Ten Commandment Representations in Hebrew Manuscripts & Books: Artistic Approaches to Theological Issues in Judaism

Dan Rabinowitz

Today, the Ten Commandments or Decalogue[1] are among the most prominently featured symbols associated with Judaism. The Decalogue is represented by two tablets, generally connected and rounded at the top. This representation occupies a central place within synagogue architecture, often displayed on the exterior or interior of the edifices and frequently above the ark itself, which is regarded as the most sacred element within the building. However, it is noteworthy that these practices only began to emerge in the 16th century. The exact origins of this practice remain unclear, but it is likely that they were influenced by the Christian adoption of the Ten Commandment tablets in art as representative of Judaism. Some scholars suggest that this may not be an instance of benign cultural exchange but might have its roots in anti-semitic legislation, which mandated that Jews wear badges shaped like the Ten Commandments with rounded tops. This imposition may have influenced Jewish consciousness, potentially resulting in eventual self-association with this symbol.[2]

Historical evidence indicates that the ancient Jewish community used of other symbols such as the lulav, shofar, menorah, ark, scroll, and etrog, but not the luchos. The absence of the luchos is unsurprising when one considers the inherent difficulties of accurately replicating them. There is substantial ambiguity surrounding the exact proportions and shape of the tablets. Consequently, accurate reproductions were improbable, preventing their adoption as a common, recognizable symbol. Apart from the Israelites in the desert who witnessed the Sinai revelation, the tablets were not publicly displayed but remained housed within the ark. The fact that the luchos were kept in the ark and never removed suggests that they were intentionally not intended for public display.

In contrast to other Temple implements that are meticulously described, the details of the luchos are only generally mentioned as being made of stone and numbering two. This lack of elaboration has resulted in uncertainty even regarding the inscriptions on the stones and their shape. Today, it is widely accepted that each tablet contained five commandments and can be sourced to the Mekhilta DeRebi Yishmael, Yisro (Horovitz-Rabin, 233-234); however, according to the prevailing opinion in the Talmud Yerushalmi (Shekalim 6:1; Sotah 8:3), each tablet contained the entire Decalogue. Additionally, Rav Saadia Gaon asserted that one tablet recorded the version given in Exodus, while the other contained the version from Devarim.

It was not until the early rabbinic period that there was an explicit discussion regarding the shape of the luchos. The two Talmuds are inconsistent as to the exact dimensions and shape of the tablets (and both versions appear in midrashic literature). According to the TY, the tablets were rectangular, six tefachim in length and three in width. The TB describes them as square, six by six. Some attempt to reconcile the two Talmudic versions, there is clearly no consensus are single traditional regarding the shape.[3]

Beyond the challenges in determining and reproducing accurate divisions and shapes, there is a theological concern with their display. The Mishna records that the recitation of the Decalogue was part of the daily service in the Beis haMikdash. Evidence of this practice is found in the Nash Papyrus, dating between the second and first centuries BCE. In that document, the Ten Commandments appear before the Shema. Although the Nash Papyrus is likely either tefillin or a mezuzah, it seemingly confirms inclusion in the liturgy even outside of the Temple.[4] Nonetheless, the liturgical practice was abolished by Rabban Gamaliel II of Yavne. The rationale for the abolition was that some sect, the Minim, had elevated the Decalogue above the rest of the Torah, and the continued public recitation might imply acceptance of that position.[5] It is worth noting that even when the Decalogue was incorporated into the liturgy, there is no mention of it being displayed.

None of these sources mention the most common shape, tablets with rounded tops. According to one theory, this shape was borrowed from the Roman writing tablet, the diptych, which consisted of two tablets hinged together. Regardless of the original source, the rounded-topped tablets became the standard in Christian art from at least the 12th century. Since Jews adopted the luchos as a symbol much later, roughly in the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries, they chose the most commonly recognized version, which features rounded tops.[6] 

The earliest extant depiction of the luchos appears in the Dura Europos Synagogue fresco, where Moshe is holding a scroll. While Dura Europos does not settle the issue of the shape of the tablets, it does begin to reveal some details about how the luchos iconography has evolved over time to address what can be referred to as the “minim conundrum.” The conflict between the Torah recording God delivering just the Decalogue at Sinai, whereas Jews believe that the entire Torah was given at Sinai.

Illuminated Manuscripts and the Ten Commandments: Resolving the Issue of the Minim

Many manuscripts, including Haggadahs, prayer books, and Bibles, feature imagery related to the Decalogue episode. Beyond merely illustrating the text these illustrators intentionally depicted the scene to address and resolve the minim issue and link the delivery and reception of the Decalogue with the entirety of the Torah. For example, many Ashkenazic Haggadahs include the Decalogue scene, typically accompanying the Dayenu, although two include it later in the liturgy. [7] The earliest, known as the Birds Head (dating to the beginning of the 14th century), depicts two fingers emerging from the cloud, presenting two rounded-topped tablets to Moshe. Immediately below, Moshe appears again transferring the tablets, now five, to two figures, presumably Aaron and/or Yehoshua. The dual tablets have been converted into five, referencing the Five Books of the Torah.[8] The Birds Head Haggadah’s metamorphosis during the transmission process of the two tablets into five is the only example of this solution in any Jewish (or non-Jewish) manuscripts.[9]

Figure 1: Birds Head Haggadah, fol. 23r, Israel Museum

A similar rereading of the Giving of the Law occurs in the thirteenth-century Parma Machzor. Unlike the Birds Head, which transforms the two tablets into five in their delivery, the Parma Machzor, however, depicts God giving Moshe three tablets, presumably alluding to the three books of Tanakh, the entire corpus of the Torah.[10]

Figure 2: Parma Machzor (Biblioteca Palatina, MS Parm. 2887)

Beyond transforming the tablets into more than the two mentioned in the Torah, other forms of iconographical methods were used to address the minim issue. Writing material underwent significant changes throughout the centuries. It was initially etched onto stones, like the luchos, then papyrus (like the Nash), and eventually, using animal skins that are much more resilient than papyrus, it was transformed into scrolls. Finally, “the most revolutionary invention in the history of the book” – the codex – was created at the beginning of the Common Era and became commonplace by the third century CE.[11] The codex, which we recognize as a book today, consists of individual pages written on both sides and addresses the major limitations of the scroll: the difficulty of quickly moving from one section to another and the fact that only one side could be used. Christians were the first to adopt this form sometime in the third century CE. Jews, however, adopted the book or codex much later than most other cultures, likely only in the ninth century.[12] This is unsurprising, as the scroll was not merely a device for Jews, but was imbued with special holiness.

These two forms, the scroll and codex, were used to address the minim issue. In these instances, they assumed the role of the entire torah as contrasted with the tablets, recording just the Decalogue. Scrolls are substituted for the tablets in at least two Haggadahs from the late fifteenth century (c. 1470-1480): the Nuremberg II and the Yahuda.

Figure 3: Second Nuremberg Haggadah (Center for Jewish Art)

Figure 4: Yahuda Haggadah (Center for Jewish Art)

In both, Moshe holds up an open scroll with wooden poles in a manner familiar from the hagbah ceremony. Likewise, in the well-known illuminator Joel ben Simon’s c. 1470 Machzor, now referred to as the Rothschild Weill Machzor, Moshe lifts the scroll. In a later Haggadah, known as MS 1388 Paris (1583), Moshe is holding a partially open scroll, though it is not raised like the other examples.[13] 

Figure 5: Rothschild Weill Machzor (Center for Jewish Art)

A similar image appears in the Ulm Machzor, c. 1430; however, Moshe is receiving it directly from God, echoing the approach of the Parma Machzor that there was no transformation, rather the delivery itself was the entire Torah.

Figure 6: Second Darmstadt Haggadah 9v (Center for Jewish Art)

The codex is similarly employed to address the minim issue. In the Second Darmstadt Haggadah (here), Moshe appears at the top right, beneath the shofar. He is holding two connected rectilinear tablets, hinged at the bottom. A man, dressed differently than Moshe and likely Aaron or Yehoshua, appears at the bottom right holding two separate rectilinear tablets, which are clearly sourced from Moshe. Finally, a group of Israelites appears in the bottom center of the page. The leader is now holding a book. This transforms the tablets into a book or Torah. The connection between the tablets becomes clearer as the person holding the book points to Aaron/Yehoshua and the tablets, indicating that the book’s source is the tablets and ultimately what Moshe received directly from God. Therefore, collectively, the page illustrates the transmission and transformation of the Luchos, from the ten into the Torah – received from God by Moshe, which was then handed off to Aaron and finally to the Jewish people.

Figure 7: Detail Second Nuremberg Haggadah (Center for Jewish Art)

There is perhaps another example of the codex that addresses the minim issue. In the Laud Machzor, c. 1290, the illustration for the piyyut recited on Shavous, Adon Ammani, the upper register has an angel delivering two separate rectilinear tablet while on the right side the Israelites receive a single item with a loop at the bottom. Unlike the Birds Head or other manuscripts that has the transformation into the Torah during the transmission stage; here, the only item the Israelites received was this single item with the loop. What is this unusual single panel with a loop? It may be a a codex. Manuscripts and codices were originally kept in cabinets, armaria, but in the late 13^th and early 14^th centuries they were more commonly placed on desks, and the practice of chaining books to prevent theft began (see here). Perhaps the loop in the Laud Machzor is a ring of a chained codex and another provides another example of using the codex to address the minim issue.

Figure 8: Laud Machzor 127r (Bodleian Library, MS Laud Or. 321)

Hebrew Book Illustrations & Anti-Jewish Representations

Illustrations in printed books, however, do not appear to be concerned with solving the minim issue. To the contrary, some iconography in printed books can be read to diminish or even undermine not only the torah’s transmission but even the continued applicability and viability of the Decalogue. Printed illustrated Hebrew books depict either Moshe receiving or transmitting the tablets or simply Moshe and the tablets without context. Of the four printed mother Haggadahs that served as models for nearly all subsequent printed illustrated Haggadahs, only one, Amsterdam 1695, depicts ma’mad har sinai. Unlike the other illustrations in that edition, which are modeled after Mathis Merian’s Bible, this illustration was borrowed from other Amsterdam Hebrew prints. As we have previously discussed, while the engraver clearly used Merian as a model he deliberately altered the images to suit the Jewish text rather than their original Christian source. Merian’s imagery for ma’amad har Sinai was entirely at odds with the Jewish view, and therefore, the illustrator sought an alternative source. Merian only depicts the sin of the Golden Calf and not the delivery or transmission of the Decalogue/Torah. That aligns with Christian theology that focuses on the sins of the Jews, rather than the monumental and exceptional example of God speaking directly to the Jews and imparting his Torah.

Figure 9: Amsterdam Haggadah, 1695 (Center for Jewish Art)

The Amsterdam Haggadah used the imagery that first appears on the titlepage of the 1679 Amsterdam Humash and reused on many subsequent editions of the Humashim from Amsterdam and other cities. Here, the mountain is in the middle and Moshe is still on top, receiving the tablets. They are square, and one is held in each of his hands. The illustration does not depict Moshe delivering the Torah or tablets; therefore, it does not address the tension between the Decalogue and the torah. Nonetheless, arguably implicitly, the inclusion of the image on a title page of a Humash, obviates the need to include additional imagery for the minim issue – Moshe receiving the tablets is literally attached and is the precursor to the entire Torah.

Figure 10: Humash, Amsterdam, 1679 (Gross Family Collection)

While the Decalogue scene does not appear in the other mother Haggadahs, Moshe with the luchos is used as one of the border figures in the Venice 1609 Haggadah. Moshe is carrying two connected round-topped tablets and has a light emanating from his forehead. This illustration of Moshe and the luchos is among the most common title page illustrations in Hebrew books.

Figure 11: Title Page Shu”t Rashba, Hanau, 1610 (Gross Family Collecdtion)

It first appears adorning the titlepage of Shu”T Maharil, Hanau, 1610. However, that image was clearly borrowed from a non-Jewish source. Moshe has horns, with rounded topped tablets, and is flanked by Aaron wearing a bishop’s mitre and holding a censer.[14] There is another nuance to the image that may also specifically Chrisitan, and more important theologically than whether Moshe had horns or light emanating from his head. Unlike the Jewish sources discussed above, Moshe does not hold the tablets aloft. Rather, they are standing on the ground, his hand on top. This aligns with the Christian view of the Decalogue; after Jesus, it was relegated to a secondary role or was even superseded by the New Testament. The depiction in Shu”T Hashiv R’ Eliezer, published in 1749 in Neuwied, Germany, presents a particularly striking variation. In this volume, Moshe’s hand is shown flat, seemingly serving to drive down the tablets into the ground rather than grasping them, as seen in the Hanua prints. Additionally, unlike other works that either show some of the text on the tablets or leave them blank, Hashiv depicts the tablets filled with lines, effectively obscuring or erasing any text.

Figure 12: Shu”t Hashiv Reb Eliezer, Neuwied, 1748

The unique nature of Hashiv’s title page is amplified when compared with to similar title pages, one may have even served as the a model for Hashiv. Critically, that title page includes subtle yet significant modifications. For example, David Gans, a disciple of Maharal, in his work Sefer Nitzahon, published in Altdorf in 1644, created one of the most exquisite Hebrew title pages. It features a similar depiction of Moshe as seen in Hashiv, with his hand resting atop the tablets that include some lines, resembling Hashiv. However, these tablets prominently display the Hebrew “Aseres ha-Dibros,” clearly underscoring their importance.

Figure 13: Sefer Nitzhon, Altdorf, 1644

Another contrary example is Yefeh Anaf, by R. Shmuel Jaffe, Frankfurt a.d. Order, 1696, which depicts a Jewish Moshe with rays emanating from his head, holding round-topped tablets with the beginning of each directive in Hebrew.

Like the three manuscripts discussed above, there is another title page that features Moshe with a scroll instead of tablets. This title page, which appears in a number of different Amsterdam books, for example, Sefer Shenei Luchos ha-Bris, Amsterdam, 1698, Yad Yosef, Amsterdam, 1700, and Eshlei Ravrevei, Amsterdam, 1711, is an amalgamation of four biblical figures, each symbolizing one of the four crowns: Torah (Moshe), priesthood (Aaron), kingship (Dovid), and a good name (Shlomo).

Figure 14: Shnei Luchos ha-Bris, Amsterdam, 1698

A later Amsterdam edition of the Humash combines all three Amsterdam illustrations on the title page. The 1827 Amsterdam Humash features Carl Christian Fuchs’s engraved title page. At the top is the image of Moshe accepting the two square tablets. Moshe appears below on the left, holding round-topped tablets with lines representing the text, and in the center is a crown of Torah. Fuchs includes another Amsterdam illustration at the bottom of the page, this one from the 1695 Haggadah, which depicts the temple.

Figure 15: Humash, Amsterdam, 1827

There is another unique depiction of the tablets on an early 19th-century title page. In the third edition of Mendelsohn’s Humash, Fürth, 1801-1803, Moshe and Aaron flank the title page. However, Moshe, with rays, holds only his staff. In the central image, the ark of the covenant is present, and the two tablets, with rounded tops, are superimposed in the foreground.

Figure 16: Derech Selulah, Fürth, 1802 (Gross Family Collection)

One printed book, however, R. Yosef Ergas’ Shomer Emunim (Amsterdam, 1736), may be a unique example that specifically addresses the minim issue. This work, which discusses the legitimacy of Rabbinic Judaism, includes a representation within a circular design surrounded by laurel leaves at the center of the upper register. Initially, the figure appears to be Moshe holding the luchos. However, the accompanying legend identifies the figure as “Rabbenu ha-Kodesh,” Rabbi Yehudah ha-Nasi, the compiler of the Mishna and a key figure in rabbinic Judaism. This suggests that the Mishna – Rebi Yehuda’s text – is synonymous with the luchos.

Figure 17: Shomer Emunim, Amsterdam, 1736 (Moreshet Auctions)

This interpretation is further supported when compared to the title page model for Shomer Emunim, David Nieto’s Matteh Dan, Kuzari ha-Sheni, (London, 1724). This work also defends rabbinic Judaism and depicts the figure labeled “Rabbenu ha-Kodesh” encircled in the upper register, but he is holding a book with the inscription “Mishna.” The printers of Shomer Emunim modeled the title page on Matteh Dan, yet went further in visually equating the Mishna with the Decalogue.

Figure 18: Matte Dan, London, 1714 (Moreshet Auctions)

Except for the Amsterdam prints, title page illustrations consistently show round-topped tablets, unlike Hebrew manuscripts where tablet shapes vary. This likely stems from printing developing after Christian art standardized the round-topped representation. Table 1 summarizes twenty-two manuscripts depicting the tablets, with no consistent shape linked to a specific era or region. In one instance both rounded and rectilinear shapes in the same manuscript.[15] In the Sarajevo Haggadah, the tablets appear on two separate panels (panels 30 and 32): once when Moshe receives and conveys the Decalogue, and a second time in the scene depicting what may be the Tabernacle, Solomon’s Temple, or the Messianic Temple.[16] In the first instance, the tablets are rounded, while in the second, they are rectilinear. It is conceivable, though admittedly improbable, that the original designs were rounded and depicted in the first panel. However, in the second panel depicting the temple, when the decision was made to construct the ark with a square shape, the tops may have been removed to ensure a better fit.

The Ultimate Message of Har Sinai

One final manuscript illustration is notable not only for the shape or material of the tablets, but for the broader message it conveys. The entire nation was present at ma’amad Har Sinai, including men, women, and children. The Dresden Machzor, circa 1290, depicts Moshe receiving the tablets on the upper right of the panel. On the left side of the top register, Moshe delivers them to a kneeling woman, with no men depicted. This representation indicates that the Torah was given to and applies to everyone equally. The shape itself conveys a universal message. The luchos feature rounded tablets within a rectangular frame, symbolizing that everyone fits within Judaism’s broad parameters.

Figure 19: Dresden Machzor, c. 1290 (MS Dresd. A.46A, 202)

Table 1: Manuscripts & the Shape of the Tablets

	Square/Rectilinear	Rounded	Scroll
1.	Laud Machzor (Southern Germany, c. 1290, Bodleian, Laud Or. 321, fol. 127v)	Birds Head Haggadah (Southern Germany, c. 1300, Israel Museum, MS 180/57, fol. 23)	Nuremberg II Haggadah (1470-1480, Schocken Library, MS 24087)
2.	Rothschild Machzor (Florence, 1492, JTS, fol. 139)	Sarajevo Haggadah (Spain, 14th Century, Sarajevo Museum)	Yahuda Haggadah (mid 15th century, Israel Museum, MS 180/50)
3.	Tripartite Machzor (Southern Germany, c. 1320, British Library, MS. Add. 22413, f. 3r)	Parma Machzor (13th century, Western Ashkenaz, Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, MS Parm. 2887, fol. 101v)	Rothschild Weill Machzor (c. 1470, NLI, MS 804450, fol. 203)
4.	Schocken Bible (Southern Germany, c. 1300, Schocken Library, MS. 14840, fol. iv)	Dresden Machzor (1290, Mscr. Dresd. A.46.a, fol. 408)	MS 1388 Paris (1583, Bibliothèque Nat., MS 1338, fol. 14r)
5.	Regensburg Pentateuch (Regensburg?, c. 1300, Israel Museum, MS 180/52, fol. 154v)	Ulm-Treviso Siddur (1450-1453, Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, MS Parm. 2895, fol. 271)
6.	Sarajevo Haggadah (Spain, 14th Century, Sarajevo Museum)	Floersheim Haggadah (1502, Zurich, Floersheim Collection, fol. 15).
7.	First Leningrad Bible Egypt, (?) 929, fragment (Leningrad Public Library, MS II 17)
8.	Parma Bible (Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, MS Parm. 2710, fol. 3r)
9.	King’s Bible (Catalonia, Spain, 1384, MS King’s 1, f. 3v)
10.	Catalan Bible (Catalonia, Spain, third quarter of 14th century, MS Add. 15250, f. 3v)
11.	Harley Catalan Bible (Catalonia, Spain, c. 1350, MS Harley 1528, f. 8r)
12.	Darmstadt Haggadah II (Universitäts-und Landesbibliothek, Darmstadt, Cod. Or 28, fol. 9v)

Review of Rav Zvi Hirsch Grodzinsky’s Taharas Yisroel

By Shmuel Lubin

Shmuel Lubin is a doctoral candidate in biology and creator of “The Rishonim” podcast.

