Using a Colophon to Find a Shidduch: on Ella the Zetser.

Using a Colophon to Find a Shidduch

by Eli Genauer

There has been much talk lately about the so called Shidduch crisis. Various initiatives have been proposed to address this problem, all of which are well meaning and well thought out. Many might be surprised to learn that an interesting approach was suggested by a 12 year old girl in the town of Frankfurt on Oder way back in 1699. This approach was based on a Pasuk in Yirmiyahu which deals with Messianic times.

We are all familiar with the 31st chapter of Yirmayahu. The first 19 pesukim of this Perek comprise the Haftorah of the second day of Rosh Hashana. The Navi begins, “Koh Amar Hashem, Matzah Chain BaMidbar”. The Haftorah proceeds to lay out a vision of Hashem’s love for the Jewish people and its eventual return to Tziyon, a fitting theme for a day in which we ask Hashem to grant us a good year. The stirring Pasuk of “HaVain Yakir Li Ephraim” concludes the Haftorah, but the Perek continues with Yirmiyahu’s vision of Yemos HaMoshiach.Yirmiyahu speaks of the Jewish people in Galus and after having been there for so long, they return to Hashem. Pasuk 21 states the following:

כא עַד-מָתַי תִּתְחַמָּקִין, הַבַּת הַשּׁוֹבֵבָה: כִּי-בָרָא יְהוָה חֲדָשָׁה בָּאָרֶץ, נְקֵבָה תְּסוֹבֵב גָּבֶר

How long will you hide, O backsliding daughter? For the Lord has created something new on the earth, a woman shall go after a man.

According to the Radak, the Navi is imploring the people to travel on a straight path and to return to Hashem. This will be a time when, as it were, the Bas HaShoveiva, the backsliding daughter, will be the one who seeks out a husband, in this case Hashem. The Navi says that this is something that is radical, but certainly required at that time.

We fast forward a bit to 1696 and we meet an amazing nine year old girl, born in Amsterdam, but now living in Dessau, Germany. Her name is Elle and she is the daughter of a man named Moshe ben Avraham Avinu. Moshe worked for years setting type and printing important Jewish books in various places in northern Europe, the last of which he did under very trying circumstances in Halle.(1) Moshe employed his children to help him in the arduous task of typesetting. We know a bit about his daughter Elle from some crumbs that she left us as she signed her name to the books she helped bring to print. She and her brother worked on setting type of the Siddur Drash Moshe printed in Dessau in 1696. After recording that the book was set to type by Yisroel ben Moshe, someone wrote a poem which tells us that a nine year old girl named Elle (עלה) helped Yisroel in this project:(This scan and those following are all courtesy of the JTS Library)

The Yiddish letters I set with my own hand
I am Elle, the daughter of Moses from Holland
a mere nine years old
the sole girl among six children
So when an error you should find
Remember, this was set by one who is but a child (2)

Did she compose the poem herself, or was it composed by her father or brother? Remarkably, we find another case not soon thereafter, of a nine year old setting type, and there we do know whether he could read or not. Nicholas Basbanes, in his book “A Gentle Madness”, records the following:

“Born in poverty, Isaiah Thomas came to know the touch and smell of ink on paper when he was only a child. Only nine years old in 1758….young Thomas was already completing his apprenticeship in the dingy Boston shop of Zechariah Fowle…When he later became the most successful printer and publisher in the United States-Benjamin Franklin dubbed him the Baskerville of America- Isaiah Thomas enjoyed telling friends that he knew how to set type before he was able to read.”(3)

Whether or not she could read at age nine, we do know that this little girl was able to recognize the Judeo Yiddish letters of a manuscript and set to type similar letters from which to print a book. Perhaps she had the potential to become as successful as Isaiah Thomas but for her gender and religion.

We meet Elle again in 1699, this time as a typesetter working on the famous Berman Shas of Frankfurt on Oder. This printed edition of the Talmud ( 1697-1699) was financed by the wealthy court Jew, Yissachar Berman Segal of Halberstadt who gave away half the 5,000 copies printed to needy scholars throughout Europe.(4)The Berman Shas is one of the most respected early printed editions of the Talmud because it contained many additional commentaries which became standard in following editions. It was the first edition since that of Gershom Soncino in the early 16th century to contain most of the diagrams we are familiar in Seder Zeraim, and Masechtos Eiruvin and Sukah. (5) It was also the first to contain Charamos from various Rabbanim prohibiting others in that general area from printing the Talmud for an extended period of time.(6) The following Cherem, recorded in Maseches Brachos, was written by Rav Dovid Oppenheim who lived at that time in Nikolsburg and later became chief Rabbi of Prague:At the end of Maseches Nidah printed in 1699, Elle signs her work a bit more boldly, and leaves us wondering what was going through her mind when she set the letters for the colophon.

