Better in the company of Shadal...

Here's a rather interesting little postscript to an 1860* letter from Jonas Bondi to Isaac Leeser:

It says, "In Jeschurun I am in the company of Luzzatto, better than Szold, Wise and Illoway."

This refers to the Jeschurun published by Joseph Kobak, not Samson Raphael Hirsch (of whom Bondi was a critic). And he is talking smack about some famous names among the American rabbis of his day - one of whom - Wise - would become his son-in-law! Apparently he liked the company in Jeschurun, but not the American Jewish publications of the day.

* Not 1865, as in the transcription here.

An English letter from Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer from 1865

This is an interesting piece that I found on the Isaac Leeser digital archive (link), a handwritten letter from Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer to the Occident, dated 26 Adar 5625. The letter asks Leeser to print an English version of an account on behalf of the "Central Committee for Building Dwellings for the Poor and Pilgrims in Jerusalem," of which Rabbi Hildesheimer was a member, along with Rabbis Jacob Ettlinger of Altona and Joseph Hirsch of Halberstadt.

Here are two excerpts from the piece, as printed in the Occident, at Rabbi Hildesheimer's request:

Below is the transcription from the site, with some corrections of my own. (If you can make corrections to make the poor English-or should I say, Englisch-in the final line intelligible, here is the link, to the letter.) 

I don't know for sure if this is Rabbi Hildesheimer's own English, but I'd say - chances are.

***

ב"ה

To the rev. editor of the Occident
Philadelphia 

Eisenstadt 26 Adar 5625. 

Since the great interest which you have always shown for the 

wellfare (sic) of our brethren in all countries and particularly the unfor- 

tunate Jews of the Holy Land is known to me I have the liberty to 

send you the enclosed statutes etc of the dwellings which we are arecting (sic) on the holy ground and pray you to give insertion to it in your esteemed 

journal in at possible great parties. 

I have the honour to sign 

your humble
Dr. Hildesheimer
Rabbi

The only english Jew that ever wore his Beard

Here is a postscript from an 1853 letter from Samuel Hyman Cohen to Isaac Leeser. Writing from California, Cohen tells Leeser which family he is from, that he is the nephew of "Moses Eliezer Solomons 'ר משה עליעזר זלמן" [sic] "of London and the only english Jew that ever wore his Beard."

"Moses Eliezer Solomons" appears to be the father of Henry Naphthali Solomon (1796-1881), a pioneer in Jewish education in England - and the first cousin of this Samuel Hyman Cohen. The rest of the letter is fascinating, as he had spent several years in China, and tells Leeser about his contact with a Chinese Jew. At first the Jew did not believe he was Jewish, because he did not know שחיטה! But:

"I was verry (sic) ancious (sic) to obtain from him Information respecting the Jews and after showing him my מחזורים מזוזת ערבה כנפוס תפלין and explaining them to him, he said that he was satisfied that I was a Jew, he give me a Invitation to come out to see him..." 

Read the entire letter here.

An ardent admirer of Jewish physiognomy

This guy *really* likes how Chasidim/ traditional east European Jewish men looked.

Adam Neale, writing in 1818, in his Travels through some parts of Germany, Poland, Moldavia, and Turkey.

A Messianic prophecy for 1840-1, Pt. II

Here's an update to this post, about a 17th century Messianic prophecy for the year 1840-1, apparently predicting the French Revolution, some kind of Russian revolution, Jewish independence, and then the Messiah. This is a copy of the document discussed in that post, copied for some reason, by Isaac Leeser's. See here. Leeser must have had hopes for the year 5601.

This is interesting; an entry for Brian Walton's 1653 - 56 London Polyglot Bible in Kohelet Shlomo - Collectio Davidis, the catalog of Rabbi David Oppenheim's famous library. Interesting, because it includes the New Testament, and the catalog says it was the complete six volumes.

Passover products circa 1842

Here's a nice ad for Passover products from 1842, under the rabbinic supervision of Rabbi Solomon Hirschell (1862-1842). From the Voice of Jacob.

British wine!

"Adam and Abraham, not "Odam and Afroom" - on an 18th century attempt to prove the correct Hebrew pronunciation tradition

This is really cool. This is a leaf from a manuscript called Sukkat David. It's a notebook of David Franco Mendes, 18th century Hebrew writer and poet of Amsterdam. He is best known (to me, anyway) for being a close friend and disciple of Rabbi Moshe Haim Luzzatto when the latter lived in Amsterdam, and also for being one of the original Meassefim, a contributor to the first periodical of the Berlin Haskalah, where he contributed poems and biographical articles about gedolei yisrael.