ר‘ צבי הירש גראדזענסקי טהרת ישראל, הלכות נדה, לראשונה מכתב יד, ע“י מכון תפארת צבי, [נדפס ע“י מכון עלה זית], תקסח עמודים

The publication of a new sefer on Hilchos Niddah is not necessarily cause for celebration in the often-saturated world of halachic literature.[1] But when such a publication is based on an early 20th century manuscript from the American heartland, it at least merits a glance; if the author happens to also have a rather famous rabbinic last name, talmidei chachamim may take interest even without knowing anything about the sefer’s content. All this can be said about Sefer Taharas Yisrael on the laws of Niddah, written by Rav Zvi Hirsch Grodzinsky zt”l. Born c. 1857 in Lithuania, where he learned be-chavrusa with his more famous second-cousin, Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzinsky zt”l, he then spent most of his adult life serving as the chief rabbi of Omaha, Nebraska for almost 60 years (1891-1947). [2] As intriguing as his biography is, once one begins studying Rav Grodzinsky’s Sefer Taharas Yisrael, such details quickly fade into insignificance, washed away by a torrent of Torah brilliance. This review will therefore focus first on judging the newly published work for what it is: a book on the laws of Hilchos Niddah (Family Purity).

Photo of Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Grodzinsky from approximately the time he arrived in America. (From Rosenbaum and Wakschlag, 1994)

Probably the most succinct way to describe the style of the Sefer Taharas Yisrael is to say that it does for Hilchos Niddah what R. Avraham Bornstein’s (the “Sochatchover”) Eglei Tal does for Hilchos Shabbos: it is a book of halacha that also provides the background for the laws through detailed conceptual analysis of its sources. In the center of the page is the halacha, which is usually a direct quotation from Shulchan Aruch, Rama, or similarly standard halachic works. This main text is flanked by two sets of notes: “Mekoros,” or citations, and “Biurim,” elaborations.

Because the main body of the text is often an exact citation from a standard halachic authority such as the Shulchan Aruch or Rama, sometimes these formulations do not precisely reflect the halachic consensus as Rav Grodzinsky understands it. Despite its name, therefore, the “Mekoros” section not only provides citations for the main text, but also serves more generally as ‘footnotes’, including brief but important clarifications or qualifications of the cited halacha. Together, this allows for the Sefer Taharas Yisrael to be useful as a work of practical guidance, like so many other summary works on Hilchos Niddah available today, but at the same maintain the voice of the classic authorities such as the Shulchan Aruch.

The vast majority of the sefer’s text, however, is comprised of the Biurim, wherein Rav Grodzinsky engages in classical rabbinic interpretation of halachic texts, analyzing their language and logic, raising questions, proposing interpretations, and refining his (and his readers’) understanding of the earlier textual sources. These sources used in the Biurim focus primarily on the Gemara and Rishonim, as well as the major poskim throughout the generations both “on the page” of the Shulchan Aruch and in other classic (and sometimes not-so-classic) works of She’eilos u-Teshuvos and halacha. Despite his remote location, especially relative to the Torah centers of Europe and America, Rav Grodzinsky amassed an extraordinary library of seforim, as attested to by the roughly 200 books of She’eilos u-Teshuvos that he lists in the introductory pages of the reference work that he published during his lifetime, “Likutei Zvi.”

Part of Rav Grodzinsky’s library which was housed by Otzar ha-Poskim in Jerusalem. (From Rosenbaum and Wakschlag, 1994)

Nevertheless, in Sefer Taharas Yisrael, Rav Grodzinsky focuses more narrowly on the classical commentaries printed in now-standard editions of the Gemara, Rambam, Tur and Shulchan Aruch.[3] Of course, not all of these were always so “standard”; for example, Rav Grodzinsky makes use of the Tosafos ha-Rosh that had been “newly printed on the side of the Gemara” (p. 42), referring to the now ubiquitous Vilna Shas published by Mrs. Deborah Romm and her sons during Rav Grodzinsky’s lifetime (while he was still living in Eastern Europe).

A few other observations are worth noting about Rav Grodzinsky’s use of sources. Although he does reference the responsa literature, aside from references to the Noda BiYehudah and Chasam Sofer, the total number of those citations is probably only a few dozen (which is certainly impressive, but does not reflect the more extraordinary breadth of his reference work, Likutei Zvi). Rav Grodzinsky also quotes heavily from both the Chochmas Adam of R. Avraham Danzig, and from the Shulchan Aruch “HaRav” of R. Shneur Zalman of Liadi, whom Rav Grodzinsky invariably – and uniquely – cites as the “the Rav, the Gaon, the Chassid.” These seforim have become standard works of halacha that are frequently cited in the literature of the past century, but in several places, Rav Grodzinsky also quotes from another book of halacha that is rarely if ever cited today, the “Ikkarei ha-Dat” of R. Daniel Tirani (18th century Italy), which is noteworthy for also including what would be considered “medical” information along with the halacha (see p. 38).

Among Rav Grodzinsky’s many sources are also non-halachic texts, such as the Midrash Vayikra Rabbah or R. Eliyahu Mizrachi’s supercommentary to Rashi on the Torah. Another noteworthy reference is Rav Grodzinsky’s discussion of a comment by the “Besamim Rosh,” (p. 215) attributed to R. Asher b. Yechiel (“the Rosh”) but now widely accepted to have been forged by Saul Berlin.[4] This is especially interesting because among Rav Grodzinsky’s unpublished manuscripts is an expansive 11-volume work on the (authentic) responsa of R. Asher b. Yechiel. Given his expertise in the works of this particular medieval authority, it would be very valuable to know whether (or to what extent) he believed that positions expressed in the Besamim Rosh fit with other known statements of the Rosh. In an important responsum on the topic of annulling a marriage, published by Rav Grodzinsky at the end of his commentary to Maseches Berachos (published in 1923), he briefly mentions a “sevara meshubeshes” [distorted reasoning] quoted in the name of the Besamim Rosh, and says that the book was not available to him at the time. In Sefer Taharas Yisrael though, Rav Grodzinsky raises no objections to the book per se.[5]

Sometimes the “Biurim” are merely quotes from earlier compendiums, such as the Beis Yosef, or summaries of some of the major discussions of later commentaries such as the Chavos Daas and Sidrei Taharah (and those who have read through extensive comments of the Sidrei Taharah will acknowledge that extracting the main points from his lengthy pilpulim is itself a great service). In what may be the most difficult topic of Hilchos Niddah, Rav Grodzinsky excuses himself for deviating from his usual brevity to enumerate the various rabbinic positions and their halachic consequences for the benefit of someone struggling through the dense halachic details in question (p. 114-117).

Usually, though, Rav Grodzinsky goes far beyond mere quotations or summaries of earlier commentaries. Whether he is discussing the Gemara, the Rishonim, the Shulchan Aruch, or later commentators, Rav Grodzinsky’s novel elaborations upon these sources of the halacha are extraordinary in their clarity, profundity, and creativity. Most of these biurim are brief, consisting of a single question-and-answer, an additional proof to the position cited in the main text, or the like, but written in a lucid style that stands in stark contrast to other ‘short’ halachic commentaries such as the Shach and Taz.

The vast majority of Rav Grodzinsky’s novel contributions are in explicating a single, very precise detail of a halachic discussion. He does not engage in the type of high-level conceptual categorization (inventing ‘lomdishe chakiras’) that is common in contemporary yeshiva study.[6] Instead, his approach involves a close examination of the original sources, on occasion proposing alternative readings or explanations to resolve questions or demonstrate proofs to the halacha in the Gemara, Rishonim and early Acharonim.

Rav Grodzinsky’s creativity is especially evident in defending positions of Rishonim (and sometimes Acharonim) from the challenges of later commentators. As he writes (p. 257 and 343), “it is a mitzvah to resolve the words of the Beis Yosef from whose waters we drink constantly.” This tendency is not at all limited to R. Yosef Caro who, as the author of the Beis Yosef and Shulchan Aruch, is one of the main pillars of halachic decision-making. Rav Grodzinsky writes similarly regarding the authors of Knesses Yechezkel (R. Yechezkel Katzenellenbogen, p. 68-69), the Perisha (R. Yehoshua Falk Katz, p. 260), the Panim Meiros (R. Meir Poznan/Eisenstadt, p. 318), and many others. In fact, Rav Grodzinsky appears to be especially motivated to defend opinions that are rejected as erroneous by the majority of other commentators, saving them from potential dishonor.

As Eliezer Brodt discussed in his review of Sefer Beis ha-Yayin, Rav Grodzinsky is at times willing to attribute difficult passages to printers’ errors, but is wary of making such suggestions too frequently.[7] However, he sometimes solves difficult positions of Rishonim or explains why groups of Rishonim will disagree with each other by noting that they likely had different versions of the Gemara’s text.[8] In a similar vein, Rav Grodzinsky is adept at demonstrating how a dispute among Rishonim or Acharonim is dependent upon a dispute found in the Gemara (or at least earlier sources; e.g. on p. 185). He is particularly sensitive to rabbinic authors of differing opinions and has a keen eye towards finding a “le-shitaso,” explaining how deciding one particular halacha is dependent upon understanding a different halacha. He applies this method to many Amoraim, Rishonim, and Acharonim. These types of explanations demonstrate how Rav Grodzinsky was deeply attuned not just to nuances of the Talmudic sources, but also to the specific personalities behind each opinion voiced by the various commentators and authorities. Relatedly, Rav Grodzinsky will sometimes remark upon the general tendency or style of a Rishon, noting, for instance, “it is surprising to me that the Rosh did not mention that the position of the Tosafists diverges [from his own view] and dispute their words, as is his custom in every place” (p. 211).

Within the context of halachic discussion, Rav Grodzinsky is not averse to suggesting fresh and often creative interpretations of the Gemara that appear to be at odds with the major commentaries. Usually, his reinterpretations of primary sources are in response to some problem raised by the commentators, but this is not always the case. To take one relatively simple example, the Gemara (Niddah 9b) states:

וכמה עונה אמר ריש לקיש משום רבי יהודה נשיאה עונה בינונית שלשים יום ורבא אמר רב חסדא עשרים יום ולא פליגי מר קחשיב ימי טומאה וימי טהרה ומר לא חשיב ימי טומאה.

And how long is a typical cycle? Reish Lakish says in the name of Rabbi Yehuda Nesia: the average cycle is thirty days. And Rava says that Rav Ḥisda says: It is twenty days. [The Gemara clarifies:] And they do not disagree. One counts [i.e., includes] days of impurity and days of purity. And the other does not count the days of impurity [i.e., the seven days of niddah plus the three days of possible ziva sightings]

The Gemara is fairly explicit in saying that the two rabbis cited as opining upon the average woman’s cycle do not disagree with each other. Yet, Rav Grodzinsky (p. 130) believes that the Gemara would not have expressed their opinions in different ways if their positions were truly identical, and so he suggests that they do, in fact, disagree, but the Gemara simply means that they both hold that the average cycle is approximately 30 days, not that their opinions vary so widely as to differ by ten whole days.

Notwithstanding his frequently bold and creative suggestions, Rav Grodzinsky is very hesitant to utilize those innovations in practice. Instead, he writes, “I will permit the audacity of boldly writing what has come into my net [arhiv be-nafshi oz lichtov mah she-alah be-metzudasi], but I am writing only for the purposes of study and not le-halacha, considering only as a student considers before his master” (p. 20), or “for even if this [novel explanation] answers many questions, it is against many Rishonim and Acharonim who are so much greater than I” (p. 389). When it comes to the practical implementation of halacha, Rav Grodzinsky’s humility prevents him from issuing a pesak that is against what he views as the mainstream position of the earlier poskim.[9] His determination of this “mainstream” is complex; Rav Grodzinsky does not appear to be working within a rule-based system such that, for example, if there is a dispute between the Shach and Taz he would always decide in favor of the Shach.[10] Instead, Rav Grodzinsky takes all the commentaries into consideration and appears to decide according to his considered majority, but many times both opinions will appear in the main body of the halacha in the center of the page, as yesh omrim [some say] one way or the other.

Even without consciously pushing the boundaries of pesak halacha, however, sometimes Rav Grodzinsky’s assessment of the halachic consensus is nevertheless important where later or contemporary rabbinic authorities continue to dispute certain halachos. Hilchos Niddah may be a “well-trodden path” (much more so than, for example, the laws of yayin nesech, the subject of Rav Grodzinsky’s book published in 2011), but there are numerous issues where contemporary poskim differ, and Rav Grodzinsky can thus serve as an important source for deciding halacha. To take just one example out of many, Rav Grodzinsky believes that there is no reason to follow the stricter opinion of the Or Zaru’a in considering a veses [expected period] to last for 24 (instead of 12) hours.[11]

Most of Rav Grodzinsky’s responsa remain unpublished, but from the few that are available it is clear that he did not shy away from tackling even the most complex of modern issues. In an undated manuscript that was probably written around 1941, for example, Rav Grodzinsky wrote what may be the first full-length discussion of the halachic implications of artificial insemination.[12] Some of Rav Grodzinsky’s previously published works also include fascinating asides or observations pertaining to his role and experiences as a rabbi in early twentieth century America.[13] However, there is almost no topic in Sefer Taharas Yisrael that was not discussed in the older, classical works of halacha. As far as I could tell, there is no hint to the fact that the sefer was written in 20th century Nebraska instead of 18th century Prague, even though there are many instances where one would think that the different American context might have an impact upon halacha. Perhaps this is because Sefer Taharas Yisrael was written earlier in Rav Grodzinsky’s lifetime, or maybe he simply wanted to maintain its classical style without discussing new questions in this context.

If Sefer Taharas Yisrael were published in pre-war Eastern Europe, it would have undoubtedly been popular among rabbinic students who recognized Rav Grodzinsky as a fantastic talmid chacham.[14] In (nearly) all of his writings, Rav Grodzinsky’s intended audience was certainly his rabbinic colleagues in Europe and Israel (then British Palestine), not his own congregants in the city of Omaha, Nebraska. In terms of his vast Torah knowledge, Rav Grodzinsky must have been worlds away from his neighbors and community. It is hard to imagine what he knew or thought about the city of Omaha when he was 33 years old, living in Vilna, when he accepted the invitation to become its rabbi in 1891. By the time Rav Grodzinsky arrived, there were (at least) two main Orthodox synagogues – a “Litvishe Shul” (Congregation B’nai Israel, founded 1883) and a “Russishe Shul” (Chevra B’nai Israel Adas Russia, founded 1884), with a third Hungarian Shul dedicated a few years after. As Omaha’s Orthodox rabbi, Rav Grodzinsky gave weekly sermons, led daily Mishnah studies, counseled congregants, answered halachic questions, and supervised kosher slaughter, but it seems inevitable that a great chasm would have existed between him and his community. He refused to speak English, even to his children, and seems to have avoided participating in the committees and social obligations that were becoming typical of American rabbis (although he did participate in the founding of Agudas ha-Rabbanim in 1902).

The majority of even Rav Grodzinsky’s most devoted congregants who may have purchased their rabbi’s books as a mark of respect could probably hardly read them, and his neighbors surely had little appreciation of the talmudic genius living among them. The salary provided by the shuls of Omaha, initially a modest honorarium of $25 per month from each synagogue, was hardly enough to make ends meet. When the two larger Omaha shuls hired Rabbi Yechiel Michel Charlop in 1923 (who stayed for two years before moving to the Bronx), he was offered an annual salary of $3,500. Meanwhile, Rav Grodzinsky at the time earned about $200-400 and was forced to supplement his income by providing various other functions such as selling Matzah for Passover and traveling annually to Sacramento, California to certify kosher wines. A few decades after his death, nobody in the community even remembered where he was buried.[15]

Instead, Rav Grodzinsky poured unimaginably superhuman efforts into producing scholarly Torah writings. His first book, “Mikveh Yisrael,” a commentary on the laws of ritual baths, appeared in 1898 with the approbation of his rebbe R. Yitzchak Elchonon Spektor zt”l. Starting in 1896, he contributed numerous articles to respected Torah journals, engaging in scholarly debates on a wide range of halachic issues with the rabbis of Europe, Israel, and elsewhere in America. The vast majority of Rav Grodzinsky’s prolific output, however, remained in manuscript form at the time of his death (at about 90) in 1947. Shortly afterwards, his personal library and unpublished writings were shipped off to the Otzar ha-Poskim institute in Jerusalem, as per his instructions prior to his passing.

A newspaper article from 1945 reported that Rav Grodzinsky (then at the age of about 87) was “planning the publication of additional works in the field of Rabbinics,”[16] but the word “planning” is a woefully inadequate description of the amount of effort and care that Rav Grodzinsky put into preparing his writings for publication. Many seforim aficionados will be aware of R. Akiva Eiger’s directions to his sons that they should publish his responsa using large clear lettering on the finest paper available. Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Grodzinsky went quite a bit further, taking an unusual, perhaps even unique step towards ensuring that his halachic works would be published as beautifully as he imagined them to be: with his clear handwriting, he would copy over his ready-to-publish manuscript into bound notebooks in the precise page layout that he intended for it to be printed, with the main halacha in the center flanked by citations on one side and elaborations on the other.

Despite the incredible lengths Rav Grodzinsky went to in preparing his manuscripts, they languished in their boxes (and were even tied up in their original ropes) for many decades before any of these previously unpublished works were actually printed. The saga of their publication is the subject of a 2015 Mishpacha magazine article[17] with additional updates included in the Introduction sections of more recent publications. In 2011, R. Shalom Jacob zt”l published Rav Grodzinsky’s work on Yayin Nesech, and a few years later published a collection of his writings on the holidays under the title Mo’adei Zvi vol. 1 (2016). This newly published work, Sefer Taharas Yisrael on Hilchos Niddah, the third in the series of Rav Grodzinsky’s works published from manuscripts, marks a bittersweet occasion, coinciding with the first yahrzeit of R. Shalom Jacob, whose dedicated efforts in publishing Rav Grodzinsky’s seforim have been continued by Rabbi Myron Wakschlag through Machon Tiferes Zvi, a nonprofit organization dedicated to publishing Rav Grodzinsky’s works. This new volume includes tributes to R. Shalom Jacob by Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Schlesinger of Monsey, by R. Shalom’s father, and by R. Shalom’s friend and partner-in-publication, Rabbi Wakschlag.

