Here we can discuss all about Torah and Yiddeshkiet!
Please post nice Jewish pictures and ideas that the our viewers will enjoy!
Here we can discuss all about Torah and Yiddeshkiet!
Please post nice Jewish pictures and ideas that the our viewers will enjoy!
Pesach, i love talking about Pesach!
i saw on facebook some real good recipes, thanks to all of you.
maybe we should post some good ones here to.
[...] Torah Talk « Hebrew Publishing [...]
Hey, I just now hopped onto your site through StumbleUpon. Not somthing I may normally read, but I liked your notions none the less. Appreciation for creating one thing worth reading.
well i enjoyed the shevous recipes. we need to start thinking about the 9 days, milky recipes.
ohh lets see what we can come up with milky and pareve recipes.
שאלות שאין עליהם תשובות
1. למה כשאתה נכנס למגדת עתידות, היא שואלת איך קוראים לך?
2. אם אנחנו תמיד נקיים כשאנחנו מתנגבים, למה צריך לכבס מגבות אמבטיה?
3. למה קוראים לה עוזרת אם היא עושה את כל העבודה?
4. אם שמן תירס עשוי מתירס, ושמן זית עשוי מזית, ממה עשוי שמן תינוקות?
5. אם שחייה זה הספורט ששורף הכי הרבה קלוריות, למה הלווייתנים נראים ככה?
6. אם מוציאים צב מהשריון שלו,הוא עירום או הומלס?
7. איך יכולות להיות סדנאות קבוצתיות לעזרה עצמית?
8. האם לעובדים של ויסוצקי יש הפסקת קפה?
9. האם יש מילה נרדפת למילה נרדפת?
10. איך זה שדבק מגע לא נדבק לחלק הפנימי של השפופרת?
11. אם אתה מנסה להיכשל ומצליח, מה בעצם קרה?
12. האם להתכונן לבלתי צפוי לא הופך את הבלתי צפוי לצפוי?
13. למה קוראים לזה חיתולים חד פעמיים? מישהו התפתה להשתמש בהם שוב?
14. במכוניות ארבע-על-ארבע, מה הם הארבעה הנוספים?
15. אם מפציץ-חמקן מתרסק, איך יודעים איפה לחפש אותו?
16. למה חברות מחשבים וגם סוחרי סמים קוראים לקליינטים שלהם “משתמשים”?
17. אם אתם רואים חיה מוגנת אוכלת פרח מוגן, מה אתם אמורים לעשות?
18. אם דיסלקטי סובל מפזילה,הוא קורא בלי בעיות?
19. האם זה נכון שחמישה מכל ארבעה אנשים מתקשים במתמטיקה?
20. אם הוא מטפל באנשים במצוקה,למה קוראים לו משרד הרווחה?
23. אם החומר שממנו עשויה הקופסה השחורה לעולם אינו מתרסק, למה לא עושים את כל המטוס מהחומר הזה?
24. איך מגיעים שלטי ה”לא לדרוך על הדשא” למרכז הדשא?
25. אם סינים זורקים אורז בחתונה, אז המקסיקנים זורקים קקטוסים?
26. האם יש נהג מונית שלא שומר את הכסף הקטן בקופסא של סוכריות?
27. למה כבשה לא מתכווצת בגשם?
28. כשאישה נישאת לערס – היא מתחתנת או מתארסת?
29. למה ליד בור יש שלט של: “זהירות בור פתוח” ? אם הוא לא היה פתוח הוא לא היה בור….
30. למה כתוב על שוקו יטבתה השקית עם השפיץ אם יש שני שפיצים?
31. אם ילד קטן הוא ילדון, ומחשב קטן הוא מחשבון, אז סבא קטן הוא סבון?
32. אם אדם שגר באנגליה הוא אנגלי, ואדם שגר בישראל הוא ישראלי, אז אדם שגר בצ’ילה הוא צ’ילי?
33. למה לקור חזק קוראים “קור כלבים”? מה לאדם ולחתול לא יהיה קר?
34. איך נוכל לדעת שנגמר לנו הדיו הבילתי נראה?
35. כשהיום 0 מעלות ומחר יהיה קר פי שניים כמה מעלות יהיו?
36. אם מילה כתובה לא נכון במילון – האם זה יוודע לנו מתישהו?
37. האם בבית ספר לחרשים יש צלצול?
38. למה כשילדים משחקים בחול ומוצאים כל מני דברים קוראים להם פראי-אדם וכשהמבוגרים עושים את זה קוראים להם ארכיאולוגים?
יש לכם תשובות???
OMEONE TOLD ME YESTERDAY THAT IN 1948 WHEN THE UN VOTE WAS TAKING PLACE TO ESTABLISH THE STATE OF ISRAEL THE SATMAR RABBI Z.L. SAID THAT THE VOTE WONT GO THROUGH AND THEY WILL NOT HAVE A STATE,
WELL HE WAS WRONG
THEN HE SAID THAT THE STATE WONT LAST MORE THEN THIRTY YEARS AND THAT THERE WILL NOT BE A GROWTH IN TORAH.
WELL THANK G-D HE WAS WRONG IN THAT TOO.
WHEN I WAS IN YESHIVA IN 1962 ,THE TO-DAY BELZR RABBI GOT A LOT OF HADROCHO.
( HE WAS STILL A BOCHER ) FROM THE GERER RABBI THE BEIS YISROEL Z.L.
( I SAW THAT WITH MY OWN EYES ).
HE WAS INSTRUMENTAL IN MAKING HIM A RABBE.
( HE SAW IN HIM THE FUTURE GENERATION ) AND WHAT A REBBE IN THE 2000 NEEDS TO BE AND HAVE.
TO – DAY WHEN I SEE THE HIDABROOT WHICH THE BELZER RABBE HAS ESTABLISHED, .
I UNDERSTAND THE BEIS YISROEL.
