Two soldiers and a Shema Yisrael.

I'm sure many readers of this blog have heard or read some variation of the following story:

During a fierce battle two enemy soldiers were engaged in fierce hand to hand combat. One soldier overpowered the other and was about to drive his bayonet into him, and the soldier called out "Shema yisrael . . . !" The other soldier was also Jewish, and answered his call, and the two looked at each other, realized who (or what) they were, and presumably the slaughter stopped. In some versions the bayonet was already lodged.

In every version of this story I heard this legend takes place in World War I. So I was interested when I came across the following version of it, printed on February 13, 1885 in the Jewish Chronicle. In this version, it occurred in the Crimean War>, approximately thirty years earlier:

As you can see, this letter concerns prayer in Hebrew vs the vernacular. I will post the entire letter, which is interesting in its own right, at the end.

Here's Allan Nadler's review of a book of Jewish war time sermons, by Marc Saperstein:

Addressing one of the earliest Jewish community rallies, held in Washington and on behalf of the Jewish victims of World War I, on October 24th 1914, Gedaliah Silverstone, a Lithuanian Orthodox immigrant rabbi, spoke in heartbreaking tones of the terrible dilemma of the Jewish soldiers who were fighting valiantly on both sides of the “Great War”:

“Our brothers… are not fighting for our country, as is the Russian army, which is fighting for Russia, and the British army, which is fighting for their country, England, and the German army for Germany, and similarly the French and the Turks. Not us! We Jews are compelled to fight for all of these, not for ourselves… that is the greatest source of pain.”

Powerfully dramatizing this point, Silverstone then recounted the horrific experience of a Jewish soldier convalescing in a Russian army hospital in Petrograd:

“Whose heart did not throb with agony, whose eyes did not fill with tears, whose blood did not turn cold in his veins upon reading in the newspapers about a Jewish soldier in the Russian army who stabbed with his bayonet a soldier from the Austrian army? The mortally wounded man cried out with his last breath: ‘Shema Yisrael Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ehad’ and with the word Ehad his soul departed. When the Russian soldier realized that he had killed one of his brothers, that he had thrust his bayonet into a fellow Jew, he went out of his mind with grief.”

This particular sermon stands out from most of the 40 assembled by Saperstein, as it takes no position on the merits of a war into which America had not yet entered. There is not to be found among the book’s other sermons so blunt an affirmation that the Jewish people have no stake in the wars of the nations.

As you can see, this image was used in a sermon during WWI. It claims that such an account was in newspapers. Since Russia and Austria first fought in WWI, it would seem that the claim is that such an incident had occurred recently.

Below is a poem which was printed in 1917:

This powerful image occurs again and again.

1943:

1986:

1990:

2005:

Another from 2005:

Judith Bleich, in an Orthodox Forum volume which she edited:



Finally, the image appears in a French novel from 1886, David-Léon Cahun's La vie juive:



Here the event occurs during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Cahun tells of a soldier in Alsace who recalls the image of a Jewish soldier friend holding a Russian Jewish soldier he has slain in his arms. The Russian had recited Chema Isroel as he died, and it greatly pains the soldier who killed him.

I have no idea if this ever really occurred, or if it really occurred once or perhaps even several times. It is interesting that there are two versions, a heartbreaking one where one soldier kills the other, which was surely true to what actually happened as Jewish soldiers in enemy European armies fought in wars, and inspirational ones where the enemy-brother is spared. In any case, I was surprised (but also not surprised) to learn that the legend dates back much earlier than WWI. Indeed, since the 19th century is the first time that it became widespread for Jews to serve in European armies, it makes sense for the story to have emerged in that century. I was gratified to find a source earlier than Cahun's novel. I wonder if indeed there is any source from the Crimean War period (1853-56) for it, and that will require more research. It is interesting, however, that because of the Eretz Yisrael angle of the Crimean War, this seems to have aroused the interest in foreign events among many European Jews, who had never before read or demanded a newspaper. This war in fact seems to have spurred the creation of Hebrew newspapers for a news-hungry public. It would make sense if such a vivid scene became known at that time.

Below is the full letter from the Jewish Chronicle:

Happy Thanksgiving

Here's the Thanksgiving Sermon of רב' שבתי מאריס, delivered 158 years ago tomorrow, with his own corrections:

An 1861 argument to establish girl's schools to combat the spread of Chassidus in Russia.

The Jewish Chronicle 2.02.1861

"We are not experts in maleh and chaser"

It's interesting to compare readings in the two most famous Hebrew Bible codices, the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex. The gray is the Aleppo Codex, and the blue (or white, in one case,) Leningrad. These are all from Deut 28, which is where the Aleppo Codex that exists today begins. Verse numberings before each image:

18.

49.

52.

58.

59.

Rabbinic signatures, 1869.

Maharam Schick
R. Shlomo Ganzfried

R. Chaim Hirschensohn and Ephraim Deinard, a follow up.

Dan called my attention to something that's really interesting -- Ephraim Deinard was R. Chaim Hirschensohn's sponsor in America, when the latter emigrated here in 1903 with his family. Here's a closeup of the ship's manifesto:






(click to enlarge)

As you can see, Rabbi Hirschensohn's age was listen as 48, occupation as "Boy School Director," his Nationality as "German Hebrew," two of his daughters were "teachers," and the other two daughters small children. It also says how much money has was said to be in possession of, although I can't read it, and rather than joining a relative, he was to join a friend, Ephraim Deinard.

All that said, I'm not sure why this entry was crossed out. Another entry which was crossed out has "(crossed off mistakenly, passenger on board)" which leads me to wonder if he actually came on this voyage after all.

R. Chaim Hirschenson pictures

From this fascinating website:



Not a great scan, but it's from this great picture book.



Wolf of Ishim ve-Shitos found a ban on his journal המסדרונה (many issues of which you can download you-know-where):

Portrait of Maimonides, Pt. II

Read Part I.

From When Jews Wore Turbans by Eliezer Segal:

Perhaps the most familiar turban in Jewish tradition topped the head of Rabbi Moses Maimonides, the noted 12th-century rabbi and philosopher. The same traditional portrait of Maimonides' stern, bearded visage has been appearing on the title pages of his works since the beginnings of Jewish printing.

