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A Conversation With Professor Marcin Wodziński on Hasidism

A Conversation With Professor Marcin Wodziński on Hasidism
By Rabbi Yitzchok Frankfurter

This article appeared in Ami Magazine July 11, 2018/ 28 Tamuz 5778 and is reprinted here with permission.

This is not my first conversation with the Polish scholar Marcin Wodzinski. In 2013, following the release of his book on chasidism and politics, he visited my office together with the well-known askan Reb Duvid Singer. Today as then, my conversation with him elicits paradoxical emotions. His knowledge of chasidism, particularly its roots and subsequent development, is shockingly broad. In fact, many chasidim turn to him for information about their origins, and Professor Wodzinski’s research has saved for posterity much of that history.
Of course, the mere fact that chasidism, a vibrant Jewish movement that once thrived in Eastern Europe and Russia, has been reduced to a scholarly discipline for a Polish academician is saddening. Poland was once the center of chasidic and Jewish life in general, but it now has very few Jews living there. And it goes without saying that Poland is devoid of any vibrant Jewish culture.
“That loss,” he tells me, “is very acutely felt in Poland on many levels. One significant expression of this is the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. I was its head historian for some time, as well as the chief designer of the gallery that depicts the 19th century. Three years after its opening, it is now the most successful museum in Poland.”
Unfortunately, it hurts to hear that, because that is precisely what Hitler was trying to accomplish. The Nazis wanted to reduce Jews and Judaism to relics and artifacts found only in a museum, and I tell the sympathetic professor as much.
“That’s true, but I would say that Poland as a country can’t do anything about it because there are so few Jews living there. But in terms of recognizing the tragedy and the loss and as an expression of pain, this museum is extremely important. And there are many other examples of how the non-Jewish community is trying to integrate an understanding of Jewish culture into what it means to be Polish today. There are at least four centers of academic Jewish studies in the country, which is the same number that exists in Israel. Each center has many scholars who are doing valuable research and earning PhDs in the subject. These schools attract people who want to study Jewish history and culture. Many of them write important articles and books that are read by a lot of Poles.
“The Jews are not an extinct race,” he says with fervor, “and this notion among Poles is even stronger today than it was 50 and 100 years ago, when Polish culture was very antagonistic towards Jews and sought to exclude them. Today, an increasing number of people realize that you can’t understand Poland without understanding the Jews.”
Field of Study
Marcin hails from a town in Poland that is 50 kilometers away from Breslau, or Wrocław as it is known in Polish, which before the Holocaust was the epicenter of the haskalah, rather than chasidism. Yet ironically, it was the chasidic movement that drew his interest.
“Of course. There weren’t any chasidim here. The city of Wrocław is best-known for the Beit Midrash l’Rabbanim, which was part of the so-called Conservative movement. Abraham Geiger, who one of the leaders of the Reform movement, was also quite active in Wrocław for over two decades. And the Jewish historian Heinrich Groetz spent his entire academic Marcin Wodzinski accompanying chasidim at a kever. Seen in the background is Reb Duvid Singer. life at its university,” he tells me when I confide in him that given his place of birth and alma mater (he also attended the University of Wrocław), I find his interest in chasidism rather peculiar. “But there were also some important chasidic books that were published in Wrocław, such as the first edition of Kol Simchah, which is the collected teachings of Rav Simchah Bunim of Peshischa.”
“So you’re a goy,” I tease him, “born in the birthplace of the maskilim, but chasidism became your field of interest.”
“That’s right!” he replies good-naturedly. “I’m trying to bridge ideas and interests. My interest in Jewish history and culture began with Jewish cemeteries, which was very typical at the time because it was the most visible presence of both the Jewish presence and absence in Poland in the 1980s. I learned Hebrew so I could write down the inscriptions, and I was fascinated by seeing the rebirth of chasidic pilgrimages to the gravesites of tzaddikim in Lizhensk, Peshischa, Lublin and other places. Then I started researching chasidic life, which is what I’ve been involved in for the past three decades.
“Two weeks ago I published a book called An Historical Atlas of Hasidism, which is going to be very important for chasidic studies. It contains 280 pages of full-color maps and images from the inception of chasidism until today. The maps present an entirely new way of understanding the movement, and there are a lot of previously unknown historical images. The book was published by the prestigious Princeton University Press.
“I also recently published a book entitled Hasidism: Key Questions. That one was printed by Oxford University Press. That is the volume of which I am the most proud, as it summarizes my entire investigation into chasidism. It has seven chapters, each of which addresses a different central question: the definition of chasidus, women in chasidism, chasidic leadership and the role of a tzaddik, the demographics of chasidim historically and today, the geography of where they lived, the economics of chasidic life, and finally, the end of chasidus in Eastern Europe and how it moved to the United States and Israel. I put forth the argument that this shift was not only because of World War II but actually started during the First World War. The book has around 350 pages.”
“What do you think you’ve added to the understanding of chasidus?” I ask.
“There are several things that are unique about my work. First of all, I am equally interested in the lives of the rank-and-file chasidim as I am in the lives of the tzaddikim. To me, a tzaddik isn’t a leader if he doesn’t have followers. That is why I believe that much of the research so far has been misguided by omitting the tzaddik’s thousands of followers from the picture. I think it’s critically important to understand not only the teachings of the great chasidic minds but also—and perhaps more so—to understand how they reached the simple folk and affected their lives. Another innovation in my work is that I don’t just delve into intellectual topics. I also look at the social, economic and other aspects of history, which are aspects that have only been properly addressed by very few scholars. This results in an entirely different perspective.
“But perhaps most importantly, the vast majority of scholarship on chasidism has focused on its early years. We know quite a lot about the Baal Shem Tov and Rav Dovber of Mezritch, and we know some things about their disciples, but we know very little about chasidism in the 19th and early-20th centuries before the Holocaust. We know about some leaders, but very little about the lives of the chasidic communities. Both of these two recent books expand the scope of interest. I call the 19th century the ‘golden age’ of chasidism, because that’s when the number of people who considered themselves chasidim reached its peak. There were many regions of central Poland, Galicia and Volhynia [the region where Ukraine, Poland and Belarus meet] where chasidim constituted the majority of Jews, and it’s critically important to understand what their lives were like then.”
“How much of the actual Torah of the tzaddikim do you study? Is it something you consider necessary for your research, or do you completely ignore it?”
“Obviously, there are many people who are bigger experts on that than I am. I’m not even an am haaretz; I’m a goy!” he says unapologetically, “so it’s not really something for me to study.”
“So you don’t think it’s important or that you’re missing something in your research?”
“It’s obviously important, and that’s why many people study it. But I can’t do everything. I do need to understand the chasidic concepts, but I don’t study them myself; I read what other scholars have written. That’s the best I can do. I can’t be a specialist on everything. What I’m trying to do is to show that beyond Torah, there is a huge area of chasidic life that hasn’t been properly looked into, such as the relative power of individual groups. These are things that everyone would love to know. It also gives you an understanding of the spiritual leadership of various tzaddikim, because if one tzaddik has 100,000 followers, his relationship with his followers is very different from that of a tzaddik with 50 followers.
“We can also see how far the shtieblach were located from the court. For Chabad, the average distance between the court and the shtiebel was 400 kilometers, which means that the vast majority of chasidim only visited the Rebbe once or twice in their lives. For Vizhnitz, which was very strong in Hungary, the average distance was less than 100 kilometers, which means that most of the chasidim came to see the Rebbe several times a year because it was relatively easy to get there. This means that the relationship of the typical Vizhnitzer chasid and his Rebbe was very different from that of the typical Lubavitcher chasid and his Rebbe.
“Then there were courts that were even closer to their shtieblach. For example, Kretchnif’s average distance was 30 kilometers, which means that they could go to their Rebbe every Shabbos and he knew his chasidim personally. The Gerrer Rebbe had 100,000 chasidim, which means that he didn’t know all of them by face and name, with the result that the spiritual inspiration they received was different from that received by chasidim of a smaller chasidus. So while this kind of information isn’t part of the teachings of any particular group, it’s still very important to understand.
“It’s hard to summarize everything I believe I bring to the field. But as I said, I try to capture the totality of chasidic life, not just its spiritual aspects but also its economic, social and cultural ones.”
“Has your work brought you emotionally closer to the Jewish community, or is it just a field of research to you?”
“Whenever anyone chooses a field of research he feels some sort of connection. The most difficult thing for anyone to do is to decipher himself.”
“You speak Hebrew and English fluently, but in which language do you write?”
“Lately, I’ve been writing more and more in English instead of Polish because my books are addressed primarily to international audiences. But I still write articles in Polish, so I’m pretty much bilingual in my academic life.”
“Is the objective of your research to understand Poland or to understand Jews?” I ask next.
“I might be exceptional in some sense because I focus on Jewish history; I don’t research so-called Polish-Jewish relations. I’m interested in chasidism, the haskalah and Jewish cemeteries and that’s it. But I would say that the majority of scholars in Poland who are interested in Jews study the relationship between Poles and Jews.”
“As a non-Jew, are you welcomed by Jewish researchers of chasidism, or do you feel like an outsider?”
“There isn’t any bias against non-Jewish scholars in academia, or at least I’ve never experienced it. As a whole, the scholars studying chasidism are extremely openminded people. I’m very happy to be part of this community and I feel very welcome and supported both intellectually and emotionally. The research I do is very broad, so I often have to rely on support from other people, which is always forthcoming.
