The newest version of the Talmud mss CD (the “Lieberman CD” or the “Sol and Evelyn Henkind Talmud Text Databank”), is now available. The newest version, using the Bar Ilan Responsa interface, includes transcriptions of all known mss of Talmud, including Cairo Genizah fragments at JTS, Cambridge and Oxford as well as scans of various mss (NOT those available via JNUL) of Talmud and Mishnah.

It normally sells for $750 but if five (5) individuals get together they can each buy it for $500 (please mention Yisrael Dubitsky’s name when ordering. He does not get a cut, it’s for statistical purposes only). For more information see here.

Gil has a nice post on the latest mythmaking regarding the Hazon Ish. Along those same lines, there is a farily well known story that goes something like this:

An Orthodox person is sitting in the Jewish National Library and gets hungry. He takes out his lunch and then benches however, he does so in an audible tone. In his recitation he says the words שלא נכשל לעולם ועד. The librarian who is not Orthodox comes over to complain about his eating and he loud blessing. Additionally, she points out the he does not even know how to properly bless in that he used a version that doesn’t appear in the blessing, namely, שלא נכשל. He is preturbed by her assertion and claims that is his custom. She then proceeds to pull out all the siddurim to show him that none have it. He goes home and comes across a siddur which does have his version and photocopies it and sends it to her. He circles in red the relevant passage – שלא נכשל.

A few years later he recieves an invitation to attend a wedding of someone he does not know. However, he decides to go anyways. Upon getting there the woman – who is the librarian – tells him that now she is marrying an Orthodox person. However, this was not always the case. In fact, she was schedualed to marry a non-Jew (in some stories an Arab). His letter with the circled words שלא נכשל reached her right before the wedding and she took it as a sign. She became Orthodox and now is marrying an Orthodox man.

Anyways this is the basic gist of the story. The story appears in a bunch of different places and in slightly differing versions. At times the “man” is identified and at times not. For instance, Ruchuma Shain in her book Reaching the Stars has this story as does the book “The Kiruv Files,” Rabbi Sholom Schwadron also has a version of this story. Here is another take on it. In all these instances this story is passed off as true. However, in truth, this is actually a much earlier story written by Shai Agnon. It was published in 1937 in a slightly different format. You can read the original here.

Rabbi Yehoshua Mondshein has collected the various stories and noted the original source in a typically excellent article available here. Also there is a thread on Hyde Park about this article here.

There is a new sefer which offers a translation of Onkelos published by Gefen books. Onkelos, which is considered the authoritative translation of the Torah has, unfortunatly, suffered from the difficulty people have in reading it. Instead, most English speakers rely upon other translation, some which do not follow Onkelos. This has now been remidied by this new book “Onkelos on the Torah: Understanding the Bible Text” by Israel Drazin and Stanley Wagner.
The book is very user friendly. It contains the Hebrew text of the Torah, Onkelos and Rashi (vocalized). Additionally, it contains an English translation of Onkelos. The translation bolds any words that Onkelos changed from the literal meaning. The authors then have a commentary on each of those changes explaining why this was changed. Additionally, the authors provide an even more in-depth commentary in the Appendix, for those who want to go even further. Drazin, has edited a more scholarly treatment of Onkelos published by Ktav (for a lot more money).

One example from last weeks Parsha. Exodos 8:2 discusses the begining of the frog plauge. The translation is as follows: “Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of the Egyptians, and the frogs ascended and covered the land of Egypt.” Thus, both Egyptians and frogs have been chaged by the targum. We will focus on the “frogs” change. The authors explain

FROGS The biblical reading is “bring up the frog” (in the singular), suggesting that one frog covered the entire land. Indeed, Rashi cites an opinion found in the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 67b) and the Midrash (Exodus Rabbah 10:4) that a single from came, split into other frogs and swarmed over Egypt. Our targumist prefers to interpret the biblical singular as “frogs,” which is closer to the intended meaning. Rashi also states that the singular form represents a swarm of frogs, just as the word kinam in verse 13 and 14, in the singular, refers to many lice. Our tagumist translates kinam in the plural in keeping with his understanding of the intended meaning of the word.

