Hebrew Manuscripts Research Articles

Rabbenu Tam and Count Henry the Liberal: New Sources

ABSTRACT Recent scholarship has demonstrated the political and intellectual connections between Rabbi Jacob ben Meir (‘Rabbenu Tam’) and Henry the Liberal, Count of Champagne, and his court. Further evidence found in Hebrew manuscript sources serves to fine-tune earlier conclusions and provide new insights regarding the unique nature of the relationship. Rabbenu Tam's rulings on matters of secular governance suggest a positivistic stance toward Henry's rule vis-a-vis baronial authority in the 1150s and 1160s, at a time when Champagne was rapidly developing politically and economically.

Digitizing the Library of Congress Hebrew Manuscripts Collection

Digitizing the Library of Congress Hebrew Manuscripts Collection

Hebrew Manuscripts as a Source of Knowledge

Abstract The Hebrew Manuscripts Catalogue of the National Library of Israel holds a wealth of information about Jewish history, literature, and culture. However, its complex structure and limited accessibility have resulted in underutilized data. This study aims to harness new digital approaches to unlock the potential of this valuable resource. Specifically, we focus on 275 Yemenite Jewish manuscripts related to ‘sciences’ to explore complex relationships within the data. We began by consolidating metadata from the Hebrew Manuscripts Catalogue, often found scattered within the ‘notes’ field of the records. We supplemented this data with information from linked open data (LOD) entities as well as previous research. This comprehensive approach reveals details about copyists, authors, and owners, even identifying lesser-known figures. Our methodology involved using Nodegoat for data management and visualization. This platform allowed us to create a comprehensive data model for manuscript provenance and explore relationships between objects, transactions, persons, and organizations, along with geographical data.

The Safed Genizah: Buried Manuscripts and Kabbalistic Philology in Seventeenth-Century Palestine

Abstract Many Jewish communities around the world have maintained a special site, known as a genizah, for discarding written materials. This article focuses on the genizah of the town of Safed in the Galilee. At the end of the sixteenth century, the Safed Genizah preserved Hebrew manuscripts written by Ḥayyim Vital (d. 1620), foremost student of the influential kabbalist Yitsḥaḳ Luria (d. 1572). These manuscripts were excavated and edited in the mid-seventeenth century and became authoritative texts in the history of Jewish esotericism. My study describes Vital’s burial of his manuscripts and the editorial efforts of the Jewish scholars who followed him, particularly Avraham Azulai (d. 1643) in Hebron and Ya‘akov Tsemaḥ (d. 1666) and his fellowship in Jerusalem. Through analysis of their rhetoric and scribal practices, I explore the ethical, philological, and material aspects of this chapter in the pre-history of Genizah research.

Lost and found manuscripts of Targum

In this article I describe the re-identification of two Targum manuscripts thought to be lost. (1) A Pentateuch with Targum formerly held in the convent of S. Salvatore, Bologna (Kennicott 532): I show that the lost manuscript is identical with MS. Vatican ebr. 608, and provide an updated catalogue summary of the Hebrew manuscripts from the convent’s library. (2) A manuscript of Writings Targums in Turin, National University Library, 22 (A.II.2): an examination of the restored remains of the manuscript reveals it contains a hitherto unknown copy of the Aramaic Dream of Mordecai.

Causes, Methods, and Manifestations of the Destruction of Hebrew Manuscripts

This study explores the diverse causes behind the destruction and scarcity of medieval Hebrew manuscripts. Factors include their extensive use for study and prayer, the absence of scriptoria in the Jewish world, precarious preservation conditions, systematic destruction by the Church and Inquisition, market circuits of reused parchment codices, and the influence of Genizah legislation. The reuse of medieval Hebrew manuscripts is situated within the epochal printing press phenomenon. The Jewish experience is unique in featuring the persecution and burning of Hebrew books, exemplified by the Talmud’s burning ordered by Pope Julius III in 1553 and the Church’s policy shift under Pope Paul IV, leading to the deliberate destruction of sacred texts. This context resulted in a severe scarcity of Talmud copies, prompting rabbis to halt teachings. The study delves into the intricate interplay of historical events shaping the fate of Hebrew manuscripts.

