Friday, February 05, 2010
Spinoza as Hebraist - more on Aben Ezra
Here's an interesting pair of letters from the Jewish Chronicle; the first is dated 10.25.1957, the second 11.11.1957. Interesting because it concerns Rashi's bing called Yarchi, and Ibn Ezra "Aben" Ezra. There's more to say about this, especially about Yarchi (which will have it's own post eventually), but also about Spinoza and Hebrew. But the day is short. See this post about pronouncing "ibn." The first guy was a famous chess player, by the way.
Thursday, February 04, 2010
The Or Sameach's last name? A reflection on surnames.
A little discussion about the surname of Rabbi Meir Simcha ha-Kohen of Dvinsk (1843-1926) has ensued on an email discussion list. Someone said it was Kalonymos; others pointed out that was just his father's name, and that person seems to have misunderstood his Wikipedia entry: "Meir Simcha was born in Butrimonys (Yiddish: Baltrimantz), Lithuania, to Samson Kalonymus, a local wealthy merchant. ."
It's possible that had some kind of legal surname, and it even might have been Kalonymos (although evidence is lacking), but a cursory glances at several sources from the 1920s and 1930s refer to him as "Rabbi Meir Simcha Kahan." I have a hunch that some may have a bit of a desire, even unconsciously, to see surnames like our surnames on great rabbis. Thus, there have been attempts to supply the Vilna Gaon with the surname Kremer, or the Chafetz Chaim with Poupko. In the case of the Vilna Gaon, there are Polish census documents that list him as "Eliasz Zelmanowicz," but surely he had as much sense of himself as "Zelmanowicz" as he did "Eliasz." It was simply a translation of "ben Shlomo Zalman," even though it looks like (and is) a modern Jewish surname, and today's Zelmanowitz surely think of themselves as Zelmanowitzes.
Perhaps some of us forget just how recent and fluid surnames in the sense which we use them were in the history of European Ashkenazic Jews (hereafter just "Jews"). Broadly speaking, they begin around 1800. As recently as before the Holocaust we see that in parts of Europe the surname used by families just weren't so important, and people were regularly referred to by their friends and acquaintances by other markers, such as town of origin, job, or even the street one lived on. By and large surnames were originally foreign to Ashkenazim, and eventually compelled by law and then custom.
I don't know about everyone else, but my last name has been a part of my identity ever since I could remember. I think of my name as being my legal surname as much as I do my first name. But this cannot be the way Jews felt about their surname when it was new, and probably not how my first ancestor with my surname felt about it. The only probable exceptions were people from famous families, eg, Rapoports, "Ish" Horowitzes, Ginzbergs or Rothschilds. Presumably some descendants of the Maharsha who used the name Eidels did not consider such a name disposable, but a gem to cherish. But that wasn't the case in general.
In my recent post on curly peyos the subject was a man called Wolfsohn or Halle. At one time he signed his name Aharon ben Wolf Halle. He was from Halle. Later he wasn't in Halle, so he began signing his name Wolfsohn. It's hard to see how he had any strong identity as either a Halle or a Wolfsohn; both choices were decisions he made as an adult and was in need of a way of identifying himself beyond a vague "Aharon ben Wolf." If he had grandchildren who continued to use Wolfsohn, as begun to happen, then the name became a part of their identity. If he had moved to England he probably would have changed his name to Wolfs, which is generally what Jews did when they moved there. They took their fathers first name, Anglicized it if necessary, and added an "s" suffix.
In Dr. J. J. Schacter's excellent dissertation on R. Jacob Emden, he discusses that surname (pg. 130), and points out that the rabbi himself never considered his surname to be Emden. Writing in 1765 he explicitly referred to himself as "The beleaguered Jacob Israel, called Yavez. I was never called Jacob Emden . . . It is known that I am not from Emden, I was not born there nor do I yearn to see it." הטרוד יעקב ישראל מכונה יעב"ץ ס"ט לא נקרא מעולם יעקב עמדין Indeed, he only lived in Emden from the time he was 16 or 17, and he signed his responsa יעב"ץ. On the other hand, he obviously had some cognizance of himself as being called "יעקב עמדין," being that he is complaining about it. However, whenever he referred to Emden in relation to himself (on title pages, for example), it was in his former role as the ראב"ד of Emden (not that he ever indicated it was a former role). In German literature he was called Jacob Hirschel, after his father. (Or "dem Emdener Rabbiner Jacob Hirschel," although this example from 1789 is from 13 years after he died:
)
As for R. Meir Simcha, when he was born in 1843 surnames were not yet deeply entrenched, and certainly one was not part of his identity. With a name like "Meir Simcha" (not a common combination until after he was gone) what further identification marker was needed? For that matter, I highly doubt the Chafetz Chaim thought of himself as "a" Kagan, as opposed to a kohen.
It's possible that had some kind of legal surname, and it even might have been Kalonymos (although evidence is lacking), but a cursory glances at several sources from the 1920s and 1930s refer to him as "Rabbi Meir Simcha Kahan." I have a hunch that some may have a bit of a desire, even unconsciously, to see surnames like our surnames on great rabbis. Thus, there have been attempts to supply the Vilna Gaon with the surname Kremer, or the Chafetz Chaim with Poupko. In the case of the Vilna Gaon, there are Polish census documents that list him as "Eliasz Zelmanowicz," but surely he had as much sense of himself as "Zelmanowicz" as he did "Eliasz." It was simply a translation of "ben Shlomo Zalman," even though it looks like (and is) a modern Jewish surname, and today's Zelmanowitz surely think of themselves as Zelmanowitzes.
Perhaps some of us forget just how recent and fluid surnames in the sense which we use them were in the history of European Ashkenazic Jews (hereafter just "Jews"). Broadly speaking, they begin around 1800. As recently as before the Holocaust we see that in parts of Europe the surname used by families just weren't so important, and people were regularly referred to by their friends and acquaintances by other markers, such as town of origin, job, or even the street one lived on. By and large surnames were originally foreign to Ashkenazim, and eventually compelled by law and then custom.
I don't know about everyone else, but my last name has been a part of my identity ever since I could remember. I think of my name as being my legal surname as much as I do my first name. But this cannot be the way Jews felt about their surname when it was new, and probably not how my first ancestor with my surname felt about it. The only probable exceptions were people from famous families, eg, Rapoports, "Ish" Horowitzes, Ginzbergs or Rothschilds. Presumably some descendants of the Maharsha who used the name Eidels did not consider such a name disposable, but a gem to cherish. But that wasn't the case in general.