In spite of the portrait's widespread acceptance, it has always seemed to me somewhat suspicious. It did not appear until many centuries after the Egyptian sage's lifetime, and it is doubtful that such a picture would have been commissioned by Maimonides himself, who shared his society's rigid disapproval of representational art.

My suspicions seemed to be confirmed a few years back when I visited Jerusalem's L. A. Meyer Museum of Islamic Culture. There among the many fascinating artifacts was sitting a copy of the familiar portrait of Maimonides--except that according to the caption on the exhibit, it was a 16th century Turkish merchant!

It would seem that the early Hebrew printers in Venice or Constantinople, eager to supply their readers with a tangible likeness of the Egyptian Jewish scholar, had simply pulled out an available piece of "clip art" that conveyed a rough image, of what he might have looked like. That picture has defined our conception of Maimonides ever since.

Personally, I'd love to see that woodcut, because I'm not so sure if what he reports is accurate, since the first and last paragraph seems to contain a big error. There's been a turbaned image of the Rambam since the beginning of Jewish printing? Where? (If anyone in Israel could visit the museum and send me a photo of the picture Segal mentions, I would be very grateful!) In fact, so far the source of the portrait captioned Maimonides is the 34 volume encyclopedia Thesaurus Antiquitatum Sacrarum (1744), a monumental work which contained Latin translations of numerous Hebrew works, including a large portion of the Talmud Yerushalmi. It contained the following image:



Thus, I really can't say why Segal writes that Hebrew printers in Venice or Constantinople used that image, or one like it. Since lots of old books, Hebrew and otherwise, have been pored over for centuries and no one has yet produced a Hebrew book from Venice or Constantinople with a turbaned Maimonides portrait, we must dismiss it (although the Thesaurus was printed at Venice). Of course it is unclear how this portrait came about. Obviously someone drew it and someone, perhaps the same person, captioned it "Moses filius Maimon . . . ex antiqua tabula," as it appeared in the Thesaurus. In addition, the picture looks like it was really a medallion. It would be nice to know where it came from, but I digress.

In 1847 Abraham Benisch (1811-1878), editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Two Lectures on the Life and Writings of Maimonides, which he had delivered at the "Jews' and General Literary and Scientific Institution."

The beginning of the book was adorned with the following:



What had happened was, the Italian scholar Isaaco Samuele Reggio (known as Yashar) had discovered the portrait on page 344 of the first volume of the Thesaurus. (In a way it's funny to think of someone discovering something in a book, but he was the first to call attention to it.) Writing about it in a letter he sent in 1844 to the Hungarian Jewish book dealer and scholar Zalman Gottleib Stern, Reggio also included a sketch of the image from the Thesaurus (Reggio was artistic and enjoyed painting). Stern in turn published it as a single sheet, both letter and image. Unfortunately I don't have a good image of that sheet to show, but someone was decent enough to scan it and upload a small one to the Daat web site. Here is what it looked like:



Benisch had received one of the copies -- not from Stern -- and he in turn commissioned a well known English portrait painter, Julia Goodman, to draw the image which I reproduced above.

On pg. 18 Benisch notes that "Nothing authentic has been recorded as to [Maimonides'] exterior or physical constitution." This is in contrast, by the way, with the Rambam's son, for whom a physical description of some kind does exist, if I am not mistaken. Benisch's footnote reads:



As you can see, he basically says that there's no reason to doubt Ugolini's caption in 1744 that the image or medallion was old (i.e., not invented then). Still, that really tells us nothing.

How did Benisch get hold of Stern's sheet? One would have assumed that Stern sent it to him, but someone claims otherwise. Moses Margoliouth, writing to a "Rev. J. Horlock", the letter printed in "A Pilgrimage to the Land of My Fathers" (1850) devoted almost four pages to explaining how it was he who had obtained Zalman Stern's page from a friend, and he had used the image on a prospectus he had published for a "Philo-Hebraic Society" which he had tried to form. Benisch saw the prospectus, and even inquired of Margoliouth as to its authenticity, and from him had learned the whole story (Ugolino, Reggio, Stern). Then, Benisch asked him for a copy of the Reggio sheet, and had Julia Goodman draw it anew. He then appended it and referred to it in his published lectures, not forgetting to lavishly thank Julia Goodman--



--but for all this, he did not acknowledge it or thank him, and Margoliouth was quite upset about it, assuming that it was just another example of the lousy treatment he received from Jews like Benisch, because he was a Jewish Christian (and missionary to the Jews, he forgot to mention). As you can see, he was so annoyed he even took a swipe at Goodman's artistic ability!







Interestingly, he also says that in France he saw several images which looked similar, which were claimed to be Maimonides, and heirlooms.

Here's a copy of Margoliouth's prospectus for the Philo-Hebraic Society, however it doesn't include the Rambam image:



Moses Margoliouth was born in 1819 in Suwalki (the same Lithuanian town that R. Dovid Lifschitz was the rav of, incidentally, more than a century later) and moved to England when he was 19. A year later he had converted to Christianity and went on to become a fairly prominent Anglican minister.

Here's a portrait of Moses Margoliouth -- an authentic one:

A Victorian rabbinic opinion regarding sex education for girls.

Below is the summary of a symposium on sex education in 1894. British Chief Rabbi Herman Adler's view regarding "the Tree of Knowledge" is summarized in the third paragraph.



Basically, he writes that mothers don't need to talk to their daughters. The girls can read all they need to know about it in the Bible.

Here is the full text of his remark:

You can read the whole symposium, which begins with the following: "I look upon the ignorance (adorned by the poetical name of innocence) in which young girls are kept as to the moral and physical conditions of marriage and conjugal life, as proof of the resolution on the part of man, by all the means in his power, to keep girls and women in an inferior position. Knowledge of things, individuals, and conditions of life, is freedom for every living being," here.

Mordechai Gumpel Schnaber, Part I.

An interesting 18th century Jewish figure who escaped the attention of no Jewish historians, yet is still not widely known, is a man with a complicated name to get right. The easiest way of referring to him is Mordechai Gumpel Schnaber (1741-1797), although he was also known by various aliases, both in his own time and afterward. Being as he was a לוי, he was known as Levisohn, with all the variants that name can produce (with or without the "h," one or two "s," etc.). In Megillas Sefer (pg. 135) R. Jacob Emden refers to Mordechai Gumpel's grandfather as החסיד המופלג בתורה ר"ג שנאפיר, although in Mordechai Gumpel's own published and private writings it is spelled שנאבר (with a couple of exceptions, where he too spelled it with a פ). However, you can see that R. Emden was not making a mistake. Below is a small sampling of tombstone inscriptions from the late 17th to early 19th centuries:







As you can see, שנאבר seems to be the anomalous spelling.