This excerpt is from an essay where he is trying to prove that the correct pronunciation of the קמץ is that of the Sephardim (A) and not the Ashkenazim. He offers several proofs, one of which is the way names like Adam and Abraham are transliterated in Greek letters in Josephus, which he points out, is from the last days of the Temple. Being this old, this is a proof that the A pronunciation is correct, while the pronunciation of the Ashkenazim as - wait for it - Odam and Afroom is not.

Check out the other proofs. It's on page 29.

I learned of this page in Berger, Shlomo. "Remus, Romulus and Sephardic Jews in Amsterdam." Studia Rosenthaliana (1992): 38-45, but finally the manuscript has actually been digitized by the amazing Ets Haim Library. Much valuable material can be gleaned from this manuscript and the wealth of others on this site.

http://www.etshaimmanuscripts.nl/portfolio/eh-47-a-26/

On Solomon Dubno's library

The Freimann-Sammlung digital library at the University of Frankfurt recently added some fantastic bibliographies, including this important one - the catalog that was prepared for the 1814 auction of Solomon Dubno's library (link).

For those who want to make inferences about contents of libraries, his includes Hameasseph, in case anyone is wondering (p. 46, 57.)

Here is the title page.

Can you help me? (No $!)

Reader request: 

If you go to Columbia University, or Harvard or Yale and you are a fan of this blog (sounds so swell-headed, but what can I say?) it is possible you could give me a hand in supporting scholarship. So if this is you, please email me ( db min9@aol .com ) and I will tell you how you can help, ask for it, and you can decide if you'd like to do so. No pressure before, during, or after. Responses themselves are highly appreciated.

Many thanks!

Yours,

S.

The stone in question

Many thanks to Michael Brocke for his cogent remarks on my post on a gravestone from Regensburg (link). Michael followed it up by sending me a photograph of the stone, with some additional remarks on the name and date.

He informs me that after the expulsion of the Jews from Regensburg in 1519 this stone, as many others, were appropriated as trophies. I don't think you can see it so well in the picture, but he says that below the inscription is the coat-of-arms of the new 'owner.'

On an interesting gravestone from 1463

I was looking through a book called Das jetzt Anno 1723 lebende Regensburg... which is, as you surmise, about the history of Regensburg. I noticed at the end it has a number of transcriptions of gravestones in the Jewish cemetery. All are worth looking at, but here is one that caught my interest, because it calls the young woman "הבחורה." At first I thought that could have been a transcription error - there are others - and it may have actually said "הבתולה." I think this usage is interesting. Perhaps it was common, but I've not come across it before. In any case, another stone in the book, for a married woman, uses it; Justina bat Rabbi Schelomia, which one imagines, was the 15th century diminutive of Shelomo, eshet Rabbi Menachem.

Here is my translation:

Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night (Jer. 8:23)
On the passing of the modest lass ("בחורה"), Miss Gutrut,
Daughter of Rabbi Jacob Halin, [her] slumber was requested from Heaven*, on Friday,
The 24th of Kislev (Dec. 15), in the year
224 (1463)

*If I got that right.

It is worth noting that the verse in Jeremiah ends with the phrase "for the slain of the daughter of my people," so one wonders if it was left off because Miss Gertrude died of natural causes or if, to the contrary, this verse was chosen because she was, indeed, slain.

One final note. Another grave, from 1540, is from a woman named Blume (that's how the German translator understood it) and here is how it is written in Hebrew letters: פלומא.

On decrees concerning rabbinic ordination from 1603

In 1603 rabbis in Germany[1] held a synod in Frankfurt, where they enacted takkanot. The takkanot were translated into German (three separates ones, according to Rabbi Marcus Horovitz[1]) since, in the prior century, various rabbinic synods were treated highly suspiciously by the non-Jews. 

Many of these takkanot are of interest (such as #6, which comes down harshly against coin counterfeiting and the forging of debt documents, stating that much harm has come to the Jews because of this, and decreeing both herem and turning counterfeiters over to the king). But I want to highlight #5, because I came across a summary of it in English in a book from only a few years later, which is interesting to see.

