On an unusual attempt to sell the Hebrew poems of a living poet to Moses Mendelssohn's son, as the work of his father

The other day I did one of my "Who am I?" posts (link), and the answer, which no one guessed but my thanks to those who tried, was Moses Mendelssohn of Hamburg (or, Mendelson, as he actually spelled his name). Here was the complete picture in which he is captioned:

You can find this picture in the Jubilee volume of the Israelit commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, here. Mendelson (1780-1861), who was really surnamed Frankfurt, was Hirsch's maternal uncle. The reason why he is holding a book with the title Columbus is because Mendelson's chief work was his translation of Campe's Die Entdeckung von Amerika into Hebrew, which was his מציאת הארץ החדשה, printed in Altona in 1807. The rest of Mendelson's output was mostly scatterings of poems and little articles in various journals. Notable exceptions included a short, anonymously published pamphlet, which contained a lengthy poem called בקשת הלמדין, featuring the letter lamed in each word, and what is supposed to be a Torah commentary called Schuschan-Eduth of which, I think, only one of two projected volumes appeared. I haven't seen this book, but the interesting introduction to this volume, as well as the aforementioned בקשת הלמדין, and basically most of his poems and essays, many of which are quite clever and fascinating, were collected and published after his death as פני תבל - מוסר השכל, which was printed in Amsterdam in 1872. (The Torah introduction from Schuschan Eduth is, for some reason, two essays on preachers - basically parodying and excoriating the new style praedigers (preachers) and the old style maggidim.)

His book about Columbus has many interesting things about it, naturally, so here are a couple. In his introduction he writes about meeting Wessely in his hometown of Hamburg the year before the latter died. The aged master, certainly seen as the expert Hebrew poet of the age, gave him advice in writing Hebrew. Do not, he told him, merely cobble together biblical verses. Although we should understand this ourselves, Mendelson explains that he in fact means the newfangled melitzah style, which consisted of little more than that, weaving together pre-existing phrases from the Bible into a confusing and imprecise text that was supposed to be meaningful and poetic.

The book also includes a neat little glossary in the beginning, for naturally in a work such as this using Hebrew in new ways would be required. Clearly desiring to write only in Hebrew, or as much as possible, Mendelson explains, for example, that when he writes Rifat he means England! - and gives his source for the identification of this biblical land with England as Ben Gorion. Similarly, he used Elul for August - which is not at all something unusual.You find this quite often; Adar is March and so on. However, his glossary is the only time where I saw someone who used the Hebrew months this way point out that he is well aware that the months are not a perfect match, but that most of the days overlap in the Hebrew and English months. He uses the term Dagim Me-ofafim for flying fish, Kumar Romi for pope - although there is a Hebrew word for pope, אפיפיור, this word is not pure Hebrew (See E. Ben Yehuda Milon v. 1 pg. 346). Mendelson used Mored Ha-har for waterfall (and he adds in parentheses that he knows that the rabbinic Hebrew term is Hardalit (sort of) but apparently chooses not to use it because its origin is Greek).

Finally, the book also comes with a - not quite haskama, but a rishyon, apparently some formal necessity for printing a Hebrew book in Altona at the time, by its rabbi, Zvi Hirsch Zamosc (d. 1807), who was the last rabbi of the united triple community Altona-Wandsbeck-Hamburg. Zamosc gives his license and says something like "Whomever wishes to read it, those people who are edified by reading stories like this, permission is granted." The rishyon is given to "the delightful bachelor, maskil, the honorable Moses, son of the wonderful rabbi Mendel F"F [Frankfurt]."

In any case, hopefully people are still reading because here is where the fun part begins. In 1841 Moses Mendelssohn's son Joseph placed advertisements in journals and newspapers all over Germany requesting the public's assistance on a project in which he was engaged, namely the printing of his father's collected writings. So he asked the public to please send him any manuscript they might have written by his father, and he will purchase them for a fair price, or to send and he ensures its safe return. Here is an example of such an ad:

One of the people who responded sent him some Hebrew poems by Moses Mendelson. Of Hamburg. And this person wanted to charge Joseph Mendelssohn for them and, as we shall see, he knew full well that they were written by the living poet - who was his friend, in fact - and not by the philosopher who had been dead for nearly 60 years. Joseph showed them to one of the editors who had been hired for the project, one Heymann Jolowicz, and he realized the deception. The story was originally reported in a Hamburg newspaper, but I cannot find this newspaper. So instead I will give you the version as it is was given in a "Hey, isn't this crazy!" kind of story in an American periodical called Bizarre, in 1855 (and this story was in fact copied from a French magazine from the same year, not the Hamburg newspaper).

As you can see, the story does not identify who made this deception; he is but "Dr. H..... of Berlin." The story makes a big deal about how Jolowicz (his last name cheerfully Americanized to "Jallowitz") was a great detective, and knew how rare poetic verse was in the Mendelssohn oeuvre. He discovered that Dr. H had actually published a Hebrew periodical 40 years earlier, and had included Hebrew poetry by Moses Mendelson of Hamburg, and these that were sent to Joseph Mendelssohn were unpublished poems by MM of Hamburg, that Dr. H tried to pass off as authentic. Actually, I am a little bewildered by how this deception was meant to happen for it seems that MM of Hamburg nearly always signed his work the same way, Moshe ben ha-torani ve-harabbni mohr"r Mendel F"F, or some variety. Not to mention that they were not in Moses Mendelssohn's handwriting. Were they supposed to be copies? Didn't Dr. H expect questions? While I guess Dr. H maybe thought he could fool Joseph Mendelssohn, it doesn't seem like it would have been a great feat for Jolowicz to detect the fraud and so of course he did.

But anyway, although Dr. H is not identified, we realize exactly who it is. But first, a portrait of Joseph Mendelssohn from 1830, aged 60:

Dr. H, who tried to sell poems under false pretenses, is none other than Dr. Jeremias Heinemann, a very interesting individual whom, I will have to guess, was in financial straits when he tried to sell the work of his living friend off as the original Hebrew poems of Moses Mendelssohn himself. Heinemann was an educator and scholar, a publisher, a bible commentator, involved in the earliest stages of Reform as a member of the Westphalian consistory, moved away from that early position to the point that even Rabbi Akiva Eger was willing to give a haskama of sorts to his edition of Mendelssohn's Pentateuch, see below, and someone who had spent a good deal of his life involved with Mendelssohn's writings - both Mendelssohns, in fact. Here is a portrait of Heinemann's father, a rabbi named Rabbi Meinster (or Joachim) Heinemann (1747-1825). And yes, I give this because I don't have one of Dr. Heinemann himself:

Here is Rabbi Akiva Eger's haskamah - or really not-quite haskamah - to one of the volumes of Heinemann's chumash, called Mekor Hachajim, published in Berlin between 1830 and 1833 Although we will acknowledge that he is not exactly turning cartwheels with enthusiasm, reportedly Rabbi Akiva Eger did order a copy, as he listed in the subscribers. However, one might also grant that it is possible that Heinemann simply sent him a copy. I often wonder if the big league rabbis actually ordered the copies they are listed as having subscribed to or if, at least in some cases, they are listed because a copy was simply sent to them. You know, it's like how a musician struggles for years then makes it big and suddenly Gibson is sending them truckloads of free gear. In any case, it is certainly a nice letter and it is much more than a sentence or two. No wonder Heinemann printed it.