THROUGH THE INTERNET AND THE T.V, CHANNELS WE HAVE A CHANCE TO REACH AND TEACH THOUSANDS AND MAYBE MILLIONS OF YIDEN WHAT TORAH IS.
THEY SAY WE SHOULD NOT MOVE AWAY FROM THE OLD WAYS.
DO I SEE THESE RABBES TRAVELING IN A HORSE AND CART OR NOT USING THE LUXURIES WHICH TIME HAS BROUGHT ?
I WAS MOST AMAZED TO SEE HOW MANY HEIMISHER CHASIDISER PEOPLE HAVE INTERNET.
SOMEONE EVEN SAID TO ME WATCHING YOUR PROGRAM ON INTERNET OR I POD IS NOT TELIVISON.
AND I AM NOT TALKING JUST ABOUT ENGLAND.
THE JEWISH TRIBUNE EVEN WRITES ABOUT IT ( DID THEY ASK THE RABBONIM )
WHICH CAUSED EVEN MORE FRUM PEOPLE TO WATCH
( I DID NOT MAKE THE PROGRAM FOR THEM ).
I HOPE B”H I HAVE OPENED PEOPLE’S EYES TO THE REAL PROBLEMS IN OUR SOCIETY.
BLACK MAIL, BLACK MAIL, AND AGAIN BLACK MAIL.
I FINISH WITH THE WORDS OF MY DEAR ESHES CHYEL WHICH THE LEV SIMCHA SAID TO ME
IN A YIDISHER WIFE DEPENDS THE WHOLE YIDISHER HOME
WE ARE FREE! ! !
GABY LOCK
WHAT WAS BOTHERING THE CENSOR?
by: Eli Genauer
The invention of the printing press in the 15th century was a great boon for Torah study. Manuscripts which had to be laboriously copied one by one could now be set to type and hundreds could be produced at one time. One of the earliest Jewish treasures to be set to print was the Talmud. Scattered volumes of it were printed in the late 15th century and early sixteenth century, but the first complete set was printed from 1519-1523 in Venice by Daniel Bomberg. He followed this with printing two more sets, and was joined by Marco Antonio Justinian who printed a complete set from 1546-1551.
The competition between Justinian and another gentile printer named Bragadini, led to one of them denouncing the other to the Pope for printing items which were against the Church. This led to the public burning of the Talmud throughout most of Italy starting in 1553.[1] The Talmud was listed in the Church’s first Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1559.
There still was a possibility to print the Talmud but only under the watchful eye of a censor who would excise all offending passages. The consequences of having to deal with censored texts, both from the outside and from self censorship, is one of the tragic outcomes of our Galus.
The first attempt to print the Talmud under the Papal ban was in 1578-1581 in Basel by the printer Ambrosius Froben who was allowed to print the Talmud under the lead censorship of Father Marco Marino.
Regarding the censorship efforts, Marvin J. Heller notes this was the most censored edition ever printed.[2] Stories about the founder of Christianity were deleted, and many references to anything remotely connected to Christianity were changed. When it came to Aggadic material, Raphael Nathan Nata Rabinowitz in מאמר על הדפסת התלמודwrites that regarding material which was either a bit strange or against the Christian concepts of reward and punishment, the censor would print a short explanation about it on the page.[3]
I would like to focus on one piece of the printed Talmud which is Aggadic in nature, the comment that was made on it by one of the classic Jewish Meforshim, and the comment made on that comment by the censor. I am vexed by the following question, “what was bothering the censor?”
The piece in question is in מסכת אבות- פרק ו’-משנה י’
חמשה קנינים קנה לו הקדוש ברוך הוא בעולמו, ואלו הן, תורה קנין אחד, שמים וארץ קנין אחד, אברהם קנין אחד, ישראל קנין אחד, בית המקדש קנין אחד.
תורה מנין, דכתיב (משלי ח), יהוה קנני ראשית דרכו קדם מפעליו מאז.
There is a commentary on Avos in many of the early printed editions of Mishnayos and of the Talmud. This commentary is attributed to the Rambam in the Soncino Napoli edition of the Mishnayos, in the Bomberg editions, in the Basel edition, and in the 1721 Frankfurt edition amongst others. It turns out that the commentary on the sixth chapter of Avos was not written by the Rambam as noted by the Romm 1880 edition of the Talmud, which attributes it to Rashi. [4]
Be that as it may, this Peirush as printed in the Mishnayos by Yehoshua Shlomo Soncino, Napoli 1492, states the following:
תורה קנין אחד מנין דכתיב השם קנני ראשית דרכו שבריאתה קדמה לעולם מפני שכשעלה במחשבה לפניו לבראות עולמו אמר יתקיים בשביל התורה
The creation of the Torah preceded the creation of the world, because when Hashem imagined creating the world, He said that the world should exist because of the Torah
This is what it looks like there: ( from JNUL digitized books )
In the Bomberg Edition of 1521, it looks like this (from JNUL Digitized Books)
In the Basel edition of 1580, (from JNUL)
The censor seems to have a problem with the comment and put in a הג”ה on the side of the text which looks like this: (Also from JNUL)
הדבר הזה קשה מאד לשמוע, וצריך באור להבין מה זאת התורה אשר קדמה לעולם
“This thing is very difficult to understand and needs an explanation what it means when it says that ‘the Torah preceded the world’”
Rabinowitz states that this הג”ה of the censor found its’ way into the Benveniste Amsterdam Shas of 1644-46 , (which I saw recently in the JTS Library) and from there, it was mistakenly included in many editions afterwards.[5]
I have an edition of the Talmud printed in Frankfurt in 1721, which is the model for almost all editions that followed. [6]
In the volume which contains Maseches Avodas Kochavim U’Mazalos, we find Maseches Avos at the very end. Not only is this comment included in it, but it now made its’ way from being on the side of the page, to being right in the text of the Peirush (albeit in parentheses).
