Yom Tov Research Articles

“A Native of Poland Professing the Arts in London”: The Unconventional Jewish Life and Thought of Solomon Yom Tov Bennett (1767–1838)

Abstract This essay offers a new reconstruction of the fascinating life and works of Solomon Yom Tov Bennett (1767–1838), a Jewish engraver and biblical scholar who emigrated from Belarus via Copenhagen and Berlin to London. While Bennett’s intellectual path might appear similar to several other notable Polish Jewish immigrants to Western Europe, he is quite distinctive for his remarkable coadunation of art and thought, for his unusual focus on biblical studies, for opening social and intellectual connections with some of the most famous and accomplished Christian intellectuals of London, and for his self-determination and drive to complete his life-long ambition of serving Western civilization by rewriting and correcting the entire standard edition of the English Old Testament, a task of translation, he fervently believed, that could only be fulfilled by a learned Jewish Hebraist like himself.

You Cannot Feel a Mother’s Heart: The Centrality of Women in the Hasidic Music of Yom Tov Ehrlich

Abstract: Recent scholarship on the history of Hasidism suggests that the role of women within Hasidic communities before World War II was minimal, and that Hasidism eliminated women from its social structure by establishing a religious praxis that was exclusively male. Studies of postwar Hasidic life similarly minimize the presence of women and suggest that they remained an ancillary and silent population within the life of the movement, in large part because scholars have relied on written and experiential Hasidic modalities to gauge female involvement. Analysis of the music of Yom Tov Ehrlich as an untapped source demonstrates that women appear to be seen, heard, and reckoned with in Hasidic life before and after the war. In Yom Tov Ehrlich’s musical texts, women are valued as religious and Hasidic actors, and serve a vital, if not precisely equal, role to that of their male counterparts, providing spiritual guidance, motivation, and agency. A significant proportion of the 317 songs released publicly by Ehrlich feature women. Physical descriptions, both of women’s dress as well as their demeanor, proliferate within the song lyrics, and women and young girls are often described as beautiful. While Ehrlich’s representation cannot be construed as historical fact, female predominance within the songs, and the widespread acceptance and encouragement of this music even within the most stringent Hasidic groups, attests to a vocal and vibrant presence of women within the panoply of religious and Hasidic experience in prewar Europe and postwar America.

On the traditions of the glosser of the text of the Tosefta: in light of glosses on folios from the Genizah

The heart of Binyamin Katzoff’s article, “On the traditions of the glosser of the text of the Tosefta: in light of glosses on folia from the Genizah,” are the notes written between the lines and in the margins of two folios from the Tosefta Yom Tov found in the Genizah. The author wishes to clarify the contribution of the glosser’s text to the history of the text of the Tosefta, and learns from the glosses about the antiquity of the Tosefta traditions that were common in the East at the beginning of the second millennium and their eastern origin. The discussion also reveals important information about the methods of glossing: correcting one version according to another in order to replace the version of the first copyist with a different one. This method of working may have far-reaching consequences for the tradition of the text and poses real difficulties for any attempt to trace the original texts according to stemmatic rules.

A New Interpretation of the Final Days of the Jewish Community of Pamiers

Abstract This article examines, and publishes in an annex, a letter written by Yom Tov ben Hannah of Montalbán. This letter describes how the seventy Jews of Pamiers were forced to raise money to ransom their lives. Henri Gross presumed that it was count Gaston III of Foix (d. 1391), who had tried to extort money from the Jewish community. A re-examination suggests that the imprisonment of the Jews of Pamiers occurred after the promulgation of the edict of expulsion from France (1394), and represented a final attempt by count Mathieu of Foix, to extort money before the Jews’ departure.

Conflict between Jews and Converts in Aragon Following the Persecution of 1391: New Testimonies from the Formulary of Yom Tov Ben Ḥannah of Montalban

Study and edition of a letter written in rhymed prose contained in the epistolographic formulary by Yom Tov Ben Ḥannah, scribe to the Jewish community of Montalban, in the Kingdom of Aragon. Written a few years after 1391 by the scribe on behalf of the local aljama, the letter was sent to the trustees of the Jewish community of Daroca, and its purpose was to collect money from Yosef Caro, a Jewish smith who had fled from Montalban to there, following a dispute with another elderly smith who was an apostate. A reading of the Hebrew text shows that the conflict goes beyond a simple dispute between craftsmen, and involves a clash between Jews and their former brethren. This new phenomenon of mass conversion is also corroborated by a Hebrew poem of the Montalban’s Jewish scribe that is edited and translated in addition. The analysis of the text reflects the tension between Jews and converts in the aftermath of the 1391 riots.

