Biblia Hebraica & Constantinople

Everytime I think I’m out, they pull me back in! I refer of course to the Jews. As Justin has pointed out in his comment here, I must indeed point out the book with which he kindly gifted me yesterday (for an early feast of St Justin Martyr): the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, ed. K. Elliger and (or should I say et?) W. Rudolph (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1983). My Hebrew is, of course, almost entirely nil (I’m even fuzzy on parts of the alphabet), but that doesn’t make it any less cool to get it. In fact, it makes it a little cooler I think.

The other piece of Judaica I came across is more apropos for today specifically. A simple Google search turned up this pdf of an English translation of a wonderful poem called ‘A Hebrew Lament from Venetian Crete on the Fall of Constantinople’, by Michael ben Shabbetai Cohen Balbo (1420?-1484), and trans. Avi Sharon:

Behold the noise of the bruit is come,
A great commotion out of the North Country,
Between Migdol and the sea,
A great captivity;
The daughter of my people of my ban.
They have destroyed my vineyard
And the multitude of my people.

The day star, son of the morning,
Has fallen from heaven
Like a thing of no light,
The quiver rattles against it,
For He dissolves the bonds of kings.
They made long their furrows,
The glittering spear and shield
While those brought up in scarlet
Are now at their wits end,
Their souls slung out like the pouch of a sling.
And Bela died.

In the desolate valleys
They are embracing dunghills,
As the earth herself laments.
There shall be a consumption in the midst of the land,
For the earth is utterly broken down.

There went a proclamation throughout the host:
‘Woe unto us! For the day goeth away.’
And the voice said: ‘Cry!’
And he said: ‘What shall I cry? All flesh is grass
As the gleaming grapes when the vintage is done.’
The heavens above are black.
He has drunk at the hand of the Lord
A cup of trembling,
And the stars of heaven and night’s constellations
Shall not give their light,
Their visage is blacker than coal.
The sun shall be darkened
And the moon as black
As the tents of Kedar,
With neither form nor comeliness.

Behold their valiant ones cry without!
Behold you fast for strife and debate!
The ambassadors of peace shall weep bitterly,
They shall set up a great sign beside him.

Therefore I said—‘Look away from me
For I shall weep bitterly,
Labor not to comfort me,
For with the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt.
I am black.’

Astonishment has taken hold of me
And trembling there
Like the pangs of a woman that travails,
And my knees strike one against the other,
Therefore are my loins filled with pain.
He has trodden under foot my mighty men
In the midst of me,
For it is a day of trouble and of treading down and
of perplexity.
Who has given Israel up to the robbers,
Whose height was like the height of cedars,
A great eagle, with great wings, long-winged,
Full of feathers of many colours.
Riphat and Togarmah,
Those that dwell on high, the lofty city,
the host and the stars, now cast down to the ground,
Unto those that peep and mutter.

Woe is me now, for my soul is made weary by
murderers.

Be sure to read the interesting ‘Translator’s Note’ in the original pdf, where Sharon points out its ‘curiously “modernist” method of quotation and allusion’, and calls it ‘a pastiche of scripture drawn largely from Isaiah, Jeremiah and Lamentation’.

Judaica

Well, I’ve got a couple of things relative to Judaism that I’d like to post, and no good excuse for posting any of them by themselves or apropos of anything else, so I’m lumping them together as 'Judaica' (it's what the bookstores do anyway, isn't it?). First of all, last week I read with great enjoyment a lecture by the Jewish scholar Martin S. Jaffee of the University of Washington called Inner-Worldly Monasticism: Towards a Model of Rabbinic-Halakhic Spirituality (Etna, CA: Center for Orthodox Traditionalist Studies, 2006). Yes, it seems Professor Jaffee is a good friend of Archbishop Chrysostomos of Etna, and thus this piece, being ‘free of the superficies of ecumenism and religious relativism’, has found its way into the CTOS catalogue (Archbishop Chrysostomos, Preface, p. 7).

