A Young Man Holding a Torah Scroll and a Young Woman Holding a Book:
The Life and Afterlife of Two Illustrations

By Rachel Manekin

Rachel Manekin is Professor Emerita of Jewish Studies at the University of Maryland. Her area of specialization is the social, political, and cultural history of Galician Jewry. She is the author of The Jews of Galicia and the Austrian Constitution: The Beginning of Modern Jewish Politics (Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 2015, Hebrew), and most recently, The Rebellion of the Daughters: Jewish Women Runaways in Habsburg Galicia (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2024; Hebrew). Her previous essay at The Seforim Blog was in Rachel Manekin and Charles (Bezalel) Manekin, “The Ḥafetz Ḥayyim’s Statement on Teaching Torah to Girls in Likutei Halakhot: Literary and Historical Context,” The Seforim Blog (27 May 2020), available here.

The 1922 illustration below of a young man holding a Torah scroll has gained a new life within the context of recent Bais Yaakov scholarship and a partial image of it appears on the main page of the Bais Yaakov Project website.[1]

This article calls into question this use of the illustration and shows that it has no connection to the Bais Yaakov movement, or Orthodox women, at least in interwar Poland. The article first traces the origin of the illustration and the context in which it was used after its first publication, and then examines the campaign proposed in 1933 to mobilize Bais Yaakov students in Poland to support financially the writing of a Torah scroll. Finally, the article presents an interwar illustration of a young woman holding a book with a tall Hanukkah menorah in the background. The latter was used as a symbol of Bais Yaakov in Viennese publications in the German language, but never appeared in Polish Yiddish publications of the Bais Yaakov movement. The article suggests a possible reason for that.

The illustration of the young man holding the Torah scroll appeared first on a postcard, one in a set of ten “art postcards” drawn by Uriel Birnbaum, the son of the general secretary of Agudath Yisrael, Nathan Birnbaum. The postcards were produced by the Viennese Tseirei Agudath Yisrael organization (Agudas Jisroel Jugendgruppe) and sold for fundraising purposes. The price of each set was 500 krone. Indeed, in May 1922 the Austrian Orthodox weekly Jüdische Presse published advertisements for this set.[2]

In 1924 the Viennese Menorah Journal published two of the postcards in a long article dedicated to Uriel Birnbaum.[3]

Each postcard had a black and white illustration of a Biblical theme with a Biblical verse under it. One can see the original envelope and some of the postcards (including the youth with the Torah scroll) in an advertisement published on February 28, 2023, on the website of Kedem Auction House:[4]

The postcard with the illustration of the youth holding a Torah scroll as if rescuing it from the whirlwind in the background (perhaps symbolizing the First World War) appears with the verse from Jeremiah 1:7, “Do not say I am a youth, for to whomsoever I shall send thee thou shalt go and whatsoever I shall command you thee thou shalt speak” (אַל תֹּאמַר נַעַר אָנֹכִי כִּי עַל כָּל אֲשֶׁר אֶשְׁלָחֲךָ תֵּלֵךְ וְאֵת כָּל אֲשֶׁר אֲצַוְּךָ תְּדַבֵּר). The import in this context is that one should not excuse himself from obeying God’s commandment, interpreted here as spreading Torah study, by claiming to be a youth.

The youth is wearing a long kapota reaching his feet, as did many at the time, and his head, especially the back of it, is all colored in black and so one cannot see the skullcap. Still, it is obvious that this is a young male, not only because of the Biblical verse under it, but also because it is absolutely inconceivable that a female carrying a Torah scroll would appear in an Agudath Yisrael sponsored postcard in the 1920s (or, for that matter, today).

After its original publication as a postcard, the illustration was used always in the context of male Torah study. To the best of my knowledge, it first was featured in the 1925 booklet of Keren ha-Torah (חוברת של קרן התורה) which included several other of Uriel Birnbaum’s postcard illustrations.[5] The illustration appears at the top of a rabbinical appeal (קול קורא) that was published in the wake of the First Assembly of Agudath Yisrael (1923) to support Keren ha-Torah. It stretches over several pages and is signed by major Agudah rabbinical figures of the time, with the Ḥafetz Ḥayim and the leaders of the Czortków and Ger Hasidic dynasties appearing first. The illustration was edited to include only the image and not the Biblical verse. Keren ha-Torah was established during the First Assembly in the purpose of supporting yeshivas, many of which collapsed during the First World War.

It should be noted that contrary to claims in recent scholarship on Bais Yaakov, there is no evidence that the First Assembly of Agudath Yisrael in 1923 mentioned the Bais Yaakov schools, and the published reports of the assembly included nothing about the support of religious education for girls.[6] During the 1924 meeting of the Central Council of Agudath Yisrael in Kraków, several delegates called for actual steps to be taken by Keren ha-Torah to support Bais Yaakov schools. Indeed, after major rabbinical figures supported this idea, the participants at a special meeting in the winter of 1925 drew up a plan to financially support the establishment of a teachers’ seminary and improve professionally the Bais Yaakov school system, all under the leadership of R. Dr. Shmuel Leo Deutschländer, the director of Keren ha-Torah. It was only during the Second Assembly of Agudath Yisrael (1929) that Bais Yaakov was mentioned.[7]

Birnbaum’s illustration of the youth with a Torah scroll later appeared in Luach Blätter der Agudas-Jisroel Jugendgruppe-Wien, the periodical of the Viennese Tseirei Agudath Yisrael, for the year 1931, this time with the Biblical verse.

A 1937 publication of Keren ha-Torah also included this illustration, albeit without the Biblical verse. It appeared on the title page of the first chapter which was dedicated to the discussions on male Torah education in the Second Assembly of Agudath Yisrael (1929).[8]

The same 1937 publication included a chapter with supplements the largest of which discussed in detail the Bais Yaakov schools. The heading of this chapter had an illustration of a young woman holding a book to which we will return below.

First, however, I wish to discuss the aforementioned campaign for writing a Torah scroll which was introduced in a Bais Yaakov Journal article in the Hebrew month of Iyar, 1933, titled: “The ‘Yehudis’ Camp’s Own Torah Scroll Will Be Written Through the Students of the Bais Yaakov Schools in Poland.”[9]

The article describes the plan for purchasing letters by Bais Yaakov students for a Torah scroll to be written for the Yehudis summer camp.[10] Camp Yehudis, according to articles published in the 1933 journal, was the first permanent summer camp built for Orthodox children, boys and girls. The journal includes two photographs of children in the camp, one of boys and another of girls.

Clearly, this summer camp was not intended exclusively for Bais Yaakov girls as can be seen also in a photograph kept in the YIVO archives of boys in the camp playing chess.[11]

The plan to have Bais Yaakov students raise money for writing a Torah scroll was proposed by Yoel Unger, a Warsaw Agudah activist and the director of one of the Bais Yaakov schools in the city. Unger was in charge of the Yehudis association,[12] and it was he who came up with the initiative to build a summer camp. Indeed, the camp was built in 1931 in the village of Długosiodło, 73 km north-east of Warsaw.[13] In the years prior to that, the Yehudis association rented camp facilities for the summer, first in 1929 in Marązy and then in 1930 in Otwock. The aim of the summer camp was to provide children, many of whom came from impoverished families, with an opportunity to enjoy fresh air and water as well as physical exercises in a country setting. In doing that, it followed what was already a norm for non-Orthodox Jewish organizations in interwar Poland. In later years the summer camp added a sanatorium for children who were at risk of tuberculosis.[14]

The number of girls in the new camp exceeded the number of boys,[15] perhaps because boys went to cheder also in the summer months.

Why was obtaining a Torah scroll necessary for a summer camp for children that apparently did not even have its own synagogue?[16] The girl campers, according to Esther Goldshtof, prayed on Friday night and on Sabbath morning in the forest surrounding the camp while sitting on benches.[17] It is not clear from the articles in the Bais Yaakov Journal whether the boys – all younger than 13 – did the same or whether they prayed in the town’s synagogue. Of course, one could place a Torah scroll in one of the rooms and have the boys pray and hear the Torah reading there. But it is more likely that Unger intended to use the money raised also for the camp itself, which struggled with a deficit because of the high expenses of running it.[18] Only a small number of children paid the full tuition, while the rest received a discount or went there for free.[19] The camp did receive financial support from the Viennese Keren ha-Torah, the Warsaw Jewish community, German Jewish organizations, the American Joint, as well as some large donations from rich Jews. Small donations from individuals also helped as those apparently accumulated to large sums.[20] In addition, Bais Yaakov raised money from their students to support the camp, mostly with the help of teachers in the three Bais Yaakov schools in Warsaw and some from Bais Yaakov schools in Rzeszów, Sosnowiec, Częstochowa, Wolbrom, Szydłowiec, Bychawa, Płock, Bełchatów, and Pińczów. Those were small sums amounting to 10-60 zlotys.[21]

This was the context of Unger’s somewhat ambitious plan to recruit Bais Yaakov teachers to raise money for writing a Torah scroll, as explained in the 1933 Bais Yaakov Journal article.

Reaching Bais Yaakov teachers would be relatively easy since one could use advertisements in the Bais Yaakov journal to which all teachers were required to subscribe, or contact Bais Yaakov schools directly, the addresses of which were kept in the central Bais Yaakov office in Kraków. There was no parallel journal or a central office with the addresses of all cheders and Talmud Torahs. The 1933 Bais Yaakov Journal article explained that “the mitzvah of writing a Torah scroll, which only individuals are able to fulfill, will be done now through the Bais Yaakov students with their own efforts.” Unger refers here to the positive commandment obligating every individual Jew to write a Torah scroll for himself or hire a scribe to do it for him. Since this is an expensive endeavor, it is allowed to pay for it in partnership with others.[22] At the same time, the article added, the money collected would also support Bais Yaakov students who cannot afford the camp tuition. Clearly, Unger himself explained that the money raised was meant not only for writing the Torah scroll.

Unger proposed that the Yehudis association would send to all Bais Yaakov schools signature forms with a picture of a Torah scroll. The price of purchasing a letter to be written in the scroll would be 25 groshen (pennies), and the names of all those who purchased a letter would be inscribed in a special book. However, each Bais Yaakov student would need to purchase a letter and sell at least one additional letter. A student who sold at least ten letters would receive gratis an additional letter in her name. The teachers responsible for selling 200 letters would have their names etched forever on a special board, and in addition they would be able to have a whole word in the Torah scroll on their name with a great discount.

But Unger proposed even more than this. The day that the writing would commence would be declared a holiday (יום טוב) in all Bais Yaakov schools. On this day the teachers would deliver lectures about the mitzvah of writing a Torah scroll,[23] and organize celebrations and special programs. When the writing of the Torah scroll would be completed – scheduled for 15^th of the Hebrew month of Av – a three-day Siyum celebration would take place in Długosiodło with the participation of all Bais Yaakov teachers, students’ delegations, the central administrations of Yehudis and the Bais Yaakov schools in Warsaw, Kraków, and Łódź. Unger also proposed that at the time of the Siyum celebration a special conference for Bais Yaakov teachers and operatives (‘askanim) would take place in Długosiodło to discuss all the problems of the movement. It is to be expected, he wrote, that the Bais Yaakov teachers would understand the important significance of this campaign, which would for sure be a wellspring of joy and enthusiasm for Bais Yaakov children and would unite them into one family that owned its own Torah scroll. It would also help the camp financially and enable it to develop so it could accept more children in need. “That is why our teachers,” Unger envisioned, “will work for the campaign with energy and dedication.” Unger added that in the following days the Yehudis association would send out the first circular with instructions regarding this important campaign.

But this ambitious and elaborate plan never came to pass, as is clear from two articles published in the Agudah newspaper, Dos Yudishe Togblat, a month after the death of Sarah Schenirer, which provided an opportunity to relaunch the project.[24] The first article, written by Abraham Mordechai Rogovy, who was involved in many aspects of Bais Yaakov, reports that the Education Center (מרכז החינוך) of Agudath Yisrael has now proclaimed for Benos and Bais Yaakov girls a campaign of writing a Torah scroll for the summer camp to memorialize Sarah Schenirer. The initiator was Yoel Unger, who had already made a name for himself as an expert fundraiser. Rogovy does not mention purchasing letters or fulfilling the mitzvah of writing a Torah scroll (the word “mitzvah” does not appear at all), but rather that there is not a more beautiful monument for Schenirer “than a Torah scroll written in partnership (בשותפות) with tens of thousands of Jewish religious girls.” The life-ideal of Schenirer, he continues, was always to connect Jewish girls to the Torah, so that their entire being and every thread of their gentle souls would feel the connection of Israel and the Torah (ישראל ואורייתא). He also writes that “there is no better manifestation of the wish to remain loyal to the teachings of Sarah Schenirer a”h than to join a common Torah campaign that should include all the Benos and the Bais Yaakov students,” or that the “Torah campaign will be transformed into a great manifestation of the Benos and Bais Yaakov idea.” Interestingly, there is no mention of the role of Bais Yaakov teachers; rather Rogovy calls on the (male) ‘askanim of Bais Yaakov and the (female) activists of Benos “to throw themselves with energy in the collection.” According to Rogovy, the writing of the Torah scroll is expected to start on 33 of the ‘Omer )May 21) and be completed on the 15^th of Av (August 14). Like Unger’s original plan, Rogovy also talks about a “grandiose” Siyum celebration after which everyone will travel to Schenirer’s tombstone in Kraków, where they will announce that a Torah scroll in her memory was completed.

The second article presents an undated letter that Schenirer wrote to Bais Yaakov girls, presumably following Unger’s 1933 article in the Bais Yaakov Journal, encouraging them to buy letters for the Torah scroll. The article explains that although the project was not carried out then “for various reasons” it has now been renewed by the initiators. “‘Keren ha-Torah’ with Agudath Yisrael are about to write a Torah scroll named after Sarah Schenirer, may she rest in peace.”

Schenirer’s letter, which has hitherto been unnoticed, reveals an important point not indicated in any of the articles cited above, namely, the audience for the Torah scroll. Ascribing to the Warsaw ‘askanim the establishment of the Yehudis summer camp, Schenirer explains that they thought that the boys who benefit from the camp should have a Torah scroll of their own so they would not have to use a Torah scroll that was already donated to some “bais midrash” [in the area]. By buying letters, Schenirer writes, the girls would not only be “fulfilling the mitzvah of writing a Torah scroll,” but also be participating in writing a Torah in which it is written עֵץ חַיִּים הִיא לַמַּחֲזִיקִים בָּהּ וְתֹמְכֶיהָ מְאֻשָּׁר. In short, Schenirer saw the goal of the project to provide a sefer Torah for the boys in the camp, and to involve girls in the mitzvah of its production by buying letters.

While the article does not explain why the first campaign never got off the ground, one may speculate that the sum collected just was not enough for the project. (Schenirer writes in the beginning of her letter that she knows that more than one will complain about being asked again for money, especially at such difficult time.) Perhaps the initial project was frowned upon by some parents or rabbis. After all, the idea that Bais Yaakov girls would be fulfilling the mitzvah of writing a Torah scroll made little sense since according to most religious legal opinions, women are exempt from this mitzvah, not to mention that most girls were minors.[25] Indeed, Unger’s 1933 article does not mention rabbinical support for his proposal. The second initiative avoided, as we have seen, mentioning buying letters or referring to it as the mitzvah of writing a Torah scroll, and instead talked simply about a “collection.”

Apparently, the second initiative did not materialize either; had a Torah scroll in memory of Schenirer been written, it would have surely been reported in the Bais Yaakov journal or in Dos Yudishe Togblat.

We now come to the illustration mentioned above of the young woman holding a large book with a tall Hanukkah menorah in the background that is found in the 1937 Keren ha-Torah publication.[26]

In fact, this illustration had appeared already in 1935 on the title page of a Keren ha-Torah booklet containing a report written by Deutschländer on the activities of the central office of the Bais Yaakov schools.[27]

Although the publications where this illustration appeared do not have the name of the artist, the style of the illustration suggests that it might also have been Uriel Birnbaum.

The unusually large book that the young woman is holding and the tall menorah in the background are not explained. We may speculate that the young woman in the illustration portrays a Bais Yaakov teacher as a modern “Judith”, a heroine who saves the Jewish people. Whereas the classical Judith held in her arms the head of the decapitated enemy general, Holofernes, this Judith holds a book (ספר, בית ספר). European artists have painted the scene of Judith carrying the head of Holophernes for centuries.

Connecting the illustration to Judith would explain the Hanukkah menorah in the background, for in the Jewish medieval tradition, Judith was associated with Hanukkah.[28] Moreover, Sarah Schenirer, who established the first Bais Yaakov school, records in her 1933 published memoir that she was inspired by the sermon delivered by R. Moshe David Flesch in Vienna on the Sabbath of Hanukkah which described the greatness of Judith and called contemporary Jewish women to take as an example the historical Jewish women heroines.[29] Schenirer subsequently wrote a dramatization of the story of Judith for girls.[30]

Starting on December 13, 1920, after Schenirer and her students staged the play in the Orthodox Warsaw Ḥavazelet high school during a visit there, the published version was advertised on the front page of the Warsaw daily newspaper of Agudath Yisrael, Der Yud, for several weeks (first as the most beautiful present for “children” and later as a present for “girls”).