“ By the hand of the faithful typesetter in this holy work, Yisroel the son of Reb Moshe. And by the hand of his maiden sister Elle, daughter of Rav Moshe, in the year “N’Kaivah T’Soivev Gaver” ( “a woman shall go after a man”.)

When you add up the letters which are set in large type, you come up with the year 459 according to the Peret Koton ( the abbreviated era ). This is the year 5459 (1699). What intrigues even the casual observer is why she, or her older brother Yisroel chose to record the year 5459 using that unusual Pasuk? One could argue that the Pasuk is tangentially related to some of the topics covered in Maseches Niddah, but there are many other Pesukim which deal more directly with the subject matter that could have been formatted to equal 459.(7) I think it is more logical to relate the Pasuk to the girl typesetter, who we are informed, is still unmarried. In Messianic times, it will be the Kallah, Am Yisroel, who seeks out its Chasan, Hashem. Perhaps Elle thought her circumstances and position necessitated a similar approach to finding a suitable Chasan. We hear the last from her in the next year having worked on a Machzor with her brother Yisroel.(8) We hope that after that, this extraordinary girl found an appropriate Shidduch. We wish the same for all those seeking the wonderful rewards that marriage has to offer.

(1) Marvin J Heller, “Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book”, Boston 2008 pps. 218-228. The entire chapter on Moses ben Avraham Avinu makes for some fascinating reading. I am indebted, as are we all, to Marvin Heller for his research into this field of study.
(2) Ibid: p.222
(3) Nicholas Basbanes, ‘A Gentle Madness” New York, 1995 pps144-145
(4) R.N.N. Rabinowitz “Ma’amar Al Hadfasas HaTalmud”, A.M. Haberman edition, Mosad HaRav Kook 2006, page 96 footnote 1.
(5) Ibid. p. 98
(6) Ibid p.100
(7) Two examples of a more fitting Pasuk to denote the year of publication for Tractate Niddah are:

“B’Mai Nidah Yischatah” which was used in Frankfurt A/M edition of 1720, and

“V’Safrah Lah Shiva Yomim, V’Achar Ti’Taher” which was used in the Dyhernfurth edition of 1816-21 ( although the highlighted letters actually add up to (5)773)

(8) Heller, page 223

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Questions

A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND QUESTIONS

By Eli Genauer

Authors note: I would like to thank Dr. Peggy Pearlstein and Sharon Horowitz of the Library of Congress for their help in allowing me to assemble the various printed editions of the Talmud that I used in this article

Amongst all the difficult tractates of the Talmud, Eruvin stands head and shoulders above most. The Gemara tries to describe in words what would normally take a picture to understand. Thankfully, our printed editions of Eruvin contain many diagrams, in the body of the text, in Rashi and in Tosafot. These diagrams help us make sense of what is going on. Truthfully, I don’t know how one could learn this Gemara without the diagrams.

I would like to analyze one such diagram and trace its history in the printed editions of Eruvin. At the end of my analysis, I will leave the reader with a few questions to ponder.

The Talmud Bavli, Eruvin, 6A, discusses the case of the מבוי עקום, literally a bent alley.[1] This is a mavoy (alley) shaped like an “L” that opens to the Reshut ha-Rabim at both ends. Indeed, both Rav and Shmuel agree that this mavoy is open on both ends to the Reshut ha-Rabim, but, they disagree on its halachic treatment. As I mentioned, the word ‘akum literally means “bent”. But, how do we know it is actually an “L” shaped mavoy? Probably from this picture which we find in the classic Vilna Shas.

It shows an “L” shaped mavoy with the notation that this mavoy opens up to the Reshut ha-Rabim at each end. Rashi does not say that it is an “L” shaped mavoy, only “מבוי עקום ושני פתחיו לרשות הרבים – a mavoy ‘akum is one that has both of its openings facing the Reshut ha-Rabim. Rashi does, however, add a critical word which adds to our understanding of the term, and that is the word “ka-zeh” (like this, or in this context, as described below). Underneath the word ka-zeh, in the Vilna edition, is the diagram with the “L” shaped mavoy, and now we know how Rashi explains this term in the Gemara. Of course, this assumes that the diagram, as it appears in the Vilna edition, is what Rashi provided. Thus, in order to ascertain if the “L” shaped diagram is really what Rashi intended, we need to examine earlier editions to assure ourselves that this diagram is the correct one.

