Should Maimonides really be called Miyaminides?

There is a pizmon (piyut) ascribed to Maimonides, which is recited by many Sephardic and North African Jews on the High Holy Days (there are different customs as to when). Belonging to a poetic genre aptly named aqedah, for it described the Binding of Isaac, Maimonides' inspired poem is the following:



As you can see, it embeds words meant to read ani moshe beribbi maimon chazak, "I, Moses, the son of Rabbi Maimon, Chazak." The reason why I posted this image is to show how it looks when these key words are not highlighted by arranging the verses in a more poetic fashion and when they are. You can also see that the poem begins, or seems to begin, with a verse that reads et sha'arei ratzon le-hipateach, "It's a good time to begin..." The scholars of poetry are divided as to whether these words are Maimonides' or not since, actually, they are not originally by Maimonides and belong to another well-known liturgical poem. So the question is, did Maimonides himself begin with borrowing from another poem, and is his poem really called, so to speak, Et Shaaret Ratzon, or is it Ani Maskir Ha-yom?

We will return to this, but first we turn to 1750.

In Berlin, after 1750, Jewish courts were only recognized by the Prussian government as an arbitration. Prior to that time they had been fully recognized as real courts for Jews in their civil cases. It was seen as desirable for Jews to decide such affairs amongst themselves. But what this change meant was that the law now permitted Jews to appeal the arbitration (that is, a Din Torah) in a non-Jewish court. However, in a position which probably seems downright strange today, the Berlin State Council wished to enable Christian judges to decide the law in an appeal between Jews according to Jewish law. This was not unprecedented; the same had been the case in Metz, and the reason for this was to discourage Jewish misuse of the courts. Once Jews knew that on appeal their case would still be decided according to halacha, they would be less likely to turn away from the decision of the Bet Din in the first place.

But of course Christian judges could hardly be expected to know Jewish civil law, so eventually a request was made of Berlin's Chief Rabbi Hirschel Lewin to provide a digest in German of Jewish laws of inheritance, wills, marriage and property rights. The rabbi tasked his friend Moses Mendelssohn to write the work for him (and presumably he reviewed it) and it was published as the Ritualgesetze der Juden, the Ritual Laws of Judaism concerning inheritance, etc. To read more about the relationship of these two men, see here, but this really is not what this post is about. In the introduction of the Ritualgesetze we find the following exceedingly quaint passage (or name, really). First line:

That is, Mendelssohn calls the Rambam "R. Moses Majemonssohn." The passage in translation means something like

R. Moses Majemonssohn, who lived in the fiftieth century after the creation of the world (in the twelfth century of Christian era), by omitting from the Talmud all disputes and [legal] investigations created a complete system of law and ritual with the title Jad chasakah, a book which received uncommon acclaim, although also some opposition, and therefore acquired authority as a legal code."

I think we may agree that Majemonssohn is going a little far, and the judges could have handled it if he called him Maimonides. But I digress. 

Jacob Reifmann (1818-1894) was one of the 19th century's great chokerim, with his field of interest being more or less everything Jewish. He made his early reputation through his many articles and short notes which appeared in the Hebrew periodical literature, but also in German translation. Here is what he looked like in the picture included in his autobiography in Kenesset Yisrael 3 (1888):

Here is a good place to post the same image, culled from an online source:

In my opinion, he looks angry in the poorer scan, whereas in the real image he merely looks fatigued. Although you obviously should not draw conclusions about a person based entirely on how they look, I think readers (as well as myself) would have gotten a very different impression of him from only seeing the second image. This is a good example of why scan quality matters!

In any case, Reifmann was an accomplished scholar who worked under poor conditions. For example, in the Shevat 1841 edition of Jost and Creizenach's periodical Zion we see the following note introducing an article by Reifman, and basically the man himself:

It describes how he toils without books or people to discuss scholarly matters with. Yet at the same time, in the same volume of Zion young Reifmann was able to publish an important scholarly finding , showing that a commentary on Proverbs which had been attributed to Ibn Ezra was really by R. Moses Kimchi. Israel Zinberg, writing about Reifmann in even later years, calls attention to a letter by Freimann to SJH Halberstamm in which he describes how he works: he lives in one small room, where he also works, filled with children and chickens.