“I would also say that over time I have established increasingly good relations with the chasidic community and with many individual chasidim who seem to appreciate my research. A big part of the atlas in my book maps out contemporary chasidism. In order to do it I had to ask a critical question—how many chasidim are there today?—because without the answer it’s impossible to continue any further. Are the numbers bigger or smaller than before the war? Where do they live? Which is the biggest chasidic court today? Celebrating at a Belz wedding To obtain the answer, I decided to turn to the chasidic phone directories and counted the number of households. Based on the 42 directories I received I arrived at a total of 130,000, which I believe covers almost all of the chasidic households in existence today. This allowed me to estimate the demographic and geographic distribution of chasidim and many other issues, and it was only possible thanks to the goodwill of the chasidic communities that appreciated my research and shared their directories with me. I am extremely pleased to have gotten support not only from my fellow scholars but also from chasidic people.”
“Which is the largest chasidus today?”
“You know the answer to that: Satmar, with 26,000 households split between the two groups.”
 “Which is second?”
“Chabad, with 16,000, followed by Ger, with 12,000. Belz has 7,500 households. The most difficult to calculate is Breslov because they use different categories for inclusion, but I estimate them at 7,000. Sanz has 4,000; Bobov has 3,000; and another 1,500 for Bobov-45. I am very proud to have done this research.”
Bustling Centers of Chasidic Life
“Where was the center of chasidic activity in the 19th century, Poland or Ukraine?”
“That’s a very good question. I have a set of maps in my atlas depicting where the tzaddikim lived and how this changed over time. I also have a map showing 70% of all the existing chasidic shtieblach at the beginning of the 20th century. This was an enormous undertaking. I managed to locate 2,854 shtieblach, which, as I said, represents some 70% of the total during that time period. It is very clear that the cradle of chasidism was Podolia and Volhynia, which are Ukrainian territories. At the end of the 18th century it moved north to Belarus and west to Galicia. In the 19th century, the epicenter was Galicia and the southern part of central Poland. Then it moved south again into Hungary and Romania.”
“Where does Czechoslovakia, where my own parents hail from, come into play?”
“Slovakia is part of Greater Hungary, because up until 1918 it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so when I say ‘Hungary’ I am including Slovakia. By contrast, the area that is now the Czech Republic isn’t significant to us because there were very few chasidim there if at all. In fact, only the eastern part of Slovakia, which later became TransCarpathian Ruthenia and was incorporated into Hungary, Romania and now Ukraine, is relevant to this topic, but it was never a center of chasidic life. As for the Hungarian territories, it was mostly Maramures and Transylvania that were heavily chasidic.”
“According to your calculations, would you say that the majority of the Jews at that time were religious, and a majority of the religious Jews were chasidim?”
“Up until the interwar period in the 1920s and ’30s, the majority of the population was religious, although not all were chasidim; it depended on the area. In Lithuania the majority were Litvish—either misnagdim or ambivalent towards chasidim—while only a minority were chasidim. But in Galicia, especially Eastern and Central Galicia, the majority were chasidim. Many communities were dominated by chasidim. Poland was also divided: Eastern Poland was mostly chasidic, but in Western Poland the numbers were much smaller.
“In general, the vast majority of Eastern European Jews in the 19th century were Orthodox, but this changed radically in the interwar period. In the Soviet Union, the number of religious people dropped dramatically because of the Communists’ anti-religious stance, and the chasidim were heavily persecuted and their leaders sent to Siberia. For example, the Machnovka Rebbe was only allowed to leave his exile in the 1960s. In Poland there wasn’t any religious persecution between the wars, but because of the trend towards modernization and the influence of secularism and politics, the number of people who were still religious dropped to one-third of the Jewish population. Of those who were religious, I’d say that the majority were chasidim. This loss was acutely felt by the chasidic community.
“If you look at the activities of the Piaseczno, Aleksander Rebbe and Gerrer Rebbes, much of their activity was inspired by the crisis of many members of the younger generation leaving the community and becoming communists or Zionists. They understood that they had to reinvent the structure of the traditional chasidic community, particularly during the First World War and immediately afterwards.”
“They say that history is written by the victors. There were many large chasidic courts before the Holocaust but they are no longer remembered, and other chasidic groups are far more dominant now. This makes people believe that they were dominant before the war as well, but it’s not necessarily true.”
“My atlas corrects this misconception. As I told you, I found 2,854 shtieblach in the early part of the last century. By comparing the number of shtieblach of different courts, I was able to establish their relative power, and the numbers are very precise. In Central Poland, 22% of shtieblach were Ger; 13% were Aleksander; 6% were Kotzk and its offspring, followed by Amshinov, Otvotzk (Vorka), and other smaller groups. Perhaps the biggest one that’s completely unknown today is Olik, which may have been the third largest in Volhynia during the interwar period.
“Which was the biggest in Ukraine?”
“Between the wars, the biggest court in Ukraine was Trisk, with 16%. The second largest was Sadigura, which was really in Bukovina, outside Ukraine, with 8%. The third was Olik, followed by Karlin-Stolin, Makarov, Tolne, Chernobyl, Stepan, Lubavitch, Skver, Brzezan, Hornosteipel and others.”
“Where was Lubavitch the most dominant?”
“Lubavitch was the dominant group in Lithuania and Belarus, where they had 32% of all the shtieblach. Every third shtiebel was Lubavitch, and there were other shtieblach belonging to other Chabad courts. Four percent belonged to Kapust; 3% to Liadi, and 3% to Strashelye. If you count all of them together, almost half of the shtieblach were Chabad. The next largest one in Belarus and Lithuania was Karlin-Stolin with 10%, followed by Slonim, Kobrin, Koidanov and several others.”
“Do you see a common denominator between all of these groups despite their differences?”
“Yes, and one of them is their common origin. The understanding that they all come from the Baal Shem Tov informs every single chasidic community. It also affects the relationships between groups, because it is much easier to move from one chasidic group to another than it is to move from chasidism to non-chasidism or vice versa. There are also elements that are shared by every group. The role of the tzaddik is one such element. Even to the groups like the ‘toite chasidim,’ as the Breslovers were once called since they don’t have a live Rebbe, there is still an understanding of the Rebbe as an essential spiritual experience for every chasid.
“Perhaps this is something that distinguishes me from many other scholars of chasidism. Whereas most of them concentrate on the theology and books, my approach is more in line with the statement of Rav Zusha of Anipoli. When he was in the court of Rav Dovber of Mezritch, he said that he learned more Torah from the way his Rebbe tied his shoelaces than he would ever learn from his lectures. To me, the interaction with the Rebbe is what defines the life of the community. My research brings this aspect to light, whereas other scholars tend to overlook it.”
Economic Life and Political Power
“How do you make a distinction in your research between religious Jews and chasidic Jews in terms of their economic, social and cultural lives? They were probably almost the same.”
“That’s true as far as economics is concerned,” he admits. “It’s very difficult to differentiate between chasidim and non-chasidim, and finding sources was extremely difficult. But I managed to locate the complete lists of several communities in Poland and Belarus, and I also came into possession of complete lists of taxpayers and their professions. By comparing the two lists, I could see how chasidim fit into the picture of the general Jewish economic activity.
“There’s a popular stereotype both in the secular world and among chasidic writers that the early chasidim were poor, even in the 19th century. One of the things I wanted to know was whether chasidim on average were richer or poorer than the average nonchasid. I also wanted to know if there was any specific profile for chasidic economic activity. Where did the money they used to sustain their families come from?
“Thanks to the comparison between the lists of chasidim and the lists of other Jews in central Poland and Belarus, I came to the conclusion— which was quite surprising to me—that chasidic communities were on average wealthier than nonchasidic ones. Even more interesting, the chasidim preferred to engage in trade and weren’t so involved in artisanship and crafts. Also, there were very few chasidim who were unskilled workers, although there was a lot overrepresentation when it came to the communal professions such as rabbi, gabbai, shames, mohel and shochet. So when you compare chasidim to other religious groups with similar profiles, you understand why their communal structure was as I described.”
“In what sense?”
“In the sense of emunah and bitachon supporting the economic activity. In the 19th century, the average boy starting an enterprise would get money from his family or in-laws and establish a business. Some of them would succeed, while others would go bankrupt. Many people needed to go bankrupt several times before starting to make money. In the traditional non-chasidic world, a person might start a business once or twice with his family’s support, but if he didn’t succeed he simply went bankrupt.
“Then there was another tier of support in the chasidic world: If a person failed using the money from his family, he could still count on assistance from his community. There is much documentation of chasidic solidarity being very important for internal economic support. If there was a wealthy person in a small chasidic town and he knew that another person had failed at his enterprise, he was willing to help him. This meant that people were given another chance.
“Also, chasidim preferred to be in trade rather than crafts, which usually generates a higher income. Being a chasid actually supported engaging in trade, because a non-chasid’s economic relations extended to his immediate business partners and family, but for a chasid this network was wider since he had to visit the court of the tzaddik several times a year, where he was able to build very strong relationships with people from other towns. This meant that he had access to business partners in a very large geographical region. It was therefore much easier for him to have a successful enterprise because he had a much larger pool of potential partners.
“Another important factor is the role of the tzaddik as arbitrator, not only in spiritual or familial matters but also economically. This is one more level that wasn’t available to a non-chasidic community, and it was enough to put chasidim in a relatively better financial situation.”
“Tell me about the political power chasidim wielded in their various countries of residence in Eastern Europe, which is the subject of the book you released in 2013.”
“It’s very interesting to see that some of the tzaddikim—most prominently Rav Yitzchak of Vurka and later the Chidushei HaRim—functioned as shtadlanim, representatives of the Jewish community to the non-Jewish authorities. It is also very instructive to see that behind their activity there were what I would call legal advisers, people who were very knowledgeable and skillful in navigating the law of the country. These were generally big entrepreneurs who had major financial influence and dealt with the authorities on a day-to-day basis. Those people weren’t visible, however; they lent their expertise to the tzaddik, who was the face of the political power. But it was really a wider enterprise undertaken by the entire community and not just the tzaddikim themselves.”
“Who do you think was the most politically astute and active among the Rebbes?