The publishers have lived up to Rav Grodzinsky’s high expectations admirably; Sefer Taharas Yisrael is handsomely bound, typeset in large lettering, and with the sections clearly laid out and formatted according to the author’s handwritten notebooks (even if maintaining the exact pagination would have been impractical, if not impossible). As expected for a work of this size and complexity, it is not entirely without typographical errors, although these rarely impede understanding.[18]

Particularly helpful is the Source Index, which contributes to making Sefer Taharas Yisrael more user-friendly for someone studying either Maseches Niddah or Shulchan Aruch (although Rav Grodzinsky’s own sefer does mostly follow the organization of the Tur). Without this index, the sefer would be much more difficult to be studied by someone following a classic yeshiva or kollel curriculum. However, it should be noted that the index, while useful, is not entirely comprehensive, especially for sources beyond the Gemara and Shulchan Aruch commentaries. For instance, there is no reference to “Ra’ah” (R. Ahron ha-Levi of Lunel) or his work, Bedek ha-Bayis despite being quoted several times.[19] However, as it currently stands the index is already 49 pages long(!), and these minor deficiencies do not substantially detract from its overall utility (and certainly do not impinge upon the quality of the sefer as a whole).

There is no question in my mind that this work will be an invaluable resource for anyone engaged in serious study of Hilchos Niddah, as Rav Grodzinsky’s scholarship deserves a place on the shelf of every kollel beis medrash. Hopefully, this publication will serve as a catalyst for the financing of more publications from Rav Grodzinsky’s writings; a list of manuscripts being considered for future publication and other information about this project can be found on the publisher’s website. Aside from the benefit that this serves “le-hagdil Torah u-le-ha’adirah,” publication of his responsa and sermons in particular will likely provide fascinating insights into the rabbinic engagement with new technologies and social realities of early 20th century America.

Moreover, the quality and depth of Sefer Taharas Yisrael should further solidify Rav Grodzinsky’s place among the gedolim of his generation, and the sefer is a fitting tribute to this giant who was largely under-appreciated by his own congregants of Omaha, Nebraska. In the commentary to Maseches Berachos that Rav Grodzinsky published in his lifetime, he explained the rabbinic ‘blessing’ that “you should see your world in your life, your end in the World to Come, and your hope will be for generations” (Berachos 17a):

“That you should be recognized and desired in people’s eyes in this world… that is “your end in the World to Come,” and “your hope,” meaning, your hope that your lips will speak from the grave through others speaking your sayings in this world, as the Gemara says in Yevamos (97a), “will be for generations,” meaning, for many generations after you, people will continue to cite your teachings in this world. (Milei de-Berachos p. 187)

May this blessing be applied posthumously to Rav Grodzinsky as fulfilled through the further study and publication of his works.

For sample pages of this work Email Eliezerbrodt@gmail.com

The Mother Haggados: Models for Modern Analysis of Printed Jewish Illustrations

There is a long tradition of illustrating Haggados, dating back to at least the early Middle Ages. Likely only a small portion of those manuscripts has survived. However, most have been reprinted, and their imagery has been meticulously analyzed and cataloged. These manuscripts can broadly be divided into two categories based on their places of origin: Sephardic or Ashkenazic countries. The former includes the creation cycle and the Exodus story prior to the Haggadah text, while the latter incorporates the imagery into the text. Within these categories, and with the exception of “brother” or “sister” manuscripts, no single manuscript necessarily influenced subsequent ones. Of course, common manuscript imagery appears in many of these manuscripts, with the hunting scene being the most ubiquitous.

Illustrations in printed Haggados, however, are different. They can be traced back to four “mother” Haggados, each the first in its respective region, representing the three main geographical areas of Jewish settlement and centers for printing Hebrew books: Prague, 1526 (Eastern Europe); Mantua, 1560 (Italy); Venice, 1609; and Amsterdam, 1695 (Western Europe). These specific Haggados were reprinted many times, with the illustrations, motifs, and themes appearing in them—sometimes collectively and at other times singularly—finding their way into nearly all subsequent illustrated Haggados. Some of these illustrations reflect influences from manuscripts, and all three were impacted by the broader non-Jewish culture and geographical iconography (though not directly related to the text itself). For example, an Italian Haggadah shows Avraham crossing a river in a gondola, while Prague incorporates Gothic architecture for the Egyptian cities. Additionally, we can sometimes identify specifically Christian iconography or direct borrowing from Christian sources in these and later Haggados. Occasionally, this involves using an image that carries no specific Christian connotations, while in other instances, the usage is clearly identifiable as specifically and uniquely Christian.

While these Haggados are discussed by many scholars, at best they analyze a few images, and even in many instances, they fail to fully account for the nuance of the images. Instead, they focus on external influences or some exotic element of the images. This form of analysis is no longer in vogue, and as it relates to Hebrew manuscripts, it has seen a substantial correction, most notably in the recent works of Marc Michael Epstein and Katrin Kogman-Appel on Hebrew manuscripts.[1] We hope to make a small contribution to redirecting the narrative regarding the imagery of printed Hebrew Haggados. What follows is not intended to be a comprehensive analysis of all printed illustrated Haggados. Indeed, we do not discuss Prague 1526, as we have dealt with that edition on a few previous occasions (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). Rather, we hope it serves as a minor contribution in applying the current methodology used for Hebrew manuscripts to the Hebrew book.

Mantua 1560: Many Cooks in the Kitchen

The Mantua 1560 Haggadah is the first Italian-illustrated Haggadah, published by Giacomo Rufinelli and it is available here from a copy in the Braginsky Collection (the NLI recently exhibited the manuscripts from Collection, with a companion book, Encounters with Beauty). The woodblock images were overseen and possibly even executed by Yitzhak ben Shmuel Bassan. However, since they are unsigned, the artist is uncertain. Yet, however, as we will see, there may have been multiple artisans involved in creating the woodblocks. Bassan served as the shamash in the first synagogue established in Mantua by Yitzhak Porto.

Mantua 1560 is the first illustrated Haggadah to include a title page. The convention of title pages became standard in Hebrew books only in the early middle period of the 16th century; see our discussion here. Like many Jewish and non-Jewish title pages, it frames the page with architectural elements, such as arches and pillars. These pillars are unique. They are not traditional columns but helical (twisted) pillars, referred to as barley-sugar pillars.

While at first blush, Rufinelli’s incorporation might seem associated with a distinctly Christian structure, closer examination reveals that the printer’s usage served a different purpose, one explicitly aligned with his publishing house. This style is most well-known for its use in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, which was constructed in the 4th century by Constantine the Great and this style is claimed to be derived from the famed pillars of the Solomonic temple, the yachin and boaz pillars (although no Jewish sources describe these as helical). These pillars supported the dome above the main altar. The original Basilica was demolished in the early 16th century and rebuilt at the end of that century. It was most famously reproduced by the school of Raphael in “The Donation of Constantine,” completed around 1524, and adorns the ceiling of Sala di Costantino, one of the four Raphael rooms within the Vatican Palace. Nonetheless, Rufinelli most likely used these pillars not to evoke St. Peter’s but for a more local reason, specifically to identify his books as Mantuan in provenance. The local Cortile della Cavallerizza in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, designed by Giulio Romano and completed around 1540, predates Rufinelli’s incorporation of these pillars in his books (they appear in the Haggadah and others). The second elevation is notable for its barley-sugar pillars, an early example of the Mannerist school of architecture and among the Palazzo’s most unique and recognizable features.

Cortile della Cavallerizza

Perhaps, in Rufinelli’s mind, these pillars symbolized Mantua, and he treated them as akin to a printer’s device expressing familial or other aspects of the printer. Indeed, while Italianate books in the 16th century regularly incorporated architectural elements into title page designs, we have not located any books that utilize the Solomonic pillars, despite their history and symbolism in Italy, other than Ruffinelli’s Mantuan prints.[2]

Another image from this Haggadah originates from the Vatican Palace: the depiction of the prophet Jeremiah that Michelangelo painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Jeremiah, seated in a contemplative pose with his hand on his beard and legs crossed, is used to illustrate the wise son in the Haggadah. Nevertheless, the image takes on a unique Jewish twist in the Haggadah version. Jeremiah is no longer bareheaded; instead, he wears a Pileus Cornutus, or Jewish hat, the cone-shaped headgear commonly mandated by Christian law.

Mantua, 1560

The first edition of the Maxwell House Haggadah (we discussed the history of the first edition here) also reproduces a well-known Renaissance image of Rembrandt. It includes Rembrandt’s Sacrifice of Isaac, now in the St. Petersburg Museum.

Maxwell House Haggadah, New York, 1932

The illustration of the final son, the one who cannot ask, is also of non-Jewish origin. In this instance, it comes from a biblical illustration by the noted illustrator, Hans Holbein the Younger, and appears in Icones Historiarum Veteris Testamenti, first published in 1538 (page 88). The image is used in a different context, Psalms 53:2, for a fool, but in the Haggadah, it illustrates the son who does not even know how to ask.

Mantua, 1560

Holbein, Icones Historiarum Veteris Testamenti

Determining the source of the remaining images, as well as the number and identity of the artists involved in the production of this Haggadah, is challenging. A close examination of the style and quality of the images suggests that at least three artists contributed. Artist A’s work features detailed, technically accurate German-style drawings, while Artist B’s illustrations resemble almost childlike line drawings that lack perspective and depth. The third artist, Artist C, produces illustrations that are not as crude as those of Artist B, as they possess a sense of perspective. Yet, they are also not executed as well as those of Artist A.

Artists A and B appear on the first page of the Haggadah. In the upper right-hand corner, there is a detailed and precise depiction of a man searching for hametz, dressed in a Germanic style, belted and wearing a beret, with the ceiling and fence rendered with perspective. At the bottom center left is a simple line drawing of the matzah baking scene. The men and women wear Italianate clothing, with the men in unbelted tunics and cloth caps covering their ears or in flat hats, and the women in low-cut dresses with exaggerated shoulders. There is no depth, as the men on the far left overlap on the same plane as the women kneading the dough. Similarly, the two people at the table in the right-center, using the “redler” (dough docker) to mark the matzah, also lack perspective.

 

Artists A and B are again juxtaposed on facing pages, featuring two images depicting the killing of Jewish babies. On the right page, we see the midrashic image of Pharaoh bathing in the babies’ blood, while the left page shows the act of casting the babies into the water. Here, as well, the illustration on the right side portrays the participants with realism, whereas the left displays simple line drawings. The woman on the far right of the left page, with her hands raised, contrasts sharply with the despondent woman at the far right of the right page, where the anguish of having her child torn from her arms is powerfully conveyed.

Artist C demonstrates intermediate technical skills between those of Artists A and B. Two similar images of the family at the seder demonstrate the distinction between Artists B and C. Artist B’s work consists of line drawings, offering little to no shading or depth on a single plane, whereas Artist C’s piece presents a crowded scene where each figure wears a unique dress, showcasing multiple perspectives and well-rendered depth of perception.

A comparison between two figures, both seated in similar chairs and holding comparable objects, effectively represents the distinct styles of Artists A and C. Rabbi Eliezer, characterized by a disproportionate head and a simpler chair. The king image, however, holds a topped goblet with filigree on the bottom and is seated beneath an elaborate copula. All of the features are well-proportioned and executed within a smaller and more challenging format. These distinctions suggest that the two seated men cannot be the work of the same artist.

Artist C is evident in Moshe leading the Israelites out of Egypt. The large group of Israelites is well drawn (no Artist B line drawings), but Moshe, particularly his head, is not rendered as well as the figures in Artist A’s works.

Similarly, the most recognizable image from this Haggadah, which shows the Messiah on a donkey with Elijah following, displays the hybrid style of Artist C. The Messiah, donkey, Elijah, and especially the figure with the bow and arrow are clearly less refined than those of Artist A, but not as simplistic as Artist B.

None of the Haggadah’s images are signed. One clue to the influence of Artist C is seen in his illustration of Avraham crossing the river. His boat of choice is a gondola, suggesting that Artist C may have Venetian origins.

The gondola also makes a brief appearance in another of Artist C’s images, titled “Building Pitom and Ramses.” There is a small gondolier crossing the river visible at the top center of the image.

Artist A’s city of origin, or where he may have spent time, cannot be determined from his drawings. The wise son, Jeremiah, is depicted by Artist A, but, despite the origins of this illustration in the Sistine Chapel, we cannot identify Artist A as Roman, nor confirm that he viewed the image firsthand in Rome. It is more plausible that he encountered the images only through drawings, whether printed or otherwise. A comparison of the beard in the Haggadah, with its long, wavy hairs, aligns much more closely with this drawing, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, printed in Mantua (although its dating is disputed), rather than with Michelangelo’s bushy, untamed beard in the Sestina.[3]

 

If, indeed, there are three artists, we can tentatively associate the images with their artists as follows:

Artist A: King on chair (p. 2, 3,36, 37, 42, 70), Jeremiah (p. 9), praying man (p. 9, 14), four sons (p. 10-11), Rosh Hodesh (p. 11), Pharoh bathing in blood (p. 20), Aaron with staff (p. 24), angel with sword (p. 24), R. Yosi (p. 26), King pointing finger (p. 27), Israelites escaping Egypt with Egyptian pursuing (p. 28-29), Paschal lamb (p. 32), matzah (p. 33, 40), maror (p. 34, 38, 40),.

Artist B: matza baking (p. 1), family seder (p. 4, 42), children thrown into the river (p. 21).

Artist C: hare hunt (p. 3), enslaved Israelites building (p. 6, 35), Avraham on gondola (p. 13), young woman (p. 18), Pitom and Ramses (p. 19), R. Eliezer (p. 28), Egyptians drowning (p. 31), Moshe leading the Israelites (p. 38), family seder (p. 41), Elijah entering Jerusalem (p. 45).

Venice, 1609 An Egalitarian Haggadah?

The third “mother” Haggadah was conceived by Israel Zifroni, a printer, editor, and typesetter, and published by Giovanni di Gara in Venice in 1609 (briefly discussed here and here).[4] The images are unsigned and it is unclear if they were executed by Zifroni or he just oversaw their production. There were three editions: in Judeo-Italian, Judeo-German, and Ladino.⁵ On the title page, Zifroni invokes the verse from Psalms 148:12: “‘Youths and maidens, elders and boys, will praise the name of the Lord,’ who inspired me, Zifroni, to bring this crown of beauty to light, so that no eye will be satiated by its forms. Here, one can always find novelties; these were not done in vain, but with intention and purpose. These will prolong the story, for your eyes withhold my glory and my deeds related to it.” In this epigraph, Zifroni alludes to two unique aspects of the illustrations in his edition: its egalitarianism, as it is for everyone, and the deliberate nature of the illustrations, meant to provide additional commentary to the text and fulfill the obligation that “whoever adds in the retelling is praiseworthy.”

While Zifroni surely intended that the Haggadah be used for all age groups, one of the “novelties” in the illustrations is a focus on a female audience. This inclusivity, emphasizing images depicting women, repeatedly appears throughout the Haggadah. Additionally, there are scenes that do not include women, in previous Haggadahs, and it is unclear from the text if women participated. Nevertheless, Zifroni incorporates them into the narrative.[6]

Zifroni’s intentional and distinct approach is already evident from the title page imagery, which contains six images divided between the processes of searching and burning hametz and matzah baking. The people depicted conducting these processes are exclusively women, with no men present. This gendered approach sharply contrasts with the Prague 1526 and the Mantua 1560, which depict a man searching for Hametz.

Mantua, 1560

Prague, 1526

Similarly, while the baking scene at the bottom of the page is very similar to that of Mantua 1560, nearly all the men depicted are now women. Aspects of the process in Mantua were entirely male, whereas in Zifroni’s they are now exclusively female.

Venice, 1609

Mantua, 1560

In Mantua, the kneading depicts three men, while in Zifroni’s there are three participants as well, but one is a woman. Mantua shows two men mixing the dough, whereas Zifroni’s features two women. Mantua has two men shaping and puncturing the dough, while in Zifroni’s there are two women. Even in the scene at the top of the page depicting the harvesting and checking of wheat, where the heavy labor involved could easily be portrayed as exclusively male, Zifroni still includes one woman at the table checking the wheat.

Zifroni’s biblical scenes, when possible, include women. For example, in the scene above depicting Avraham crossing the river in the Prague and Mantua Haggadahs Avraham is shown alone, accompanied only by the rower in Prague (second image below) and the gondolier in Mantua (third image below).

This aligns with the verse in the Haggadah, “that I took Avraham your forefather over the river,” which does not mention anyone else. By contrast, in this seminal scene in the formation of the Jewish people, Zifroni did not limit himself to the literal text. His illustration references the biblical story that includes Sarah. Thus, she is portrayed in the gondola, along with two other women at the dock about to board, while no other men, aside from Avraham, are present, not even Lot. This multitude of women sharply contrasts with the scene on the right, depicting idol worship, where the genders are reversed; here, there is just one woman, and the rest are men.

Another “novel” illustration related to the Israelites time in Egypt. The Talmud offers two reasons why women are obligated to the same degree as men in reciting the Haggadah: they too were included in the Exodus miracle, and, according to Rabbi Avira, they were not just participants, they were the catalyst for the Exodus (Sotah 11b). There are at least three episodes that demonstrate the integral part women played: Shifrah and Pu’ah, women’s roles in the exponential reproduction of the Israelites, and Pharaoh’s daughter saving Moshe. All three feature prominently in Zifroni’s images. While infanticide is illustrated in Prague and Mantua in two panels, one showing the gruesome murder to drain their blood for Pharaoh’s bath and the other showing them being cast in the river, neither Haggadah shows the multiplication of the Israelites. Yet, in Zifroni’s work, in addition to one panel of the babies being cast in the river, he includes two that illustrate the population explosion, specifically highlighting the unique and nearly exclusive role of women.

The first shows four women nursing and raising the children, both alluding to the midrash teaching that Jewish woman in Egypt birthed sextuplets. On the right, one woman is nursing two children while another four are clamoring for sustenance. In the middle, the three other women tend to six children. Two men appear far to the left, only partially depicted with most of their bodies cut from the scene (perhaps alluding to their male parts, their only relevant part in the story). Additionally, as we previously discussed in the article, “Separate Beds,” this printed Haggadah is unique in representing Jewish abstinence. Like the other images, it displays an awareness with rabbinic literature. 

Indeed, this scene is repeated and expanded upon on the next page. Again, a woman nursing six children, this panel now incorporates the earlier part of the story, which emphasizes that the women encouraged their husbands, even after a brutal day of enslavement, to spend time together. This alludes to the Talmudic passage that uses the verse in Shir HaShirim (8: 5), stating that they procreated under the apple tree. The Nile River is included in this scene, not to illustrate infanticide, but to show the women bathing in preparation for their meeting with their husbands.

Even the panel that depicts infanticide is unique in that the largest and most prominent portion of the scene shows Pharaoh’s daughter saving Moshe. Additionally, Shifrah and Pu’ah appear before Pharaoh on the left, unlike any earlier illustrations that omit them entirely.

Contrasting the earlier Haggadahs illustration of the scene with the Israelites safely on the side of the sea and the Egyptians drowning highlights the central role that women play in Zifroni’s version.

In his depiction, the center of the frame shows Miriam playing instruments and singing with the women, while Moshe and the rest of the men are relegated to the right of the panel. In Mantua, (the two images below) Miriam is merely part of the larger group, identifiable only upon close examination.