The authors in a section titled “Onkelos Highlights” offer an additional reason why the targumist picked this explaination.

Onkelos most often attempts to translate Scripture in accordance with the view of Rabbi Ishmael, rather thatn that of Rabbi Akiva – both spiritual giants of the second centruy CE. Rabbi Akiva, recognizing the sacredness of every word in the Bible, understood Scripture literally. Hence, when the Bible describes the second plauge in verse 8:2, stating that a “frog,” in the singular, covered Egypt, he understood it to mean that it was a single frog that miraculously afflicted Egypt. Rabbi Ishmael, on the other hand, insisted that “Scripture speaks in human language,” and that it often metaphoric and imprecise, a view embraced by Onkelos. The tragumist, therefore, translates the Hebrew word as “frogs,” to reflect the intention of the Bible, which frequently uses the singular in the place of the plural.

Thus, there is a basic controversy how to understand the Bible, with Onkelos taking one position which is reflected in his targum.

It is worthwhile to note how other translations have translated this verse (8:2) to compare and understand what they were doing.

Artscroll actually differs depending upon which book one is looking at. In the Artscroll translation that includes a translation of Rashi, the verse is translated in the singular – “frog.” This, as noted above, reflects Rashi’s understanding of the verse based upon the Midrash and the Talmud. Artscroll in their introduction claim they follow Rashi in their translation.
In the Artscroll Stone edition which is just a translation of the Torah with a commentary, the verse is translated as “frog-infestation.” The commentary notes that they followed Rashi on this as well (the second explaination offered in Rashi). However, a closer reading of Rashi actually leads to a different translation. Rashi states “The simple understading of this verse is that a singular form of frog can mean frog infestation.” Thus, Rashi is saying although only the singular is used it can mean multitudes. Therefore, Rashi would actually translate the verse, according to this understanding, as “frog” which would mean frog infestation, not that the translation is actually frog infestation.

Additionally, Artscroll does not explain why in one book they translated it one way and in the other a different way.

JPS follows Onkelos and translates “frogs.”

I do have one criticism of the an otherwise excellent work. I think it would have been even better if they had aside from bolding the English to bold the actual targum words that are changed. However, beside for this, this work allows many, who constrained by the difficult language employeed by the Targum to now study this invaluable work.

I purchased this from Biegeleisen for $27. As of yet the only volume published is the Exodus volume, however, the authors note that Genisis is almost complete. One can also buy this directly from the publisher and also see page samples here

While I do not intend to focus solely on racy title pages, I do have a futher update to my previous posts I, II. It appears that the title page used in the Levush (Prauge, 1590) was actually a recycled page. It was first used in the Prague 1526 Haggada.

Now aside from this page, which we have seen is objectionable to some today, there were other objectionable illustrations in this edition. Yerushalmi in his Haggadah and History, notes that there was an illustration accompaning the verse found in haggadah from Exekiel 16:7. That verse reads “I cause you to increase, even as the growth of the field. And you did increase and grow up, and you became beautiful: you breasts grew, and your hair has grown; yet you were naked and bare” Accompaning this verse the following illustration appeared, which as you can see, really just shows just what the verse describes.

Now in the Venice 1603 they wanted to illustrate this verse, however, they did not want to use a nude, so they replaced it with a picture of a man, which of course, has little to do with the verse. In fact, they felt the need to place a legend on the picture so the reader would not be too confused the legend reads “A Picture of a Man!” (on the right)

As I had previously noted, many older seforim include what may be deemed objectionable by today’s standards. I had mentioned how one book had attempted to rectify this, the new edition of the Levush. In this edition the title pages from some early editions of the Levush are included in the introdoction, however the title pages has been “touched up.” Now that I have learned how to include images, I present both the original and the touched up version.