In any case, so here's what happened. In the late 1810s Heinemann had a periodical called Jedidja. It was not a Hebrew journal, as Bizarre says; it was in German. However, it did have quite a nice amount of Hebrew material, poems and so on. It notably contains a little poetic translation by none other than Leopold Zunz, a very early literary production by him. Here it is:

So this poem, Halayla (the night), is a translation of Sommernacht (Summer Night) by Klopstock. Compare the above with an English translation of Sommernacht:

So Jedidja. Many interesting things, including work by Moses Mendelson of Hamburg. I will show the following, though, because I love finding English in non-English works. So here we have the following. What happened was, in 1815 the Duke of Sussex became a Patron of the Jews' Hospital and Orphan Asylum in London (link), which had the Hebrew title נוה הצדק. Sussex, a son of King George III, was a real ohev yisrael, which was not necessarily common in England at the time without a missionary motive, and a collector of Hebrew books.  In 1817 at the annual meeting of Jews' Hospital, Sussex came, apparently, and to celebrate this momentous occasion - poetry! And pageantry. A Hebrew poem was composed, and perhaps read, along with an English poem to be "recited by One of the Girls of the Institution." Another poem was written by Shalom Hakohen, one of the patron saints of the Haskalah (last editor of Hameasseph, later to publish Bikkurei Haittim, and several noted works of his own) who was living in London at the time (on him, and the London Chief Rabbi's haskamah to his book for children, see here). So the next year in Berlin Heinemann printed the poems for this occasion, including the English ode to be recited by a girl. Try to imagine a little Jewish orphan girl with her London accent of whatever manner it was, in 1817, reciting,

"Behold, we cry, our smiles of health,

Our moral minds, our means of trade;

Here have ye treasured up your wealth,

And thus your offerings are repaid."

I should have given this above, but here is the title page for Jedidja:

Now, in addition to publishing many letters by Mendelssohn (the first one) it also included a poem or two by Mendelson of Hamburg. Here is the end of one:

Now, some 20 years later Heinemann revived the Jedidja periodical in Berlin. In the second go-around he included much interesting material, some recycled, some new. Apparently he was strapped for cash, or at least had a lot of copies of his Chumash Mekor Hachajim he was trying to sell, because he kept including ads for it, and descriptions of it. It is of some interest that he felt like pointing out that it included a map of Israel, following the Vilna Gaon:

In any case, only a few years earlier (1833) the following appeared in one of the volumes of the Chumash Mekor Chajim; a friendly letter from Moses Mendelson of Hamburg. That is, they were firm friends.

So it was that Dr. Jeremias Heinemann in Berlin allegedly tried to sell Joseph Mendelssohn Hebrew poems written by his friend Moses Mendelson of Hamburg, and this deception was discovered by Heymann Jolowicz whom, I might add, was one of the Reform rabbis in the synod I posted about the other day (link). His grand contribution to the Simchat Torah question was: "We should read Vezot Habracha once every three years." 

It should be noted that when the Collected Writings of Mendelssohn were published a couple of years later, the volume which included the entire German translation of the Pentateuch (in German, not Hebrew letters) came with an extensive introduction by Jolowicz, and he mentions Heinemann's Berlin edition of the Chumash in very nice terms, but does not mention this attempted fraud. Truth be told I feel a little badly about it myself, seeing as how even Jolowicz saw fit not to mention it. But as I said, I strongly suspect that Heinemann was motivated by economic desperation and should not be judged harshly.

Since previously I had mentioned Jolowicz's prize comment that  "We should read Vezot Habracha once every three years," and he was a better scholar than that suggests, we should talk about him. Eventually he moved to England, where his credentials as a learned scholar enabled him to receive a government stipend (interestingly, the materials relating to this process are online - it involved testimonials, a sponsor, personal statements, and a list of his published work). I would just like to call attention to a paper he delivered for the German Oriental Society in England in 1855. Here is the title page of the published version:

In the introduction, W. H. Black recommends the paper, writing that that "For many years I have been convinced that the printed text of some parts of the Hebrew Scriptures may be fairly subject to critical emendation, especially the Psalms, and other poetical portions of the Bible." He continues, that Jolowicz presents the evidence for the position that the Bible contains errors in need of emendation from rabbinic sources.

In the paper itself, Jolowicz refers to the different Versions, and the variants found in the collations of Kennicott and De Rossi, which prove that the text as found in the manuscripts have been subject to corruption. But also "the Talmudists, and the latter Rabbis, as well as the Chaldee parphrast [sic] Jonathan ben Uziel, not only knew various readings most strikingly different from our Canonical Text, but also determined by the interpretations of the same most important usages of religious life." He begins by declaring that the Talmud gives as authors of the books mostly different people from those for whom the books are named. The reason he mentions this is to set the stage for the idea that certain words had to have been interpolated by later copyists, such as Proverbs 25:1 ("King of Judah") words which, as he points out, are missing in some manuscript variants found by Kennicott. He continues by asserting that many "among the most orthodox and greatest authorities of post-Talmudical rabbis . . . did not less practice a strict criticism of the Biblical Text." And conveniently he writes "But this subject will be more conveniently treated of in another place." He goes on to list several dozen variants implied by the Targum called Jonathan, and in the Talmud, Midrash and Zohar, and a few instances in Rashi. He closes with a much-cited passage in Massechet Sopherim, which shows that there were variant readings in the Torah. He closes by quoting a letter from Leib Dukes which notes that one of the Oppenheim manuscripts at Oxford actually contains a masoretic note which gives an interesting variant for Number 12:16, saying that this variant is a more correct reading. Jolowicz notes that one such text corrected according to this manuscript was listed by Kennicott. The paper may be read here.

EDIT: To give Heinemann more his due as an interesting and creative person, I'd to call attention to the second half of my post here, where I refer to an interesting book by him which "I have never seen anything quite like," I wrote, and that "on the face of it it seems like one of the most effective methods of learning what the prayers mean that I have ever seen." Do take a look.