In my recent post on curly peyos the subject was a man called Wolfsohn or Halle. At one time he signed his name Aharon ben Wolf Halle. He was from Halle. Later he wasn't in Halle, so he began signing his name Wolfsohn. It's hard to see how he had any strong identity as either a Halle or a Wolfsohn; both choices were decisions he made as an adult and was in need of a way of identifying himself beyond a vague "Aharon ben Wolf." If he had grandchildren who continued to use Wolfsohn, as begun to happen, then the name became a part of their identity. If he had moved to England he probably would have changed his name to Wolfs, which is generally what Jews did when they moved there. They took their fathers first name, Anglicized it if necessary, and added an "s" suffix.
In Dr. J. J. Schacter's excellent dissertation on R. Jacob Emden, he discusses that surname (pg. 130), and points out that the rabbi himself never considered his surname to be Emden. Writing in 1765 he explicitly referred to himself as "The beleaguered Jacob Israel, called Yavez. I was never called Jacob Emden . . . It is known that I am not from Emden, I was not born there nor do I yearn to see it." הטרוד יעקב ישראל מכונה יעב"ץ ס"ט לא נקרא מעולם יעקב עמדין Indeed, he only lived in Emden from the time he was 16 or 17, and he signed his responsa יעב"ץ. On the other hand, he obviously had some cognizance of himself as being called "יעקב עמדין," being that he is complaining about it. However, whenever he referred to Emden in relation to himself (on title pages, for example), it was in his former role as the ראב"ד of Emden (not that he ever indicated it was a former role). In German literature he was called Jacob Hirschel, after his father. (Or "dem Emdener Rabbiner Jacob Hirschel," although this example from 1789 is from 13 years after he died:
)As for R. Meir Simcha, when he was born in 1843 surnames were not yet deeply entrenched, and certainly one was not part of his identity. With a name like "Meir Simcha" (not a common combination until after he was gone) what further identification marker was needed? For that matter, I highly doubt the Chafetz Chaim thought of himself as "a" Kagan, as opposed to a kohen.
Death of a High Priest.
What measures did lonely, traveling Jews take to maintain their observance of kashrut on the road in the 18th century?
In 1887 a fellow named Israel Solomon self-published a small booklet called Records of My Family. Solomon was born in Falmouth, England in 1803; he moved to New York in 1881. I don't know when he died.
In his book he recounts the following highly interesting description of how itinerant peddlers kept kashrut in the 18th century:
As part of a series of of articles called 'Pictures From the Past,' printed in the 36th volume of The Menorah (1904), Dr. Hermann Baar wrote a piece called Yokel, the Horse-Dealer:
He does not identify the place, except as "St. ---" but it must be in Germany.
In his book he recounts the following highly interesting description of how itinerant peddlers kept kashrut in the 18th century:
" . . . in that time (i.e., appr. 1740 - MFM), down to 1830, inns where Jewish travellers rested were to be found in all the roads and towns of England. The landlord then, especially to gain their custom, kept a cupboard or closet containing cooking utensils entirely for their use, so that they might eat kosher. The landlord kept the cupboard locked and guarded the keys on his own person, and when a Jew used the utensils he saw to the cleaning of them, and before putting them away he wrote with chalk within the bottom of the utensil his name, day of the month, and year, with the portion from the law read on the Sabbath of that week - all in Hebrew. Some of these hotels were in the centre of populated districts, and the pedlars going the rounds of the district would congregate of a Friday evening at these hotels and stay over Saturday, and on Sunday they trudged again on their laborious rounds. They generally formed a club and one of the number, who was licensed by the rabbi to slaughter animals, was paid by the club for one day's less of profit from his business to get to the hotel on Friday early enough to kill animal or poultry, purchase fish, etc, and either cook or superintend it that it should be quite kosher by the time the brotherhood came there, and ushered in the Sabbath gladly singing hymns, and after a copious but frugal repast, some Hebrew literature or tales of the past and present were related by one or the other with all the happy freedom allowed to speech in dear old. England; although these happy lovers of English soil were not allowed the perfect equity now enjoyed by their children.This particular passage has been quoted many times, and it seems to be the only written source for it, at least in English. There's no reason to doubt it -- if only all 80 year olds would write or record their memories! It seems to me that this practice must not have originated in England, as Jews were rural peddlers all over Central Europe and, indeed, most of the Jewish peddlers in England were not native-born. I saw that John Cooper makes the same conjecture on pg. 164 of his Eat and Be Satisfied: a Social History of Jewish Food: "Surely these must have been long-standing practices of Continental Jewry that were transplanted to England."A hint that this is so can be found in a reference to a similar practice which I noticed.
As part of a series of of articles called 'Pictures From the Past,' printed in the 36th volume of The Menorah (1904), Dr. Hermann Baar wrote a piece called Yokel, the Horse-Dealer:
He does not identify the place, except as "St. ---" but it must be in Germany.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
The obituary of a great masoretic and liturgical scholar; Seligmann Baer remembered.
From the Jewish Chronicle; December 1897:
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
A Yekke with curly peyos?
Here's an interesting portrait. This individual was most definitely a Yekke who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries. I'll say who he is a little later (either in the comments or by updating the post), but right now that would detract from the visual impact.
Edit: I updated the post; now the original image with its caption is posted. As noted in the comments, this is Aron Wolfsohn, who was also known as Aharon ben Wolf Halle and eventually as Aharon Wolfsohn. He was co-editor of Hameassef with Joel Brill, and later rabbi of Hildesheim.
Seven reasons why the Jews can be restored to the land of Israel, from 1749.
In the comments to my camel post (link) the discussion concerned notions of Jewish restoration to Palestine in the early 19th century. My friend Dan pointed out that after the failure of his Ararat project, Mordecai M. Noah made a speech about restoration of the Jews to Palestine, years before Rabbi Kalischer or Simcha Pinsker had begun advocating proto-Zionism. Perhaps this refers to his Discourse on the Evidence of the American Indians Being the Descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel (1837) in which he predicted that "Syria will revert to the Jewish nation by purchase." Actually, I'm not sure about his preceding Kalischer. It seems that he must already have had Eretz Yisrael on his mind, as he famously discussed the question of offering the Korban Pesach with his rebbe Rabbi Akiva Eger, who died in 1838. However, his writings on the subject were not published until over 60 years later (assuming, as I am, that his Drishas Zion's first edition was the 1899 one on hebrewbooks.org; even if it isn't, it is not listed in Ben Jacob's Ozar He-Seforim, 1880 edition). So Noah may well have been the first, or among the first, Jews to publish about this, although clearly in the 1830s some Jews had already begun thinking about it, Rabbi Kalischer included. As for Pinsker, he was only born in 1821.
I'd been wanting to post the following for awhile, but now seems the right moment. The following is a passage in volume 2. of David Hartley's Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations (1749):
Most interesting to me is his observation (or fantasy?) that the Jews around the world can speak and write "the Rabbinical Hebrew" and therefore will be well-suited to joining together from around the world.