Incidentally, לעוויסאן is how he spelled the surname Levisohn, by which he was known by non-Jews. In later times he was called "Georg" or "George Levison," although apparently this is an error. Heinz Moshe Graupe notes in his article "Mordechai Shnaber-Levison The Life, Works and Thought of a Haskalah Outsider" that in fact there is no evidence during his life that he was called George. His published writings are signed "G. Levison," but when his name is spelled in full he is called "Gumpertz" or some variant of that. If he was ever known as George, there's no evidence as yet that he was so called during his life time.

Since his name definitely was Mordechai Gumpel, that is how he will be referred to by me hereafter. Born into a rabbinic family in Germany, he somehow became a physician, although according to Graupe there is no record of where and how (Graupe, I think, is the most recent expert to write about him, in the LBIY 1996; he also wrote a widely quoted article about him in the LBI's other journal in 1961). By contrast, in the very interesting and informative introduction to the Sprecher Bar Mitzvah volume מבחר כתבי מו"ה מרדכי גומפל שנאבר הלוי לעוויזאהן ז"ל, it is stated (pg. 4) that his medical studies were conducted through an apprenticeship with a physician associated with the Jewish hospital of Breslau, which had been founded in 1760. Although a very informative footnote explains how such typical studies were conducted, including the possibility of taking anatomy and other classes at the nearby University of Breslau (where Jews could take classes, but not enroll), it gives no reference to show that in fact this is how Mordechai Gumpel became a physician. However, it is a reasonable conjecture given that in his next destination, London, he was as a physician. After his time in London he joined the medical faculty at the University of Upssala in Sweden, where he became a favorite of the king. Eventually he moved to Hamburg where he continued his medical practice, continued to write and publish, and died in 1797.

As a young man he moved to London, apparently under a cloud, for while in Breslau his landlord died, and all possible suspects, including him, were arrested. He was cleared of the charge (he was released, after all), but it came to haunt him again. While in London he apprenticed with two very famous physicians, the Hunter brothers, William and John. In fact, when he eventually published his own medical texts, one German reviewer maintained that the only valuable thing in his book was that he recorded treatments of the Hunters that he had observed.

His presence in London is marked in several ways, but below is an incidental one. A British clergyman, Anselm Bayly, wrote a guide to reading Hebrew without points. In the preface he writes that "the hebrew hath never been totally dead; it is alive to this day in the mouths and understanding of the wise and learned Jews who all over the world can converse with each other, and write in biblical as well as in the rabbinical hebrew. This is a fact* (see here). The asterisk gave the following footnote:

Accuracy aside -- see below for an excerpt from an 1847 Jewish newspaper -- here is the advertisement it refers to:

So we see that in addition to being a doctor, he also accepted or wished to accept pupils to teach the Hebrew language.

Here is the title page to his book on sore throats:

Later in that book there is a list of his already published books.

The Dissertation on the Law and Sciences seems to refer to his מאמר התורה והחכמה, although it has been suggested (hoped?) that it is a separate English essay, or at least a translation of it, but one has never been found.

Here are two advertisements, the first from 1776 and the other from 1779:





His Hebrew work was sufficiently well known that a 1783 attempt to complete Wolf's Bibliotheca Hebraea, with 50 years of material to update, included an entry on him:


In any case, someone from Breslau recognized him in the Great Synagogue of London, and apparently publicly accused him of being a murderer. Chaos ensued, the police were called, and although he protested his innocence and that he had documents to show he was cleared, he was kicked out of the synagogue. In response he published a pamphlet in his own defense, while in turn a representative of the synagogue published another pamphlet under the name "Yehudah." Incidentally, because of this second pamphlet there was some confusion about the reason why he was kicked out/ left the synagogue.

Below is the account of the very interesting 19th century apostate Moses Margoliouth:









As you can see, he espoused the view that this incident was an example of Jewish intolerance for supposedly unacceptable or even heretical views in the מאמר התורה והחכמה. In addition, we learn that he was called רע גומפל "Ra'a Gumpel" (which in itself is strange; perhaps he meant רשע גומפל. Moshe Pelli gives another conjecture in an article on MG in JQR.). Apparently Margoliouth did not lie, but rather misunderstood something he had read. In turn, his statement misled many historians. According to Sprecher the "Yehuda" pamphlet (which is called תשובת הפרושים) only exists today in one copy in the British Library (bound together with MG's תוכחה מגולה, his vindication statement which is available at hebrewbooks.org). So it isn't exactly easy to access. However, in it we find the following background. "Yehudah" accepts that MG murdered his landlord. It is asserted that the wife of the landlord had a reputation for having affairs with Jewish and non-Jewish men. Yehudah assumes that MG was one of them, and that she seduced him on condition that he would kill her husband! In addition, Yehudah adds that he is acquainted with "an old man in the community" who had been friendly with MG, but broke off the friendship when it became clear to him that the latter was lascivious. However, when the alleged old man had initially met MG, through his own son, the latter had informed his old father that MG was great in "תורה והחכמה," that is, he was a great Torah scholar and possessed much secular knowledge. Apparently Margoliouth confused this with the title of MG's work מאמר התורה והחכמה and turned it into a case of Jewish intolerance. Even Cecil Roth fell for this; as Graupe put it, only Moshe Pelli realized that the מאמר התורה והחכמה had no connection whatsoever with his expulsion from the Great Synagogue. Where did he daven afterward, you ask? To the Hambro' Synagogue, of course.

In any case, I will digress for a moment to talk about chocolate. As you can see above in the Margoliouth excerpt, we are told "He was a clever physician, and discovered the use of chocolate." In fact, there is a reason for his association with chocolate, which will become clear, but in the meantime, Graupe writes (f.n. 44) that "Margoliouth goes so far as to call Shnaber-Levison the inventor of chocolate." Perhaps Graupe was misled by the other mistake, but I think Margoliouth did no such thing. He does not claim that MG invented chocolate, but rather that he "discovered the use of chocolate" [for medicinal purposes]. Below are some excerpts from period literature (18th and 19th century, when Margoliouth lived) which show that "the use of chocolate" means for medical reasons, not because it tastes so very good.