EDIT II: Another angle. Here is fascinating poem by Moses Mendelson of Hamburg, in tribute to Johannes Gutenberg on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Gutenberg's use of moveable type printing. This was printed in the Algeimeine Zeitung des Judentums May 2, 1840. Click them to enlarge and read:

What makes this all the more interesting is that Heinemann printed the same poem in his revived Jedidja in 1842. And there is no mention of Mendelson's authorship, not on the poem and not in the table of contents. Here is the first page from that reprinting. 

 

If you implement a Triennial Torah reading cycle well, what about Simchat Torah?

I thought it would be interesting to post my rendering of the vote about whether or not to retain Simchat Torah in the Reform Synod at Frankfurt in 1845.

The background is, of course, that the Reform rabbis were trying to implement liturgical reforms, to modernize the services, to both attract people and avoid repelling them, and do it in a way that was consistent both in Reform theory and in practice. So in this, the second of three such assemblies, held in Frankfurt A.M.[1]  between July 15 and 28, 1845, many questions were discussed. 

As part of the process of reforming, modernizing and streamlining services, the assembly had approved of implementing a Triennial cycle of reading the Torah. This would of course have the effect of shortening the Torah reading by one third which is something that people who look forward to Parshat Nitzavim can understand. Old sources showed that in ge'onic times (and later) the Torah was read and completed every three years, while our custom of reading it in one year, and celebrating Simchat Torah on the second day of Shemini Atzeret arose in Babylonia. The question therefore was, should Simchat Torah be celebrated only every three years? Or annually? Or at all? Here is what they said:

12th Question, 23 July 

President: Since the majority are in favor of the Triennial cycle for reading the Torah, a question arises: Can the second day of Schemini Atzereth, which until now was the day when the end of the Torah was read, and the Torah reading completed, be maintained? It was pointed out that the Torah describes the entire Sukkot as zeman simchoteinu, a time of joy, so as the Torah was the greatest joy of Israel, celebrating it as Simchath Torah was very suitable. 

A vote was requested, and here is is along with each rabbi's comments:  

Salomon: In the Hamburg Temple they celebrated Simchat Torah once every three years. 

Wechsler: Simchat Torah doesn't only signify that the Torah was ended, but is also a memorial to the great teacher Moses; the festival can be seen this way as well. (He is referring to the fact that we read of Moshe's death, with all of his accompanying praises on S"T.) 

Maier: Simchat Torah has the character of Yom Tov Sheini Shel Shemini Atzeret. This is when we read Vezot Habracha. (I guess he means to point out that it is the second day of Yom Tov and, hello, we are supposed to be against it.) 

It moves to a vote. 

Jolowicz: We should read Vezot Habracha once every three years, 

Lowengard: Likewise. Simchat Torah is unimportant as a memorial for Moses. This only comes as a consequence of reading Vezot Habracha. 

Sobernheim: Likewise. 

Einhorn: Read it every three years. 

Wagner: Likewise. 

Kahn: If we should read Vezot Habracha each year then we're guilty of inconsistency in theory. We should not say that the festival is a celebration of the Siyum. 

Philippson: Vezot Habracha should be read every three years. We already have a festival of joy for our possession of the Torah; Shavuot. 

A. Adler: Likewise. We should not allow a new dichotomy between teaching and life. 

Auerbach: Likewise. 

Süsskind: Likewise. The commemoration of Moses' death only developed from the reading of Vezot Habracha. 

Treunfels: Read Vezot Habracha yearly. 

Ben Israel: Likewise. 

S. Adler: I abstain from voting. 

Hoffmann: Read Vezot Habracha yearly. 

Güldenstein: Every three years. 

Herrheimer: Every three years. 

Hess: Yearly, because otherwise the communities would be opposed. 

Wechsler: Yearly, in memory of Moses, as long as Yom Tov Sheini is maintained. 

Geiger: Yearly, because otherwise you'd have to look for something new to lein for the day. Simchat Torah has importance as the final day of the festivals. 

Maier: Every three years. 

Salomon: Every three years. 

Herzfeld: Yearly, the festival was celebrated, as the president specified, because of the spiritual joy, and not for the reading of Vezot Habracha. 

Holdheim: Simchat Torah, as a day of significance arose late. In the original prayers it is not called as such. Only in the Piyutim is it called this. I therefore agree to reading Vezot Habracha every three years. However, the day as a memorial to Moses should be kept as long as Yom Tov Sheini is. 

Formstecher: Every three years. A memorial for the death of Moses is appropriate on 7 Adar. The Rejoicing of the Law is, as noted by Philippson, Shavuot. Rejoicing will still bring the people in. As it is, those who read the Torah the most are the least joyful, and those who are more forward-looking read the Torah the least. 

Gosen: Yearly. You can read Vezot Habracha again, just as other lessons from the law are repeated [=from time to time]. (i.e., even with a three year cycle) 

Jost abstains from voting. His personal opinion would be that the rabbis should not rob the people of a joyful celebration. But when joy comes about through inappropriate ways that harm the dignity of worship, the thing to do is to direct a nobler attitude in a better direction. (I am not sure why this is in the third person - perhaps they failed to transcribe his exact words. I think this means that he thinks that Simchas Torah excesses are not good, true, but the rabbis should not do away with it, but rather influence the people to celebrate it in a joyful, but more dignified manner.) 

Hirsch: Every three years. Simchat Torah is only a siyum (=conclusion to the Torah). Cannot sanction giving it a new meaning. We have made the decision for a three year cycle, and we have to take the consequences that come with it. 

President: Yearly. 

Conclusion: For the Triennial reading of Vezot Habracha and Bereischit we have 16, for the yearly reading we have ten. Three abstentions. 

President: I request that the Assembly also decide whether to retain the reading with the traditonal neginah (melody)...

[1] I just wanted to end with a little arcane note. I've recently been re-reading The Making of a Godol by Rabbi Nathan Kamenetsky and he included something in a note that, in part, inspired this post (which was also inspired, in the other part, by a good friend). Here is the note (p. 194):

As you can see, Rabbi Kamenetsky saw fit to add a small conclusion that he made, as we who make conclusions are wont to do. In his research he read of the Reform synods. Naturally most sources call "Frankfurt" simply "Frankfurt," even though in Germany there are two cities by that name. He happened to notice that the Encylopedia Judaica says that the Frankfurt synod was held in Frankfurt-am-Main, but he believes this is an error, because both Brunswick and Breslau are in eastern Germany. Frankfurt A.M., a major German metropolis, is in Central, maybe you can even say Western Germany, while Frankfurt-am-Oder is a small city in the east. So it makes sense that if two of the synods were in the eastern part of Germany, also the third.

The reasoning is sound, but however, there are many ways in which we can verify this, such as by reading the title page of the published proceedings of the synod, where we see plainly that it was in Frankfurt A.M., no matter the direction.