As I said, in his early career many of his pieces appeared in German. In the literary supplement of the Orient (the Literaturblatt des Orients #28; July 11, 1843, pg. 439) we find the following tidbit by Reifmann:

In English, Reifmann writes:

The Name Maimon (מיימון) *). This name is usually written with double Yud and Vav, and I've never been able to give a good explanation of its origin. However, it is very notable that in the piyut written by Maimonides which begins עת שערי רצון (in the Sephardic Mahzor for Yom Kippur), the embedded signature is אני משה ברבי מימן חזק, with only one Yud and no Vav. As this is his own signature, this led me to conjecture that this name is probably Hebrew, as in Neh. 10.8 מִיָּמִן, and therefore we should properly say Mijaminides.

Reifmann

In other words, Reifmann was suggesting that really Maimon, the father of Maimonides, might have been named Miyamin, which is an obscure biblical name, and if so, shouldn't we say Miyaminides? The evidence is in the form of the piyut, or synagogal poem, written by Maimonides which included his signature embedded within it. Since Maimonides himself writes his father's name "מימן" rather than "מיימון," perhaps the correct explanation is that really his father was named מִיָּמִן.

The first little editor's note at the bottom (by Julius Fuerst) notes that he had received this and another Hebrew note from the author. He praises Reifmann very highly as a young man from Galicia with an extraordinary knowledge of the liturgy. Then comes the smack:

That the name Maimun is Arabic and that Moses himself wrote it מימון in his writings in (Judeo) Arabic, is known. Herr Reifmann is in error; but at any rate, it all depends on the acrostic in the one song.

In other words, even if we ignore the fact that we already know that the name is Arabic and it is Maimun, Reifmann just did not present enough evidence for his conjecture - he only gives one piece.

In the following issue someone who signed his name "A. Ink."- and if anyone can tell me who that is I'd appreciate it - sent in another response:

The meaning is approximately as follows:

Maimonides or Mijaminides? Herr Reifmann wants ميمون (i.e., Maimun) to be seen as identical with מִיָּמִן (i.e., Miyamin) of Neh. 10:8, and his primary argument rests on the piyut עת שערי רצון, etc. He goes on to point out three things.

1) The words embedded in the poem - אני משה ברבי מימן חזק - form a part of the poem. So of course the و (the Arabic equivalent of vav) isn't there. Where is there room for a vav in the phrase מִי מַן?

2) Many of the other words are not properly vocalized as real words. For example, in the piyut the word is מְשֵׁה, not מֹשֶׁה. In other words - hello, this is poetry! And which Arab Jew will see מימן in a poem such as this and not realize it is supposed to double as ميمون (=Maymun)?

3) If this was all a great big mistake, would Maimonides have allowed everyone to think his father's name was the Arabic maymun - which meant the same thing as the Latin felix, or happy - if it was really Miyamin? But Maimonides never corrected this error - because it is no error!

Still, Reifmann was using his head, and it sure was an interesting suggestion. When I was 24 I don't think I was hairsplitting piyutim and drawing analogies to, face it, obscure biblical names.

Now, a few things are in order. First, it must be noted that Reifmann really did not discover this. There is a little known branch of Jewish learning on onomastics, that is, the proper spelling and origin of names. The reason why this field exists is because of the stringent halachic requirements of writing a get, or writ of divorce. In a get names must be spelled very precisely, and there are all kinds of questions about nicknames, which gives rise to deep study about the origin of names. Hence the rise of guides to the proper spelling of names for writing a get. So people who love to investigate names have a whole literature all about them, spelling, etymologies and so on.

Actually, the observation regarding the spelling of the name Maimon really comes straight out of the Rabbi Simcha Ha-kohen's Sefer Shemos (Book of Names) of 1657 - although most likely Reifmann was familiar with Rabbi Simcha's remarks through the later 17th century work, the Bais Shmuel on Even Ha-ezer, in the portion of the work called Shemot Anashim/ Nashim ('Names of Men and Women' printed in the second edition of 1696 after EH 129). Bais Shmuel, by Rabbi Shmuel Shay ben Ohr Shraga Phoebus of Fuerth incorporated the findings of Rabbi Simcha into his work, which he acknowledges, as later halachic writers on names would incorporate the Bais Shmuel itself.