Here is the text of the takkana, as printed by Horovitz. It concerns the manner in which rabbis can be ordained in Germany (and, incidentally, we see that the term bahur was used even for a young married man).

And here is how it is summarized in Purchas his Pilgrimage, v.5, (London 1626).[3] As you can see, he refers to this very takkana, enacted by the "Chief RR [=rabbis] of Frankford":

Since Purchas, in his attempt to explain the Jewish forms of ordination then in vogue, the titles Morenu, Chaver, and Bachur, relates them to the Christian university degrees of Doctor, Licentiate and Bachelour, I thought it worth highlighting an interesting couple of sentences from Abarbanel's commentary to Mishna Avot that I was recently looking at (link). He writes that in Spain and the places of its exiles, they did not ordain rabbis, following the old practice not to ordain outside of the and of Israel. He continues as follows:

"But after arriving in Italy I found there a widespread custom to ordain one another. I saw that the Ashkenazim had all been ordained, and ordained others, as rabbis, and I do not know who gave them permission to do so. [I thought] perhaps they had followed the gentiles in making themselves Doctors."

And since we mention Italy, here is how Rabbi Leon Modena described ordination in his Riti (1650 English translation:

[1] Obviously not in the modern sense. For example, Takkana 12 concerns printing, and refers to Basel, then a major center of Hebrew printing, and juxtaposes it with "or another city in Ashkenaz." Basel, in Switzerland, was in "Germany."

[2] Die Frankfurter rabbinerversammlung vom jahre 1603, p. 5. See also Louis Finkelstein Jewish Self-Government in the Middle Ages, Chapter 8, on the 1603 Frankfurt synod and the takkanas.

[3] The full title of this book, by Samuel Purchas, is: Purchas his Pilgrimage. Or Relations of the World and the Religions Observed in all Ages and Places Discovered, from the Creation unto this Present. And since this continues for a paragraph, here is the title page:

A 21st century responsum - the Shabbos Blettel asks if it is permitted to lie on a school's internet questionnaire

One of the more interesting, creative works I've seen in the past couple of years is the Shabbos Blettel, which is an incredible (mostly) Yiddish periodical published online.

After a hiatus, there is a new issue (#11) and it contains the following responsum concerning the question of whether or not it is permitted to lie on a Chareidi school's questionnaire about technology use. These invasive questionnaires are increasingly standard, requiring parents to respond. But with only one kind of answer acceptable, parents who own devices such as smartphones generally feel compelled to answer untruthfully, or invite scrutiny that they do not need. Currently, these questionnaires mostly rely on some form of the honor system (with caveats). So, is it permissible to lie?

Here is the responsum:

Here is a link to a pdf of this responsum: link

And to the entire issue: link

A beautiful translation of a Gordon poem; a guest post

I would like to post this wonderful free translation of the first part of Yehuda Leib Gordon's 1875 poem Kotzo Shel Yud. This was originally posted by my talented friend הערשי at Kave Shtiebel, and he gave me permission to post it here:

Jewish wife, who shall know your life?

It comes in the dark, and leaves no mark

Your joys and your anguishes, your hopes and your wishes

In your heart born, and in your heart worn

The world and all the pleasure

For others to treasure

The life of the Jewess a perpetual grind

Forever in her house confined

Bear, deliver, rear, and litter

Bake, and make, and wither

So what if you’re blessed, beauty you possessed

A heart refined, a keen mind

Study is bane, beauty vain

Talent a defect, knowledge abject

Your voice is crude, your hair lewd

You are naught, a goatskin filled with blood and rot

The Serpent’s pest, in you rests

Like the infected, by your own kin rejected

From scholarship, and from the house of worship

In the houses of merriment, you but lament

Good you don't master, the tongue of you ancestor

Thus you are barred, from the Lord’s yard

And you don't hear, the blessing the jeer

“Lord we bless, for not creating us a lass”

Like the heathen and the slave you are rated

Like a hen to breed fated

A heifer threshes, milk gives the cow

What use is it with knowledge to endow?

Why waste time you to rear

Those who follow your counsel in hell will sear

Not only has God closed your womb

Took your husband in your bloom

The cream of your days you while through

But you await your husband’s brother to pull his shoe

On your fathers bed you most grieved

From his inheritance nothing received

They deprive you not only the material

But keep from you the ministerial

For themselves commandments two forty eight

Only three for poor you, said the cheapskate

You are miserable so, Jewess!