And even without such a proceeding, there would of course be other ways of verifying. Contemporary newspaper reports and other sources. Here's another example. This is the title page to Rabbi S. J. Rapoport (Shir)'s work against Reform, written in direct response to the Frankfurt synod:

As you can see, he addressed his remarks to the assembly of rabbis in Frankfurt-am-Main. Lest one think that maybe he, in Prague was mistaken, this was not only an open letter that may or may not have been sent to the assembly itself, but inside Rapoport also includes a letter he literally sent directly to the synod (dated 10 Tammuz/ July 15, the first day of the assembly).

In any case, my point is not to make a big deal about a wrong conjecture but to highlight the fact that there is a time and place for thinking very intently and cleverly about something and for just looking something up, or at least attempting to verify a conjecture from information that is readily available. Only in the absence of such information should one fill in the gap with a well-reasoned conjecture. 

Finally, I wanted to reproduce a great phrase from this book. Rapoport, in his letter to Jost, is deploring the fact that Reform threatens to tear the Jewish people apart, and so he refers to the fact that the Protestant Reformation did just that to the Christians in Europe. He writes that it isn't as if one split will happen and then that's it. No, after one sect emerges from the main group, then new sects dissent from those and so on, such as what happened with "איזה דיססענטערס בבריטאניא."

Who am I?

And yes, the picture contains a clue, if you are eagle-eyed. A little arcane, but a genuine clue.

Chocolate laced with ham

This is an interesting passage in Robert Johnston's 1815 book Travels through part of the Russian Empire and the country of Poland; along the Southern Shores of the Baltic. He was not, shall we say, a fan of Jews. For example, visiting a town called Belitza he writes: "The population is about five hundred, partly Jews and Lithuanians.- The Jews in this place are better looking than formerly, but still Jews." To be sure, he met with a great deal of behavior that, actually, are not uncommonly experienced by first world visitors to incredibly poor countries - petty scamming, maddening travel arrangements, and personal space crowding by people with lesser hygiene. At one point he complains about all the charges and surcharges the Jews impose for driving. In one case he complains that Jews later charged a fee for "a few blows which one of our servants had given the Jew at the time he overturned the carriage!"

And he writes of  almost equal horror at the Lithuanians. He seemed to admire Russians alone. After describing his disgust the Lithuanian boys, he remarks that they are similar to boys in Sweden. He says the women in West Prussia are "even pretty" but they get uglier the farther east you go; "from Konigesberg to Memel this ratio still further holds good." His travels occurred in the aftermath of Napoleon's retreat from Russia. In Dubrovna (near Liadi) he describes the Jews as follows: 

The common Lithuanians are poor miserable abject creatures, and are servants to the Jews. The Jews are all dressed alike, in long tunics of black silk, with a broad silken sash tied round the waist; on the head they wear a small velvet cap, and over it a huge one of fur; they neither shave nor cut their hair; in their figures they are lank and squalid; they all speak the German language, but are deplorably ignorant. Although it was little more than twenty months since the French army retreated from Moscow, and partly destroyed their town, yet they did not know the month in which it took place. How different from the Russ, who never passed a spot or a well, where any event had taken place, without minutely detailing it. However the Jews informed us of the dreadful distresses which their invaders had suffered, on their return, and the miserable plight in which they appeared; they only burnt seventeen houses here."

But I digress.

In any case, here is an anecdote about ham and chocolate; to be more exact, how someone slipped a piece of ham into a cup of chocolate. 

On cutting off peyos to comply with a Czarist edict, 1845

This story from a Dublin newspaper, the Freeman's Journal and Daily Commercial Advertise (July 4, 1845) concerns the Tsarist edicts regarding traditional Jewish dress. According to this story, in Berdichev some Jews complied, and showed up in shul with their peyos cut off. They were then attacked by Chassidim. The men explained that they were only complying with the law, and the reply was that the Tsar has no authority in religious law. Interestingly, the article states that they said that the Tsar "might be the God of the Javanim" but not theirs. It explains, correctly but without comprehension, that "so the Jews call the Russians, as properly the Greeks." First time I've seen this noted in such an old source, in English no less. In any case, the article continues to report a rumor that two of the young men were killed! It should perhaps be pointed out that this is exceedingly unlikely, simply because if so then as far as I can tell no one has ever heard of this before (you know, the time Chassidim killed two young men who cut their peyos), and that would be unlikely. The correspondent reports that 15 Chassidim were sent to Siberia, and ironically would have been forced to "change their national dress" with their peyos the first to go.

A copy of the ketubah of a giyoret in New York from 1827

Nice new web site on the CJH site, called the Early New York Synagogue Archive (link). Contains some interesting archival material, including, for example, this bound collection of what are in effect copies of ketubbot from marriages performed in Congregation B'nai Jeshurun between 1826 and 1841.

Here is one example from this book, a marriage performed in 1827. The groom was named Israel Eliezer ben Gershon, and his bride was a convert named Sarah bat Avraham Avinu. Note also that the 200 zuz are also given as dolars ma'ot amerika, "Dollars, the currency of America."

A Christian observer calls attention to the lack of decorum in synagogues, and the lack of attention by London's Chief Rabbi, in 1810

This excerpt from the book The Obligations of Christians to Attempt the Conversion of the Jews (with the Hebrew title הנה מלאך יבוא לך) by an anonymous "Presbyter of the Church of England," (London 1810) compares the prayer that can be seen in London's Great Synagogue to a scene at the Stock Exchange, while "their chief Rabbi" - Solomon Hirschell - sits by "seeming to care for none of these things."

More remarkable than the criticism is the footnote, where the author basically apologizes to Jews if he caused any offense by this description, and even says that he would have kept quiet about it, except that he believes printing it has a to'elet, a purpose, in that it can stir up Christians to remedy the lack of devotion among Jews! you know, by converting them.

The above can be found on pp. 8 - 9 of the 4th edition (1813) ; the above image was digitally manipulated to put it all one one page. It also appears on pg. 9 of the 1st edition, and not one word was changed.

Jewish peddlers

Alsace, 1790. How do you suppose the tied the string to the far branch?

Would you like fries with that?

Or whatever they say.

McDonald's. Thanks, Google.

An amusing foray into philology

Just for fun I thought I'd discuss an amateur foray into the wooly world of groping in the dark for a plausible translation of a - maybe - Latin word in a rabbinic text. A friend of mine is doing some research - on what I have no idea - and asked me if I had any idea what the following word from the Yalkut Shimoni Tehillin 80 (#830) means:

יכרסמנה חזיר מיער" זה רומולוס, "וזיז שדי ירענה" זה האיסקראטורין"

So of course the answer is no, I have no idea. Here's the verse:

יד  יְכַרְסְמֶנָּה חֲזִיר מִיָּעַר;    וְזִיז שָׂדַי יִרְעֶנָּה.

14 The boar out of the wood doth ravage it, that which moveth in the field feedeth on it.

So the first part is easy, it mentions Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome. Plus, in rabbinic symbolism the boar means Rome.

