Monday, August 16, 2010

Pages of the Heidenheim siddur discovered in the trenches.

Here is some interesting coverage in the Jewish Chronicle (Dec. 9, 1870) of Jewish soldiers on both sides of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.

Here we read about two pages of a ubiquitous Rodelheim siddur discovered in the trenches, which in its British way is called "interesting" rather than "poignant," as I think is meant:



Here is the complete coverage:



See also an earlier post, 'Two Soldiers and a Shema Yisrael.'

6 comments:

  1. Fascinating stuff, so interesting to read about what was going on over a hundred years ago.

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  2. Let me get this straight. The patriotic French Jews would suffer for the sake of not giving away alsace and lorraine, but today's so-called zionist Jews are begging to give away Judea and Samaria and half of Jerusalem. Patriotism is dead.

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  3. I like the ngayin in "Arbang".

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  4. i've always been fascinated by the first instances of jews fighting for opposing armies and have wondered if there is any discussion of this in rabbinic literature.

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  5. My two grandfathers were technically enemies during WWI, with one serving in the Hungarian Army (and taken prisoner to Siberia), and the other in the then equivalent of the ROTC in Cincinnati. Fortunately the war never reached Ohio.

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  6. >I like the ngayin in "Arbang".

    Hartwig Hirschfeld writes in "The Pronunciation of the Letter AYN (‮‎ע‬)‎ " JQR 4.3 (1892):

    "...in this country, in Holland, and perhaps elsewhere, the nasal articulation of the ע occupues the rank of a doctrine. . . . Deeply rooted as the evil is, it can be extirpated by means of the school. . . . I have, in writing these lines, the feeling of stirring a wasps' nest, and am prepared to see the champions of the ngayn defend it as some holy relic. Many are anxious to make the public worship easthetic and attractive ; here is an opportunity to do away with something which is in every way hideous and unaesthetic."

    (The ellipses are three pages expounding his theory that the ngayin was an import to Western Sephardim from migrating Polish Jews (!)

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