventually discovered it sitting in the middle of a quarto-size box specially made to protect it from getting lost.

Another ongoing part of my work has been to deal with specialist enquiries, often as part of scholarly research leading to publications, such as those of Prof. Benayahu at Yad Harav Nissim or Marvin Heller, who is presently working on a volume dealing with 17th century Hebrew printing. Scholars would come to Fairport to see our copies of Meshal ha-Kadmoni, Me’or Einayim, Nishmat Chayim, or to study the typography and ornamentation in early Mediterranean printing, or the writings of Solomon Twena, Samuel de Medina, the Bene-Israel, and the Samaritan sect, to see our special bindings, and so on. Way back in the eighties, Jack Lunzer had a very special request from Princess Margaret to see a ‘Hebrew Incunable’. A meeting was set up at Kenwood House where an Incunable was inspected, and both parties returned from the meeting duly charmed.

Other meetings were arranged, to comply with specialist requests. A calligraphy group had a very enjoyable meeting at Fairport where they viewed a selection of manuscripts, their favourite being the early 15th century illuminated Yemenite Pentateuch. In June 2006 a group of 20 scholars who were in London for a Judeo-Spanish Conference spent a morning at Fairport with twenty books they had specially selected. There were 2 Conferences of UCL in which we participated by hosting receptions at Fairport. The first was in June 1995, entitled ‘Jews of Italy – Memory and Identity,’ and the second in June 1997, on ‘Jews of the Low Countries,’ during which Prof. Chimen Abramsky gave a lecture one evening at Fairport about Menasseh b. Israel and his printing, illustrated by examples from our collection, to a room packed with people. More recently we have been involved in an annual one-day seminar co-sponsored with the Institute of Jewish Studies, UCL. The first of these was in September 2004, coinciding with Jack Lunzer’s 80th birthday and an exhibition arranged by Camilla Previté at Sotheby’s, entitled ‘The Valmadonna Trust Library and early Hebrew printing.’ In December 2005 the theme was the 350th anniversary of the re-admission of the Jews into England (entitled ‘Jews at the end of the Earth’), and in December 2006 ‘Hebrew bibliography – Steinschneider and after.’

Two students from the London College of Printing came one summer to clean and polish all the bindings. In the winter of 1993 an Israel producer came to Fairport to interview Jack Lunzer for a programme to be televised in Israel on the theme of an unusual library, and in the autumn of 2006 a French film-maker came over for the day to make a programme for French TV about the Talmud for which a considerable amount of preparation was required. In the summer of 2004 Esra Kahn spent 3 months making a card index of the ‘bibliography room’ on the second floor, which had never before been catalogued. This collection of bibliographical works, ranging from the standard to the very rare, is in itself an important part of the Valmadonna Library and one for which Jack Lunzer holds great affection. On many a sleepless night he has burnt the midnight oil in the company of Moses Marx or Moritz Steinschneider, or more recently, Marvin Heller. As for the computerization of the Library itself, the bulk of the work was done by the Librarian’s son Solomon, who between the years 1989 and 1998 entered 9,200 records into the system. I took over in the early 2000’s, in the meantime constantly correcting and updating the computer records and printouts with a view to eventually producing a Valmadonna catalogue which would be a vital Hebrew and English bibliographical tool for worldwide reference.

In 2004, IDC Publishers in Holland microfilmed our Baghdad collection at Fairport and made available on microfiche almost 350 titles, including the earliest lithographs, unrecorded Judeo-Arabic books and rare treasures from the Sassoon collection, with an introduction by Brad Sabin Hill. In the summer of 2006 they filmed our unique Indian collection, so that a cultural legacy of over 730 items from Bombay, Calcutta, Poona and Cochin, including texts in Judeo-Arabic, Marathi and Malayalam, a Hindustani drama in Judeo-Urdu, works by Yemenite authors, unique Indian lithographs, rare liturgies, and many unrecorded items has now also become available to worldwide bibliography.

We hope that in future this work will continue, starting with the microfilming of our entire collection of Byzantine printing including Constantinople, Salonika and Izmir. Meanwhile, we are working on a publication based on our extensive holdings of 16th-19th century wall calendars and similar ephemera such as edicts, decrees, odes and poems. These have been described with the help of Isaac Yudelov and Ariel Viterbo at the JNUL, and will be published in book form and profusely illustrated. The next project will be the publication of our holdings of incunabula, numbering approximately 70, edited by Dr A. Offenberg of the Amsterdam University Library, together with an important collection of books printed on vellum.

It has sometimes been hard to catch Jack Lunzer with library work amidst his dizzying travels around the globe, mostly on business and diplomatic matters during the eighties and nineties, as well as a range of other activities and family engagements. We would sometimes work in the evenings, but always on Sunday mornings when he was in town, and I was often frustrated by the incessant telephone calls. I was, however, frequently amused by the strange assortment of people at Fairport, especially on Sundays. There might be two Chassidic book dealers in one room, an African lady visitor in another, a third book dealer in a different room, a Rabbi on a charitable mission in another, the gardener waiting for instructions outside, two waitresses coming to discuss breakfast arrangements for the overnight Shavuot study, the pedicurist and the electrician, while family members would be dropping in to see their father, grandfather or uncle. All the while Dillon, the handsome golden labrador known as ‘the boy’ and a very prominent member of the household during the eighties, would be having a field day dancing around each visitor with his brown towel flapping in his paw. Jack Lunzer was unperturbed by the transitions between all these people, with his astonishing ability to switch from business to family to book matters, while constantly being interrupted by telephone calls. Sometimes he would carry on two conversations on two phones, and once I actually heard him speak in 7 languages in the course of one evening. However there would always be time and enthusiasm for the books, which were treated with love and respect and often referred to as ‘old friends’ or ‘children.’ The library is a quiet, beautiful refuge from the fatigue of aeroplanes, travel and business, and each item holds its own story which is waiting to be read and put in its perspective of our history, liturgy, bibliography and typography.

I myself feel immensely privileged to have been part of the preservation for posterity of this extraordinarily rich and tangible part of the history of our people, extending as it does to towns all over the globe – from Cochin to Curacao, from Irkutsk to Guadalajara – and in time from manuscripts 1,000 years old, to printed books over 500 years old and unique journals of the 20th century. After 25 years I continue to find my work exciting, in its scope and variety, and highly rewarding, and it is my wish, together with that of the Custodian, Jack Lunzer, to be able to see the transition of the Valmadonna Library as an intact and permanent collection to its next home, so that it should always remain a testimony to the history and culture of the Jewish people.