In Prague, the scene is exclusively male. Likewise, in the scene of the Israelite encampment in the wilderness, Zifroni was careful to include Miriam and her well.

Another scene where there was no need to include women is Avraham meeting Malki Tzedek, where a woman appears at the far right of the panel.

There are other scenes where women take center stage. When eating the matzah, the women at the center distribute it to the men, seemingly indicating that the women are leading the seder. Both Prague and Mantua, show only a lone man.

Mantua, 1560

Women are central in the scene of the Four Questions. Their prominence is particularly noticeable as the image on the following page depicts Rabbi Eliezer and other sages, with him in taking center stage.

Similarly, when Avraham greets the three angels, both he and the angels are shifted to the left of the frame, while Sarah, in the tent, occupies the center.

Finally, most radically, although it is not entirely clear as the top of the head is obscured behind the letter, the wise “son,” upon close examination, it is perhaps a woman. Unlike the other “sons” this child is wearing a skirt whereas the men and boys are in pants!

In conclusion, one prominent and exceptional thematic element in Zifroni’s illustrations is the significant role of women. This leaves little doubt that he intended to portray and elucidate the Haggadah through deliberate images that appeal to and highlight both the feminine and the traditional masculine role in the Exodus.

Amsterdam 1695, A Judeo-Chrisitan Haggadah or an Exemplar for Haggadah Illustrations?

One of the most striking examples of Christian iconography in the Hebrew book is the 1695 Haggadah printed in Amsterdam and illustrated with copperplates by the convert Jacob Bar Abraham. This marks the first use of that technique in a Hebrew book, which allows for a much more refined and precise presentation of images. The Haggadah also includes a fold-out map, though it may not be the first example in a Haggadah.[7] Bar Jacob was originally from the Rhineland and may have even been a Christian preacher.[8] He was not the only convert involved in Amsterdam Jewish printing. According to Yaari, there were at least six others.

These images were used as a template for at least four 18th and 19th-century Haggados in Amsterdam, as well as hundreds of editions printed in Germany and Eastern Europe, and even as far afield as Iran, India, and North Africa.[9] There are at least five 18th-century manuscripts that also utilize Bar Jacob’s images.[10] Despite their popularity throughout the European Jewish world, the source of his images is non-Jewish. Thirteen of the fourteen illustrations in this edition, and six of those on the title page, do not come from any of the three other “mother” Haggados. Instead, these illustrations are sourced from the biblical images created by the Christian artist Matthaeus (Mathis) Merian the Elder.[11] They first appeared in his Icones Biblicae, published in Basel in 1625, and were subsequently incorporated into the most popular Bibles in the Rhineland

Bar Jacob’s source was first identified in 1931, a fact acknowledged by subsequent analyses of this edition. Some critiques are highly critical of Bar Jacob’s model, with one scholar going so far as to assert, without any corroborating evidence, that “there was fierce opposition” to Bar Jacob’s edition.[12] These scholarly critiques generally question the appropriateness of using Christian biblical imagery, the lack of direct relevance of this imagery because it was not designed for the Haggadah, and the failure to follow the “traditional” imagery found in other “mother” haggados. Despite the great scrutiny to which this edition was subjected, the most obvious Christian element that appears in just one of the fourteen images went unnoticed scholars.[13] And in fact, upon close examination, these scholars’ complaints are easily refuted. While Bar Jacob’s source was Merian, he transformed those images to fit the Haggadah, and with one exception, they fall well within the bounds of accepted Jewish imagery and further enhance and clarify the text of the Haggadah.

The six biblical images at the top of the title page predate the Exodus story, which triggered some complaints of them being non-conformist and irrelevant.[14] Yet, this criticism fails to acknowledge the widespread Sefardic manuscript convention, dating back at least to the 14th century, of prefacing the Haggadah with biblical imagery that documents the precursor events to the Exodus. The Sarajevo Haggadah but one of many examples. Indeed, most Jews in Amsterdam in 1695, particularly the wealthier individuals who were likely the target audience for what was presumably an expensive Haggadah, were of Sefardic origin. Some scholars identified examples of borrowing images and motifs from Medieval manuscripts in other “mother” haggados, but they overlook this when it comes to Bar Jacob.

Perhaps the most consistent criticism relates to the disconnect between biblical images and the Haggadah liturgy. Since Merian’s images were designed for the Bible, they do not necessarily correspond directly to the words of the Haggadah. While some parts of the Haggadah reference the biblical story, Merian did not illustrate those specific narratives. To address this limitation, Bar Jacob discovered alternative images and adapted them for the Haggadah. Importantly, Bar Jacob did not merely “cut and paste.” He modified Merian’s images as needed to align with and, crucially, to clarify through illustration the Haggadah and its themes. Since these subtle modifications do not align with traditional scholarly criticism, most remain unmentioned. Although we lack the space to cover all of Bar Jacob’s images and his distinct approach, we will revisit this later. One scholar points out that “the most egregious” example is Bar Jacob’s illustration of the rabbis in Benei Brak. Being that this story post-dated the Bible by many centuries, none of Merian’s images were intended for this scene. Instead, Bar Jacob used Merian’s image of Joseph and his brothers, provoking this scholar’s ire.

From the Gross Family Collection

This is another example of a surface-level examination of printed illustrated Haggadah images. A close look at the image demonstrates that, rather than being an egregious usage of Merian, it perfectly illustrates Bar Jacob’s approach to transforming the image to suit the Haggadah and express the nuance of the text. In adapting Merian’s image, Bar Jacob modified it in three significant ways, all of which render it especially suitable to clarify the text of the Haggadah.

The purpose of the story of the rabbis in Benei Brak is to provide a historical example of people meaningfully discussing the Exodus story all night. The rabbis were so engrossed in conversation that they were unaware that the time for this obligation had ended, and that they were now required to express the Exodus in a different and common format, reciting the Shema. The nocturnal nature of the story is a central element. Thus, in Bar Jacob’s version, the chandelier, which in Merian’s version is unlit, is lit. To further emphasize the fact that this took place at night, Bar Jacob includes two lit candles in the foreground.

Second, the Benei Brak story is predicated on the fact that the rabbis were unaware that the sun had risen. Thus, as opposed to Merian’s version, where Joseph and his brothers are dining in a room with large open windows, Bar Jacob’s version has opaque windows, indicating that the rabbis became aware that the sun had risen only when their students interrupted the discussion. The windows also allow Bar Jacob to avoid the visible church with a cross atop the steeple that is seen through the large opening in Merian’s version.

Third, Bar Jacob has removed the two dogs, a common Christian artistic motif, from the foreground. The Talmud is anti-canine. Indeed, Rabbi Eliezer, one of the sages listed in the Haggadah, stated that “one who breeds dogs is like one who breeds pigs!” Needless to say, it would be highly inconsistent with the text of the Haggadah to retain dogs in the illustration.

The final modification is in the participants’ headgear. In Merian’s version, only Yosef’s head is covered, with a royal turban. Bar Jacob’s version has all the rabbis wearing head coverings. Beyond a possible Jewish halachic requirement to cover one’s head while engaged in Torah study, a close examination of the headgear fundamentally changes the scene’s dynamic. In Merian, the brothers genuflect to who appears to be an Egyptian royal figure. In the Haggadah, all the rabbis are equal in their obligation. This is made clear in the previous statement of the Haggadah, which states that all, whether wise, knowledgeable, and even those proficient in the entire Torah, are equally obligated to discuss the Exodus story all night. Bar Jacob retained a figure at the head of the table, yet his importance is deemphasized because he wears the same hat as the rabbi on his left.

Bar Jacob’s awareness of the limitations of Merian’s illustrations is evident in the one illustration in the text that is not from Merian. Merian’s illustration of Moshe receiving the Torah depicts Aaron meeting Moshe and the Israelites worshipping the Golden Calf. Thus, Merian’s focus is on sin rather than the spiritual importance of receiving the Torah. Therefore, Bar Jacob chose a different image, one that appears in many Amsterdam Bibles (see here, here and here), showing the Israelites celebrating the event.

Yet, there is, one image that seemingly includes an obvious Christian element: a cross. While somewhat unclear due to its minuscule size, Bar Jacob’s depiction of the Temple appears to have a cross on the front of the building’s roof. Bar Jacob did, however, modify the image in another way to clarify the text. Marien’s version features many people outside and inside the Temple. But the text of the Haggadah discussing the Temple is a prayer for the future, and Bar Jacob presented the Temple as empty, symbolic of the fact that Jews today do not have a Temple to visit. We pray that in the future, we will all be among those in its courtyards.

From the Gross Family Collection

Surprisingly, this is not the only instance of a cross in a Hebrew book. For example, in the 1747 Hamburg edition of Mahram Schiff, the bottom image includes two prominent crosses. Likewise, the bottom left image of the 1668 Amsterdam edition of Nahlas Shivah, which uses “Moshiach Bar David Ba” to denote the year, shows a cross in the background.

Finally, we must discuss two additional Haggados, both of which have been repeatedly praised as beautiful examples of illustrated printed Haggados. Unfortunately, upon close examination, they clearly display Christian iconography in an entirely unnecessary and highly problematic manner. The first, Basel 1816, praised by Steinschneider and described as containing “pleasing” woodcuts is the most troubling. In 1997, this edition was even reprinted and colorized to mark the centennial of the first Zionist Congress held in Basel. For centuries, some have claimed a connection between Jesus’ Last Supper and the Pesach seder. Yet, Jews today would reject the notion that they are reenacting the Last Supper. But in the Basel Haggadah the text regarding the three items that one must eat on Pesach is illustrated with the image of Jesus at the Last Supper, surrounded by the Apostles!

The final “Christian Haggadah” is described by Yerushalmi as “undoubtedly the most distinguished illustrated edition produced in Europe during the 19th century,” and the images “welcome a freshness of design.” Alexander Marx praised its “refined artistic taste,” and that the illustrations are “dignified and pleasing and make this edition outstanding among its contemporaries.”[15] Despite these compliments, in truth, most of the images are not fresh but are copies of previous images from the “mother” Haggados, specifically the 1609 Venice Haggadah. In many instances, this “distinguished” edition eliminates the nuance and meaning of those earlier images. In some cases, the images are nonsensical. Finally, many of the designs suffer from blatant non-Jewish imagery.

From the Gross Family Collection

For example, the Venice Haggadah uniquely enhances the image of the Israelites’ encampment with Miriam and her well as part of the theme of emphasizing women’s role in the Exodus. In the Trieste Haggadah, Miriam and a group of women appear in the bottom far right. However, the women seem to be worshipping her as some sort of deity, with one woman bowing to her. The Venice Haggadah includes the scene of Yaakov meeting Lavan after fleeing Lavan’s home. It features four tents in the background, each with one of Yaakov’s wives, as they play a critical role in that story – Lavan’s complaint is that he did not have the opportunity to say goodbye to them, and then Rachel has a calamitous interaction with Lavan. Yet, in the Trieste Haggadah, there are five (!) empty tents.

Finally, in the most egregious image that is not modeled after any of the prior Haggados, Moshe appears before the burning bush, with God depicted as a man with a beard. Of course, direct depictions of God are prohibited. Unfortunately, this is not the only example in Hebrew books depicting God’s face. The title page of the first edition of Minhas Shai, 1742-1744, also includes such an image. However, it appears that, unlike the illustrator of the Trieste Haggadah, the illustrator of that title page was a non-Jew. This is evident from the fact that the artist was unfamiliar with Hebrew, as the letters are crude and obviously copied. Likewise, since the illustrator of the Kaufmann Haggadah was a non-Jew, in the scene with the burning bush God is depicted as a man.[16]

From the Gross Family Collection

The Moss YaKNeHZ: History and Historic Imagery

The four “mother” haggados are not the only examples of thoughtful illustrations in printed haggados. A contemporary work by David Moss, who remains active with his studio in the Artist Colony in Jerusalem, is an exceptional piece that creatively combines the history of illustrated Haggados in both manuscript and print. The original manuscript has been recently acquired (at Sotheby’s auction) and donated to the National Library of Israel, where it is now on display (see here). If one cannot visit, they can still enjoy it in the comfort of their home. Originally, a small number of exact reproductions were produced; however, those are long out of print. Still, copies of a beautiful two-volume reproduction remain available—one volume contains the manuscript, while the other offers explanatory notes. This edition is admittedly missing a few original elements, but it retains many of the most critical aspects, including the papercuts and fold-out pages, leaving most of Moss’s genius still apparent. One version merely reproduces the Haggadah in a flat format, and we recommend splurging for the two-volume version.

As this year’s Pesach begins on Saturday night, we will use Moss’s accompanying illustration of the procedure unique to that evening as an exemplar of his approach. This procedure, referred to by the Talmud by the acronym YaKNHaZ, translates to the order of operations for the blessings: Yayin (wine), Kiddush, Havdalah, and Zeman (the Shehechiyanu blessing). Moss depicts this section with 12 boxes, 11 containing coins adorned with eagles, and the final one showing a hare jumping out of the frame. This illustration references manuscripts, one of the “mother” haggadot, and its subsequent expression, Jewish history more broadly.

Upon closer inspection, the hare makes an appearance not only in the final box but also is present in each of the boxes with eagles, where it is grasped in their talons. The scene of a hare hunt is common in both non-Jewish and Jewish manuscripts, yet in many instances, it is simply aesthetic and disconnected from the text. However, in the Prague 1526 Haggadah, it becomes directly associated with the text. YaKNHaZ sounds similar to the German phrase “Jagen Has,” which means chasing or hunting hares. The Prague illustrator includes an image of hares fleeing from the hunter and seemingly running headlong into a net. In the next illustrated Haggadah, printed in Augsburg in 1534, which mainly uses the Prague illustration, the hare hunt appears on two panels, transforming the narrative from merely evocative of the procedure to becoming symbolic of the Exodus story. The first panel is a copy of the Prague illustration; yet, rather than the hares succumbing to their pursuer, the second panel shows them jumping over the net to safety. The hunter is no longer just a hunter, and the hares are not mere animals of prey. Instead, the hunter symbolizes those who seek to persecute the Jews, while the hares represent God’s promise that the Jews will ultimately prevail against their adversaries.

Moss’s research uncovered that many historically anti-Semitic governments employ the eagle as their symbol. The eleven panels reproduce these symbols. To illustrate those governments’ animosity toward the Jews, the hares are clutched in the birds’ talons. Yet, akin to the optimism of the Augsburg illustrator, the final frame depicts the hare escaping.

In the accompanying commentary, Moss explains that this image proved to be the most controversial in his Haggadah because eagle imagery is not limited to the past. Instead, it is now most associated with the United States. Until recently, one could comfortably distinguish the United States from its eagle predecessor, as it uniquely granted Jews equal rights from its inception. However, during these unprecedented times, one hopes that Moss’s imagery does not turn out to be prescient.

On the History and Development of Nirtza

By Yaacov Sasson

Yaacov Sasson is a musmach of RIETS, and author of the recently published ספר שש אנכי, available here.

Nirtza is the conclusion of the seder, and as most commonly recited in the Ashkenazi tradition, consists of the following components: the recitation of L’shana Habaa B’Yerushalayim and Chasal Sidur Pesach, followed by the piyutim Vayehi Bachatzi Halayla, Va’amartem Zevach Pesach, Ki Lo Naeh, Adir Hu, and then additional piyyutim such as Chad Gadya and Echad Mi Yodea; the latter two are of later vintage.[1] Nirtza remains somewhat enigmatic, and an analysis of the historical development of Nirtza is helpful to understand its function within the structure of the seder.

The Leket Yosher, a student of the Trumas Hadeshen, records the Trumas Hadeshen’s simanei haseder, which are more detailed and elongated than the popular “Kadesh Urchatz” simanim. The Nirtza of the Trumas Hadeshen is similar to the current day Nirtza, with one very noteworthy difference. For the end of the seder, beginning with the washing of mayim acharonim, the Trumas Hadeshen’s simanim read as follows:

The Leket Yosher goes on to explain each of these simanim in more detail, and writes[2]:

As such, the Leket Yosher already had the components of L’shana Habaa, Chasal Siddur Pesach, Vayehi Bachatzi Halayla, Va’amartem Zevach Pesach, Ki Lo Naeh, and Adir Hu. However, the Leket Yosher has the piyyutim of Vayehi Bachatzi Halayla, Va’amartem Zevach Pesach, and Ki Lo Naeh before the drinking of the fourth cup, whereas the common practice now is to say these piyyutim after the cup and after Chasal Siddur Pesach.

The recitation of these three piyyutim before the drinking of the cup seems to indicate that, fundamentally, the Trumas Hadeshen and Leket Yosher considered these piyyutim to be part of Hallel, as the fourth cup was instituted over the recitation of Hallel. The content of these piyyutim is mostly hallel and shevach, so it seems reasonable that these piyyutim were originally included in the seder as a part of Hallel, and this is also indicated by the Trumas Hadeshen’s language of “Mosif B’Shvachos Ha-el”, indicating that these piyyutim are indeed a hosafa to Hallel. Thus, within the structure of the seder, these three piyyutim do not function as part of the conclusion of the seder; rather they are actually part of Hallel.

The Leket Yosher places L’Shana Habaa, the piyyut Adir Hu, and Chasal Siddur Pesach after the fourth cup. The distinction between these, which are placed after the cup, and the aforementioned three piyyutim, seems to be that the elements placed after the cup are thematically forward looking, toward the future geula, rather than hallel on past miracles. As such, they are appropriate for Nirtza, which, as mentioned, functions as the conclusion of the seder.[3] While Vayehi Bachatzi Halayla and Va’amartem Zevach Pesach do end with bakashos for the future geula, they are by and large shevach and hallel for past miracles, and thus were considered a hosafa to Hallel.

It is also likely that Chasal and Adir Hu were later additions to the seder, which might constitute an additional reason why they were split from the three earlier piyyutim.[4] It appears from Leket Yosher that Chasal Siddur Pesach was originally a local minhag, so that certainly became widespread later than the three earlier piyyutim. And in the hagada of Rav Yitzchak ben Meir of Dura (author of Shaarei Dura), the seder ended with L’shana Habaa after the final cup, with no recitation of Adir Hu or Chasal.[5] This would indicate that Adir Hu and Chasal became standard later than the three earlier piyyutim, which are included in the Shaarei Dura’s hagada.[6]

As noted earlier, the widespread practice today is to recite the three piyyutim (Vayehi Bachatzi Halayla, Va’amartem Zevach Pesach, and Ki Lo Naeh) after the drinking of the fourth cup.[7] Maharshal (Shu”t Maharshal 88) objected to the recitation of these piyyutim before the drinking of the cup, because the closing bracha of Hallel should immediately precede the drinking of the cup.[8] Maharshal states that the piyyutim should be recited after the cup, unlike the Tofsei Machzorim that have the drinking of the cup after these piyyutim. Maharshal is cited by the Bach (siman 480), and the Magen Avraham (siman 480) writes that the piyyutim should be recited after the cup, as they are only a minhag. Although Maharshal and the Magen Avraham provide reasons why the piyyutim should come after the cup, it is possible that they fundamentally agree that the piyyutim are an extension of hallel, albeit with technical reasons why they should be recited after the cup.

It should be noted that the Magen Avraham also cites from the Tashbetz (99) that Maharam would recite the piyyutim before drinking the fourth cup, so as not to be thirsty when going to sleep, and this is what is printed in Siddurim. My impression is that, although he brings both opinions, the ikar halacha according to the Magen Avraham is like the opinion of Maharshal, that the piyyutim be recited after the cup.