My immediate, definitely mistaken idea, was that the second part referred to Greece, and the reason why is because איסקראטורין, uh, sounds Greek. So I thought really hard about it and concluded that it was a metathesis/corruption of the word aristokratia, and refers to the Greek government.

My interlocutor quickly pointed out that plainly Rome is meant in both parts, and I rethought again and agreed. So my next try was to look at old texts of the Yalkut to make sure our איסקראטורין was at least spelled right. Well, not texts. One text. I looked at the Livorno 1650 edition (link) and noticed that in this text the word "Romulus" is changed to "melekh"/king and reads "האוסטרולוטון." Although I have not yet pursued this lead - forgive me, sometimes I would like to post mid-thought - it definitely indicated to me that we cannot consider איסקראטורין to be a perfect text. Could be a transcription error or corruption. In any event, I looked at a late 19th century edition of the Yalkut which has a glossary and source list on the bottom of the pages, and the editor gave סופרים as the translation.

After an embarrassing few minutes leafing through Masseches Sofrim (including the 1799 Hamburg Latin edition) I realized that he meant to define איסקראטורין, not cite a rabbinic source for it. So thinking Romish I decided that perhaps איסקראטורין is the Latin word scriptor, which means scribe, writer or author. To get at this, we of course disregard the rabbinic plural suffix ין- and also the prefix א, which is common enough in Hebrew, which does not deal well with initial consonant clusters (cf, Achashverosh, aspaklaria, etc.). Left with סקראטור, and armed with the opinion of the Yalkut editor I mentioned, I deemed it close enough to scriptor and hoped no one would know the difference. Finally, I admit that I have no idea how the second part of the verse is supposed to mean Roman scribes or sofrim or scriptor.

Thoughts?

והצדיקו את הצדיק - explaining a bibliographical error in the Seder Ha-dorot

Bernhard Felsenthal wrote an article in the first American Jewish Historical Quarterly (1892) called The Jewish Congregation in Surinam (link). It mentions David Pardo, who left London and lived out his final years in Surinam, until his death in 1713. Pardo is known for his having published his father's abbreviated Shulchan Aruch, the Shulchan Tahor (and also translating it into Spanish), in 1686 in Amsterdam. Felsenthal added the following amusing footnote:

Putting aside for the moment that David Pardo, the Hazzan in London, only published it, but actually his father Joseph was its author - the note states that in the Seder Ha-doros of Rabbi Yechiel Heilprin, 18th century Minsker ga'on and historian/bibliograpaher par excellence, the author of Shulchan Tahor is given as Baer London. And indeed it is.

The excerpt I reproduce above is from the original, first edition of the Seder Ha-doros (Karlsruhe 1769). As it happens, Felsenthal says he used the Warsaw 1882 edition. In any case, Felsenthal explains what happened - or as we shall see, what he thinks happened. Rabbi Heilprin looked at the title page and must have read it quickly for he read "בער לונדן" (Baer London) instead of "בעיר לונדן" (in the City of London), to say nothing of not having properly read that title page at all. Here is the title page of the 1686 Amsterdam edition:

So it says "Printed at the behest of the scholar, sweet singer of Israel [i.e., Hazzan] in the City of London, Rabbi David Pardo." But Heilprin misread - perhaps jotted down a note without looking carefully - and read "be-'ir london" ad "ber london." Adding some flourishes, Felsenthal makes a big deal out of this interesting error and exaggerates that this man who never existed, Baer London, was "made immortal" by Heilprin. Okay, very cute.

In any case, as I said, Felsenthal had the Warsaw 1882 edition in front of him, and he says that here the Seder Ha-doros mentions Baer London twice; once in his list of books - which I showed above - and once in his list of authors. Interestingly, if you look at the 1769 edition you will see that Baer London is not listed among the authors. Here is where Baer London would be listed in the first edition, but he isn't:

These are all the Baers that Heilprin listed as authors.

If you examine later editions, you will see the same thing. So here is the 1858 edition:

And also, there is no Baer London. Baer London is only mentioned in the entry for Shulchan Tahor proper.

However, in the Warsaw 1882 edition we find the following:

Here we see him listed as an author. However, he is in parentheses and the reason is because he, as well as others, were added by the learned editor of this edition, Naftali Maskil Le-Eisan. In other words, the editor of this edition improved upon the earlier ones and added author names missing from the text and the list compiled by Heilprin. After all, if Baer London appears in the list of books, should not his name be given as one of the authors? So although Heilprin did, seemingly, make an error and read "City of London" as "Baer London," he didn't quite immortalize him. More like squeezed him into a lengthy paragraph.

But in any case, it turns out that Heilprin probably made no error at all. No, there was no Baer London. But surely he was capable of reading a simple inscription on a title page, if not the work itself. It turns out that in 1696 a second edition of Shulchan Tahor was published in Franfkfurt. Unfortunately I do not have access to the title page of this edition, however in a wonderful article from 1928 Israel Solomons seems to have independently noticed the same thing as Felsenthal, but he knew more about the Shulchan Tahor itself. In David Nieto and some of his Contemporaries Transactions (Jewish Historical Society of England) , Vol. 12, (1928-1931), pp. 1-101, Solomons writes as follows:

As you can see, whomever put together the 1696 edition somehow managed to misread the title page of the original 1686 edition, and it was that person who read be'ir london as ber london. That person seems to have omitted David Pardo's name, and replace it with "the wise scholar Rabbi Baer of the Congregation of London" (מהרר בער מק"ק לונדין) - which was accurate insofar as Pardo was in London, it just made him Baer. I can only assume that Rabbi Heilprin had before him the 1696 Frankfurt edition and wrote just what it said on the title page. Sure, he omitted מק"ק, but so what? The 1696 Frankfurt Shulchan Tahor said it was printed by Rabbi Baer London, and that is what is repeated in the Seder Ha-doros. The editor of the Warsaw 1882 edition improved it and added all the various author names in the text proper to the list of authors cited in the Seder Ha-doros. If Baer London was "immortalized" it was by Maskil Le-eisan, who plucked a name buried into a paragraph and gave him a real entry. Note that Solomons tells us that the 1696 edition did not even include the introductory paragraphs, that is, all the stuff by and about Pardo. So it is likely that Heilprin did actually read the Shulchan Tahor, it is just that his edition had nothing about the author apart for the mistake on the title page.

Finally, it should be noted that Solomons says that actually it doesn't even say Frankfurt on the title page, but that is what bibliographers say about it. So, for example, we find in the 1826 catalog of the Oppenheimer Collection (Collectio Davidis):

An impression of Jewish Vilna from the 1840s

This appeared in the Jewish Chronicle July 15, 1861. This is Max Lilienthal's account of his first impression of Vilna, which he first visited in 1842. This isn't a particularly obscure account; it is reproduced in Philipson's  Max Lilienthal, American rabbi: life and writings. However, it is interesting because here we see a  carefully chronicled support for the Lithuanian tradition of both velvet and leather yarmulkes.