1788:



1803:



1810:



From an encyclopedia:



MG developed a medicinal chocolate, which he called Gesundheitsschokolade, frequently advertising it in a journal he started called Die deutsche Gesundheitszeitung. Although Graupe seems to take it at face value that Gesundheitsschokolade was his baby, it seems that not only did this become a generic German word (look it up in a dictionary) but that it was also a term used throughout the 18th century. Rather, it seems that he devised a kind of gesundheitsschokolade. See below:


In any case, in an 1801 critique of the entire medical profession, Garlieb Merkel wrote as follows:



Basically one of his critiques were that physicians preyed on credulous women who were impressed by scholarly language and behavior. As an example, he mentions MG's chocolate. MG is dead, he writes, but his widow sold his recipes and prescriptions to another Jewish physician, a Dr. Meier. The gesundheitsschokolade is mentioned in the 8th and 9th line. (Graupe relates a charming conjecture; when he lectured in Hamburg, someone in the audience informed him that a chocolate company owned by an "S. Meier and Son" still existed, and that the Meier's were supposed to be descendants of baptized Jews. Graupe wonders if it might be possible that these are the same Meiers, and if so, perhaps Mordechai Gumpel's chocolate lives on.)

Don't let the chocolate mislead you. MG was no quack. He was a good 18th century physician. Sprecher published an account by him where he removed a parasite from a child with the use of a microscope. Not being a medical historian, I'll trust the judgments of others, who have concluded that he had new ideas and his science was of his time. Speaking of parasites, MG also explained the Talmudic story of the gnat which entered Titus's brain, only to grow into a pigeon-like creature in the following way: the parasite was tiny. But the rabbis examined it under a microscrope of their own invention, and it seemed as large as a bird.

In Dr. Sprecher's book we find a highly interesting account of an incident which almost certainly didn't happen the way MG records. MG relates that when a fire totally devastated the walled-off Frankfurt Jewish ghetto in the early 18th century, the residents turned to the communal leaders to obtain a שכירת רשות which would allow them construct an eruv. The authorities took the dual approach of 1) charging an exorbitant sum of money for the privilege and 2) accusing the Jews of somehow using the requested שכירת רשות to aid the French who were laying siege to Frankfurt at the time. Desperate to demonstrate that an eruv is just a string, they turned to none other than Johann Andreas Eisenmenger (post forthcoming) who in fact supported their contention as correct. Now, while it is true that Eisenmenger is best remembered by Jews as a צורר היהודים, this is theoretically possible. Although E's reputation for antisemitism is not at all undeserved, in his infamous work he also doubted that Jews used the blood of Christians to bake matzah. Furthermore, there can be little doubt that his view was shaped by how he understood Jewish texts, and there would be no reason on his part to lie. Most likely he viewed the idea of an eruv as an outrageously silly thing, but that doesn't mean that it isn't what the Jews say it is! However, Sprecher notes that E. died in 1704, while the Frankfurt fire occurred in 1711. So unless the true facts are buried in this account, it doesn't appear to have happened. Still, it's a great story, isn't it?

Incidentally, in his vindication pamphlet he writes the following:


As you can see, he appears to be claiming that his two illustrious rabbeim, R. David Frankel and R. Jonathan Eybeschutz, ordained him as rabbi at age 14!

Not impossible, but highly unlikely. On the other hand, how would he think to pass of a lie in such a context? Sprecher says he thinks it's undoubtedly an exaggeration; Graupe writes that other historians, such as Cecil Roth, assume he had in fact been granted מורנו הרב status at that age, but for him it is unclear. Graupe notes that sometimes he is addressed this way by others, but that may be for reasons of etiquette. There can be little doubt that MG possessed the knowledge and learning for the title, but he seems to have always referred to himself as "הרופה," "Physician." This tells me nothing, because it seems likely that a practicing physician in the 18th century, especially a Jewish one, would have been quite proud to call himself הרופה. To me it seems most likely that he had exaggerated, and had really achieved the degree of חבר at that age. Since he was writing in poetic style, no doubt his readers would have understood that. Another piece of evidence to consider is that Moses Mendelssohn related that R. Jonathan Eybeschutz withheld מורנו ordination from him because he was at the time yet unmarried. Although in 1755 it is possible that 14-year old MG might have married, in fact he remained a bachelor until he was in his 30s, so it seems impossible that R. Jonathan would have ordained him then simply because he was unmarried, without even considering the question of whether he was qualified.

In February 1847 a column appeared in the Jewish Chronicle giving a list of important Jewish persons and events which happened in the month of February. The list was translated from Zunz, but see the translator's wry comment about the Jewish knowledge of Hebrew in the England of his time:



In 1861 the following query was published in the same periodical:



Here's a review of his Essay on the Blood, from 1776:



And one from 1778:



Here's a bibliography of his medical writings from 1842:



Some info from his will:



Two views of his tombstone, taken 60 years apart:





Part II will deal with some of his teachings and his thought and the question of whether he is to be considered a maskil, or if indeed that is even a meaningful question.

A 13th century Spanish Torah for sale.

Here are some images of the 13th century Torah scroll currently on auction at Sotheby's (expected to sell for $500,000).








These images are from a powerpoint presentation (download as a pdf) which expands upon the unique features of this scroll, including illustrations of later scribal emendations apparently made to bring this scroll in line with later scribal traditions. An actual 700 year old sefer Torah, it also seems like a nice illustration of why archaeology is not normally welcomed in halachic discussions.

Inscribed books

I came across a pretty interesting book by Johanan Salomon Wittkower, Agudat perachim (1880). You know it has to be notable when it begins with letters from Marcus Lehmann, Eliezer Lipman Silbermann, Adolph Jellinek, Samson Raphael Hirsch, Ezriel Hildesheimer, Salomon Plessner, David Gordon, Hermann Adler and others.

But what really interests me was the inscription in the beginning:



But not everyone inscribed this book, which included the above plate. See this copy with a blank plate:




See also this post.

Haskamah collecting: an aspect of the literary output of Rabbi Abraham Belais of Tunisia (and Italy, and France, and England).

There once was an interesting character named Rabbi Abraham Belais.