As noted by Maharshal and the Magen Avraham, the order printed in the Tofsei Machzorim and Siddurim in their time was the recitation of the three piyyutim before the drinking of the cup. And while Maharshal, the Bach, and the Magen Avraham ruled as early as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the piyyutim should be recited after the drinking of the cup, this ruling was largely not followed for hundreds of years.[9] In my informal survey of printed hagados available online, virtually all printed hagados that I saw through the eighteenth century followed the old order, with the piyyutim before the cup, as presented in the simanim of the Trumas Hadeshen.[10]

To show just a few examples, this hagada printed in Amsterdam in the late 1700s places the piyyutim directly after the concluding bracha of Hallel, before drinking the cup[11]:

As does this hagada printed in Fuerth in the late 1700s[12]:

There were few hagados in the early 1800s that placed the piyyutim after the cup, with more in the later 1800s, as this practice grew modestly. But even by the end of the nineteenth century, the majority of hagados placed the piyyutim before the drinking of the fourth cup. (Aruch Hashulchan (480:3) also writes regarding the placement of the piyyutim before the cup, that it is so in the Hagados, confirming that this was the standard order through the nineteenth century.) The major shift to placing the piyyutim after the cup took place in the twentieth century, and very much accelerated in the second half of the twentieth century, to the point that today, it is difficult to find a hagada that places the piyyutim before the cup.

The Maxwell House hagada is the most widely used hagada in America, and has been used by millions of Jews over the past 100 years. Maxwell House also placed the piyyutim before the cup, as late as its 1994 edition. (Below is an image from the 1964 edition.)

However, by the 2015 edition of the Maxwell House hagada, the order was changed, and the piyyutim are now placed after drinking the cup.[13]

Some other new editions of older hagados have also moved the placement of the piyyutim to after the cup. For example, in the 2001 Ahavas Shalom edition of the Shelah’s hagada, they have moved the piyyutim to after the cup, but do inform the reader of the original placement of the piyyutim.

One popular hagada that still places the piyyutim before the cup is the Ktav Publishing House (red and yellow) hagada.[14] This placement is so out of the ordinary in current day hagados, that it leads to questions like this one[15]: “The semi popular Passover Hagadah by Rabbi Nathan Goldberg strangely puts drinking the fourth cup at the seder after starting a couple of songs from nirtzah. I’ve never seen this in any other haggadah, and it seems wrong. The fourth cup was established to go with hallel, and it would make sense then to drink it at its conclusion, and not make an interruption with a couple of unrelated songs. Is this a mistake? Is there some source for this “change”?”

The pendulum has swung so much to the Maharshal’s order, that the questioner is unaware that this was the order in the majority of hagados until a century ago, and that the change went in the other direction; the order more common today is the result of a change. The language of the question is also noteworthy, as “drinking the fourth cup at the seder after starting a couple of songs from nirtzah” would indeed be strange, as would be an interruption of “unrelated songs”. However, if we understand that these piyyutim are actually intended to be part of Hallel, as noted above, the question falls, as the question is based on the assumption that these piyyutim are intended to be part of Nirtza.

Similarly, the Mesivta (Nusach Ashkenaz) Hagada (p.792) singles out Rav Reuven Margoliyos’s hagada (Be’er Miriam) in noting that Ki Lo Naeh appears there before the drinking of the cup, seemingly also unaware that the majority of hagados were printed that way until the twentieth century.

An interesting question arises: why is it that the ruling of Maharshal and the Bach were largely not followed until the twentieth century, and the custom in the twentieth century shifted so dramatically that the prior custom is now nearly unheard of? One possibility is that this is a “Rupture and Reconstruction” phenomenon, and reflects the shift from mimetic tradition to book-learning halacha due to the rupture in Ashkenazi society caused by the holocaust, a result of which was the de-emphasis of the mimetic tradition. This larger trend was noted by Dr. Haym Soloveitchik in his seminal article in Tradition.[16] A modification of Dr. Soloveitchik’s hypothesis was put forward by Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer, who suggested that the shift to book-learning halacha was a result of the explosion of yeshivos and kollelim in the 20^th century.[17] R. Micha Berger has argued that the changes noted by Dr. Soloveitchik began in the 19^th century, and “less than a discontinuity that occurred in the mid-20^th century, the reconstruction was a long process that was forced to a hasty close[18]”, which seems to fit the phenomenon we have observed here.

Another factor to consider is what R. Joseph Tabory has written, that “the custom eventually disappeared from the eastern European tradition, although it still appears in some haggadot of the western Ashkenazic tradition[19]”, although he does not note what precipitated the change, when the change occurred, or that it has further accelerated in the last century with the demise of Eastern European Jewry.

An additional explanation for the dramatic change in common practice was suggested by my good friend Dr. Josh Lovinger, who noted that the halachic codes themselves may have tended more towards Maharshal’s position as time has gone on. The Magen Avraham, for example, brought the position of Maharshal, as well as the practice of Maharam. However, the Shulchan Shlomo (480:1) requires the piyyutim to be placed after the cup, and the Aruch Hashulchan (480:3) also endorses Maharshal’s position unequivocally.[20] There are however, counter-examples, as Chayei Adam (Klal 130: Hallel) presents both options as legitimate, and Mishna Brura, following Magen Avraham cites both positions. It is possible that the acceleration of this shift was a result of a combination of all of the above factors.

Assuming the three piyyutim are to be recited after the cup, as according to Maharshal, what then is the proper sequence after the cup? Based on the above, that the piyyutim were originally part of Hallel, it would follow that the three piyyutim should be recited immediately after the cup, and before Chasal. Although the piyyutim ought not be recited before the cup for a technical reason, it is reasonable that the piyyutim be placed adjacent to Hallel since they were intended to be part of Hallel. Chasal Siddur Pesach means that the seder is complete, so it would be inconsistent to declare that the seder is complete and then go back to reciting Hallel. As noted above, the three piyyutim are primarily hallel-themed, while Chasal is forward looking, and as such seems to belong after the piyyutim. Additionally, as mentioned above, Chasal was added to the seder later than the three piyyutim, which might be another reason that Chasal was originally placed after the cup. This might be additional reason to recite the piyyutim before Chasal, as they were incorporated into the seder earlier.

This order, with the three piyyutim after the cup but preceding Chasal, is in fact found in the hagada of Rav Yozfa Shamash, available in manuscript online via the National Library of Israel.[21]

This section is also included in Machon Yerushalayim’s edition of Rav Yozfa Shamash’s Minhagei Vermeiza, in the hagahos to siman 77:

This is also the order presented in Rav Yaakov Emden’s siddur Shaarei Shamayim, with the three piyyutim after the drinking of the cup, and preceding Chasal.[22] Here is Chasal following the completion of Ki Lo Naeh:

However, this order is not the prevailing practice, and is almost unheard of in present day hagados.[23] Although R. Joseph Tabory notes that “Others of the western tradition have…retained a vestige of the western Ashkenazic custom by retaining the Hasel Seder Pesach after the additional songs, rather than immediately after drinking the fourth cup[24]”, it is unclear to me who he is referring to in the present day that has retained Chasal after the additional songs.

The only hagada that I have seen printed in the last 100 years that places these piyyutim after the cup and before Chasal, is the hagada Todas Yehoshua of the Monastryshcher Rebbe, printed in 1935.[25] (There might be others that I have not seen, but they are certainly very few and far between.) Here is how the piyyutim appear in the Todas Yehoshua, with Vahehi Bachatzi Halalya after the cup, and Chasal after the end of Ki Lo Naeh.

The Monastryshcher was one of the earlier Chasidic Rebbes to emigrate to the United States, and OU Press recently published a volume about him, entitled Hasidus Meets America: The Life and Torah of the Monsatryshcher Rebbe, by Ora Wiskind.[26] I contacted the Rebbe’s descendants to inquire why his hagada placed the piyyutim before Chasal, but did not receive a clear answer. However, his great-grandson Rabbi Nachum Rabinowitz pointed me to the Rebbe’s hanhagos, printed in sefer Erkei Yehoshua, and his own practice was not as printed in his hagada. On the first night, he recited the piyyutim after the cup and after Chasal, as is the common practice today. On the second night, he recited the piyyutim before the cup, as was the old minhag. So his personal practice was different on each night, but neither night was consistent with what he printed in his hagada.

The prevailing practice nowadays is to recite the piyyutim after the cup, and after Chasal. The earliest hagada that I have seen with this order is the hagada of Rav Shabsai Sofer (published from manuscript over 20 years ago), that has the three piyyutim after the cup and after Chasal.[27] The vast majority of hagados with the piyyutim after the cup follow this order, and virtually all hagados printed nowadays follow this order. It is not clear to me how this order became dominant. Most published halachic codes, when they state that the piyyutim belong after the cup, do not specify whether they belong before or after Chasal. Shulchan Shlomo appears to be the exception, as it specifies saying the piyyutim after Chasal. This might have contributed to this becoming the prevailing practice, although it is not clear that this would be sufficient to carry the day so decisively. It is possible that the order of Chasal being recited immediately after the cup stuck, even when the piyyutim were moved to after the cup.

Aside from the question of how this became the prevailing practice, there is also the question of whether this practice is reasonable. If the piyyutim are seen as a part of Hallel, then it should make sense to recite them before Chasal, not after. Part of the explanation might be that the recitation of Chasal is intended to connote the end of the formal halachic seder, and as such should follow the drinking of the last cup, and not additional piyyutim which are a hosafa to hallel. However, as noted above, thematically these piyyutim are more similar to Hallel, while Chasal turns the focus towards the future geula, so the placement of these piyyutim remains somewhat ambiguous, and as such is a matter of dispute between different authorities, as noted above.

In summary, the Trumas Hadeshen and Leket Yosher place these three piyyutim (Vayehi Bachatzi Halayla, Va’amartem Zevach Pesach, Ki Lo Naeh) before the drinking of the fourth cup, as part of Hallel. This was the Ashkenazi practice for hundreds of years. Maharshal, Bach and other poskim objected to this practice and required the piyyutim to be placed after the cup. This ruling was largely not followed the twentieth century. If the three piyyutim were intended to be part of hallel, it would seem to be reasonable to recite them before Chasal, but the common practice is to recite them after Chasal.

Let us conclude with a Nirtza bakasha found in a hagada manuscript from Baghdad in 1776[28]:

,נרצה כל מי שעושה זה הסדר יזכה לשנים רבות
,נעימות וטובות, לשנה הבאה בירושלים
שמחים כפלי כפלים בקבוץ גלות יהודה ואפרים אמן

[1] See R. Daniel Goldschmidt’s chapter 3, and Hagada Shleima (R. Shmuel Ashkenazi and R. Menachem Kasher) siman 36.
[2] https://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=8860&st=&pgnum=155

[3] The 1526 Prague Hagada also contains a version of Adir Hu in German, printed in Hebrew letters, beginning “Almechtiger Gott”.

https://braginskycollection.com/portfolio/prague-haggadah
Hagada Shleima suggests that perhaps the German is the original and the Hebrew (Adir Hu) is a translation, but I have not seen any evidence to support that assertion. Versions of this German Adir Hu also appear in various later hagados, some of which include the refrain “Nun Bau”, for example in the 1725 Herlington Hagada.

https://braginskycollection.com/portfolio/herlingen-haggadah/

This German version is still recited by some in the Yekke community to this day. This version also appears in the Hagada in the original printing of the Shaar Hashamayim siddur with the commentary of the Shelah. (The 2001 Ahavas Shalom edition of the Shelah Hagada has removed the German version.) This German version of Adir Hu did elicit some opposition, such as in Beis Eivel Uveis Mishte (pp18b – 20b) by Rav Shmuel Palaggi, and Kos Yeshuos by Rav Naftali Hertz Fleish (excerpts printed in Min Hagenazim, vol. 3, 1975, p. 96.)
[4] See R. Daniel Goldschmidt’s Chapter 3, where he also notes that Chasal and Adir Hu were later additions.
[5] https://www.loc.gov/item/2022397713
[6] Interestingly, the Shaarei Dura hagada has the recitation of borei nefashos after the fourth cup, in the image shown. This is certainly a scribal error, as a few pages before, when detailing the halachos of the remainder of the seder, it says explicitly that al hagefen is to be recited after the fourth cup. Also noteworthy is that this hagada includes our standard simanim of “Kadesh Urchatz”, but with the addition of a siman “Notel”, denoting mayim acharonim before birkas hamazon.
[7] I am told, anecdotally, that some in the Yekke community still recite the piyyutim before the fourth cup.
[8] Regarding the closing bracha of birkas hamazon, and the recitation of harachaman before the cup, see my Sos Anochi (siman 26).
[9] My assumption in this statement is that people’s practice generally followed what was printed in their hagados.
[10] One exception that I saw in print is in the siddur of Rav Yaakov Emden, which will be shown below. There were also several exceptions in manuscript that were printed only more recently, such as the hagados of Rav Yozfa Shamash and Rav Shabsai Sofer, also mentioned below.
[11] https://hebrewbooks.org/4889
[12] https://hebrewbooks.org/10550
[13] My attempts to determine who decided to make this change to the Maxwell House hagada were unsuccessful.
[14] https://ktav.com/products/goldberg-passover-haggadah-box-of-50
[15] https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/102127/fourth-cup-after-starting-nirtzah
[16] “Rupture and Reconstruction” by Dr. Haym Soloveitchik, in Tradition 28:4.
[17] In a Symposium on “Rupture and Reconstruction”, Tradition 51:4, specifically pp. 83-84.
[18] https://www.torahmusings.com/2019/08/rupture-and-reconstruction-at-25-years/
[19] The JPS Commentary on the Haggadah, p. 60. My thanks to Dr. Josh Lovinger for bringing this reference to my attention.
[20] Interestingly, Mishna Brura cites both positions, while the Aruch Hashulchan endorsed Maharshal unequivocally. This is somewhat of a departure from what we would expect based on Dr. Soloveitchik’s presentation in “Rupture and Reconstruction”, in which the Aruch Hashulchan typically attempted to justify common practices, while the Mishna Brura tended to value common practice less than did the Aruch Hashulchan.
[21] https://www.nli.org.il/he/manuscripts/NNL_ALEPH990001671700205171/NLI#$FL15383925. This hagada was recently published by under the title Hagada Likutei Yosef.

https://kollelashkenaz.org/publications/haggadah-shel-pesach-the-yosef-yusfa-haggadah/

[22] https://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=22619&st=&pgnum=92&hilite=

My thanks to Dr. Josh Lovinger for bringing this reference to my attention.
[23] I would expect that Hagada Likutei Yosef should follow this order, but have not seen a copy thus far.
[24] The JPS Commentary on the Haggadah, p. 60.
[25] https://hebrewbooks.org/2712

This hagada was printed as a fundraiser for Yeshiva R. Chaim Berlin.
[26] https://oupress.org/product/hasidus-meets-america/
[27] My thanks to Dr. Josh Lovinger for bringing this reference to my attention.
[28] Hebrewmanuscripts.org/hbm_712.pdf

Stet in the Beit Yosef: Fish and Milk, from Typographical Error to Typological Exemplar
Aton M. Holzer

Rabbi Dr. Holzer is Director of the Mohs Surgery Clinic in the Department of Dermatology, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, and is an assistant editor of the recent RCA Siddur Avodat HaLev. ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9852-3958/ 28 Binyamin, Beit Shemesh, Israel 9952200/ Aton.holzer@gmail.com

A passage in the magnum opus of R. Joseph Karo (Maran, or the Mehaber, 1488-1575), the Beit Yosef (YD 87:5) tends to be reckoned among the more consequential scribal errors in Jewish legal texts.

[ה] ”דגים וחגבים מותר לאכלן בחלב“. ריש פרק כל הבשר (קג:) ”(כל הבשר) אסור לבשל בחלב, חוץ מבשר דגים וחגבים“. וכתב הר”ן דכיון דלבשלן שרי משמע דלאכלן בחלב נמי שרי, דאיסור בשר בחלב בלשון בישול אפקיה רחמנא, וכן כתב הרמב”ם והרשב”א דלאכלן בחלב נמי שרי. ומכל מקום אין לאכול דגים בחלב מפני הסכנה, כמו שנתבאר בספר אורח חיים סימן קע”ג.

“Fish and locusts, it is permitted to eat them in milk.” In the beginning of the chapter kol basar (bHullin 103b) [it is written]: “(all flesh) it is prohibited to cook in milk, except for the flesh of fish and locusts.” And R. Nissim wrote that since cooking them is permitted, it implies that to eat them in milk is also permitted, for the prohibition of meat in milk was set out by the Torah in the semantics of cooking, and likewise did Maimonides and R. Shlomo ibn Adret write, that to eat them in milk is also permitted. And in any event, one should not eat fish in milk because of the danger, similar to what was elucidated in Orah Hayyim 173.

In his 2014 “A Guide to the Complex,”[1] Shlomo Brody highlights this passage – which invokes a heretofore ostensibly unknown ‘danger’ regarding consumption of fish in milk, and which makes reference to a chapter that deals with measures that must be taken with regard to the ‘dangerous mixture’ of fish and meat[2] – as a banner example of the ‘impact of inaccurate texts on Jewish law.’ He adds that ‘Ancient manuscripts regularly suffered from poor penmanship, slipping of the eyes, and misunderstandings by unlearned or confused copyists.’ The first to make this sort of observation regarding this passage was none other than R. Karo’s younger contemporary and interlocutory commentator R. Moses Isserles (Rama, 1530-1572), who puts it humorously (Darkei Moshe, Tur YD 87:4):

.ולא ראיתי מימי נזהרין בזה וגם בא”ח סימן קע”ג אינו אלא שלא לאכלו בבשר משום סכנה אבל בחלב שרי ועי”ל סימן קי”ו ולכן נראה שנתערב להרב בשר בחלב

And in all my days I have never seen [anyone] take care with regard to this, and also in Orah Hayyim 173 there is not but not to eat [fish cooked] in meat because of danger, but in milk it is permitted, and see earlier in chapter 116, and therefore it appears that the Rabbi has confused (mixed) meat and milk.

As neat as this solution appears, there remain some problems. For one thing, in context, the Beit Yosef discusses the consumption of various forms of flesh – fish and locust – in milk, not meat; replacing the word ‘milk’ for ‘meat’ would render the ultimate sentence a nonsequitur with regard to the full passage.

For another, the idea of danger attendant to mixtures of fish and dairy is not entirely unprecedented. R. Bahye b. Asher (1255-1340), who hailed from R. Karo’s native Christian Spain two centuries earlier (but from Zaragoza, quite a ways from Toledo), seems to make reference to such a practice in his commentary to Exodus 23:19:

.וכן דעת הרופאים בתערובת דג וגבינה שנתבשלו כאחד שמוליד תכונה רעה וחולי הצרעת

And so is the view of the physicians regarding the mixture of fish and cheese that were cooked together, that they beget a bad character and the illness of tsara’at (biblical ‘leprosy’).

To be sure, this is a lone statement, found in a decidedly non-Halakhic work, at a distance of two centuries and one continent from R. Karo’s work, which was completed in Ottoman Safed.