Of course Rabbi Simcha does not actually make Reifmann's suggestion, that Maimon/ Maimun was really the obscure biblical name Miyamin. But priority of noticing the spelling of the name in this piyut definitely goes to him. The passage in the Sefer Shemos is as follows:

He quotes R. Isaiah di Trani as establishing the proper spelling of Maimon as Mem-yud-mem-vav-nun, even though we find in many rabbinic works, such as Mordechai, that it is spelled with two yuds - but that's really no big deal. So R. Simcha asks that in the aforementioned Yom Kippur piyut it is also spelled with no vav? He answers that names which aren't scriptural can be spelled plene to give a visual aid in its pronunciation. Not much of an answer, if we're trying to say that מימון is best, rather that מיימון or מימן. But the point is that R. Simcha definitely noticed the spelling in the Rambam's piyut and brought it to the attention of the world. His discussion was in turn adopted by R. Shmuel, and that work became an appendix to the Shulchan Aruch Even Hae-zer and also as the basic text of works later like Tiv Gittin. Reifman almost certainly noticed it in the Shulchan Aruch.

I suppose that since Reifmann did not mention the Bais Shmuel, it is poetic justice that his exact suggestion was eventually incorporated into a halachic work about names - only without mentioning him. I am speaking of the שלחן המערכת (Warsaw 1876) by R. Isaac Notowich. I don't know much about him, but he was the rabbi of Simferopol in the Crimea, and I saw that he is listed as a pre-subscriber to the Karaite Firkowich's Avne Zikaron (he is listed as "Moreh dat be-veit ha-sepher me-ha-memshalah be-ir Simferopol"). At the same time, Efraim Deinard says that he wrote a work against Firkowich. It seems from this description, and the fact that he seems to have been a fellow traveler with rabbis like Yosef Zecharya Stern, that he was one of those quasi-maskilim rabbis who existed in large number in those days, thus it would be know surprise if he had read this passage in the Orient or discussed it with someone, rather than independently reaching the same conclusion, that Maimon could really have been Miyamin (although he rejects it).

In any case, on page 108 of Shulchan Ha-ma'areches he discusses the Bais Shmuel's quotation from R. Simcha in Sefer Ha-shemos. He cites the book Ezras Nashim which also had much to say about the proper spelling of the name. The material that R. Notowich refers to deals with the modern publication of responsa of the Rambam which actually featured a facsimile of his signature, and it read like this: "הוגה מספרי אני משה ברבי מימוני ז"ל." See my earlier post, Maimonides's Own True signature, about the history and dissemination of this facsimile before the revelations of the Genizah.

Speaking of the discussions of a signature in this book by Notowich, I came across a really interesting note in the biography of R. Mordechai Banet. Basically, the problem is this. We know that in official government documents R. Mordechai Banet signed his name "Markus Benedict." The question then, of course, is how could this ga'on and tzadik change his name, when we know that Israel was redeemed on account of their never changing their names?!

Back to our subject. This leads us to several questions. First, what does the Arabic word/ name Maimon mean? Second, what's this business with the piyut (really pizmon) written by Maimonides?

As we said, Maymun means "happy" or "fortunate," similar to the name Felix (the name, which comes from the Latin word). Since there are a number of Hebrew names with a similar meaning, some have conjectured that Maymun is an Arabic form of Matzliach or Baruch. The idea here is similar to Yiddish, which used German words and names as a parallel to Hebrew. So, for example, the German Selig was paired with the Hebrew Asher, which have similar meanings.

Here is L.M. Simmons writing in the Jewish Quarterly Review in 1890. In his opinion this name is equivalent to Baruch:

As is to be expected, Moritz Steinschneider is more meticulous and, frankly, more plausible. He writes (same publication) that it is the Hebrew equivalent of Matzliach, as mentioned.

Not only is it a more exact equivalent linguistically, the name מצליח was not uncommon in the Ge'onic, Arab milieu.