I'd been wanting to post the following for awhile, but now seems the right moment. The following is a passage in volume 2. of David Hartley's Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations (1749):
Most interesting to me is his observation (or fantasy?) that the Jews around the world can speak and write "the Rabbinical Hebrew" and therefore will be well-suited to joining together from around the world.
Monday, February 01, 2010
What can camels tell us about kashrut? Also, the Neturei Karta's ideological connection to Napoleon's Chief Rabbi de Cologna.
Why are there Jewish dietary laws? Maimonides conjectured that the reason for the dietary laws is mostly for health and hygien (Guide iii.48, see below):
By the 19th century the premise that "there is nothing among the forbidden kinds of food whose injurious character is doubted, except pork and fat" was itself doubted. In Samuel David Luzzatto's Yesode ha-Torah (below) we find the rejection of a connection between kashrut and health. He offers a proof for this being that camels aren't kosher but Arabs eat them without any injurious result; on the contrary, it is an excellent source of nutrition for them.
Instead, Luzzatto explains that the point of prohibited foods is to promote separateness and holiness, not for this or that specific thing being prohibited, so long as some foods are prohibited.
The eessence of this argument was already made at the end of the 17th century by Isaac Fernando Cardoso, a Marrano physician who left the Iberian peninsula to join the Jews of Venice. He wrote a classic of apologetic Jewish literature on "The Excellence of the Hebrews," (Excelencias de los hebreos).
I haven't seen the book, but Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi writes that his discussion of kashrus is on pp. 39 to 45 of this book. He summarized Cardoso as explaining that there were two opinions regarding the reason for the dietary laws. One is that of Maimonides and the other is found in the Letter of Aristeas, where Eleazar the High Priest explains to Ptolemy that the significance is purely symbolic. Below is from Thackeray's translation of the Letter of Aristeas:
Cardoso adds a third reason, that eating food which is not kosher engenders a bad temperament, which blocks understanding and leads to contamination of thought, brought about by contamination of spirit. I do not know where this view is advanced, unless this refers to the kabbalistic concept of טמטום הלב. Perhaps it is a view of his own (although he will reject it).
Cardoso, the physician, rejects any medical explanation, for a few reasons. First, to claim that the dietary laws are really a kind of manual of health demeans God, because guides for healthy eating are found in any medical text, while God's laws are wisdom which cannot be obtained elsewhere. Furthermore, it is obvious that generally speaking Gentiles are no sicker than Jews although they eat those foods. (Yerushalmi reminds that Cardoso knew this from personal experience.) Additionally, foods which are considered unhealthy by medical science (such as cucumbers, mushrooms and onions) are permitted by the Torah. Finally, the Torah calls such forbidden foods unclean or impure, not unhealthy.
While rejecting the idea of some kind of medical reason for kashrus, it should be noted that elsewhere in the book (pg. 348) Cardoso attempts to refute a popular antisemtic claim that Jews suffer from particular defects and maladies. Here he claims that Jews are really generally healthier than the general population. In support he cites Buxtorf, that Jews are less prone to leprosy because of kashrus, but also subjects Buxtor's complete view of this issue to critique. It is worth reproducing Buxtorf's complete chapter (translation by Alan D. Corré ):
Not directly related to this post, but it is interesting that Cardoso allows that it may be that there is one illness which Jews suffer from more than gentiles: melancholia. This he ascribes to the bitterness of exile.
In any case, in his Excelencias he does not really accept any of the proffered reasons for the dietary laws, pointing out strengths and flaws in them all, but mostly accepting that they are God's wise laws. As you can see, his approach is a precursor to Shadal's. You can't say that various animals are forbidden because they aren't healthy, for that is not at all established. On the contrary, the evidence indicates otherwise.
Interestingly, in R. Leone Modena's Riti numerous pages are devoted to explaining what the dietary laws are, but there is not one word of suggestion toward an explanation for them, except at the end, where the rabbinic prohibition of eating meat and fish together is given as due to a health concern, "but that is not observ'd now-a-days."
Thus for Jewish approaches to the dietary laws. Christians, on the other hand, had to grapple with dietary laws being found in the Old Testament, that is they are the Word of God, but also somehow no more applicable. With that in mind, health and hygiene were offered as probable reasons, but since the dietary laws themselves were no longer applicable, it was reasoned that the health benefits were also from the remote past (e.g., suited for the wilderness, or the climate of ancient Israel).
In the early 19th century the dietary laws became highly unpopular among a certain segment of reform-minded Jews and non-Jews for they were perceived as a major barrier to Jewish emancipation and integration. Charles-Joseph Bail, the Napoleonic administrator of the Kingdom of Westphalia wrote a book decrying the intolerance and discrimination against Jews that he found in Westphalia. However, like all liberal non-Jewish opinion of the time, this defender of the dignity of the Jews also assumed that the Jews must reciprocate and reform Judaism. With that in mind, he evidently described the laws of kashrus as vestiges of ancient hygienic practice, and therefore unnecessary in the 19th century.
Responding to his call for reform of Judaism in 1817, Rabbi Abraham Vita de Cologna wrote a reply in the form of a pamphlet, headed by the motto Erit amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas ("I love Plato, but I love Truth more" - a post about this phrase in Jewish tradition will be forthcoming) as follows:
The meaning of the passage can be conveyed well and most interestingly by an English translation from 1833 that is found in Isaac (father of Benjamin) D'israeli's book The Genius of Judaism:
Shadal is normally meticulous to the point of distraction in citing sources, but Yesode ha-Torah was meant to be a simple, fluid book, and I assume that is why he did not cite him, unless he simply forgot the source or somehow arrived at it independently. But Cologna was personally known to Luzzatto in Trieste, and admired by him. He is quoted in several places in his Torah commentary, and always wrote extravagantly of him whenever mentioning his name. In addition, he considered his brother R. Angelo (Mordechai) Cologna to be one his primary rabbeim. It is thus all but certain to me that the 1817 pamphlet was where he acquired the point about Arabs eating camel flesh as a refutation of Maimonide's view.
R. Cologna was a Very Important Jew early in the 19th century. He was among the three leaders of the Parisian Sanhedrin of 1806 (R. David Sinzheim was titled President, or נשיא. R. Sauveur Benoit Segre was titled premier Assesseux, or אב בית דין, and Cologna was deuxieme Assessuer, or חכם). He had been the Chief Rabbi of Mantua, and as a result of his Parisian experience, was knighted by Napolean [1] and became the Chief Rabbi of Paris. After some years in this position he became the Chief Rabbi of Trieste after it's incumbent R. Avraham Eliezer ha-Levi died. The astute reader will recall that Rabbi Abraham Belais sought Cologna's haskamah as well as R. Moshe Sofer (link).