Let us now turn to the history of the printed editions of the Talmud and, specifically, the various versions of this Rashi in different editions. I first looked at the second Bomberg edition printed in Venice in 1528.[2] Marvin Heller states that the Bomberg editions were, to some extent, based on the previous editions of Gershom Soncino.[3] However, where Soncino editions did contain diagrams, the Bomberg editions did not.[4] Dr. Edward Fram writes that “A blank space was left on the page suitable for adding a woodcut, but, whether for financial or technical reasons, the diagrams were not included until later printings”.[5] It wasn’t until Yissochar Berman Segal’s Frankfurt on Oder edition of 1697-1699, almost 200 years later, that diagrams were included in a printed edition.

Therefore, as we would now expect, the 1528 Venice edition looks like this.

The text in Rashi reads מבוי עקום ושני פתחיו לרשות הרבים כזה. The words are perfectly clear, but without a diagram to indicate what the word ka-zeh meant, a student might be a bit lost.

At least the reader would know that there was supposed to be a diagram there, and he might look somewhere else (perhaps in an old Rashi manuscript) to find it.

Such is not the case for our next example, which was printed in Cracow in 1619. This was a smaller version of the Talmud and included only the text of the Gemara and the Rashi. It was printed for students for use in various Yeshivos.[6] Here is how our passage looks there.

If you look at the 7th line on the picture shown, you will see it says מבוי עקום ושני פתחיו לר”ה כזה, but there is no space left to indicate a diagram was supposed to go there. One wonders what went through the mind of a young Yeshiva student when he studied this line. It is perhaps no wonder that Marvin Heller quotes R. Raphael N.N. Rabinowitz comment regarding this edition of Eruvin that “the tractate is almost impossible to learn from, and is, therefore, worthless.”[7]

Next we will go to the Benveniste edition, printed in Amsterdam in 1644. Similarly, this edition does not contain diagrams, as we can see from a copy that I possess.

However, as noted above, there were some editions that had the blank spaces filled in by artists or through the addition of woodcuts. Such is an edition housed in the Library of Congress, where the page in question looks like this.

The words inside the diagram are smudged, but at least it is somewhat clear that the alley in question is “L” shaped.[8]

Let us finally get to the first edition that had diagrams included, that of Frankfurt on Oder of 1697. After almost 200 years of no printed diagrams, just empty spaces, this is what we see.

It is safe to say that the editors belonged to the minimalist group of diagram makers. We can see the “L” shape, but no indication of where the reshut ha-rabim begins. You will also notice that the word מכאן is spelled incorrectly as מיכן, in the text of the Rashi.[9] Not an auspicious start for diagrams in the printed Talmud.

From then on, the diagrams get a little better and begin to look quite a bit like the definitive diagram in the Vilna Shas. Here are a few examples.

AMSTERDAM, 1743

DYHERNFURTH 1816

My personal favorite is from Frankfurt on Oder of 1734. I think the picture tells the story best (even better than the Vilna Shas) because of the position of the words “reshut ha-rabim“. (ר”ה as abbreviated)

This edition, correctly shows the reshut ha-rabim beginining only where the alley ends.

As I mentioned before, the Soncino editions contained the diagrams that were missing in the Bomberg editions. (See note [4] below). Clearly, these came from manuscripts which were used to prepare the Soncino editions. It was easy for a scribe who was copying a manuscript to insert a diagram where indicated, as everything was being done by hand. We might also assume that the copyists were artistic in nature and that drawing a diagram came easily to them.

I am left with just a few questions.

1. Who drew the first diagram? Was it Rashi himself? Are there manuscripts that provide evidence that Rashi did or did not execute the diagrams that appear in today’s editions of the Talmud?

2. Did Rashi even write the word “ka-zeh” in his Peirush?

3. Once the original manuscript of Rashi was copied and re-copied, did the diagrams change? I can imagine that a copyist wanted to strictly maintain Rashi’s words, but I wonder if one of them thought that their version of a diagram might be better understood? This would cause later versions to be changed forever.

We know that a picture is worth a thousand words. We are also taught that in studying Gemara, every word is precious. It is therefore very important that the diagrams that we have be accurate, so that the thousand words they tell us will also be accurate.

NOTES

[1] The online Milon gives the following meaning to the word “‘akum” – curved; bent; inclined. Jastrow renders our particular passage as “a winding alley.” Clearly, a picture would be helpful here to indicate what the Gemara was talking about.