As a curiosity, I will point out that in Turkish maymun means monkey!

See this passage from an Illustrated Natural History from 1865:

If you doubt this, see this Google translator generated page:

The Illustrated Natural History correctly pointed out that it comes from Greek, where μαϊμού (mayimu) means monkey to this day. I don't know why or when it meant "hobgoblin," but there it is. Thus the name. But what of the Rambam's piyut?

First, Rabbi Simcha may have made a mistake here - a common mistake. The Rambam's piyut - pizmon, really - properly begins אני מזכיר היום חסדי אבותי, not עת שערי רצון להפתח. There is another pizmon, which is also part of the Sefardic liturgy, which begins עת שערי רצון להפתח. This pizmon was written by Yehuda Shmuel Abbas. In printed editions the Rambam's pizmon begins with Yehuda Shmuel Abbas's first paragraph, with slight variations. Here are two of several possible reasons for this. The first is that it was added by chance or by accident. The second is that the Rambam, well, plagiarized those lines. Or if you prefer, adopted his form. It is certainly better to assume the latter - and actually it might be plausible, if Yehuda Shmuel Abbas' piyut was already well known. Speaking of Yehuda Shmuel Abbas, it's interesting to note that there used to be a strange idea that his piyut was written by three brothers, one called Yehuda, one Shmuel and one Abbas. We now know full well that there was a man Yehuda (ben) Shmuel (ibn) Abbas - and what a story there was with his son - and the strange idea that one pizmon would be written by three brothers is basically ruled out.

Here's an early printed Sefardic machzor with YSA's piyut. This is the 1526 Salonica edition, which claimed to be the "nussach Barcelona" and "minhag Catalonia":

And here is the Rambam's pizmon in the same machzor:

Here is the Rambam's pizmon, as I began the post, printed in awful fashion, in 1860. If not for the fact that I highlighted the key words in red, you'd hardly be able to read the signature. Compare them, from the same machzor. Note that the introduction is now identical to Abbas, whereas originally there were some differences:

Interestingly, there've even been those who doubted that the Rambam really wrote this pizmon because "he didn't have the soul of a poet!" So who wrote it? Another Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon! Not to mention the Rambam's famous disdain for poetry.

However, this seems to be no objection to me. My theory is that the Rambam may not have had "the soul of a poet," but he was born in Spain in 1135. After the Golden Age, true, but it's not like he was born in Brooklyn in 1930. He was born into a society which valued Hebrew verse, and it is not unreasonable that non poets also tried their hand at some verse. In the Spain which the Rambam grew up as far as I can tell everyone "did" poetry. It was a basic part of education. Furthermore, there is poetic verse which is undoubtedly written by the Rambam. See, for example, Bacher's article on verse in the writings of the Rambam. (link) and also Steinschneider's collection of verse by the Rambam (link). I also noticed that Joel Kraemer very aptly writes that "although the scholarly consensus takes Maimonides' negative references to poetry as a token that he held this genre in disdain . . . This, for an Andalusian, is prima facie implausible. Maimonides' exquisitely rhymed prose in a letter to Joseph b. Judah and his own poetry indicate otherwise." (Six Letters from the Cairo Geniza in Maimonidean Studies, Volume 2 edited by Arthur Hyman)

In R. Lippman Prinz's Tashlum Abudarham, the erudite author offers some linguistic evidence (pg.135) from the Rambam's own writings to try to establish that he was indeed the author of this pizmon. He leaves out the עת שערי רצון verse entirely, so I think he must have believed that it was added later to the Rambam's verses as an introduction to his pizmon.

Incidentally, I think there is a problem that can't simply be brushed away with assuming that this pizmon was written by the Rambam, which is that the old machzorim don't say so. Sephardic machzorim are chock full of author identifications, Ibn Gabirol, Ibn Ezra, R. Yehuda Halevi, etc., and they note the names of more obscure payetanim as well. Yet, where is the Rambam identified? Not only isn't it in this one (Salonica 1526), but it also isn't in the Catalon machzor manuscript from circa 1280, which gives the names of many authors. The Rambam died in 1204. To put this in perspective, it would be like a machzor today printing a poem by a man who died in 1935. That's recent. We would probably know who the author is, particularly if he is so prominent. If the Rambam actually wrote this pizmon, why isn't he mentioned? Now there are possible answers, and we don't have to resort to a far-fetched suggestion like that the ani moshe be-ribbi maymun chazak signature is a coincidence and imaginary. However, I do find it interesting that rather early on one does not see him necessarily identified as the author. On the contrary, the identification happens the later we get.