A Maimonidean political endorsement

Good thing the Rambam has peyos now. החזיר עטרה ליושנה.

e.g., and so on:

Cracking Google Books, a public service announcement

This isn't rocket science, but as per a request, I am posting the following.

A friend of mine, Mar Gavriel, remembered a funny sort of thing. In one of the volumes of the 24-volume strong Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, its editor James Strachey allowed himself a prim little indulgence, a confession. If he had the chance to redo the project "today" he would have omitted the tedious hyphen in "psycho-analysis," which is no longer used, but for the sake of consistency, the project continued to hyphenate it, perpetuating the archaism. Wait, was it the "tedious hyphen?" Or something else? My friend did not recall and wanted to find the exact words. He came across the page in Google Books - here - and was "pretty sure it used to be searchable," but no longer was. In fact, this happens with Google Books all the time. A book I could search in 2008, now it is a gan na'ul, searchable no more.

However, in no time I showed this to him:

This isn't amazing - it's just that I know that Google often scans multiple copies of the same work, and has an absolutely awful search function. For no good reason that I know you can search for a work by title and Google may give you two copies which it has. Or it may give you one. Or on some days it may give you none. Or if you click the "more editions" link it may give you eleven versions of the same work. Or none. And some may have a "snippet" view, and some may have a regular Preview, and some may have nothing. There seems to be little rhyme or reason. But the point is to know it. If you know it, then you could do as I did: search for The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume 24 even after you have already come across a version which allows no snippets to appear. And if that didn't work, I would have tried something else. Once I found that this book allows a snippet, I simply put in the word hyphen. And the text was right there. But if it hadn't, then I would have tried tedious, tired, tiresome, as well as words like starting and urge. The idea is to tease Google Books into giving you what you need. You can't always do it, but you can far more often than you'd think, and it's worth trying more than once before prematurely concluding that there is nothing there.

For added fun, now that I know the term is "tiresome hyphen" - and how fun is it that Strachey writes this while he also writes "to-day"? - I searched Google Books again, this time the phrase "tiresome hyphen," and was rewarded with these.

On a guide to decoding Jewish documents and letters (for merchants, you understand) from 1792

Here are a couple of interesting excerpts from a book printed in Leipzig in 1792, the Lehrbuch zur gründlichen Erlernung der jüdischdeutschen Sprache für Beamte, Gerichtsverwandte, Advocaten und insbesondere für Kaufleute* by Gottfried Selig (link).

* Guide for Learning the Jewish-German Language for Civil Servants, Court Officials, Lawyers and Especially Merchants.

It's an absolutely fascinating book (fascinating being relative, I know). As you will understand, the point of this book is to teach one to understand business documents and correspondence written by Jews in Yiddish (oder Judeo-German).

This piece describes the way Hebrew words are given diminutive forms or change gender in Judeo-German; "Rebbe" (Rabbi) becomes Rebbezen, and so on.

This piece, obviously, concerns names. It is interesting because of - the names - and also sometimes how they are written. For example, "Jaunosson," is explained to be Jonathan, David is "Dowid" and so on.

It also includes an extensive abbreviation dictionary, dozens and dozens of examples. We are told, for example, that בל"ט stands for בלשון טומאה, or, Latin, and we see that Groschen were called גדולים, as in ג"ג, or ג' גדולים. German script? גלחות, perhaps meaning "Gothic." It gives עכו"ם as both עובדים כוכבים ומזלות and העובדים כריסטוס ומרים (about this, I blogged here). It also explains ס"ט as סימן טוב.

The dictionary proper includes many interesting entries, naturally, including one for . . . אדוק בזנות (der hurerey nachlausen). For the entry on בענשין there are many examples, in the form of phrases, such as this one: הערט צו רבותי מיר וועלין בענשן.

And so on.

On Yiddish and German, from 1829

Here's an interesting excerpt from a much lengthier multi-part article from 1829, illustrating the differences between Yiddish and German.

One part of the article gives encouragement to Christians in learning how to read and understand Yiddish literature, which is says would be easier than Rabbinic literature:

From The Jews, and Jewish Literature in the Christian Review of 1829 (link).

A rather unsympathetic portrait of the Rebbe of Sadigur from 1887

Here is a rather interesting article, to say the least, about Rabbi Avraham Yaakov Friedmann of Sadigura, from the Salt Lake Weekly Tribune (Jan. 20, 1887). They are not very impressed, is basically the summary. The contents of the article come from the Viennese correspondent in London.

Increase Mather on Gynecandrical Dancing

This is just too much fun.

Here is Increase Mather's pamphlet An Arrow Against Profane and Promiscuous Dancing Drawn out of the Quiver of Scriptures (Boston 1684). You understand, he's against mixed dancing because it may lead to mixed dancing.

Of interest, on p.12 he points out that in the description of Jacob's marriage in Genesis, we read of a marriage, but no dancing! On p. 21 he rhetorically asks, Is this a time for Jigs and Galiards! On p. 23 he explains that David and Miriam's dances were "Religious Dances accomodated to the State of the Old Testament-Church." And, of course, those were not "mixt" dances.

Printing in Roedelheim before Heidenheim?

Who knew?

Shadal series #16 - A partial translation of Shadal's letter about the Samaritans and their script

Actually, I plan to complete the translation, but for today it is partial.

In 1851 Raphael Kirchheim - see here about Kirchheim and his cholent - was working on his annotated edition of the Seven Minor Tractates (link) as well as a work about the Samaritans, intended as an introduction to Massekhet Kutim (link). Before these works were finalized at the printer, he asked Shadal to look it over and give comment. Shadal replied that he did not have the time for that, but he would be happy to send him whatever material he had written about the Samaritans, based on his own researches. Most of it was written in Italian, but Shadal rewrote it in Hebrew. Kirchheim printed the entire letter as an appendix in his Karmei Shomron. It contains some interesting thoughts, and here is my partial translation:

I was overjoyed when I heard the news that you are publishing the Seven Minor Tractates, which for many generations languished in obscurity. Today is a holiday! - to find that you are printing them with explanations and notes; among them, your great book Karmei Shomron which, through your broad learning, you elaborated on the history of the Samaritans and all that pertains to them. In your humility, you asked if I would present you with all that I have to say on your words. However, dear friend, time is short, and your printer is demanding. How can I carefully look over and plumb the depths of your work with all the research that your 'pleasant garden' requires [and respond in time]? Therefore, I thought that it would be sufficient for me to present you with all that I have already written (in Italian, for my Grammar of Hebrew, which has yet to be printed) regarding the Samaritan or Old Hebrew script, and on the very old debate about whether the Hebrew script was changed or not. Without elaborating on the matters well known, I will add to that which the researchers have already stated, that if the script was not changed, then it is incomprehensible on what grounds some of the Mishnaic and Talmudic sages would say, from their own minds, such a strange opinion as this, to say that the script with which we write Holy Scriptures is not the original which the Prophets used. Quite the contrary, if the script truly was changed, and some of those sages denied it, we can understand why they would say it: to remove a stumbling block before the masses, for if our Torah is written in a different script from the one Moshe wrote in, this would be bizarre to the weak minded.