A third is that it is difficult to ascribe scribal error to the Mehaber’s project, if only because Beit Yosef was not transmitted in manuscript, and does not exist in manuscript – at least not beyond the author’s autograph. The four volumes of Tur with Beit Yosef were printed in different Italian publishing houses over the course of the 1550’s, in the author’s own lifetime, and he lived to see several printings of the Beit Yosef and Shulhan Arukh, the precis of the conclusions of halakhic discussions in the Beit Yosef. In fact, printing, and particularly choosing to do so in Renaissance Italy – where there was a Christian censor but superior presses to what was available in Ottoman Turkey, but more importantly, where (Jewish exile) cultures met and wide dissemination was guaranteed[3] – was central to R. Karo’s stated mission, a messianic objective of a piece with his participation in reconstituting the Sanhedrin to administer corporal punishment.[4] Taking a page from the messianic project of Sultan Suleiman, Kanuni or “the lawgiver,”[5] his project would complete Maimonides’ project[6] to unify the Jewish people under a uniform system of law in anticipation of redemption. And indeed, in his own lifetime, Beit Yosef and Shulhan Arukh enjoyed wide dissemination and readership, if not universal acceptance.[7] 

Figure 1: 87:5 in its first printing (Venice, 1551)

Given this, if “milk” is an error, it is much more likely typographical than scribal, and not the best example of the phenomenon R. Brody describes. But more importantly: given that the printed versions were available to the author, and were widely read and used, in his presence, for more than twenty years, the possibility that a typographical error of such consequence would go unnoticed by the author or his immediate milieu is at least somewhat diminished. The author himself issued a work called Bedek ha-Bayit with corrigenda and addenda, and there is a gloss on siman 86, but not 87.

—

Muhammad ‘Abd al-Ra’ūf al-Munāwī (1545-1621), a renowned scholar in Ottoman Cairo whose hadith commentary is still popular in Sunni Islam, also composed a compendium of fundamental, practical scholarly-spiritual knowledge related to a number of everyday issues[8] – a sort of Islamic Orah Hayyim, as it were – known as Tadhkirat ūlī al-albāb bi-maʻrifat al-ādāb. This work is significant as a snapshot of the cultural climate in Early Ottoman Cairo, and has traces of persistent Mamluk attitudes, reconfigured in light of Ottoman sensibilities and cutting-edge intellectual trends in his time in Cairo, which, under the Mamluks, had long been a hub of science and the occult (which, at the time, were also deemed ‘sciences’) in the Islamicate world.[9]

In his compendium,[10] there is a fascinating discussion of food mixtures, launching off a discussion of Galenic medicine and the inadvisability of combining food that relate to different humors/elements (moisture/water, dryness/air, coldness/earth and hotness/fire). In pertinent part:

يعسر علينا اثبات كثير من ذلك بالقياس فمن ذالك انه لا يجمع بين سمك و لبن فإنه يولد أمراضا مزمنة كالجدام والبرص والفالج

It is difficult for us to prove much of this by (syllogistic) reason. For example, that combining fish and milk causes chronic diseases such as leprosy, vitiligo, and paralysis.

Figure 2: Tadhkirat ūlī al-albāb bi-maʻrifat al-ādāb,folio 14a (Yale, Landberg MSS 163)

Paulina Lewicka, a Polish scholar who studied foodways in Mamluk and Ottoman Cairo,[11] highlights this passage and notes that it represents a novelty on the Egyptian scene.

In fact, there seems to be no evidence that avoidance of mixing fish and milk products had been observed in Egypt of the Mamluk period, or in the medieval Middle East in general. This combination, which is considered unhealthy today, appeared in a number of old Arabic-Islamic recipes where fish and yoghurt were put together. Al-Munāwī’s remarks may have reflected, then, a new trend in medico-culinary thinking.[12]

Lewicka also notes in al-Munāwī’s treatment of Galenic medicine an interesting development: even though Galen’s theory of humors had formed the basis of Islamicate medicine for centuries, in the Muslim-Sufi environment of early Ottoman Cairo there was discomfort with use of pagan theories and concepts. Instead, al-Munāwī traces the theory of humors to Kitāb al-Tawrāt, the Torah,[13]  where, according to him, Adam was created with dry soil, wet water, heat (nefesh/nafs) and cold (ru’ah/rūḥ).

—

R. Yosef Karo, living in the same territorial-ideological expanse as al-Munāwī – with frequent interchange between Safed and Cairo by figures no less than R. David abi ibn Zimra, R. Bezalel Ashkenazi, and R. Isaac Luria – had ample access to the developments in Cairene medicine that inspired the Tadhkirat passage.

His relationship with classical philosophy – the ostensible basis for Galenic (as opposed to prophetic) Cairene medicine – is complicated. In his mystical diary Maggid Meisharim (80a-b), he cites his angelic guide who allows that, pace the view of other Kabbalists of his day, Maimonides was not condemned to reincarnate as a worm because of his philosophical views – but only because he was saved from this fate by his Torah and good deeds, and thus was allowed to reincarnate in a usual way before ascending to join the souls of the righteous. However, there is evidence that he himself was more accepting and even dabbled in philosophy – but assigned it a decidedly secondary or tertiary position to the study of Talmud and Halakhah, either behind or on par with Kabbalah, which also took a backseat to Halakhic sources in terms of study and Halakhic decision/pesak.[14]

The case of milk and fish may serve as something of an acid test for medical science. R. Karo includes it in his Beit Yosef, but as an ayn le-ekhol – it should not be eaten – rather than ‘it is forbidden.’ Clearly R. Karo prohibits it, as perhaps a contemporary posek (if not for the Igrot Moshe) might prohibit smoking, but does not share al-Munāwī’s view that humoral medicine is a de’orayta. And while cutting edge Galenic knowledge merits mention in Beit Yosef, the Mehaber omits it from the Shulhan Arukh (87:3), the repository of pesak, regarding which, just as for Kabbalah,[15] the Talmudic sources – which explicitly permit such a mixture (kutah, e.g. Pesahim 76b) – trump all.

A Tale of Two Zionist Siddurim in Exile
Seth (Avi) Kadish

 

Zionist Siddurim and Modern Orthodoxy

Modern Orthodoxy today, in America and throughout the diaspora, is largely a Zionist world. It is, in a sense, the English-speaking wing of Religious Zionism outside of Israel.[1] It is a world of synagogue communities with very close ties to Israel. Most people in Modern Orthodox synagogues have visited Israel, have family and friends who live in Israel, and support Israel. They see Israel as a blessing from God. They say prayers for the State of Israel and the IDF in their synagogues, and many of them celebrate Israel’s Independence Day with public prayers of thanks, including Hallel. At least some of these prayers are included in those siddurim which are designed for Modern Orthodox communities.

In this sense, a Modern Orthodox siddur is a Zionist siddur. But it is also invariably a bilingual siddur. Despite their love of Hebrew-speaking Israel, Modern Orthodox Jews are often uncomfortable with a siddur in Hebrew alone. Therefore, Modern Orthodox siddurim are typically published with introductions, translations, instructions and commentaries which are all in the vernacular. This format is so typical of the Modern Orthodox world that there is a small but competitive industry that produces and markets bilingual Modern Orthodox siddurim, and even a minor literature devoted to reviewing, evaluating and comparing them.

Even a Modern Orthodox Jew who makes ‘aliyah to Israel is likely to continue using a bilingual siddur. In Israel and abroad there is a much larger market for all-Hebrew siddurim, but most of those who prefer an all-Hebrew siddur are not Modern Orthodox Jews. Rather, they are native Israelis or haredim. That is why all-Hebrew, Zionist siddurim are usually published with native Israelis in mind, and sold mainly in Israel.

However, there have been exceptions to this rule. I am aware of two all-Hebrew, Zionist siddurim whose editors were Torah-observant scholars outside of Israel. These two siddurim were published, marketed and sold in pre-Holocaust Europe or in America, even though they contain no translation and their introductions, instructions and commentaries are all in modern Hebrew. The stories of these two siddurim and their editors reveal some important and moving aspects about Zionism since the dawn of the 20th century, including cultural movements and historical events that have largely been forgotten.

The publication of a siddur can reveal the soul of its publisher or point out the condition of communities, because a siddur is not just a prayerbook. Its core blessings and prayers have been the most basic component of oral Hebrew culture for thousands of years, and the same has been true for the siddur as a mass-produced physical book since the invention of printing. In many times and places the siddur was the Hebrew text most familiar to the majority of Jews, sometimes better known than the Bible itself. The two siddurim that we will discuss bear witness to the life of the Hebrew language over the past two centuries. They can help us understand the circumstances under which the Hebrew language has struggled or failed or been snuffed out, or to the contrary, where and when it lived and grew and flourished.

The two siddurim and their respective editors also highlight something fundamental and deeply traditional about Jewish prayer, which goes straight to the roots of the Torah. Namely that, in prayer, the nation of Israel stands before the God of Israel. Yet in order for Israel to stand before its God, it must first be a nation, an ‘am in Hebrew, which shares a language, a homeland and a common fate.[2]

1. Siddur Shirah Ḥadashah, edited by Ḥayyim David Rosenstein (Vilna, 1909)[3]

Siddur Shirah Ḥadashah was first published in Vilna, 1909. It was issued in the two versions that were most important to eastern European Jews, namely Ashkenaz and the hasidic Sefard. It was reprinted a great many times since then, and is still on the market to this very day. 

The text of Siddur Shirah Ḥadashah is laid out with great care, and marked with modern punctuation. It is accompanied by concise instructions in vowelized Hebrew as well as a short commentary on the bottom of the page, also in vowelized Hebrew, which explains difficult words and phrases in the Hebrew prayers. Prayers in Aramaic (such as Berikh Shemeih and Yequm Purkan) are accompanied by translation into Hebrew. Shirah Ḥadashah is an appealing edition of the siddur and a pleasure to browse.

Who published a siddur like this in eastern Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, and why? Its editor, Ḥayyim David Rosenstein (1871-1934) lived his entire life in Minsk (Russia and then USSR, now the capital of Belarus), which had a Jewish majority at the turn of the 20th century. Rosenstein was a Torah scholar, a Hebraist, a Zionist activist and above all an educator. In Minsk he was known in Yiddish as Der Hoikhe Melamed (“the tall teacher”), which referred not just to his physical stature but also to the great esteem in which he was held by the people of the city. He was also known in literary circles by his Hebrew initials חד״ר (like cheder in Yiddish) or as חד”ר מד”ן (taking the first and last letters of his name). 

Rosenstein was the founder and principal of a cheder in Minsk, but it was no ordinary cheder. It was rather called a ḥeder metukan in Hebrew, i.e. an “improved” cheder in that it included secular studies along with Torah study, and employed modern pedagogical techniques in all disciplines. It prepared its students as Jews and for success in the modern world. But above all, it taught the Hebrew language and other subjects not in Yiddish nor in Russian but rather in Hebrew (‘Ivrit be-‘Ivrit). Rosenstein’s Siddur Shirah Ḥadashah was designed for students in schools like his own. By 1903, there were 934 ḥadarim metukanim in Tzarist Russia. Siddur Shirah Ḥadashah became a bestseller not just among their students, but also among Hebrew-oriented Jews throughout Europe, and it was even exported to North America and to the Hebrew-speaking settlements in Ereẓ Yisra’el.

The ḥeder metukan was vociferously opposed by the traditionalists of the time, who sarcastically called it a cheder mesukan in the Ashkenazic pronunciation (i.e. “a dangerous cheder”).[4] The ḥeder metukan also raised the ire of assimilationists, who wanted Jews to learn Russian, drop their separate national identity and fully join Russian society. But the ḥeder metukan was most fiercely opposed by Jewish socialists and communists, who despised its traditional nature, its nationalist pretensions, and its promotion of Hebrew. In their view every nationality, including Jewish nationality, took a back seat to the international revolution of the proletariat. And if an ethnic Jewish culture was to be promoted, they argued, then that culture must be Yiddish culture. They saw Hebrew as the language of a repressive religious tradition, of privileged rabbis and scholars. It was not the mother tongue of the Jewish masses in Europe, and it must therefore not be part of a tolerated culture in a future communist country.

Despite all of this harsh opposition, Rosenstein’s ḥeder metukan in Minsk was highly successful following its founding in 1903. During its golden years, it educated many students who eventually made ‘aliyah and contributed to the rise of the State of Israel. Rosenstein’s son, Avraham, told the following story which illustrates something of the educational spirit of the school at its very best:

Years passed, and I was in the upper class of the cheder—in my father’s cheder. Some eighteen 10-year-olds were attending lessons on Torah and Nevi’im and Ketuvim, on Hebrew grammar, Mishnayot, on the early history of Israel. And all of it was, of course, in Hebrew: Hebrew in the lessons, Hebrew during recess, in conversations and in games. All of us were all proud of the fact that we were in Rosenstein’s cheder, myself among them. I felt no embarrassment, or, to the contrary, “privilege” or “advantage” over my fellow students because the teacher was my father … In his keen pedagogic instinct, my father gave me no cause to feel “privileged” or “near to the throne”—neither in my eyes nor in the eyes of my fellow students. [I was] one student among all the others, and there was an equal and fatherly attitude towards each and every one, in accordance with his attitude toward his studies.

Of all the classes, the ones in Tanakh are carved most deeply into my heart. My father immersed his entire soul and all of his enthusiasm in them, infecting all of us [students] as well. We would learn complete chapters by heart but felt no onus or burden in it.

I remember one episode extremely well from those school days.

One day we began to study the book of Proverbs, after we had learned a selection of Psalms. The “modern” commentaries we had sometimes resorted to, apart from Rashi and the “Meẓudot”, were the “Miqra Meforash” (“Explanatory Tanakh”) of Treves, Notik and Levin. For the Book of Proverbs, father told us, no Miqra Meforash had yet been published, so we would have to make due with the traditional commentaries and supplement them with father’s explanations, which we would jot down for ourselves.

Or if you want, added father with a smile, you may compose your own Miqra Meforash…

I do not recall how my classmates reacted to that “invitation,” but I certainly do recall that the words entered my heart and together with my friend David Lifshitz, an outstanding student in the class, we decided to take up the task—to compose an edition of the Book of Proverbs with a new commentary in the format of Miqra Meforash, based on the commentaries of my father and other commentaries that we had at our disposal…

When our plan was revealed to father, he smiled and asked, “So what shall you call your commentary?” Upon seeing the confusion in our eyes, he added, “Look carefully at Psalm 110, which we studied not long ago, perhaps you will find a suitable name there…”

Indeed, after we read and reread the psalm with care, David extracted from it the phrase טַל יַלְדוּת (“the dew of youth”), and we decided that this was surely what father had meant, for it was quite fitting to our work and the age of its “authors.”

For many weeks we worked in the evenings at the “sacred labor” of the commentary, writing and erasing and rewriting. David, who had a very fine hand, would copy inside a thick notebook, in large and handsome letters, the biblical text up to the middle of the page, and then I would copy, in small letters in the lower half, the exegesis we had worked out together, and all of it of course with full vowelization!

And so it was day after day and week after week, page after page and chapter after chapter.

What became of our “creation” inspired by father, whether it was completed or left unfinished—I cannot recall.[5]

In a footnote to the above story, Rosenstein’s son added the following: “I hope that this same dear friend, who is today Rabbi David Lifshitz, one of the heads of Yeshiva University in the United States, will not resent the exposure of these ‘youthful indiscretions’…”.[6]

Rosenstein’s three sons succeeded in making ‘aliyah to Ereẓ Yisra’el by 1925. For years they made strenuous efforts to bring their parents and sister. Finally, in 1934, they were able to secure official permission for them to leave the USSR, along with entry permits from British Mandate officials. Yet Rosenstein never saw Ereẓ Yisra’el.

After the Bolshevik revolution he continued to secretly teach Hebrew and engage in Zionist activities. His house was searched repeatedly for forbidden works in Hebrew. More than 60 unpublished manuscripts by Rosenstein—including a complete modern edition of ‘Ein Ya‘akov for Hebrew-speaking students—were confiscated by the Yevsektsiya or the Cheka and lost to posterity. The Soviet authorities arrested and tortured Rosenstein several times, but he always returned to teaching and writing in Hebrew. Weak and ill, he died in exile in Minsk in 1934, just before one of his sons was due to arrive from Ereẓ Yisra’el and bring home the rest of his family. His wife and daughter buried him in the Jewish cemetery of Minsk, shortly before they left for Ereẓ Yisra’el. No stone marks his grave. His wife is buried on the Mount of Olives.

Rosenstein’s writing following the revolution describes the plight of Jewish decency in an age of totalitarian terror. Today, when we hear the term anusim we mostly think of medieval Spain (conversos or Marranos), and when we mention “Prisoners of Zion” it usually refers to heroes from the 1970s and 80s. Yet there were Prisoners of Zion in the USSR ever since 1917, and Rosenstein was one. A posthumous collection of his surviving writings, based on notebooks brought home to Ereẓ Yisra’el by his wife and daughter following his death, contains short stories in Hebrew on subjects such as “Pesaḥ Anusim”—one Jew’s doomed attempt to hold a Passover seder with his wife behind closed doors instead of attending a mandatory Passover pork festival, complete with four cups of vodka, at the Yiddish cultural center (a former synagogue). Another story is about the daughter of a former dayyan (rabbinical judge) in Minsk who disobeyed her parents by attending a forbidden gathering of Zionist youth. This indiscretion empowered a Jewish officer in the Cheka to force her to be his consort and bear his child; the story ends with a clandestine circumcision. At the very same time, along with these terrifying themes, Rosenstein continued to write children’s stories and poems in Hebrew, as well as modern Hebrew editions of Torah texts and articles about pedagogy or wider issues in the Jewish world, until his dying day.

In 1949, Eshkol publishers of Jerusalem reissued Rosenstein’s Siddur Shirah Ḥadashah in an edition that was newly typeset, revised and expanded for use in the brand new State of Israel. The 1949 edition contains the Prayer for the State of Israel at the very end of the volume, and was one of the very first siddurim in the world to include it.

Shirah Ḥadashah has been reprinted in Israel many times. One later, undated edition includes not just the prayer for the state, but also prayers for Israel’s 3rd president Zalman Shazar (who was in office 1963-1973), for peace in the world, for remembering Holocaust victims on ‘Asarah be-Tevet, for fallen Israeli soldiers, for Israel’s Memorial Day and Independence Day, and the prayer for the well-being of IDF soldiers. Shirah Ḥadashah’s popularity began to diminish after Siddur Rinat Yisra’el was published 1970, as the latter quickly became the standard siddur in many of Israel’s Zionist synagogues, but it still continued to be used.[7]

When the founder of Eshkol publishers, Rabbi Yaakov Shaul Weinfeld, died in 1989, his sons divided the rights to its publications into two separate ḥaredi publishing houses. One of them is called Shai la-Mora, which continues to publish Siddur Shirah Ḥadashah to this day. However, its title page no longer credits Ḥayyim David Rosenstein, and all prayers related to the State of Israel have been removed.[8]

In a brief introduction to the 1949 edition, Eshkol publishers thanked the author’s son Avraham for editing the Israeli version of his father’s siddur, and for writing a Hebrew commentary to the newly added sections in the spirit of his late father’s work. The publisher’s acknowledgment is credited not to Avraham Rosenstein, but rather to “the teacher A. Even-Shoshan of Jerusalem.” The Hebraified version of “Rosenstein” was “Even-Shoshan,” the name which the family adopted in Ereẓ Yisra’el with the blessing of their father, who himself had used Even-Shoshan as a Hebrew pen name in his youth.[9] Avraham Even-Shoshan (1906-1984) was one of the great Hebrew lexicographers of the 20th century and author of the multivolume Even-Shoshan Dictionary. During his lifetime, Ḥayyim David Rosenstein expressed two unfulfilled literary desires to his children: He wanted Siddur Shirah Ḥadashah to be republished in a new edition, and he thought there was a great need for a new, accessible Hebrew-language dictionary. Both of these wishes were fulfilled by his son Avraham in Israel. 