You crave to know, to live, but alas

God’s sprout, wilting in drought

Not by sun rays dry, but away from the eye

Fertile soil, bearing luscious fruit with toil

For want of plow, grows weed now

Ere you matured into a conscious soul

You were thrust into a motherly role

Before they taught her, to be a daughter

She married, and her own children carried

Wed him, have you even met him?

Love him, aye; have you cast an eye?

You’re loved, what? Wretched, you know not

Love is apart, from the Jewish heart?

Forty days before, her mother bore

Her match-maker, destined her taker

What good will it do, to take a view

What will it add, to see the lad?

What’s love? Our mothers knew not

We shall not put off, our sister a slut

Head furled, face shrouded in veil

Hair curled, to the razor avail

Why have you eyed, who stands by your side

Whether crippled or bald, whether young or old

It’s all to the same use, you don’t get to choose

Your father will accord, he is your lord

Like chattel sold, from hold to hold

Are they like Aramites to inquire, after the girl’s desire?

As a maiden, your father is your warden

Your husband you please, under his auspices.

Your husband knows no art, he is not skilled

Never planted a vineyard, nor a house built

When the dowry is drawn

The family spawn

He sets looking for a trade

Dejected and dismayed

With options few, he has no clue

He runs away in the night, and leaves you chained in plight.

This is the story, of the Jewess’ glory.

"This is the story of the uncovering of the hair of Jewish women..."

This is a fascinating anecdote I came across in R. Chizkiya Feivel Plaut's biography of the Chasam Sofer included in his Likutei Chever Ben Chayim (link).

The story, as told to the author by Rabbi Daniel Prosstitz (a close friend of the Chasam Sofer) takes place in 1785, when the 23 year old Moses Sofer accompanied his rebbe Rabbi Nathan Adler on his journey to Baskowitz, where he was to become rabbi. When in Vienna, they stayed in the home of a wealthy man, Reb Nathan Arnstein - who was none other than the banking giant Adam Isaac von Arnstein (1715-1785).[1] Rabbi Nathan Adler has sent young Moshe out on some errand, and when he returned, he stumbled into a room where the host's daughter-in-law was sitting, bareheaded, having her hair done in a "frisiere" - her hair was being styled. Fuming, the boy berated the hostess, "Is this how a married Jewish woman goes?" Not surprisingly, she told her husband's father that if the guests are not thrown out immediately then she was going - to Berlin, to her father's home. (Her father was Daniel Itzig (Jaffe) in Berlin, an interesting personality in his own right, how maintained a Beit Midrash in his home, which luminaries such as the Peri Megadim frequented.)

So - and one imagines this part of the story is either imagined in the retelling, on behalf of the kind man who hosted great rabbis, or was meant to soften the blow to the guests - Nathan Adam von Arnstein approached them, thanked the young man for chastising his son's wife, and asked them if they would remove themselves to another apartment of his, a better one, so that his wife would not travel on the holiday, as it was Pesach.

Concludes the teller, Rabbi Plaut, go check if Reb Nathan Arnstein has any Jewish descendants! And this is the story of the uncovering of the hair of Jewish women...

The woman? Fanny von Arnstein, whose Wikipedia page says "In 1814, Fanny von Arnstein introduced a new custom from Berlin, hitherto unknown in Vienna: the Christmas tree."

This, presumably, is what the young Chasam Sofer found, when he wound up in the wrong room:



[1] Actually, Fanny's husband was Nathan Adam von Arnstein - I assume that in the story the son and father's names were confused.

On fundraising for fake, or at least unknown, yeshivas and institutions in 1924

This fascinating article by Rabbi S. Felix Mendelsohn discusses a fundraising letter for a "Yeshivah Rabbi Akiba Eiger" of which it wasn't entirely clear if it actually existed. But even if it did, the point was that the provenance of the institution which was "unauthorized and superfluous" was simply unknown and suspect. Mendelsohn is particularly perturbed that 29 names of officers and directors are listed on the stationary, 6 being rabbis, and not one of them was known. And he also cannot forgive the name - Yeshivah, rather than Yeshivath.

From the Sentinel May 15, 1924.

The rise of Kashrut observance noted in 1935

This interesting note is from the Telling It In Gath column by Rabbi Louis I. Newman in the Sentinel, a Jewish newspaper based in Chicago (4.11.1935 issue).

Irony

Link

Warren G. Harding's Zionistic Rosh Hashanah greeting, 1922