However, this proof is external, meaning that it relies on the testimony of the Mishnaic and Talmudic sages. I have an internal proof, from the Holy Scriptures themselves. In my researches, plumbing the depths of our Prophets and Sages, using the critical method, which seeks the truth alone, [this method] not appealing to the old [i.e., traditional Jews] and also not popular among the new [i.e., the Reform Jews], I looked all over the Bible (specifically in the Prophets and Hagiographa, which is not known to them, due to their excess love for the Torah) and found certain words which are errors due to the incompetence of the scribes who copied the books. I did not rush to disclose my findings to the public, because I know about the challenge which such critical research poses, and the many errors which are easy to make. Many scholars and so-called scholars, both uncircumcised and circumcised, boast that they make emendations, but they make errors. In many biblical passages I found what I myself thought was a scribal error, but after days and years I changed my mind and saw that the books' reading was true and correct. With all this, a small bit of the readings which I established in the texts still seem to me correct (now, as a 50 year old man, and after I have passed the passion of my youth) and sustained, above all doubt. Now, of some of these, I discovered that the mistakes happened through the similar appearance of letters, but not in our Hebrew script, but in the Samaritan script.

See how different is the appearance of a yud and a tzade in our Hebrew script (ketav ashuri), but it is the opposite in the Samaritan script, the two letters are almost identical. In Isaiah (11:15) we find: וְהֵנִיף יָדוֹ עַל-הַנָּהָר בַּעְיָם רוּחוֹ (and with His scorching wind will He shake His hand over the River). The root עים is neither Hebrew, nor one of its cognate languages. Therefore it seems to me that Isaiah did not write בעים, but בּעֹצֶם. I wrote this in my notes to Isaiah which I sent the scholar Rosenmueller, alav ha-shalom, and he printed in his 1835 book. Gesenius, in his W?rterbuch, explained עים (following Rabbi Jonah [ibn Janach]) from אָיֹם, but he reversed himself in his great Lexicon, and he took this explanation from me, and wrote that it seems that be-ayam ought to be emended to be-otzem, due to the graphic similarity between the yud and tzade in the Samaritan and other early Near Eastern scripts. [1]

[1] If someone says, maybe Gesenius did not see what you wrote and came up with it independently, much the same way you yourself, [Shadal], in your youth derived "tanur" from "aton nora" without seeing Gesenius - the response is, I have a Latin letter from Rosenmueller dated 24 April 1835, and he wrote this: "Gesenius reviewed all the pages, including your notes, and approved of them." This is not the only thing which Gesenius took from me [Shadal gives three more examples, and the places they can be found in Gesenius' writings - S.]. 

Also the aleph and tav are of similar appearance in the Samaritan alphabet, and from this we can understand what we find in Jeremiah 3:8, "  וָאֵרֶא, כִּי עַל-כָּל-אֹדוֹת אֲשֶׁר נִאֲפָה מְשֻׁבָה יִשְׂרָאֵל, שִׁלַּחְתִּיהָ, וָאֶתֵּן אֶת-סֵפֶר כְּרִיתֻתֶיהָ אֵלֶיהָ; וְלֹא יָרְאָה בֹּגֵדָה יְהוּדָה, אֲחוֹתָהּ--וַתֵּלֶךְ, וַתִּזֶן גַּם-הִיא," "And I saw, when, forasmuch as backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a bill of divorcement, that yet treacherous Judah her sister feared not; but she also went and played the harlot." There is no doubt that Jeremiah did not write "וָאֵרֶא," "And I saw," but ותרא, "And she saw." The opposite (e.g., a tav replacing a proper aleph) occurs in 1 Samuel 24:11[sic; it's actually 10]: "וְאָמַר לַהֲרָגְךָ, וַתָּחָס עָלֶיךָ," "and some bade me kill thee; but mine eye spared thee." But its true reading is "."

Next follows quite a few other example, which I will return to and translate, but in the meantime, the two (one and a half, actually) above will suffice. 

Returning to our subject, that the scribal errors we mentioned arose, without a doubt, because of the graphic similarity of letters [only] in the Samaritan alphabet, is in my view a faithful witness that the script changed and that our books were not originally written in our Ashuri script, but in the one which remained in use among the Samaritans. It is true that changing the script, and writing the holy books in a new script, not previously used by the Prophets for their books, does seem extremely odd. Not for nothing was the matter difficult to accept for many Jewish scholars and non-Jewish ones, so it seemed to them false, and they accepted the wrong opinion [i.e., that Ashuri was older]. But all this is because they didn't understand the reason, they merely heard the idea that the Jews changed the script, but lacked any idea about why, until they were left with the wrong view, that it never happened. If they had known the reason, and the circumstances which caused the Jewish sages to change the script, they would have been able to accept it, and would actually have thanked their predecessors [i.e., the sages, for changing it]. For it is known that the Samaritans tampered with their Torah and introduced many changes into it, large and small. This thing was a stumbling block for the simple Jews, because the Samaritans could, for example, point to what is written in their Torah at the end of the Ten Commandments, "And it will be when the Lord, your God, will bring you to the land of Canaan, which you have come to inherit, and you will establish large stone monuments and write this song upon them, etc. and when you will cross the Jordan you should establish these stones which I command you this day on Mt. Gerizim and build their an altar, etc. - from here is proof to say that their Temple [on Mt. Gerizim] was the spot chosen by God, and not the Temple in Jerusalem. So because of such changes by the Samaritans, the Jewish sages were smart and figured out a way to stop this problem and make a clear, lasting change between our proper books and their improper ones. They found no greater change than to write our scrolls in another script, so that even a simple person could see a Torah of a Samaritan and discern immediately that it is unfit. 