All the People of Israel Are Friends: An Unknown Mid-Fifteenth Century Earthquake in the Marche Region (Central Italian Apennines) Recorded in a Coeval Hebrew Manuscript

Abstract Although the Italian seismic catalogs are considered among those with the best historical completeness, for periods prior to the Modern era they have gaps, often concentrated in limited regions. For example, Marche, a central Apennine region with high seismicity level, lacks any macroseismic observations throughout the entire fifteenth century. The chance discovery of a destructive earthquake summarized in a note written on a Hebrew prayer manuscript from 1446, not only helps us partially fill a gap in the seismic history of Italy but also prompts us to reflect on how much we still do not know about seismogenesis even in times covered by written sources.

From Digitization and Images to Text and Content: Transkribus as a Case Study

ABSTRACTThis poster explores the potential of using technological tools, specifically the Transkribus platform, for the transcription of Hebrew manuscripts. The digitization of historical resources has made them accessible, but the textual content of the scanned images remains inaccessible. Transkribus, an AI‐powered platform, offers tools for text recognition, transcription, and search of historical documents. The poster discusses the process of automatic text recognition (ATR) and the challenges it faces, particularly in handling handwritten texts and Hebrew letters. It provides an overview of the Transkribus platform, its functionalities, and the training process for creating transcription models. The author presents a case study of transcribing a 15th‐century Sephardic semi‐cursive Hebrew manuscript using the Transkribus platform and evaluates the performance of different models. The poster concludes by discussing the implications and possibilities of using Transkribus for automatic transcription of historical Hebrew manuscripts. While the results show promising improvements in accuracy, further challenges and solutions are also discussed. Overall, Transkribus offers significant potential for the study and transcription of Hebrew manuscripts, revolutionizing the field of Jewish studies and historical research.

‘The Breath of Every Living Thing’: Zoocephali and the Language of Difference on the Medieval Hebrew Page

Abstract The most remarkable feature of the Hammelburg Mahzor, a fourteenth-century German High Holiday book, is the inclusion of zoocephalic figures: humans with beastly heads. The purpose of this essay is to explore the semiotics and phenomenology of this specifically Jewish visual idiom, and to suggest that its presence lies at the intersection of language, philosophy, poetry, and history. In the Mahzor, zoocephaly signals distinction that collapses temporalities, tests the limits of alterity, and engages in a sophisticated word–image play that strives to establish visceral connections with the community of the manuscript's users. Hammelburg zoocephali invoke the fragility of the human condition by establishing reverberating relationships between themselves and other inhabitants of the Mahzor's pages: echoes of many, avatars of none. Outwardly monstrous yet emphatically human, these zoocephali prove to be particularly excellent images to think with about the place of Hebrew manuscripts in the long history of medieval visual culture.

Selected Hebrew Manuscripts from the Bavarian State Library, written by Aliza Cohen-Mushlin

Selected Hebrew Manuscripts from the Bavarian State Library, written by Aliza Cohen-Mushlin

The story of one acquisition: Hebrew manuscripts from Venetian Candia

This article focuses on a large group of Hebrew manuscripts that members of the Jewish community in Candia sold to an anonymous Christian in 1541–1543. Not only was selling Jewish books to Christians on such a large scale unusual in the Jewish context, but also many aspects of the acquisition remain unknown. Largely based on the owners’ entries and purchase notes found in the acquired manuscripts and other documentary sources, this study examines the circumstances of the acquisition and its details from both Jewish and Christian perspectives and scrutinizes how each of the parties involved approached the acquisition.

Vladimir Ivanov’s “Jewish Manuscripts”. Part 1. The Collection And The Archive

The “Bukharian Collection” of Vladimir A. Ivanov included dozens of Jewish manuscripts. They came to the Asian Museum in St. Petersburg in 1915, and Alexander A. Freiman systematized some of them – in Judeo-Persian only – by 1918. Over the past century, there have been several (re-)inventories, so nowadays one cannot rely on those obsolete publications, working with these monuments. Part of the provenance has been lost. Basing on Ivanov’s archive and the inventory books of different years, this article is an attempt to update the information on all Jewish manuscripts acquired in Bukhara. The Aramaic and Hebrew manuscripts are new to the scientific circulation, the provenance of the Judeo-Persian manuscripts is clarified. Ivanov’s personal notes for each manuscript are scarce. Nevertheless, they are the primary source about the manuscripts, and today his “notebook” on the “Collection” is kept in the Archive of Orientalists of the Institute of Oriental Studies RAS. Using Ivanov’s list of manuscripts and their description by Freiman, as well as the current inventory, I managed to restore the provenance of almost all monuments. Some last Hebrew manuscripts in this list are particularly difficult to identify, while other monuments within the Jewish fund have been erroneously attributed to the “Collection” for a long time. Only one manuscript from Bukhara has remained unidentified. Checking the rest of the manuscripts for Ivanov’s notes at the margins in his “notebook” helped to match and connect the archival data with the source data of the manuscripts.