However, the above illustration of the young woman did not appear in the Bais Yaakov Journal or in any other Polish Agudath Yisrael publication. The illustrator for the Viennese publication was apparently unaware of the modesty requirements in the Polish Bais Yaakov movement, especially the style of the dress and the length of the sleeves. In illustrations of women and girls appearing in textbooks for school age Bais Yaakov students, the women were portrayed with long sleeves reaching the wrist.[31]

* * *

To sum up: we began by mentioning that Birnbaum’s illustration of the young man holding the Torah scroll appears prominently in recent academic forums where Bais Yaakov is discussed.[32] We have claimed that this illustration was neither appropriated nor used by the Bais Yaakov movement in any of its publications. In fact, it is inconceivable that it would do so. But it is understandable why some today would like the illustration to have been of a woman, or at least be relevant to women. Such an interpretation accords nicely with the narrative in recent scholarship that Bais Yaakov provided Orthodox women in Poland, for the first time, the opportunity to have a strong connection with Torah study. The same is true of the aforementioned proposed campaign to write the Torah scroll. That interpretation bolsters the contemporary reading of the Bais Yaakov movement in interwar Poland as a movement that brought Torah to women by involving them in the mitzvah of writing a Torah scroll and by teaching them classical texts and commentaries (albeit not of the Talmud) in the Kraków seminary. In various writings I have shown this reading to be mistaken.[33]

In fact, the Bais Yaakov movement was from its inception a deeply conservative movement of religious revival aimed at Polish Orthodox girls and young women, in an age when various ideologies (Zionism, Socialism, Bund, etc.) competed for their attention. Through mostly supplementary education and youth activities, the movement promoted a model of a Jewish woman that emphasized piety and modesty in dress, and that educated girls to accept with pride and joy their traditional roles as Orthodox women. This is why it enjoyed and benefited from broad rabbinic support from the outset.[34] The small number of zealous Hasidic leaders who opposed the Bais Yaakov schools did so only after Agudath Yisrael, their ideological foe, took it under its auspices. It also explains why of all the Polish and Lithuanian innovations in Orthodox Jewish female education during and after the First World War (e.g., the Warsaw Ḥavazelet high school or the girls’ Yavneh high school in Telz), Sarah Schenirer’s afternoon school in Kraków, which taught young girls prayer, strict Orthodox observance, and Biblical stories, was adopted by the Polish Agudath Yisrael as the model for the development of the Bais Yaakov school network. The Bais Yaakov teachers’ seminary provided the teachers for these schools. Schenirer, a pious woman with a burning zeal for bringing Jewish women back to Orthodoxy, played a major role as the public face of the movement, primarily as its chief promoter in the towns and Polish countryside, and as the “spiritual mother” of the movement.[35] But the portrait of her as instituting women Torah study for its own sake, or of encouraging life-long study of Torah, a portrait that accords with modern progressive sensibilities, does not stand up to sober historical inquiry.[36]

Notes

[1] The illustration appears as a frontispiece of a chapter in Naomi Seidman, Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement: A Revolution in the Name of Tradition (Liverpool: Littman Library, 2019), 226.
[2] Jüdische Presse, May 12, 113; Jüdische Presse, May 19, 120.
[3] Menorah: jüdisches Familienblatt für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Literatur, May 1924, 17. See also Der Israelit: Ein Centralorgan für das orthodoxe Judentum, October 6, 1930, 22.
[4] See the auction site here.
[5] Shabtai Scheinfeld (ed.), Ḥoveret shel Keren Ha- Torah, Vienna 1925, 24. For a digitized copy see https://hebrewbooks.org/43310.
[6] For a detailed discussion on this issue see Rachel Manekin, “Torah Education for Girls in the Interwar Bais Yaakov School System: A Re-Examination,” Zion, vol. 88, no. 2 (2023): 219-262, esp. 238-244, 238n71 (Hebrew). In 1929 Leo Deutschländer recounted that “just a few months” after the First Assembly, Keren ha-Torah took up its task “according to five main directions,” the fifth of which was to establish and expand the Bais Yaakov organization of schools for girls. If that is the case, then the decision of Keren Ha-Torah to support the Bais Yaakov schools was taken at its first founding meeting on December 25, 2023. But no practical steps were taken until the September 1924 meeting of the Central Council of Agudath Yisrael in Kraków.
[7] Der Israelit: Ein Centralorgan für das orthodoxe Judentum, Blätter, September 19, 1929, 2, §2c.
[8] Programm und Leistung: Keren Hathorah und Beth Jakob 1929-1937: Bericht an die dritte Kenessio Gedaulo, London/Vienna 1937, 5.
[9] See Naomi Seidman’s blog post, “When Bais Yaakov Girls Commissioned a Sefer Torah,” available here. The illustration of the youth with the sefer Torah (including the Biblical verse) accompanies the blog post giving the impression that it is part of the original 1933 article on the campaign. The following corrects inaccuracies in the blog post and adds details concerning the proposed campaign that did not come to fruition. Cf. Seidman, Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement, 166.
[10] “An-eigene sefer-torah far der kolonye ‘yehudis’ vert gishribn durch di shilerins fun di beis yakov shuln in Poyln” (The ‘Yehudis’ camp’s own sefer Torah will be written through the students of the Bais Yaakov schools in Poland), Bais Yaakov 104 (1933), 15-16.

[11] YIVO Archives, ID: RG 120 / yarg120po705.01, “Description: Dlugosiodlo, 1920s-1930s. Boys playing chess at the Yehudia summer camp for religious children. Photographed by Leo Forbert.” The description erroneously calls the camp “Yehudia”.
[12] The Yehudis association was founded in 1928 for the purpose of religious education of girls. Among its aims it listed also the establishment of summer camps for girls from religious schools and ensuring that poor children attend school. Its organizing committee included Alexander Zusha Friedman, Yoel Unger, Yehudah Leib Orlean, and others. See “Oyfruf funem ferband far relig. yudishe techter ertsihung in varsha ‘yehudis’” (call of the association for a religious education for girls in Warsaw “Yehudis”), Der Yud, April 2, 1928, 4.
[13] “Gilaygt a yesod… fun der gruntshtayn chagigah in dlugashadle” (placing a foundation… about the cornerstone celebration in Długosiodło), Bais Yaakov 69 (1931), 2-3. Gershon Eliezer Friedenson, who wrote the article, says that when he visited the socialist Medem sanatorium five years earlier he was ashamed and jealous for not having a truly-Jewish similar institution. See also “Fayerleche grunt-shtayn leygn fun der ershter ortodoksisher zumer-kolonye ‘yehudis’ in dlugat-shadle” (the festive cornerstone placing of the first orthodox summer camp ‘Yehudis’ in Długosiodło), ibid., 14; “Der fayerliche chanukat-habayis fun der ershter ortodoksisher zumer-kolonye ‘Yehudis’” (The festive opening celebration of the first Orthodox summer-camp ‘Yehudis’), Dos Vort, June 26, 1931, 4.
[14] See the article in a Yiddish newspaper on a visit of journalists organized by the camp, “A bezuch in der chasidisher… ‘medem-sanatarye’ in dlugashadle” (A visit in the chasidic ‘Medem-sanatorium’ in Długosiodło), Unzer Białystoker Expres, January 13, 1939, 14. ‘Medem’ was the famous Tsysho sanatorium for children named after the Bundist leader Vladimir Medem. The article, which praises the camp and includes two photographs, also mentions the physical exercises as well as the play and the songs performed by the girls for the journalists. See also the photographs published in the art section supplement, Forverts, March 26, 1939.

[15] A[lexander] Z[usha] Friedman, “Di arbit far der zumer kolonye ‘Yehudis” in licht fun tsifern” (the work for the summer camp ‘Yehudis’ in light of numbers), Bais Yaakov 104 (1933), 9-11.
[16] An article by Unger written after the camp was built lists the rooms in the building in the following manner: six rooms for sleeping, a dining hall, an office, a lounge for the [female] teachers, an isolation room [for the sick], two washrooms, pantry, kitchen with separate facilities for milk and meat dishes, wardrobe room, porches, “etc.” Had there been a synagogue in the building it would have certainly been listed. see Yoel Unger, “Fir yohr ‘yehudis’ arbit” (four years of the ‘Yehudis” work), Bais Yaakov 104 (1933), 5-6, especially 6.
[17] Esther Goldshtof, “Dos leben oyf unzere kolonye” (the life in our camp), Bais Yaakov 104 (1933), 8.
[18] The deficit in the summer of 1933 amounted to 8,000 zloty, and in addition the camp needed to complete things like running water and electricity, see A[lexander] Z[usha] Friedman, “Di arbit far der zumer kolonye ‘yehudis” in licht fun tsifern” (the work for the summer camp ‘Yehudis’ in light of numbers), Bais Yaakov 104 (1933), 11.
[19] Twenty-five children paid full tuition in 1931 and 100 in 1932. 310 children received a discount in 1931 and 180 in 1932 while 55 children went for free in 1931 and 75 in 1932, ibid., 9-10.
[20] “Der fayerlicher chanukat-habayit fun der ershter ortodoksisher zumer-kolonye ‘yehudis’” (the festive dedication celebration of the first Orthodox summer camp ‘Yehudis’), Dos Yudishe Togblat, June 22, 1931, 5.
[21] “Reshimeh fun menadvim letovas der ‘yehudis’ kolonye in dlugashadle”, (a list of contributors for the benefit of ‘Yehudis’ camp in Długosiodło), Bais Yaakov 104 (1933), 15-16.
[22] For the mitzvah obligating individuals to write a sefer Torah and the question whether it applies also to women see the article by R. Eliezer Melamed, available here; and the sources presented by Barry Gelman, here.
[23] This mitzvah is not about the laws of the Torah scribe or about the mechanisms of inscribing a Torah, but rather about the mitzvah that applies to each individual Jew.
[24] A[braham] M[ordechai] Rogovy, “Di heyntige hatcholah (tsu di shloyshim fun froy scheniere a”h) (Todays beginning: at the shloshim of Mrs. Schenirer, may she rest in peace), Dos Yudishe Togblat 169, April 2, 1935, 3; “A brief fun Sarah Schenirer a”h tsu di Bais Yaakov kinder vegen koyfn otiyos in der sefer-Torah far der ‘yehudis’ kolonye (A letter from Sarah Schenirer, may she rest in peace, to the Bais Yaakov children regarding buying letters in the Torah scroll for the Yehudis camp), Ibid., 6. The issue number is different on every page, but the correct date and issue number is as written on the front page.
[25] According to the “Sha’agat Aryeh” there is no reason to exempt women, see Aryeh Leib Gintsburg, Sha’agat Aryeh, 69-70 (https://hebrewbooks.org/14616), but his is a minority opinion.
[26] Programm und Leistung: Keren Hathorah und Beth Jakob 1929-1937: Bericht an die dritte Kenessio Gedaulo, London/Vienna 1937, 295.
[27] L[eo] Deutschländer, Tätigkeitsbericht der Beth Jacob Zentrale, Vienna 1935.
[28] On Judith, see Kevin R. Brine at al. (eds.) The Sword of Judith: Judith Studies across the Disciplines, open access, 2010, especially chapter 2, “The Jewish Textual Traditions” by Deborah Levin Gera.
[29] Sarah Schenirer, Gezamelte Shriftn, New York 1955, 9. This is the American edition (with some corrections to the original Polish 1933 edition) available online, see https://hebrewbooks.org/41613.
[30] The image below comes from the Moreshet auction house, which can be accessed here.
[31] See Eliezer Gershon Friedenson at al., Yiddish loshn: ilustrirte alef-bais un layen-buch far ershtn shul-yor, Lodz 1933.
[32] Cf. the website of the 2023 international conference on Bais Yaakov held at the University of Toronto, available here. The illustration also adorns the cover of the conference program, available here.
[33] See, for example, Manekin, “Torah Education for Girls.”
[34] The claim that Bais Yaakov was “controversial among the Orthodox at the outset,” and that Schenirer herself aroused orthodox opposition initially, is made among others by Seidman, Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement, 5; its basis is the author’s interpretation of a story circulating in Bais Yaakov when she was a student there: “When she [Schenirer] would walk around the towns of Poland in her efforts to found Bais Yaakov schools, Jewish boys would throw stones at her. She would bend down, pick up the stones, and say to her assailants, ‘From these stones will I build my school.’”

According to Seidman’s interpretation of the story, Schenirer “was seen by some in the Orthodox community as a dangerous innovator, and had thus faced opposition (stones), which she turned into support (schools).” Seidman cites for this E. G. Friedenson’s 1936 children’s anthology about Schenirer, Di mamis tsavoah: Zaml-buch far kinder un yugnt (The Mother’s Last Will: An Anthology for Children and Youth), 35-36. However, the story in Friedenson, which appears in the chapter on “Stories and Bon Mots” (mayselach un gute verter) and not in the chapter on “Life and Deeds,” differs significantly: “Mrs. Schenirer once visited a shtetl accompanied by its teacher. At that time, the idea of Bais Yaakov was not yet well known and fully developed as today, and its leaders and teachers were mocked at. When Sarah Schenirer had arrived in the city, a few young rascals (לאבוזיס; the Yiddish term comes from the Polish łobuz, ‘rogue’. See also Alexander Harkavy’s Yiddish dictionary for לאבוסעס) threw stones into [the classroom] (איר ארײַנגיווארפן) and one stone hit the teacher who, because of this, felt upset. We will have not just one stone – Schenirer said with a smile – they will throw stones and we will build with the stones our Bais Yaakov.” For a Hebrew translation see Em be-Yisrael, vol. 2, Yechezkel Rotenberg (ed.), Bnei Berak 1960, 41-42.

The story, apparently the first time to appear in print, and which may or may not have any basis in fact, refers to one incident in which ignorant rascals threw stones into somewhere, presumably, the school, and struck a teacher – providing Schenirer in the story with an occasion for a bon mot. Decades later, the story appears to have morphed into a tale of “violent opponents” throwing stones at Sarah Schenirer herself. See Chava Weinberg Pincus, “An American in Cracow,” in Daughters of Destiny: Women who Revolutionized Jewish Life and Torah Education, compiled by Devora Rubin, Brooklyn 1988, 189-208, esp. 200: “It was her courage and idealism that made her pick up the rocks thrown at her by violent opponents to Bais Yaakov. Rocks in hand, she would turn to her talmidos saying, ‘We will take these rocks and turn them into bricks with which we will build Bais Yaakow’.” See Shoshanah Bechhofer, “Identity and Educational Mission of Bais Yaakov Schools: The Structuration of an Organizational Field as the Unfolding of Discursive Logics,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Northwestern University, 2005, 121-122.

Clearly, לאבוזיס are not simply “Jewish boys,” nor can they represent Orthodox opposition to Schenirer as a “dangerous innovator,” since such opposition to her did not exist, even among the zealots who opposed Bais Yaakov as an Agudah project.
[35] Schenirer’s travel to towns throughout Poland was aimed to convince local Agudah ‘askanim to spend the money needed to open an afternoon Bais Yaakov school (housing and salary for the teacher, an appropriate space for the school, school expenses, etc.), as well as to convince parents to send their daughters to the school. As described in Yehudah Leib Orlean’s eulogy after Schenirer’s death, convincing ‘askanim was not always easy, although the people felt for her and the gedolei yisroel understood her, both placing their greatest trust in her. See Bais Yaakov journal 125 (1935), 6, and in Hebrew translation Em be-Yisrael, vol. 3, 49-50. According to Schenirer, many parents did not understand the importance of the Bais Yaakov education or were satisfied with sending their daughters to the school for one year, just enough for them to learn to pray and write in Yiddish. Even then, girls were occasionally late or missed school with all kinds of excuses. Other parents thought it was too difficult to attend two schools. See Sarah Schenirer, Tsu vos darf men Bais Yaakov shulen? Populare agitatsye-broshur far’n Bais-Yaakov-gedank )’Why Does One Need Bais Yaakov Schools? A Popular Agitation Brochure for the Bais Yaakov idea’), Warsaw 1933, 25-31. The brochure includes a proclamation by Agudath ha-Rabbanim signed by many rabbis (among them Ḥayim Ozer Grodzinski, Zalman Sorotzkin, and Aharon Walkin) calling parents not to send their daughters to Jewish secular schools, which were “akin to Molekh” (e.g., the Tarbut schools), but rather to Bais Yaakov. Clearly, such an endorsement was needed not to support Schenirer herself, but rather to convince parents of the importance of sending their daughters to Bais Yaakov. It should be noted that annual statistics of Bais Yaakov students do not take into account the number of years they attended the school.
[36] See Manekin, “Torah Education for Girls.” The memorial issue of the Bais Yaakov journal published after Schenirer’s death which includes about three dozen articles about her written by different personalities and students, praised her dedication, idealism, enthusiasm, piety, warmth, charity, modesty, and teaching yidishkeit rather than her learning or teaching Torah, something that was not even mentioned. One of the articles emphasized her simplicity (פשטות), explaining that “when she decided to devote her efforts to the education of girls, she did not make herself important as dealing with the problems of the education of daughters, did not aggrandize her mission, did not try to win personalities for her plan; in general, she avoided any advertisement or propaganda noise, but rather simply sat down to learn yidishkeit with children with seriousness and honesty, so her path did not only not arouse opposition (because of the fear of teaching girls Torah etc.), but on the contrary, it only aroused great satisfaction and approval of all circles.” See A. Y. Lipmanovitch, “Der Koyech fun Pashtus” (the power of simplicity), Bais Yaakov 125 (Iyar/Sivan 1935), 18.