The Ancillary Benefits of Non-Jews on the Hebrew Book

The Ancillary Benefits of Non-Jews on the Hebrew Book

In the history of the Hebrew book, the books, like the Jews themselves, have been subject to external persecution. Thus, some books and manuscripts have been totally lost. On the other hand there are a few examples of books or, as we shall soon demonstrate, technices that are are a product of external influences.

Abraham Ibn Ezra had a very hard life. In his well-known formulation that appears at the beginning of his commentary to the Humash, he complains that his luck is so bad that if he were a candle maker the sun would always shine. As Naftali ben Menachem has shown, (Inyanei Ibn Ezra, Jerusalem, 1978, 1-9 and see 132-37 for his discussion regarding the Ibn Ezra’s bad luck) the Ibn Ezra’s books “suffered” as well. In particular, many of his books were unavailable for hundreds of years (as an aside, Ibn Ezra’s Yesod Moreh ve-Sod Torah has recently been reprinted in an expanded format by Bar Ilan Press). Relevant to our theme, however, are Ibn Ezra’s books on astronomy. Anyone familiar with Ibn Ezra’s commentary knows that Ibn Ezra uses astronomy in his commentary with some frequency and, to properly understand his various statements regarding astronomy it is helpful to have Ibn Ezra’s own statements regarding various astronomical ideas. But, for hundreds of years, the only available editions were not in the original Hebrew but were instead “saved” in other languages (see one example here).

Another example, although this case is not one of saving but instead appropriating from non-Jewish sources, is the portrait traditionally associated with R. Saul Morteira (1596-1660).

As Dr. S. Z. Leiman has noted (see Ali Sefer 10 [June 1982]: 153-55; reprinted in Givat Shaul, ed. Hayyim Eliezer Reich [Brooklyn, NY: [n.p.], 1991]) there is some doubt as to the veracity of this portrait. In a later article, (published in Daniel Sperber, Minhagei Yisrael, vol. 6, [Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1998], 17-19), Leiman shows that this portrait is not of R. Morteria. Indeed, its first appearance was in Wagneseil’s Latin translation of tractate Sota, published in 1674. The engraver, whose initals appear in the corner is Cornelius Nicholas Schurtz (whose initials are found in the bottom right corner) and who lived and worked in Nuremberg between 1670-90 and probably never saw R. Morteira who died in 1660 in Amsterdam. Indeed, this engraving is merely used to illustrate what tallis and teffilin look like and there is no mention of R. Morteria. [There are other illustrations by Shurtz in this volume that are also of interest including the halitzha shoe as well as others, in Sperber’s article on halitzha (Minhagei Yisrael, vol. 6, op. cit., pp. 62-73, 326-33 he doesn’t mention this illustration.] As Leiman notes, Schurtz’s engraving was very popular and subsequently appeared in various books.

J. Wagenseil, Sota, Altdorf, 1674
Courtesy of the B. Jackson Library

Reich, in his reprint of Givat Shaul provides a different portrait of R. Morteira, also from a non-Jewish source, Rembrandt. Although Reich doesn’t provide how he knows this information, Leiman cites a Dutch book, Herman Prins Salomon, Saul Levi Mortera en zijn “Traktaat betreffende de waarheid van de wet van Mozes”, eigenhandig geschreven in de portugese taal te Amsterdam 1659-1660 (Braga, 1988), which offers the suggestion that a Rembrandt portrait is that of R. Morteira. Although, some scholars now doubt that the Rembrandt portrait is that of Morteira and instead claim it is of the Czech Protostant Jan Amos Comenius who lived next door to Rembrandt for a period of time. See here (a review of Stevan Nadler’s book, Rembrandt’s Jews) and here.

Two other examples, both relating to the Talmud and both concern the Vatican library. In R. N. N. Rabinowich’s Dikdukei Soferim, the introduction to Baba Batra, Rabinowich thanks God for answering his prayers and allowing Rabinowich entry to the Vatican library in preparation for this book. Specifically, Rabinowich explains that he was allowed access to the Vatican libraries when no other outsider was allowed to use the library. The second example concerns the Romm edition of the Talmud. One of the most important early commentaries to the Talmud is that of the Rabbenu Hananel. This commentary was included for the first time with the Romm edition. The editors explain in their Afterword that the manuscript they used was the from the Vatican.

The next example, is again one in a similar vein to that of the Morteira portrait. As S. has noted, the Brooklyn-based Jewish publishing house ArtScroll has (or purchased) a patent regarding the use of arrows to allow for an interlinear translation. While the focus of the patent is on the arrows, the patent claims the need for the arrows is the difficulty in providing an interlinear translation from that of a right to left language (Hebrew) to one that reads from left to right (English). It seems that this wasn’t that much of an issue for at least 400 years ago (and there may be earlier examples) an interlinear bible, printed in 1609, which translated the Hebrew into Latin (a left to right language like English) was published. It seems that it worked just fine.

Biblia Hebraica, Eorundem Latina Interpretatio, 1609
Courtesy of the B. Jackson Library

Eli Meir Cohen: A Question of Mesorah?

“בין דַּם לדָּם”

by Eli Meir Cohen

In the upcoming Krias Hatorah in Parshat Shoftim and Parshat Ki Savo there are a number of instances where the meaning of a phrase changes completely based on the pronunciation of a single word – דם – with either a Komatz or Patah. Until recently, most Chumashim and Tikunim which generally followed the famous Yaakov Ben Hayyim 1525 edition of Mikraot Gedolot published in Venice that printed a seemingly inconsistent pattern in the pronunciation of the different occurrences of this word.

In the following post we have attempted to trace some of the available manuscript and mesoratic evidence on this issue as well as the early printed editions. We have also presented opinions of some of the authorities on dikduk that have dealt with this issue directly.

בפרשיות הבאות בספר דברים ישנן כמה פסוקים אשר הניקוד במילת “דם” משנה את הפשט ואעפ”כ מופיעות נוסחאות שונות מחומש לחומש ואף במהדורות שונות מדפוס לדפוס.