“In the 19th century, it is clear to me that the biggest innovation in the understanding of politics among tzaddikim came from Rav Yitzchak of Vurka. Around the same time the Tzemach Tzedek, Rav Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, was also very influential in political matters in Russia. You can see the structure of support from very wealthy Jews in St. Petersburg and Moscow, who brought their expertise into the service of the chasidic community. Those two should be listed as the most skillful political leaders of that period. In a sense they established the path for other segments of the Orthodox Jewish community. In the next century you have the founders of Agudat Yisrael in Poland, but that was a very different concept because by then it was mostly electoral politics predicated on parties.”
“Was the political power held only by the Rebbes or the chasidim as well?”
“I would say that any political activity required a very developed cooperation of many levels of political involvement. The tzaddik would never act alone, and it is obvious that without support he wouldn’t have been able to accomplish what he did. At the same time, without him others would be unable to have power. They were entirely interdependent, so it’s impossible to say which was the more important. The beauty is that they managed to invent new ways of being politically active, because traditional Jewish politics had been based on shtadlanim.
“The way it worked up until then was that the Jewish community would hire a political activist who would go to the Polish court or nobleman and try to obtain certain political privileges. This changed in the late-18th century because there was no longer a Polish court, so the entire legal system changed. Under the new system, the Jewish community was deprived of political power, not because of antiSemitism—which of course existed—but because the authorities claimed that the Jews weren’t a community but only individual citizens. Every citizen could represent his own interests, but no one could speak in the name of a group. Jews were permitted to organize for religious purposes, but they were forbidden to organize politically. This meant having to reinvent how to represent themselves to the government, but somehow the tzaddikim managed to present themselves as the representatives of the entire Jewish population.”
“What’s fascinating is that all of this developed in antiSemitic environments. Would you agree with that statement?”
“The political elite were certainly more or less antiSemitic, but they were trying to present themselves as neutral. Those who were skillful used this supposed ambivalence to their advantage. Rav Yitzchak of Vurka, for example, was as successful as he was because he was able to neutralize the anti-Semitic bias of many politicians. He forced them to act against their will by citing legal precedents in support of his arguments that they couldn’t reject. One such case involved the right of rabbanim to control the kashrut of meat in Poland. Absurdly, the right to sell kosher meat and levy the special tax on it had been given over to a Christian enterprise, which was obviously a major problem. Rav Yitzchak of Vurka managed to present this as destructive to the state budget and contrary to its revenue laws. By using this argument, he managed to help the Jewish community regain control. The political bias and anti-Semitism of many of the politicians was rendered ineffective, because they had to follow the legal procedures established by the law of the land. One of the most important factors in the politics of the 19th century was that even the most oppressive countries were trying to establish themselves as places that operated under the rule of law.”
“Tell me about the Tzemach Tzedek’s successes. What was his style of political activity?”
“He was active in Russia in a different context. When he passed away in 1866 there was a visible break in the political representation in Russia, mainly because his succession was unclear; his sons established other courts in other towns, and his youngest son, Rav Shmuel, remained in Lubavitch. This was only slowly regained by his grandson, Rav Shalom Dovber, but his was a time of lesser political success. Concurrently, the Chidushei HaRim established himself as an extremely successful political leader in central Poland. He was succeeded by the Sfas Emes, who was also very successful, as was his son, the Imrei Emes, who was very involved in the creation of Agudat Yisrael. By then the political climate in central Poland was under Russian control, but because it was ethnically different, it maintained a separate legal system that encouraged political activity far more than Russia. So I would say that after 1866 and the passing of the Tzemach Tzedek, there was no longer a real parallel of politics in Russia and Poland.”
“By ‘political activism’ you mean efforts to benefit Jewish life in the places they lived.”
“I am referring to those actions that were undertaken by chasidic leaders with the support of their constituencies to guarantee certain privileges or rights for the Jewish community at large, not just the chasidic community. Aside from the right to have control over the supply of kosher meat, this would include the ability of Jewish prisoners to have kosher food or the right to establish eiruvin in Jewish districts. This was a very important change from the earlier chasidic involvement in politics like that of Rav Meir of Apta, who was mostly active in defending the rights of chasidim to establish their own shtieblach, or to prevent the persecution of the chasidic community.”
“Every Jewish leader really fought for the rights of the Jewish community, so how were the chasidic leaders different in that regard?”
“True, many of their efforts weren’t very different from those of non-chasidic rabbanim, but the whole structure of chasidism empowered its leaders far more than other rabbanim. Let’s say that there was a rabbi of a town—even a very important posek in a big city. Who was behind him? He had only his personal charisma and his community. The Gerrer Rebbe, however, had 50,000 followers all over Poland. This gave him the ability to engineer a campaign to support his political actions in a very broad way. This structure of support that wasn’t confined to specific territories and could cover large areas of Eastern Europe gave additional power to chasidic representation.”
“Did you get the feeling that the growth of a particular court was dependent on the political skills of its leader?”
“That’s something that’s very hard to establish, because no direct testimonies would say such a thing, that this tzaddik was more powerful because he was politically skilled. But if you observe the correlation between political involvement and the number of followers, it’s very significant that those tzaddikim who became more politically involved eventually gained wider followings and vice versa; by having wider followings they were able to be more effective politicians. So these two phenomena were interdependent both ways.
“This is also very true of the interwar period. The tzaddikim who were engaged in the reinvention of chasidism after the First World War, establishing new school systems and other activities of that kind, eventually turned out to be more effective than others. For example, before WWI the Tchortkover and Belzer Rebbes were equally as powerful. But after the war the Tchortkover Rebbe’s power shrank dramatically, and the same holds true of many other Rebbes in central Poland. Another example would be the Gerrer Rebbe, whose political involvement and institution of new infrastructures in the yeshivos and Bais Yankevs [sic] gave him a very strong boost. He had 100,000 followers in the interwar period, which was unparalleled. So a connection exists between politics and the internal relative power of certain Rebbes.”
Concerns and Lessons
The country of Poland is currently going through difficult political times. Last week, the government effectively forced more than two dozen justices out of their jobs. The purged judges refused to recognize their dismissal, while the government officials insisted that they would no longer be allowed to hear cases. Surrounded by cheering supporters, the top Supreme Court justice took a defiant stand on the courthouse steps, and vowed to keep fighting to protect the Polish constitution and the independence of that nation’s courts. The confrontation was followed by dueling news conferences, fiery speeches and more street protests. I ask Marcin if he thinks Poland is moving towards a more dictatorial type of government.
“Poland has been losing its democratic institutions with increasing rapidity over the last three years since the ruling party took power,” he admits. “I can already see a lot of manifestations of an authoritarian state. While the Supreme Court is currently in the news it’s really only the tip of the iceberg, because we see many such things on a daily basis, such as the use of police against the political enemies of the present government, which is typically authoritarian. Then there’s the use of the media as a propaganda tool for the current government. Using public money in support of one political option totally demolishes the constitutional structure. I am very afraid that if the ruling party wins again next year, that will be the last free election in Poland.”
“Do you think that the Jews who live in Poland and the Jewish community at large should be concerned about this?” I want to know. “The ruling party is right-wing, and in Europe right-wing parties are very closely associated with anti-Semitic ideologies, but they are very wary of being labeled antiSemitic. For this reason, the ruling party won’t openly attack the Jewish community in the foreseeable future. But just by looking at the Holocaust law that was passed in January you can see that even without the direct intention of the regime there’s been a rise of anti-Semitic sentiment, which is fueled by the current political climate. This might be a concern in the long run, and is something that has been expressed by many representatives of the Jewish community over the last year.”
“Are you concerned as an academic about the freedom to do your research?”
“Yes. My understanding of the Holocaust law, which was somewhat rescinded, was that the objective wasn’t to persecute people who discussed the involvement of Poles in the killing of Jews during the Holocaust; it was more about creating a general feeling of fear and auto-censorship of what can be said in public these days.”
My final question to the professor is whether he thinks that what his research reveals about chasidic life contains lessons for the world at large.
“That’s a difficult question for me because I’m an academic; my work isn’t so much about finding moral lessons. But it is very clear to me that chasidism holds a huge cultural and spiritual attraction to the world. If you look at its impact on cultural imagery, the image of the traditional Jewish world to many non-Jews is identical to chasidism. This is a huge success, which is due to the spiritual attractiveness of chasidism. But I’m much more interested in analyzing it as a religious phenomenon that shows the interrelationship between religion and other aspects of daily life. I’m not saying that chasidism isn’t a religious movement; of course it is. But being a chasid is something so comprehensive that it affects cultural expressions, economic life and many other areas of activity.
“My research articulates the totality of the experience and helps people understand chasidism as a vibrant movement that isn’t black and white, which is the way it is often portrayed. It has very rich and complicated structures, which have a very big influence not only on the Jewish community but on the larger, non-Jewish societies in which chasidim live. It is also very deeply embedded in geographical location. My Historical Atlas of Hasidism shows how much the spirituality of chasidism is conditioned by the geographical context in which it developed, which is yet another aspect.
“What I would love to achieve with my publications,” he finally allows, “is to promote the understanding that because chasidism is so unique, it allows us to understand much of the world around us, and not just chasidism itself.”