Here is what it looked like in 1721:
I saw the censor’s comment in the Sulzbach 1755 edition and the Amsterdam 1763 edition. It appears as late as the Czernowitz edition of 1843, 200 years after being mistakenly included in the Benveniste Amsterdam edition.
By the time we get to the Romm Vilna edition of 1880, thankfully the comment is gone.
The censor does not seem to have a problem with the idea that the world was created in the merit of the Torah, rather that the Torah preceded the creation of the world. Rabinowitz had stated that the censor commented on Aggadic material if it was either strange or against Christianity. The comment of the Peirush did not seem at all strange (especially when compared with other Aggadic statements) so I was curious to find out if there was anything in it that was against Christianity.
Whom to ask? I turned to a real expert, someone who wears a big black Yarmulkah, sports a Rabbinic beard, and learns Mishnayos every morning at 6:30 AM with our neighborhood hematologist/oncologist. His name is Dr. Martin Jaffee, a professor of comparative religion at the University of Washington in Seattle, and until recently, the co-editor of AJS Review. He is so good at explaining Christian theology, that one of his students once remarked to him “I wish my minister were able to explain out beliefs as well as you did”
Here were his comments:
What bothered the censor is the parallel of the primordial Torah and the Primordial Logos (Word)–Gospel of John 1:1–”In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with G-d, and the Logos was G-d.” Your censor was probably upset by the parallel. He probably wasn’t a classicist, though, or he’d have known that this Neo-Platonic idea was all over the Mediterranean and had been for several centuries. In fact, Chazal’s idea of the Torah that precedes Creation is an example of their own exploitation of Neo-Platonism in service of Torah. Surely you know the Medrash about HaKadosh Baruch Hu looking into the Torah for instructions for creating the world, “like an architect consults a plan?
That seemed simple enough. The Christian censor’s comment then made its’ way into many editions of the Talmud, to be perused by many, and discussed by some, without realizing its’ origin. I imagine a scholar in the mid 18th century who acquires a set of the Frankfurt Talmud and studies this expensive edition to his library from cover to come. He learns Maseches Avos which he finds in the back of the volume which contains מסכת עבודת כוכבים ומזלות and is happy to have the Peirush on Perek Vav which is ascribed to the Rambam. He is quite curious about a הג”ה he finds in parentheses within one of the Rambam’s comments. Who wrote this comment and what exactly was his problem? He should only know.
Notes:
[1] I have simplified this quite a bit to what most consider the immediate cause for the burning of the Talmud at that time. For a more complete discussion of this matter, I would suggest reading chapters XI and XII in Marvin J. Heller’s Printing the Talmud: A History of the Earliest Printed Editions of the Talmud (Brooklyn 1992 ).
[2] Id. at p. 255
[3] Maamar alHadpasat ha-Talmud with Additions, ed. A.M. Habermann (Jerusalem 2006) p. 78.
On that same page Rabinowitz writes about the Basel edition: “The Jews looked with broken hearts on what had been done to their Talmud which had been trampled upon by the censor” (my paraphrase).
[4] In the Vilna Shas, this comment appears at the beginning of Perek Vav of Maseches Avos on Daf 15A. Maseches Avos can be found in the volume that contains Avodah Zarah. I have also seen that this commentary is attributed to the Beis Medrash of Rashi.
[5] Maamar alHadpasat ha-Talmud with Additions, p.78. at the end of footnote 10.
[6] Id. at p. 111
Posted by Dan Rabinowitz at 7:01 AM
Labels: Censorship, Eli Genauer, Printing of the Talmud
Comments (10)
Echo 10 Items
J. de Prado Plumed
Rabbinowicz’s ”מאמר על הדפסת התלמוד” in the Munich edition of 5636 anno mundi can be found here. Acces to the edition in Google Books may prove outside the States. A short but substantial assessment of Christian attitutes to the Talmud from a Church law perspective is given in Benjamin Z. Kedar, ”Canon law and the burning of the Talmud”, Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law (new series), 9 (1979), pp. 79-83.
יום ראשון 10 ינואר 2010, 15:26:48
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Guest
It is also possible that the censor was bothered by the strangeness of the statement. Since the Torah (in its revealed state) deals only with the physical world, how could the Torah have preceded it? The usual answer is that the Torah is a guideline to creation. However, this Peirush states that its creation preceded the world “because when it ascended in thought before Him to create the world He said, ‘Let it exist for the sake of the Torah’” The Torah existed separately and unrelated to the world; it was only when G-d decided to create the world that He decided to make it in accord with the previously created Torah. But what type of Torah could exist before the world was created that existed independently of the world? This could have bothered the censor as well. [The real answer to the question is that it refers to the secrets of the Torah that are only hinted to in the revealed text.]
יום ראשון 10 ינואר 2010, 19:37:10
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DF
RS Lieberman, in either Grrek or Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, I forget, observes that sometimes chazal spoke in “loshon nikiah” and sometimes did not, and says it’s impossible to give precise paramaters as to when a phrase bothered them and when it did not. Chazal consisted of numerous individuals, and some were bothered by some phrases, and others were bothered by other phrases. We cant give a one-size-fits-all reason for everything.
Maybe the same is true of cenosorship. You acknowledge that aggadas were subject to the censor if they were either strange or against Christianity. So why must we say the Censor here was bothered by a passage in John – perhaps he simply thought it strange to say the Torah predated the world. Sure sounds strange to me – numerous commandments were given explicitly to commemorate events, and so how could the Torah have been written before the events actually happened? Seems to contradict the whole notion of free will, no?
And there may be other aggadas that sound even stranger to you and me, but again, that’s precisely RSL’s point. There’s no way to determine what one man will find strange and one another not. It’s like trying to define “ugly”.
יום שני 11 ינואר 2010, 01:41:59
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S.
The Talmud struck the censor as strange, from beginning to end. So you can’t say that random aggadta X bothered him for no particular reason.
