Monday, October 11, 2010

The Hoffmanns

Here's a really nice photograph of R. David Zvi Hoffmann and his wife Zerline:

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7 comments:

  1. Dan Klein3:14 AM, October 11, 2010

    Nice photo, yes, but my vote for best-looking rebbetzin on this blog still goes to Mrs. Joseph Hertz.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous6:46 AM, October 11, 2010

    Is that a sheitel?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yair8:52 AM, October 11, 2010

    Cool! Where's it from?

    ReplyDelete
  4. S.9:38 AM, October 11, 2010

    Yair

    >Cool! Where's it from?

    Germany.

    Anonymous

    >Is that a sheitel?

    Maybe it doesn't look like it (or maybe it does?), but my guess is yes. As far as I know, the German Orthodox women generally covered the hair. In fact there's a story in the Louis Ginzberg biography about how after Ginzberg married, his wife "in harmony with her Orthodox upbringing . . . wore a wig." I won't say what the postscript was, but imagine that it was more, shall we say, Litvish.

    Dan

    >Nice photo, yes, but my vote for best-looking rebbetzin on this blog still goes to Mrs. Joseph Hertz.

    ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yair4:37 PM, October 11, 2010

    I meant where did you find the picture - or was that the answer? (And if so, where in Germany?) Though perhaps you intended to artfully dodge the question :).

    Also, I definitely do recall a passage in which Alexander Marx's traditionalism was underscored by reference to the fact that his wife (RDTH's daughter, Hannah), alone among JTS wives, covered her hair in the traditional German fashion. Do you recall where this passage appeared? I thought it was in Keeper of the Law, but at least in the searchable portion of it on Google Books, I couldn't find it.

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  6. S.4:49 PM, October 11, 2010

    I did artfully dodge it, but if you will email me . . .

    I don't remember if it was in Keeper of the Law. It might have been in the Tradition Renewed volumes (history of JTS), if you saw them. It rings a bell with me too. I think the consensus seems to be that Alexander Marx was *really* Orthodox (albeit in a Hildesheimer-y Wissenschaftlich way) and not an observant Conservative rabbi, or whatever anachronistic category people get placed in.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Mar Gavriel9:25 PM, October 11, 2010

    Hey, I wear a käppchen like that!

    Also: Zerline? As in Don Giovanni?

    ReplyDelete

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