Here is his biography in Rabbi Marco Ghirondi's Toldos Gedolei Yisrael:
Here's a poem written in his honor by Shmuel Chai Zelman, published in Bikkurei Ha-Ittim 11 (1830), on the occasion of his move to Trieste:
Here's what is written on his tombstone:
Part of a poem he wrote in honor of Napoleon's birthday:
Here is the final page of the Hebrew-French edition of the Decisions Doctrinales of the Sanhedrin published in Paris in 1812:
A notice from 1811 about a Hebrew prayer composed by him for the pregnancy of Napoleon's wife, meant to be recited daily until her Majesty's delivery:
In the 1820s, the missionary Joseph Wolf wrote the following about his visit to Gibraltar; Cologna's portrait could be found on the walls of the Jews there:
An image of some of the members of the Sanhedrin:
Here is a larger picture of the Chevalier himself:
Strangely, there is a Neturei Karta connection. Before I could even draw the following connection, Neturei Karta already did. In 1825 Mordecia Manuel Noah, aprominent Jewish American, hatched a plan to create a Jewish refuge called Ararat in Upstate New York. He tried to enlist support among fellow Jews, including such prominent Europeans like our Cologna, British Chief Rabbis Hirschell and Meldola, and Leopold Zunz, but ultimately got nowhere, which hardly needs to be said. Perhaps Noah's approach of appointing individuals to positions without asking them first -- he wished to make Cologna Secretary of Emigration -- was not the most diplomatic.
The Journal des Débats printed Cologna's reply to Noah in its November 18, 1825 issue. So significant is this reply (and/ or obscure is the Journal des Débats today) that simply putting those words into Google returns, as its third result, a translation of this letter at Nkusa.org, ascribed to "the Chief Rabbi of Cologne". This is a fabulous example of the citation of rabbis who say something potentially supportive of one's position, without having the slightest idea of who it is one is citing. This is hardly unique to Neturei Karta.
Below is the original and an English translation published in an American periodical called Niles' Weekly Register:
Here's the Neturei Karta translation:
Getting back to the kashrut-health-hygiene question, this generally was a connection made only in the early 19th century. By the end of that century no one really lodged it anymore, at least not on the Jewish side, except to apologize for kashrus or to grant a point in favor of tradition, but to show it as something which wasn't crucial. Thus, Lilian Helen Montagu writes the following in her Thoughts on Judaism:
However, for her "the legal minutiae added by the rabbis" have distorted whatever good there is in kashrus, and thus the laws should be "reverently examined" and where in accordance with "hygienic truth" and human treatment for animals, should be given our allegiance.
Writing in 1896, C.G. Montefiore stresses that kashrus is superstition, not hygiene. It is Asiatic, and not European. Furthermore "it is impossible for persons of culture to keep the Dietary Laws." It is worth reading his article and Hyamson's reply, "Another Word on the Dietary Laws" in the Jewish Quarterly Review.
Here's a typical sort of treatment about it from 1912:
In Isaac Mayer Wise's autobiography, he printed a letter as follows:
In short, by century's end everyone was too smart and too sophisticated to claim that the Mosaic dietary laws were a healthful measure. However, early in the century the Rambam's explanation had been more popular.
[1] Cologna's knighthood (hence, his title Chevalier) was something many Jews were quite proud of. In the Voice of Jacob October 14, 1842 we find:
I have no source other than this, but the claim here is that he was knighted for something entirely unrelated to being a rabbi. I have no idea if this was meant to be a loophole, that is, if Napoleon's Order of the Iron Crown precluded knighting a Jew for his Jewishness, or not. In any case, the order had only 100 members (of three different ranks), and would thus seem to have been quite an honor.
By the 19th century the premise that "there is nothing among the forbidden kinds of food whose injurious character is doubted, except pork and fat" was itself doubted. In Samuel David Luzzatto's Yesode ha-Torah (below) we find the rejection of a connection between kashrut and health. He offers a proof for this being that camels aren't kosher but Arabs eat them without any injurious result; on the contrary, it is an excellent source of nutrition for them.
Instead, Luzzatto explains that the point of prohibited foods is to promote separateness and holiness, not for this or that specific thing being prohibited, so long as some foods are prohibited.
The eessence of this argument was already made at the end of the 17th century by Isaac Fernando Cardoso, a Marrano physician who left the Iberian peninsula to join the Jews of Venice. He wrote a classic of apologetic Jewish literature on "The Excellence of the Hebrews," (Excelencias de los hebreos).
I haven't seen the book, but Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi writes that his discussion of kashrus is on pp. 39 to 45 of this book. He summarized Cardoso as explaining that there were two opinions regarding the reason for the dietary laws. One is that of Maimonides and the other is found in the Letter of Aristeas, where Eleazar the High Priest explains to Ptolemy that the significance is purely symbolic. Below is from Thackeray's translation of the Letter of Aristeas:
Cardoso adds a third reason, that eating food which is not kosher engenders a bad temperament, which blocks understanding and leads to contamination of thought, brought about by contamination of spirit. I do not know where this view is advanced, unless this refers to the kabbalistic concept of טמטום הלב. Perhaps it is a view of his own (although he will reject it).
Cardoso, the physician, rejects any medical explanation, for a few reasons. First, to claim that the dietary laws are really a kind of manual of health demeans God, because guides for healthy eating are found in any medical text, while God's laws are wisdom which cannot be obtained elsewhere. Furthermore, it is obvious that generally speaking Gentiles are no sicker than Jews although they eat those foods. (Yerushalmi reminds that Cardoso knew this from personal experience.) Additionally, foods which are considered unhealthy by medical science (such as cucumbers, mushrooms and onions) are permitted by the Torah. Finally, the Torah calls such forbidden foods unclean or impure, not unhealthy.
While rejecting the idea of some kind of medical reason for kashrus, it should be noted that elsewhere in the book (pg. 348) Cardoso attempts to refute a popular antisemtic claim that Jews suffer from particular defects and maladies. Here he claims that Jews are really generally healthier than the general population. In support he cites Buxtorf, that Jews are less prone to leprosy because of kashrus, but also subjects Buxtor's complete view of this issue to critique. It is worth reproducing Buxtorf's complete chapter (translation by Alan D. Corré ):
About the Sicknesses of the JewsCardoso is a physician, Buxtorf was not. Thus, he knows more about the subject, and although he is happy that Buxtorf reports that Jews suffer from less leprosy and therefore cites him, he should have known that they also suffer less from the other diseases mentioned. Furthermore, Cardoso reports that even gentiles ascribe cleanliness to kosher food, and so in Venice they order meat from the Ghetto markets, being that the meat is from animals that did not die naturally, is without disease and also without blood. This is interesting because insofar as cleanliness relates to health, does this not undermine his whole argument?
Many people believe that Jews live longer than Christians, and do not have as many diseases among them as Christians. Experience teaches, however, that they die just as young as other peoples. So we also know from experience that they suffer from Chicken Pox, Measles, Epilepsy, and Cholera, and they have among them other diseases, just as much as other peoples.