The Haftarot in the1806 Lopez Calendar
Eli Duker

Although[1] a Sephardi Machzor was published in 1766 in colonial New York by Isaac Pinto,[2] the first Jewish book printed in the newly formed United States that I am aware of was a calendar published by Moses Lopez of Newport, in 1806.

Lopez born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1740 with the given name Duarte to a “New Christian” family, arrived with that family in Newport in 1767 on a ship sent by his uncle Aaron where he was circumcised together with his father and brothers, upon which he took the name Moses.[3] His arrival in Newport coincided with the most active period in the colonial Jewish community’s existence.[4]

The synagogue of Congregation Nefutsé Israel (later known as Yeshuat Israel) opened in 1763,[5] and thrived for the next few years.

As the struggle between the British and the Colonists began in the 1770’s, it became more difficult to conduct business in Newport. After the Revolutionary War began, the fighting and damage caused the community to flee, mostly to New York. While some returned after the war ended, and the synagogue had the distinct honor of receiving a letter from President Washington. Nonetheless, the community never recovered. Uriah Hendricks, a Jewish traveler from New York attending services there in 1789, noted that they read the parasha from a Humash rather than from a sefer torah.[6] Upon his return there for Rosh Hashana in 1790, he became upset with how the shofar was blown. He walked out and did not return.[7]

IN 1818 it was recorded in the synagogue’s congregational minutes that there had not been any services there “for a great number of years.” In 1820, Lopez himself, the last Jew remaining in Newport, moved to New York, but continued to involve himself in the upkeep of the Newport synagogue and cemetery from afar.

Lopez’s calendar, printed in English with all Hebrew words transliterated, covers the dates from 5566 (corresponding to 1805-6 until 5519 (1858-9). It also has estimated times for the commencement of the Sabbath (rounded off to the half hour) and a list of parshiyot and haftarot. The historical context and details of the calendar are all covered quite well in M. Satlow’s “Jewish Time in Early Nineteenth Century: A study in Moses Lopez’s Calendar”.[8] Yet, other than mentioning that a list of Haftarot was printed there, there are no details or specifics given about what those Haftarot were. That will be the focus of this article.

As a Sephardic community, most of the Haftarot listed there are similar to what appears in most printed Humashim as the Sephardi Haftarah. This is not immediately apparent, as Lopez used the chapter system as it appears in the King James Bible, rather than the standard “Jewish” chapters.[9]

That said, there are points of interest concerning some of the Haftarot listed there. While there are no haftarot unique to this list, some have an end or a beginning that I have not found in any of the hundreds of Geniza fragments, or Humashim in manuscript or printed form, that I have checked. Others accord with a practice that was practiced in some other places, but that clearly deviate from the standard Sephardi practice,

Here is a list of the Haftarot in the calendar in these categories:[10]

Parashah	Haftarah	Also found in:	Closest Practice	Standard Sephardi practice
Bereishit	Isiah: 42:5-43:11	Not found anywhere else	Old Sephardi practice before Expulsion, standard Ashkenazi practice today end the Haftarah at 43:10	42:5-42:21
Vayera	II Kings 4:1-37	Old Sephardi practice before Expulsion (as well as in most Geniza fragments); later on it was the practice in Algiers, as well as the practice among most Ashkenazim, and in Italy and Yemen		4:1-23
Miketz	I Kings 3:15-28	Found in some Ashkenazi Humashim in manuscript		3:15-4:1
Beshalach	Judges 4:5-31	Old Sephardi practice before expulsion; later on in most Morrocan communities, standard Ashkenazi practice throughout history		5:1-31
Ki Tisa	I Kings 18: 20-45	Not found anywhere else	Most sources including all Sephardi ones 18: 20-39
Pekudei	I Kings 7:40-51	Some Ashkenazi and Sephardi Humashim in manuscript; one Chumash in print		7:40-50
Shemini	II Samuel 6:1-23	One Sephardi Humash in manuscript		6:1-19
Kedoshim	Ezekiel 20:1-20	Italy, one practice in Bukhara, Geniza fragments		20:2-20
Behar	Jeremiah 32:6-28	Not found anywhere else	Most communities today, and most Sephardim throughout history 32:6-26
Naso	Judges 13:3-25	Not found anywhere else	All communities that read this Haftarah (almost all) 13:2-25
Re’eh	Isaiah 54:11-55:7	Not found anywhere else	Most communities (including almost all Sephardi sources) 54:11-55:5
Second Day of Rosh Hashanah	Jeramiah 30:25-31:19[11]	Not found anywhere else	Almost all communities: 31:1-19
Second Sabbath of Hannukah	I Kings 7:40-51	Italian practice found in some Sephardi humashim in manuscript		7:4-50
Parashat Zachor	I Samuel 15:1-35	Not found anywhere else	Sephardic Italian and one Geniza fragment 15:1-34
Parashat Parah	Ezekiel 36:16-38	Ashkenaz, Italy		36:16-36
Parashat Hachodesh	Ezekiel 45:18-46:18	Some Romaniotes, and some printed Chumashim		45:18-46:15
First Day of Passover	Joshua 5:3-15	Not found anywhere else	Most communities (including Sephardim) 5:2-6:1[12]
Tisha B’Av Morning	Jeremiah 8:13-9:24	Not found anywhere else	All other communities 8:13-9:23

The only other source I was able to find regarding specific Haftarah practices in colonial America and the early United States was in the English prayer book of 1806, which lists the haftarot for the Festivals. It always conformed to the standard Sephardi practice, without the deviations found here.

It is hard to understand where these alternate Haftarot came from. Lopez was raised under the thumb of the Inquisition in Portugal. It seems highly unlikely that he attended synagogue at all, let alone with any regularity. After a few short years of belonging to a fully functioning congregation in Newport, the community began to decline, and 12 years after the completion of the calendar we know that there hadn’t been any services “for a great number of years.” In all likelihood, a man who had never really attended synagogue until he was 27 and was living in a community that likely hadn’t held Sabbath services regularly in quite some time sat on his own with a Christian Bible, writing down what he believed to be were the texts to be read for the Haftarot, even though some of these do not seem to have been practiced in the larger Sephardi Shearith Israel synagogue in New York.

Are these Haftarot figments of his faulty recollections? Or is it perhaps possible that a synagogue without a Hacham, whose members were former Anusim and their descendants, developed practices disconnected from other communities? Or is this reflective of a minhag not yet familiar? I have no answers

Selected Bibliography

Chyet, Stanley F. Lopez of Newport: Colonial American Merchant Prince. Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1970.
Pinto, Isaac (translator). Prayers for the Sabbath, Rosh HaShana and Kippur: or the Sabbath, the Beginning of the New Year and the day of Atonements, with the Amidah and Musaph of the Moadim, or Solemn Seasons, According to the Order of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews. New Tork, J. Holt, 1766.
Satlow, Michael L. “Jewish Time in Early Nineteenth Century: A Study in Moses Lopez’s Calendar.” American Jewish Archives 65, 1-2 (2013), 1-29.
Urofsky, Melvin I. A Genesis of Religious Freedom: The Story of the Jews of Newport RI and Touro Synagogue, Including Washington’s letter of 1790 New York, George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom, 2013.

Notes

[1] I would like to thank R. Stephen Belsky for alerting me to the existence of these haftarot and sending me a copy of the calendar and my brother R Yehoshua Duker for editing the article. I would also like to thank Dr. Gabriel Wasserman, R’ Dr. Zev Ellef, and the staff of the National Library of Israel for their input and assistance. As the 4th of July approaches I feel it is an honor for me to be writing about the possible practices of an early American shul, having in mind the words that my beloved Rav, Rabbi Avraham Levene ZT”L spoke on the Sabbath of my bar mitzvah, that even after the arrival of mashiach we will have to continue to show appreciation to America. I merited making aliyah, but that sentiment is still with me.
[2] “Prayers for the Sabbath, Rosh HaShana and Kippur: or the Sabbath, the Beginning of the New Year and the day of Atonements, with the Amidah and Musaph of the Moadim, or solemn seasons, according to the order of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews.” It is the only such book I have seen to be printed entirely in English.
[3] See S.F. Chyet “Lopez of Newport” pp. 106-107.
[4] It is worth noting that the synagogue is still in use today making it the oldest synagogue building in the United States.
[5] M. Urofsky “A Genesis of Religious Freedom – The Story of the Jews of Newport RI and Touro Synagogue” p. 59.
[6] Urofsky p. 76.
[7] Ibid. p. 86.
[8] American Jewish Archives vol. LXV pp. 1-29.
[9] Sifrei Kodesh seemed to have been a rarity in America then; see Stalow p. 9.
[10] For a more complete list of the various practices of Jewish communities regarding these Haftarot throughout history, see my site on AlHatorah. https://alhatorah.org/Index:Haftarot/0/he
[11] Listed there as Jeremiah 31: 1-20 it is following the chapters that appear in the Kings James Bible, which would be consistent with the other listings. Some Jewish Bibles, such as that of Cassuto, use this chapter breakdown as well. It is worth noting that the New York Machzor from 1766 lists the Haftarah as Jeremiah 31:2-20, which would be consistent with the standard practice using the same chapter breakdown.
[12] The verse 6:27 is then added. It is clear that the calendar does not include anything that involves skipping verses, so it is unclear what the author intended here.

Franciscans and More; “Repulsive” Practices; Saul Lieberman, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg

Marc B. Shapiro

1. Following up on what I wrote here and here about the term צעירים (Franciscans) and other expressions used with reference to Catholic religious orders, Brian Schwartz called my attention to a couple of relevant sources. In Milhemet Hovah (Constantinople, 1710), p. 14a, R. David Kimhi mentions a theological argument he had with one of the חכמי הצעירים. In Ginzei Nistarot (1868), vol. 2, p. 10, R. Jacob of Venice in his anti-Christian polemic mentions the צעירים and the דורשים (Dominicans). I also found a mention in the text of the Tortosa Disputation, ibid., p. 47. R. David Kimhi refers to the צעירים and the דורשים in his letter about the Maimonidean controversy found in Kovetz Teshuvot ha-Rambam ve-Igrotav, sec. 3 (Iggerot Kanaut), p. 4.[1]

There are no doubt many other such references in medieval texts and there is no need to elaborate any further. However, there is one other point worth noting. In the version of Nahmanides’ Disputation printed in Judah Eisenstein, Otzar Vikukhim, p. 89, it reads: וחכמי הצעירים והדורשים והחובלים. The last word, החובלים, is not found in the version published in Chavel’s edition. What does החובלים mean?

In his note Eisenstein tells us that החובלים are Cordeliers, which is how the Franciscans were called in France.[2] In fact, the Cordeliers were only one branch of the larger Franciscan order. The word cordelier refers to the rope that Franciscans wore around their waist.

חובלים, together with Cordeliers, appears in R. Avigdor Tzarfati’s Torah commentary:[3]

מכאן רמזה תורה אותן החובלים קירדליי”ש והייקופינ”ט ההולכים יחפים שעתידין להכעיס את ישראל

In this text we also have a new word, הייקופינ”ט. This is just an alternate spelling of the word יקופש. In Da’at Zekenim mi-Ba’alei ha-Tosafot, Deut. 32:21, it refers to החובלים ויקופש as people who bring trouble upon the Jews. So what does this word יקופש mean? In R. Aharon Yehoshua Pessin’s Midah ke-Neged Midah [4] he knows that החובלים refers to Franciscans and suggests that יקופש means “Capuchin.” However, the Capuchin order, which is a branch of the Franciscans, was only founded in the sixteenth century, so the Tosafists could not have mentioned it. יקופש actually refers to the Jacobins,[5] which is how the Dominicans were called in medieval France.

2. Readers might recall that in my post here I mentioned the late Dr. Shlomo Sprecher’s characterization of two segulot as “repulsive.”[6] I then cited another example of a segulah which I believe falls into this category (and see also my post here). However, the obvious point, which I mention here, is that what our generation regards as repulsive was not always regarded so in a different generation and culture.

Following the post in which I discussed Dr. Sprecher’s article, a few people sent me examples of things that were accepted in previous generations but today would be regarded as repulsive. Many of these examples are from general society and relate to standards of hygiene, food, etc., but a few came from Jewish texts as well. One reader sent me this interesting post by Tomer Persico that deals with the matter. He mentions, among other things, the following shocking remedy recorded in R. Hayyim Vital, Sefer ha-Peulot, p. 321, that appears to recommend a blatant halakhic violation. (It is doubly shocking when one remembers how seriously this sin is viewed in Lurianic Kabbalah, and this fact alone should perhaps lead us to reject the authenticity of the comment.)

לנכפה [לריפוי אדם הסובל ממחלת הנפילה], יקחו נער א’ [אחד] שמימיו לא ראה קרי ויוציאו ממנו שכבת זרע, ואותו הקרי ושכבת הזרע ימשחו בו שפתותיו של החולה ומעולם לא יחזור החולי ההוא

Jeremy Brown, in his recent National Jewish Book award winning volume, The Eleventh Plague: Jews and Pandemics from the Bible to COVID-19 (Oxford, 2023), p. 77, mentions another recommendation, this time to avoid bubonic plague. Among the ingredients to be consumed are “a little of the first urine” produced in the morning and “a small quantity of dried human feces, dissolved in wine or rose water, to be taken while fasting.”[7]

In the post here referred to above, I dealt with metzitzah ba-peh. Subsequently, I found that R. Leon Modena, in his response to the heretic Uriel da Costa, rejects the latter’s claim that metzitzah ba-peh is disgusting because the mouth speaks the word of God while the sexual organ is impure.[8] The medieval anti-Jewish polemicist, Raymond Martini, had earlier attacked metzitzah ba-peh as an “abominable act.”[9]

R. Moshe Mordechai Epstein has a perspective at odds with many other Lithuanian sages in seeing metzitzah as essential to the mitzvah of circumcision, not simply a medical procedure.[10] He also sees metzitzah ba-peh as crucial to the fulfilment of this mitzvah, again, in opposition to what was the standard approach in Lithuania (as opposed to among the Hasidim). As he puts it, if metzitzah ba-peh is not a basic part of the mitzvah, no one would have ever advocated such an action that, in any other circumstance, would be regarded as utterly repulsive.

אשאל שאלה מאלה האומרים כי מציצה היא רק משום סכנה, וע”כ די ברטית סמרטוטין, מאותם אשאל, נשער נא בנפשינו, אילו לא הי’ מצוה ולא הי’ נהוג אצלינו לעשות המציצה, ואחד הי’ רוצה לעשות המציצה בפה, בודאי היינו קוראים אחריו מלא כי אין לך מתועב יותר מזה ליקח אבר פצוע לתוך הפה. ומה גם אותו האבר. ולא עוד אלא למצוץ הדם, הלא הדבר גועל נפש ממש חלילה (אם אינה מצוה) . . . מי זה חסר לב יאמר כי הנהיגו דבר כזה בלי מצוה . . . בענין המציצה כאשר היא מצוה קדושה לתקן הנפש, אין בה גיעול ח”ו, קדושה וטהורה היא המצוה, אהובה וחביבה מרוממת רוחניות הנפש, אבל אילו לא הי’ מצוה רק הכשר כדי שלא יסתכן הולד מהדם, איך נוכל לומר שיהי’ נהוג בישראל ענין מתועב כזה, חלילה וחלילה. הלא האמת ברור לכל, כי המציצה היא מצוה קדושה בעצמה דוקא באופן הזה למצוץ דוקא בפה

3. In my last post here I spoke about Saul Lieberman, so let me add a few more points. In Tovia Preschel’s Ma’amrei Tuvyah, vol. 6, p. 231, he discusses Lieberman’s investigations into obscure words in rabbinic literature, and is reminded of how Sherlock Holmes can always find the answer:

כשאתה רואה אותו מצרף קו לקו ותג ותג להוכחה ברורה ומוריד מעל המלים את המסווה שמאחוריו מתחבאת משמעותן האמיתית – עולה בלבך המחשבה: הרי זה שרלוק הולמס, האמן-הבלש, של שפתנו

ואמנם נקראים כמה ממחקריו בענייני לשון כסיפורים של סר ארתור קונן דויל. דומה עליך שהנך רואה את שרלוק הולמס מרצה לידידו ועוזרו ואטסון כיצד סימנים ועקבות קטנים ובלתי-ברורים מוליכים אותו לפענוחו של תעלומות גדולות

ר’ שאול ליברמן – תורה למד בישיבות, חכמה קנה באוניברסיטאות – אך אמנות הבלשות מנין לו

Preschel then notes that in the little free time that Jabotinsky had, he liked to read detective stories. Preschel wonders, does Lieberman also do so? He adds that he was never brazen enough to ask Lieberman about this.

