Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Jerusalem missionary Joseph Wolff's conversation with a Ba'al Shem of 180 years ago, and his basic Hebrew mistake

This is an interesting excerpt from Joseph Wolff's Missionary Journals, his diaries from his period in the Holy Land in the early 1820s. It concerns his meeting with Rabbi Joseph Marcowitz and their discussion of the 72 letter name of God, and Marcowitz's alleged use of it in performing a miraculous exorcism in Constantinople. 

Marcowitz is identified by Wolff as 80 years old, from Poland, and regarded by the Jews as a Ba'al Shem. Later in his journal he writes that the Sephardic Jews became angry with Marcowitz for teaching the 72 letter Name to Wolff. In other places in the journal, Wolff writes about various discussions about passages in the Talmud which he had with Marcowitz, including an instance of a fantastic aggadah which other Jews were annoyed at Marcowitz for showing him, because, writes Wolff, it would make the Talmud appear ridiculous to him.

All of it is interesting and worth a read, but the part I like best is a little mistake that Wolff makes, so I will highlight at the top:


As you can see, Wolff writes that Marcowitz showed him a copy of the Sefer Raziel Ha-malach, and he translates the title page. In doing so, Wolff identifies the edition; Amsterdam 1701. And as you can see, he rather clumsily misconstrued the name of the printer, who was not Moses Ben Ayeshish, but Moses ben ha-yashish [=the aged] and honorable gentleman Abraham Mendes Coutinho z"l. What is strange about this is the way the names are actually set apart in large type, so not only is this Wolff not understanding the Hebrew word הישיש, for some inexplicable reason he failed to notice the last two lines which give the printer's complete name. Maybe he copied wrong, or didn't see it fast enough to get all of it. Who can tell?

















15 comments:

  1. Transcribing (and pronouncing) "heh" as "a" is widespread Sephardic practise. Our Hazzan in Seattle has published for decades, always spelling the grace after meals as "Birkat Amazon.

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    1. I agree; I don't think this is a mistake at all. I also think that the e in "yeshish" is probably a reflection of a Sephardic milra pronunciation. That is, the penultimate syllable, not being stressed, sounds like a "e."

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    2. No, the mistake isn't in the transliteration; I didn't say it was. The mistake is in turning the word into the man's surname!

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  2. Oh.. I reread and see that the main problem was that the father was named Avra'am Mendes.

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  3. Who is the rabbi mendel he mentions towards the beginning? Can you check it thru the previous pages.

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    Replies
    1. It's Rabbi Mendel Shklover, one of the leading talmidim of the Gra.

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  4. I love the flowery dialogue between Rabbi Marcowitz and his wife. Now that's the proper way to conduct an argument!

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    ReplyDelete
  6. That's far from the only stupid mistranslation in that piece. Read through it and compare it to the original, and you'll see that it could easily have come from Google Translate. For instance that nonsense about exploring hidden treasures.

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    Replies
    1. Of course, but this is a good one. Also, I am reasonably sure that Rabbi Joseph Marcowitz said 120, not 100.

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  7. Is "vav", when spelled out, "vav - yud - vav"? Veev?

    For what it's worth, there are at least three typos in the text where the three verses are written out in groups of three letters.

    I'm also trying to make heads-or-tails out of the "alayich, layich, yich, ch" wordplay underneath that set of triplets. (For healing purposes, of course.)

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  8. According to the Alcalay Hebrew dictionary, the name of the letter "vav" can be spelled either vav-alef-vav, vav-vav, or vav-yud-vav. The yud in the third spelling is apparently vestigial and archaic, like the yud in words such as "alav" or "Esav."

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  9. That was very informative post and I've learn a lot.

    Thanks for sharing this kind of information.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Quiteno: native of Quito, which is named for the Quitu Indians who founded the city over a thousand years ago.

    Coutinho: Portuguese Jewish family, living today in Brazil and elsewhere. See Marvin J. Heller on the family here: http://tinyurl.com/clf2w7m

    ReplyDelete