They call epilepsy Choli hannophel. [falling sickness] They very commonly curse one another with this disease and say: "Der Schem (das ist: God) gebe dir Choli nophel, oder den Tippul." ["May God give you epilepsy – or its treatment." I think B. misses the point of this humorous curse, because the treatment, of course, is death.]
They call cholera Hilluch. [An abbreviation of hilluch me'ayim, "bowel movement."] They curse one another and say: May the hilluch overtake you. At the time of cholera they write strange characters and wonderful names on their houses, rooms and apartments. They say they are the names of the angels who are appointed over cholera. I once saw on their houses in big letters Adiridon, Bediridon etc. with the ending "diridon" appended to every letter of the alphabet, as well as some words in Hebrew script. They believe this to be a powerful remedium for cholera.
To be sure, leprosy is not so common among them as among Christians, partly because their numbers are few compared with Christians, and partly because they are more abstemious in respect of many foods and other things which can bring about this condition. So far as possible, they conduct themselves with regard to food according to the Law of Moses, but in nothing are they so obstinate as in the avoidance of the flesh of the pig. They will not, and cannot, even hear about it, and would rather die than eat it. However, some of them are afflicted with this disease, leprosy, as Anton Margarita testifies that there were some Jewish lepers at Prague. The Old Testament proves that it was common among them. They call it Nega, plague, and curse one another: May the Nega seize you.
Not directly related to this post, but it is interesting that Cardoso allows that it may be that there is one illness which Jews suffer from more than gentiles: melancholia. This he ascribes to the bitterness of exile.
In any case, in his Excelencias he does not really accept any of the proffered reasons for the dietary laws, pointing out strengths and flaws in them all, but mostly accepting that they are God's wise laws. As you can see, his approach is a precursor to Shadal's. You can't say that various animals are forbidden because they aren't healthy, for that is not at all established. On the contrary, the evidence indicates otherwise.
Interestingly, in R. Leone Modena's Riti numerous pages are devoted to explaining what the dietary laws are, but there is not one word of suggestion toward an explanation for them, except at the end, where the rabbinic prohibition of eating meat and fish together is given as due to a health concern, "but that is not observ'd now-a-days."
Thus for Jewish approaches to the dietary laws. Christians, on the other hand, had to grapple with dietary laws being found in the Old Testament, that is they are the Word of God, but also somehow no more applicable. With that in mind, health and hygiene were offered as probable reasons, but since the dietary laws themselves were no longer applicable, it was reasoned that the health benefits were also from the remote past (e.g., suited for the wilderness, or the climate of ancient Israel).
In the early 19th century the dietary laws became highly unpopular among a certain segment of reform-minded Jews and non-Jews for they were perceived as a major barrier to Jewish emancipation and integration. Charles-Joseph Bail, the Napoleonic administrator of the Kingdom of Westphalia wrote a book decrying the intolerance and discrimination against Jews that he found in Westphalia. However, like all liberal non-Jewish opinion of the time, this defender of the dignity of the Jews also assumed that the Jews must reciprocate and reform Judaism. With that in mind, he evidently described the laws of kashrus as vestiges of ancient hygienic practice, and therefore unnecessary in the 19th century.
Responding to his call for reform of Judaism in 1817, Rabbi Abraham Vita de Cologna wrote a reply in the form of a pamphlet, headed by the motto Erit amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas ("I love Plato, but I love Truth more" - a post about this phrase in Jewish tradition will be forthcoming) as follows:
The meaning of the passage can be conveyed well and most interestingly by an English translation from 1833 that is found in Isaac (father of Benjamin) D'israeli's book The Genius of Judaism:
The camel is an interdicted animal and as we know that its flesh yields a nutritious and even delicate meat among the Orientalists, the great legislator must have had some more important motive in prohibiting the use of these animals as food ; and therefore we must infer that the distinction between clean and unclean animals must originate in a higher and more occult source.This is Shadal's objection to the hygiene approach, or rather, this 1817 pamphlet is Shadal's source for his objection.
Shadal is normally meticulous to the point of distraction in citing sources, but Yesode ha-Torah was meant to be a simple, fluid book, and I assume that is why he did not cite him, unless he simply forgot the source or somehow arrived at it independently. But Cologna was personally known to Luzzatto in Trieste, and admired by him. He is quoted in several places in his Torah commentary, and always wrote extravagantly of him whenever mentioning his name. In addition, he considered his brother R. Angelo (Mordechai) Cologna to be one his primary rabbeim. It is thus all but certain to me that the 1817 pamphlet was where he acquired the point about Arabs eating camel flesh as a refutation of Maimonide's view.
R. Cologna was a Very Important Jew early in the 19th century. He was among the three leaders of the Parisian Sanhedrin of 1806 (R. David Sinzheim was titled President, or נשיא. R. Sauveur Benoit Segre was titled premier Assesseux, or אב בית דין, and Cologna was deuxieme Assessuer, or חכם). He had been the Chief Rabbi of Mantua, and as a result of his Parisian experience, was knighted by Napolean [1] and became the Chief Rabbi of Paris. After some years in this position he became the Chief Rabbi of Trieste after it's incumbent R. Avraham Eliezer ha-Levi died. The astute reader will recall that Rabbi Abraham Belais sought Cologna's haskamah as well as R. Moshe Sofer (link).
Here is his biography in Rabbi Marco Ghirondi's Toldos Gedolei Yisrael:
Here's a poem written in his honor by Shmuel Chai Zelman, published in Bikkurei Ha-Ittim 11 (1830), on the occasion of his move to Trieste:
Here's what is written on his tombstone:
Part of a poem he wrote in honor of Napoleon's birthday:
Here is the final page of the Hebrew-French edition of the Decisions Doctrinales of the Sanhedrin published in Paris in 1812:
A notice from 1811 about a Hebrew prayer composed by him for the pregnancy of Napoleon's wife, meant to be recited daily until her Majesty's delivery:
In the 1820s, the missionary Joseph Wolf wrote the following about his visit to Gibraltar; Cologna's portrait could be found on the walls of the Jews there:
An image of some of the members of the Sanhedrin:
Here is a larger picture of the Chevalier himself:
Strangely, there is a Neturei Karta connection. Before I could even draw the following connection, Neturei Karta already did. In 1825 Mordecia Manuel Noah, aprominent Jewish American, hatched a plan to create a Jewish refuge called Ararat in Upstate New York. He tried to enlist support among fellow Jews, including such prominent Europeans like our Cologna, British Chief Rabbis Hirschell and Meldola, and Leopold Zunz, but ultimately got nowhere, which hardly needs to be said. Perhaps Noah's approach of appointing individuals to positions without asking them first -- he wished to make Cologna Secretary of Emigration -- was not the most diplomatic.