לפעמים אני הוגה בלבי: אולי גם ר’ שאול בין קוראי ספרות זו, עת הוא נח מעמלה של תורה, בשעה שאינה לא יום ולא לילה? אך עדיין לא העזתי לשאול אותו כל כך

Preschel’s insight is amazing. In Lieberman’s letter to Gershom Scholem, dated July 31, 1947,[11] Lieberman writes about how during the summer vacation, when he is away from New York and has free time, he reads detective stories![12]

ומכיוון שבכפר אני מתיר לעצמי לבטל קצת את הזמן הריני קורא לפעמים ספרות בלשית. וכשבא מאמרך לידי נמשכתי אחריו באותה מתיחות ממש כאילו אני קורא a detective story

Earlier in Ma’amrei Tuvyah, vol. 6, pp. 229-230, Preschel provides the answer to something I had thought about. If you look at a number of the title pages of Lieberman’s books you see that his name is in smaller print than that of his father.

Other than in Lieberman’s books, I don’t recall ever seeing this on a title page. Fortunately, Preschel asked Lieberman about this and Lieberman explained that this is “minhag Yisrael”. Lieberman showed Preschel what R. Hayyim Benveniste writes in Sheyarei Kenesset ha-Gedolah, Tur, Yoreh Deah 240:8, that when one signs his name together with that of his father, yesh nohagim that the father’s name is written above as a sign of respect. What this means is that the father’s name written with bigger letters so that it stretches above the son’s name.

Here is the page in R. Benveniste’s work where he also provides an example.

Preschel concludes:

“פותח שערים” אני. אצבעותי מישמשו בהרבה ספרים. שערים רבים ראיתי. צא ובדוק אם תמצא מחברים שנהגו מנהג רם ונשגב זה בשערי ספריהם. ואם תמצא – מעטים הם, נער יספרם

Since we have been speaking about Lieberman, here is a treat for all the Lieberman fans: A letter from Lieberman to Abraham Joshua Heschel in which we see a bit of Lieberman’s mischievous humor.[13]

And while mentioning Heschel, here is another letter to him from R. Pinchas Biberfeld.[14]  

From this letter we learn something that until now was completely unknown, namely, that Heschel attended lectures of R. Jakob Freimann at the Berlin Rabbinical Seminary. In Edward Kaplan’s book on Heschel, Prophetic Witness, pp. 106, 256, he mentions that Heschel would frequently eat at Freimann’s house on Shabbat, and that Heschel contributed an article — his first academic publication — to the Freimann Festschrift.

R. Pinchas Biberfeld was the son of the legendary physician-rabbi Eduard Biberfeld, and he received semikhah from the Berlin Rabbinical Seminary. Here is a copy of his semikhah.[15]

The semikhah, dated Feb. 7, 1939, is signed by R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg and R. Samuel Gruenberg. R. Weinberg was forced to leave Germany not long after this, and R. Gruenberg  and R. Biberfeld were fortunate to also get out and immigrate to Eretz Yisrael. While in Israel R. Biberfeld edited the Torah journal Ha-Ne’eman. You can read about him here on Wikipedia, and here is an interview he gave.

Biberfeld’s German name was Paul, and he was named after Paul von Hindenburg![16] People today often don’t realize how integrated into German society the German Orthodox were, and the naming of Paul Biberfeld is a great example of this.[17] In some ways, the German Orthodox were even more attached to their non-Jewish surroundings than today’s American Modern Orthodox, whose Americanness is usually expressed in a shared low culture with non-Jewish society (e.g., television, music, and sports), rather than in high culture and patriotism, both of which were part of the German Orthodox ethos.

R. Immanuel Jakobovits’s father was a well-known German rabbi, Julius Jakobovits, and yet he was comfortable naming his son after Immanuel Kant.[18] (R. Jakobovits’s Hebrew name was Yisrael.) In Michael Shashar, Lord Jakobovits in Conversation, pp. 10-11, Jakobovits explains (and it is obvious that he did not know the story of Paul Biberfeld’s name):

I may be the only rabbi in the world named after a non-Jew – Immanuel Kant, who was a native of Koenigsberg [where Jakobovits was born] and never left it.[19] The city was also known as “Kantstadt” [the city of Kant]. My father was one of Kant’s admirers, and when I was born he wanted to call me Israel, after one of his uncles, but at that time in Germany it was not acceptable to call a Jewish child Israel. Accordingly, he searched for a name beginning with I and ending with L, and so he gave me Kant’s name, Immanuel.

I don’t know why it was not acceptable in 1920s Germany for a Jewish child’s “secular” name to be Israel. 

Returning to Heschel, when he first came to the United States he was teaching at the Reform Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. Here is a letter from Louis Ginzberg to Heschel that provides information that until now has not been known.[20]

From this letter, we see that Heschel was in discussions about a job at Dropsie College. Ginzberg urges him to accept this position if offered, and notes that the atmosphere at HUC was not in line with Heschel’s outlook. This never came to be, and Heschel accepted a position at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1946 where he spent the rest of his life.

I think readers will find the next two letters of interest, as we see that Heschel was in discussions to teach at Yeshiva College and its Bernard Revel Graduate School.[21]

There are two other documents from the Heschel Archives that I would like to call attention to as they are of great historical interest. Unfortunately, they were not available to me when I wrote Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy. First, I must note that a few months ago the Jewish Historical Institute of Warsaw published a wartime list of rabbis in the Warsaw Ghetto. You can see it here. The list is not complete. For one, it does not mention R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, whom as I discuss in Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy was very involved in the Warsaw ghetto rabbinate and also served as the head of a committee to assist rabbis and yeshiva students. Also not mentioned in the Hebrew document is R. Kalonymous Kalman Shapiro, the Piaseczno Rebbe.

In a letter dated May 25, 1941, R. Weinberg wrote to Heschel from the Warsaw Ghetto.[22] Here is the envelope that R. Weinberg used. I include both sides of the envelope. As you can see, Heschel was living at Henry Street on the Lower East Side. Also note R. Weinberg’s address on the reverse as well as the Nazi stamp.

Here is the letter in which R. Weinberg asks Heschel for assistance with the emigration of rabbis in the ghetto. Because of German censorship, R. Weinberg’s letter had to be written in German. (We have other letters from R. Weinberg sent from the Ghetto and they too are written in German.)

 

Book Week 2024

By Eliezer Brodt

Book week recently began in Eretz Yisrael. Continuing with my now Seventeenth year tradition B”h, every year in Israel, around Shavuos time, there is a period of about ten days called Shavuah Hasefer – Book Week. Many of the companies offer sales for the whole month.

Shavuah HaSefer is a sale which takes place all across the country in stores, malls and special places rented out just for the sales. There are places where strictly “frum” seforim are sold and other places have most of the secular publishing houses. Many publishing houses release new titles specifically at this time.

In my lists, I sometimes include an older title, from a previous year, if I just noticed the book. As I have written in the past, I do not intend to include all the new books. Eventually some of these titles will be the subject of their own reviews. I try to include titles of broad interest. For last year’s list see here

As this list shows although book publishing in book form has dropped greatly worldwide, Academic books on Jewish related topics and Seforim are still coming out in full force.

To receive a PDF of the sale catalogs of Mechon Yerushalayim, Zichron Ahron, and Ahavat Shalom, e-mail me at Eliezerbrodt-at-gmail.com.

In the lists below I have not included everything found in these catalogs as some items are not out yet and are coming out shortly. Others items I have not seen yet so I have not mentioned them as I try to only list items I have actually seen.

Note: Just because a book is listed below does not mean it’s on sale.

The second section below are titles that were printed in the past year, on a wide range of topics. These items are not specifically on sale at this time or easy to find. In addition, this is not an attempt to include everything or even close to that.

The purpose of the list is to help Seforim Blog readership learn about some of the seforim and Books that have been published in the past year.

A second purpose of this list is, to make these works available for purchase for those interested. As in previous years I am offering a service, for a small fee to help one purchase these titles (or titles of previous years). For more information about this email me at Eliezerbrodt-at-gmail.com.

Part of the proceeds will be going to support the efforts of the the Seforim Blog.

מאגנס

1. דוד רוזנטל, אסופת מאמרים בחקר התלמוד, שני חלקים [מצוין]
2. מנחם קיסטר, אחור וקדם: המשכיות וצמיחה של מסורות בין ספרות בית שני לספרות חז”ל [מצוין]
3. אילן אלדר, עדה ולשון, פרקי הוֹרָיַית הקוֹרֵא: מבחר טקסטים בתורת הקריאה במקרא בליווי תרגום לעברית
4. קובץ על יד, כרך כט
5. מחקרי תלמוד, חלק ד, שני כרכים
6. אסף תמרי, האל כמטופל והקליניקה של המקובל, קבלת האר”י כשיח רפואי
7. עומר מיכאליס, עת לעשות לה’ הפרו תורתך: מסורת ומשבר בהגותו של ר’ משה בן מימון
8. ספר היובל לכבוד מנחם בן ששון, ‘שמעו כי נגידים אדבר’: עיונים בתופעת המנהיגות בקהילות ישראל בימי הביניים

9.יוסף יהלום, יהודה הלוי, שירי החול הדיואן המקורי עם נספחים, 691 עמודים

10. אריאל זינדר, קומי רוני: קריאותבפיוטיסליחהותחנוניםמאתמשורריבבלוספרדהמוסלמיתבימיהביניים
11. מחקרי ירושלים בספרות עברית, לג
12. מחקרי ירושלים בפולקלור יהודי, לו
13. דוד אסף ויעל דר, ואולי נתראה עוד: מכתבי תלמידים יהודים מפולין לארץ ישראל בין שתי מלחמות העולם
14. רחל מנקין, בנות סוררות: מרד הנערות בגליציה ההבסבורגית
15. תרי עשר, מהדורת מפעל המקרא של האוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים
16. דניאל, מקרא ישראל

Littman Library

1. Haym Soloveitchik, Jews and the Wine Trade in Medieval Europe Principles and Pressures
2. Yaron Tsur, Jews in Muslim Lands, 1750–1830
3. Miri Freud Kandel, Louis Jacobs and the Quest for a Contemporary Jewish Theology

ביאליק

1. יוסף מרקוס, ערכין: מחקרים במשנה ובתוספתא
2. אברהם דוד, למען ירושלם לא אשקוט: אסופת איגרות ירושלמיות מראשית תקופת השלטון העותמאני
3. משה בר-אשר מחקרים בלשון חכמים (כרך ד): שאלות מרכזיות, ענייני דקדוק, מדרש ולשון ונוספות
4. אהרן ממן, מילונאות עברית: מילונים ומילים [חומר חשוב]
5. אליעזר שריאל, מסורת בזמן משבר: הזיקה שבין תהליך המודרניזציה לבין התגבשות ההלכה, 248 עמודים [חומר חשוב על רע”א, פוזן בזמנו, בעל הנתיבות, דיני בין השמשות, דיני תליה במכה, מאבד עצמו לדעת ועוד]
6. רבקה אמבון, בני ארץ ישראל: דברי ימי הרב שמואל הלר מצפת
7. דרורה שקד, העלמה המהירה לְדַבֵּר צָחוֹת: חייה ויצירתה של מרים מארקל-מוזסזון (1920-1838)
8. אסף ידידיה, דורש יש לה: חייו ומשנתו של הרב צבי הירש קלישר
9. פרופ’ יצחק ש’ פנקובר, תולדות פירוש רש”י לתנ”ך [מצוין]
10. פירוש רש”י למסכת ביצה, מהדורה ביקורתית, ההדיר והוסיף מבוא והערות דר’ אהרן ארנד

הוצאת בר אילן

1. ד”ר יצחק ברויאר, אליהו, מהדורה בעברית עם מבוא מאת שובל שפט
2. היהודים באימפריה העות’מאנית, בעריכת פר’ שפיגל ושאול רגב
3. בד”ד לז
4. סידרא לה
5. גדליה לסר, חיבור ההכרעות לרבנו יעקב בן מאיר תם: למלחמת הלשון בין מנחם בן סרוק לדונש בן לברט
6. רונאל עטיה, הגדיים יהיו תיישים: למנהיגותו החינוכית של הרב כלפון משה הכהן מג’רבה בראשית המאה העשרים
7. שמואל ויינשטיין, פסיכואנליזה מיסטית, ממד הלא־מודע בחכמה, בינה ודעת
8. דב שוורץ, מאופל לבהירות תורת הבריאה בכתבי אבות החסידות
9. פראג ומעבר לה: יהודים בארצות הבוהמיות – אוסף מאמרים מתורגם
10. עלי ספר, לב-לג
11. פירוש יפת בן עלי לשמואל ב ומלכים א א-ב

יד הרב ניסים

1.       יעקב גולן, תנאים בקידושין ובגירושין
   2. ברכיהו ליפשיץ, סוגיית חסורי מחסרא בתלמוד בבלי
   3. ברכיהו ליפשיץ, פרק אלו נערות – עיונים בסוגיות התלמוד

מגיד–קורן

1. ר’ שמואל מוהליבר, ברית האהבה והשלום, כתבים על ציונות חינוך מחשבה ומעשה, 452 עמודים
2. Rav Kook, Hadarav, His inner Chambers, Translated by Bezalel Naor
3. Rav Hershel Schacter, Divrei Soferim, The Transmission of Torah Shebe’al Peh

4.R’ Levi Cooper, Hasidic Relics, Cultural Encounters

5. R’ Jonathan Ziring, Torah in a Connected World, A Halakhic Perspective on Communication Technology and social media
6. Rabbi Zvi Ron, Jewish Customs, Exploring Common and Uncommon Minhagim
7. Yair Ettinger, Frayed: The Disputes Unraveling Religious Zionists
8. Rabbi Daniel Feldman, Letter and Spirit, Evasion, Avoidance, and Workarounds in the Halakhic System
9. Rabbi Raphael Zarum, Questioning Belief Torah and Tradition in an Age of Doubt
10. Rabbi Shlomo Brody, Ethics of our Fighters, A Jewish View on War and Morality

בן צבי

1. הספר הכולל, לר’ דוד בן סעדיה אלגר – מראשוני תקופת הראשונים בספרד, יהודה שטמפפר, בשיתוף: דוד סקליר דוד, נסים סבתו, אליעזר רייף, 448 עמודים
2. ר’ ישראל נאג’ארה, שארית ישראל, ב’ חלקים, מכת”י, מבואות וביאורים: בארי טובה, סרוסי אדוין
3. ספר ירושלים, 1948-1973
4. זאב וייס, ציפורי, פסיפס של תרבויות, 250 עמודים
5. עוזי ליבנר, היישוב הכפרי בגליל בעת העתיקה
6. ספונות כט
7. גנזי קדם חלק יט
8. הערבית-היהודית הקדומה בכתיב פונטי – חלק ב
9. מרשה בשפלת יהודה, מבט ארכיאולוגי והיסטורי

אלון שבות– הרצוג

1. ר’ אהרן אדלר, על כנפי נשרים: מחקרים בספרות ההלכתית של הרמב”ם [מעניין]
2. ר’ יואל בן נון, מקראות, ויקרא-דברים
3. ר’ יואל בן-נון, מחביון תורתך, ב’ חלקים
4. ראובן גפני, לכרוך את התפילה
5. ר’ אליקים קרומביין, מהפך המתנגדים, הגר”א ותלמידיו בין שמרנות לשינוי, 302 עמודים [מעניין]

כרמל

1. עמנואל אטקס, משיחיות, פוליטיקה והלכה – הציונות הדתית ו”השטחים” 1967 – 1982
2. אבישלום וסטרייך, ארבעה אבות נזיקין: מסורת משפט ופרשנות
3. הרב ליאו בק: ייעוד דתי בעת סערה
4. יעקב שביט, כתוב בספרים, רשימות
5. מנחם קלנר, עם לבדד ישכון? גישה לאַחֵר ברוח הרמב”ם
6. אפרים חמיאל, הויית החכמה וגידולה” – פרקי מחקר ופרשנות – חלק ב
7. אילן אלדר, העברית ולשונות אירופה – עיונים בלשונות ספרותיות
8. אבן אלשנטאש – יוצרות לר’ יוסף בן יצחק ספרדי המכונה אבן אביתור

מכון הר ברכה

1. ר’ אלעזר מלמד, מסורת הגיור, 896 עמודים
2. קורות חיי, מבורשא עד ירושלים, סיפור חייו של הרב אלתר מאיר שטינמץ זצ”ל [כולל המון תעודות על פרשת גיורי וינה], 582 עמודים
3. ר’ חיים דוד הלוי, עשה לך רב, שו”ת מים חיים
4. פרשת גיורי וינה, הרב ד”ר בועז הוטרר והרב צוריאל חלמיש

עתניאל

1. ר’ שמואל הכהן וינגרטן, פירורים משולחנם של גדולי ישראל [זכרונות, מאוד מעניין]
2. ר’ שמואל אריאל, נטע בתוכינו, ב’ חלקים, [מהדורה שנייה]

ראובן מס

1. יוסף פונד, השתלבות והתבללות, אגודת ישראל – מפלגה אורתודוקסית במדינה היהודית החילונית; בחינת ההתנהגות הפוליטית והחברתית של תנועת ‘אגודת ישראל’ במדינת ישראל; הערות, איורים, צילומים, מסמכים, ביבליוגרפיה, 598 עמודים
2. שמואל אבא הורודדצקי, מן המיתוס העברי [מכתב יד], 227 עמודים

בית מדרש לרבנים

1. אור במושבותם, חכמי מצרים יצירתם ופועלם במאות השבע עשרה-התשע עשרה, בעריכת שמואל גליק וחנן גפני [מעניין]
2. Shalom Sabar, The Art of the Ketubbah 2 Volumes

