Tuesday, January 27, 2009

So you want to cantillate a Hebrew text yourself? R. Samson Rafael Hirsch's approbation to Seligmann Baer's Thorath Emeth, and Franz Delitzsch

Here is a haskama by R. Samson Rafael Hirsch to the book תורת אמת by Seligmann Baer.



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In addition to being a complete guide to the masoretic accents and cantillation of the 21 prose books of the Bible, and including an important letter by Shadal on the accents, there is a section which purports to teach the rules for cantillating a free standing Hebrew text:

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This comports well with Baer's methodology, which earned him the designation as a latter-day Massorete in the evaluation of critics, that the way to edit a biblical text was not to reproduce a manuscript, but to freshly apply the massoretic rules, whether as found in massoretic manuals or as discovered by experts like him, to the text anew. Interestingly, he published his editions of the Tanakh, complete with lengthy introductory essays in Latin, in conjunction with Franz Delitszch, the great Christian Hebraist, Judeophile and missionary.

This last point is particularly interesting, because one simply cannot imagine a Jewish editor of a Bible collaberating with a Christian missionary today, and one simply can't imagine one such as R. Samson Rafael Hirsch thinking warmly of the person that did so. (Granted, this part is speculative, as the collaberation was later. However, it seems difficult to conceive of Seligmann Baer of Thorath Emeth being essentially different from the more mature Seligmann Baer, who was certainly still highly regarded as a religious scholar of the highest caliber.) My guess is that at the time in Europe, a friendly figure such as Delitzsch whom, moreover, tended to accord respect and sympathy to Judaism and to actual, living Jews (even while he hoped and worked for the conversion of the Jews) was of sufficient rarity that such a figure was appreciated rather than shunned. In addition, today, whether in America or Israel, there is a certain amount of independence and self confidence which circumstances affords today's Jews who might be more discriminating in who it sees as its friends or people worthy of being acquainted with.

(As an example of the kind of warm feelings for Judaism and Jewish texts that Deltzsch had, see the following excerpt from his Iris: Studies in Colors:

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Truly it takes a sincere אוהב ישראל to look for and see the beauty in בדיקות.

Franz Delitzsch:

)

Joseph Wolff's missionary journal; excerpts concerning his contact with a disciple of the Vilna Gaon

One of the famous 19th century Jewish-born missionaries was Joseph Wolff, born in Bavaria in 1795, who converted to Catholicism (1812). He studied in Rome, but was eventually expelled for heresy. An English banker based in Rome named Henry Drummond brought him to England. There he became a Protestant and was signed up as a missionary for the London Society for the Promotion of Christianity Amongst the Jews. When the Society did not send him on a mission, Drummond himself financed a trip to the Middle East for him, including to (what I will call) Israel. This he did in 1821-22.

First, a digression. The following was published in The London Magazine in 1827:

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Wolff then published an account of his travels in the form of journal entries, and very interesting they are. Included in his account is a meeting with one of the foremost students of the Vilna Gaon, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Shklov (1750-1827), who had emigrated in 1808 with a group, was then the leader of the Ashkenazim in Israel.

Here is a letter written by him:

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Wolff's complete account deserves to be reprinted, so here it is:

March 26 I had already at Malta Alexandria and Cairo heard of the name of rabbi Mendal Ben Baruch the chief rabbi of the Polish Jews residing at Jerusalem who is generally acknowledged even by the Spanish Jews as the greatest divine of this present age He is considered the greatest Baal Kabbala and Hasid Hab bi Solomon his disciple told me of him when at Cairo that rabbi Mendel can preach upon every word of the Torah more than three hours and every one present Seems struck with astonishment Rabbi Mendel was the disciple of the celebrated I lia Wilna Abraham the son of David entered my room and told me that
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was Israel cast to the ground nnW he was banished out of the land of the living from the land of Canaan for the transgression of my people I interrupted him and asked Who was banished for my people the people of God Rabbi Mendel became rather angry as soon as I observed it I broke off Mendel continued He made his with the wicked for Israel is buried

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I know that this is unusually long, but it's well worth reading. If you want to read the parts I left out, plus much more, do see the Missionary Journal and Memoir of the Rev. Joseph Wolf, Missionary to the Jews.