Genazym Auctions: Illustrations & the Friendship Between the Hazon Ish and R. Zevin

Genazym Auction:  Illustrations and the Friendship between the Hazon Ish and R. Zevin

The auction house, Genazym, is holding its third auction (the catalog is available here) this week Thursday, August 30th. This auction includes many Hassidic works, letters, autographs, early editions, and some impressive bindings.  Additionally, as at other auction houses, items are already appearing from the Lunzer/Valmadonna collection whose books were sold and auctioned in the past year. 

There are a few items that have aspects that go beyond their texts.  The book, Hok le-Yisrael, Prague, 1798, (lot 27) is notable for its unusual title page.  It contains Dovid and Shlomo (for a discussion of the inclusion of biblical figures on the title-page see here), with the head of Goliath at David’s feet.  David is shown lifting his shirt to expose his belly which is depicted as one of substantial girth.  It is unclear why the illustrator used that particular pose. The remainder of the illustration is unremarkable.  But the text of the title has its own quirk, where it is printed in a handwritten font, both the Hebrew and the German.   

Just to mention one other unique illustrated item I recently came across about to be auctioned off in the forthcoming Genazym auction (lot 26). In a few copies of the 1840 printing of the classic work on Shecitah, Tevous Shor there is a very nice illustration connected to the title and name of the author. 
Some books are especially valued because of their legendary segulah powers.  Recently this has become even more commonplace with this genre expanding exponentially.[1]  At times the source for how these books fall into that genre are murky, but one that has a long history is Hayim ben Attar’s Or ha-Hayim.  The first edition, Venice 1742, (lot 49), in a very nice binding,  is highlighted for its segulah powers that include protection, healing, and children, and the study of it has the power to purify one’s soul. 