מרכז זלמן שזר

1. טלי בוסקילה, פוריות, לידה וילדות: המשפחה היהודית במרחב העות’מאני, 386 עמודים
2. יצחק מלמד, ברוך שפינוזה, סידרה גדולי הרוח והיצירה בעם היהודי

האקדמיה ללשון העברית

1. אהרן ממן וחננאל מירסקי, מחברת מנחם בן סרוק
2. משה בר-אשר, מחקרי עברית מראשונות לאחרונות

אקדמיה הלאומית הישראלית

1. הרמב”ם וגניזת קהיר, פרופ’ מרדכי עקיבא פרידמן ופרופ’ שמא פרידמן [מצוין]
2. לזכרון של יהושע בלאו, חוברת

האוניברסיטה הפתוחה

1. אבריאל בר לבב ומשה אידל, שער לקבלה נתיבות למיסטיקה יהודית, חלק ד

ידיעות ספרים

1. שאלי שרופה באש – השואה וזיכרונה במבט דתי-לאומי, עורך איתמר לוין
2. ר’ אהרן ליכטנשטיין, בדרשם פניך: פרקי תשובה
3. לעולם יהא אדם – תורות שבעל פה, סיפורי הרב עמיטל
4. ר’ יובל שרלו, כי ישרים דרכי ה’ – אתיקה יהודית
5. זאב קיציס, המורים הגדולים של החסידות
6. אבישי בן חיים, החרדים: דע את האוהב המסע להכרת העולם החרדי

אידרא

1. גבריאל שטרנגר, רוחנית ודבקות מיסטית
2. רוברטו ארביב, הסוד בגבולות התבונה, במשנתו של רבי אברהם בן הרמב”ם
3. היצירה בספרד ומסורותיה, משה חלמיש אורה שורצולד
4. יוסף יצחק ליפשיץ, ובימי הקדמונים: התפתחות ההלכה האשכנזית
5. דרך הלב – בין אבו חאמד אלע׳זאלי ור׳ אברהם בן הרמב״ם
6. תרשיש / ב, מחקרים נוספים ביהדות תוניסיה ומורשתה

7.הרב כלפון משה הכהן וחכמי תוניסיה בעת החדשה/ עיונים ביצירתם, פועלם והשפעתם

רסלינג

1. ענת רובינשטיין, חזן המשוררים באודסה
2. בניהו טבילה, הישיבה התיכונית החרדית
3. יוסף חקלאי, האומנות והיופי בהגות היהודית ברנסנס ובנאורות

בלימה

1. גרשם שלום, אלכימיה וקבלה
2. ר’ אהרן תמרת, תהו ובהו (מהדורה שנייה)
3. דן מירון, כל העולם בימה
4. ג’ שלום, בעקבות משיח, מהדורה שנייה, כריכה רכה
5. יונתן מאיר, תיקון הפרדוקס
6. זלמן שזר, על תלי בית פרנק
7. מיכה יוסף ברדיצ’בסקי, סתירה ובנין

8. רחל אליאור, שירת הקודש בספרות ההיכלות והמרכבה

9. פול מנדס־פלור, אוריינטליות ומיסטיקה

פרדס

1. אמוף דפני וסאלח עקב ח’טיב, שורשים, שושנים ומלכים: עיונים בפולקלור צמחי ארץ־ישראל, 181 עמודים

2. יוסף שיטרית, חורבן ותקומה: הרס החיים ביהודיים במרוקו בשמד המווחדון ושיקומם [1154-1269], ג’ חלקים
3. רוני רייך, יום ביומי חיי היום יום של היישוב היהודי בארץ ישראל בשלהי ימי הבית השני, לאור הממצא הארכיאולוגי, {תשפ”א}, 334 עמודים

מכון תלמוד הישראלי

1. מסכת נזיר, ב
2. חידושי ר’ יהונתן מלוניל, ברכות
3. אנציקלופדיה תלמודית, כרך לא* ערכי כלים, [כרך חדש], כולל נספח ‘ריאליה של הכלים’, מאת דר’ קרן קירשנבוים
4. אנציקלופדיה תלמודית, כרך נא

מכון שלמה אומן

1. ר’ אריה ליב עטלינגר, גיטין, אחיו של הערוך לנר
2. סמ”ג עשין, חלק ב, להמהרש”ל
3. סמ”ק, א, א-קנא
4. רש”י ורשב”ם, ערבי פסחים מהדורה חדשה
5. ר’ אברהם הרופא, שלטי הגיבורים, מהדורה חדשה עם הוספות ותיקונים רבים

אהבת שלום

1. ר’ רפאל יצחק זרחיה אזולאי, זרע יצחק, אביו של החיד”א, מכתב יד
2. דרשות ר’ בצלאל אשכנזי, מכתב יד
3. ר’ שריה דבליצקי, אני לדודי, עניני ימים נוראים, תשיז עמודים
4. ר’ יעקב הלל, שו”ת וישב הים, חלק ד [מלא חומר מעניין]
5. מן הגנזים גליון יח
6. דרך ה’ לרמח”ל, ביאור נתיבות הים, מאת ר’ יעקב הלל
7. כתבים חדשים לרבינו חיים ויטאל [מכתב יד]
8. צנצנת המן, ב’ חלקים

זכרון אהרן

1. אוסף מדרשים, חלק ג
2. שו”ת חוט השני
3. ספרי, במדבר, ב’ חלקים

4.שו”ת כנסת יחזקאל

מכון ירושלים

1. רבינו אליקים על מסכת יומא, מכון ירושלים
2. פסקי תוספות השלם, מכון ירושלים, ב’ חלקים
3. שואל ומשיב תליתאה, חלק ג
4. מוריה, אדר תשפ”ד [מלא חומר מעניין]
5. צרור החיים, תלמיד הרשב”א [בדפוס]
6. שו”ת בית יצחק, או”ח [בדפוס]

אופק

1. תורת כהנים, חלקים ה-ו, מכון אופק

שובי נפשי

1. סדר מועדות, לגאון האדר”ת, על סדר מועדי השנה, שבת תשובה, סוכות, חנוכה, פורים, פסח ושבועות, מכתב יד, תשעה עמודים [מצוין]
2. שלחן ערוך, אבן העזר, שתילי זיתים, ג’ חלקים, מכתב יד

ספרים של ר‘ אלחנן סמט

1. ימי ירבעם
2. מלחמות אחאב
3. מרד יהוא
4. עיונים במזמורי תהלים של הרב סמט [מהדורה חדשה]

חלק ב

חז“ל ועוד

1. ליקוטי מדרשים חלק ד
2. ליקוטי מדרשים חלק ה
3. ליקוטי מדרשים חלק שישי
4. ליקוטי מדרשים חלק שביעי [א] מכתב יד
5. ליקוטי מדרשים חלק שביעי [ב] מכתב יד
6. חומש עם תרגום יהונתן המפורש, שמות
7. ר’ אהרן לופיאנסקי, מפרש ושום שכל, אוצר ביאורים על התורה על פי טעמי המקרא ולקט הערות על תרגום אונקלוס, תקמו עמודים

ראשונים

1. רש”י השלם, מכון אריאל, במדבר -קורח
2. מורה נבוכים, חלק א, פרקים א-ל, בעריכת ר’ יהודה זייבלד ואחרים, על פי כ”י כולל פירושים מכ”י ועוד
3. שערי מוסר לר’ אביגדור כהן צדק\עסק התורה לרבינו יחיאל אבי הרא”ש
4. פירוש רש”י ובית מדרשו, על פיוטי סדר עבודת יום הכיפורים
5. רס”ג לספר ויקרא, לפרשיות מצורע ואחרי, מבוא והערות, מכ”י, נדפס לראשונה כעת, ע”י מכון עלה זית ליקווד, 310 עמודים
6. פירוש רבנו מיוחס לספר בראשית, עם מבוא והערות
7. ספר משלי עם ביאור רבינו ששת, מכתב יד [לפני הרמב”ן], שיג עמודים
8. מאמר על הדרשות ועל האגדות, לרבינו אברהם בן הרמב”ם, מעתיקי השמועה, בירורים בתולדות חכמי התלמוד ועיונים בדרכי העתקת שמועותיהם, ר’ משה מיימון [מהדורה שנייה עם הוספות ותיקונים]

מחקר

1. ספרי יסוד, לאחים סטפנסקי, מהדורה חדשה כולל ספרי יסוד אינקונבלים, [מלא חומר חשוב]
2. פרופ’ מאיר בר אאלן, מגילת הזייפן, [מגילת מוזס וילהלם שפירא]
3. מאמרי שד”ל, אסופה מתוך מאמרים שכתב שד”ל (שמואל דוד לוצאטו) בכתבי העת של המחצית הראשונה של המאה ה-19 [מעניין]
4. משה חלמיש, הנהגות קבליות בשבת, מהדורה שנייה מורחבת
5. שנתון משפט העברי, לב
6. שמע ישראל על קמעות סגולות ומאגיה
7. אהוד נצר, טביעות אצבע בנוף הארץ בין ארכיאולוגיה לאדריכלות
8. ר’ ירון אונגר, אפוטרופסות בעריכת נחום רקובר
9. סיור סליחות, מסע חווייתי על פיוטי הסליחות ותפילת הימים הנוראים, 279 עמודים
10. זהר עמר, כלכלת המקדש, והיערכותה של עיר הקודש לייעודה

11.ספר חיבת הפיוט

12. עיונים בדרכי הפסיקה של מו”ר הרב נחום אליעזר רבינוביץ זצ”ל, 102 עמודים

היסטוריה / תולדות

1. ר’ אברהם כלפון, מעשה צדיקים, ילקוט סיפורים צדיקים [חומר חשוב], ב’ חלקים, מהדורה רביעית, כולל מפתחות מפורטת
2. תיאור המסע של אברהם לוי 1723-1719 מתורגם מיידיש מערבית עם הערות ונספחים, מהדיר: אלחנן טל
3. מנהיג בסער התקופה, פרקים בחייו של ר’ יצחק מאיר לוין, ב’ חלקים
4. ר’ מנחם מנדל פלאטו, מרן החזון איש, ב-ג, 366+360 עמודים

ר’ דב אליאך, החפץ חיים, 800 עמודים

5. בשבילי ראדין, כולל שני חלקים חדשים, 150 עמודים על החזון איש ור’ חיים עוזר, וחיבור של ר’ יעקב עדס, דברי יעקב, 263 עמודים, בין השאר, ביקורת על החיבור ה’חזון איש’ של בנימין בראון, ועוד
6. התוספות יום טוב ומגילתו, שסד עמודים
7. אדרת אליהו, הנהגות והליכות מרן הגאון ר’ אליהו דושניצר, תסו עמודים
8. קונטרס הזכרונות מתורת מרן החזון איש, ממרן ר’ חיים קניבסקי זצ”ל, תקלד עמודים [מצוין]
9. ר’ אליהו מרגליות, מבריסק עד קוסובה, יסודות ועקרונות פרשנות התלמוד, מהדורה שלישית [מאוד מעניין]
10. ר’ בנימין לובאן, שמע בני הנהגות והדרכות בארחות חיים, חלק א, [מאוד מעניין]
11. ר’ ירוחם ווייכבויט ואחיו, בימים ההם, אופן החיים בזמן חז”ל התנאים ואמוראים, תקיב עמודים [מאוד מעניין]
12. אחד היה אברהם, ספר זכרון למרן חזון איש, חלק א, 632 עמודים, כולל הרבה מאמרים של ר’ יהושע ענבל, עם מאות תיקונים והסופות [מלא חומר חשוב]
13. על דעת רבו, תורתו משנתו והליכותיו של הגאון המופלא רבי מנחם מנדל כשר בעל ה’תורה שלמה’ [מלא חומר מעניין]
14. אוצרות מהר”י שטייף, מכתבים רשימות ליקוטים הנהגות הדרכו ועוד, תשטז עמודים [אוסף מעניין]
15. עבדא דקודשא בריך הוא, ר’ יחזקאל לוינשטיין, ב’ חלקים
16. איה שוקל, משקל החסידות בדרכי הוראתו של רבינו שריה דבליצקי, [חוברת] [מצוין]
17. גדולים מעשי יחיאל, מסכת חייו ופעליו.. ר’ יחיאל בנדיקט, 739 עמודים
18. מיקרי ירושלים, תולדות חייו של רבי נתנאל הסופר ובנו ר’ שמואל תפילינסקי
19. אנג’לו מ’ פיאטלי, משה דוד קאסוטו: מחינוכו בבית המדרש לרבנים האיטלקי עד הוויכוח עם יהודה מנחם פאצ’יציצ’י, 86 עמודים
20. נגלה ונסתר, מאמרים וסיפורים על הגאון מר שושני, 101 עמודים
21. ר’ עקיבא סופר, קורות דברי הימים, למרן החתם סופר, ב’ חלקים

שונות

1. כל כתבי רבנו מנשה מאיליא, [כולל מכת”י], מהדיר: ר’ דוד קמנצקי [מצוין], תקע”ב עמודים ר’ 2. אורי טיגר, קומי אורי: דרך איש\דרך הקודש\משפט עשה\הטבע הרוחני [כריכה קשה] מצוין
2. ר’ אליהו גרנצייג מקרא העדה, דברים ב, [כי תצא-וזאת הברכה], שכ עמודים
3. ר’ צבי פרבר, שיח צבי, על תפילה חלק א
4. ר’ דוד גאלדשטיין, דודאי ראובן על הלכות כיבוד אב ואם
5. ר’ משה חנונו, עטרת יחזקאל, טעמים ועיונים במנהגי ישראל, סעודת חג השבועות, ר”מ עמודים

7.מאורי אש, השלם ממרן הגרש”ז אויערבאך ב’ חלקים [מצוין]

8. מילואים ותיקונים לספר מאורי אש השלם מהדורת תש”ע [המילואים והתיקונים שנוספו במהדורת תשפ”ד יוצאים בכרך נפרד לתועלת אלו שרכשו את מהדורת תש”ע, מפתחות ואינדקס לחלק המילואים]
9. קרני אורה, נספח לספר מאורי אש השלם, החשמל בהלכה לאור משנתו של מרן הגרש”ז אויערבאך, ב’ חלקים [מצוין]
10. ר’ חיים קניבסקי, טעמא דקרא, ספר תהלים
11. ר’ שלמה ברגמן, משנת חיים, על המשנה ברורה, מלקוט מכל כתבי ר’ חיים קניבסקי, כולל קונטרס כתב יד: כתבי ידות של המשנה ברורה [!], שנ עמודים
12. ביצחק יקרא על ספר החינוך, מתורת רבנו הגאון ר’ אביגדר נבנצל
13. כתבי אבות, ב’ חלקים, שו”ת, מכתבי תורה, חידושים ובירורי סוגיות, יושביה עליה, מאתגרי 14. הדמוגרפיה במדינה יהודית, עורכים, ר’ נריה גוטל, ר’ דוד שטרן, 436 עמודים [מלא חומר מעניין]
14. ר’ יצחק שטסמן, עומקה של הלכה, פרק אלו מציאות, תשל עמודים
15. ר’ יצחק שטסמן, אלו מציאות, דיני השבת אבידה הצלת ממון, גוף ונפש, תתקנו עמודים
16. ר’ עמרם קורח, פלאי התביר, ויקרא, שמה עמודים
17. ר’ מאזוז, בית נאמן, ויקרא
18. ר’ משה פירוטינסקי, ספר הברית, הלכות מילה, תתע, [עם אלפי הוספות ותיקונים מכת”י המחבר] מכון עלה זית
19. ר’ איתי אליצור, פקודיך דרשתי, ו’ חלקים, [כיצד למדו חכמים את הפסוקים ואיך הגיעו מהם למסקנה ההלכתית. מבאר כל מקום שבו חכמים העלו הלכה מן הפסוקים. רבים עומדים נבוכים ומתקשים לבאר כיצד עולה ההלכה מן הפסוק על דרך ההגיון, ולכך מוקדש החיבור].
20. אהבת חסד עם הוספות, מהדיר: ר’ משה ווילליגער, תתלט עמודים
21. אגרות הראי”ה, חלק ז [ב’ חלקים]
22. ר’ ארז אברהמוב, העוסק במצווה פטור מן המצווה, תתסא עמודים
23. ר’ מרדכי ציון, הלכות רבע”ס
24. ר’ אורי טיגר, לדופקי תשובה, מהדורה חדשה
25. ר’ בנימין הכהן ויטאלי, אבות עולם, על מסכת אבות
26. ר’ אליהו גרינצייג, תפארת התפילה,  תקעט עמודים
27. ר’ יעקב חיים סופר, דברי יעקב חיים, א-ב, מהדורה שניה
28. סידור לימות החול ושבת, עם ביאור ערוגת הבושם, מאת ר’ חנוך זונדל, מכתב יד, ב’ חלקים

30.ר’ יהודה יונגרייז, מילי דקטן

31. ר’ רצון ערוסי, אמרי רצון, ג’ חלקים
32. שו”ת שלמת יוסף המבואר, לבעל צפנת פענח
33. ר’ בנימין הכהן, אלון בכות על מגלת איכה, תקנג עמודים + מפתחות