הנידון הוא כאשר כתוב בתורה מילת דם לפני מילת נקי. כגון בפרשת שופטים יט,י “ולא ישפך דם נקי בקרב ארצך אשר ד’ אלקיך נתן לך נחלה והיה עליך דמים”, האם קוראים דַּם בפתח ופירושו לשפוך דַּם של איש נקי או קוראים דָּם בקמץ ופירושו לשפוך דָּם שהוא נקי, ונקי הוא תיאור להדם. מילת דם הסמוך למילת נקי מופיעה עוד ארבע פעמים בספר דברים.

השאלה נידונת באופן מפורש בחומש מאור עינים מהמדקדק הידוע הרב וולף היידנהיים בדברים יט,י ושם הוא מביא מקור לדבר מהרד”ק, וזה לשונו שם, “כן הוא (בקמץ) בספרים מדויקים וכתבי יד וכן כתב רד”ק במכלול בשקל פל, בדרך כלל כל דָּם נקי קמוץ וכל דַּם הנקי פתח, וכן עיקר כי כל דם נקי פירושו דם שהוא נקי ואיננו סמוך, אבל דַּם הנקי פירושו דם של האיש הנקי לכן סמוך ופתוח אבל הדָּם הנקי קמוץ שאיננו סמוך בעדות הה”א שבראשו”.

הכתבי יד המנוקדים הישנים והמדויקים של התורה מלפני תקופת הדפוס שנמצאים כיום תואמים בנידון זה להרוו”ה. וכן בבדיקת הערות ‘המסורה הקטנה’ ‘והמסורה הגדולה’ שבידינו מצאנו רק הערת ‘מסורה גדולה’ יחידית על “דם הנקי” שהוא בפתח והוא גם תואם למה שמובא ברד”ק והרוו”ה.

ברם חומש מקראות גדולות דפוס ויניציה הנודע (שנת רפ”ד-רפ”ו), שעליו התבססו הרבה חומשים ותיקונים במשך הדורות, מנוקד בשלוש מקומות דַּם בפתח ובשתי מקומות מנוקד דָּם בקמץ. הגם שרק מופיעה הערת ‘המסורה’, (המוזכרת למעלה) במקום אחד בלבד, והוא על “דם הנקי” שהוא בפתח.

מאידך, בתנ”ך כתר ירושלים, ע”פ הנוסח והמסורה של כתר ארם צובה וכתבי יד הקרובים לו בשיטת הרב מרדכי ברויאר (נוסח השער) ניקדו בדיוק כהרוו”ה וכן ניקדו בתנ”ך הוצאת קורן. וכנראה מכח זה שינו הרבה חומשים ותיקונים הנדפסים היום מהניקוד הישן שנסמך על דפוס ויניציה וניקדו באותו צורה כהרוו”ה וכהמופיע בכת”י.

הצעה אחת יש, והיא לחזור פעמיים על המקומות המסופקים וכעין מה שנהגו כמה בפרשת זכור במילת זכר עמלק – זֵכר או זֶכר (הגם ששם ודאי חומרא בעלמא הוא יען שאין פירושה מתחלפת). ואכן כן מצינו מובא בקובץ זכור לאברהם תש”נ במאמר “עין רואה ואזן שומעת בעניני קריאת התורה” דף ש”ה בשם הרה”ג ר’ אביגדור נבנצאל שליט”א שמכח ספק זה החמיר לקרוא “דם נקי” המופיע בפרשת כי תבוא בשתי האופנים. ולכן שאלתנו פרוסה לדעת האם אפשר להכריע בדבר ולקבוע תורה אחת לעם ישראל ושלא תהא קריאתנו אגודות אגודות, זה בכה וזה בכה, בבהכנ”ס אחת תתפרש הקריאה דם של נקי ובבהכנ”ס אחר דם שהוא נקי.

אליהו מאיר קאהן.

seforimlib@gmail.com

הספק והמקורות

חמישה פעמים מופיע בתורה המילה “דם” או “הדם” בצירוף עם מילת “נקי” או “הנקי”,

(דברים יט, י) ולא ישפך דם נקי בקרב ארצך אשר ד’ אלקיך נתן לך נחלה והיה עליך דמים.
(דברים יט, יג) לא תחוס עינך עליו ובערת דם הנקי מישראל וטוב לך.
(דברים כא. ח) כפר לעמך ישראל אשר פדית ד’ ואל תתן דם נקי בקרב עמך ישראל ונכפר להם הדם.
(דברים כא. ט) ואתה תבער הדם הנקי מקרבך כי תעשה הישר בעיני ד’.
(דברים כז. כה) ארור לקח שחד להכות נפש דם נקי ואמר כל העם אמן.

הצירוף דם נקי מופיע תשעה פעמים בנ”ך (שתים מהם בתוספת “ו”)1, דם הנקי מופיע ב’ פעמים בנ”ך2. באחד מהם, מלכים ב’ כד,ד מופיע גם דם נקי וגם דם הנקי באותו פסוק. כמו כן מופיע דם נקיא פעמים בנ”ך3

ישנם שתי דרכים לנקד את מילת “דם” בקמץ או בפתח, והניקוד גורם לנפקא מינה גדולה במשמעות המילים משום הסמיכות למילת “נקי”.

אם הניקוד הוא בקמץ, א”כ מילת “דם” אינה סמוכה למילת “נקי” וכוונת הפסוק הוא דם שהוא נקי (ר”ל הדם הוא נקי).
אם הניקוד הוא בפתח, א”כ מילת “דם” סמוכה למילת “נקי” והכוונה הוא דם של איש הנקי.

המקורות הקדומים4

הרד”ק בספר המכלול, (שער דקדוק השמות דף קפ”ג), דן מפורשות בשאלת הניקוד, וז”ל שם, דָּם קמץ ובהסמכו פתח, דַּם הפר (ויקרא ד’). דָּם נקי (שופטי’ י”ט) קמץ, דַּם הנקי (שם) פתח, דַּם נקיים (ירמיה י”ט) פתח.

בדיקת כמה כת”י המוקדמים, והמנוקדים של התורה, מעלה את החלוקה הבאה.

כידוע כתר ארם צובא, (משנת 930 לספה”נ) שהוא הכת”י הכי מדויק שיש ע”פ המסורה, חסר עד לסוף פרשת כי תבוא.