Returning to illustrations, a portrait of R. Dov Ber Meisles, the rabbi of Warsaw (and other cities), from 1891, is among the items.  This is not the only illustration that R Meisels appears.  During the late 1860s, there was substantial unrest in Poland when many sought to force the Tsar to bestow greater civil rights to the populace.  The clergy played a large role in this endeavor and R Meisels was among them.  This was viewed as an opportunity for Jews to be accepted by the population.  In this, Meisels had a profound impact and was among the main influencers of Marcus Jastrow to take part in the movement.  Meisels and Jastrow became very close.  When both were imprisoned for their activities, initially Jastrow was kept in isolation but when he was transferred to Meisels’ cell, Jastrow’s spirits were lifted and was able to deal with the remainder of his imprisonment.  In the end, both were expelled from Poland, although eventually permitted to return.  One of the most notable events during this period was the funeral of five protesters who were killed by government forces.  The funeral took place on Shabbos and both Jastrow and Meisles were in attendance.  Their participation is recorded in Aleksander Lesser’s painting, “Funeral of five victims of the demonstration in Warsaw in 1861.”In the center left, Meisels appears with a fur hat next to Jastrow in his canonicals.[2]   
 Another item of ephemera is a letter from the Hazon Ish to R. Yosef Zevin (lot 68)(the envelope confirms that the addressee was R Zevin).  Although there is no doubt about R Zevin’s Zionist leanings, the Hazon Ish carried on a correspondence with him.[3] This is yet another letter showing the connection between R Zevin and the Hazon Ish. (For others, see Yehoshuah Levin, HaShakdan (Monsey: Tuvia’s, 2010), 117). R Zevin included a profile of Hazon Ish and his style of study in the book Ishim ve-Shitot. 

As we have shown in the past, one can learn all kinds of things from the information found in the writeups in the various auction catalogs including seeing actual clear copies of the manuscripts (lot 55). there is a letter of his from 1886 about his essay on Antisemitism called Shar Yisroel which he was about to print. He writes to his son to check it over as someone told him that perhaps some might get angry about and it would cause problems for him and the Yeshiva. This is not the only time that we find the Netziv nervous about his actions and that it would cause possible problems for the Yeshiva.

Two of R Yaakov Emden’s important works, Mitpahat Seforim and his Siddur, both of which are rare are up for sale (lots 75 & 76).  The first of edition of his siddur is critical to actually determining R. Emden’s opinions regarding the liturgy and its attendant customs.  This is so because although there are many alleged reprints of the Siddur, they, in fact, do not include the text that R Emden so carefully edited.  Only recently has the complete siddur been reprinted.  The Mitpahahat is R Emden’s well-known challenge to the Zohar, or parts of it.  Emden points to many passages that appear to be later than when R Shimon bar Yochi lived, the traditional author of the Zohar. R. Emden’s work was subject to some rebuttals, one is Moshe Kunitz Ben Yochi.  But some allege that Kunits freely borrowed from others and that his rebuttals fall short of the mark. 
One final item, also a siddur, is a first edition of Siddur R’ Shabsai MeiRushkov (lot 95) which is considered very rare starting bid is $50,000 and with a sale’s estimate of  $100,000.

[1] See Avraham Ya’ari, Mehkeri Sefer (Jerusalem:  Yehuda, 1958) who discussed a number of books that were written after the author experienced cataclysimic events. See also Eliezer Brodt’s article in the forthcoming Ami Magazine discussing the ubiquity of this phenomenon. 
[2] See Jastrow, “Baer Meisels, Chief Rabbi,” The Maccabean XI, 5 (Nov. 1906), 208-09; idem. XI, 6 (Dec. 1906), 246-48. For Jastrow’s activities during that time see Michael Galas, Rabbi Marcus Jastrow and His Vision for the Reform of Judaism:  A Study in the History of Judaism in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Anna Tilles (Boston:  Academic Studies Press, 2013), 70-88. Even at the end of his life, Jastrow was in America he still counted Meisel among those who influenced him.  See idem. 170.
[3] That is not to say that some didn’t try to write out R Zevin’s connection to Zionism.  See Jacob J. Schacter, “Facing the Truths of History,” Torah u-Madda Journal 8 (1998-1999): 223-24. 



New book announcement

New book announcement
By Eliezer Brodt
יצחק לנדיס, ברכת העבודה בתפילת העמידה, עיונים בנוסחיה ובתולדותיה, 170 עמודים
This recent work written by Yitz Landes, of the Talmud Blog looks rather impressive and I am sure will be enjoyed by many readers of the blog. What follows is the abstract of the book and the Table of Contents. If you are interested in purchasing the book contact me at eliezerbrodt@gmail.com

The present work traces the history of the ante-penultimate blessing of the Amidah, “Birkat ha-Avodah”, from Second Temple times through the Middle Ages. The first chapter deals with the rabbinic sources that describe its recitation in the Temple and compares versions of the blessing found in siddurim with prayers found in literature from the period of the Second Temple. The second chapter is devoted to the early evidence of the blessing’s formulation located in the 4th century church order, The Apostolic Constitutions. In the third chapter, all of the various versions of the blessing located in siddurim and in medieval halakhic literature are analyzed.  In the fourth chapter, he utilizes a variety of sources, including a large corpus of classical Piyyut, to reconstruct a lost version of the blessing’s doxology. The fifth chapter unpacks the language of cultic worship utilized in the various versions of the blessing and compares it with the understandings of the blessing’s meaning found in classical Piyyut and in medieval sources. In the summary, he provides a new model for understanding the development of the version of the blessing that was eventually adopted and address the ramifications of this study for our understandings of the development of Jewish liturgy and of the substitution of sacrifice in Jewish thought.

 

 

 




Book Announcement

Book Announcement
By Eliezer Brodt
ספרות חזל הארץישראליתמבואות ומחקריםהמערכת מנחם כהנא, ורד נעם, מנחם קיסטר, דוד רוזנטל, ב’ חלקים, 732 עמודים.
I am very happy to announce the publication of an important work which numerous people will find very useful. This is a collection  essays from various experts in the field of Chazal’s Eretz Yisrael Literature. If one wants a proper introduction to various works of Chazal from the Mishna and on, this is the place to look Up until now there were numerous articles and books on all these topics, including the two volumes set Literature of the Sages Many of the topics covered in these two new volumes can be found in; Literature of the Sages, some times even by the same authors e.g. Vered Noam on Megilat Tannit or Chaim Milikowsky on Seder Olam. However, many of the chapters are new or are written by different people. One hopes that they will continue this series with a volume dealing with the Talmud Bavli.
For a short time copies can be purchased through me for a special price. Contact me at Eliezerbrodt@gmail.com