The Journal des Débats printed Cologna's reply to Noah in its November 18, 1825 issue. So significant is this reply (and/ or obscure is the Journal des Débats today) that simply putting those words into Google returns, as its third result, a translation of this letter at Nkusa.org, ascribed to "the Chief Rabbi of Cologne". This is a fabulous example of the citation of rabbis who say something potentially supportive of one's position, without having the slightest idea of who it is one is citing. This is hardly unique to Neturei Karta.
Below is the original and an English translation published in an American periodical called Niles' Weekly Register:
Here's the Neturei Karta translation:
As you can see, speaking on behalf of himself and Rabbis Hirschell and Meldola, he said, no thanks.To the Editor:
Dear Sir:The wisdom and love of truth that characterizes your Record, and the reputation that it enjoys in France and abroad give me hope that you would be kind enough to provide space in your next issue for my comments offered to the public in the interest of accuracy and truth.
The French and English newspapers have covered in detail the unique project of one Mr. Noah, who claims to be the founder of the city of Ararat in the northern part of United States of America. Of course, if Mr. Noah is supposedly the owner or lessor of a great amount of uncultivated land to enable people lacking wealth to find their fortune in a colony, offering them mountains of gold, no one would ever think of disputing his position that is currently very popular, and prevent him from undertaking his projects.
However, Mr. Noah intends to play a much more important role because he is dreaming about a celestial home, he pronounces prophecies, and considers himself a Jewish judge. He gives orders to all the Jews in the world, and is trying to impose a head tax on all Jews. In all of his excitement, Noah goes so far as to try to create a central Jewish council in France. His chief administrator would have the honor of the noble role of “minister of emigration.” This tremendous effort considers its deficiencies of little importance: 1) the well-established “proof” of Mr. Noah’s authority; 2) the text of his prophecy demonstrating North America as the location where the Jewish Diaspora is supposed to gather together.
In all seriousness, though, it is proper to inform Mr. Noah that the esteemed Mr. Hierschel and Mr. Meldola, chief rabbi of London, and I thank him by completing [sic]rejecting the appointments that Mr. Noah wishes to offer us. We state that according to our religious teachings, only G-d Himself knows when the redemption of the Jewish People is to occur, and it is only G-d who will make His will known to the entire universe with unmistakable signs. Any attempt to gather together the Jewish People with political and nationalist goals is forbidden to us as a crime of the highest divine authority. Mr. Noah has surely forgotten that Jews are loyal to the principles of their faith, that they are too attached to the native countries where they reside and too devoted to their governments providing them with liberty and protection to pay attention to a fairy tale and fantasies of a false redeemer.
Therefore, since fairness demands discretion on behalf of those absent today, we would feel bad to deny him the title of Visionary of Good Faith.
Your very humble servant, The Chief Rabbi of Cologne
Please accept my wishes,
Getting back to the kashrut-health-hygiene question, this generally was a connection made only in the early 19th century. By the end of that century no one really lodged it anymore, at least not on the Jewish side, except to apologize for kashrus or to grant a point in favor of tradition, but to show it as something which wasn't crucial. Thus, Lilian Helen Montagu writes the following in her Thoughts on Judaism:
However, for her "the legal minutiae added by the rabbis" have distorted whatever good there is in kashrus, and thus the laws should be "reverently examined" and where in accordance with "hygienic truth" and human treatment for animals, should be given our allegiance.
Writing in 1896, C.G. Montefiore stresses that kashrus is superstition, not hygiene. It is Asiatic, and not European. Furthermore "it is impossible for persons of culture to keep the Dietary Laws." It is worth reading his article and Hyamson's reply, "Another Word on the Dietary Laws" in the Jewish Quarterly Review.
Here's a typical sort of treatment about it from 1912:
In Isaac Mayer Wise's autobiography, he printed a letter as follows:
In short, by century's end everyone was too smart and too sophisticated to claim that the Mosaic dietary laws were a healthful measure. However, early in the century the Rambam's explanation had been more popular.
[1] Cologna's knighthood (hence, his title Chevalier) was something many Jews were quite proud of. In the Voice of Jacob October 14, 1842 we find:
I have no source other than this, but the claim here is that he was knighted for something entirely unrelated to being a rabbi. I have no idea if this was meant to be a loophole, that is, if Napoleon's Order of the Iron Crown precluded knighting a Jew for his Jewishness, or not. In any case, the order had only 100 members (of three different ranks), and would thus seem to have been quite an honor.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Dayanim in brown suits and Kabbalah
In November of 2007 it was reported that at an Eternal Jewish Family trade show a rabbinic speaker made comments to the following effect:
Another "distinguished" speaker lamented that he saw a "supposed" dayan actually wearing some "brown" article of clothing and "smelled of cologne"; the EJF speaker commented something along the lines of, "can you imagine such a person serving as a dayan?"… (link)It has been widely believed that the '"supposed" dayan' who fails to conform to the contemporary Chareidi dress code is none other than Rabbi Barry Freundel, who is in fact a dayan, and is also the head of the RCA's conversion committee.
Today I happened to have opened his book Contemporary Orthodox Judaism's response to modernity at random and this is what I saw:
ParshaBlog has a post today called "Dybbuks, Gedolim, and adding to ikkarei emunah via makchich magideha." A couple of excerpts:
Judaism has several axioms, called ikkarei emunah. Rejecting these axioms puts one into the category of heretic. Yet there are few of them. There are many other beliefs in Judaism, and someone who rejects any of those might be grievously wrong, and an idiot, but not necessarily a heretic. This despite how these beliefs have always had, or have gained over time, common acceptance, including among great rabbis.. . .[. . .] in a theological debate, there is great temptation to turn one's frum position into an ikkar, an axiom. That way, you are automatically right; no one can question the foundations of the axiom, and you are not forced to grapple with its foundations yourself. Furthermore, your disputant need not be engaged. He is a heretic for daring to say this, and one should not engage with a heretic! And proof that he is an oisvorf whose words and proofs should not be considered is this position he is putting forth.Thus, as an example, the belief in the integrity of the transmission of the Oral Torah is expanded to include the integrity of the Zohar, despite it being revealed / having been invented in the 13th century. If someone argues that this is not part of Oral Torah, and has proofs of late authorship, this should not be considered. After all, he is a heretic, according to Rambam! This even though Rambam did not agree with certain kabbalistic beliefs and considered them nonsense.
Interesting! I almost wonder, by the way, which would be considered the bigger outrage; a dayan who wears brown suits and cologne, or one who holds you can be a full and complete Jew while disbelieving all of Kabbalah?
A Gaon's seal.
A real Gaon. Maybe not Rav Sherira, maybe not Rav Hai, but this is the real thing.