[2] Maamar ‘al hadpasat ha-Talmud with Additions, ed. A.M. Habermann, Mossad ha-Rav Kook, Jerusalem: 2006, p. 73 n.1. Rabinowitz states that although it is unclear to him the exact date of the printing of all the volumes of this edition, he had a copy of Eruvin that provided it was printed in [5]288 (1527/8). This is the same year indicated in the copy in the Library of Congress.

[3] Marvin J. Heller’s Printing the Talmud: A History of the Earliest Printed Editions of the Talmud, Brooklyn, NY: 1992, p. 145.

[4] Here is an image of the Soncino, Pesaro 1511 Eruvin 6A which shows a diagram of the “L’ shaped alley (from JNUL online digitized collection). Marvin Heller has a picture of the front page of this Tractate in his above cited book (p. 110) and he identifies it as Pesaro 1511.

[5] Edward Fram, “In the Margins of the Text, Changes in the Page of the Talmud,” in Printing the Talmud: From Bomberg to Scottenstein, ed. Sharon Lieberman Mintz et.al., Yeshiva Univ. Museum, New York: 2005, p. 91, n.4.

[6] Heller id. at p. 38.

[7] Id. p. 388. According to Heller, Rabinowitz made his comment because of the inferior paper and letters of this edition. But, I imagine that he was also bothered by instances such as this.

[8] Here is a picture of a different page of Eruvin from the same copy with diagrams drawn in by ink. Although he was living in Amsterdam at this time, I do not think it was Rembrandt who drew these.

[9] It was spelled that way in the Pesaro 1511 edition also. I assume that the Vilna Shas version is correct.

What Was Bothering the Censor?

WHAT WAS BOTHERING THE CENSOR?

by Eli Genauer

The invention of the printing press in the 15th century was a great boon for Torah study. Manuscripts which had to be laboriously copied one by one could now be set to type and hundreds could be produced at one time. One of the earliest Jewish treasures to be set to print was the Talmud. Scattered volumes of it were printed in the late 15th century and early sixteenth century, but the first complete set was printed from 1519-1523 in Venice by Daniel Bomberg. He followed this with printing two more sets, and was joined by Marco Antonio Justinian who printed a complete set from 1546-1551.

The competition between Justinian and another gentile printer named Bragadini, led to one of them denouncing the other to the Pope for printing items which were against the Church. This led to the public burning of the Talmud throughout most of Italy starting in 1553.[1] The Talmud was listed in the Church’s first Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1559.

There still was a possibility to print the Talmud but only under the watchful eye of a censor who would excise all offending passages. The consequences of having to deal with censored texts, both from the outside and from self censorship, is one of the tragic outcomes of our Galus.

The first attempt to print the Talmud under the Papal ban was in 1578-1581 in Basel by the printer Ambrosius Froben who was allowed to print the Talmud under the lead censorship of Father Marco Marino.

Regarding the censorship efforts, Marvin J. Heller notes this was the most censored edition ever printed.[2] Stories about the founder of Christianity were deleted, and many references to anything remotely connected to Christianity were changed. When it came to Aggadic material, Raphael Nathan Nata Rabinowitz in מאמר על הדפסת התלמודwrites that regarding material which was either a bit strange or against the Christian concepts of reward and punishment, the censor would print a short explanation about it on the page.[3]

I would like to focus on one piece of the printed Talmud which is Aggadic in nature, the comment that was made on it by one of the classic Jewish Meforshim, and the comment made on that comment by the censor. I am vexed by the following question, “what was bothering the censor?”

The piece in question is in מסכת אבות- פרק ו’-משנה י’

חמשה קנינים קנה לו הקדוש ברוך הוא בעולמו, ואלו הן, תורה קנין אחד, שמים וארץ קנין אחד, אברהם קנין אחד, ישראל קנין אחד, בית המקדש קנין אחד.
תורה מנין, דכתיב (משלי ח), יהוה קנני ראשית דרכו קדם מפעליו מאז.

There is a commentary on Avos in many of the early printed editions of Mishnayos and of the Talmud. This commentary is attributed to the Rambam in the Soncino Napoli edition of the Mishnayos, in the Bomberg editions, in the Basel edition, and in the 1721 Frankfurt edition amongst others. It turns out that the commentary on the sixth chapter of Avos was not written by the Rambam as noted by the Romm 1880 edition of the Talmud, which attributes it to Rashi. [4]

Be that as it may, this Peirush as printed in the Mishnayos by Yehoshua Shlomo Soncino, Napoli 1492, states the following:

תורה קנין אחד מנין דכתיב השם קנני ראשית דרכו שבריאתה קדמה לעולם מפני שכשעלה במחשבה לפניו לבראות עולמו אמר יתקיים בשביל התורה