Here's a short biography of him (in Hyamson's The Sephardim of England):




R. Avraham ben Shalom Belais wrote numerous works, many of which can be downloaded from hebrewbooks.org (search for author בלעיש). He seemed to want to make his books accessible as possible, and thus some of them were published with a vernacular translation. For example, the book באר לחי רואי was printed originally in 1828 with a French and Italian translation, and was also translated into German in 1838 by Moritz Steinschneider. It is oddly enough Steinschneider's first published work. This book is described by Alexander Marx in "Essays in Jewish Biography" as "a versified collection of moral sentences."

In addition to collecting moral sentences, Rabbi Belais apparently enjoyed collecting haskamas. At the end of one his works was appended the following notice:



That's quite a list! He wasn't exaggerating either. Below are some of the haskamos:

This one is from the very first Sir Rabbi there was, Abraham de Cologna, who will be the subject of an upcoming post:



Naturally the Chasam Sopher's haskamah is of interest.

I am assuming this is the earliest bit of the Chasam Sofer's writing translated into English (1845 or 46):





He had a thing for the Montefiores, who were probably a great couple to butter up.

Here's a dedication from one of his books:



And here's a translation of a poem he wrote in praise of Montefiore's journey in Russia:



But he could write hymns and praises of others, too. For example, this was appended to one of his books, in praise of Sir Samuel Isaac Avigdor (who had been the secretary of the Napoleonic Sanhedrin):



And here is what aristocracy and royalty had to write about him, including a Hebrew letter from the Duke of Sussex:



Incidentally, this Duke of Sussex really wrote that letter himself. Although there are earlier sources discussing his Hebrew ability, below is a notice in the Jewish Chronicle from May 1943:



The Solomon Lyon mentioned as the Hebrew teacher of the Duke of Sussex taught Hebrew at Oxford and Cambrdige, and also wrote a Hebrew grammar called "A Key to the Holy Tongue." He once testified as an expert witness in a trial of 1795 called Lindo v. Belisario, concerning the legality of a certain Jewish marriage:



Back to Belais; another of his works featured the following notice at the beginning:



Below is the translator's little note at the end of the book:



That note is interesting for a number of reasons. Note the apology for deviating from the Authorised Version (i.e., the King James Bible) in biblical quotations which differed from Belais's interpretation. Secondly, he praises Morris Raphall. Although the translator is not identified in the book, I suspect that it is David de Sola, who was the Hazan at London's Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue. He also translated 18 massekhtot of the Mishna in collaboration with Raphall, a very interesting and worthy edition. In addition, de Sola's daughter Yael was married to Belais's son Shelomo.

Finally, here is the Hebrew and English introduction to his commentary to Ecclesiastes. Note his apology for writing the commentary, his perception of his uprooted and difficult life and how he signs off in the Hebrew section (i.e., which he actually wrote):




Finally, please don't get the impression that he wasn't learned. Many of his works are available, and you can see for yourself.

Ben Usiel revealed

From Index pseudonymorum (1856).

Was the term 'orthodox' really first applied to Jews only in the late 18th century?

There's an interesting paper called Saul Ascher’s Leviathan, or The Invention of Jewish Orthodoxy in 1792 by Christoph Schulte in LBIY 2000 45 (1):25-34. The premise is that the aforementioned book more or less is the first time the concept of Jewish Orthodoxy is really nailed down. I will not take issue with that claim, but in the course of discussing the book Schulte gives what he thinks is the genealogy of the term "Orthodox Jew."

In the course of the paper he writes the following: "In the sciences it is fairly easy to date inventions. In the humanities, however, it is rare to be able to date the birth of an idea or a concept." With that in mind, he tries to develop the thesis regarding Saul Ascher's book, which of course dates the concept of Jewish Orthodoxy to the late 18th century generally, but he also shows what the earlier literature had to say about the genesis of the term.

Below are some quotes:

pg. 28-29 section III. THE INVENTION OF JEWISH ORTHODOXY

"What is striking about the words “orthodox” and “orthodoxy” is the fact that they were originally Christian terms. Before the end of the eighteenth century, they had never been applied to Jews."

"The hebraist and theologian Johann David Michaelis, as Mordechai Breuer has shown,17 probably was the first person to attribute the term “orthodox” to a Jew. He called Moses Mendelssohn an “orthodox Jew” in the Göttingische Gelehrten Anzeigen in 1770 following the so-called Lavater affair.18 Another example of a Protestant speaking of the “orthodoxy of the Jewish superstition” is found in an antijudaic reference to the Emden-Eybeschütz affair in an anonymous letter in the second volume of Dohm’sUeber die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden (1783).19 Ascher refers to this book, and he mayalso have known that Mendelssohn was the first Jew to publicly use the term “orthodoxJew”, when he wrote that Spinoza (!) could have remained an orthodox Jew if only he had clung to his philosophical ideas in the Ethics instead of attacking various religious doctrines of Judaism directly in texts like the Tractatus theologico-politicus.20

17 Mordechai Breuer, ‘Das Bild der Aufklärung bei der deutsch-jüdischen Orthodoxie’, in Karlfried Gründer and Nathan Rotenstreich (eds.), Aufklärung und Haskala in jüdischer und nichtjüdischer Sicht, Wolfenbütteler Studien zur Aufklärung 14, Heidelberg 1990, pp. 131–142. I thank Renate Best for drawing my attention to this article and to Breuer’s findings.
18 Johann David Michaelis, Göttingische Gelehrten Anzeigen, vol. 1, 59. Stück, 17 May 1770, p. 514.
19 Christian Wilhelm von Dohm, Ueber die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden, Zweyter Theil, Berlin and Stettin 1783, p. 131. The letter is signed Gr. v. S. (?).
20 Moses Mendelssohn, ‘An die Freunde Lessings’, Berlin 1786, in Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften. Jubiläumsausgabe, vol. 3.2, ed. by Leo Strauss, Stuttgart 1974, p. 188. In two private letters to Herz Homberg, dated 14 June 1783 and 1 March 1784, Mendelssohn again speaks of Jewish orthodoxy; cf. Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 13, ed. by Alexander Altmann, Stuttgart 1977, pp. 112 f. and p. 178.