As an aside, SL’s point wasn’t that Chazal sometimes used and sometimes didn’t use leshon nekiah, but that from our cultural vantage point we are in no position to decide what should have or should not have struck Chazal as strange or vulgar.
“We cannot apply our modern standards to the ancients. We are not in a position to measure their sensitivity to certain expressions and their definition of rudeness of style. We really find no consistency in the use of euphemisms even in later rabbinic literature. We are in no position to judge the ancients for their seeming inconsistency; they were guided by their own standards and reasons. We must also take the individuals, times and places into consideration.” Hellenism, pg 34.
יום שני 11 ינואר 2010, 05:02:58
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DF
Tanya Di-kimaseiah? I can’t tell you if you’re arguing with me or supporting me. (I hope the latter.) My point is 1) it could be the reason the censor commented was because it’s strange, not because of anything in John or in in Christian writings. And as for why this in particular he found strange enough to warrant a note, 2) we are not in a position to judge, accord RSL.
יום שני 11 ינואר 2010, 16:31:26
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S.
Firstly, I agree that the author of this interesting post made too great in assumption in assuming that there is nothing strange about this passage. In fact, I was taught Torah tziva lani, etc. when I was 2 years old, studied in yeshivos until adulthood, live as part of an Orthodox community, etc. and I certainly see the passage as strange. In fact, I didn’t really see why the author doesn’t see it as strange. Likely, all he meant was “no stranger than hundreds of other aggados,” i.e., he is used to strangeness in the Talmud. Actually, so was the censor. The difference between the censor and me and Genauer is that we are raised on the Talmud; the censor either wasn’t, or (if he was a convert) came to be incredibly alienated from it. As such, the way he viewed the entire body of Talmudic literature — as strange in nearly all of its facets — means that if he singled out a particular aggadta it must have struck him especially so. That being the case, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to try to see what struck him, from his perspective, as being particulary strange.
As for SL’s comment, the full context of his statement is with regards to the tikkueni sofrim in the biblical text. On the assumption that these were changes made because the biblical text was found to be offensive or disturbing (or prone to misinterpretation), many other examples in the Bible can be pointed out, and those were not changed. Enter SL, who reminds the reader that we lack the ability to feel offended by precisely the same things as Chazal and their culture, or conversely, we may see things as offensive that they did not see that way.
While it’s a good rule of thumb to keep in mind before attributing too much to others (including contemporaries), the 16th century censor is not “the ancients.” In many respects we are closer to the culture and mindset of 16th century Italy than to the culture and, mindset of the Talmud. True, in other respects we are closer to the Talmud insofar as we have been exposed to it all our lives, and perhaps try to shape and change our own mind to conform with it — likely this is why it did not occur to the poster than it’s really a strange passage, than we are to Renaissance Italy with all its Catcholicism and other foreign elements. But under the assumption that a professor of comparative religion at the University of Washington in Seattle can at least partially penetrate the mind of a 16th century Catholic censor of Hebrew books, it doesn’t seem necessary to simply throw our hands up and either assume we can’t know what his problem was, or conversely that we should stop speculating beyond “He thought it was weird.”
יום שני 11 ינואר 2010, 19:13:07
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bill gewirtz
is “mah zot hatorah” an oblique reference to the old verus new testament? perhaps even just the old testament (or the jewish people) may be sufficient to justify the creation of the world even for a christian, but an entire blueprint for that world might require the “complete” architectural plan.
יום שני 11 ינואר 2010, 14:56:00
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Yehuda H.
Meir Benahu already pointed out, that there is no evidence that the fight between Giustinian and Bragadin led to the burning of the Talmud. It’s time this myth was put to rest.
יום שלישי 12 ינואר 2010, 19:18:17
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Yehuda H.
I humbly disagree with the explanation provided by Dr. Jaffee, as there is no reason why the censor could not have identified the Logos with the Torah or the Old Testament.
I think the explanation is as follows:
According to Christian theology, the reason for keeping the commandments is a way of atoning for Adam’s original sin. When Jesus was crucified, the original sin was atoned and therefore there was no longer any need to keep the commandments.
The censor was therefore troubled, how could the Torah with all the commandments it contained have preceded the world. For since Adam had not yet sinned, there was no need for all those commandments.
יום שלישי 12 ינואר 2010, 20:52:07
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Eli Genauer
Thank you for all your comments. When I said that I felt that the comment of the Peirush did not seem too strange, I meant it in the context of everything else that is written in the entire Talmud and Meforshim. I felt that it probably had more to do with Christian beliefs than anything else. I am glad I took that position because it did initiate this discussion.
As far as Benayahu’s thesis on the reason why the Talmud was burned, it was still listed “below the line” in Heller’s book on the printing of the early editions of the Talmud. When I read Benayahu’s thesis, I thought it made quite a bit of sense, especially the relationship between the fight and the Talmud. ( not the Rambam) I sent it to one of my very educated friends for his reaction and he almost took my head off. So I think it remains a secondary approach.
יום רביעי 13 ינואר 2010, 00:53:46
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Modesty and Piety: Improving on the Past
Modesty and Piety: Improving on the Past
by: Michael K. Silber
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The well known “coat of arms” of the priestly Rapaport family first appeared as a colophon at the end of Avraham Menachem Rapa of Porto’s Mincha Belulah (Verona, 1594), fol. 207b, readily at HebrewBooks.org (here). Instead of a motto, a banner proclaimed the author’s name above and below the shield which featured a pair of hands raised in priestly benediction in the upper half, while below was depicted a crow (Rabe in German) on a branch, a reference to the author’s family name. The shield is flanked by two heraldic supporters, and this is what interests us here.
The supporters feature two female torsos rampant facing away from the shield. They are nude from the waist up.
It was by no means rare to encounter nude women in Hebrew books between the sixteenth and the early eighteenth centuries, even prominently displayed on the covers (Adam accompanied at times by a buxom Eve is a ready example). But no doubt such nudity proves unsettling to the Orthodox public nowadays.