אבל הרב יעקב ספיר שהיה מן החכמים האשכנזים בירושלים שלח בשנת 1855 לספה”נ 550 שאלות לרב משה סתהון שישב בחאלב כדי שיבדוק בכתר בשבילו.אחד מהשאלות היה ניקוד דם נקי הראשון, והתשובה הייתה שהיא בקמץ.

בדיקת החלקים שנשתיירו מהכתר בנ”ך מעלה את החלוקה הבאה.

• דָּם נקי, ודָּם הנקיא תמיד בקמץ.

• דַּם הנקי בפתח, במלכים ב’ כ”ד ד יש הערת מסורה קטנה ג’, [דהיינו ששלושה פעמים מופיע דם הנקי בתנ”ך]. ובאותו פסוק שם מופיע דָּם נקי לאחריו מנוקד בקמץ!
בכת”י לנינגרד5 (משנת 1008 לספה”נ) הניקוד הוא כדלקמן.

• דברים יט,י דָּם נקי בקמץ.

• דברים יט, יג, דַּם הנקי בפתח.

• דברים כא,ח דָּם נקי בקמץ.

• דברים כא, ט הדָּם הנקי בקמץ.

• דברים כז, כה דָּם נקי בקמץ.

בנ”ך כל דָּם נקי (ודָּם הנקיא) בקמץ ו דַּם הנקי בפתח.
כתר דמשק6 (בערך משנת 1000 לספה”נ) גם כן

• דברים יט,י דָּם נקי בקמץ.

• דברים יט, יג, דַּם הנקי בפתח, הפתח ברור. (אמנם ישנו נקודה מרוחקת מהפתח אבל ברור שהיא אינה כחלק מקמץ).

• דברים כא,ח דָּם נקי בקמץ.

• דברים כא, ט הדָּם הנקי בקמץ.

• דברים כז, כה דָּם נקי בקמץ. (הקמץ ברור כשבודקים במהדורה המסורקת).
בספר הללי (משנת 1241 לספה”נ) הוא ככת”י לנינגרד,

• דברים יט,י דָּם נקי בקמץ.

• דברים יט, יג, דַּם הנקי בפתח.

(ישנו גם שם הערת המסורה הגדולה, “דם הנקי ג’ וסי’ לא תחוס עינך עליו, וגם דם הנקי שפך, ועל דם הנקי אשר שפך”.)

• דברים כא,ח דָּם נקי בקמץ.

• דברים כא, ט הדָּם הנקי בקמץ.

• דברים כז, כה דָּם נקי בקמץ.

הרב ברואיר בספרו “נוסח המקרא בכתר ירושלים” שהוא היצירה המדוקדקת שישנה כיום על המסורה, ובו מביא כל המקומות שישנם חילוקים בכתבי יד בתנ”ך, אינו מציין שום כת”י שחולק על החלוקה בכת”י לנינגרד. [הוא רק מציין לדפוס וניציה, ראה לקמן].

בשנת 1920 לספה”נ הדפיס המשומד קריסטיאן גינזבורג, שנחשב לאחד מגדולי חוקרי המסורה בעולם המחקר, חומש שמבוסס על 71 כתבי יד ו24 דפוסים ראשונים של התורה. בהערותיו על הניקוד בדברים יט,י הוא כותב שרובם של כת”י הניקוד הוא דָּם בקמץ ומיעוטם הם דַּם בפתח. החלוקה היא כדלקמן.

• כ”ד כת”י הניקוד הוא בקמץ.

• ז” כת”י הניקוד הוא בפתח.

אמנם מכיון שאינו מציין כלום בפסוקים האחרים כלל (אפילו לא בפסוק הבא דברים יט,יג דם הנקי!) א”א לדעת איך מתחלקים הכת”י בפסוקים השונים ואין רשימתו מועילה כלל מבלי בדיקת הכת”י עצמם.

דפוסים קדמוניםבדפוס הראשון של התורה בתנ”ך דפוס בולוניה שנת רמ”ב (1482) החלוקה היא כדלקמן

• דברים יט,י דָּם נקי בקמץ.

• דברים יט, יג, דַּם הנקי בפתח.

• דברים כא,ח דָּם נקי בקמץ.

• דברים כא, ט הדָּם הנקי בקמץ.

• דברים כז, כה דָּם נקי בקמץ.

אותו חלוקה ממש מופיעה בתנ”ך דפוס סונצינו שנת רמ”ח (1488), תנ”ך דפוס ליסבון שנת רנ”א (1491), תנ”ך דפוס נפולי שנת רנ”א (1491)7, תנ”ך דפוס ברישא [שונצינו] רנ”ד (1492), תנ”ך דפוס פזרו רע”א (1511),

בתנ”ך דפוס שלוניקי שנת רפ”א (1521) החלוקה היא

• דברים יט,י דָּם נקי בקמץ.

• דברים יט, יג, דַּם הנקי בפתח.

• דברים כא,ח דָּם נקי בקמץ.

• דברים כא, ט הדָּם הנקי בקמץ.

• דברים כז, כה דַּם נקי בפתח.

בתנ”ך דפוס קושטא שנת ש”ו (1546) החלוקה היא

• דברים יט,י דָּם נקי בקמץ.

• דברים יט, יג, דַּם הנקי בפתח.

• דברים כא,ח דָּם נקי בקמץ.

• דברים כא, ט הדַּם הנקי בפתח.

• דברים כז, כה דָּם נקי בקמץ.

בחומש דפוס וינציה שנת רע”ח (1518), מופיע החלוקה הבאה.

• דברים יט,י דַּם נקי בפתח.

• דברים יט, יג, דַּם הנקי בפתח.

• דברים כא,ח דָּם נקי בקמץ.

• דברים כא, ט הדָּם הנקי בקמץ.

• דברים כז, כה דָּם נקי בקמץ.

בחומש דפוס וינציה שנת רפ”ד (1524) מופיע החלוקה הבאה.

• דברים יט,י דַּם נקי בפתח.

• דברים יט, יג, דַּם הנקי בפתח.

• דברים כא,ח דָּם נקי בקמץ.

• דברים כא, ט הדָּם הנקי בקמץ.

• דברים כז, כה דַּם נקי בפתח.

בחומש דפוס וינציה שנת רע”ח (1525) מופיע אותו חלוקה.