34.ר’ ישראל אריאל, שופר ולולב בשבת, תנב עמודים

35. ר’ יעקב עמדין, מטפחת ספרים, מהדורה שנייה [אין הוספות]

36.שו”ת מזבח אדמה, כולל הרבה הוספות

37.ר’ רפאל קרויזר, הגירושין בהלכה

38. ר’ נתן ב”ר יעקב, זמן חצות, בירור זמן חצות לילה לפי כל השיטות עם גילויים חדשים מספרים נדירים וכתבי יד שטרם ראו אור
39. ר’ מרדכי טרענק, קונטרס מזלא טבא בעניני מזלות וכוכבים ובסופו חידוש רבינו ברוך רוזנפעלד על ספר החינוך, מכתב יד, תלמיד רע”א
40. דרכי תשובה, כרך חדש, נדרים שבועות
41. הר הבית כהלכה, חלק ב
42. ר’ משה דוד ואלי תהלים, תקלד, מכתב יד

43.קהלת סדר של אור, יונתן גרוסמן עשהאל אבלמן

44. ר’ דוד אריה מורגנשטרן, פתחי דעת אבן העזר, חלק א,  פרו ורבו, פצוע דכה סריס ואנדרוגינוס ועוד, 544 עמודים [מצוין]
45. ר’ שלמה גריינימן, לקט השבלים, כללי המשנה ולשונותיה, ב’ חלקים, [מצוין] תתרו+תתקסו עמודים
46. ר’ מרדכי הלוי פטרפרוינד, נתיבות הוראה, בדרכי קביעת והוראת ההלכה\הכרעת המחלוקות\ והנהגת היחיד במחלוקת, תתקנ עמודים [מצוין]
47. ר’ יחיאל מיכל טוקצינסקי, שו”ת הגרימ”ט, ב’ חלקים, מכתב יד [מלא חומר חשוב]
48. ר’ קושניר, מחשבת האמת, 288 עמודים
49. ר’ קושניר, מלכודת האמת
50. ר’ יעקב ישראל יהל, נפש ישראל, אוצר ענייני פיקוח נפש, תתרסט +47 עמודים [מלא חומר חשוב]
51. ר’ יוסף עבאדי, מנהגי אר”ץ, ארם צובה

52.יד שאול לבעל שואל ומשיב, סי’ רמ-רצג

53. ר’ מרדכי רוזנבלט, הדר מרדכי, שמות מכתב יד [מצוין], מכון משנת ר’ אהרן
54. שו”ת באר עשק, מכון משנת ר’ אהרן
55. ר’ מאיר עראמה, אורים ותומים, ירמיהו
56. ר’ שמואל בן שלמה, מבאר המים, הדרת פנים, ברכת חתים, בר מצוה, מילואי
57. ר’ יוסף ענגיל, ציונים לתורה

58.ר’ יוסף סאפרין, אוצר הקדיש, פסקי הלכה ומנהג, משנת הראשונים, תקפו עמודים

59.ר’ צבי הירש גליקזאהן, חתן מרן הגר”ח, שיעורי תורת חיים

60. ר’ יצחק מאיר אירם, מכשירי חשמל בשבת,
61. חתם סופר, גנוזות, ב”מ, אגדה, ועוד

62.תשובות רב קאפח, חלק ז

63. ר’ אריה ליב ליפקין, אור היום, [בירור הלכה בענין בין השמשות וצאת הכוכבים…] [נדפס לראשונה ב1901] עם הערות ולוחות כוכבים לאור, מהדיר: ר’ משה ברוך קופמאן, 27 +רנז עמודים [להשיג עותקים בארץ ישראל, דרכי]
64. ר’ מרדכי בנעט, שו”ת פרשת מרדכי [מעניין]
65. חידושי רבינו יוסף זוסמנוביץ’, [כולל הרבה חומר מכ”י] [מצוין]
66. ר’ משה דוד וואלי, איוב
67. הכתבים שלי, החיד”א דברים שקיבל מרבו ר’ יצחק רפפורט [מכת”י]
68. ר’ אפרים בוקוולד, קו התאריך במקורות, עיון במקורות בגמרא ובראשונים, ק’ עיון ביסודות הלוח
69. ר’ אורי טיגר, זבח פסח, על רמב”ם הלכות קרבן פסח [מצוין]

70.תורת חיים על מסכת עבודה זרה, עם הערות על פי דפוס ראשון [קראקא שצ”ד] כולל השמטות הצנזורה, מבוא ותולדות, בעריכת: אברהם מנחם וויינשטיין, [המכונה NACHI בעל SEFORIM CHATTER] רנב עמודים

71. ר’ משה שבת, תורת התחייה, אסופת כוללת אודות תחיית המתים, תתג עמודים
72. ר’ יעקב תעמירלש, ספרא דצניעותא דיעקב
73. כתבי רבינו יהונתן תלמיד של ר’ חיים מוואלזין [מכתב יד]
74. ר’ יוסף יפה, עדי מסירה, הלכות ודינים של המוסר את חבירו ביד אנסים
75. ר’ שלמה תווינא, שו”ת וישב שלמה [חומר מעניין]

76.ר’ יוסף גולדברג, טובי העיר, הלכות נבחרי ציבור, תקנות ציבור, יחיד וציבור, תשל עמודים

77.ר’ יוסף גולדברג, גט מוטעה, כללים והלכות בדיני גט מוטעה, הגט מווינא, תט עמודים

78. ר’ אברהם אסולין, תורת אמך
79. כל כתבי בעל ענף חיים, ג’ חלקים, [מלא חומר מעניין]
80. ר’ אברהם אביש דאקס, אוצר הפרשה,  פרשת המן, 435 עמודים
81. מעשי למלך, הלכות ביאת המקדש
82. ר’ מאיר א”ש, דרשות אמרי יושר, דרשות, תרסב עמודים
83. השלמות ותוספות לערכים באנציקלופדיה התלמודית כרכים א-נ, מדברי מרן הגאון ר’ אברהם יצחק הכהן קוק, ובנו רבנו צבי יהודה הכהן קוק, 690 עמודים

84.מודעא לבית ישראל, ביטול מודעה, מודעה רבה: תשובות גדולי ישראל בנדון מצות מכונה בפסח, כולל מאמרים מר’ יחיאל גולדהבר ואליעזר בראדט, קיא+שיא עמודים

85.הגדה של פסח, לקוטי יוסף לרבי יוזפא שמש, מכ”י, 14+קכז עמודים

86.ר’ יוסף לובאן, אור ציון, בירור ענין החרוסת בליל הסדר, רכו+קכד עמודים

87. גאון יעקב, על טור אורח חיים, למהר”ם אלשקר, מכתב יד
88. ר’ עקיבא שטיינמן, דתי המלך, לא בשמים היא, מדרש והלכה [מעניין]
89. ר’ יהודה לביא בן דוד, שבט מיהודה, ה’ חלקים [!] [מלא וגדוש עם חומר מעניין] חלק ה ממש חדש]
90. ר’ אברהם אלטר, חמדה גנוזה, ביאורים על רות, אקדמות, מאמרים ופנינים לחג השבועות, קפו עמודים
91. ר’ אשר נדלר, אקדמות לשבועת, עם פירוש אלף בינה,

92.ר’ אליהו ברכה, מחשבות אדם, תשובות ומערכות בתלמוד ובהלכה, [מלא חומר מעניין על נושאים שונים], תשנ”ו עמודים

93. ר’ אביגדר נבנצל, הערות ופסקים ביצחק יקרא, על כל חלקים משנה ברורה
94. ר’ יהודה דרגולי, דברי יהודה, ב’ חלקים, על כללי הפסיקה והוראה כללי השלחן ערוך, כללי המנהגים והספקות על ספרים וסופרים [חומר מעניין]

95.כתבי הגרמ”א האברמן, תשובות ומכתבי תורה, דרשות והספדים מאת ר’ מרדכי האברמן [מכתב יד], בעריכת ר’ שמחה שכטר

96.ר’ משה לוי, שירת הלויים, עניינים עבודת הלויים בסוגיות הש”ס ופרשיות התורה, קפט עמודים

97. ר’ יעקב בנדיקט, ק’ שער המלך, הקשבה לחזרה השץ, לימוד בזמן חזרת השץ, מעלת אמירת אמן, פא עמודים

98.ר’ אהרן רוטנר, ק’ מדרכי אהרן, עניני נישואין, מאמרים, מנהגים, מכתבים, צה עמודים

99.ר’ חום חנן, וימצא דודאין, פסקי המשפט כנגד הקבלה

100. ר’ חנוך פאק, זכרון יוסף, תרלב עמודים
101. ר’ צבי הירש ווייס, הררים התלויים בשערה, דיני ומנהגי תגלחת הראשונה\ כיסוי הראש וטלית קטן\ סדר הכנסת הילד לחדר\ דיני ומנהגי גילוח צפרנים ושערות, מהדורה חדשה עם אלפי הוספות
102. ר’ אפרים זלוטניק, מקורי התפילה חלק ד
103. ר’ חיים ישראל בעלסקי, משנת ישראל על מסכת אבות
104. ר’ עזריאל טויבער, הגדרות אבני נזר, על פרשיות התורה ומעודים, תסד עמודים
105. היכלא יב [חומר מעניין]
106. ר’ דניאל אלתר, חדא פלפלתא, תורה ומועדים, במדבר\שבועות, תנז עמודים
107. ר’ דניאל רובין, מראה המסעות והנחלות, מסעות בני ישראל במדבר והנחלות בארץ ישראל ובעבר הירדן
108. ר’ גור אריה, שו”ת גורארי
109. ר’ משה הררי, מקראי קודש, הלכות מועדי התקומה, יום העצמאות יום ירושלים
110. ר’ אברהם בורשטין, עבודת הדביר, מה יעשו היום בבית המקדש,

From Kitzingen to London, From Berlin to Boston
Charting the Pathways of an Intriguing Siddur Translation

Yaakov Jaffe

The vast library of Koren English-language Siddurim generally follow the same translation of the prayers, authored by the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, including “The Koren Siddur” (Sacks, 2009),” The Koren Soloveitchik Siddur (2011), “The Magerman Edition” (Goldmintz, 2014), “Zimrat Ha-Aretz Birkon” (2015), ”Birkon Mesorat Harav” (Hellman, 2016), “Rav Kook Siddur” (2017), and others.  Of note is their translation of Psalm 37:25, the penultimate verse of the Grace After Meals: “Once I was young, and now I am old, yet I have never watched a righteous man forsaken or his children begging for bread.”  This translation followed an interesting path from its original formulation to the siddur, and simultaneously addresses Hebrew lexicography, theology, and poetics.  This essay will investigate the impact and origins of this translation, within the context of the original verse, Psalm 37.  

Psalm 37 and the Pursuit of Wisdom 

The 37th Psalm is one of the 8-9 acrostic Psalms (9-10, 25, 34, 37, 119, 111, 112, 119, 145); in this Psalm every letter of the Hebrew alphabet begins one long verse or two average-size verses.  The acrostic Psalms have much in common besides just their format or structure as they share common themes and also common phrases.[1] Many of the acrostic Psalms contain basic principles of Jewish thought, a basic, foundational outlook on Judaism, without some of the deeper theological musings of some of the other, non-acrostic Psalms.[2] They provide basic guidance and encouragement on how to live one’s life, without considering deeply or in any detail the outcomes of living the religious life. 

For that reason, it is common to find broad, overarching promises of good for the righteous in these chapters.  Not intended philosophically but intended educationally, they paint in broad strokes that good things befall the righteous.  Guarding one’s tongue yields life (34:12-15), Hashem saves the righteous and none of their bones are broken (34:18-23, 37:39-40, 145:19-20), the righteous person is wealthy (112:3), the righteous will inherit land (“Yirshu Aretz” 37:9, 11, 22, 29, 34), will merit peace (37:37), will be full at a time of famine (37:19), will lack nothing (34:10-11, which also appears at the end of the Grace After Meals).

Thus, the key verse in question, 37:25, “Once I was young, and now I am old, yet I have never seen/watched a righteous person forsaken or his children seeking for bread” is consistent with the wider tone of this Psalm and this type of Psalm; it speaks in simple absolutes about the benefits of religious experience without attending to the details of theodicy and the real world, practical experiences of the righteous individual.  The words “le-olam,” and “La-ad,” “forever” appear four times in the chapter (37:18, 27, 28, 29).  The chapter paints a picture for the righteous to strive for; it doesn’t describe factual realities experienced by the author and Psalmist.

Talmudic Solutions to the Problem of Psalm 37

The student of literature and poetry would, thus, not be bothered by 37:25 and its implication that no righteous person ever went hungry. The genre and tone of the Psalm indicate that the verse isn’t meant to be understood as literally describing the goings-on of the world.  It is aspirational and hortatory more than it is descriptive.

Still, the simple reading of the verse is troubling to many, especially when read out of its originally literary context. The simple translation appears to state that the Psalmist has never seen righteous never go hungry, something we know to not actually be the case. Numerous answers have been given and can be given to this question; one appears to be given in the Talmud even.  Before turning to Rabbi Sacks’s approach to the verse, we survey these earlier approaches.

Psalm 37:25 finds many parallels with 37:32-33, and it is helpful to look at these two verses side by side, with shared words in bold:

Once I was young, and now I am old, yet I have never seen/watched a righteous person forsaken or his children seeking bread.

The wicked watches for the righteous person and seeks to kill him. Hashem does not forsake him into his hands and will not cause him to be incriminated in his judgment.

The two verses share three words in common, and also convey the same idea in unequivocal terms – the righteous faces nothing bad, and is always protected by G-d.  Though the Talmud never discusses any theological problems with 37:25, it has a lengthy discussion of the parallel problem in 37:32-33, and the same Talmudic solution for the latter verse can also solve the problem with the former.

The Talmud reads (Brachot 7b): 

Rav Hunah said, what is the meaning of the verse [in Habakuk’s theodicy] ‘Why do You look at treacherous ones, are you silent when a wicked person swallows someone more righteous than him’?  Does a wicked person swallow a righteous person?  But does it not say: ‘Hashem does not forsake him into his hands’…?”  Rather, he swallows someone ‘more righteous than him,’ but he does not swallow someone who is fully righteous (Tzadik Gamur).

The Talmud provides a solution to understanding why the blessings to the righteous person of Psalm 37 are not entirely fulfilled today. The Psalm refers to someone fully righteous, with no sins or faults, a rare individual; perhaps everyone to reach this lofty status does, indeed, never lack from bed.  The Talmud uses the same phrase “fully righteous” (Tzadik Gamur) on the previous page to solve the general problem of theodicy; when there is a righteous person who faces difficult times, our interpretation is that this righteous person is not “fully righteous.”[3] This argument can apply to the entire chapter, and surely also to 37:25, the verse which shares so much which 37:32-33.  The word “Tzadik,” righteous, appears nine times in the chapter (37:12, 16, 17, 21, 25, 29, 30, 32, 39), and once the Talmud limits one of the nine to someone fully righteous, it would follow that all nine occurrences, and thus the entire chapter, only speaks of the rare, special, fully righteous Tzadik Gamur.  The word Rasha, which Brachot 7a says can similarly be limited to someone totally wicked also appears frequently in the Psalm (13 times -37:10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 20, 21, 28, 32, 34, 35, 38, 40).[4]

I have never “seen a truly righteous person forsaken,” because this unique, singular, generational figure is never forsaken by G-d, never goes starving and never lacks anything.

Other Solutions to 37:25

The literary solution to 37:25 and the Talmudic solution to 37:25 should suffice to explain the verse fully, and no additional solutions to the problem are necessary.  Still, traditional commentaries have offered many more solutions to the problem, listed below:

• Ibn Ezra and Radak explain that the righteous are never totally forsaken, lacking bread and clothing (based on Bereishit 28:15), even if they sometimes face poverty, lack, or destitution.

• Malbim explains that the speaker has never seen the righteous and his children forsaken, for any setback is temporary, and success always follows for the righteous in the next generation.  This view was also offered by Kli Yakar to Devarim 15:10.[5]
• Rabbi Sampson Raphael Hirsch explains that the righteous are never forsaken by G-d, such that even if they are impoverished, G-d sends agents, sometimes other charitable human beings, to provide for the needs of the righteous. They are not forsaken, because other people performing the Mitzvah of Tzedakah take care of them.

• Maharam Shik to Yevamot (16b) says that the verse means to say that the righteous never feel forsaken.  Even when facing difficulty, even when starving for bread, the righteous always feel Hashem is with them, and are never emotionally, spiritually alone.[6]

• Others take the descriptions of physical want as being mere metaphors of spiritual want.  Perhaps the righteous go starving, but they never lack from the real, true spiritual “bread.”[7]
• Still others offer different translations for “seen”:  I never “mocked” (Riva Bereishit 28:15), or never “understood” (Pnei Shlomoh Brachot 7a)

The Preferred Translation of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

With many possible interpretations and solutions for the line, each reader can choose the interpretation and translation that resonates best for them, and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks already expressed his preferred translation in 2005, before the publishing of his siddur translation.  In To Heal a fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility (New York: Schocken Books, 2005), Rabbi Sacks wrote (57):

I cherished an interpretation Mo Feuerstein offered (he had heard it, I think, from Rabbi Joseph Soleveitchik) of one of the most difficult lines in the Bible: ‘I was young and now am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging for bread’… The verb ‘seen’ [ra’iti] in this verse, said Feuerstein, is to be understood in the same sense as in the book of Esther: ‘How can I bear to see [ra’iti] disaster fall on my people?’ (Esth. 8:6). ‘To see’ here means ‘to stand still and watch’. The verse should thus be translated, ‘I was young and now am old, but I never merely stood still and watched while the righteous was forsaken or his children begged for bread.’ (pp. 57-58, italics in the original)

This solution is different from all the other ones, because it turns the narrator of the chapter from a passive reporter of events to an active participant in the conversation of moral action and righteousness.  Instead of passively narrating that the righteous never lack food, he makes an active statement about his own righteous action, saying that as a good person, he would never allow the righteous to go hungry.  This answer provides a wonderful interpretation for the verse, albeit one that does not exactly conform with the role of the narrator over the course of the chapter.  Out of context, however, the translation works and create a resounding charge for how we should ask.