2. Siddur ‘Am Yisra’el, edited by Paltiel Birnbaum (New York, 1978)

Siddur ‘Am Yisra’el was published in New York, 1978 by Dr. Paltiel (Philip) Birnbaum (1901-1988).[10] It is an all-Hebrew version of Birnbaum’s best-selling Daily Prayer Book (Ha-Siddur Ha-Shalem), which was first published in 1949 and used widely by generations of American Jews. Most of the text consists of images that were reproduced mechanically from the Hebrew part of his earlier bilingual siddur, but in some places it was altered to conform with the Ashkenazic custom prevalent in Israeli synagogues.[11] The editor’s introduction is in Hebrew, as is sporadic commentary in the form of explanatory notes at the bottom of some of the pages.[12] The Prayer for the State of Israel—which appeared at the very end of Birnbaum’s original 1949 bilingual siddur, making it, too, one of the very first in the world to include it along with Siddur Shirah Ḥadashah that very same year—appears here within the Shabbat morning prayers right after the prayer for the government (outside of Israel),[13] and is immediately followed by the prayer for the IDF. 

The end of the volume contains significant material that did not appear in the original siddur: prayers for Israel’s Independence Day (pp. 420-427); Torah readings for Shabbat afternoon, Monday and Thursday (pp. 428-459); two lists of holiday Torah readings, one for Israel and one for the diaspora (pp. 460-461); and “Months of the Year,” a summary of laws and customs in Hebrew (pp. 462-466).

The volume’s cover is dominated by the color blue, which reminds one of the Israeli flag. All writing on the cover (such as the volume’s title) is in black letters, which continue as black stripes surrounding an area of grey that wraps around to the back cover. The title of the volume on the front cover, namely Siddur ‘Am Yisra’el, connects via that orange area to further text on the back cover which reads: Ki attah shomea‘ tefillat ‘amekha Yisra’el be-raḥamim (“for You hear in mercy the prayer of Your nation Israel”). Birnbaum chose a title for his all-Hebrew siddur which emphasizes that Israel stands united before God in prayer.[14]

The most important fact about this volume, in terms of its public impact, is that it was never reissued. Unlike Siddur Shirah Ḥadashah, for which there was public appreciation expressed as market demand over several generations in Europe and Israel, Siddur ‘Am Yisra’el seems to have left no mark.[15] It is notable that in Rosenstein’s introduction to the original 1909 edition of Siddur Shirah Ḥadashah, he described the practical need which led him to produce a new siddur designed for use in schools. Birnbaum too, in the introductions to his successful bilingual editions of the siddur and the maḥzor, took pains to describe the widespread need for a new edition with clear instructions and a modern translation, accompanied by a clear and accurate Hebrew text with modern punctuation. But he mentions no such need in his introduction to Siddur ‘Am Yisra’el. This leads one to suspect that Birnbaum published his all-Hebrew siddur not in response to public demand, but rather out of a personal desire to see his siddur published in a purely Hebrew form, without material in a foreign tongue. The story of his life supports this suspicion.

Paltiel Birnbaum immigrated to the United States in 1920, at age nineteen, alone without his family. The village of Żarnowiec (Chernowitz), Poland, where he was born in 1901, was about half-Jewish at the time and highly traditional. Little is known about his childhood or education, except for an anecdote told by relatives which “remembers him sitting at night under the table with books and candles, always studying.” Birnbaum grew up in Rosenstein’s world, namely the centuries-old communities in eastern Europe whose many millions of Jews provided a thick, thriving Jewish environment that enabled Jewish and Hebraic culture to flourish. The young Birnbaum appears to have been an autodidact with a deep love for both the traditional and modern scholarship of his people. As a young man in America, he financed his undergraduate degree by tutoring Hebrew and Greek. His Ph.D. dissertation analyzed a Karaite commentary on Hosea in Judeo-Arabic.[16] His entire career indicates a love for his people’s literature and especially for the Hebrew language. 

Throughout much of his life in America, Birnbaum administered and taught in local community Hebrew Schools. He became famous as the editor and translator of bilingual prayer books, as well as the author of popular volumes in English that were designed to enlighten and inform the American Jewish masses. He was heartbroken that so many American Jews were bereft of their heritage: “We are losing our people because of ignorance,” he said. “People are ignorant of their ignorance.”[17]

Hebrew language and literature survived in 20th century America, but mostly within a small circle of intellectuals, along with some schools they established in which a small minority of American Jewish youth studied in Hebrew. Birnbaum was active in this somewhat lonely environment. He served on the board of the Histadrut Ivrit of America and contributed regularly to its journal Hadoar and other Hebrew literary forums that existed at the time. He also founded a Ḥug ‘Ivri (a social club for people to study Hebrew and speak it to each other) in his Wilmington, Delaware community, where he lived for 20 years.

Birnbaum’s first book aimed at a popular audience was an abridged version of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah in vowelized and punctuated Hebrew, along with explanations of various Hebrew words, phrases and concepts in English at the bottom of the page (New York, 1944). A short, educational biography of Maimonides in vowelized Hebrew comes just before the text. Birnbaum hoped that this volume would enable its readers to access the original Hebrew text by Maimonides, so that it might be a window for them into the language and literature of Israel and serve them as a concise encyclopedia of Judaism. But years later, in 1967, he republished the very same Hebrew text with a full, facing English translation instead of brief explanations. Although Hebrew illiteracy was painful to him, Birnbaum was never stingy with his American Jewish audience. He provided them with any tool he could in his literary efforts to tackle their ignorance. Indeed, in a passionate Hebrew-language review of a book written in Hebrew on the story of the Hebrew language, Birnbaum remarked that “the main purpose of having precise translations is that they make it easier to understand the Hebrew original.” Even though his review made it clear, through lengthy citations, that there can be no Jewish future without Hebrew, Birnbaum nevertheless suggests that the book itself “should be published in English translation, so that people may know…”[18]

A full volume of Birnbaum’s collected writings in Hebrew entitled Peleitat Soferim was published by Mossad Harav Kook (Jerusalem, 1971). It contains numerous book reviews, biographical portraits of traditional and modern Jewish scholars of Judaica, and articles on other classic Judaica topics. But the final essay stands out. In it, Birnbaum passionately described his five-week visit to Israel following the Six Day War in 1967. It was his fifth trip, at a time long before Birthright, when the vast majority of American Jews never visited Israel even once in their lives. “This visit, my fifth to the Land of Israel, was an experience that I will never forget. This time I felt in every fiber of my being that I was treading the soil of the land of our fathers, the land of our longing, the goodly heritage, the source of our millennial culture…” Birnbaum wrote of the desperate need for olim[19] to fill the vast space he encountered from the Sinai desert to the Golan Heights.[20] He wondered whether Israel should deal with these precious places in terms of their history, the national longing of countless generations, or in terms of the practical need for defensible borders.[21] He further recounted the strange experience of being a Hebrew-speaking tourist in Israel: “A tourist who speaks fluent Hebrew is assumed to be a yored.[22] People immediately want to know where he learned such Hebrew. If an American citizen, for instance, speaks fluent Hebrew, residents of the State see that as a sign that he once resided in Israel and then left…”[23] He described his visit to Masada[24] and wrote at great length about his encounter with Samaritans, their history and their version of the Torah.[25] It is with this essay about his visit to Israel that Birnbaum chose to close the volume of his collected writings in Hebrew.

Siddur ‘Am Yisra’el was published a decade after that visit to Israel. To publish his siddur in an all-Hebrew version, with changes needed to make it suitable for use in Israel as well as America, seems to have been the realization of a dream for Birnbaum. Perhaps he felt that in 1978 there were already enough literate, observant, Zionist American Jews who might want to use such a siddur. Perhaps he hoped that his siddur would also be marketed in Israel. Yet given his outlook, it makes the most sense to view Birnbaum’s publication of Siddur ‘Am Yisra’el as an expression of Birnbaum’s ideal and of his dream, namely for the nation of Israel to know and love its own language and foundational texts with no need for crutches in a foreign tongue.

When Birnbaum died in 1988 he left no family, as he never married. But he did belong to an active Jewish community (the Jewish Center in Manhattan) and received a proper Jewish burial. The tombstone provided by his community contained very little Hebrew (not even his Hebrew name), and its English text was marred by three errors. In 2022, Yosef Lindell spearheaded an effort in cooperation with the Jewish Center to replace Birnbaum’s tombstone with a new one that would not only be more accurate, but also contain a small amount of elegant text in Hebrew and English to give tribute to his life’s work. The Hebrew sentence on the new tombstone reads, in translation, “He instructed the mouths of his nation so that they err not in their language nor falter in their speech.”[26] This beautiful rephrasing of an ancient prayer may be taken to refer not just to Birnbaum’s great care for language, Hebrew and English alike, but also to his love of Israel as a nation. “He instructed the mouths of his nation,” ‘ammo in Hebrew, referring to a man who devoted his life and his wisdom to his nation and its language, while simultaneously yearning for its land. 

Prayer, Torah and Hebrew Nationhood

Throughout our history, when the communities of Israel in exile were either unemancipated or multitudinous, the Hebrew language had a chance to flourish. Before emancipation, Jews in most times and places were typically able to communicate in Hebrew as a matter of course, and did most of their writing in Hebrew. They spoke Hebrew when they encountered Jews who knew a different mother tongue, and sometimes even when there was no practical need. Hebrew was not their mother tongue, yet they became intimately familiar with it “at an extremely early and impressionable age.”[27] It was precisely this familiarity which enabled the revival of Hebrew as a mother tongue in modern times. As Cecil Roth is famously said to have put it, “Before Ben-Yehuda… Jews could speak Hebrew; after him, they did.”[28] The living reality of Hebrew in both of these stages was a remarkable achievement, and may well be considered miraculous, the former no less than the latter.

But in places and times where Jews were both emancipated and constituted a small minority, Hebrew was ultimately doomed. This was true for Jewish enlightenment in the 19th century, which took place in two different tongues. In Western Europe, where emancipated Jews were a small minority, the language of Jewish enlightenment was mostly German and its spirit strove “to wipe out any national memory of ‘Am Yisra’el.”[29] But in eastern Europe, where Jews largely remained unemancipated (or at least unintegrated), and where they often constituted a large minority and sometimes even a local majority, the Hebrew language was able to flourish. Hebrew continued to thrive in eastern Europe (outside of the USSR) right up until the Holocaust as the language of schools, youth movements, newspapers, journals, and books. It was evident to those who took part in this culture that they had no future in Europe, but only a minority escaped.[30]

In the modern, emancipated countries of the 19th century, even Orthodox rabbinic scholars quickly abandoned Hebrew as their natural language for discussing the Torah. Birnbaum cites an example of this from the book he reviewed on the history of Hebrew. Upon receiving a letter from Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, written in German, the Italian-Jewish scholar Samuel David Luzzatto (Shadal) replied in haste on the very same day: “What has happened to the author of The Nineteen Letters? Has he turned into Geiger or Holdheim, that he writes to Shadal in the tongue of the North [=Germany], rather than the language of Judah and Jerusalem?”[31]

Hebrew ceased to be the language of Torah in the West, but not in the East. The difference was rooted in the continued sense of Israel as a nation, or lack thereof. One critical issue that was often debated—it is arguably the most important dilemma for Torah life in modern times—was what attitude the Torah demands towards Jews and Jewish movements when they openly rebel against tradition. Must Jews who are loyal to God and the Torah formally disengage from them? Or would that be an attack on the cohesion of Israel as a nation? In Germany, the practical question was whether a religious denomination now called “Orthodox Judaism,” once it received recognition from the government, must formally break off from the general Jewish community. Rabbinic debate on that issue took place in the form of open letters published in 1877 by Rabbi Seligman Baer Bamberger (against separation) and Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (in favor).[32] Those open letters in literary German, on a critical topic with immense halakhic, hashkafic and practical repercussions, are closed books for nearly all Torah scholars today. In the end, Hirsch’s view was later embraced by most of the yeshivah world.

The same issue rose in eastern Europe, but in Hebrew. An editorial entitled “Right and Left” was published in the Hebrew-language newspaper Maḥziqei ha-Dat, which argued that in an age of anti-religious ideologies and rebellion against tradition, the only way for God-fearing Jews to uphold the Torah was to join together as a separate group and keep themselves far from evildoers.[33] But Rabbi Naftali Ẓvi Yehudah Berlin (the “Neẓiv”), head of the Volozhin Yeshivah and a supporter of Ḥovevei Ẓiyyon, responded that such a move would be “as destructive as swords to the body of the nation and its existence.” In the end it would also fail to uphold the Torah, because every real or seeming deviation would provide cause for endless internal warfare. In order for Israel to return to God, it must remain one nation. According to Neẓiv the correct thing to do, as in the past, was to live together with others and cooperate with them while working hard to spread Torah study and observance in every possible way (“On Right and Left” in Responsa Meishiv Davar I:44). His approach influenced not only his student, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook,[34] but has been typical of mainstream religious Zionist leaders for the past century.

The Jewish Hebraists in America have been described as follows: “Immigrants from Eastern Europe, they tended to be heder- and yeshiva-educated Jews who had embraced the achievements of modern Western culture while at the same time preserving an ardent commitment to Jewish tradition, the Hebrew language, and the national renaissance that was based in Zionism.”[35] That description fits Birnbaum like a glove to a hand. It was equally true for Hebraists who remained in Europe, like Rosenstein. Men such as these were quite comfortable among Orthodox rabbis, so long as they were not authoritarian in their attitudes and did not demand extreme rejection of modernity. They were similarly comfortable among secular Zionists, so long as the Jewish tradition and the Hebrew language could be promoted with pride within the Zionist movement. They respected serious Jewish scholarship, regardless of the scholar’s affiliations or his lifestyle.[36] Yet they were deeply opposed to modern Jewish ideologies which rejected the totality of Israel as a nation in time and in space. Such rejectionists included Bundists, radical Yiddishists, assimilationists, Reformists, and many of the Orthodox traditionalists.

Rosenstein expressed attitudes like these in journalistic essays, where he described the traditionalists, Zionists, and Reformists of Minsk in the early 20th century. In an essay entitled “On Those Who Slander the Zionists,”[37] he sarcastically described self-righteous Jews in Minsk who publicly derided all Zionists as violators of the Torah, while others demanded that Zionist rabbis and God-fearing Jews break away from Herzl’s Zionist Organisation. Rosenstein responded that those who selflessly come to the aid of beleaguered Jews in Minsk are invariably the Zionists—but never the traditionalists who berate them—and suggested that the beauty of the Zionist Organization lies precisely in the fact that its rabbis and freethinkers work together for the common good of the nation.[38] In another essay he described an effort to establish a liberal synagogue in Minsk (“like the Temples of the enlightened [Jews] in the Lands of the West”). Rosenstein mocked its builders for their cosmopolitan outlook, crude materialism, and utter lack of regard for the needs of Jews in Minsk who lived in dire poverty. At the very same time he wryly noted that such an effort would never have gotten off the ground if not for the unappealing and chaotic nature of the rest of the synagogues in Minsk.[39]

In 1927 there was an American Jewish Hebraist who found it was still possible to send issues of the Hebrew periodical Hadoar from the USA to the USSR. He mailed them to his brother in Minsk, who in turn shared them with Ḥayyim David Rosenstein. In a written response, Rosenstein expressed not just his gratitude for this kindness but also his admiration for Hebrew culture in America:

I’ll tell you the truth, that to me the young American [Hebrew] authors seem much better than the young authors of Ereẓ Yisra’el. But alas, alas for us, the inhabitants of the Soviet ghetto, who are withering away, wasting away for lack of inspiration or a new Hebrew word. Have mercy, dear man, and grant us at least some passages, to quench our terrible thirst for the word of the Lord. There are no longer any seekers of a teacher of Hebrew among us. The conditions of the place are the cause of this. There is no national content to fill the emptiness of our lives.[40]

Rosenstein’s impression of Hebrew culture in America, which he gleaned from afar in the pages of a journal, was poignant and hopeful at the time. But in the end, Hebrew “national content” was ultimately doomed by the warm embrace of America no less than by the cold fist of Soviet totalitarianism. The only place in today’s world where ‘Am Yisra’el can live its national life in its own language is the State of Israel.

In hindsight, the intense and generally positive struggle for the Hebrew language was a highly worthwhile cause and an enormous success. It would have been impossible to unify the Jews of Ereẓ Yisra’el, before and after 1948, and give them a sense of common nationhood, without the Hebrew language as a shared inheritance and subsequently as their spoken tongue. For Jewish immigration flowed into the country from every part of Europe, every corner of the Arab-Muslim world, and beyond. Each tide of immigration brought its own language, and Israel sounded like a Tower of Babel. The synthesizing factor was Hebrew, and its role in deepening the Jewish national spirit cannot be overestimated.[41]

Rosenstein and Birnbaum supported that struggle, and felt that the siddur had a central part to play in it. Yet it is striking that despite being the editors of prayer books, they both mentioned God infrequently in their writing.[42] Perhaps this reflects a kind of modesty, which made it hard for them to write about the sublime, or from a shared aversion to public displays or declarations of piety. Perhaps their very idea of God was somewhat Maimonidean or impersonal and therefore led to fewer words. But it surely had to do with what they saw as the desperate need of the hour: For Rosenstein and Birnbaum, there was a desperate need to strengthen the Jewish national spirit. They saw the siddur as the most basic expression of that spirit, since it expresses the age-old collective yearnings of Israel as a nation in exile, in its own language. Rosenstein and Birnbaum understood that no Jewish religious denomination—no matter how pious, scholarly, enlightened or virtuous it may be—can ever be called Israel. Nor can any Jewish ethnic flavor be thought of as a partner to the ancient covenant. In the siddur, it is the nation of Israel as a collective whole which stands before God in prayer. Rosenstein and Birnbaum appreciated that in order for there to be prayer to the God of Israel, one must first be able to speak of Israel itself. That is why the siddur was critical to them, as the most basic expression of national feeling in Hebrew.

The national life of Israel today is alive and vibrant. It is rich, resilient and strong even as it continues to face extraordinary threats coupled with immense animosity, like no other nation on earth. In order for the siddur to make sense in this reality, those who use it must turn back to the living, personal God of the Bible and Ḥazal who chose that living nation as His own. Rosenstein and Birnbaum correctly understood that the siddur expresses a common language, land, history and fate—critical elements which define many nations. But it is also much more: Quite unlike the harsh dichotomy between nationality and religion typical of the western world, the covenant between God and Israel lies at the heart of the historic national culture of ‘Am Yisra’el.[43] That covenant binds God no less than it obligates Israel. Now that Israel is a living reality, the prayers in the siddur have the potential to live again too, as they did in premodern times before emancipation. The prayers of a nation in exile can become the prayers of a nation that dwells in its land.[44] In fact, never before has the plain meaning of the entire book of Psalms and the extension of all its varied themes as found in the siddur been as literally true as they have become over the past two years. For the siddur to make literal and powerful sense, all it takes now is for communities of ‘Am Yisra’el to turn to the living God of Israel as the nation of the covenant.