This seal belonged to the Gaon Nechemia of Pumbedisa.
This seal belonged to the Gaon Nechemia of Pumbedisa.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
A blessing for Ibn Ezra.
Willard Fiske, The Chess Monthly 3, August 1859 (although the clip above was from a book printed in 1912, chosen for its superior typographical beauty).
Minhag jokes and their historical kernels.
Over at Hirhurim Rabbi Ari Enkin posts about the prevalent custom of changing the tune for Lecha Dodi at the stanza of Hisoreri. This post provoked the usual musings about minhagim and their significance.
I wonder if anyone's discussed the issue of anecdotes about customs which actually hint, by their details, to significant issues, but the significance is since forgotten, at least in the vulgar versions? I can think of two examples:
I wonder if anyone's discussed the issue of anecdotes about customs which actually hint, by their details, to significant issues, but the significance is since forgotten, at least in the vulgar versions? I can think of two examples:
1. The tale of the rebbe who cut his fingernails after the mikva. His Chassidim thought it was imbued with significance and wanted to imitate him, until he pointed out to him that his nails are softer and easier to cut after the mikva. In the retellings of this story, the issue of fingernails as a resting spot for ruach ra is not noted. Whether or not such a story is true, surely the issue of whether to cut the nails before or after the purifying agent of the mikva is of some concern to mikva going rebbes.
2. Someone told me the following joke he heard from a leading rosh yeshiva of an earlier generation (its context was the issue of ecumenism in the early '60s): A priest, a minister and a rabbi decide that in the spirit of tolerance and the times, each ought to modify tenets of their religion to bring all men closer together. So the priest says "Well, we'd be willing to do away with Immaculate Conception." The minister says "We'd be willing to do away with the Trinity." The rabbi says "We'd be willing to get rid of the second yequm purkan." This joke almost turns its grain of historical basis on its head. If I understand the joke correctly, the rosh yeshiva meant to say that for Judaism even the least practice is as significant as the chief dogmas of the other religions; ecumenism is pointless. The issue of removing the second yequm purkan (or the whole thing) was a topic in 19th century Reform, and especially in Orthodox polemics about Reform.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Selling Torahs and stories
Something like five people have forwarded me an interestingarticle about a Torah scroll dealer from Baltimore who apparently cooks up a delicious story to sell with every old Torah that he sells to Conservative and Reform congregations.
Touting his expertise in dating parchment, Youlus says he has studied with curators "in Europe," but pressed to say with whom he has studied, he won't give names.Personally I think paleographical expertise might be a little more useful, but maybe I'm wrong about that. CoughShapiraCough.
In a 3-hour interview, Youlus is unable to provide a single name, date, place, photograph or document to back up the Auschwitz stories or any of the others. He says that until Save a Torah was founded in 2004, he kept no records. He refers all requests for documentation since then to the foundation's president, investment banker Rick Zitelman of Rockville.The irony is that pious Jews do not usually call myth 'midrash.'
---
As for Youlus's Torah rescue stories, Berenbaum came to his own conclusion. "A psychiatrist might say they are delusional. A historian might say they are counter-factual. A pious Jew might call them midrash -- the stories we tell to underscore the deepest truths we live," he says. Midrash, in this context, refers to the ancient tradition of rabbis telling anecdotes and fables to convey a moral lesson. "Myth underscores the deepest truth we live," Berenbaum says.
The Talmud-Memorizer-Performer, Rabbi Hirsch Denmark.
In June I posted a little clipping from the October 7, 1842 issue of the Voice of Jacob newspaper, in a post I called So you know the Talmud by heart and via pin-prick, but do you also know the 5th volume of Kerem Hemed and the Czar's officer list? . It concerned a man named Hirsch Denmark (spelled here this way to conform with modern American orthography; but it is also spelled Dannemark and Daennemark, not to mention Dænnemark) who seemed to have an extraordinary memory. Not only was he able to seemingly memorize the Talmud and its page layout, and perform a "pin demonstration" (that is, someone would prick a pin through or place a finger on the pages of a volume and he could pinpoint which words the point pierced on the various pages) but he could do this with numerous other works, including משמרות כהונה, the 5th volume (1841) of the Haskalah periodical כרם חמד, and even Hebrew works with Latin translations. He also read a list of officers in the Russian army (200 names, see below) and was able to repeat it from memory. Impressive!
This was the clipping:
I came across another clipping in the same periodical and realized that this Hirsch Daenmark was still at if a few years later (August 7, 1846):
so I decided to dig a little deeper. A much fuller account was printed September 9, 1846 in the Manchester Guardian. As you can see, the exhibition seems to have been billed as a supernatural demonstrator. The reporter found that it did seem to exhibit his extraordinary memory, but no supernatural powers:
The January 7, 1875 issue of The Academy referred back to Rabbi Hirsch Denmark in an review of a book about memory:
This article notes that Prosper Lucas wrote about Hirsch Denmark, and indeed he did. Several pages of his 1847 book Traité philosophique et physiologique de l'hérédité naturelle are about Hirsch Denmark (413-419):
To summarize Lucas's account as best as Google Translator was able to provide: Hirsch Denmark is a great example [of Lucas's thesis about heredity), because of the public nature of his cases, and the empirical reality of his phenomenon. He arrived in Metz in August of 1842 bearing letters from the Pope, Prince Metternich and famous professors in Germany. He is a Polish Jew, average looking, and aged 34, and he appears very nervous. He said that he first became aware of his strange power at age 12. He considers it a gift from God, sort of a combination of the natural and the supernatural. On the one hand, he acknowledged having a phenomenal memory. On the other, he claimed to be able to do it with works which were unfamiliar to him. He refers to himself as "Der Wundermann."
He gave three demonstrations in Metz. The first one was on August 2, and was attended by the Chief Rabbi and some Hebrew scholars, the second at the Seminary where the teachers all knew German and Hebrew, and the third in a private home, attended by several notables. Next follows a description of the Talmud, and notes that it consists of 36 volumes (bibliophiles are welcome to recognize the particular edition). The following were how the demonstrations were conducted:
1. He has people look at the book and affirm that there was nothing suspicious about the book that could indicate that there was a trick.
2. Hirsch asked someone to to place a finger or pin inside a closed book, which is then turned on its side. He then said which word the finger was covering, or if it was covering white space.
3. He asked several people give a page number and designate a few lines from the top or bottom of the page, either text and commentary. In one case he was asked to read a certain line on page 38, and it wasn't what he had said. Then he told them that there was a misprint in the page number, and it should be on the following page, and indeed it was.
4. He'd have someone put his ear on a page, and he could tell which words were covered by the ear. Then he could do the same with several pages closed together.
5. More of the same.
6. "
7. They opened a book at random, and stuck a pin in. He was asked to tell which words were at that place in pp 58-71 of the volume. He would also indicate where it crossed no word. Sometimes he would recite the word, and then also add what the commentaries on the page said about the word.