Here is the aforementioned machzor. No ID given - other authors are mentioned in this manuscript::

Finally, here is some miscellaneous material I collected relating to this post. 

1. In a didactic book written in German with Hebrew letters from 1846 by David Ottensosser, called  Sippure Musar Minei Kedem Moralische Erzählungen aus der Vorzeitwe see that he adds gershayim to the name Maimon showing that he considered it a foreign name:

2. Here's some pages from a Karaite siddur from 1890, which includes the other, original version of the pizmon (which Rambam may or may not have borrowed the opening lines from), and it identifies the author as R. Judah Halevi:

3. It should be noted that there is a textual issue with the name Miyamin and an apparent variant in the Bible (Minyamin) itself. Furthermore, the name Minyamin makes appearances in the Talmud, and all this could be incorporated into this discussion.

4. It should be pointed out that Reifmann's scholarly credits also include anticipating actual Hebrew words which were to later be discovered in the original Hebrew of Ben Sirach pulled out of the Geniza. 

Finally, there is much more to write about this fascinating subject and how it relates to scholarship and speculation about the author of Yigdal, as well as other musings about the Rambam's pizmon itself - but all posts must come to an end. 

What was the "Jewish hat" as late as 1824?

Here's an interesting little aside in a book called Incidents of Social Life Amid the European Alps, an English translation from 1844 of  Zschokke's Bilder aus der Schweiz (1824).

Note, he is not talking about a Jew here, but he is describing the hat itself, the tricorne hat so familiar to us from the 18th century, as the "three-cornered Jewish hat."

See this old post about Jews and three cornered hats into the 19th century.

Ber of Bolechow on Torah im derech eretz and Humphrey Prideaux

Here's an interesting and well-known, I think, passage in the memoirs of Ber Birkenthal of Bolochow (1723-1805), a person most famed because of his role in the disputations with the Frankists and obviously the memoir itself:

So he's going on explaining how he thinks that the biblical Gehazi established Zoroastrianism, and he was reminded of this because he observed that Hungarian peasants were accustomed to always keep a fire burning. This led to a digression on the dualists (Zoroasters) mentioned in the Talmud, and how he thinks the Hungarians are descended from them, and how the name 'Magyar' is a hint toward that (sounds like Magi - why, you can even spell them the same way in Hebrew as he chose to do). In any event, he says that Gehazi established this dualist religion - but he was called Zoroastrus in the books of the Greeks - and that he saw this idea in gentile books.

Then comes a fascinating digression about a book he read by the Englishman Hunphrey Prideuks [sic], from London, who wrote about Gehazi in the first part of his book. He explains that Prideaux wrote all about the history of the nations which bordered ancient Israel and how all the prophecies were fulfilled. In fact, he translated much of the book into Hebrew, and he hopes with God's help to print it, and it will be very enlightening for the Jewish scholars to read.

He then says that he hopes especially his own descendants would read Prideaux (the 'Englander Hunphrey') in the German translation as well as in his Hebrew translation [my guess is that he enlarged it and included his own notes and rabbinic references], they will learn some great matters, for not only the Holy Scripture, but also many worldy matters were known to him, but not to the Jews - and us Jews are obligated to know all, so in them can be fulfilled the verse from Deut. 4:6, "for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples." Even though this verse was applied by Hazal to our holy Torah, but they did also say that Torah is good with derech eretz, and also it is good for every Jew to be wise and understanding, to know also what the gentiles know. Through this he [=Ber] was been able to at times properly answer their confrontational and negative questions about the Jewish faith and religion, with the replies which he thought of when conversing with nobles and priests, and he found that most of the time his replies were correct and perceived as convincing.