The Ze’enah –Re’enah and its Author

The
Ze’enah –Re’enah
and its Author
Morris
M. Faierstein, Ph.D.
It has traditionally assumed that Rabbi Jacob ben Isaac of Yanova was the author of the Ze’enah U-Re’enah. Every edition of the Ze’enah U-Re’enah lists him as the author on the title page. Recently, this assumption has been questioned and the suggestion made that there may have been another author of this seminal work in addition to Rabbi Jacob ben Isaac. This article will consider two aspects of the Ze’enah U-Re’enah and its author. First, the two-author theory and its evidence. Second, who was the author of a section of the Ze’enah U-Re’enah entitled “Hurban ha Bayit [Destruction of the Temple]”, which is found immediately following the commentary on Lamentations?
1. The two-author theory.
The second volume of the earliest extant edition of the Ze’enah U-Re’enah (Basel/Hanau, 1622) begins with the following statement:
“The five Megillot and the Haftarot. In addition, Hurban ha-Bayit [Destruction of the Temple] in Yiddish which was weighed and researched by the noble and pious Rabbi Jacob, the son of Rabbi Isaac, of blessed memory, from the family of Rabbino, who erected his tent and dwells in the holy community of Janova. He is the man who has already authored the five books of the Torah in Yiddish with nice midrashim and innovative interpretations.”
The same or similar statement can be found in all subsequent editions of the Ze’enah U-Re’enah. Rabbi Jacob ben Isaac was also the author of several other books, published both during his lifetime and posthumously by family members. A statement of his authorship of the Ze’enah U-Re’enah is also found in these books.[1] The first one to question the authorship of the whole Ze’enah U-Re’enah by Rabbi Jacob ben Isaac, was Simon Neuberg in his book, Pragmatische Aspekte der jiddischen Sprachgeschichte am Beispiel der Zenerene.[2] More recently, Jacob Elbaum and Chava Turniansky have reiterated
Neuberg’s argument and supported it.[3] The Elbaum/Turniansky article provides a clear summary of Neuberg’s argument. It would be helpful to begin with this summary:
In a meticulously systematic analysis of the language of the Tsene-rene Simon Neuberg has demonstrated that the vocabulary of each of the three sections (Torah, Megillot, haftarot)  differs clearly from that of the of the two, a phenomenon that becomes particularly prominent in the section khurbn in loshn ashkenaz, which, together with Ruth, differs in its linguistic features most conspicuously from that of the other four Megillot in the Tsene-rene.[4] The conclusions of the linguistic analysis seem to indicate clearly that Rabbi Jacob, the author of the first volume of the Tsene-rene (on the Torah), was not the author of the various components of the second volume of this book (Megillot and Haftarot).
The discussion of the questions about the integration of the two volumes into one opus is beyond the framework  of this article.[5] It is, however, relevant that an earlier printed Yiddish booklet on the destruction of the Temple has been inserted directly after the Yiddish translation and explanation of Lamentations. The difference between the Tsene-rene’s treatment of Lamentations and that of the other four Megillot leads to the
conclusion that whoever included the booklet in the second volume of the Tsene-rene wished to differentiate Lamentations from the other Megillot. Since the khurbn booklet consisted of midrashim, the preceding rendition of Lamentations required no more than a Yiddish translation and explanation of the text, as has been done in
the section of the Haftarot. Indeed, there is a great similarity between the manner of rendition of the haftarot and the methods used in the rendition of Lamentations.[6]
Neuberg bases his conclusions on the basis of his study of the vocabulary of the various sections of the Ze’enah U-Re’enah and the variations that he has found. This mode of philological analysis is ancient, going back to Alexandrian studies of Homer and revived in the study of the Biblical text in the Early Modern and Modern periods. The starting point of this mode of analysis is the concept that a certain text is considered to be a unitary product of one author, whether Homer or Moses, and the scholar endeavors to show that in fact there is more than one hand discernable in the production of the final product. The most famous example of this type of analysis is the “Documentary Hypothesis” relating to the Five Books of Moses. The fatal flaw in Neuberg’s analysis is that he assumes this unitary authorship, that Rabbi Jacob ben Isaac was the author in the way one thinks of someone being the author of a novel or a monograph, the intellectual product of one mind and one style. In fact, the Ze’enah U-Re’enah is a very different sort of work, one composed of passages from a wide variety of texts of different periods and styles that were collected, reworked, paraphrased and abbreviated by Rabbi Jacob to form a bricolage, an anthological commentary based on a diversity of sources.
As an integral part of my English translation of the Ze’enah U-Re’enah[7] I have endeavored to document the sources that Rabbi Jacob utilized and show how he built his commentary.[8] My conclusion is that Rabbi Jacob built his text from the whole panoply of Talmudic, Midrashic, and medieval and early modern Biblical commentaries. He even cites the Torah commentary Keli Yakar (Lublin, 1602) of Rabbi Ephraim Lunshits of Prague, which was most likely published while he was at
work on the Ze’enah U-Re’enah.
Rabbi Jacob had no specific model that he followed, but rather was guided by the commentaries that were available for a particular text. To
take the most obvious example, the number and type of commentaries
available for the Humash
is dramatically greater than what is available for the Megillot,
which is greater than what is available for the Haftarot.
As a result, the Humash
commentary is richer, has greater depth and is more extensive than
the other sections. Even within the Humash
commentaries, it is a well-known phenomenon that the quantity of
comments on Genesis and Exodus is much greater than those on
Leviticus, Numbers and Exodus. This pattern follows through from
Midrash and through all post Talmudic commentaries, from the earliest
medieval commentaries to those being written in the present. This is
also reflected in the allocation of space in the Ze’enah
U-Re’enah
. For example, the number of
pages devoted to Genesis is double the number of pages devoted to
Deuteronomy. It is a reflection of the available resources and not a
deliberate decision by Rabbi Jacob to privilege one part of the Torah
over another.
The
differing level of resources is much greater when one goes from the
Torah to the Prophets and Writings. In the Jewish tradition in
contrast to the Christian tradition, the Torah (Humash)
has been the center of study and interest, while the rest of the
Bible plays a secondary role. This is particularly true in the
Ashkenazi tradition and is evidenced by the paucity of commentaries
on the Prophets and Writings. The great exception is Rashi, whose
commentary encompasses the whole Bible and much of the Talmud. Thus,
we find that Rabbi Jacob has more than a dozen commentaries that he
regularly quotes and cites, not to mention the whole of Midrashic
literature that is largely focused on the Humash
and in the case of Midrash Rabbah,
also includes the Megillot.
The Talmud is also a rich source of comments and stories that are
interspersed in the Torah commentary. In contrast, when one comes to
the Haftarot,
the only commentaries that he relies on regularly are Rashi and Rabbi
David Kimchi.[9] Rabbi Jacob tries to leaven the commentary on the Haftarot
by adding to the end of most of the Haftarot,
a group of three stories taken from the medieval anthology, Yalkut
Shimoni
. It is noteworthy that this
group of stories is quoted in the same sequence that they are found
in the Yalkut Shimoni.
Rabbi
Jacob does not have a fixed form or pattern in his commentary. Each
verse or part of a verse is approached on its own merits. He appears
to have examined the universe of comments on that passage and then he
chooses those things that appeal to him. The range can be anything
from one sentence to several paragraphs, from one commentator to a
medley of several comments that expand on each other or they might
offer conflicting perspectives. Sometimes he ends a commentary with
the phrase, “from here we can learn”, which is a sign that he is
adding his own insights. In addition to the commentaries, or
occasionally in place of a commentary, he might cite a Talmudic or
midrashic passage. Not only do his sources vary widely, but his mode
of citation also varies. Sometimes he translates the Hebrew original,
more or less precisely. Other times, he might paraphrase a text or
summarize an argument from a source. It is also worth noting that he
does not comment on every verse. This too follows the pattern of the
commentaries that he relies upon, in that they also do not feel the
need to comment on every verse. The same applies to the Megillot
and Haftarot,
with the proviso that the universe of sources is smaller and
therefore the variations in form and style will not be as dramatic.
In
summary, any literary analysis of the Ze’enah
U-Re’enah
must take into account the
nature of the sources that underlie the text, how the author utilizes
the sources and the methods of composition. Without a thorough
knowledge of rabbinic literature in the broadest sense and the
ability to deal with these texts, both in the Hebrew/Aramaic original
languages and a solid ability to understand the Yiddish text of the
Ze’enah U-Re’enah, it
would be impossible to make any judgments about this work that have
merit and should be taken seriously.
Another
argument raised by Neuberg is the fact that the Basel/Hanau, 1622
edition of the Ze’enah U-Re’enah was
published in two volumes, with the Torah in one volume and Megillot
and Haftarot
in the second volume. He ascribes great significance to this fact but
does not provide any evidence to support his argument that there is
significance to this fact beyond the things that have already been
discussed. Since this was the first extant edition, we cannot learn
anything from the three preceding editions that have not survived. We
can only look at subsequent editions and see if this pattern is
repeated. The next edition of the Ze’enah
U-Re’enah
was published in Amsterdam,
1648. Rabbi Jacob’s son wrote in the Introduction of his edition of
his father’s small book Sefer Shoresh
Yaakov
that he was publishing this book
to raise funds to enable the publication of a new edition of his
father’s Ze’enah U-Re’enah.[10] The Amsterdam edition retained the same
format as the 1622 edition. That is, the Torah came first, followed
by the Megillot,
and ending with the Haftarot.
The one important change was that the work was published in one
volume and in a folio format. The first edition to break this pattern
was the Amsterdam, 1711 edition, which placed the Haftarot
for the Torah portions immediately behind the respective Torah
portion, in the same way that one would find it in a printed Hebrew
Humash.
This was probably the reason for the change and nothing more
significant. All subsequent editions followed the model of the 1711
edition. In addition, all editions of the Ze’enah
U-Re’enah
beginning with the
Amsterdam, 1648 were published in one volume.[11] The Basel/Hanau, 1622 edition is the only one that was published in
two volumes. It is most likely that the two volumes had simple
internal reasons related to practical aspects of the printing
process. Without additional evidence it would be inappropriate to
make assumptions about this fact.
2.
The authorship of Hurban ha-Bayit.
 
Immediately after the commentary on
Lamentations in the Ze’enah U-Re’enah
there is a separate section entitled, “Hurban
ha-Bayit
[Destruction of the Temple].” An examination of this section shows
that it is a Yiddish translation/paraphrase of a famous passage from
the Talmud about the causes of the destruction of the Second Temple,
found in tractate B. Gittin
55b-58a. After the passage from Gittin
until the end of this text there is a combination of passages taken
from Yalkut Shimoni,
Lamentations, Remez
995 and 996, and selections from Lamentations
Rabbah,
Petihtah
24.
In
1979, Sara Zfatman published an article about a pamphlet by an
anonymous author that was published in Cracow, before 1595.[12] The text of this pamphlet is identical to the “Hurban
ha-Bayit
[Destruction of the Temple]” material in the Ze’enah
U-Re’enah.
[13] Two pamphlets containing this material were reprinted in the
nineteenth and twentieth century[14] and it was even translated into German.[15] It is likely that they were extracts from the Ze’enah
U-Re’enah
, and not from the Cracow
pamphlet.

The
question that concerns us is the authorship of this pamphlet and the
section in the Ze’enah U-Re’enah.
The similarity of both versions of the text is strong evidence that
one person is the author of both. The title page of the second volume
of the Basel/Hanau, 1622 begins with the following statement. “The
five Megillot
and the Haftarot.
In addition, the destruction of Jerusalem in Yiddish which was
weighed and researched by the noble and pious Rabbi Jacob, the son of
Rabbi Isaac, of blessed memory.” Having argued that there is one
author of the whole Ze’enah U-Re’enah,
Rabbi Jacob ben Isaac, it naturally follows Rabbi Jacob ben Isaac is
also the author of this pamphlet and the text in the Ze’enah
U-Re’enah.
 
It
is not hard to understand why Rabbi Jacob might have felt the need to
create a supplement for Lamentations, where there is no similar need
or the other Megillot.
Tisha B’Av
when Lamentations is read in the synagogue became the date to
commemorate and mourn a variety of destruction and catastrophes in
Jewish history. The text of Lamentations is so specific to the
situation of the First Temple that over the centuries a whole
literature developed to supplement the Book of Lamentations and
better express the emotions engendered by later events being
commemorated and mourned. I would suggest that Rabbi Jacob first
wrote this pamphlet as an additional text for Tisha
B’Av
observances and later
incorporated it into the Ze’enah
U-Re’enah.
The sparse nature of his
commentary on Lamentations points to this. There is virtually no
effort to add commentary. Aside from a few references to Rashi, the
commentary on Lamentations is no more than translations or
paraphrases of the Biblical text.
[1]
Melitz Yosher
(Lublin, 1622; Amsterdam, 1688); Sefer
ha-Magid
(Lublin,
1623-1627); Sefer
Shoresh Ya’akov
(Cracow, 1640). The relationship of Rabbi Jacob ben Isaac to Sefer
ha-Magid
is
complicated. See, R. Hayyim Lieberman, “Concerning the Sefer
ha-Magid
and its
Author [Yiddish].” In idem. Ohel
RH”L.
3 vols.
(n.p.: Brooklyn, 1984), 2: 231-248. A Hebrew version of the article
is found in idem. 3: 365-382. The article was originally published
in Yidishe Shprakh,
vol. 26 (1966): 33-38.
[2]
Neuberg,
Simon. Pragmatische
Aspekte der jiddischen Sprachgeschichte am Beispiel der Zenerene.