This reason for the change of script was hypothesized by my beloved son Ohev Ger, the Lord keep and strengthen him. It is possible that this was what was intended by Jerome on Ezra (from his version of the Chronicon by Eusebius): "[Ezra] collected the holy Scripture, that they might not be mingled with the Samaritans, [and] changed the Jewish letters." [I reject] the understanding of this passage in Eusebius by Rabbi Azariah, that the  script was changed in order to prevent the physical mixing of the Jews and Samaritans, but in order that the Torahs should not mix! - as he wrote, "divinas scripturas"  

Actually, the change in the script did not occur in the days of Ezra, but later, for we find also in the book of Ezra and Chronicles scribal errors which are due to the similarity of lettes in the Samaritan script. Furthermore, when they changed the script they only prohibited its use for Scriptures, but they still used it for other writing (like the rabbis said, it was left for the plain folk). This is the cause of why we find coins from the Hasmonean era in the Samaritan script. In those times there were two Jewish scripts, one used for secular and one for holy writing. In the end the holy script prevailed, and the earlier script which was left for plain folk, was also abandoned, and remained in use among the Samaritans only. 

Now we will discuss the names which the Samaritan script was known by in earlier times. In the Talmud we find it called Ktav Ivri, and also the Samaritans themselves called it Ktav Ivri, for they called our script Ktav Ezra; see their letter to Scaliger of the year 5349 (1589), which was printed in the book Repertorium fur biblische und Morgendlaendische Litteratur vol. 13 [pp. 257 - &c.]. Now, Rashi to Sanhedrin 21 explained "Ktav Ivri" as "of the people who dwelled over the river [i.e., Euphrates]." This explanation is justified on account of Sabbath 115 and Megillah 18, which refer to Coptic, Ivrit, Elamit, Medite, and Greek, and the intention there is to foreign languages. But how could this explanation pertain to the script in which the Torah was given, which was the ancient Jewish script, similar to the Phoenician script used by the people of Tyre and Sidon? Perhaps Rashi believed that the Samaritan script truly came from over the river, and was used in Eretz Yisrael in the time of Abraham, and from their it came to Israel, only he did not know (and it was impossible for him to know) that also the people of Tyre and Sidon used this script. And when I looked into it, and realized that Ktav Ivri [in this Talmudic text] did not mean a script used in the Land of Israel, and this was at the beginning of the Second Temple era, when Israel was reigned by the Persians. The Persians, who dwelled in the east, called the land of Israel and her environs to the west, "Ever Nahara" (Ezra 4, 5, 6, 7). From the expression of the king and the nobles, the Jews themselves, as well as the Samaritans, began calling their script by the name Ktav Ivri; note that the expression "ever ha-nahar" doesn't refer to any one side of the river. It's primary meaning is either side of the river, and depends upon the perspective of the speaker or listener. (To learn more in depth about "ever" see Gesenius' Thesaurus p. 986 and also what I wrote in Hamishtadel at the beginning of Deuteronomy) After the dissolution of the Persian Empire, the term "Ivri" returned slowly but surely to its original meaning, Aram Naharayim (hence the Talmudic list, Ivrit, Elamit, Medit) and the word "Ivri" as referring to Israel was from then only used in the phrase "eved Ivri" (for so it is called in the Torah), and Ktav Ivri (for this was its name as it was used by the Samaritans, who actually used the script). For this reason R. Abraham de Balmes, R. Azariah de Rossi and others who did not call the Samaritan script "Ivri" but "Ktav Ever Hanahar" were being inexact. 

Sanhedrin 22, we find Ktav Ivri called "Ro'etz," and in Yerushalmi Megillah (first chapter) we find it called "Ra'atz" (i.e., without the vav). The scholar R. Moses Landau writes in his book Geist und Sprache, p. 104, that Ra'atz is like La'az. However, the word "la'az" was well known and used constantly in the language of the Mishnah and Talmud, so who could believe that it was mistakenly changed to ra'atz? Or to say, as a few scholars do, that the idea of ra'atz means a broken script (Fractur) is impossible, since the root of ra'atz doesn't mean broken in scriputral Hebrew, but only in the Hebrew language of the Mishnah and Talmud. When I looked into it, this is what I concluded. Now, the Samaritans refer to our script as "Ktav Ezra Ha-arur", the Script of Ezra the Accursed, (see their letter in the aforementioned Repertorium 13 pg. 273). Therefore the Jews, to retaliate, also coined a term of opprobrium for their script, and took the name of Ezra, which they used in referring to ours, and changed the letters around, also exchanging the letter zayin for a tzade, and came up with the term ra etz, intending "breaking." What is this like? Like Bar Kokhba, whose name they changed to Bar Koziva, or like Evangelion, which they changed to Even Gilyon - even though the terms "kazav" and "aven" are atypical for Mishnaic language, and are only used in Biblical Hebrew. [i.e., so it does mean "Broken" after all, and a clever inversion of "Ktav Ezra"] 

When the Talmud asked, "What is Ktav Ivri?" Rav Hisda replied, "Ktav Livuna'ah." Many think this is one of the names for Ktav Ivri (including Gesenius). To me it seems that as the Samaritans lived in Israel, and not in Babylonia, and Ktav Ivri was unknown in Babylonia, so when they asked Rav Hisda "what are the hedyotot" he answered "the Samaritans." Then they asked him, "What is Ktav Ivri" but Rav Hisda did not know to answer "the Samaritan script," since he was unfamiliar with it. So he answered "Ktav Livuna'ah," which did not mean exclusively the Samaritan script, and it must have been a script known at the time in Babylonia, and [perhaps] it was somewhat similar to the Samaritan. And truly these writings are found in the ruins of Babylon and Nineveh on bricks. Some of these [=cuneiform] slightly resemble the Phoenician and Samaritan (see Kopp "Bilder und Schriften" II 152, 154) and Layard in "Nineveh" (Paris 1850) p. 173). R. Moses Landau in his book Ma'archei Lashon (p. 875) explained the word "Livuna'ah" from the term "levenah," (brick), but this is impossible. First, because of the vav after the beit, as it is written in the earlier printed editions, as well as my old manuscript of the Aruch, under the entry Ktav. The second reason is that the bricks [=tablets] in Babylon are not at all similar to the Samaritan, most are written in cuneiform, only the tiniest fraction are alphabetic. So I say that the term Livuna'ah does not refer to the Samaritan alphabet, but another script, and the true meaning of it is not possible for us to determine.

After this follows several pages on the poetic language of the Samaritans.

This is sufficient because of the lack of time. You my dear lerned friend, rejoice in your work, and rejoice all who love Torah and her aids. Peace to you and yours, signed Padua 9 Sivan 5611, your friend Shadal.

An execution by guillotine described in 1818

The execution of a Jew by guillotine - I assume - is described here. Note that the Jews accompanying the man "carefully removed ... even the smallest traces of blood" - to bury with the body.

A Detroit family's conversion to Judaism in 1916

This story is from the Tageblatt (English section) exactly 94 years ago - Jan. 1, 1917.

Kalman Wagner of Brisk came to this country as a child. An orphan, he became a Christian, married, and had five children. One night, he said, his father appeared to him in a dream and told him to return to Judaism. After some resistance from his wife, she agreed, and she and his children were converted. And that is how a whole Detroit family converted to Judaism in December of 1916.