Here's the first part of this passage in the original manuscript published by Wischnitzer:

And for fun, here is the entire passage in the facsimile published in Joseph Geller's fascinating dissertation The Manuscript Version of the Memoirs of Dov Ber Birkenthal (Ber of Bolechew) (Montreal 1989), which meticulously corrected Wischnitzer's transcription errors (no opinion on whether Geller is always right and so on).

By the way, in case you are wondering about his spelling "Hunphrey" (with a nun) my theory is as follows. You can see in the manuscript that the first name was added later or as an afterthought, because it was inserted above the ruled space, on top of his transcription of Prideaux (which is accurate, although it implies that he did not pronounce it "Prido"). So he must not have had the book and didn't check twice, although maybe you'd think he'd have recalled the author's name given that he was engaged in translating his work! In any case, this is probably the edition of Prideaux that Ber was using - link.

Finally, here is a nice post where you can see pictures of his tombstone and read about it.

Orphaned English in non-English books

As an inveterate fan of the English language, I love spotting English - the more broken or misspelled the better - in books written in other languages, whether it's letters by Heinrich Graetz which keep spelling English words with "sch" for "sh" ("I schall take the honour to send the englisch translation of my "History of the Jews," as soon as it will be completely finisched.")[1] or anything else, really. I have an extraordinary and wonderful example, which will be the subject of a future post, but in the meantime here's a nice one from מסורת התורה והנביאים (Vilna 1906) by Rabbi Pesach Finfer [sp?], מו"ץ on the rabbinic court of that city.

A different example, which I enjoyed very much although it is almost quite correct, can be found in the introduction to Samuel Romanelli's Grammatica ragionata Italiana ed Ebraica: con tratto, ed esempj di poesia, in which we find the following as a motto:

Note that there is no letter "W" in Italian (see here).

[1] See Founders of "Wissenschaft des Judentums" and America by Guido Kisch,  p. 168 in Essays in American Jewish History (Cincinatti 1958).

A Short-Lived Relic of Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschuetz - a guest post by Prof. Shnayer Z. Leiman

I am pleased and excited to present this guest post by Prof. Leiman. While I don't think he needs an introduction in this venue, and I don't believe he wants one, duty obliges me to apply the statement כל הבורח מן הגדולה גדולה מחזרת אחריו. - S.

A recent issue of Kehilot, the Wednesday supplement to Ha-Mevasser, a Haredi newspaper published in Israel, featured on its front page a photograph of a Jewish relic. The relic was a decorated ceramic plate that was identified as belonging to Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschuetz, the venerable eighteenth century rabbi and talmudist who served with distinction as Rabbi and Rosh Yeshiva in Prague, Metz, and Altona-Hamburg.

A brief note accompanying the photograph explains that the plate had been used by R. Jonathan Eibeschuetz and was then passed down in his family from one generation to the next. It came into the possession of R. Leibush Eibeschuetz, a direct descendant who settled in Jerusalem early in the twentieth century. In turn, his daughter, Rebbetzin Samet inherited it from him. It was her practice to use the plate for the Seder plate on Passover eve. A grandson from her second marriage (to R. Abraham Joshua Heschel), Rabbi Menahem Shlomo Bekerman – the well known head of  מוסדות טשכנוב in Israel – owns the plate today.

Alas, even a glance at the photograph of the plate indicates that it is a commemorative plate celebrating the setting and life of a hero who does not appear to be Jewish. More importantly, an inscription in Cyrillic script in the center of the plate raises an obvious question. Why would R. Jonathan Eibeschuetz possess a commemorative plate with an inscription he almost certainly could not read? It gets worse. The Russian inscription under an iconic statue clearly reads (in translation): Monument of Prince Vorontsov.

Prince Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov’s monument stands today in Odessa, at the very place it stood when it was first erected in 1863. Vorontsov (1782-1856) was a Russian prince and field marshal, famous for his exploits in the Napoleonic wars and in the Caucasian wars. He died and was buried in Odessa.