Jewish Memory and Local History: A Commemorative Liturgy from Early Modern Prague

When the Jews of Prague had passed unharmed through the volatile events of the early stages of the Thirty Years' War, from May 1618 to November 1620, they instituted a local annual commemoration of their safe deliverance observed, in part, by the recitation of selibot [liturgical poems] composed for the occasion by Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller The observance and its liturgy not only expressed gratitude to God, but also sought to crystallise the community's pro-Habsburg political stance. Moreover, in choosing locally-based models for the liturgy's form, its author both reflected and helped shape his community's historically-based local consciousness.

Rereading the Mishnah: A New Approach to Ancient Jewish Texts (review)

Reviewed by: Rereading the Mishnah: A New Approach to Ancient Jewish Texts Rivka Ulmer Rereading the Mishnah: A New Approach to Ancient Jewish Texts, by Judith Hauptman. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism, Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum, 109. 285 pp. $185.00. This work contains the results of many years of carefully reading and evaluating the relationship between the Tosefta and the Mishnah. The book has the following chapters: (1) Rethinking the Relationship between the Mishnah and the Tosefta; (2) The Tosefta as a Commentary on an Early Mishnah; (3) Rewriting Tosefta's Halakhic Paragraphs for Inclusion in the Mishnah; (4) Condensing Aggadah; (5) Editing for the Ease of Memory; (6) From Tosefta to Mishnah to Talmud; (7) A New Model of the Mishnah-Tosefta Relationship. This book contains a bibliography and an index that lists sources, modern authors, and subjects. Most of the materials were presented as papers at [End Page 200] academic conferences such as the Association for Jewish Studies Conferences; this reviewer was present at virtually all of Judith Hauptman's presentations that led to this revolutionary book which sets forth the premise that the Tosefta preceded the Mishnah. Hauptman is justified in providing the following subtitle to her book: "A New Approach to Ancient Jewish Texts." Her engagement with the tannaitic stratum of rabbinic legal texts, which led to the redaction of the Mishnah and the Tosefta, challenges the widely accepted Lehrmeinung (the view that is commonly taught) as to the chronology of these two rabbinic documents. The prevailing understanding has been that subsequent to the creation of the Mishnah, the Tosefta was an addendum, supplement, or afterthought to the Mishnah. However, other scholars have noted that the interrelationship between the two texts is far more complex. For example, referring to Shamma Friedman, Günter Stemberger states that "the Tosefta often seems to have the more original arrangement as well as the more primitive form of the halakhah itself"; he emphasizes that the connections between the Tosefta and the Mishnah are "similar to the basic facts of the synoptic problem in New Testament studies" (Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, p. 152). Hauptman states that the Mishnah that is extant should be approached from the premise that the Tosefta and an (assumed) "Ur-Mishnah" were the base documents; this approach resembles New Testament scholarship which contends that parts of the Gospels are based upon the "Q" source. Although Hauptman presents a highly provocative and partially convincing argument to support her position, nevertheless, her conclusion is problematic since we have little documentary evidence to corroborate her hypothesis. The term "Ur-Mishnah" seems to be based on the notion of an "Urtext," i.e., the precursor of an edited text. Hauptman presents the reader with a new model which involves reading the Mishnah as a response to this "Ur-Mishnah" and to the Tosefta. For example, according to Hauptman, the extensive aggadic material concerning the Exodus that is found in the Tosefta has been "condensed" in the Mishnah. Still another example offered by Hauptman is that on occasion the redactor of the Mishnah adds narrative material to make his point and in the process rewrites Toseftan halakhot. This expansive strategy by the Mishnaic redactor appears to be the reversal of the "condensation" response. These conflicting redactional approaches demonstrate that in order to maintain her hypothesis Hauptman has to make comparisons unit by unit. An example of the condensation procedure in the Mishnah is based upon Tosefta, Yom Tov 2:3; someone forgot to set an Eruv and there are questions in respect to what he and other people may prepare on his behalf. The redactor of the Mishnah omits this passage; for the redactor of the Mishnah the [End Page 201] "ruling is after the fact," whereas the Tosefta presents the ruling "ab initio." The problematic relationship between the Mishnah and the Tosefta is illustrated in the following passages: Click for larger view View full resolution Table 1. Hauptman contends that in the above texts the redactor of the Mishnah was aware of a preceding Toseftan document. In support of her position Hauptman asks: "If the redactor of the Mishnah knows...