• דברים יט,י דַּם נקי בפתח.

• דברים יט, יג, דַּם הנקי בפתח.

(כאן ישנו הערת המסורה הגדולה, “דם הנקי ג’ וסי’ לא תחוס עינך עליו, וגם דם הנקי שפך, ועל דם הנקי אשר שפך”.)

• דברים כא,ח דָּם נקי בקמץ.

• דברים כא, ט הדָּם הנקי בקמץ.

• דברים כז, כה דַּם נקי בפתח.

האור תורה וגם המנחת שי לא העירו דבר באף אחד מהמקומות.

הרב ברויאר בספרו “כתר ארם צובה והנוסח המקובל של המקרא” , דף 39, מציין רשימה ארוכה של מקומות שבהם חומש דפוס ויניציה שינה הניקוד מקמץ לפתח (בניקוד של אות “ד”) בניגוד למופיע בכתבי יד ואעפ”כ לא העיר בהם המנחת שי דבר. שתיים ממקומות אלו הם דברים יט,י ודברים כז,כה.

דפוסים מאוחריםהדפוסים הידועים של המקראות גדולות במשך כל השנים שנסמכו על דפוס ויניציה גם ניקדו כדפוס כויניציה, דהיינו

• דברים יט,י דַּם נקי בפתח.

• דברים יט, יג, דַּם הנקי בפתח.

• דברים כא,ח דָּם נקי בקמץ.

• דברים כא, ט הדָּם הנקי בקמץ.

• דברים כז, כה דַּם נקי בפתח.

וכמו כן התיקונים שנסמכו על דפוס ויניציה ניקדו ג”כ כך.

חומש היכל ברכה קמרנא (שאינו נחשב חומש מדויק ביותר) הניקוד הוא כמו דפוס ויניציה והמקראות גדולות. בהערותיו בהיכל ברכה על פסוק יט, י הוא מציין שדם בפתח, וכן ביט, יג. בדברים כא, ח אינו מעיר כלל אבל הניקוד בקמץ. וכן אינו מעיר על כא, ט שגם בקמץ ובכז, כה שנמקד בפתח.

ב’המסורה’ בחומש נטר (שבאופן כללי הולך אחר הרוו”ה) הניקוד הוא ג”כ כמו בויניציה וכמו כן רק מעיר על השתי מקומות הראשונים, יט, י שהוא בפתח וכן ביט, יג.

המקור להערות אלו המופיעים בחומש היכל ברכה וחומש נטר נראה שהיא ציון להנוסח הנדפס בדפוס ויניציה, משום שלא מצינו אף הערת מסורה בספרי המסורה, המעירים במקומות אלו, ואף בדפוס ויניציה עצמה ישנו רק הערת מסורה אחת על “דם הנקי” בלבד.

דפוסים מאוחרים מדוקדקים

בחומש מאור עינים מהמדקדק הידוע הרב וולף היידנהיים, ישנה הערה בדברים יט, י,

“דם נקי, או”ה כן הוא בספרים מדויקים וכתבי יד וכן כתב רד”ק במכלול בשקל פל, בדרך כלל כל דָּם נקי קמוץ וכל דַּם הנקי פתח, וכן עיקר כי כל דם נקי פירושו דם שהוא נקי ואיננו סמוך, אבל דַּם הנקי פירושו דם של האיש הנקי לכן סמוך ופתוח אבל הדָּם הנקי קמוץ שאיננו סמוך בעדות הה”א שבראשו”.

וכן ניקד בחומש עצמו.

• דברים יט,י דָּם נקי בקמץ.

• דברים יט, יג, דַּם הנקי בפתח.

• דברים כא,ח דָּם נקי בקמץ.

• דברים כא, ט הדָּם הנקי בקמץ.

• דברים כז, כה דָּם נקי בקמץ.

תנ”ך הוצאת קורן ג”כ הניקוד כן.

ובחומש שהדפיס הרב ברויאר לפי המסורה שהוא המדוקדק ביותר שישנו כיום, הניקוד הוא גם כך. וכן בתנ”ך כתר ירושלים.

דפוסים חדשים

הרבה מהחומשים החדשים נראה סומכים עצמם על דפוס קורן. ומשום כך הם מנקדים מחדש כמו שמופיע בדפוס קורן וכדמוכח מהכת”י.

כך הניקוד בחומש המאור

• דברים יט,י דָּם נקי בקמץ.

• דברים יט, יג, דַּם הנקי בפתח.

• דברים כא,ח דָּם נקי בקמץ.

• דברים כא, ט הדָּם הנקי בקמץ.

• דברים כז, כה דָּם נקי בקמץ.

וכמו כן חמשה חומשי תורה לבית המדרש הוצאת וגשל. וכן החומש הנפוץ חמשה חומשי תורה הוצאת ב”ב. וחומש שנדפס לאחרונה על ידי מכון ירושלים (חומש ע”פ רבינו יונתן) גם כהרוו”ה.

תיקון קוראים המפואר הוצאת יושר גם כן הניקוד כך. וכן תיקון סימנים החדש, שהוא תיקון מדוקדק (שסומך בעיקר גם על הרוו”ה ודפוס קורן) גם כהרוו”ה8.

——————————————————————————-

[1]

(מלכים ב’ כא, טז) וגם דם נקי שפך מנשה הרבה מאד עד אשר מלא את ירושלם

(מלכים ב’ כד, ד) וגם דם הנקי אשר שפך וימלא את ירושלים דם נקי ולא אבה ד’, לסלוח.

(ישעיה נט, ז) רגליהם, לרע ירוצו וימהרו, לשפוך דם נקי מחשבותיהם מחשבות אוון שוד ושבר במסילותם

(ירמיהו ז,ו) גר יתום ואלמנה, לא תעשקו ודם נקי, אל תשפכו במקום הזה ואחרי אלהים אחרים לא תלכו לרע לכם.

(ירמיהו כב, ג) כה אמר ד’ עשו משפט וצדקה והצילו גזול מיד עשוק וגר יתום ואלמנה אל תונו אל תחמוסו ודם נקי אל תשפכו במקום הזה.

(ירמיה כו, טו) אך ידע תדעו כי אם ממתים אתם אתי כי דם נקי אתם נתנים עליכם

(משלי ו, יז) עיניים רמות, לשון שקר וידיים שופכות דם נקי.