The commemorative ceramic plate, with its depiction of the Vorontsov monument, is often replicated and reissued. No issue of the ceramic plate could have appeared prior to November 9, 1863, when the monument was unveiled for the first time in Odessa. Despite his rich imagination and mastery of kabbalistic teaching, it does not appear likely that R. Jonathan Eibeschuetz  (d. 1764) owned a commemorative plate that was issued in 1863 or later.

 I am deeply grateful to Rabbi Menachem Silber for bringing the Ha-Mevasser Kehilot account to my attention.

(All images may be enlarged by right-clicking and opening a new window. -S.)

 

A book burning in Galicia, Purim 1859

Here's an account of a book burning in Dobromil in the American Israelite (March 2, 1860), taken from Hamaggid (Jan. 5, 1860/10 Tevet 5620).

Interestingly, one of the books that is mentioned in the original Hebrew, but not the English, which only mentions books by Mendelssohn, is Agadat Arba Kosot by R. Solomon Pappenheim (and this one too).

Trivia

Where in rabbinic literature does the word "response" as in "responsum" occur? (And, it seems to me, ever so slightly, a hair inaccurately.)

'A Bon Mot of Mendelssohn' concerning a shul window donated by a less-than-honorable wealthy man.

From the Voice of Jacob December 23, 1841.

Revel on the "Signifigance of [a] Yeshiva in America"

In early 1924 Rabbi Dr. Bernard Revel published a piece called Signifigance of Yeshiva in America, meant to appear, I am sure, in as many media sources as would print it. Here is the article as printed in Newark's Jewish Chronicle, February 8, 1924.

Open pdf.

And thus we see that you could not get kosher veal in Holland in the late 18th century

Here's the story of a Dutch Jew named Levi and his cousin, a Jewish servant girl named Katrina, who converted to Christianity in or around 1799. Katrina worked for "respectable" Sephardim.

Look at Levi's brother's problem with kashrut.

From the 1817 issue of The Jewish Expositor, and Friend of Israel.

Have you seen that Jewess?

Here's a rather interesting 'missed connection' type of ad from 1869 in the New York Herald.

Pressburg reacts to the appointment of R. Samson Raphael Hirsch as Chief Rabbi of Moravia

Jewish Chronicle Nov. 12, 1847.

Can a man divorce his wife for wearing a sheitel cut in a flapper's style? From 1927.

One more.

This little piece, which is from the Jewish Chronicle via the JTA newswire, states that a man in Warsaw tried to divorce his wife on grounds that she did not dress tznius. She wore a sheitel, but it was cut in a 'boyish bob.' And her sleeves were too short. No dice, ruled the rabbi.

And in the tarte de-sasrei department, here is another JTA piece from 1924, recounting how an antisemitic French newspaper declared that the new fashion of the Flapper's bob is a Jewish conspiracy modeled on the sheitel and that head-shaving for gentile women was no doubt soon in store. I guess the aforementioned rav agreed with the Libre Parole.

The Chofetz Chaim as pogrom victim

This is Newark's Jewish Chronicle's account of a pogrom in Radin in 1922, and how it personally affected the Chofetz Chaim, who was dragged outside from his sickbed, and his pillows stolen by marauders.

On Litvaks

Here's a couple of interesting excerpts from the Jewish Chronicle - of Newark, New Jersey - from Nov. 16, 1928. The article was called "Lithuanian Jews Have Rich Culture As Their Heritage."

It also points out that "Lithuania, it is important to remember, is the only country in Europe where that are no assimilationists, so that it is no wonder that Zionism should have a stronghold there. . . . Today, despite enormous economic handicaps, Lithuanian Jewry retains its intellectual morale. It is the only country in the world where 95 per cent of the Jewish children are educated in Jewish schools, where they receive not only a Jewish but a general education as well." It also points out that 800 boys and girls study in Kovno University.

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Don't worry!

The Hafla'ah's cherem on a bootlegged machzor

Here's a nice little interesting pamphlet published in Frankfurt AM in May 1805, publicizing the cherem on a man called Lemle Geiger's plan for a bootlegged version of Heidenheim's machzor, by order of the Hafla'ah, Frankfurt's Chief Rabbi Pinchas Horowitz (and seconded by various rabbis of other cities), complete with fiery curses. (link)

For more - or actually, less - on this fascinating episode, see p. 133 in Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums, Volume 44, in 'Materialen zu einer Biographie Wolf Heidenheims' by Louis Lewin (the rabbi, not the expert on peyote).