Buske: Hamburg, 1999, 109-115.
[3]
Elbaum,
Jacob. and Turniansky, Chava. “The Destruction of the Temple: A
Yiddish Booklet for the Ninth of Av.” In Midrash
Unbound, Transformations and Innovations
.
Ed. Michael
Fishbane and Joanna Weinberg. Oxford: Littman Library, 2013,
424-427.
[4]
See Neuberg,
Pragmatische
Aspekte
,
109-115.
[5]
At this point there is a lengthy footnote about the significance of
the title pages of the two volumes and the fact that there are two
volumes. I will address the issues raised here in my response.
[6] Elbaum
and Turniansky, “The Destruction of the Temple,” 425.
[7] Faierstein, Morris M. Ed. Ze’enah
U-Re’enah: A Critical Translation into English
.
2 Vols. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017 (Studia Judaica, 96).
[8] The Index of Sources in my translation is a vivid example of the
wide variety of sources found in the Ze’enah
U-Re’enah
.
[9] Rabbi David Kimchi was a member of the medieval Spanish school of
Biblical commentary that emphasized grammar and logic rather than
the more midrashic and mystical approach of many of the Ashkenazi
commentaries. It is noteworthy that neither Kimchi nor the other
great Spanish commentator Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra are mentioned in
the Torah commentary. It is only in the Prophets where Kimchi is
consulted, because the number of commentaries is limited.
[10] Sefer Shoresh
Yaakov
, Cracow,
1640, Introduction.
[11] A complete bibliography of Ze’enah
U-Re’enah

editions can be found in Morris
M. Faierstein, “The
Ze’enah U-Re’enah
:
A Preliminary Bibliography”, Revue
des etudes juives
,
172, 3-4 (2013), 397-427.
[12] On this pamphlet and its history see, Sara Zfatman, “The
Destruction of the Temple, Cracow, before 1595 – An Additional
Yiddish Text from the Sixteenth Century [Hebrew],” Kiryat
Sefer
54 (1979):
201-202.
[13] Zfatman, “The Destruction of the Temple,” 201 n. 5.
[14] The nineteenth century edition was published in Johnnisburg
(Prussia), 1862. See,
Faierstein, “The
Ze’enah U-Re’enah
:
A Preliminary Bibliography,” 411 no. 121. The twentieth century
edition was Brooklyn, 2007. See, idem. 422, no. 240.
[15] The German translation is, Die
Zerstörung Jerusalems: aus dem Buche Zeena u’reena. Deutsch von
Alexander Eliasberg

(Berlin: F. Gurlitt, 1921). See, Faierstein, “The
Ze’enah U-Re’enah
:
A Preliminary Bibliography,” 424 no. 264.



מצות ישיבת ארץ ישראל

מצות ישיבת ארץ ישראל
בצלאל נאור
א]
רבי אבא הוה קא משתמיט מיניה דרב יהודה, דהוה קא בעי למיסק לארעא דישראל, דאמר רב יהודה, כל העולה מבבל לארץ ישראל עובר בעשה, שנאמר “בבלה יובאו ושמה יהיו עד יום פקדי אותם נאום ה’ [והעליתים והשיבותים אל המקום הזה]” [ירמיה כז, כב].
אמר, איזיל ואשמע מיניה מילתא מבית וועדא והדר אפיק. אזל1 אשכחיה לתנא דקתני קמיה דרב יהודה, היה עומד בתפלה ונתעטש, ממתין עד שיכלה הרוח וחוזר ומתפלל. איכא דאמרי, היה עומד בתפלה ובקש להתעטש, מרחיק לאחריו ארבע אמות ומתעטש, וממתין עד שיכלה הרוח, וחוזר ומתפלל ואומר, “רבונו של עולם, יצרתנו נקבים נקבים, חלולים חלולים. גלוי וידוע לפניך חרפתנו וכלימתנו בחיינו, ובאחריתנו רימה ותולעה”. ומתחיל ממקום שפסק.
אמר ליה, אילו לא באתי אלא לשמוע דבר זה, דיי!
(ברכות כד, ב)
יש לבאר שרבי אבא עמד בפני דילמה גדולה. מצד אחד, בערה בו חיבת הארץ. רבי אבא נעשה לשם דבר עבור חיבת ארץ ישראל שלו. “רבי אבא מנשק כיפי דעכו”.2 אמנם לעומתו עמדה שיטת רבו, רב יהודה, שהתנגד בכל תוקף לעלייה מבבל לארץ ישראל.
במצב כזה שהיה “על הגדר” ומתנדנד בשרעפי לבו, קרהו מקרה—”השגחה פרטית”—שהכריע לצד העלייה לארץ ישראל. הוא שמע הלכה שמי שנתעטש מלמטה, מתרחק ארבע אמות ממקום התפילה שלו, וכשיכלה הרוח, חוזר למקומו הראשון ומתפלל. רבי אבא בחכמתו ובתבונתו שמע לקח לגבי גורל ישראל. הגם שחטאו ישראל על דרך שכתוב “נרדי נתן ריחו”,3 “ומפני חטאינו גלינו מארצנו”,4 אין חייבים להישאר בגלות בבל עד ביאת גואל, אלא משיכלה הרוח, חוזרים לארצם ומתחילים את העבודה ממקום שפסקו.5
ב]
רבי זירא הוה קא משתמיט מדרב יהודה, דבעי למיסק לארעא דישראל, דאמר רב יהודה, כל העולה מבבל לארץ ישראל עובר בעשה, שנאמר “בבלה יובאו ושמה יהיו” [ירמיה כז, כב].
אמר, איזיל ואשמע מיניה מילתא ואיתי ואיסק. אזל אשכחיה דקאי בי באני, וקאמר ליה לשמעיה, הביאו לי נתר, הביאו לי מסרק…
אמר, אילמלא באתי אלא לשמוע דבר זה, דיי!
קא משמע לן דברים של חול מותר לאומרם בלשון קודש.
(שבת מא, א)
גם רבי זירא התלבט אם לעלות לארץ ישראל או להישאר בבבל. הוא השתוקק לעלות לארץ ישראל אבל עמד מנגד פסק דינו של רבו, רב יהודה, שאסר העלייה מבבל לארץ ישראל.6 וגם לו קרה מקרה—”השגחה פרטית”—שהכריע את כף המאזנים לצד העלייה לארץ ישראל אם עוד קינן ספק בלבו. אף הוא שמע הלכה חדשה—מתוך “מעשה רב”—שהפיק ממנה לקח לגבי העלייה לארץ ישראל. כנראה שהיו כאלה שסברו שאסור לומר דברים של חול בלשון הקודש; שסברו שרק דברים של קודש מותר לומר בלשון הקודש. ומפי רבו, רב יהודה—”מרא דשמעתתא” גופיה—שמע יקרות לשון הקודש והבין שכמה שיותר יש לדבר בלשון הקודש.
“תני בשם רבי מאיר: כל מי שהוא קבוע בארץ ישראל, ואוכל חוליו בטהרה, ומדבר בלשון הקודש, וקורא את שמע בבוקר ובערב—מובטח לו שהוא מחיי העולם הבא”.7
ג] תוספות כתובות קי”א א’ ד”ה בבלה יובאו ושמה יהיו: “אף על-גב דהאי קרא בגלות ראשון כתיב, יש לומר דבגלות שני נמי קפיד קרא”.
דברי התוספות אינם מובנים כל הצורך. וכבר כתבתי במקום אחר,8 שישנו חבל ראשונים שכתבו שבאמת בית שני לא היווה גאולה אלא “פקידה” בעלמא, שמלכי בית חשמונאי לא השיגו מלוא העצמאות ועדיין משועבדים היו למלכי פרס ויוון ורומי. ראה פירוש רבינו עזרא מגירונה לשיר השירים ח, יג: “הלא לא היתה לישראל מלוכה וממשלה כל ימי בית שני כי תחת מלכי פרס ויוון ורומי היו”.9 וכן כתוב בדרשות הרן, סוף הדרוש השביעי,10 וביתר הרחבה באור השם לתלמידו ר’ חסדאי קרשקש.11
ואם כן, איננו צריכים לתירוץ התוספות אלא מובן מאליו שגלות ראשון וגלות שני היינו הך, המשך אחד עם פסק זמן באמצע הקרוי “בית שני”. מפורש אומר רבי חסדאי: “האמת הגמור לפי מה שיראה, שהגלות הזה שאנחנו בו, הוא הגלות שנמשך מחורבן הבית הראשון”.12
אולם הרמב”ם לא יסבור כן שהרי כתב בהלכות חנוכה פ”ג הל”א: “וחזרה מלכות לישראל יתר על מאתיים שנה עד החורבן השני”. והוא יצטרך לתירוץ התוספות. וצריך עיון.13
ד] הרמב”ן החשיב ישיבת ארץ ישראל למצות-עשה מן התורה (עיין פירושו במדבר לג, נג) וכן מנאה במניין המצוות שלו (מצות-עשה רביעית לדעת הרמב”ן, נדפס בספר המצוות לרמב”ם). וזה לשונו שם: “הכל הוא ממצות עשה שנצטווינו לרשת הארץ ולשבת בה. אם כן, מצות עשה לדורות, מתחייב כל יחיד ממנו ואפילו בזמן גלות”.
והנה יש לנו ספר חשוב בשם מגילת אסתר (ויניציאה, שנ”ב) שנכתב להצדיק את שיטת הרמב”ם בספר המצוות מהשגות הרמב”ן. מחברו ר’ יצחק ליאון בן אליעזר אבן צור ספרדי.14
זה לשון מגילת אסתר (דפוס ויניציאה שנ”ב), דף צז ע”ב:
ונראה לי כי מה שלא מנאה הרב [=הרמב”ם] הוא לפי שמצות ירושת הארץ וישיבתה לא נהגה רק בימי משה ויהושע ודוד וכל זמן שלא גלו מארצם, אבל אחר שגלו מעל אדמתם אין מצוה זו נוהגת לדורות עד עת בא המשיח, כי אדרבא נצטוינו לפי מה שאמרו בסוף כתובות [קי”א א’] שלא נמרוד באומות ללכת לכבוש את הארץ בחזקה, והוכיחוהו מפסוק “השבעתי אתכם בנות ירושלים וגומר, ודרשו בו שלא יעלו ישראל בחומה15…ועוד ראיה שאין בו מצוה ממה שאמרו גם כן התם [=כתובות ק”י ב’] כל העולה מבבל לארץ ישראל עובר בעשה שנאמר “בבלה יובאו ושמה יהיו”. ואם היה מצוה בדירת ארץ ישראל בכל הזמנים, איך יבוא נביא אחרי משה לסתור את דבריו והא אין נביא רשאי לחדש דבר מעתה וכל-שכן לסתור.
מהרץ חיות בהגהותיו ברכות כ”ד ב’ דחה דבריו האחרונים: “ואני אומר, ולטעמיך גם לשיטתו [=לשיטת הרמב”ם] לא יתכן, דאפילו אם מצות עשה דירושת הארץ אינה לדורות, מכל מקום אין נביא רשאי לחדש דבר, אלא ודאי דאמירת ירמיה איננה רק תקנה כשאר תקנות נביאים שאינן בכלל מצוות…”
אמנם יש להפריך את דברי המגילת אסתר באופן יסודי יותר. אלה דברי הרמב”ם בספר המצוות, מצוה קעב:
היא שצונו לשמוע כל נביא מהנביאים לעשות כל מה שיצוה אפילו בהיפך מצוה או כלל מצות מהמצוות האלו ובתנאי שיהיה זה לפי שעה, לא שיצוה להתמיד תוספת או חסרון, כמו שבארנו בפתיחת חבורנו בפירוש המשנה, והכתוב שבא בו הציווי הזה הוא אמרו “אליו תשמעון” [דברים יח, טו] …
וכן כתב הרמב”ם בחיבורו הגדול משנה תורה, הלכות יסודי התורה פ”ט הל”ג: “וכן אם יאמר לנו הנביא שנודע לנו שהוא נביא, לעבור על אחת מכל מצוות האמורות בתורה, או על מצוות הרבה, בין קלות בין חמורות, לפי שעה—מצוה לשמוע לו”.
ולכן מילתא דפשיטא הוא שמה שציווה ירמיהו הנביא “בבלה יובאו ושמה יהיו”, הוראת שעה היא, כדברי הנביא עצמו “עד יום פקדי אותם, נאום ד'”.
אלא שנצטרך להבהיר שישנה “שעה” שמתארכת מאות שנים. וכבר הוכחנו זאת במקום אחר מדברי הרמב”ם בהלכות בית הבחירה פ”ד הל”א שמנה בין הכלים הנטפלים לארון את מטה אהרן וצנצנת המן והשמיט את הארגז ששיגרו פלשתים דורון לאלוקי ישראל, משום שאינו אלא על דרך הוראת שעה ולא הוראה לדורות.16
לכן, מה שחשב בעל מגילת אסתר להוכיח שמצות ישיבת ארץ ישראל אינה מצוה לדורות מזה שהנביא ירמיהו יכל לאסור העלייה לארץ ישראל (לדברי רב יהודה), נפל בבירא. כי יתכן מאד שהמצוה נוהגת לדורות והנביא לא אמר לבטלה אלא “לפי שעה”.17
ה] יש בידינו ספר יקר מאד, מסולא בפז, מאחד ה”חסידים הראשונים”, שהיה שייך לחוג הנרחב של הבעש”ט, ר’ בנימין מגיד מישרים דק”ק זלאזיץ. שם הספר הוא אהבת דודים (למברג, תקנ”ג), פירוש על שיר השירים.18 בפירוש לפסוק “השבעתי אתכם בנות ירושלים בצבאות או באילות השדה אם תעירו ואם תעוררו את האהבה עד שתחפץ” (שיר השירים ב, ז), כותב ר’ בנימין דברים נוראים המרקיעים שחקים.
הגמרא סוטה (י”ג ב’) אומרת: “כל העושה דבר ולא גמרו—קובר אשתו ובניו”. בבראשית רבה (פה, ג) הלשון: “כל מי שהוא מתחיל במצוה ואינו גומרה—קובר את אשתו ואת בניו”.
מקשה המגיד מזלאזיץ:
וצריך להבין, הא כל מדותיו של הקב”ה מדה כנגד מדה, וקשה, וכי כך היא המדה שיבוא עונש כזה על שאינו גומר המצוה?
שנית, למה יהיה זה האדם יותר גרוע ממי שאינו מתחיל בה כלל?
המגיד מסביר על-פי משל:
ונראה לתת טעם לשבח, ומבשרי נחזה, באלפי אלפים הבדלות, כשאדם בא לקרב את עצמו אל היחוד הגשמי ונתעורר[ה] תאות שניהם אל היחוד, ובא איזה דבר המונע לגמור יחודם, כמה “אנפיהם עציבין”,19 ולא עוד אלא במה שהיה אפשר להם להוליד איזו נשמה קדושה ביחודם, לא די שלא הולידו בקדושה, אף זו שלפעמים יצא חס-ושלום ממנו לבטלה הואיל שנתעורר לזווג, ויתן כח חס-ושלום לחיצונים בהתעוררות זיווג זה.
ותיכף למשל, נמשל:
כן הדבר הזה, כשהתחיל לעשות היחוד באיזו מצוה, ובאתערותא דלתתא אתער לעילא, העלאות מ”ן [=מיין נוקבין] והורדות מ”ד [=מיין דוכרין], וכשלא נגמר היחוד כדקא יאות, גורם ד”אתכסיא סיהרא”,20 שהיא מדת מלכות…
והוא הדבר אשר גורם מי שהתחיל במצוה ואינו גומרה. ונמצא לפי זה עונשו הוא לפי המדה: כשם שהוא גורם ש”אתכסיא סיהרא”, לכך הוא קובר אשתו ונכסית ממנו; וכשם שגרם ש”נהורא לא אשתכח”,21 שלא קיבלה המיין דוכרין, שהיא [=שהן] נשמות קדושות, שהיה יכול להוליד מזה היחוד, לכך קובר בניו, חס-ושלום.22
כך מפרש אחד מגדולי החסידות את השבועה בשיר-השירים, “אם תעירו ואם תעוררו את האהבה עד שתחפץ”. הדברים נאמרו במישור הפרטי שהמתחיל במצוה מושבע ועומד לגומרה, אולם ניתן להעתיק את הדברים אל המישור הכללי. כנסת ישראל התחילה במצות ישוב ארץ ישראל. “באתערותא דלתתא, אתער לעילא”. אחינו בני ישראל, אל נא נרפה ממצוה זו! מושבעים אנו בכל חומר השבועה לגמור את אשר החלנו.