Benjamin Shlomo Hamburger’s recently published magisterial three volume history, Ha-Yeshiva ha-Rama bi-Fiorda (Bnei Brak, 5770) is a rich, learned study by one who has dedicated many scholarly books to the heritage of German Jewry. The volumes are noteworthy also for their rich illustrations, but one in particular catches the eye.
A chapter dedicated to Baruch Kahana Rapaport who served for many years as rabbi of Fürth (1711-1746), reproduces, as many a study on the Rapaports, the “coat of arms” from Mincha Belulah (volume 1, page 390).
But the supporters here have been modestly transgendered and piously rendered with beards!
Several studies by Jacob J. Schacter and others have noted the tendency to “verbessern” the past in Orthodox historiography. This then is a modest (but not very pious) contribution to the topic from the perspective of visual evidence of the past.
Addendum:
Dan Rabinowitz
the Seforim blog
It is indeed import to note as Dr. Michael K. Silber has, that we have yet another example of doctoring history to conform with today’s anachronistic views. But, we should note that this is not the first time the Rapoport coat of arms has undergone a change. Before turning to this early example, we need to a make a few points.
As Dr. Silber notes, this coat of arms appears at the end of the first edition of Mincha Belulah, Verona, 1594. Rapoport created this herald and the herald contains allusions to his name – Rapoport. Hida, R. Hayyim Yosef David Azulai, no Reform rabbi, includes an entry on Rapoport in Hida’s Shem HaGedolim (Machret Seforim, Mem, sub. Mincha Belula). Importantly, although the herald appears at the back of Mincha Belulah, Hida calls attention to this herald. Hida notes that “Rapoport” is spelled differently on the herald than on the title page. But, no where does Hida question the inclusion of the bare-breasted women on this rabbinic herald. Moreover, Hida doesn’t alert that reader that if one looks up the herald there are these “offensive” images. Hida’s silence is remarkable but only if one ignores the prevalence of such imagery in Hebrew books. That is, Mincha Belula is not the only work to include such imagery. For example, as we have previously discussed, other works include similar imagery (see here, here, here, here, for examples of nudes, and here for examples of mythological images).
We also note that this was not the first time the herald from the Mincha Belulah has been modified. In the 1989 Beni Brak reprint of Mincha Belulah, the images are also altered. While they haven’t been turned into men, the women are more modestly clothed. The image below is taken from this edition.
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Using a Colophon to Find a Shidduch: on Ella the Zetser.
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Posted by Dan Rabinowitz at 9:01 AM Comments (35)
Labels: Illustrated Seforim, Michael K. Silber
Monday, December 20, 2010
Eliyahu Bachur in Isny
ELIYAHU BACHUR (1469 – 1549) IN ISNY
by: Dan Yardeni
Dan Yardeni, an engineer by profession (Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, 1963), is entrepreneur specializing in cutting edge materials and materials production processes.
As sideline, he researches problems in the history of Hebrew books printing and printers. He also contributes articles to the Culture and Literature sections of Haaretz and other Israeli newspapers. This is his first post at the Seforim blog.
A little street in Tel Aviv commemorates the personality of a colorful Jewish culture hero at the time of the Italian Renaissance, known as Eliah Levita by Christians and Eliyahu Bachur by Jews. While he considered himself primarily a linguist, he was also a teacher, translator, writer and editor, debater, poet, singer and humanist with a deep sense of social awareness, which he expressed in sharply worded satires. While all his life he was an observant Jew, he was also a close friend and teacher of the greatest Christian scholars of his day and became a foremost “cultural agent” between Judaism and Christianity.
Eliahu Bachur’s unusual name is due to the fact that he remained a bachelor for a long time, and later adopted the epithet in the sense of Bachur – Chosen (see his preface to Sefer HaBachur, Isny 1542 where he explains the name of the book and comments: “…. היות שם כינויי משונה ובשם בחור מכונה …. ” ). He was born in southern Germany in 1469 and died and was buried in Venice at the age of 81, a rather advanced age at the time.
Most of his life he lived and worked in Italy. For a brief period of two and a half years, between 1540 and 1542, Eliyahu Bachur moved to the small town of Isny in the picturesque Allgäu region of southern Germany. Isny was at that time a a free self-governing city organized as a republic within the Holy Roman Empire, then under the rule of Charles V. Eliyahu Bachur was invited by the Christian reformer and Hebraist Paulus Fagius to work with him as editor and proofreader in the printing-house, which Fagius had founded in Isny. Despite the burden of his seventy-one years, Eliyahu accepted the invitation, left his home in Venice and crossed the Alps to live in that little town. Why did he do it? The large and world famous printing-house of Daniel Bomberg in Venice, where he had worked as an editor and proofreader for many years, ceased operating at that time and Fagius was offering him a good job and, most important, undertook to print the books Eliyahu had written.
Eliyahu Bachur describes his journey to Isny at the end of his book ‘Tishbi,’ the first of his books to be published in the new printing-house. (The name of the book alludes to his name, Eliyahu). The book, printed in typical Ashkenazi Hebrew typography, constitutes a kind of dictionary describing 712 roots of Hebrew words. And so he writes in the preface to the book: “… I beg anyone, scholar or student who reads this book and finds a mistake or error, to note that it is the fruit of haste since I was in a hurry to reach this place and when I left my house the book was not yet finished, and as I was en route, crossing lands of raining hills and mountains I stood trembling, weighing matters up in my mind and writing them in my heart, and then, when I reached the inn, I opened my case, took out my notebook and wrote down the things which the Lord had put into my heart.”
We know of sixteen titles (sometimes in 2 editions, with and without Latin translation), which Eliyahu Bachur published in Isny. He may have printed more, of which no copies survived. Most of the time he was the only Jew in that Christian town which was so devoutly Protestant that it did not allow Catholic Christians to reside within its walls. The contents of his books, and the texts which he wrote and appended to them, are of great interest still today. Most touching is the reflected conflict between his desire to publish the books he had written and the longing for his family and for Venice, the town where he had lived most of his life.