Steimann, Ilona. Jewish Book – Christian Book: Hebrew Manuscripts in Transition between Jews and Christians in the Context of German Humanism

Steimann, Ilona. Jewish Book – Christian Book: Hebrew Manuscripts in Transition between Jews and Christians in the Context of German Humanism

“Perhaps The Oldest Piece of Ecclesiastical Furniture in this Country”: The Construction and Destruction of Solomon Schechter’s Cairo Genizah Torah Ark

Abstract In 1897, Solomon Schechter brought a hoard of Hebrew manuscripts, now known collectively as the Cairo Genizah, to England from Cairo. Along with these manuscripts were several wooden Hebrew inscription fragments from Cairo’s Ben Ezra Synagogue. When Schechter left Cambridge to assume the presidency of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, these fragments were brought to New York where they were transformed into a Torah Ark. This Torah ark was used at the Seminary for three decades and subsequently exhibited at the Jewish Museum, New York and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was featured on numerous postcards and in major works on Jewish art. In 1997, it was deconstructed by the Jewish Museum to extract the medieval inscriptions. This article explores the history, meaning and reception of the Schechter Torah Ark as a window into the complexities of Schechter’s legacy and the history of Jewish scholarship in the twentieth century.

Clinging to a Jewish Saint in a Time of Growing Turmoil: Appropriating the Figure of Rabbi Judah the Pious in Late Fifteenth-Century Jewish Folktales from Regensburg

Abstract Among a unique collection of stories in Hebrew manuscript copied in the sixteenth century and found at the National Library of Israel (NLI) are twenty-seven hagiographic tales about the prominent Jewish pietist of Medieval Germany, Rabbi Judah the Pious (d. 1217) and his father Rabbi Shmuel ben Kalonymus. Scholars have suggested that the entire original collection dates back to ca. 1300 and echoes the lives, concerns, and ideals of thirteenth-century Ashkenazi Jews. However, some of the hagiographic tales found in the collection seem to have been written later, appropriating the figure of the mystical Rabbi Judah and using it in stories from the fifteenth century that were set in his city, Regensburg. Told by the Jews of this city, the tales of Rabbi Judah and his magical abilities seem to have fulfilled the needs and concerns of the community in the turbulent late fifteenth century. The paper analyzes three of these stories, demonstrating how they correspond with the realities of this time and suggesting the possible roles the tales of Rabbi Judah and his miracles played for Regensburg Jewry as they contended with the hardships of daily life and the shadow of expulsion that loomed large over the community in this period.

Gianni Barbiero, Marco Pavan, and Johannes Schnocks, eds. The Formation of the Hebrew Psalter

Gianni Barbiero, Marco Pavan, and Johannes Schnocks, eds. <i>The Formation of the Hebrew Psalter</i>

Diplomatic or eclectic critical editions of the Hebrew Bible? Considering a third alternative

Ever since the publication of the third edition of Rudolph Kittel’s Biblia Hebraica (BHK3) to the present gradual production of the Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ) so-called editiones criticae minores of the Hebrew Bible are diplomatic editions. The Codex Leningradensis, dating from 1008/9 CE, is used as the base text, and the Biblia Hebraica text editors note significant variants in other Hebrew manuscripts and/or the ancient versions in eclectic fashion in a text-critical apparatus. The Hebrew University Bible Project (HUPB) also publishes a diplomatic text based on the Codex Aleppo but with a more detailed text-critical apparatus. The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition (HBCE) follows a different route, traditionally more familiar in the production of critical editions of the Septuagint and New Testament, namely to publish an eclectic edition. The text editors produce a theoretical, reconstructed text of what they regard as the ‘correct’ reading after careful consideration and weighing of variants in all available textual witnesses. I argue that critical editions of the Hebrew at the disposal of Hebrew Bible scholars, whether based on a diplomatic or eclectic text, have two inherent weaknesses, namely eclecticism and lack of context. Taken together, these shortcomings might be classified as subjectivism. I propose at least considering the alternative of a synoptic text-critical approach beyond the diplomatic-eclectic dichotomy.Contribution: This research critically reviews the current diplomatic/eclectic approaches in the production of scholarly Hebrew Bibles and proposes at least considering a third alternative, namely a synoptic approach

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

Catalan Maps and Jewish Books: The Intellectual Profile of Elisha ben Abraham Cresques (1325–1387) by Katrin Kogman-Appel