Here is an image of him preaching in the Holy Land:

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

1843 English translation of 18 Treatises from the Mishna; also, orangutans

It's definitely worth checking out Eighteen Treatises from the Mishna, an English translation of 18 massekhtos from 1843. See the circumstances surrounding its production in the Preface below (and check out that footnote!*).

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This is the not the first English translation of a part of the Mishnah. I believe that honor is due to William Wotton, whom I blogged about here.

* But see here about a question of delicate sensibility in translation, where an English machzor from 1796 translated mei raglayim, and a siddur from 1949 didn't. Of course, the translator of the machzor was an Ashkenazi; the translators of the Mishna were Western Sefardim!

See also the following footnote (pg. 30) on אדני שדה:
stronger than those foaled by she asses 4 The description of this animal given by various commentators of the Mishna is that of an absolutely fabulous one which cannot have been meant by the text According to Dr Jost

Apparently Tiferes Yisrael was preceded by Jost.

On the Aramaic of the Talmud Bavli and Geonic Responsa

I came across an interesting article by Yochanan Breuer about rabbinic Aramaic of the Talmudic period. In his discussion about the Aramaic of the Geonim he makes the following comparison and (to my mind) keen observations:

Here are two typical sentences culled from Geonic responsa:

הכין חזינא דהדא שאלה לא כשאלתא קדמייתא
'So we have seen this question is unlike the first question.'

ופקידנא וקרו יתהון קדמנא ועיננא בהון וקמנא על כל מאי דכתיב בהין ופקידנא וכתבו תשובות דילהין לפום דאחזו לנא מן שמיא
'And we ordered that they read them [the questions] in our presence and we studied them and we investigated all that was written in them and we ordered that they write answers to them according to what we were shown from heaven.'

The language in these snippets differs from the Aramaic of the Bavli in several respects:

  • הכין; in the Bavli the final n is dropped, and the form הכי is typical (Berachos 18b, מאי טעמא עבדת הכי).
  • הדא; in the Bavli the d has been dropped, and the typical form is הא (Zevachim 44a, כי הא מילתא).
  • קדמייתא; in the Bavli the d is assimilated to m, so we find קמייתא (Gittin 55b, גזרתא קמייתא).
  • לנא, קדמנא; in the Bavli the final letter is dropped and forms are קמן and לן (Chullin 11a, כי קא מיבעיא לן רובא קמן).
The explanation Breuer offers, convincing to my mind, is not merely that language changes. This is true, but typically we would expect the Bavli forms to be later, as languages have a tendency to decay, drop sounds and letters, become less flowery than the classical form, not more so. The explanation may be that the teshuvas ha-Geonim were written and therefore preserved a more classical form of Aramaic. The Bavli, however, was oral until it was written down, perhaps early in the period of the Geonim, and so the forms it preserves are actually a later, spoken form of Aramaic.

Azaryah de' Rossi condemns the non-literal reading of the six days of creation

Me'or Enayim, Imre Binah chapter 5:

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The context is his evaluation of Philo, who he calls Yedidya of Alexandria. He lists four complaints he has about him. This is the third.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Are you a student at YU and a fan of On the Main Line?

If so please email me.

Thank you.

The teshuva of Arnold B. Ehrlich

The case of Arnold B. Ehrlich, author of Bible commentary מקרא כפשוטו, influencer on young Mordecai Kaplan, is interesting. Having converted to Christianity at a young age, he assisted (or perhaps ghost-wrote) Franz Delitzsch in his Hebrew translation of the New Testament. Apparently he regretted this, so when he arrived in New York the following occurred, as recorded by Gustav Gottheil:

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Tuesday, January 06, 2009

How to become a great 18th century English Hebrew scholar in six to eight weeks

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From The Monthly Review, vol. 24, 1797. Review of George Benjoin's translation of Jonah.