While being a deeply religious and observant Jew, Eliyahu Bachur displayed cultural openness to the Christian world. He did this in spite of the fierce opposition of rabbis, who regarded him with suspicion, as someone who was prepared to venture beyond the self-imposed barriers surrounding the Jewish scholarly community (See his preface to Masoret Ha-Massoret book printed in Venice 1938 and later). He also had the courage and intellectual honesty to admit that he had been helped in translating difficult Greek words to Hebrew by the learned Christian cardinal Egidio Viterbo, to whom he had taught Hebrew during his sojourn in Rome years earlier. He dared to state, in face of virulent opposition from leading orthodox rabbis, that the punctuation of the Hebrew language was a later invention and not as ancient as had been thought until then. In his rhyming introduction to his book ‘Tishbi,’ he challenged those who disagreed with him to react still in his lifetime:
“….. / כי אומנם לא שקר מילי / אם לא איפא מי יכזיבני / מה שגיתי יבין אותי / יכתוב לו ספר איש ריבי / אך יעשה זאת טרם אמות / כי מה אשיב אחרי שכבי / או ימות גם הוא כמוני / או ימתין לי עד שובי / …….”
“…Indeed my words are not a lie / So who will dispute me? / If I erred, please show me where / And my rival may write his own opinion / But let him do it before I die / Because once I died how could I reply? / Or possibly he too may meanwhile pass away / Or he might have to wait for my resurrection from the dead….”
Later, in a playful rhymed foreword, combining genuine modesty with an awareness of his own value, he added a well-known fable attributed to Pliny the Elder, which Eliyahu claims to remember from his youth:
“אפתחה במשל פי / אשר שמעתי בימי חרפי / כי היה באחד המקומות / אשר נקבו בשמות / אמן אחד צייר / וצייר צלם איש על נייר / והיה האיש ההוא / תם וישר / יפה תואר ומשוח בששר / וידביקהו על לוח עץ / ועל פתח ביתו היה אותו נועץ / להראות העמים והשרים את יופיו / כי כליל הוא מהדרו וצבי עדיו / ויהי כאשר כל העם רואים / והנה בתוך הבאים / זקן אחד רצען / על משענתו נשען / וראה והביט גם הוא / אחרי כן פתח את פיהו / ויאמר הנני עומד משתאה / איך הצייר שגה ברואה / הלא תראו כי שרוך הנעל / הפוך למטה למעל / וכשמוע הצייר את זאת / יצא גם הוא לראות / וירא ויניע ראש / והודה ולא בוש / ויאמר צדקת אתה הזקן / אך הלילה המעוות אתקן / וכן תקנהו טרם הלך לישון / ולמחרתו הוציאו כמשפט הראשון / ויבוא הרצען שנית / ויוסף להביט בתבנית / ויאמר לצייר יפה תיקנת ועשית / אבל בדבר אחד שגית / כי רואה אני דבר נבזה / כי הברכיים אינם דומים זה לזה / האחד גדול והאחד קטן / ויאמר לו הצייר לך אל השטן / כי משרוך הנעל ולמעלה/ אין לך בחכמה חלק ונחלה / ויהי הרצען לבושה ולכלימה / ויפן וילך בחימה / וכן יראתי גם אני / שכמקרה הרצען יקרני / בעניין זה החיבור / רעה עלי ידובר / ויאמר אלי מי שהוא / מה לך פה אליהו / כלך למדברך אצל דקדוק ומסורות / אין לך עסק בנסתרות / אל תחמוד כבוד יותר מלימודך / ואל תנבל כסא כבודך / ולכן יראתי לקרב אל המלאכה / פן לא אראה בה סימן ברכה / אך רוחי הציקתני / ואש עצור בעצמותי ושרפתני / וכלכל לא יכולתי / ומאת השם עזר שאלתי / יצרף לי למעשה המחשבה / ויורני בדרך הטובה / כי מכיר אני את מקומי / שיותר מידי נטלתי גדולה לעצמי / שמלאני לבי לפרש כל השורשים / אשר בשום מקום אינם מפורשים / ואף מאותם המפורשים כבר / אחדש בכל אחד איזה דבר / ורובם מן הגמרא ומדברי רבותינו / כגון בראשית רבא ותנחומא וילמדנו / ואף שבעוונותיי / כבר עברו רוב שנותיי / ולא ראיתי בטובה / בהוויות אביי ורבא / ולחכמים מעט שימשתי / ומשאם ומתנם לא בשתי ביקשתי / מכל מקום לבי לא מנעני / ובאגדות ובמדרשים יגעתי / להוציא מהם דברים חשוקים / ובפרושי ומדרשי הפסוקים / עד שרוב גירסתם היא לי ידועה / וזה יהיה לי לישועה / את הספר הזה לחבר / ולברר וללבן את אשר אדבר / …………/.
The fable tells the story of the famous Greek painter Apelles (a contemporary of Alexander the Great), and a cobbler,. Apelles drew a beautiful young man and pasted the painting on wooden board that he placed at his doorway to impress all passers-by. Among them was an old cobbler, leaning on his cane. The cobbler gazed at the painting and commented: “I am surprised how the artist made such a mistake. You see, the shoelace goes upside down”. When the artist heard that, he went out to see, nodded his head and consented: “You are right, old man. But tonight I shall correct the mistake”. And so he did before going to sleep and the next day he hung the painting in place as before. And the old cobbler came again. He looked at the painting and told the artist: “Well done but there is still another mistake: the knees are not alike, one is bigger than the other”. The artist said then commented angrily: “Go to hell. From the shoelace upwards you know nothing”. The cobbler was ridiculed by all around and turned away in a rage. And, says Eliahu Bachur, he is afraid that the same will happen to him with this book, the “Tishbi”. Somebody will say: “What are you doing here? Go back to Hebrew grammar and Massoret. Don’t deal in what you don’t know and don’t ask to be honored in doing so”. Therefore, he was afraid to undertake that work, in which he might fail. However, he could not restrain himself and asked God for help in showing him the right way. Eliyahu adds that he knows his place and that he may be presumptuous in daring to explain all the Hebrew roots, which are not explained elsewhere, adding that even to those that had been explained, he was still bringing something new from the Gmara and other sources.