(תהילים צד, כא) יגודו על נפש צדיק ודם נקי ירשיעו.

(תהלים קו, לח) וישפכו דם נקי דם בניהם ובנותיהם
[2] (מלכים ב’ כד,ד) וגם דם הנקי אשר שפך וימלא את ירושלים דם נקי ולא אבה ד’, לסלוח. (ירמיהו כב, יז) כי אין עיניך וליבך כי אם על בצעך ועל דם הנקי לשפוך ועל העושק ועל המרוצה לעשות.
[3] (יונה א, יד) ויקראו אל ד’ ויאמרו אנה ד’ אל נא נאבדה בנפש האיש הזה ואל תתן עלינו דם נקיא כי אתה ד’ כאשר חפצת עשית.

(יואל ד, יט) מצרים לשממה תהיה ואדום למדבר שממה תהיה מחמס בני יהודה אשר שפכו דם נקיא בארצם.

[4] רב תודות לר’ יהודה חיים זאבאלאוו עמו”ש על עזרתו האדיבה בפתיחת ספרייתו הגדולה לרשותנו בעין יפה.
[5] אחרי כתר ארם צובא, נחשב כת”י לנינגרד לכת”י המדויק ביותר ע”פ המסורה.
[6] MS. Heb 5702. הוא כת”י מדויק ע”פ המסורה
[7] קצת קשה לקרוא הניקוד של דם הראשון אך נראה די ברור שהוא נקוד בקמץ

[8] על אף שבסופו יש ליקוט שכותב לנקד כויניציה, אבל כפי שכתוב בהקדמה, הליקוט אינו מהמוציא לאור של התיקון.

A Gemeinde Gemeinheit

A Gemeinde Gemeinheit

by Shlomo and Mati Sprecher

We are delighted that the occasion of our son’s wedding (Uri Sprecher to Rivi Zand, 4 Kislev 5769) solved a 150-year-old bibliographic mystery. When we chose to provide our guests with the opportunity to engage in limmud Torah during the course of the wedding by reprinting and distributing “Tshuvah Be’Inyan Kriat HaKetubah,” we assumed that, just as the title page and the publisher’s introduction indicated, it represented an actual Halakhic Responsum issued in 1835 by the Chief Rabbi of Bialystok, Rabbi Nechemiah, to a query submitted to him by Rabbi Shalom, the Chief Rabbi of Novgorod. The Responsum had been brought to print, some 2 ½ decades later, by Rabbi Nechemiah’s devoted disciple, Nehorai Zechnech-Lefavitch, who had just taken up residence in Vienna, a city in which the necessity of the public reading of the Ketubah was coming under question.

Nehorai Zechnech-Lefavitch, informs us that he had long sought to share his teacher’s wisdom with the world at large, and so he seized this opportunity to enlighten his Viennese hosts with his Rebbi’s lengthy and learned psak, which after closely examining all the arguments ruled that such a public recitation of the Ketubah was entirely and appropriately dispensable. This Tshuvah (aside from its scarcity as an example of ephemera,[1] i.e., a solitary Responsum appearing in print) was taken at face value and duly registered as such in all the standard bibliographies of Hebrew printing and Responsa literature. Even A.H. Freimann, in his authoritative work, Seder Kiddushin VeNissu’in (Jerusalem, 1964) cites this work (on page 41) and Daniel Sperber, in his magisterial Minhagei Yisrael (Jerusalem 1995), 4:89, follows Freimann’s lead in referencing this Teshuvah. Further attestation of its acceptance as an authentic Responsum is its inclusion in an anthology of rare Halakhic material bearing on Kiddushin and Nissu’in issued by Rabbi Yitzchok Herskovitz, Mili deVei Hillulah, (Brooklyn, 1998), adorned with the Haskamah of his illustrious father, Rabbi Ephraim Fishel Herskovitz, the noted Hasidic Posek of the Klausenberger Kehillah (who is also an acclaimed expert on Seforim).

However, our close reading of this Tshuvah led us in an entirely different direction. To us, the work’s style manifested clear Maskilic echoes, and its arguments rejecting the binding nature of centuries-old Minhagim were clearly not in accord with 19th –century Halakhic thought. Our reaction was that the work must certainly be pseudepigraphical and could not have arisen from the pen of the Chief Rabbi of Bialystok. In fact, a quick perusal of the reference literature demonstrated that there never was any Chief Rabbi of Bialystok named Nechemiah, nor, for that matter, was there any Chief Rabbi Shalom of Novgorod. As for Nechemiah’s disciple, Nehorai Zechnech-Lefavitch, well, one didn’t need to do much research in order to recognize the pseudonymous nature of this publisher’s name.[2] But who was really behind this masterful forgery, which deceived so many discerning readers for a century and a half?[3] Our initial thought was to place the blame on the notorious Abraham Krochmal or his erstwhile partner in literary crime, Yehoshua Heschel Schorr. They certainly had the requisite Talmudic knowledge to perpetrate a learned forgery.[4] But the tone of the work did not reflect their slashing, acerbic style. Our Tshuvah evinced a genuine love for Talmudic learning, albeit with a clear intent to utilize earlier sources to eliminate the prevailing Minhag of Kriat HaKetubah and replace it with an edifying sermon.

At an impasse, we reached out to Professor Shnayer Z. Leiman, who suggested that the scholar most likely to solve the mystery would be the doyen of Israeli bibliographers, Rabbi Shmuel Ashkenazi.[5] We were rewarded thanks to the tireless efforts of Eliezer Brodt who, on our behalf, pestered the aged Jerusalem sage until he successfully unmasked the name, but not quite the identity, of the author. Rabbi Ashkenazi concluded that the first line of the introductory poem that prefaced the Halakhic query contained the acrostic – “Meir Ish-Shalom.” (His initial contention was that this could not be the noted 19th –century Viennese scholar, Meir Ish-Shalom, because his heretofore known literary output began only some five years later, with his publication of the Sifre in 1864.)

Once Rabbi Ashkenazi had provided the key to the author’s name via the acrostic, it became apparent that all along the title page had been proclaiming that very same message. Let us recall the passage in Bavli Eruvin 13b where it is recorded that the celebrated Tanna, known to us as Rabbi Meir, was actually named Nehorai, according to one opinion; or alternatively, that both Meir and Nehorai were laudatory appellations reflecting his enlightening wisdom, whereas his actual name was Nechemiah. Recall also that the query first originated with Rabbi “Shalom” of Novgorod, and the word “shalom” appears twice more on the title page and is highlighted by the placement of a circle above one of its appearances.