1
.רש”א גורס: וועד ואתי ואזיל
2
.כתובות קיב, א
3
.שיר השירים א, יא ורש”י שם
4
.תפילת מוסף של שלוש רגלים
5
.(כבר נדפס ממני דרוש זה בראשית אוני על מסכת ברכות, חלק א (ניו-יורק תשל”ה
6
בעלייתו לארץ ישראל הצטיין רבי זירא במסירות הנפש שלו, כמסופר בשלהי מסכת כתובות (קי”ב א’): “רבי זירא כי הוה סליק לארץ ישראל, לא אשכח מברא למיעבר, נקט במצרא וקעבר”. (רש”י: נקט במצרא—יש מקום שאין גשר, ומשליכים עץ על רוחב הנהר משפה לשפה, ואינו רחב לילך עליו, כי-אם אוחז בידיו בחבל המתוח למעלה הימנו, קשור שני ראשיו בשתי יתידות, אחת מכאן ואחת מכאן, בשני עברי הנהר.)
מלבד מסירות הנפש הגופנית, היתה כאן מסירות נפש רוחנית. אלה דברי מו”ר הרב צבי יהודה הכהן קוק זצ”ל:
לא רק במסירות גופו בהסתכנות חייו בהיותו “נקט במצרא” כדי להזדרז ולהגיע אליה [=אל ארץ ישראל] בהקדם, כאשר “לא אשכח מברא למיעבר” (כתובות קי”ב א’), אלא גם במסירות נפשו והקרבת עמדתו הרוחנית בשביל זה. כי ירא שמים כמוהו, הלא בודאי היה לו “מורא רבו כמורא שמים” (אבות פ”ד מ”יב) בכל תוקפו. אכן בהחלטתו לעלות לארץ ישראל השתמט מלפני רבו רב יהודה, שאמר “כל העולה מבבל לארץ ישראל עובר בעשה”, ומקיים בפועל את העלייה לארץ, במסירות נפש והקרבה רוחנית, למרות הוראתו זו של רבו.
(רצי”ה קוק, לנתיבות ישראל, ב [ירושלים, תשל”ט], “תורה לשמה והארץ לשמה”, עמ’לא)
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ירושלמי, שבת פ”א הל”ג. ובירושלמי שקלים פ”ג הל”ג הסדר הפוך: “ומדבר בלשון הקודש ואוכל פירותיו בטהרה”. (ועיין בתקלין חדתין שם מר’ ישראל משקלוב, תלמיד הגר”א, שפירש  על דרך הסוד שישיבת ארץ הקודש, אכילת פירות בטהרה, הדיבור בלשון הקודש, וקריאת שמע כנגד גוף ונר”ן, מתתא לעילא, ואם כן הסדר במסכת שבת מדוייק טפי.) יש עוד שינוי, במסכת שקלים הנוסח: “יהא מבושר שבן עולם הבא הוא”. אמנם בכפתור ופרח לרבינו אשתורי הפרחי, פרק י, מביא את הגמרא הירושלמית שקלים בזה הלשון: “יהא מובטח שהוא מבני העולם הבא”.
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.בספרי אוירין (ירושלים, תש”מ), עמ’ פה-פז
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.כתבי רמבן, ערך רח”ד שוול, כרך ב (ירושלים, תשכ”ד), עמ’ תקיז
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.רבינו נסים בן ראובן גירונדי, דרשות הרן, ערך ר’ אריה ל’ פלדמן (ירושלים, תשל”ז), עמ’קכג
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ר’ חסדאי קרשקש, אור השם, מאמר ג ח”א, כלל ח, פרק ב. במהדורת מו”ר רבי שלמה פישר שליט”א (ירושלים, תש”ן), עמ’ שסח-שסט
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.שם, עמ’ שסט
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וראה מה שכתב בשיטת הרמב”ם (הלכות מלכים פרק ה, הלכה יב) ר’ חיים הלוי, זה מקרוב נדפס:
ונראה לומר, דהנה התוספות (כתובות קי”א א’ ד”ה בבלה) הקשו דהאי קרא דבבלה בגלות ראשון הוא דכתיב. ותירצו דילפינן גלות שני מגלות ראשון. והנה צריך עיון דאיך ילפינן גלות שני מגלות ראשון כיון דקדושה ראשונה לא קידשה אלא לשעתה, ונמצא דלא היה על כל יחיד ויחיד הך מצוה דישיבת ארץ ישראל, מה שאין כן בקדושה שניה דקידשה לעתיד לבוא, ונמצא דאיכא על כל יחיד הך מצוה דאורייתא של ישיבת ארץ ישראל, אפשר דבכי האי גוונא ליכא להך דינא דשמה יהיו.
ואשר על כן סובר הרמב”ם דהך דינא דאסור לעלות מבבל לארץ ישראל לא קיימא אלא אם נימא דקדושה שניה גם כן בטלה, או דנימא דקדושה ראשונה גם כן לא בטלה, אבל אם אך נימא דראשונה בטלה ושניה לא בטלה, באמת ליכא למילף גלות שני מגלות ראשון, כיון דבגלות שני איכא מצות עשה דישיבת ארץ ישראל, מה שאין כן בגלות ראשון.
אכן כל זה הוא רק לעניין ארץ ישראל, מה שאין כן לעניין שאר ארצות, הרי גלות ראשון וגלות שני שווין, ושפיר ילפינן שני מראשון. ועל כן הרמב”ם דפסק (פ”ו מהלכות בית הבחירה הלט”ז) דקדושה ראשונה בטלה ושניה קידשה לעתיד לבוא, על כן שפיר חילק, וכתב דלעניין שאר ארצות איכא הך עשה דושמה יהיו, מה שאין כן לעניין ארץ ישראל ליכא הך עשה, כיון דאיכא עשה דישיבת ארץ ישראל, וכמו שנתבאר, ודוק.
(כתבי רבנו חיים הלוי מכי”ק [טאג בוך], ערך הרב יצחק אבא ליכטנשטיין [ירושלים,תשע”ח], עמ’ קלט)
לפי הסבר ר’ חיים הלוי, מצות ישיבת ארץ ישראל תלויה בקדושת הארץ לגבי תרומות ומעשרות וכו’ (וכן העלה באבני נזר, חלק יורה דעה, סימן תנד, אותיות לג, לה, לט, דלמ”ד קידשה ג”כ לע”ל היא מצוה דאורייתא, ולמ”ד לא קידשה לע”ל אין מ”ע דישיבת ארץ ישראל בזמן הזה רק מדרבנן).
אמנם יעויין בספר כפתור ופרח לרבנו אשתורי הפרחי, פרק יו”ד, שמבוארת דעתו שאין מצות ישוב הארץ תלויה במצוות התלויות בארץ (ודעתו מיוסדת על הלכות ארץ ישראל לרבינו ברוך בעל ספר התרומה). הובאו דברי הכפתור ופרח במבוא לספר שבת הארץ לראי”ה קוק, פרק טו. וכן במשפט כהן להנ”ל, סימן סג (עמ’ קכט), בתשובה לרידב”ז: “הנה כבר האריך בכפתור ופרח (פ”י) שקדושת ארץ ישראל וקדושת המצוות תרי מילי נינהו, ואפילו כשנפקעה קדושת המצוה…מכל מקום מצוה רבה יש בישוב ארץ הקודש מפני קדושתה העצמית”.
וקדמו בזה הרמב”ן בחידושיו ריש מסכת גיטין: “ואי נמי סבירא להו לא קידשה לעתיד לבוא לעניין תרומות ומעשרות, חביבא עלייהו, דהא איכא דאמרי קדושה שלישית יש להם, ואף על-פי כן ארץ ישראל בחיבתה היא עומדת ובקדושתה לעניין ישיבתה ודירתה”.
לאחרונה, ראיתי חכם אחד שביקש להעמיס חילוק זה של הרמב”ן והכפתור ופרח—בין קדושת ארץ ישראל העצמית ומצות ישובה לבין קדושת המצוות כגון תרומות ומעשרות—ברמב”ם! וחיליה מרמב”ם הלכות שבת פרק ו, הלכה יא: “הלוקח בית בארץ ישראל מן הגוי,מותר לומר לגוי לכתוב לו שטר בשבת, שאמירה לגוי בשבת אסורה מדבריהם ומשום ישוב ארץ ישראל לא גזרו בדבר זה, וכן הלוקח בית מהם בסוריאשסוריא כארץ ישראל לדבר זה“.והקשה המגן אברהם (אורח חיים, סימן שו, סקי”א): “צריך עיון דהא ברייתא [גיטין ח’] סבירא לה כיבוש יחיד שמיה כיבוש, ואם כן אסור ליתן להם חנייה בקרקע מלאו ד’לא תחנם’, לכן מותר לעבור איסור דרבנן, אבל כיון דהרמב”ם פסק דכיבוש יחיד לא שמיה כיבוש, למה נדחה דרבנן מפני דרבנן?” וחידש החכם הנ”ל שלרמב”ם בסוריא אין קדושת מצוות תרומות ומעשרות אבל קדושת הארץ העצמית—וממילא מצות ישובה—ישנה. ואם כן, השבות דרבנן של אמירה לגוי נדחית מפני המצוה דאורייתא של ישוב ארץ ישראל. עד כאן תורף דבריו.
אמנם אין צריך לזה, שהרי “לשבת יצרה” מצוה דרבנן, ומכל מקום כתבו התוספות בכמה דוכתי (גיטין מא, ב ד”ה לא תוהו בראה לשבת יצרה, ובבא בתרא יג, א ד”ה שנאמר לא תוהו בראה) שהיא “מצוה רבה”. ואף לגבי סוריא, יש לומר שהרמב”ם סובר באמת שישובה מצוה דרבנן, ברם מכיון ש”מצוה רבה” היא, נדחית השבות דאמירה לגוי מפניה. ועיין תוספות, שבת ד, א ד”ה וכי אומרים לו לאדם חטא בשביל שיזכה חבירך.
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ראה עליו בשם הגדולים לגרחיד”א, ערך “יצחק דיליאון” (יו”ד—שלג), שבשנת ש”ו כתב איזה פסק, וכתוב שם שהיה תושב אנקונה (של איטליא).
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“אין למידין מן ההגדות” (ירושלמי, פאה פ”ב הל”ד). דבר השבועה הוא בגדר אגדה ולא הלכה.  ראה שו”ת אבני נזר לר’ אברהם בורנשטיין מסוכצ’וב, חלק יורה דעה, הלכות ישיבת ארץ ישראל, סימן תנד, אותיות מ-נ. וזה לשונו שם אות נ: “ובהכי ניחא שהרמב”ם וכל הפוסקים לא הביאו דין החמש שבועות שנשבעו ישראל דזה אין עסק בהלכה, דבאמת האדם עצמו כמו שהוא בגוף לא נצטוה רק שורש הנשמה למעלה”. ובאות נא: “קרא דהשבעתי…אין בזה לא ציווי ולא אזהרה שהיא רק שבועת הנשמה בשורשה”. ובתור שכזו—אגדה ולא הלכה—הביא הרמב”ם את דבר השבועה באגרת תימן (ראה אגרות הרמבם, מהדורת הרב קאפח, ירושלים תשנ”ד, עמ’ נה), והשמיטו מחיבורו ההלכתי, משנה תורה.
חכם אחד העיר לי דיוק נפלא ברמב”ם הלכות מלכים (פי”ב הל”ד) שאינו סובל את איום השבועה שלא יעלו בחומה.
כותב הרמב”ם:
ואם יעמוד מלך מבית דוד הוגה בתורה ועוסק במצוות כדוד אביו כפי תורה שבכתב ושבעל-פה, ויכוף כל ישראל לילך בה ולחזק בדקה, וילחם מלחמות ה’—הרי זה בחזקת שהוא משיח.
אם עשה והצליח ונצח כל האומות שסביביו, ובנה מקדש במקומו וקיבץ נדחי ישראל—הרי זה משיח ודאי.
ואם לא הצליח עד כה, או נהרג—בידוע שאינו זה שהבטיחה עליו תורה, והרי הוא ככל מלכי בית דוד השלמים הכשרים שמתו.
למה נחשב מלך זה שלא הצליח למלך שלם וכשר? הרי “נלחם מלחמות ה'”, וממילא העביר את ישראל על השבועה שלא יעלו בחומה, ובסוף לא רק שהורעה חזקתו אלא איגלאי מילתא למפרע שהרשיע. ואם כן, היה לו לרמב”ם לפסוק דינו ככל המלכים הרשעים. אלא, “בהדי כבשי דרחמנא למה לך?!” (ברכות י’ א’).
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.ראה בצלאל נאור, אמונת עתיך (ירושלים, תשמ”ז), “הארון ואביזריו”, עמ’ קלט-קמ
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אגב, המגילת אסתר כתב דבר תמוה מאד במצות-עשה החמישית (דפוס ויניציאה שנ”ב, דף פו ע”א): “שמה שתקנו אלו הזמנים [=זמני התפילה] אינם לעיכובא, רק למצוה, דהא תפילה רחמי נינהו, ובכל עת הוא זמן רחמים”. וכבר שקיל למטרפסיה בשאגת אריה, סימן טו (בהמשך לסימן יד).
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יש אומרים שר’ בנימין היה תלמיד ר’ יחיאל מיכל מזלוטשוב. הוא חיבר ספרים נוספים: חלקת בנימין על הגדה של פסח (לבוב, תקנ”ד); אמתחת בנימין על מגילת קוהלת (מינקאוויץ,תקנ”ו); תורי זהב על התורה (מאהלוב, תקע”ו). כבר בשער ספרו אהבת דודים (למברג,תקנ”ג) נזכר שמו בברכת המתים.
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:ר’ בנימין הביא את דברי ספר הזוהר, חלק ב, קפא, ב
אמר רבי שמעון: כלא איהו קריבא למאן דידע ליחדא יחודא ולמפלח למאריה, דהא בזמנא דאשתכח קרבנא כדקא יאות, כדין אתקריב כלא כחדא ונהירו דאנפין אשתכח בעלמא בבי מקדשא…וכד קרבנא לא אשתכח כדקא יאות, או יחודא לא הוי כדקא יאות, כדין אנפין עציבין,ונהירו לא אשתכח, ואתכסיא סיהרא, ושלטא סטרא אחרא בעלמא, ואחריב בי מקדשא, בגין דלא אית מאן דידע ליחדא שמא דקב”ה כדקא יאות.
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.ספר הזוהר, שם
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.ספר הזוהר, שם.
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.ר’ בנימין מזלאזיץ, אהבת דודים (למברג, תקנ”ג), כז, א-ב