Particularly impressive is the friendship and mutual respect that developed between the old Jew and the Christian preacher Paulus Fagius in the course of their work together in Isny, about which Eliyahu writes in the foreword to the book:
“……..ובבואי הנה תהיתי בקנקנו ומצאתיו מלא ישן ולא הוגד לי החצי מחכמתו וידיעתו, ורבים שואבים מי תורתו, ודורש טוב לעמו, נאה דורש ונאה מפרש ………..ובראותו הספר הזה אשר חיברתי והכיר רוב טובו ותועלתו, נזדרז מאד והעתיק אותו ללשון לאטין אשר קראו קדמונינו לשון רומי וחיבר שתי הלשונות יחד ונשים עיוננו עליו בכל מאמצי כוחנו, הוא מצד אחד ואני מצד אחר. ונקרא איש אל אלוהיו שיצליח את מלאכתנו ………”
“…And when I came hither I wondered about his character, and I found him full of wisdom, and I had not been informed about the breadth of his knowledge, and many come to learn from him, and he performs good deeds, in sickness and in health… And when he saw the book which I had written he recognized its worth, and hastened to translate it into Latin, which was the language of ancient Rome, and together we made connections between the two languages, he on the one hand and I on the other, and each one of us sought guidance and help from his God.” (my emphasis, D.Y.)
Being a devoted Christian Pastor, Fagius didn’t abandon his missionary vision and one of the books he printed in Isny, ‘The Book of Belief’ (Sefer Amana), is unmistakably a missionary tract. The book was published in two versions, Hebrew and Latin. In the introduction to the Hebrew edition Paulus Fagius wrote in Hebrew: “The Book of Belief is a goodly and pleasant book which was written by a wise Israelite a few years ago in order to teach and prove quite clearly that the belief of Messianic in the Lord the father, his son, and the holy spirit, and other things is entire, correct and without doubt…”. We can only imagine how uncomfortable Eliahu Bachur felt in proofreading this book.
Now, as was customary in those days when printers took pride in their work, Paulus Fagius placed a colophon at the end of the books he printed with his printer’s emblem, an elaborate and beautiful woodcut of a tree surrounded by verses, which he regarded as his motto in life. Among them was one verse, which appeared with slight variations in most of the books that were printed at Isny:”תקוותי במשיח הנשלח שהוא עתיד לדון חיים ומתים” “My hope is in the Messiah who was sent (נשלח) and who will judge the living and dead.”
As stated, ‘The Book of Belief’ appeared in Hebrew, apparently intended for the Jews, and in Latin for the Christians. The Latin version ends with the verse cited above, while at the end of the Hebrew version the printer’s emblem appears with a slight difference, which is not immediately discernible:
תקוותי במשיח הנשלך אשר הוא יבוא לדון את חיים ומתים
My hope is in the Messiah who was dismissed (הנשלך) and who will come to judge the living and dead.
There can be no doubt that this is no printer’s error but a subtle message sent by Eliyahu Bachur in his capacity as the book’s proofreader to his Jewish brethren down the ages, saying: “I have not betrayed. You know what I think about this”. I noticed this subtle difference when I examined the books, which are kept in the amazingly well preserved study of Paulus Fagius next to the Church of Saint Nicholas in Isny, where he preached nearly 500 years ago. When I brought it to the attention of the extremely kind priest who escorted me and who now occupies Fagius’s chair, he was very surprised and, I fear, somewhat offended.
Eliyahu Bachur was attuned to the need to disseminate knowledge not only to the educated Jewish elite but also to the general Jewish community, men and women. Therefore, another book, which Eliyahu Bachur printed in Isny in the year 1541, was ‘Bovo d’Antona’, a popular adventure novel about knights, which he translated into the Judeo-German dialect, Ivri Teitsch (western Yiddish From the introduction he wrote to the book, we learn about the status of women in Jewish society at that time and about their reading habits. In rhymed introduction, he tells all righteous women”איך אליה לוי דער שרייבר, דינר אלר ורומן וויבר” that there are women who complain that he does not print for them in Ivri Teitsch the books that he has written, and they are right. And since he has written eight or nine books in Hebrew and since he is now rather old, he wishes to publish all these books and poetry in Ivri-Teitsch. The first of which will be the “Bovo Buch,” which he translated from Italian thirty-four years earlier. Since this translation contains words in Italian, he will print a glossary at the end of the book explaining their meaning [and so he did, D.Y.]. Naturally he cannot transmit,the melody by which the book should be read. “איך זינג עש מיט איינם ועלשן גיזנק, קאן ער דרויף מכן איין ביסרן, זא הב ער דאנק” . He himself sings it in the Italian melody but everyone can adapt a better melody to the text, as he wishes. At the end of the book, Eliyahu Bachur adds that he hopes to print more books in Ivri Teitsch, but apparently he did not, or perhaps no copy has reached us. Of the ‘Bovo d’Antona’ book, only a single copy (Unicum) survives, which is preserved in the Zurich Public Library. However, the book was so popular at the time that its name has given rise to the expression that we use still today, “Bobe Meise” in the sense of silly, nonsense tale.