Notes:

[1] I refer to “Religious Zionism” as a worldwide movement for well over a century, not to the current Israeli political party which adopted that title.
[2] The premodern sense of “Israel” as a nation, even in exile, is best understood in contrast to the widespread modern use of “Judaism” to signify a religion in the Christian or Protestant sense. For two excellent studies of the latter concept, and how it shaped Jewish identity and thought in modern times, see Leora Batnitzky, How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton University Press, 2011); Avraham Melamed, Dat: From Law to Religion—A History of a Formative Term (Tel Aviv, Hakibbutz Hameuchad: 2014) [Hebrew]. Also see below, n. 37.
[3] Unless otherwise stated, the biographical, historical and literary information in this section is taken from the posthumous edition of Rosenstein’s writings, along with introductions by family members and friends: Ketavim: Ma’amarim, Reshumot, Divrei Sifrut [=Essays and Memoirs] (Jerusalem: Kiryat Sefer, 1973). I also consulted Shelomoh Even-Shoshan, “Beit Avinu,” Mibifnim 46:4 (1984), pp. 548-553.
[4] Ketavim, p. 14. Haredi opposition to the ḥeder metukan had economic motives as well, because a major form of employment for traditionalists around the turn of the century was as teachers in the chadorim. On this point and on the history of the ḥeder metukan in general, including the information provided here, see Yossi Goldstein, “‘Ha-ḥeder ha-Metukan’ be-Rusya ke-Basis le-Ma‘arekhet ha-Ḥinnukh ha-Ẓiyyonit,” ‘Iyyunim be-Ḥinnukh 45 (1986): 147-157. More information on the ḥeder metukan is available in Hebrew via Yad Vashem. A first-hand description of the project’s initial goals can be found in a letter from Ḥayyim Nahman Bialik to Gershon Stavsky and Yaakov Weinberg in the year 1900, available at Project Ben-Yehuda. Also see M. Ẓ. Frank, “Ha-ḥeder ha-metukan be-Rechytsa,” in He-‘Avar le-Divrei ha-Yehudim veha-Yahadut be-Rusya (volume 16), ed. B. Ẓ. Katz (Tel-Aviv 1969), pp. 85-96.
[5] Ketavim, p. 19.
[6] Unfortunately, during my years at Yeshiva University, I did not know Rav Dovid Lifshitz z”l well, nor did I have any idea why he taught his shi‘urim in Hebrew. This story may shed light on part of the reason.
[7] It is possible that Siddur Rinat Yisra’el itself was partially inspired by Siddur Shirah Ḥadashah in its content (Hebrew commentary and translations) and even in its name (Rinah = Shirah); this suggestion appears in a discussion thread at Forum Otzar HaHochma.
[8] Over the years, sporadic protests against the use of Siddur Shirah Ḥadashah appeared in the ḥaredi press in Israel. A letter to the editor printed in She‘arim 3 (Elul 5735) castigates the siddur for a list  of “‘inaccuracies’ which should really be called misrepresentations” and bemoaned its use in synagogues and yeshivot. A letter to Digleinu (Tishrei 5742) points out that the siddur’s editor was “a certain maskil of the previous generation, and in his preface, which was omitted in the new printing, he boasts that he is one of the founders of the ḥeder metukan (mesukan). His name is Ḥ. D. Rosenstein.” The letter concludes: “This volume, in my humble opinion, is in the category of sifrei minim (heretical works), and it is forbidden to purchase it or bring it into one’s home. And as many good people have failed in this matter, I have felt it my duty to call attention to it.” Here are the texts of these critical letters, via the same thread at Forum Otzar HaHochma (see previous note):

[9] Beit Avinu, pp. 551-552.|
[10] The dates provided here and further biographical information on Birnbaum found below are all based on a well-researched biographical sketch of Birnbaum’s life, including never-before published testimonies to his early life, provided by Yosef Lindell in “Dr. Philip Birnbaum’s Forgotten Ḥumash,” Ḥakirah 35 (Summer 2024), pp. 207-222 (at pp. 208-210). Other biographical facts mentioned below are also based upon Lindell’s fine work. However, despite several excellent essays on Birnbaum which have been published by Lindell and others in recent years, Birnbaum’s Zionism—as a key motivation for his scholarly and popular publications—has been underemphasized or omitted. The description here thus has a different emphasis, but there is nevertheless some unavoidable overlap.
[11] For instance, Siddur ‘Am Yisra’el instructs one to say Morid ha-Tal “during the summer in Ereẓ Yisra’el” (p. 42). Unfortunately, Birnbaum’s adaptation of his original siddur to Minhag Ereẓ Yisra’el was sporadic and incomplete. Apparently, too much text was cut and pasted “as is” from Ha-Siddur ha-Shalem, and wasn’t always changed where it needed to be. Some typical examples: Birnbaum failed to change ve-sabe’enu mi-tuvekha to ve-sabe‘enu mi-tuvah in the ‘Amidah (p. 44). He failed to add Birkat Kohanim, which is said daily in Israel, within the text of the ‘Amidah (e.g. pp. 47-48); instead he added a short note about it at the bottom of the page. He failed to indicate that the final blessing of the ‘Amidah is not changed to ‘oseih ha-shalom during the Ten Days of Repentance in Israel (p. 48). For a complete digital siddur based upon Birnbaum’s original Hebrew version, which fully represents Nosaḥ Ashkenaz in both its traditional and Israeli versions, see Hebrew Wikisource. For a complete list of places in that digital siddur where Birnbaum’s original text has been modified for this purpose, see here.
[12] The introduction is mostly new, not a translation of the English-language introduction to the bilingual Daily Prayer Book. Its first section emphasizes that the fixed community prayers are central to the shared culture of Israel. The second section is a short collection of talmudic maxims on prayer. The third and final section is the longest, a collection of notes by scholars over the generations on the text and procedure of the daily prayers. A number of the items in these three parts are already found in Birnbaum’s original introduction in English, but the Hebrew collection is richer. As for the explanatory notes in Hebrew at the bottom of many pages, they mostly parallel those found in English at the bottom of some of the pages in Birnbaum’s 1949 bilingual Daily Prayer Book, but are not direct translations. In particular, the English-language notes often provide information based on a Hebrew source for which a reference is provided, while in Hebrew that source is cited in its original language. As Yosef Lindell suggested to me in correspondence, Birnbaum may have felt that he could go more in depth with a Hebrew-speaking audience.
[13] In his original bilingual Daily Prayer Book, Birnbaum printed a prayer that was worded specifically for the government of the United States. It asks God to bless “the president and the vice-president and all the officers of this country” (p. 380). But in Siddur ‘Am Yisra’el the Hebrew text was cut down to a simple generic form: “all the officers of this country.” This formulation is artificial, because although it technically fits all countries it actually meets the needs of none. It seems to have been chosen as an easy yet ineffective way to allow the siddur to be used internationally.
[14] I am grateful to Rabbi Gabriel Kretzmer Seed for the color photo of the Siddur ‘Am Yisra’el’s cover. Note that the flash distorts the grey area, which appears more like orange in the photo.
[15] A number of factors may have contributed to the market failure of Siddur ‘Am Yisra’el. It was inappropriate for an Israeli market because it was only printed in Nosaḥ Ashkenaz—the custom of a minority of Ashkenazic synagogues in Israel—and was unsatisfactory in terms of the Israeli version of even that custom (above, n. 11). In addition, the market for a Zionist siddur in Israel had already been captured by Siddur Rinat Yisra’el (Jerusalem, 1970)  which was issued in a more appropriate Ashkenazic version as well as a Sefard version. Then in 1981—just two years after the publication of Siddur ‘Am Yisra’el—Koren publishers issued the first edition of its own siddur, which was also quite popular and more appropriate for use in Israel than Birnbaum’s siddur. Overall, the Hebrew Publishing Company in New York, which marketed all of Birnbaum’s siddurim, never succeeded in penetrating the Israeli market, and was already in its waning years in America when it published Siddur ‘Am Yisra’el in 1979 (see Lindell, pp. 15-16, “The End of the Hebrew Publishing Company”). But the most important factor would seem to be the lack of an audience for a siddur of this type in America: Most American Jewish Zionists who used a traditional siddur preferred a bilingual one.
[16] The Arabic Commentary of Yefet ben ‘Ali the Karaite on the Book of Hosea. Edited from Eight Manuscripts and Provided with Critical Notes and an Introduction by Philip Birnbaum, Ph.D. (Philadelphia: Dropsie College, 1942); doctoral dissertation. He later edited Karaite Studies (New York: Hermon Press, 1971).
[17] Steve Lipman, “Birnbaum version: Bible purged of ‘thees’ and ‘thous’,” The Jewish Week (January 27, 1984), p. 24; cf. Lindell, pp. 5-6.
[18] “Teḥiyyat ha-Lashon ve-Hashpa‘atah” in Peleitat Soferim (Jerusalem, 1971), p. 309 (see the next paragraph regarding this book).
[19] Jewish immigrants to Israel (literally “those who ascend”).
[20] Ibid., pp. 312, 315.
[21]  Ibid., p. 312.
[22] I.e. a former Israeli who has left Israel (literally “gone down”).
[23] Ibid., p. 315.
[24] Ibid., pp. 315-316.
[25] Ibid., pp. 317-320.
[26] On the rededication of Birnbaum’s gravestone, see Ari L. Goldman, “He wrote a beloved prayer book. But his gravestone misspelled his name” (Forward, July 19, 2022); Marla Brown Fogelman, “Bubby and Birnbaum” (Tablet, November 16, 2022). See Yosef Lindell’s blog for links to recordings of and about the rededication ceremony (here). All of these sources describe the new inscription as a reflection of Birnbaum’s great care for language, without mentioning his national feeling. Yet the traditional language which was chosen for the inscription (פיפיות עמו and לשונם) easily conveys that meaning too.
[27] See Cecil Roth, “Was Hebrew Ever a Dead Language?” in his Personalities and Events in Jewish History (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1953), pp. 136-142 (at 136).
[28] The quotation from Roth is found in Jack Fellman, The Revival of a Classical Tongue: Eliezer Ben Yehuda and the Modern Hebrew Language (The Hague: Mouton, 1973), p. 139, but does not appear as cited there in Roth’s “Was Hebrew Ever a Dead Language?” I have not been able to locate its source.
[29] Birnbaum, Peleitat Soferim, p. 306.
[30] Those surviving Jews in modern times who continued to view themselves as ‘Am Yisra’el, managed to preserve just enough national spirit and power to allow for the State of Israel to arise. The Holocaust did not result in the rise of Israel, as is commonly thought today. Rather, Israel was just barely able to rise despite the Holocaust. Watch Yehuda Bauer, “Israel and the Holocaust: Debunking the Myth”.
[31] Birnbaum, Peleitat Soferim, pp. 306-307. This is a play on words, because Hirsh’s Hebrew title for The Nineteen Letters (Altona, 1836) was אגרות צפון.
[32] The open letters are also available via the National Library of Israel (Bamberger to Hirsch and Hirsch to Bamberger).
[33] I have not been able to locate the original editorial. Another version of the newspaper appears here.
[34] A discussion of Rav Kook’s early views on nationhood, universalism, morality and the challenges of modernity may be found in chapters 5-6 of Yehudah Mirsky’s Towards the Mystical Experience of Modernity: The Making of Rav Kook, 1865-1904 (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2019), pp. 233-328.
[35] Michael Weingard, “The Last of the (Hebrew) Mohicans,” Commentary (March 2006), p. 2.
[36] In the “Acknowledgments” at the beginning of his original siddur (1949), Birnbaum thanks a number of scholars who assisted him with his work, beginning with Rabbi Ḥayyim Heller, who is followed by multiple figures associated with non-Orthodox institutions including several from the Jewish Theological Seminary (which was still a highly traditional institution at the time). The “Acknowledgments” page does not appear in the second edition (New York, 1977). On Birnbaum’s opposition to liturgical reform see below, n. 38.
[37] Ketavim, pp. 94-95.
[38] Precisely because Zionism was a national movement, it may be argued that out of all the many competing Jewish ideologies from a century ago, it had the greatest potential for compatibility with the traditional Torah of premodern times, or even to be a fulfillment of that Torah. On a practical level, Zionism in its very nature had room for the entire nation, including those who still strove to be loyal to the ancient covenant. It is therefore not surprising that some of the ḥadarim metukanim eventually joined the Mizrachi movement (founded in 1902).

According to Melamed (Dat, pp. 206-277), modern resistance to the concept of “Judaism” as a religion in the Christian or Protestant sense came simultaneously from the “Orthodox” and “National” (=Zionist) camps. In his analysis, he groups religious Zionists together with the “Orthodox” rather than the “Nationalists,” but the opposite approach might have yielded a richer discussion of Hebrew nationalism and its attitude towards the term dat. He also strives to be balanced in terms of anachronism: “They all criticized the Jews who turned Judaism into a religion for having been influenced by alien elements, while ignoring the fact that their own identification of the Jews as an ummah (nation or volk) in the modern sense of the term, is a product of European nationalism, a clear import from without, no less than the identification of Judaism as a ‘religion’ in the modern sense of the term” (p. 245). This is quite true as a matter of principle, yet not in terms of proportion: It would have been impossible for Melamed to write a volume that describes radical, extraordinary changes throughout history in the sense of Hebrew terms like ‘am or le’om, as he did for the word dat, precisely because even the modern meaning of the former terms has much stronger roots in Israel’s past. In other words, the anachronism is indeed “less” than for the word dat.

That the “Orthodox” and the “nationalists” were both able to reject “Judaism” quite easily as an anachronistic modern concept is best explained by their awareness of the historic term “Israel” in its premodern sense, and of the radical sense of otherness that its use conveyed over the ages. That term, and the ramifications of its use before modernity, are barely considered by Melamed and Batnitzky in their respective books (above, n. 2). In fact, nearly all modern writers routinely translate premodern occurrences of the Hebrew word Yisra’el as “Jew” or “Jews” or “the Jewish People” because modern languages like English typically leave them with no other option. Yet this anachronistic conversion of “Israel” to “Jews” is precisely what obscures the traditional outlook at the roots of both religious and secular Zionism, and even the very choice of “Israel” as the name for the state that rose in 1948.

In Christian Europe before emancipation, Jews and gentiles alike considered the Jews to be a separate nation, a disgraced nation that had been exiled and scattered around the world. Their disagreement was a theological one: Did God hate and reject that nation for its sins (the Christian position), or was that nation still beloved by God as “Israel” despite its failings and contrary to appearances (the Jewish position)? This explains why the term “Israel” was invariably used in Hebrew study, prayer, correspondence and formal writing over the ages: On the one hand, “Jew” was a pejorative term preferred by Christians (it implied betrayal). On the other hand, Jews before modern times made every effort to call themselves “Israel,” the still-proud name of their exiled nation and partner to the divine covenant.
[39] Ketavim, pp. 88-89. The text of Rosenstein’s siddur is entirely traditional, and basically identical to other eastern European siddurim in its day. There is no trace in his writing of a desire for liturgical change in the spirit of the times, just as he avoided modifying the original Hebrew language of other classic texts that he presented in modern Hebrew editions (this is the case for Beit Midrash [Vilna, 1906], Mishnah Berurah [Vilna, 1910] and presumably also for his lost edition of Ein Ya‘akov). In this he provides a contrast to Bialik and Ravnitsky’s Sefer ha-Aggadah (Odessa, 1912). He seems to have viewed the siddur as a national cultural treasure that one must learn to appreciate in its classic formulation. Thus, Reuven Gafni’s conjecture that the fully traditional nature of Rosenstein’s siddur may have been by dint of necessity does not seem correct (“Educational Prayer Books and Synagogues in the Land of Israel During the Mandate,” Dor le-Dor 26 [2013], pp. 433-465 [at p. 436]). Similarly, Birnbaum wrote: “The Siddur should never become a source of contention among any segment of our people. One must not fail to realize that the Siddur is a classic similar to the Bible and the Talmud, to which the terms orthodox, conservative or reform do not apply. Editors of the Siddur should not take liberties with the original, eliminating a phrase here and adding one there, each according to his own beliefs. Such a procedure is liable to breed as many different kinds of public worship as there are synagogues and temples. The danger of rising sects is obvious, sects that are likely to weaken still more our harassed people. The ever-increasing modifications in the text of the Siddur are apt to destroy this unique source book of Judaism, designed for old and young, scholars and laymen” (p. XIII; cf. Lindell, p. 14). In short, the root of this reticence for both of them alike seems to be a concern for national unity combined with a deep respect for national culture, which to their mind included the traditional siddur.
[40] Ketavim, p. 17.
[41] This paragraph is a restatement of Abram Leon Sachar, A History of the Jews (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), p. 410.
[42] In terms of Birnbaum, Yosef Lindell noticed this about his introduction to the Daily Prayer Book: “Birnbaum waxes poetic about the Siddur’s educational function, but entirely neglects to discuss how prayer facilitates communication with God. He only adds such a discussion in the second edition. One gets the impression that for Birnbaum, prayer was almost the siddur’s secondary function. Cultivating Jewish knowledge was more important” (ibid., p. 6). Not only is this observation quite true, but even in the discussion added to the second edition—which stresses the public aspect of prayer, its deeper meaning, the need for kavvanah, the importance of custom and the history of the siddur—communication with God is hardly central. The same is true of Birnbaum’s Hebrew introduction to Siddur ‘Am Yisra’el, of his essay Ha-Siddur ve-Lashon ha-Tefillot (Peleitat Soferim, pp. 77-106), and it is typical of the rest of his writing.
[43] That the Torah is the center of Israel’s national culture, which makes any distinction between religion and culture artificial at best, is typical in the outlook of early religious Zionists and of their pedagogical approaches. A bold statement to this effect may be found in Rabbi Chaim Hirschensohn’s introduction to his pedagogical manual for teachers of Talmud, Mosedot Torah shebe-‘Al Peh (Jerusalem, 1889). This approach further means that the written and oral Torah form the core of all Hebrew literature, including modern secular literature. On Hirschensohn see Melamed, Dat, pp. 235-238. A similar sentiment seems to have motivated Rosenstein, who in the year 1900 expressed his desire “to revive our language and return it to the days of its youth, when it was a language of qodesh and ḥol at once” (“Litḥiyyat ha-Safah” in Ketavim, pp. 20-22 [at p. 20]).
[44] The traditional view is that fixed public prayer took place throughout the Second Temple Era. Its content consisted of the same themes as in exilic times, but its wording reflected a pre-exilic reality. As Rabbi Shim‘on ben Ẓemaḥ Duran expressed it, “Our wording of prayer today is clearly not the same as how they prayed when the Temple stood. For we pray that that Kingdom of David be restored, that the Temple be rebuilt soon in our days, and that our scattered people be gathered together. But they would pray for the Kingdom of David to continue, for the Temple not to be destroyed, and for Israel not to be exiled from its land. Similarly, when the High Priest prayed the blessing reẓeh on the Day of Atonement, he did not pray using our words…” (Responsa II:161; cf. Ramban on Berakhot 49a). On the views of Duran and others as to whether rabbinic prayer is meant to be a fixed text or more of a general structure, see my Kavvana: Directing the Heart in Jewish Prayer (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1997), pp. 257-357; “Each River and its Channel: Halakhic Attitudes Toward Liturgy” (Torah Musings, October 30, 2011).