Edit:

An example of the attitude scorned here:

TO BEGINNERS IN HEBREW t LAt aside all jrerrifyrrig thoughts of its diffi and resolve to give no ear to any sneers or prejudices that may be thrown in your way however it may be represented as a needless unprofitable and barren study 2 MCaJj the pursuit of it a pleasant recreation i 40lft iifap o s6 jt rt yOurself asatask Beassur e cT tnat th is g Tqrio us knowledge is not only easier to IJ cib f ame d Ihah L qtin CneJc Frenchj ot Geogra yV bvif tis likewise more easy than many of the recreatkins that are pursued with eager VlB y ouf g pe6ple in tlii

A yeshivish joke at R, Joseph H. Hertz's expense from the 1930s

An illustration of the disdain the Eastern European Yeshiva had towards the Anglo-ecclesiastical leadership can be found in an oft repeated comment by one of Jacobs’s teachers in reference to Chief Rabbi J.H. Hertz: “If a reverend is a goy. It must follow that a “Very Reverend” [Hertz’s title] is a ‘great goy’ (a grosser goy).” Hyperbole aside, the sharp remark is illustrative of the degree to which Jacobs’s Yeshiva environment understood itself vis-à-vis the pre-autochthonous institutions of Anglo-Jewry.


Pg. 18, Teyku: The Insoluble Contradictions in the Life and Thought of Louis Jacobs, Phd. dissertation by Elliot Cosgrove (download here).

Monday, January 05, 2009

Photo of R. Samson Raphel Hirsch's parents

Does anyone have this in a viewable format? This is the closest I can get:



Click to enlarge.

From the Samson Raphael Hirsch Jubilaeums in Der Israelit No. 25, Jun. 6, 1908 (pg. 7 of the Hirsch section). You (or I) could have bought this issue on auction a few years ago. (link.) But in the meantime, all I've got is this bad scan on Compact Memory.

Edit: Thank you, Neil Harris, for providing the following:

Friday, January 02, 2009

A censored text from a Lakewood high school Jewish history class

A cache of high school הסטוריה notes and teacher handouts from a Lakewood Bais Ya'akov recently came into my possession. The important thing to remember is that the following is 100% authentic.

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As you can see, this is a quote from I. B. Singer, Yiddish Nobel laureate, from Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer. You can also see that text is blotted out (probably with white out). What was so bad about the few words written after "baron," and later, "proud," that it was judged unsuitable for these students?

Luckily these days you don't have to own the book (I don't) or go to the library (closed on Jan. 1). I hit GBS (Google Book Search), snippet view and all and saw that it was these:

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I found it interesting that this was so unsuitable, but I. B. Singer is, in general, acceptable as a source for reinforcing a point. The truth is, this is really a kind of קבל את האמת thing, is it not?

Personally I dislike the idea of presenting texts with the censor's line blatantly present. I realize that such schools are doing the right thing and voluntarily separating and forming an enclave where they can teach whatever they wish. This, rather than forcing it onto others, is proper. However, I can't get behind being so blatant about censoring texts in this way, as opposed to showing texts at the outset that don't require snipping out a phrase here and there.

On the other hand, that reflects my own values. From their point of view, this may not have been a sloppy job at all, but an overt message for the students: "We may feel that 99% of a certain source is appropriate for you, so we will show you 99% of it. The fact that we feel that 1% is inappropriate neither means that we will show you that 1%--alas--or show you none of it. The 99% will not lose out on account of the 1%. And we're happy to let you know that this is how we feel and see exactly how we do it."

Either way, it's interesting that the problem seems to be simply calling attention to the fact that men notice how women look.

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