A Kol Nidrei alternative from the 1850s.

Are you still thinking about Kippur?

I forget to post Abraham Geiger's Kol Nidrei. Does anyone with a nice set of pipes (or even a not nice set) want to record a version of Kol Pishoai and post for us?

The original R. Zalman Leib Teitelbaum's rabbinic contract from 1841 ("בתוך הדרשה קיינען ניכט מקלל צו זיין או מבזה צו זיין הן בכלל והן בפרט")

Here is a translation of the 1841 rabbinical contract given by the community of Ujhely, Hungary to Rabbi Zalman Leib Teitelbaum, (1808-1883), also known as the Yetev Lev and the grandfather of the Satmar Rav, Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum. Apparently offered this seat at the time more out of respect for his grandfather then his own qualities (he was a young men then) this contract contains some interesting clauses (see, e.g, 4, 9 and 12).

From the article Rabbones Briefe by Rabbi Julius Rapoport in the April 11, 1914 issue of The Advocate: America's Jewish Journal (link). The article also included a translation of Rabbi Akiva Eger's rabbonus briefe from Posen, dated 100 years earlier.

At the end of this post is the original Hebrew, as well as its source and some discussion of it. Note how loose Rapoport felt he was entitled to play with this translation, renumbering, etc.

An interesting assortment of hand-picked chosen cities in an 18th century shul tool

Here's an interesting page from this calendar tool, printed in Leiden in 1756, for use in calculating the molad for kiddush ha-chodesh. What I find particularly interesting are the chosen cities, from Alexandria in Egypt to London to Lima, Peru to Siam to Paris. Warsaw and Stockholm are there, but not Vilna. Also of note is that the designation Yavan "Greece" is used instead of Russia (or Rusland).

Here is the title page, which gives the author as Raphael Halevi Hanover. From the stamps you can also see that while it ended up in the YIVO Library (and made it to New York, where it was scanned by hebrewbooks.org) but prior owners included the Library of the Great Synagogue of Vilna, S. J. Fuenn - it is inscribed as a gift from his father-in-law Mordechai Nathansohn - and another stamp which is hard to read, but I think may plausibly read Daniel Jaffeh, who is otherwise known as Daniel Itzig, famous 18th century Court Jew and patron of Jewish learning; he founded the Berlin beit hamidrash frequented by the Pri Megadim, Isaac Satanow, and others. But of course I can only read "Daniel," the fact that the Latin initials are "D. J." and that it looks like the Hebrew surname is three letters, which may be yud-heh-feh.

A Capuchin monk and a Jew walk into a bar; a joke from 1837.

Okay, maybe there was no bar. From Fraser's Magazine.

It is necessary to read about Saint Ursula.

On a women's Korban Minchah siddur

Here's an interesting entry penciled on a Google Booked Korban Mincha siddur. The siddur was printed in Vilna in 1892, and the entry was written in 1910.

One of the great things about history, bibliography, bibliolatry, is that eventually the describers become interesting in their own right. So if you want to know what a Korban Mincha siddur was perceived as by a Harvard librarian in 1910, here it is.

Now, I know some will say "Well, that's what it is." But my point is that 100 years later it isn't really thought of as "a Chasidic prayerbook" per se, but as a woman's prayer book. And that is why Artscroll calls its women's siddur Korban Mincha in Hebrew (link).

Fourteen commonly asked American she'elot from 1922

Apparently so - these are representative questions which Rabbi Henry Pereira-Mendes included in his series called Orthodox Judaism - The Future  in the section titled  A Plan for Organization in the Jewish Forum.

As you can see, he advocated for the formation of a national bet din to deal with modern questions and to publish answers to them. These are the questions which "every modern Rabbi knows" (because they get asked them).

A stolen sheitel

Here's an ad promising a reward for the recovery of a stolen wig worth £3 which, according to my crude calculations, is over $600 today.
From the New State of Europe January 20, 1702.