There is no reason to doubt that Rabbi Sacks preferred this explanation, or that he heard it from Mo Feurstein, a leader of the Jewish community in Brookline, Mass. when Rabbi Sacks visited in the late 1970s.[8] There is also no reason to doubt that Mr. Feurstein had heard this explanation from one of the leading rabbis of the Brookline community at the time.  However, there is some reason to question whether this view was indeed the translation preferred by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the Rav z”l.

Beiurei Ha-Tefillah and the Rabbis of Maimonides School

There are three reasons to doubt whether the Sacks translation should be associated with the Rav z”l.  First, it seeks to solve a theological or Biblical-exegetical problem using Biblical lexicography – which was not the conventional way Rabbi Soloveitchik generally addressed Biblical or theological problems in his other writings.[9]  Second, when considering Turkel’s extensive index of the Rav’s writing, one finds no entry for Psalms 37:25.[10]  Though this index does not include every last one of the Rav’s writings, and surely also doesn’t include his oral addresses and personal conversations, its absence from the list is telling.  Ironically, the idea that the Bible asks us to respond to the experience with poverty through action and not idle speculation is an idea that finds resonance in the Rav’s writings,[11] but the author has not found this particular reading of Psalms 37:25 yet in the Rav’s writings.

The best reason to doubt the attributions can be found in the writings of Rabbi Isaiah Wohlgemuth, another leading Rabbi in Brookline at the time.  A holocaust survivor, Rabbi Wohlgemuth taught at Maimonides for decades, later focusing his attention on a course on the prayers, affectionately titled “Beiuri Ha-Tefillah.”  The course notes were later published as a book, which has since been republished a number of times.[12] and Rabbi Sacks’s preferred translation does, indeed, appear on the 231^st page of that book, without attribution to any earlier scholar by name.  Rabbi Wohlgemuth often quotes the Rav z”l in the volume, his colleague and neighbor for decades.  Why would this explanation be introduced cryptically with the words “I have seen it interpreted the following way” instead of being directly attributed to the Rav?  Given how many times the Rav is mentioned by name in the volume,[13] one imagines Rabbi Wohlgemuth heard this translation for someone else, or better still read it in the name of someone else, and not from the Rav, otherwise it would have been attributed to Rabbi Soloveitchik.

To review the provenance of the translation, we now see that Rabbi Isaiah Wohlgemuth heard or read the translation from a hitherto unidentified commentator, and that he communicated this translation to his students in Maimonides, and to other residents of the Brookline community, including Mo Feurstein or a third party who then shared the translation with Mr. Feurstein.  Mr. Feurstein shared the explanation with Rabbi Sachs, with the slight error that the view was associated with Rabbi Wohlgemuth and his teachers, and not specifically with Rabbi Soloveitchik.  But who originated the translation?  We must look back earlier to the start of the 20th century to discover who first offered this translation.

The Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary

Before moving to Boston, Rabbi Isaiah Wohlgemuth’s (1915-2008) first position was in Kitzingen, Germany, a Rabbinical post he began after concluding the Hildesheimer Rabbinical  Seminary in Berlin in 1937, shortly before the school was closed upon the eve of the Holocaust.[14] One of the teachers in the Seminary who died shortly before Rabbi Wohlgemuth attended, was Dr. Abraham Berliner, best known for his critical edition of Rashi’s Bible Commentary and his work behind the Mekitzei Nirdamim publishing society.[15] Berliner also wrote a short work on prayer, later translated into Hebrew and published by Mossad Ha-Rav Kook.

In a short paragraph at the end of a chapter of collected short notes on the siddur, Berliner suggests the same very reading found in the Sacks translation, noting that it goes against the exegetical tradition found in the Book of Psalms, and nevertheless offers the idea as his own, with the proof text from Esther cited above.[16] Berliner is the first and the only translator to offer this interpretation and not to cite it in the name of any other source, and so it is fair to say that he is the original author of this translation.[17] Thus, even if the Rav was part of the chain of the transmission of the insight, it ought not be attributed to him, given that Berliner had already began to circulate the insight when the Rav z”l was only nine years old.

Though Berliner had passed away before Rabbi Wohlgemuth arrived at the seminary, there were less than 20 years in between the two, and so the insight was either passed down orally in Berlin and possibly also accessible through Berliner’s book in the seminary.  Given that Berliner was essentially unknown to his students at Maimonides – in noted contradistinction to the Rav – Rabbi Wohlgemuth intentionally chose not to provide his name when sharing the idea with his students. But he had read the idea in the name of Berliner, not in the name of the Rav.

Chains of Transmission

The Siddur is one of the biggest repositories of the Jewish tradition – recited daily in synagogues and in homes, with a safely guarded set of customs for each Jewish community.  So much of what we say today can be traced back to a specific historical moment of time, and each generation adds a new element or aspect to the siddur.  Users of the Koren siddur now can appreciate the lengthy and somewhat circuitous history of their translation.  Birthed by Dr. Abraham Berliner in Berlin in the early 20th century, a young Rabbi Isaiah Wohlgemuth learned the idea in the late 1930s and brough the insight out of the destruction of the holocaust to Brookline and Boston by way of a small synagogue in Kitzingen.  A major community leader, Moses Feurstein heard the insight in Boston in the 1960s, internalized its message, and then shared it with a young Rabbi Jonathan Sacks upon his visit to Brookline in the late 1970s.  Rabbi Sacks treasured the idea for decades, returning to it in his writings and his siddur translation, back in Europe although now in London, publishing it in the Koren siddur roughly one century after the idea was first formed.  London and Berlin are less than 600 miles apart as the crow flies, but ideas sometimes take a somewhat more complicated route to get from one place to another.  And anyone using said siddur now continues the path of insight, from Europe to your own home, wherever it may be.

Life After Death: The Afterlife of Tombstone Inscriptions in the Old Jewish Cemetery of Vilna

By Shnayer Leiman

The ultimate purpose of any Jewish cemetery is to provide a resting place, with dignity, for the Jewish dead. Jewish law and custom have played a major role in regulating almost every aspect of burial from the moment of death through the funeral itself, the period of mourning that follows the funeral, and – ultimately – the erection of a tombstone over the grave.[1] Once the tombstone is in place, the living return to the cemetery for occasional visits, usually on the anniversary of the death (yahrzeit) of a dear one, or to pray at the grave of a righteous rabbi or ancestor in a moment of need.

And, of course, the living return to the cemetery in order to attend the funerals of others. But the last mentioned occurs only in “living” cemeteries, i.e. cemeteries that still bury the dead. But, at some point, cemeteries run out of space, and/or are forced to close by municipal ordinance. In 1830, after serving Vilna’s Jewish community for well over 250 years, the Jewish cemetery ran out of space and the municipal authorities forced it to close.[2] It was no longer a “living”cemetery and it transitioned into a pilgrimage site, where Jews came to pray at their ancestors’ graves, and at the graves of the great Jewish heroes of the past.

Any such transition comes at a cost. It became necessary to provide for the security of the cemetery, despite the lack of income from regular funerals. Guards had to be hired, fences had to be built and repaired, caretakers had to maintain the cemetery grounds, and guides had to be provided for those searching for specific graves in the cemetery. In this brief essay we will focus on only one interesting phenomenon: the need to identify “celebrity” graves, and to create markers, often on the tombstones themselves, that identified the person buried at the foot of the tombstone as a celebrity, or as a close relative of a celebrity (e.g., אם הגאון רבינו אליהו “The Mother of the Gaon R. Eliyahu [of Vilna],” and אבי הרב הגאונים ר‘ חיים ור“ש זלמן מוואלאזין “The Father of the Rabbis and Gaonim R. Hayyim and R. S[hlomo] Zalman of Volozhin ).[3] Clearly, this need was made necessary – in large part – by the wear and tear on the tombstone inscriptions that made many of them almost impossible to read by the end of the19^th century. But it was also made necessary by the passage of time, when a younger generation no longer recognized the names of the deceased, who often were the parents or spouses of celebrities of the past and present.

Our evidence will come mostly from photographs of tombstones in the Old Jewish Cemetery taken during the first decades of the 20^th century.[4] These will be supplemented by the hand copies of the same tombstones published mostly in the second half of the 19^th century.[5] First, a word of caution.

While photographs don’t lie, they often mislead. Thus, a recent work – and a superb one at that – on the leading 20^th century rabbinic figure in Vilna’s long history of rabbinic scholars, i.e., Rabbi Hayyim Ozer Grodzenski (d. 1940), inadvertently suggests that R. Mordechai Meltzer (1797-1883), a distinguished 19^th century Vilna Talmudist, was buried in the Old Jewish cemetery of Vilna.[6] The suggestion is based upon a poor photograph of a group of graves in the Old Jewish cemetery. The Hebrew legend under the photograph reads “The tombstone of the Gaon Rabbi Mordechai Meltzer in Vilna.” Here is the photograph, as it appears in the volume, p. 180:

With a magnifying glass, one can barely make out above the second tombstone from the right, the title and name: הרב הגאון ר‘ מרדכי מעלצער “The Rabbi and Gaon R. Mordechai Meltzer.” Since the third tombstone from the right is clearly identifiable as marking the grave of R. Abraham Danzig (d. 1820), a distinguished Vilna rabbinic scholar who was certainly buried in the Old Jewish cemetery, there is perhaps some reason to think that R. Mordechai Meltzer was, in fact, buried next to him, in the same cemetery.[7]

Interestingly, the author himself states openly the Rabbi Meltzer left Vilna and ultimately served as Rabbi of Lida (today in Belarus), “where he died in 1883.” Apparently, the author assumes that Rabbi Meltzer died in Lida, but was somehow brought to burial in the Old Jewish cemetery of Vilna.

Alas, it cannot be, for many reasons. Among them:

a) R. Mordechai Meltzer died in 1883. The Old Jewish cemetery was officially closed in 1830. No Jew was buried in the Old Jewish cemetery after 1830. From 1831 until 1941, all Jews who died in Vilna, including its most famous rabbis in that period, were buried in the Zaretcha Jewish cemetery (Vilna’s second Jewish cemetery).

b) R. Mordechai Meltzer, after serving 19 years as Chief Rabbi of Lida, was buried in Lida. A mausoleum was built over his grave, one of the few in the Lida Jewish cemetery, and it became a major pilgrimage site until it was destroyed during the Holocaust and its aftermath.[8]

c) More importantly, here is a clear photograph of the tombstone misidentified in the Grodzenski biography. The photograph will also introduce the first of 6 samples of celebrity markers on tombstones.

Sample1. R. Asher Klatzko (d. 1820).[9]

The second tombstone from the right is that of Rabbi Asher Klatzko (d. 1820), father of Rabbi Mordechai Meltzer. One can still read (in the photo) the original epitaph that mentions Asher and his father’s name, Isaac.[10] [Asher was a great talmudic scholar in his own right, and no one would have marked his grave in 1820 with an epitaph that mentions his 23 year-old son, Mordechai, who held no official position at the time. But in 1860 or so, long after the cemetery was no longer a living cemetery, few remembered who “R. Asher son of R. Isaac” was, but everyone knew who R. Mordechai Meltzer was: the head of Vilna’s Ramajles (ראמיילעס) Yeshiva during the first half of the 19^th century, an official rabbi of Vilna with the title מורה צדק, teacher of Vilna’s most distinguished rabbis, and among the Vilna leaders who officially greeted Moses Montefiore when he visited Vilna in 1846.[11] And so the top of the tombstone frame was marked:

הוא אבי הרב הגאון ר‘ מרדכי מעלצער “He [Asher, the person buried here] is the father of the Rabbi and Gaon, R. Mordechai Meltzer.” The message seems to be clear: This is a celebrity related grave, not to be overlooked. This is our first sample of a phenomenon that characterizes the Old Jewish cemetery in its second phase, i.e. after it was no longer a living cemetery. Aside from repairing broken tombstones and re-inking the faded epitaphs, the cemetery authorities saw a need to introduce markers that provided new information that identified celebrity graves of one kind or another. Nor did the cemetery authorities hesitate to post those markers on the original tombstones themselves, when there was sufficient space to do so.

Sample 2. R. Yehuda Leib Gordon (d. circa 1825).

The third tombstone from the right, whose epitaph (in the center of the tombstone) is no longer legible, and is not recorded elsewhere, was accorded a celebrity inscription which reads: פ“נ חותן הרב הגאון ר‘ מרדכי מעלצער “Here lies buried the father-in-law of the Rabbi and Gaon, R. Mordechai Meltzer.” The father-in-law, R. Yehudah Leib Gordon, was a member of a distinguished Vilna family that produced a long line of communal leaders and rabbis.[12]

Sample 3. R. Yosef b. R. Shmuel Zaskewitz (d. 1829).

In the same photo as at Sample 2 above, the first tombstone at the right has a celebrity marker at its top. The outer rim of its rooftop reads:

י[פ“נ ה]רבני המופלג מו“ה יוסף [בן ה]אב“ד דק“ק זאסקעווץ “Here lies buried the outstanding rabbinic authority, our teacher and rabbi Yosef, son of the Chief Rabbi of Zaskewitz.” Inside the rooftop, a celebrity marker has been added. It reads: אבי הרב הגאון ר‘ שמואל שטראשון “The Father of the Rabbi and Gaon, R. Shmuel Strashun.” By 1860 or so, few knew who R. Yosef b. R. Shmuel Zaskewitz was. But every learned Jew in Vilna knew precisely who R. Shmuel Strashun was,[13] and so R. Yosef was now properly identified as the father of R. Shmuel Strashun.[14]

Sample 4. R. Baruch b. R. Shmuel Zaskewitz (d. 1829).

In the same photo as at Sample 2 above, adjacent to R. Yosef b. Shmuel, rests his brother R. Barukh, who also died in 1829. Not surprisingly, he too was accorded a celebrity marker. It reads: דד הרב הגאון ר‘ שמואל שטראשון “The uncle of the Rabbi and Gaon, R. Shmuel Strashun.” In case you don’t know who R. Baruch was, now you know.[14a]

Sample 5. R. Zvi Hirsch b. R. David ha-Levi (d. 1830).

In the same photo as at Sample 2 above, at the extreme left, is the tombstone of R. Zvi Hirsch of Libau, who served with distinction as the lead cantor of the Great Synagogue of Vilna from 1822 until his death in 1830. The original epitaph is legible in the photograph, and has been recorded.[15] It makes no mention of his son. At a later date, perhaps in the 1860’s or later (see below), few remembered who R. Zvi Hirsch was, but everyone knew who his son was. Indeed his son not only eclipsed his father as a cantor, he eclipsed every cantor who would ever serve as lead cantor of Vilna. The son, the legendary “Vilner Balabesel” (Yiddish for: young and married householder in Vilna), R. Yoel David Strashunsky, succeeded his father upon his death in 1830, only 14 years old at the time. At that young age, there was much communal strife as to whether it was appropriate for him to serve as the lead cantor. It was decided that he would share the post with an older cantor until 1836, when in fact, he became the sole lead cantor. There was more trouble ahead, when in 1842 he left Vilna for Warsaw, where he performed in public concerts of operatic music. Ultimately he suffered from severe depression, and – on and off – either lost his voice, or lost his interest in serving as a cantor. He died in a hospital for the mentally ill in Warsaw in 1850, and was buried in Warsaw. He was 34 years old at the time of his death.[16] And so R. Zvi Hirsch too was accorded posthumous celebrity status. The inscription added to the rooftop portion of his tombstone reads:

פ“נ הש“ץ מק“ק ליפי ופה ק“ק ווילנא אבי ר‘ יואל דוד ש“ץ דפה “Here lies buried the Cantor from the holy community of Libau and [who also served] here in the holy community of Vilna, the father of R. Yoel David, the Cantor [who served] here.”