"Another text Ascher may have known is Moses Hirschel’s Kampf der jüdische Hierarchie mit der Vernunft (1788), in which Hirschel attacked “the orthodox” Jews and the “jüdische Orthodoxie” in a Voltairian manner as representatives of superstition, ignorance, and priestly hypocrisy.21 But in Hirschel’s publication – in contrast to Ascher’s work – there is no proposal for religious change. His anti-religious polemics favour the radical abandonment of the rabbinic tradition without replacing it with any religious alternative."

"Ascher, then, was not the first Jew to write publicly about Jews being “orthodox”– as far as we know Moses Mendelssohn was. But Mendelssohn’s words about Jewish orthodoxy were incidental and not conceptual. Ascher, on the other hand . . . "

However,

1690:



1708:



1714:



1722:



1737:



1737:



1738:



1752:



1761 -- this one is actually Michaelis, who is credited above with calling Mendelssohn an Orthodox Jew in 1770:



1777:



1790:



Although it is true that many of these are really speaking about Jews in the time of Jesus I think it must be admitted that the suggestion that "before the end of the eighteenth century, [the term orthodox] had never been applied to Jews," as "orthodoxy" is a "Christian term," must be rejected as inaccurate. And it isn't as if I've read through all of early 18th century literature, and these examples are only from English texts. I'll bet the same can be shown in Latin, German, Dutch, Italian, etc.

Secondly, clearly Mendelssohn was not the first to write publicly about Jews being orthodox.

That said, I'll grant that Michaelis may well be the first to speak of a specific Jew as orthodox, in this case, Mendelssohn in 1770, although I suspect that really he is but the first so far noticed.

See also the 2007 article in Modern Judaism "So-Called Orthodoxy": The History of an Unwanted Label" by Jeffrey C. Blutinger who also discusses the history of the attempt to date the origin of the term.

He writes that for a long time it was thought that the published transactions of the Parisian Sanhedrin (1806) were the first use of the term (although I think he meant first published). Below is the reference from the 1807 English translation, the Transactions of the Parisian Sanhedrim [sic] or Acts of the Assembly of Israelitish Deputies of France and Italy Convoked at Paris by an Imperial and Royal Decree, dated May 30, 1806:



Blutinger recounts that in 1956 that date was pushed back to 1795, when the term was found in an issue of the Berlin Monatsschrift. Later Blutinger adds his opinion that Mendelssohn seems to have been the first Jew to use the term Orthodox, however he found this in a letter from 1755, which is 15 years earlier than the letter Schulte found the term in. In any event, the article usefully notes that in its original late 18th century use the terms means "Anti- or Un- enlightened." This is how it was used by 18th century Aufklarung (men of the Englightenment) and this is how it was used by those Jews who had used it. Later it took on the connotation of "Anti-Reform." Obviously the examples I have uncovered have nothing to do with the Englightenment. However, we see that term was most certainly used by writers wanting to contrast something with what was supposed to be the standard or normative -- orthodox -- Judaism.

An aborted attempt to establish an English yeshiva 270 years ago.

In 1739 a Jewish man in England, Elias de Pas, willed £1200 to establish a yeshiva. That's more than $260,000 in today's money. The court ruled that it is superstitious use, and therefore an illegal charity, and instead the funds went to the Foundling Hospital.



and




By the way, "superstitious" in the 18th century meant "mistaken devotion," which it still does, in a way, but was more of a commentary on wrong religion rather than lack of critical or rational thinking (although in a way, to profess "wrong religion" was seen as a lack of critical thinking). In this case, "superstitious use" was a legal term.

Note as well that although this is not religious tolerance as we've become accustomed to, this should not be seen as antisemitic. It was the law and had nothing to do with Jews per se. Below is from a legal treatise on wills from 1809:



By 1848 the reasonableness of such a law was questioned:

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A Jewish lawyer graduates in 1791

Here's a report from 1791 about a Jew named Raphael Joel graduating with law degree from Fordham the University of Prague.



And a little more context concerning how this came about:



And to give some more context, in December of 1744 it was decreed that the Jews of Prague would be expelled in six weeks. Here's a translation of that decree from 1745:



What sort of Jewish community was in Prague when it was so cruelly disrupted? Here's a report from 1738:



I think the real number might have been more like 8000.

R. Zecharia Frankel's 'Modifications of the Liturgy,' 1843.

Voice of Israel May 12, 1843, pg. 166.

As always, context helps. See the following footnote and article to which it refers in the May 26 issue:


שובר הרשעה ומכניע זדים

Golem addenda

Here are some interesting golem related things I came across, to supplement the golem post of last week.

A hypothesis about the origin of the golem legend, from Old European Jewries by David Philipson (1894):



From a list of Yiddish proverbs and sayings collected in St. Louis (1920):



A description of the golem, in which the Maharal is named "Rabbi Bezalel [sic] Loew," the golem is a dwarf, and the magic word which automates him is G O L E M, from a book called The follies of science at the court of Rudolph II: 1576-1612 by Henry Carrington Bolton (1904). Unfortunately it can't be bothered to cite sources or give a bibliography.





Here's a great article on Artifical Life by J.D. Eisenstein in his Topics of the Day in the Talmud series, in New Era Illustrated 7 (1905)






Writing in that same magazine, is Gotthard Deutsch. He recounts what he was told about the resting place of the golem, by the shammas of the Altneu Schule, and based on personal knowledge, what the fate of the Maharal's kiddush cup would be:

What a professor of Hebrew and Oriental languages had to know to qualify for a university chair in 1839.

John Duncan (1796-1870) was Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages at New College, Edinburgh. In a time when loads of educated people had a smattering of Hebrew and Rabbinic knowledge, evidently he was considered to have more than the usual, for he was sometimes nicknamed 'Rabbi Duncan.' (I'm not kidding -- Google returns over 8000 results for "Rabbi Duncan.") It seems that he is known primarily for his aphorisms, but that is not what this blog is about.



Below is the letter he sent in 1839 to the university which would employ him, explaining why he is qualified for the academic post. He refers to "his friend Hoga" Evidently he wasn't a fan of Rashi or the Yalkut Shimoni:







Appended to the letter were testimonials, including one by his Hebrew teacher, who signed his name יהודה אריה בן יעקב:



It would be nice if I could establish the identity of the aforementioned Judah Aryeh ben Jacob (known as Lion), but as of yet I cannot. However, a childhood friend of Duncan's recollects the following regarding their learning the Bible's trop, and evidently this Hebrew teacher was of Spanish-Portuguese Jewish origin:

בחיי; Bachya or Bechaye? Steinschneider "defends" the traditional pronunciation.