When he quoted a verse (ie, if the place landed on a biblical verse) he'd repeat the entire verse.
8. A Hebrew translation of the New Testament was brought to him. After reading it he was able to perform the finger experiment as well.
9. Gerson Levy (1784-1864) produced a Hebrew manuscript written in the Hebrew cursive used by Polish Jew, but it also contained square Hebrew used in printing. If someone's finger was on the cursive, he indicated that they should put it elsewhere, where the other kind of script was and he was able to perform. He also was able to do it on other books provided by Levy that he was unfamiliar with.
One thing to note is that before performing, he would always touch the volume and some of its pages. Asked if it would suffice if he could touch a person in contact with the book, he said that he didn't know, never having tried it.
When a book was placed on top of the Bible, he hesitated for some time, and then began to read the designated line. He was then asked to do it without touching the Bible, but refused. Finally he agreed to do it touching the hand of someone touching the Bible with his handkerchief.
At this point the author footnotes that in his opinion his insistance on touching the Bible was because of his belief in the supernatural aspect to his ability. He was able to do this, although sometimes he made small errors, such as coming to the line above or below the one he meant,
Lucas says he will omit the accounts of how he triumphed before the Pope in Rome, although he does mention that Hirsch was given a Hebrew manuscript in gold letters from the Vatican library, and succeeded.
Any noise in the room caused Hirsch Denmark to act like he was in pain. He insisited on only performing indoors, and required total silence.
Lucas concludes the account by noting that Denmark told him that he has a ten year old son in St. Petersburg with similar, or even more remarkable abilities, and this was demonstrated before the Czar of Russia.
At least, that is a sense of what it was about.
I looked a little deeper and saw that there was an account of him as early as 1839. The following was printed in The Family Magazine (published in Cincinnati, but this does not mean that Denmark had visited America. The demonstration was at a popular venue in London):
This is all that I've been able to learn thus far. I will add a new post if I learn more.
Finally, below is a famous article "Mnemonic Feat of the Shass Pollak" by George Stratton in the third issue of the 1917 Psychological Review (24):
This was the clipping:
I came across another clipping in the same periodical and realized that this Hirsch Daenmark was still at if a few years later (August 7, 1846):
so I decided to dig a little deeper. A much fuller account was printed September 9, 1846 in the Manchester Guardian. As you can see, the exhibition seems to have been billed as a supernatural demonstrator. The reporter found that it did seem to exhibit his extraordinary memory, but no supernatural powers:
The January 7, 1875 issue of The Academy referred back to Rabbi Hirsch Denmark in an review of a book about memory:
This article notes that Prosper Lucas wrote about Hirsch Denmark, and indeed he did. Several pages of his 1847 book Traité philosophique et physiologique de l'hérédité naturelle are about Hirsch Denmark (413-419):
To summarize Lucas's account as best as Google Translator was able to provide: Hirsch Denmark is a great example [of Lucas's thesis about heredity), because of the public nature of his cases, and the empirical reality of his phenomenon. He arrived in Metz in August of 1842 bearing letters from the Pope, Prince Metternich and famous professors in Germany. He is a Polish Jew, average looking, and aged 34, and he appears very nervous. He said that he first became aware of his strange power at age 12. He considers it a gift from God, sort of a combination of the natural and the supernatural. On the one hand, he acknowledged having a phenomenal memory. On the other, he claimed to be able to do it with works which were unfamiliar to him. He refers to himself as "Der Wundermann."
He gave three demonstrations in Metz. The first one was on August 2, and was attended by the Chief Rabbi and some Hebrew scholars, the second at the Seminary where the teachers all knew German and Hebrew, and the third in a private home, attended by several notables. Next follows a description of the Talmud, and notes that it consists of 36 volumes (bibliophiles are welcome to recognize the particular edition). The following were how the demonstrations were conducted:
1. He has people look at the book and affirm that there was nothing suspicious about the book that could indicate that there was a trick.
2. Hirsch asked someone to to place a finger or pin inside a closed book, which is then turned on its side. He then said which word the finger was covering, or if it was covering white space.
3. He asked several people give a page number and designate a few lines from the top or bottom of the page, either text and commentary. In one case he was asked to read a certain line on page 38, and it wasn't what he had said. Then he told them that there was a misprint in the page number, and it should be on the following page, and indeed it was.
4. He'd have someone put his ear on a page, and he could tell which words were covered by the ear. Then he could do the same with several pages closed together.
5. More of the same.
6. "
7. They opened a book at random, and stuck a pin in. He was asked to tell which words were at that place in pp 58-71 of the volume. He would also indicate where it crossed no word. Sometimes he would recite the word, and then also add what the commentaries on the page said about the word.
When he quoted a verse (ie, if the place landed on a biblical verse) he'd repeat the entire verse.
8. A Hebrew translation of the New Testament was brought to him. After reading it he was able to perform the finger experiment as well.
9. Gerson Levy (1784-1864) produced a Hebrew manuscript written in the Hebrew cursive used by Polish Jew, but it also contained square Hebrew used in printing. If someone's finger was on the cursive, he indicated that they should put it elsewhere, where the other kind of script was and he was able to perform. He also was able to do it on other books provided by Levy that he was unfamiliar with.
One thing to note is that before performing, he would always touch the volume and some of its pages. Asked if it would suffice if he could touch a person in contact with the book, he said that he didn't know, never having tried it.
When a book was placed on top of the Bible, he hesitated for some time, and then began to read the designated line. He was then asked to do it without touching the Bible, but refused. Finally he agreed to do it touching the hand of someone touching the Bible with his handkerchief.
At this point the author footnotes that in his opinion his insistance on touching the Bible was because of his belief in the supernatural aspect to his ability. He was able to do this, although sometimes he made small errors, such as coming to the line above or below the one he meant,
Lucas says he will omit the accounts of how he triumphed before the Pope in Rome, although he does mention that Hirsch was given a Hebrew manuscript in gold letters from the Vatican library, and succeeded.
Any noise in the room caused Hirsch Denmark to act like he was in pain. He insisited on only performing indoors, and required total silence.
Lucas concludes the account by noting that Denmark told him that he has a ten year old son in St. Petersburg with similar, or even more remarkable abilities, and this was demonstrated before the Czar of Russia.
At least, that is a sense of what it was about.
I looked a little deeper and saw that there was an account of him as early as 1839. The following was printed in The Family Magazine (published in Cincinnati, but this does not mean that Denmark had visited America. The demonstration was at a popular venue in London):
This is all that I've been able to learn thus far. I will add a new post if I learn more.
Finally, below is a famous article "Mnemonic Feat of the Shass Pollak" by George Stratton in the third issue of the 1917 Psychological Review (24):
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