Some, but hardly all, of the celebrity markers include the date when they were installed by the cemetery authorities. It is of particular interest to establish the date when R. Yoel David’s name was entered on his father’s tombstone, given the controversy that surrounded his name. It just happens to be that in the case of R. Zvi Hirsch of Libau, the celebrity marker included the date of its instillation, at least initially, but it no longer is entirely legible. The text at the bottom of the rooftop inscription reads:

 _ _נתחדש ע“י גבאי דצ“ג בשנת תר “It [the grave site][17] was refurbished by the adjutants of the Zedakah Gedolah Society[18] in the year [5]6_ _.” The last two digits are illegible, leaving us with a range of years between 1840 and 1939. We can quickly close the gap a bit, since the photograph at Sample 2 was taken circa 1913.[19] Interestingly, the neighboring grave site just to the right of that of R.Zvi Hirsch Libau in the photograph at Sample 2, was also refurbished by the Zedakah Gedolah Society, and the date of instillation of its new inscription is included. It is the grave site of a pious woman named Roza, about whom we know almost nothing, other than the fact that she died in 1830 or earlier and was buried in the Old Jewish cemetery of Vilna. The text in the rooftop inscription reads: פ“נ ה[אשה] הצנועה המפורסמת מ[רת] רוזא. נתחדש ע“י גבאי דצ“ג בשנת תרע“ג

“Here lies buried Mrs. Roza, the woman renowned for her modesty. It [the grave site] was refurbished by the adjutants of the Zedakah Gedolah Society in the year 673.”[20] The Hebrew year [5]673 was mostly in 1913. Almost certainly, both these grave sites were refurbished at the same time, in 1913. By that year, Yoel David Strashunsky was a legendary figure not only in Vilna, but indeed throughout the world of Yiddish speaking Jews. We will examine one more interesting celebrity marker that, as an aside, provides linguistic support for our dating of the R. Zvi Hirsch of Libau celebrity marker to circa 1913.

Sample 6. R. Shmuel b. R. Hayyim Shebsils (d. 1818).[21

Little is known about him, other than that he was a distinguished talmudic scholar, pedigreed, wealthy, charitable, and modest. He adopted the surname Landau, and one of his sons, R. Yitzchak Eliyahu Landau (1801-1876), was appointed rabbi and official preacher (מורה צדק ומגיד מישרים) of Vilna in 1868. Landau was a remarkable preacher and a prolific author who left an indelible impression on all who knew him. In 1870, among many other charitable deeds, he personally raised the funds necessary to rebuild the fence that surrounded the entire Old Jewish cemetery, where his father was buried.[22]

When his father died in 1818, there was no reason for the epitaph on his father’s tombstone to make mention of his 17 year old son. But this would change in 1912, if not earlier. As can be seen on the photo, the outer rim of the tombstone’s rooftop reads: פה מצבת הרב ר‘ שמואל בהרב ר‘ חיים שבתילס “Here is the tombstone of the rabbi R. Shmuel, son of the rabbi R. Hayyim Shebsils [sic].” Inside the rooftop, a celebrity marker has been added. It reads:

אבי הרב ר‘ יצחק אליהו לנדא מ“מ דפה “ Father of the rabbi R. Yitzchak Eliyahu Landau, [who served as] official preacher here.” Just under, and to the right, of the inscription on the outer rim, one reads: נתחדש ע“י גבאי דצ“ג בשנת תרע“ב “Refurbished by the adjutants of the Zedakah Gedolah Society in the year 672.” The Hebrew year [5]672 was mostly in 1912. Here too, few, if anyone, really remembered who R. Shmuel b. R. Hayyim Shebsils was, but every learned Jew knew who R. Yitzchak Eliyahu Landau was. Gems from his sermons were repeated orally, and his books were published and republished in Vilna, Warsaw, and elsewhere. A celebrity marker was necessary in order to identify R. Shmuel b. R. Hayyim Shebsils.

It is interesting to note that the celebrity markers that highlight the names of Cantor Yoel David Strashunsky and Official Preacher R. Yitzchak Eliyahu Landau, share a specific – and ambiguous – Hebrew turn of phrase. Cantor Yoel David is called ש“ץ דפה and R. Yitzchak Eliyahu is called מ“מ דפה. The term דפה can be rendered as present tense: “who presently serves as…” or past tense: “who served as…” I have preferred the latter sense in the English translations above, largely because in the case of R. Yitzchak Eliyahu Landau, the date of the refurbishing is clearly given as 1912. R. Yitzchak Eliyahu Landau was surely no longer alive in1912; as indicated above, he died in 1876. But it is possible that the celebrity markers come from an even earlier period, and were entered on the tombstones during the lifetime of Strashunsky (in the 1840’s) and Landau (in the 1870’s). When the ink faded, they were redone in 1912.

What argues against this possibility, however, is the written record. None of the 19^th century publications of the tombstone inscriptions discussed in this essay record (or even seem to be aware of) any of the celebrity markers.

In sum, our purpose has been to introduce a topic – the afterlife of tombstone inscriptions – that needs to be developed and applied to many Jewish cemeteries, sooner rather than later.[23] Our purpose has not been to present an exhaustive treatment of celebrity markers – one category of the afterlife of tombstone inscriptions — in the Old Jewish cemetery of Vilna. That would require much research, and would result in a hefty monograph, both of which are well beyond our means. The few samples we examined, however, surely serve to underscore the fact that the study of the afterlife of tombstone inscriptions remains a scholarly desideratum.

Notes

[1] For a comprehensive bibliography on the Jewish cemetery, see Falk Wiesemann, Sepulcra Judaica: Jewish Cemeteries, Death, Burial and Mourning from the Period of Hellenism to the Present, A Bibliography (Essen: Druckerei Runge, 2005). For an eminently readable summary of contemporary Jewish halakhic practice and custom relating to erecting tombstones and visiting graves, see Chaim Binyamin Goldberg, Mourning and Halachah: The Laws and Customs of the Year of Mourning (New York: Mesorah Publications, 14^th edition, 2012), pp. 382-399.
[2] [] See Israel Klausner, קורות בית–העלמין הישן בוילנה (Wilno: An-ski Jewish Historical and Ethnographical Society of Vilna, 1935), pp. 30-32.
[3] For these markers, see the photographs below:

a) 

b) 

a) Tombstone of R. Yitzhak b. R. Hayyim of Volozhin, and just behind it, the tombstone of Traina, mother of the Gaon of Vilna.
b) Frontal view of Traina’s tombstone (in the center of the photograph, and to the right of R. Yitzhak b. R. Hayyim of Volozhin’s tombstone).

R. Yitzhak b. R. Hayyim died in 1780. At the time, his son R. Hayyim of Volozhin was 31 years old, and had just recently been appointed Rabbi of Volozhin, hardly a large and significant Jewish community in Lithuania at the time. The Yeshiva of Volozhin was not founded until 1802. R. Yitzhak’s son R. Shlomo Zalman was 24 years old when his father died, and relatively unknown. Indeed, R. Yitzhak’ eldest son, R. Simhah, 39 years old at the time, and a practicing rabbi, is not even mentioned by the marker. Clearly, the markers come from a much later period when R. Hayyim and R. Shlomo Zalman were the only names (of R. Yitzhak’s 5 sons) that were known widely by learned Jews, and by visitors to the Old Jewish cemetery of Vilna. For R. Hayyim of Volozhin, see, e.g., Dov Eliach, אבי הישיבות (Jerusalem: Moreshet ha-Yeshivot, revised and expanded edition, 2012); and Shaul Stampfer, Lithuanian Yeshivas of the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2015), pp. 15-47. For his younger brother R. Shlomo Zalman, see, e.g., R. Yehezkel Feivel, תולדות אדם השלם (Jerusalem: Makhon Moreshet ha-Gra, 2012).

For the little that is known about Traina, who died in 1742, see Bezalel Landau, הגאון החסיד מוילנא (Jerusalem: Torah mi-Ziyyon, third edition, 1978), p. 15, note 14; and Dov Eliach, הגאון (Jerusalem: Moreshet ha-Yeshivot, 2002), vol. 1, pp. 66-70. For the epitaph on her tombstone, see Klausner, op. cit., p. 56. The marker was surely added after the lifetime of Gaon of Vilna (d.1797), who would not have tolerated seeing the title “Gaon” next to his name, permanently etched in stone as it were, in the Old Jewish cemetery. In photo b, one can actually see how an earlier marker on the upper portion of the tombstone, “פ“נ אם הגאון רבינו אליהו“, after fading away, was replaced by new marker “פ“נ אם הגר“א” .
[4] Photographs of Vilna’s Old Jewish cemetery abound in a wide variety of publications and periodicals in different languages. These include: Hebrew (e.g., Y. Kremerman, מוילנא ‘ירושלים דליטא‘ עד חיפה [n.p: privately published, 1995]); Yiddish (e.g., Leyzer Ran, אש פון ירושלים ד‘ליטא [New York: Wilner Ferlag, 1959]); Russian (e.g., G. Agranovskii and I. Guzenberg, Litovskii Ierusalim [Vilnius: Lituanus, 1992]); Lithuanian (e.g., K. Binkis and P. Tarulis, Vilnius 1323-1923 [Kaunas-Vilnius: Švyturio Bendroves Leidinys, 1923]); German (e.g., Paul Monty, Wanderstunden in Wilna [Wilna: Verlag der Wilnaer Zeitung, 1916]); and English (e.g., Gerard Silvain and Henri Minczeles, Yiddishland [Corte Madera, CA: Ginko Press, 1999]), and total many more publications than can possibly be listed here. Postcard reproductions of photos were produced and sold before, during, and after World War I, serving as a major source for some of the publications mentioned above. Some of these photos are posted on line in various collections of ephemera. Numerous photos, not yet published, are available in private collections. All the photos in this essay (with the exception of the misidentified photo in the recently published Grodzenski volume) are from original photographs and postcards in my possession. Artists have also depicted a variety of scenes from the Old Jewish cemetery (e.g., Walter Buhe, “Wilnaer Judenfriedhof,” 1916; a copy can be viewed online at the Wikipedia entry for Walter Buhe, sub: Images for Walter Buhe).
[5] The hand copies were published mostly by Samuel Joseph Fuenn, קריה נאמנה, second edition (Vilna: Notes and Schweilik, 1915), henceforth: Fuenn; Hillel Noah Steinschneider, עיר ווילנא (Vilna: Romm Publishing Company, 1900), henceforth: Steinschneider; and Israel Klausner (see above, note 2), henceforth: Klausner.
[6] R. Dovid Kamenetsky, רבנו חיים עוזר: רבן של כל בני הגולה (Jerusalem: n.p., 2021), volume 1.
[7] Our author may have been misled by Leyzer Ran, ירושלים דליטא (New York: Wilner Verlag, 1974), vol. 1, p. 101, who mistakenly identified the same photograph as containing the graves of both R. Mordechai Meltzer and R. Abraham Danzig in the Old Jewish cemetery of Vilna. The same error appears in Y. Kremerman (see above, note 4), p. 267.
[8] See R. Mordechai Meltzer’s posthumous publication, תכלת מרדכי (Vilna: Matz, 1889). On the reverse side of the second title page, the full text of the lengthy epitaph on his tombstone in Lida appears in print. A short biography appears on pp. 20-24, which makes mention of the mausoleum constructed over his grave, and that it has become a pilgrimage site. Cf. A. Manor et al, eds., ספר לידא (Tel-Aviv: Or-Li Publishers, 1970), pp. 91-92.
[9] See Steinschneider, p. 122, note 1.
[10] Klausner, p. 75, notes that the inner epitaph was no longer extant in 1935.
[11] See Isaac Meyer Dik, האורח (Vilna, 1846), pp. 30-31. The place and date of publication are uncertain; and the volume may have been co-authored. For bibliographical discussions, see the sources cited in the entry האורח in מפעל הביבליוגרפיה העברית accessed at:  https://uli.nli.org.il/permalink/972NNL_ULI_C/4upfj/alma99682727008422).
[12] Steinschneider, pp. 123 and 194.
[13] For R.Shmuel Strashun, see Zvi Harkavy’s “,תולדות רש“ש וכתביו” appended to his edition of מקורי הרמב“ם לרש“ש (Jerusalem: ha-Eretz Yisraelit, 1957), pp. 53-58. Cf. David Abraham, פנקסו של שמואל (Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushalayim, 2011).
[14] For the text of the inner epitaph, see Fuenn, pp. 254-255.
[14a] See note 14.
[15] Klausner, p. 74.
[16] A vast literature has developed regarding the history and legends surrounding the life of R. Yoel David Strashunsky. These include novels, plays, and film productions. For one of the many failed attempts to distinguish fact from fiction, but fascinating nonetheless, see Samuel Vigoda, Legendary Voices (New York: M.P. Press, 1981), pp. 390-427.

Some of the more important scholarly studies are: Hillel Noah Steinschneider “תולדות הש“ץ הנפלא מווילנא ר‘ יואל דוד לעוווענשטיין” in תלפיות (Berditchev, 1895), part 12, pp. 8-13; Abraham Z. Idelsohn, “תולדות הש“ץ יואל דוד ‘בעל הבית‘ל” in Hebrew Union College Monthly 20 (May-June 1933), pp. 27-29; Isaac Schiper, “אונבעקאנטע ארכיון– מאטעריאלען וועגען דעם אויפהאלט פון ווילנער ‘בעל–הבית‘ל “אין ווארשא אין יהאר 1842 Haynt, September 23, 1934, p. 9; Silja Haller et al, eds., Joachim Stutchewsky Der Wilnaer Balebessel (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 2013; and James Loeffler, “Promising Harmonies: The Aural Politics of Polish-Jewish Relations in the Russian Empire,” Jewish Social Studies 20:3 (2014), pp. 1-36 (especially pp. 19-25). קבר
[17] I translate “grave site” [for Hebrew קבר] rather than “tombstone” [for Hebrew מצבה], for –strictly speaking – the form נתחדש can only be the passive verbal form for a masculine noun. But I have some doubts about whether the sign painters in 19^th and 20^th century Vilna cared very much about Hebrew grammar. See below, in the center of the photograph at Sample 6, where the celebrity marker at the top refers to מצבת, yet under it, the marker specifically states נתחדש. In any event, the masculine noun קבר, ordinarily rendered “grave,” bears secondary meanings including “grave site” and “tombstone.” See Klausner, passim, who uses the term regularly for “grave site” and “tombstone; and cf. A. Even-Shoshan, מלון אבן-שושן (Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, 2003), vol. 5, p. 1623.
[18] The Zedakah Gedolah Society was Jewish Vilna’s official communal institution in charge of public welfare. Given the rampant poverty that prevailed throughout much of Vilna’s Jewish history, this was one of the most important institutions in Vilna. It assumed even greater significance when the Czarist regime abolished Jewish Vilna’s “Kahal” structure in 1844. One of the Zedakah Gedolah’s many tasks was to provide the lion’s share of the funding necessary for the upkeep of Vilna’s Jewish cemeteries. See Israel Cohen, Vilna (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1943), pp. 121-122; cf. Israel Klausner, וילנה ירושלים דליטא: דורות הראשונים 1495-1881 (Tel-Aviv: Kibbutz Ha-Me’uhad, 1988), pp. 393-394. For a vivid description of how the Zedakah Gedolah provided Passover aid for the poor in late 19^th century Vilna, see David Livni, ירושלים דליטא (Tel-Aviv, 1930), vol. 1, pp. 9-43. With the advent of World War I, it fell into a period of steady decline and would ultimately be liquidated under Polish rule in 1931. See Israel Cohen, op. cit., pp. 394-397; and cf. Andrew N. Koss, “Two Rabbis and a Rebbetzin: The Vilna Rabbinate during the First World War,” European Judaism 48:1 (2015), pp. 120-122.
[19] It is clearly a Jan Bulhak photograph, taken between 1912-1915 at the Old Jewish cemetery.
[20] The date תרע“ג = [5]673 = 1913, and not תרס“ג = [5]663 = 1903, is confirmed by several different photographs, taken from different angles, of Roza’s grave site (in my personal collection of Vilna materials).
[21] Fuenn, p. 230 and cf. his Introduction, p. xxxi. R. Hayyim’s father’s name was Shabsai. For the form “Shebsil” derived from “Shabsai,” see Alexander Beider, A Dictionary of Ashkenazic Given Names (Avotaynu: Bergenfield, 2001), pp. 409-411.
[22] Steinschneider, p. 97. For the date, see the essay “דער אלטער בית עולם” authored by “ב–מ–ב” in the weekly ווילנער וואכענבלאט, August 12, 1910, pp. 2-3.
[23] Anyone who has frequented, for example, the old Jewish cemeteries in Frankfurt, Mainz, Worms, Prague, and Cracow, will know that celebrity markers are commonplace and mostly late, and that many faded tombstones have been re-inked, often wrongly. Sadly, even the Gaon of Vilna’s epitaph, while yet in the Old Jewish cemetery, was – in part – re-inked wrongly. See the discussion of the Gaon’s epitaph in my “The Paper Brigade’s Recording of Epitaphs in Vilna’s Old Jewish Cemetery: A Literary Analysis,” The Seforim Blog, February 26, 2024 (SeforimBlog.com). It should also be noted that there are different categories of celebrity markers, such as large maps or lists of famous names (often encased in glass) at the cemetery entrance, arrows posted along the route to a celebrity grave, new inscriptions on old tombstones or mausoleums, and entirely redone tombstones (enlarged and enhanced to underscore their celebrity status). I am indebted to Marcin Wodzinski (Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Wroclaw in Poland), who in a personal communication kindly informed me about yet another factor that plays a role in celebrity markers: the material out of which a tombstone is made, and its malleability. If you cannot easily engrave an inscription on a tombstone, others ways will be found to mark a celebrity grave. Thus, local geophysical factors may well influence the kind of celebrity markers used in a particular cemetery.