Link.

Interestingly, Google returns only 2,200 results for "rabbeinu bechaye" vs 11,700 for "rabbeinu bachya." I tried other titles and permutations, but the results don't really change. Anyway, next time your rabbi quotes Rabbenu Bechaye, don't cringe. Think of Steinschneider.

The rules for the Ramchal's Zohar Society, 1726, translated from the Italian by Sabato Morais.

Here's a Ramchal poem published in Bikkurei Ha-ittim 7, 1826.

An earlier written source for the Golem of the Maharal from 1836

Pg. 42, Note 34. in "The Adventure of the Maharal of Prague in London: R. Yudl Rosenberg and the Golem of Prague," Tradition 36:1 ( 2002):

The earliest printed reference to the Maharal's Golem appeared in B. Auerbach, Spinoza, Sttugart, 1837, vol. 2, pp. 2-3. Kieval's claim (in Pursuing the Golem of Prague," p. 7; . . . that the first such reference appeared in 1841 needs to be revised accordingly: Two printed references (and the first by a non-Jew) to the Maharal's Golem appeared in 1841. For the non-Jewish reference, see F. Klutschak's Der Golam [sic] des Rabbi Löw," Panorama des Universums 8 (1841), pp. 75ff; reprinted in Kieval, "Pursuing the Golem," pp. 21-23. For the Jewish reference, see G. Philippson, "Der Golem," Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums 5 (1841), number 44, pp. 629-631.

לענ"ד I have found a reference from 1836.

What you see is page 368 of the Oesterreiche Zeitschrift für Geschichts und Staatsunde, 92, 16 November 1836:



By the 1840s everyone knows about it so there's almost no point giving additional sources (unless one is striving for comprehensiveness). Nevertheless, here's an 1843 review of the Altneu Schule in Prague in the Archives israélites 4:



By 1845 you've even got a poem about it.



And in 1846 it's in a Jewish history book:



Dr. Leiman's reference to the first printed source is to the 1837 book Spinoza by Berthold Auerbach. Here is what the passage looks like in the 1854 edition:



And you can read the entire thing in English translation, from 1882:






It should be noted, by the way, that another Golem legend seems to have spread, namely that Rabbi Yudl Rosenberg more or less invented the legend. Here seems like a good place to repudiate this misconception. No one makes this impossible claim, and the articles dealing with him make it clear that the legend was not created by him, and they cite earlier sources, such as some of the ones mentioned in this post (but not my 1836 source!). Rather, the claim is that he is the first (and only) source which claimed that the legend was written many hundreds of years earlier, namely by someone he claimed was the Maharal's son-in-law, and in a manuscript from 1590 which only he had seen (and found in a library which didn't exist). The story only exploded in popularity after his book, which means that he helped to popularize it. In addition, stories in the legend come solely from his book (see, e.g., the Jewish Press's weekly cartoon about the Golem, which has looped for decades).

But it was sufficiently a part of pop culture that the following, from 1884, appears. It was part of an article called Legends of the Synagogue in the journal All the year round, founded by Charles Dickens. This piece is written by his son, Charles Dickens, Jr.:



According to this piece from a 1938 Life the statue in Prague was erected in 1905:



In any case, why is any of this on my mind at all? I happened to come across a fascinating and charming article of 90 pages written in 1896 called A Glossary of Jewish Terms by Joseph Jacobs. It was published by him in the 1899 edition of the Jewish Yearbook. This list contains a fascinating mix of folklore, history, modern scholarly conjectures (some of which are pretty wild) and also "Amhaaretsuth," to use his spelling.

Here is how the list begins (note the strange claim; either wild conjecture or Amhaaretsuth) at the very end:



Here is his entry on Golem:



This particular list is a real pleasure to read; I strongly urge everyone to print it up (here it is). In fact, I could probably do ten posts just about the list. There's an entry on "Fried Fish" (where it calls cholent "Shalet," a "favorite [Sabbath] dish of the Continental Jews), and one on "Froom," which is what "pious Jews are said to be."

To give an indication of how long ago it really was, in the entry on Court Jews ("Hofjude") it remarks that the father of the recently departed Baron de Hirsch was one. It informs us that Sir Moses Montefiore belonged to a Chevra Kadisha ("Lavadorea" in the Spanish-Sepharadic parlance) and often performed taharas on the deceased. It also includes many terms which were evidently in common parlance at the time, but not so much anymore. For example, I don't know if in a list like this today there would be an entry for "Hamechuna" or even "Hatarath Hora'ah" (given that it's vulgarly called "semicha" these days). He has an entry on "Din," which seems to have fallen by the wayside and is mostly called "halacha" these days. Actually, I should qualify that: my reading seems to indicate that British Jews preferred and perhaps still prefer the term "din." He also preserves minhagim. For example, in his entry on the priestly blessing he notes that it is not performed on the Sabbath. While there are still some places which do not do this, in my experience this is today rare. Actually, in the view of some that minhag is "Amhaaretsuth." Rabbi Rakeffet-Rothkoff tells a story about Rabbi Soloveitchik opposing this custom in his first rabbinic position in Boston, forcing his viewpoint (i.e., making the kohanim duchan against their will) and making enemies out of his congregants. He later realized that he should not have opposed this custom until he had formed alliances and taught the halacha properly to receptive ears. Only then should he have insisted that his change in their longstanding practice be instituted.

Josephs also refers to his own book The Jews of Angevin England: documents and records from Latin and Hebrew in his entry on Charoseth:






Getting back to golems, here are some 19th century Hebrew references:

Fuenn's Kiryah Ne'emanah (1860):


An 1874 edition of the Sefer Yetzirah:



An essential part of the dictionary entry for גולם, by 1880:



Here's the Maharal's headstone inscription referred to in Kiryah Ne'emanah; this is from Gal 'Ed (1856):




Putting aside the Maharal's alleged golem, what about golems in general? By the 183os it had sufficiently entered European popular culture, that a character in a German book is a golem. Here is from a review of that book, from 1836:



Here's an entry in a English-Welsh dictionary from 1756:



And in a very strange book containing much material trying to connect Hebrew with English, from 1766:



Read what Jonathan Swift had to say about this sort of philology:



All eggs under the grate!