The book ‘Meturgaman’, (”Translator”), which Eliyahu Bachur composed and printed in Isny in 1542, was intended to be a dictionary which “Will explain all words, difficult and easy alike, which appear in the Aramaic translations of the bible and Talmud Yerushalmi”. To the book Eliyahu Bachur added a colophon, which sheds light on a touching side of his personality. In the colophon Eliyahu printed a delicate and sweet love song to his wife whom he had left behind in Venice:
“והנה מאחר שקפצה עלי הזיקנה / ואני איש זקן וכבד מאד / ומידי יום יום תכהה עיני ונס ליחי / אשוב מצבא העבודה ולא אעבוד עוד / ואלך לי אל ארצי אשר יצאתי משם / היא מדינת וונציה/ ואמות בעירי עם אשתי הזקנה / ולא אניד עוד רגל ממנה / והיא תשת עלי עינה / ורק המוות יפריד ביני ובינה/ ואשב שם כל ימי חיותי/ ואשלים חיבור הספרים אשר החילותי/ אז אומר לאל אשר יצר אותי/ קח נא את חיי כי טוב מותי”.
The song is translated here without modifications or explanations, though the charming wording in Hebrew is lost:
“And since I became old and heavy, and each day my eye sight weakens and my strength is leaving me, I shall retire from work and go back to the homeland that I left, the land of Venice, and die there with my old wife, and I shall never move again from her, and she will keep an eye on me and only death shall part us, and I shall live there the rest of my life and complete the books which I have already started to write. Then I shall ask the Lord who created me: take my life, it is better that I die”.
And in another song below this one, the old scholar summarize his life and work in most touching words:
“הלל אל אל המלך נאמן אבינו האב הרחמן
שהחייני עד הגעתי עתה אל זה היום וזמן
היה איתי עד נטעתי זה הנטע נטע נעמן
בו נגלות כל המילות העבריות עם תרגומן
גם הוא מורה בגיליון איה תחנותן ומקומן
הוא כמליץ שהוא ממליץ ובטוב מילין הוא מטעימן
ויי שוכן שמים וממנו דבר לא נטמן
ידע כי לא עשיתי זאת להיות נקרא רב או אמן
כי הנותן לכסיל כבוד כצרור אבן תוך ארגמן
לאל בלבד נאה כבוד ולזולתו הא ליכא מאן
הן לכבודו ולאהבתו בלבד רשמתי רישומן
אנא אלי לי ולאשתי החסד גם האמת מן
שהיא לא תהיה אלמנה ואני לא אהיה אלמן
יחד נמות ובגן עדנות תוך חיקה אישן עד לזמן
יבוא הקץ ואזי נקיץ ולחיי עד יחד נזדמן
ובכך תמו גם נשלמו דברי השירה עד תומן
ואני אליה המחבר לפרט זאת השנה סימן”
Praise the God, faithful king
Our merciful father
That kept me alive
To this date and time
Be with me till I plant
This pleasant plant
In which all Hebrew words are revealed
With their translation
And also indicate
Where they are located,
Explaining them
In plain words.
God in heaven
From him nothing hides
He knows that I did not do that
To be called rabbi or scholar,
Because rendering honor to a fool
Is like wrapping stone in expensive textile
Only God deserves honor
Nobody else
And to his honor and love
I wrote what I wrote.
Please God, to me and my wife
bestow grace and truth
That she will not become a widow
And I shall not become a widower
Together we shall die and in Garden of Eden
In her bosom I shall sleep until
End of time and then we shall awake
And for ever be together
And here ended and completed
This song
I Eliyhau the writer
In the year …..
Eliyahu Bachur’s wish was only partly fulfilled. He returned to Venice after the short-lived printing house in Isny closed down, and even though he edited and proofread a few more books for printers who replaced Bomberg’s enterprise, his strength continued to weaken. His long time co-worker in the printing business, Cornelio Adelkind in a letter to the humanist Andrea Masius in 1547 calls Eliyahu איש ערירי (Lonely man) which implies that his wife passed away few years before him. Eliyahu Bachur died in the month of Shevat in the year Shin Tet (1549) and was buried in the old Jewish cemetery in the isle of Lido near Venice. The headstone on his grave is still to be seen. I visited his grave, put a little stone on it and read the engraved epitaph, which includes sophisticated wording and allusions in Hebrew. This and the fact that the epitaph does not refer to the day of his death may suggest that he composed the text himself:
ש”ט לפ”ק
ר’ אליהו הלוי בחור ומדקדק
הלא אבן בקיר תזעק ותהמה לכל עובר
עלי זאת ה-קבורה
עלי רבן-אשר נלקח ועלה בשמיים
אלי-יה ב-סערה
הלא הוא זה אשר האיר בדקדוק אפלתו
ושם אותו לאורה
שנת שט שט בחדש שבט בסופו, ונפשו ב
בצרור חיים צרורה
It was impossible to translate the delicate playing in words that is concealed through the epitaph. The text below is only a shadow of its poetic brilliance.
Shin Tet le Prat Katan
Rabbi Eliyahu Halevi Bachur And Grammarian
A stone from wall will cry and moan to every passer by
On this grave
On rabbi Eliyahu who went to heaven
To God by a storm
He is the one who lightened the darkness of [Hebrew] grammar
And put it to light
Year Shin Tet at the end of the month of Shevat and his soul
In the bonds of life be bound
תנצב”ה
8
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Torah Talk Hebrew Publishing just best like you say!
There are some fascinating deadlines in this article but I don’t know if I see all of them center to heart. There’s some validity but I will take hold opinion till I look into it further. Good article , thanks and we want more! Added to FeedBurner as nicely
Zune and iPod: Most people compare the Zune to the Touch, but after seeing how slim and surprisingly small and light it is, I consider it to be a rather unique hybrid that combines qualities of both the Touch and the Nano. It’s very colorful and lovely OLED screen is slightly smaller than the touch screen, but the player itself feels quite a bit smaller and lighter. It weighs about 2/3 as much, and is noticeably smaller in width and height, while being just a hair thicker.
I’m not sure if it has been talked about but when using Chrome. Let me start by saying nice post.
But a smiling visitor here to share the enjoy (:, btw wonderful pattern .
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