Although none of the biographies [6] and bibliographies [7] devoted to the life and works of Meir Ish-Shalom attributes the Tshuvah Be’Inyan Kriat HaKetubah to him, we believe that a re-examination of Meir Ish-Shalom’s life supplies overwhelming confirmation that he is indeed the actual author of this Tshuvah. Born, as Meir Friedmann, in 1831, to a simple village couple in Krasna, his formative years were strained by extreme material and spiritual deprivation. At the age of Bar Mitzvah, his great desire to study Torah was realized by his acceptance to the Yeshiva in Ungvar, which was led by a distant relative of his mother, Rabbi Meir Asch-Eisenstadter, a noted disciple of the Hatam Sofer. Meir’s brilliance was soon recognized by his teachers, and he made great strides in Torah scholarship and adopted many stringent ascetic practices such as prolonged fasting, ritual immersion in ice-covered rivers and hours of un-interrupted Torah study and prayer. At the age of 19, he was granted Rabbinic ordination. Unfortunately, this phase of his life was cut short by a spiritual crisis induced by his exposure to Mendelssohn’s Biur and Wessely’s Hebrew poetry.[8] After a decade of hardship and wandering through Hungary and Slovakia, his wanderlust brought him fortuitously to Vienna in late 1857. That summer, the newly hired assistant to Vienna’s Chief Rabbi Mannheimer, Adolf Jellinek, began officiating at marriages. Claiming that sitting through the recitation of the Ketubah was too burdensome for the assembled guests, Rabbi Jellinek substituted in its stead an edifying sermon in the German language.[9] This reform of the Chuppah ritual was not endorsed by his employers, the leadership of the Gemeinde, who at that time still favored the classical Viennese approach of caution and consensus in religious reform,[10] and letters of reprimand directed at Rabbi Jellinek for this innovation are extant.[11] Rabbi Jellinek’s angry retort to Josef von Wertheimer, the Gemeinde’s President is also preserved:

Tatsache ist es; dass kaum eine kleine Zahl unserer grossen Gemeinde sich mehr um die Ketuba kummert, da die Vorlesung derselben fur jeden Sachverstandigen, der niche in Zogling der Pressburger Rabbinatsschule ist, als nutzlos und storend erscheint. Tatsache ist es, dass man hier mit mir umspringt, als ware ich der unfahigste, geistloseste, taktloseste und unbrauchbarste Mensch. In Berlin sitzen Manner wie Fr. Veit, Magnus, Dr. Oesterreicher, Geheimrat Joel Meyer im Vorstande; aber wahrlich diese Manner werden es nich wagen, ihre Prediger so zu tyrannisieren, wie es hier in Wien beliebt wird, wo alle Urteile nach Horensagen under Einflusterungen gatallt warden.[12]

Apparently, the ex-Yeshiva prodigy, newly arrived from Hungary, aided Rabbi Jellinek in resisting his Governing Board’s demands to re-institute the recitation of the Ketubah by fabricating a learned Responsum from a distant (and fictional) Rabbi proving that reading the Ketubah was a practice that had no sound Halakhic basis. This fabricated Responsum relied heavily on the reasoning advanced by Rabbeinu Meshulam in his celebrated correspondence with Rabbeinu Tam, which had recently appeared in print when the Sefer HaYashar was published for the first time.[13] Meir Ish-Shalom was thus able to demonstrate that Rabbi Jellinek’s innovation, far from being a deviation from correct Halakhic practice predicated on a reformist basis, was in reality a restoration of the authentic ritual promoted by Rabbeinu Meshulam, whose arguments, in the opinion of the Responsum, clearly bested the counter-arguments of Rabbeinu Tam.[14]

After surviving this rocky beginning, Rabbi Jellinek enjoyed a productive career that spanned the remaining four decades of the 19th Century. In 1864, Rabbi Jellinek established the Beth Midrash, an adult-education program, and Meir Ish-Shalom, our Hungarian prodigy, finally secured a steady income as a teacher at that institution. In 1893, the program was expanded to include a seminary for the training of Rabbis, and Meir Ish-Shalom was appointed Professor of Rabbinics, a job he held until his death in 1908. Among his students was a fellow Eastern European expatriate and ex-prodigy – Solomon Schechter.

Although he remained a devoted student of Torah and Rabbinics, Meir Ish-Shalom did display intentions to abrogate other time-honored practices as well. For example, he argued that it was entirely correct to accede to the expressed desires of a non-Jewish husband to be allowed to purchase a burial plot alongside that of his Jewish wife, who had been interred in the Gemeinde’s cemetery. This ruling proved too radical even for his colleague, Isaac Hirsch Weiss, who strongly protested this breach of Jewish law and custom.[15] One of the ironies of history is that Isaac Hirsch Weiss has high name recognition as a foe of traditional Orthodoxy, because of his authorship of the controversial Dor Dor VeDorshav, whereas Meir Ish-Shalom’s Midrashic editions enjoy a respected position in the typical Yeshiva library. This anomaly was first noted by an actual Bialystoker Talmid Chakham, Rabbi Eliezer HaBavli, writing in HaLevanon 8 (1872): 372, who considered Meir Ish-Shalom to be firmly in the camp of the Maskilim and thus deserving of opprobrium and censure.[16] Imagine what Rabbi Bavli would have said had he known the true iniquity of Meir Ish-Shalom – creating a forged Tshuvah that justified discarding an ancient and hallowed Ashkenazi Minhag and attributing it to the “chief rabbi” of his beloved Bialystok.[17]

[1] Attesting to its ephemeral nature is the fate of my own personal copy. Since purchasing it at the renowned liquidation sale of Feldheim’s Lower East Side bookstore in 1988, I haven’t been able to extract it from whichever book I placed it in (for safe-keeping!). My fellow Feldheim shopper, Dr. Benny Ogorek, was kind enough to lend me his copy to produce the facsimiles that were distributed at the wedding. On these forgotten Hebrew booksellers of the Lower East Side (and especially Philipp Feldheim’s bookstores), see Shnayer Z. Leiman, “Montague Lawrence Marks: In a Jewish Bookstore,” Tradition 25:1 (Fall 1989): 59-69, and esp. 60, 68n5.