Medieval

External Contacts and the Economy of Late Roman and Post‐Roman Britain. Edited by Kenneth Dark Gregory the Great and his World. By R. A. Markus Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West. Edited by Guy Halsall Colonial England, 1066–1215. By J. C. Holt The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers. Edited and translated by R. H. C. Davis and Marjorie Chibnall Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe. Edited by Anne J. Duggan Montjoie: Studies in Crusade History in Honour of Hans Eberhard Mayer. Edited by Benjamin Z. Kedar, Jonathan Riley‐Smith and Rudolf Hiestand The First Crusade: Origins and Impact. Edited by Jonathan Phillips Peasants, Merchants and Markets: Inland Trade in Medieval England, 1150–1350. By James Masschaele The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople. By D. E. Queller and T. F. Madden The Capture of Constantinople: The ‘Hystoria Constantinopolitana’ of Gunther of Pairis. Edited and translated by A. J. Andrea The Golden Age of Aragonese Jewry: Community and Society in the Crown of Aragon, 1213–1327. By Yom Tov Assis Controlling Misbehavior in England, 1370–1600. By M. K. McIntosh On the Origin of the Ottoman Emperors. By Theodore Spandounes. Translated and edited by Donald M. Nicol The Protestant Reformation in Ireland, 1590–1641. By Alan Ford The Reformations in Ireland: Traditions and Confessionalism, 1400–1690. By Samantha A. Meigs

Ashkenazic Rationalism and Midrashic Natural History: Responses to the New Science in the Works of Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller (1578–1654)

The ArgumentBetween 1550 and 1650, the intellectual elite of Ashkenazic (German-and Yiddish-speaking) Jews, including rabbis such as Yom Tov Lipmann Heller (1578–1654), showed a marked interest in astronomy, and to a lesser degree in the natural sciences generally. This is one aspect of the assimilation of medieval Jewish rationalism by that group. Passages from Heller‘s writings show his familiarity with medieval and early modern Hebrew astronomical texts, and his belief that astronomy should be studied by all Jewish schoolboys. Heller‘s astronomical views were then influenced by the discoveries and debates of his period. Between 1614 and the 1630‘s, Heller moved from an Aristotelian to a Tychonic view of the nature of the celestial bodies. Inspired, furthermore, by the notion of a natural order subject to change, and basing himself on the exegesis of ancient rabbinic texts, Heller offered what we have termed” midrashic natural histories”: namely, a hypothesis concerning the development of a certain type of animal, and another concerning the dimming of the moon and its movement into a lower orbit.

Jacob Robinson — In Memoriam

Jacob, son of David and Bluma Robinson and the eldest of seven brothers, was born in the little Lithuanian village of Serijai, near Suwalk on the German frontier, then part of the Czarist Empire. Among his distinguished forebears was Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller, author of the Mishna commentary Tosephot Yom Tov. His father, a well-known scholar, teacher and maskil of Wistyten (Vishtinetz) and a prominent member of the Jewish community, had been its spokesman on several occasions, and had represented it in meetings both with the Czar and with the Kaiser. A sense of Jewish public service was natural in the Robinson household.In the summer of 1914, as the war-clouds were gathering, Jacob graduated in the Faculty of Law of the University of Warsaw. He went there not so much from choice, but because Czarist anti-Jewish legislation prevented him from studying at the great Russian centres of higher learning. Shortly after the outbreak of the First World War on 1 August 1914 (in the East), he enlisted in the Russian Army under special recruitment plans for university graduates (universanti). He served for about a year, and then was taken prisoner by the Germans after Vilna fell to them, in 1915. He was to remain in captivity in German Prisoner of War camps until the end of the War. There he had a hard time of it, and during a period of about 30 months he was in no less that eight different POW camps, where he established himself as an unofficial leader and spokesman of the Jewish POW's and of the Russian POW's as well, no doubt an early manifestation of his sense of universal humanism which was to show itself on so many occasions later.