The creation of the Torah preceded the creation of the world, because when Hashem imagined creating the world, He said that the world should exist because of the Torah

This is what it looks like there: ( from JNUL digitized books )

In the Bomberg Edition of 1521, it looks like this (from JNUL Digitized Books)

In the Basel edition of 1580, (from JNUL)

The censor seems to have a problem with the comment and put in a הג”ה on the side of the text which looks like this: (Also from JNUL)

הדבר הזה קשה מאד לשמוע, וצריך באור להבין מה זאת התורה אשר קדמה לעולם

“This thing is very difficult to understand and needs an explanation what it means when it says that ‘the Torah preceded the world'”

Rabinowitz states that this הג”ה of the censor found its’ way into the Benveniste Amsterdam Shas of 1644-46 , (which I saw recently in the JTS Library) and from there, it was mistakenly included in many editions afterwards.[5]

I have an edition of the Talmud printed in Frankfurt in 1721, which is the model for almost all editions that followed. [6]

In the volume which contains Maseches Avodas Kochavim U’Mazalos, we find Maseches Avos at the very end. Not only is this comment included in it, but it now made its’ way from being on the side of the page, to being right in the text of the Peirush (albeit in parentheses).

Here is what it looked like in 1721:

I saw the censor’s comment in the Sulzbach 1755 edition and the Amsterdam 1763 edition. It appears as late as the Czernowitz edition of 1843, 200 years after being mistakenly included in the Benveniste Amsterdam edition.

By the time we get to the Romm Vilna edition of 1880, thankfully the comment is gone.

The censor does not seem to have a problem with the idea that the world was created in the merit of the Torah, rather that the Torah preceded the creation of the world. Rabinowitz had stated that the censor commented on Aggadic material if it was either strange or against Christianity. The comment of the Peirush did not seem at all strange (especially when compared with other Aggadic statements) so I was curious to find out if there was anything in it that was against Christianity.

Whom to ask? I turned to a real expert, someone who wears a big black Yarmulkah, sports a Rabbinic beard, and learns Mishnayos every morning at 6:30 AM with our neighborhood hematologist/oncologist. His name is Dr. Martin Jaffee, a professor of comparative religion at the University of Washington in Seattle, and until recently, the co-editor of AJS Review. He is so good at explaining Christian theology, that one of his students once remarked to him “I wish my minister were able to explain out beliefs as well as you did”

Here were his comments:

What bothered the censor is the parallel of the primordial Torah and the Primordial Logos (Word)–Gospel of John 1:1–“In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with G-d, and the Logos was G-d.” Your censor was probably upset by the parallel. He probably wasn’t a classicist, though, or he’d have known that this Neo-Platonic idea was all over the Mediterranean and had been for several centuries. In fact, Chazal’s idea of the Torah that precedes Creation is an example of their own exploitation of Neo-Platonism in service of Torah. Surely you know the Medrash about HaKadosh Baruch Hu looking into the Torah for instructions for creating the world, “like an architect consults a plan?

That seemed simple enough. The Christian censor’s comment then made its’ way into many editions of the Talmud, to be perused by many, and discussed by some, without realizing its’ origin. I imagine a scholar in the mid 18th century who acquires a set of the Frankfurt Talmud and studies this expensive edition to his library from cover to come. He learns Maseches Avos which he finds in the back of the volume which contains מסכת עבודת כוכבים ומזלות and is happy to have the Peirush on Perek Vav which is ascribed to the Rambam. He is quite curious about a הג”ה he finds in parentheses within one of the Rambam’s comments. Who wrote this comment and what exactly was his problem? He should only know.

Notes:

[1] I have simplified this quite a bit to what most consider the immediate cause for the burning of the Talmud at that time. For a more complete discussion of this matter, I would suggest reading chapters XI and XII in Marvin J. Heller’s Printing the Talmud: A History of the Earliest Printed Editions of the Talmud (Brooklyn 1992 ).

[2] Id. at p. 255

[3] Maamar alHadpasat ha-Talmud with Additions, ed. A.M. Habermann (Jerusalem 2006) p. 78.
On that same page Rabinowitz writes about the Basel edition: “The Jews looked with broken hearts on what had been done to their Talmud which had been trampled upon by the censor” (my paraphrase).

[4] In the Vilna Shas, this comment appears at the beginning of Perek Vav of Maseches Avos on Daf 15A. Maseches Avos can be found in the volume that contains Avodah Zarah. I have also seen that this commentary is attributed to the Beis Medrash of Rashi.

[5] Maamar alHadpasat ha-Talmud with Additions, p.78. at the end of footnote 10.

[6] Id. at p. 111