Although, the publishers of the Levush decided to alter the original, the new edition of the Tashbatz Koton did include a reprint of the first edition (1556) with the original title page unaltered. However, as is apparent, there are images on this title page that some might find objectionable.

[Unfortunately, I can’t get the pictures to layout nicely, if someone knows how to fix that please let me know]

Although, taken for granted today, there is a rather interesting discussion regarding putting ones name on one’s sefer. The early Jewish books we have- Tanak, Mishna and Talmud, the authors or compliers did use their names. It appears that this practice started in the times of the patanim. R. Yehuda haHasid says

In the early days, the patanyim – the ones that appear in Tanakh – did not use acrostics. Further, early blessings that were fashioned by the Great Assembly do not either have such attributions. However, when wicked people began creating songs of nothing . . .and people could not discern what the righteous people had written and what these wicked people wrote, the righteous people began putting their names in the acrostic . . . and with this the wicked could no longer take credit for poems that were not theirs.

Sefer Hasidim (ed. Wistinetzki), Frankfort 1924, no. 470, p. 133.

Thus, the practice of taking credit for one’s written came in order to allow the reader to know the provenance of the work. Others claim the use of the acrostic was just borrowed from non-Jewish sources. Be it as it may, these claims only date the usage of the writing the authors name to the time after the Talmud.

Some, however, go to some length to show that even in the books of Tanakh and the Mishna the authors or compliers did, at the very least, hint to their name. The Midrash Tanchuma explains why the letter Hey in the verse in Hazenu (Devarim 32:6) H-l’shem tigmilu zot (ה-לה’)is separate from the name of God. The Midrash explains that this unusual separation is to “tell the reader to take the first letters of the verses up until this verse. The Hey (ה) from האזינו, the Yud (י) from יערף, the Kuf (כ) from כי שם, the Hey (ה) from הצור, the Shin (ש) from שחת לו, and finally the Hey (ה) from ה-לה’. Those letters numerical value equal the name of Moshe as this is Moshe signing his name just as a person who finishes his book signs his name to it.” (Tanchum Hazenu 5). Though some note that this quote may have actually been inserted later, it does demonstrate that at a fairly early time people felt it was important to claim authorship to their own work.

At times, however, there were some even long after the Talmud who wrote works in an anonymous fashion. One book provoked a discussion that sheds some light on the above discussion. R. Shmuel Aboab (1610-1694), wrote the ethical work Sefer HaZikronot, first published in 1631 in Prague, recently reprinted in 2001. However, the book was published anonymously. R. Hayyim Yosef David Azulai (Hida) in his bibliographical work, Shem HaGedolim, has an extensive discussion on the entry for the Sefer HaZikronot whether one should or should not note that one is acatully the author of a book. Hida quotes another passage in the Sefer Hasdim that offers an explanation why some do not note they are the author. “The early ones did not write their names on their works for example who wrote Torat Kohanim, Mehilta etc. so that they would not derive benefit from this world and lose any reward they will have in the world to come.” Sefer Hasidim, ed. R. R. Margolis no. 367. However, Hida notes that although for the “early ones” such as the those before the time of the Geonim, they did not reveal their authorship, from the times of the Geonim this has become common practice and thus in today there is no longer a reason to hide who the author is. Hida explains that the nature of R. Aboab’s book was the reason he did not reveal his authorship. The Sefer HaZikronot is a book of exhortations, a mussar book, as R. Aboab did not want to appear as more righteous in giving ethical direction he decided to remain anonymous.

Interestingly, the Hida nor anyone else, ever mention any prohibition in revealing the name of an anonymous work.

Sources: Yakov Shmuel Speigel, Amudim b’Toldot HaSefer HaIvri – Kitiva V’Hatakato, Ramat-Gan 2005, pp. 307-317; R. Hayyim Yosef David Azuali, Shem HaGedolim, Jerusalem 1997, vol. 2 Sefarim, 46-49.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: for further on the pronunciation of the word ה-לה’ see David Yishaki, in R. Jacob Emden, Luah Eres, 2000, appendix.