Reviewed by: Catalan Maps and Jewish Books: The Intellectual Profile of Elisha ben Abraham Cresques (1325–1387) by Katrin Kogman-Appel Javier Del Barco Katrin Kogman-Appel. Catalan Maps and Jewish Books: The Intellectual Profile of Elisha ben Abraham Cresques (1325–1387). Terrarum Orbis: History of the Representations of Space in Text and Image, 15. Turnhout: Brepols, 2020. Hardcover, 357 pp. including appendices, tables, and indices + [108] pp. of illustrations and two detached booklets with a complete reproduction of Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS esp. 30 (attributed to Elisha ben Abraham Cresques, Mallorca, ca. 1375). €125. ISBN 978-2-503-58548-2. The title of this book, Catalan Maps and Jewish Books: The Intellectual Profile of Elisha ben Abraham Cresques (1325–1387), is a precise description of Katrin Kogman-Appel’s three objects of study: a Catalan-Aragonese map (the so-called Catalan Atlas, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS esp. 30), which Kogman-Appel prefers to call the Ecumene chart; a Jewish book, the famous Farhi Codex, MS 368 in the Sassoon Collection, containing the Hebrew Bible and a selection of grammatical, rabbinical, exegetical, historiographical, and even calendrical texts; and the Mallorcan Jewish scholar Elisha ben Abraham Bevenisti Cresques (1325–87), who is credited with authorship of the map, and who compiled and copied the materials that make up the Farhi Codex. Kogman-Appel offers us a fascinating journey [End Page 396] through Elisha Cresques’s life and the contents of both the map and the Farhi Codex. She provides a thorough reconstruction of Cresques’s cultural, political, and religious universe in order to understand the reasons why each of these artifacts was produced and the multiple ways in which they signify. The book consists of an introduction, eight chapters, and an epilogue. Special mention must be made of the abundant and magnificent images that help us to visualize the narrative and that force us to move back and forth between the text and the images that correspond to it. Moreover, the book is accompanied by two booklets that contain the reproduction of the twelve sheets into which Cresques’s Ecumene chart is currently divided. In chapter 1, Kogman-Appel sets forth a panoramic view of her study’s contents and organization, touching briefly on the central issues that will be addressed in the following chapters. She also offers a detailed argument for Elisha Cresques as the author of the Ecumene chart, comparing it to other maps also attributed, rightly or wrongly, to Cresques and establishing both the corpus of maps and their approximate chronology. In chapter 2 we find a meticulous analysis of the contents of the Farhi Codex, as well as an exhaustive list of the possible sources Cresques may have consulted for the non-biblical texts included in the codex, both in Mallorca (in Lleó Judà Mosconi’s library) and at the court of Pedro IV of Aragon, or through his contacts with other communities in North Africa. Kogman-Appel has written before about the Farhi Codex, for example, in “The Scholarly Interests of a Scribe and Mapmaker in Fourteenth-Century Majorca: Elisha ben Abraham Bevenisti Cresques’s Bookcase” (in The Hebrew Book in the Western Mediterranean: Late Medieval Hebrew Manuscripts and Incunabula in Context, ed. Javier del Barco [Leiden: Brill, 2015], 148–81). However, in Catalan Maps and Jewish Books, she connects the intellectual interests that Cresques demonstrates in the Farhi Codex to the Ecumene chart in a more explicit and articulated way. By the same token, in chapter 3 we find a precise exposition of the Ecumene chart and its multiple readings, ranging from those related to the patron’s expectations of the work, to more personal ones connected with Cresques’s own cultural and religious interests. Chapters 4 to 8 focus on different aspects of reading and analyzing the Ecumene chart related to representations of political space, of Islam and the [End Page 397] Islamic world, of the territories controlled by the Mongols, and of mythical and imagined spaces. They also deal with the possible sources used by Cresques for the Ecumene chart, and how these were understood and modeled according to his different interests. Kogman-Appel uses the...

Isolated Handwritten Character Recognition of Ancient Hebrew Manuscripts

Character recognition is widely considered an essential factor in preserving and digitizing historical handwritten documents. While it has shown a significant impact, the character recognition of historical handwritten documents is still a challenging task. This work aims to present a study on building a character recognition system for a handwritten ancient Hebrew text utilizing convolutional neural networks, dealing with material degradation, script complexity, and varied handwriting style. Our research underlined the importance of creating a ground-truth dataset for a robust and reliable character recognition system. Moreover, this study compares the performance of four convolutional neural network models applied to our dataset.