[2] Saul Chajes, who assembled all known Hebraic pseudonymy in his Otzar Beduyei HaShem (Vienna, 1933) also overlooked Tshuvah Be’Inyan Kriat HaKetubah, as it does not appear in the what he considered to be the comprehensive repository of all such literature. What is especially surprising is that Chajes spent the last two decades of his life in Vienna (1914-1933) and he was employed as the primary assistant to Bernard Dov Wachstein, the librarian and archivist of the Gemeinde’s magnificent library and communal archives, and therefore was no doubt aware of this pamphlet.

[3] With the possible exception of Benjacob who places a question mark after listing Rabbi Nechemiah of Bialystok as the author of the Tshuvah; see his Otzar HaSefarim (Vilna, 1880), 675, item #1013.

[4] See Allan Nadler, “The Besht as Spinozist: Abraham Krochmal’s Preface to Ha-Ketav ve-ha-Mikhtav,” in Daniel Frank & Matt Goldish, eds., Rabbinic Culture and Its Critics: Jewish Authority, Dissent, and Heresy in Medieval and Early Modern Times (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008), 359-389, for examples of Krochmal’s not very successful pseudepigraphical attempts. See also Daniel B. Schwartz, “The Spinoza Image in Jewish Culture, 1656–1956,” (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2007), who discusses how Abraham Krochmal (son of Nachman Krochmal) “became a leading advocate for religious reform in the Hebrew press and served briefly as [Yehoshua Heschel] Schorr’s co-editor of He-Haluts” (page 207).

[5] For more information regarding this semi-mythic figure see S.A. Tefilinsky, Alpha Beta Kadmaita D’Shmuel Ze’ira (Jerusalem, 2000) which lists 289 publications that Rabbi Ashkenazi either wrote under various guises or had a significant role in editing (i.e., ghost-writing).

[6] The earliest complete biography of Meir Ish-Shalom was authored by his son, Joab Freidmann, Lector M. Friedmann (Wien, 1931). The noted Rabbinic scholar, Binyamin Ze’ev Benedikt, a native of Vienna and the son of Rabbi Lemel Benedikt, the Rabbi of the Adath Jeshurin Synagogue located in the Ninth District (Neunte Bezirk), had intended to write a full-length book devoted to the life and works of Meir Ish-Shalom, but settled instead for a fifteen-page essay that appeared in the Mosad ha-Rav Kook Bibliographical Yearbook, Areshet 2 (1960): 269-284. Benedikt had earlier compiled what he considered to be a complete bibliography of all Meir Ish-Shalom’s works, which appeared in Kiryat Sefer 24 (1948): 263-275. The attribution of the Tshuvah Be’Inyan Kriat HaKetubah to Meir Ish-Shalom eluded both Joab Friedmann as well as Binyamin Ze’ev Benedikt.

[7] See B.Z. Benedikt’s two bibliographies referenced above. Tuvia Preschel supplemented Benedikt’s bibliographies in Areshet 3 (1961): 468, but he too failed to include the Tshuvah Be’Inyan Kriat HaKetubah in the list of works authored by Meir Ish-Shalom.

[8] See Solomon Schechter’s obituary entitled “Lector Meir Freidmann” that was reprinted in Seminary Addresses and Other Papers (Cincinnati, 1915), 136.

[9] See Marsha L. Rozenblitt, “Jewish Identity and the Modern Rabbi: The Cases of Isak Noa Mannheimer, Adolf Jellinek, and Moritz Güdemann in Nineteenth-Century Vienna,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 35 (1990): 111. According to Rav Moshe Leiter, “HaPulmus Hildesheimer – Yellinek,” HaDarom 17 (Nisan 1963): 105-133, Rabbi Leib Schwab, the lapsed disciple of the Hatam Sofer, was the Mesader Kiddushin at Rabbi Jellinek’s own Chuppah, in Budapest (May 1850) and he was the one who initiated this practice of skipping the reading of the Ketubah. He was also responsible for moving the Chuppah from the synagogue’s courtyard to the interior. Rabbi Leiter, however, provides no citation for these claims (which can be found on page 108 of his article).

[10] See Marsha Rozenblitt, “The Struggle over Religious Reform in Nineteenth-Century Vienna,” AJS Review 14:2 (Fall 1989): 179–221.

[11] Moses Rosenmann, Dr. Adolf Jellinek: Sein Leben und Schaffe (Wien, 1931), 83.

[12] Ibid, p. 84. For those whose German is somewhat weak (and I include myself in that category, Rabbi Jellinek’s response is as follows: “only a small number of our large community trouble themselves regarding reading the Ketubah, since the vast majority (besides those graduates of the Pressburg Yeshiva) consider it a useless and disturbing ritual.” The remainder of the letter voices a complaint which many a pulpit rabbi must feel regarding the tyrannical oppression perpetrated by the lay leadership on the hired clergy.

[13] (Vienna, 1811).

[14] For a comprehensive essay on this fascinating conflict between these two noted antagonists, see Dr. Avraham (Rami) Reiner’s article, “Parshanut VeHalakhah BePulmus Rabbeinu Tam VeRabbeinu Meshulam,” Shnaton HaMishpat HaIvri 21 (1998-2000): 207-239. The section that relates to our Responsum is found on pages 228-230.

[15] See the biographical essay by Yehudah Bergmann entitled “Meir Ish-Shalom” that appeared in Sefer HaZikaron LeBait HaMidrash LeRabbanim BeVinah (Jerusalem, 1946), 43.

[16] Cited by Rabbi Eliezer Katzman, “Chalutzei Tzava: Sefer HaTzava U’Mechabro- LeDmut HaRav HaGaon Rav Eliezer HaBavli ZT”L M’Bialystok,” Yeshurun 2 (1997): 666-679.

[17] We wish to thank all those who helped us on this project: Rabbis Shmuel Ashkenazi, Eliezer Brodt, Menachem Butler, Eliezer Katzman, and Menahem Silber, as well as Drs. Shnayer Z. Leiman, Benny Ogorek, and Avraham (Rami) Reiner. And Achronim Achronim Chavivim – Uri and Rivi!