By the way, if I'm behind the curve and this 1836 source for the golem has already been discovered, please let me know.

Advertisement for Rabbi Mendel Hirsch's school in Frankfurt, 1865.

From the Occident and American Jewish Advocate.

Donkeys laden with books

Years ago somehow I got signed up for a Daily Hadith email, which meant that every day a nugget of Islamic tradition arrived in my inbox. I would notice this or that thing which I knew of as a ma'amar Chazal. This was hardly my discovery. Abraham Geiger wrote a whole book about it, his doctoral dissertation Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen? (1833)

The expression חמור נושא ספרים is found in many Jewish sources, and is used colloquially as a dismissive insult. There are some who would say, not entirely without justice, that I am a חמור נושא ספרים; or if they are feeling particularly witty, not even that. It is also found in Sura 62.15 of the Quran (below is a translation from 1821):



As you can see, in its original context the phrase refers to the Jews. They are like an ass laden with books, because while they carry the law, they did not observe it, in the opinion of Muhammad.

Here is Geiger:



It seems to appear in Jewish sources for the first time in Chovos Ha-levavos, 3.4:



Below is Menahem Mansoor's translation:

An early list mention other, later sources, but surprisingly doesn't mention the Quran:



The above is from Otzar Nechmad vol. 2, in a letter by Leopold Dukes. Any חמור נושא ספרים (technically anyone who can cut + paste and press enter) can find numerous later sources using this aphorism (Chavos Yair, etc).

Here's an illustration of how it had entered popular Jewish culture, from Israel Zangwill's Dreamers of the Ghetto (1898):


As an aphorism it is found constantly in 19th century literature, seemingly having been adopted from Montaigne, who used in a 16th century essay on education, or from Swift (who probably got it from Montaigne).

Although I am not from those who automatically see a similarity and then give priority to the non-Jewish source (see the first paragraph of this post) it is exceedingly difficult to maintain that the author of חובת הלבבות (which was originally written in Arabic) did not adopt the expression from the Quranic source, although it is possible that in his time it was already a popular Arabic saying, and that was more directly his source (see a related post; see below for the saying:



In any case, it certainly is ironic that in the original meaning it is exceedingly derisive of the Jews, yet Rabbi Bahya took it like an אדמו"ר takes a tune.

Here's the complete passage from a 1764 edition:



Incidentally, I searched in vain for an edition of the Chovos ha-Levavos written in its original Arabic, but in Hebrew letters. I'm embarrassed to say that I poured over the 1569 Ladino edition for ten minutes before I realized it wasn't Arabic! In my defense, it's a really hard to read scan. See for yourself.

Post inspired by Michael Makovi.

R. Jonathan Eybeschutz on Wessely

I've referred to interesting comments regarding Wessely's commentary to Leviticus which are found in Moses Mendelssohn (Hamburger)'s book פני תבל: מוסר השכל (Amsterdam, 1872), but I finally have a chance to post them directly.


Later he discusses Wessely's writings in general (below) and be sure to read the last line to see who, as of that writing -- he died in 1861 -- was in possession of Wessely's manuscripts.


R. Samson Rafael Hirsch was his nephew. See the following from pg. 108:

19th Century Missionariana and Apostatiana

A wealth of a resource for Jewish life in the 19th century is to be found in the periodical and journals of Christian missionaries to the Jews, which was a very popular English pursuit of the time. With the usual caveats about how to critically evaluate sources, here are a couple of interesting things I found recently.

The following three illustrations appear in a book from 1838:







The following notice is a memoir by a Jewish apostate, written in 1839:





The careful reader will see what makes this particularly interesting:

"addressed as Rabbi Moreni"

"A book, intitled Schebet Misser"

The convert, a Galicianer born in Brody in 1761, writes his Hebrew transliterations with the form of Hebrew pronunciation known today because it is preserved by the Chassidim.

The Jew of Vilna; a 19th century inspirational Christian story.

In 1835 an article circulated in many English periodicals, in a very similar manner to email forwards today. The little anecdote is called The Jew of Vilna, and tells the story about the Napoleonic advance, when a French colonel in Vilna discovered a Jewish girl and her aged father being assaulted by four soldiers. Not being able to convince them to stop, he wielded his sword, killing two of them, wounding the two others and sustaining some cuts himself. When the Russians beat the pants off the French, the colonel again passed through Vilna on retreat. This time it was he who was in a bad state, and he knocked on the door of the Jew's home, and was given clean clothes and a way for him was even arranged to make it back to France.

Retiring with only a small pension back in France, he was surprised some years later by a knock on the door. It was the Jew, who handed him an envelope and left. Inside it was £5000 with a note; read the article below to know the content of the note. The story ends with the optimistic notice that not only that, after the Jewish man died, the French colonel married his daughter and inherited £100,000!

Although, as I said, I have found this story is printed in many different books and periodicals, the one below is from a book called Five Hundred Curious and Interesting Narratives and Anecdotes (1838).



And in case the lessons of the story, why it circulated, is not apparent, below is an introduction to one of the printings of the story in the Christian Penny's Magazine:

Illowy adjustments and clarifications

I need to make a few adjustments to the Illowy post below, reflecting some new information and also reflecting personal reflections. However, I do not have time to do it now, but going into shabbos, I don't want the post as it is to be assumed to reflect everything I have to say about it.

In the meantime, here's an unintentionally hilarious notice from an 1868 issue of the Scientific American about the Illowy image from the American Phrenological Journal I had posted:




Since Chanuka's coming, here's something which ran in the Jewish Chronicle of London a long time ago:



Edit 11.02.09

Please read the update at the bottom of that post.

The thrilling adventures of . . . the Aleppo Codex?

This should be . . . interesting:

Crown of Aleppo: The Mystery of the Oldest Hebrew Bible Codex by Hayim Tawil and Bernard Schneider.



One thing seems certain; given Tawil's involvement, even if it is Da Vinci Code-sque with a silly plot and contrived contrivances, at least the facts will likely be facts. Plot prediction: a secret cabal of Syrians with a lair on King's Highway will be hoarding missing leaves.

Tawil is about to publish a new lexicon of Akkadian (link).



See this Yeshiva University press release (via Hirhurim).