Apart from Jaffee’s thesis itself, I am quite taken with his bibliography (as given in the footnotes), and especially in the opening parts of the lecture where the primary focus is on presuppositions in the field of religious studies. I fully intend to track down some of these materials, as well as to purchase my own copy of this book (I read it on loan from a friend). Anyway, what I wanted to post, aside from a mention and general opinion of the book, was an interesting story from the Talmud that Jaffee tells quite briefly. It is told as an illustration of the way sex was treated ascetically by the Babylonian Sages, despite their being married:

The Babylonian Talmud, therefore, records stories of Sages who regularly left their wives for their Masters, taking up a life that Boyarin labels as that of the ‘married monk’ (Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture [Berkeley, et al.: U of California, 1993], p. 165). Some would return home every week to fulfill their Torah obligation to satisfy their wives (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Ketubot [‘Marriage Contracts’], folio 61b); others would return annually, and others, notably Rabbi Akiva, whom we met in the above-cited Tosefta—stayed away for thirteen years. Upon entering his village to reacquaint himself with his wife, he heard a villager taunting her: ‘That husband of yours seems to have left you a widow!’ Akiva heard also her reply: ‘Let him stay away another thirteen years, if Torah is his preoccupation!’ With his wife’s explicit wish clearly stated, Akiva wordlessly turned around and did just that (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Nedarim [‘Vows’], folio 50a). (Jaffee, p. 48)

The second thing I wanted to post was my favourite passage from Chaim Potok’s The Chosen (NY: Fawcett Columbine, 1995), a tale of two friends and their fathers. I saw the movie years ago, bought the book in college, and finally read it at some point three years ago or so (after my own son was born). The scene is at the end, when Reb Saunders is explaining to Reuven why he quit speaking to his son Daniel outside of his Talmud lessons when he was still a boy:

Reuven, the Master of the Universe blessed me with a brilliant son. And he cursed me with all the problems of raising him. Ah, what it is to have a brilliant son! Not a smart son, Reuven, but a brilliant son, a Daniel, a boy with a mind like a jewel. Ah, what a curse it is, what an anguish it is to have a Daniel, whose mind is like a pearl, like a sun. Reuven, when my Daniel was four years old, I saw him reading a story from a book. And I was frightened. He did not read the story, he swallowed it, as one swallows food or water. There was no soul in my four-year-old Daniel, there was only his mind. He was a mind in a body without a soul. It was a story in a Yiddish book about a poor Jew and his struggles to get to Eretz Yisroel before he died. Ah, how that man suffered! And my Daniel enjoyed the story, he enjoyed the last terrible page, because when he finished it he realized for the first time what a memory he had. He looked at me proudly and told me back the story from memory, and I cried inside my heart. I went away and cried to the Master of the Universe, ‘What have you done to me? A mind like this I need for a son? A heart I need for a son, a soul I need for a son, compassion I want from my son, righteousness, mercy, strength to suffer and carry pain, that I want from my son, not a mind without a soul!’ (pp. 276-7)

I’m sure one has to read it in its full context, as the powerful explanation of an ongoing source of pain in these characters’ lives, but I actually shed tears when I read those words the first time.

Lastly, another book—this, one I have not read and am not certain that I shall. It’s called The Book of Customs: A Complete Handbook for the Jewish Year, by Scott-Martin Kosofsky (SF: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), and, as the cover tells us, it was ‘inspired’ by a Yiddish work called the Minhogimbukh, published in Venice in 1593. Following the Jewish liturgical year, it contains explanations and details of the prayers and rituals, and even minor customs, appropriate at various times, including such modern observances as the Yom Hashoah on the twenty-seventh of Nisan. It is filled with interesting marginal notes, many of them only tangentially related to the text, as well as woodcuts reproduced from the 1593 Minhogimbukh (such as the illustration of a Havdalah ceremony above). It is a fascinating, beautiful book, which Lawrence Kushner in his Foreword calls ‘an example of graphic art at its finest’ (p. ix), and I really wish we Orthodox Christians also had something like it in English.

I say that I’m not certain I’ll read it, but this is only because it’s a big commitment for something that I have no practical use for, nor even a point of reference for (it’s hard to understand a description of a ritual that you’ve never seen and never will see). In fact, although I saw it at a Barnes & Noble or Borders a few years ago and thought it was really neat, a cover price of $29.95 was far too much to pay for something like that. I wouldn’t have bought it at all if I hadn’t found it at Aladdin for $14.95 and if it hadn’t been so beautiful. So, for any Jews that come across this, I highly recommend it, but for Orthodox (or other Christians), unless you really want to learn about all of the details of the Jewish liturgical calendar or you just love beautifully printed books no matter what they’re about, I suppose this may not hold much interest for you.

I will, however, post something from it that I find interesting per se. As Kosofsky writes in a prefatory note entitled ‘A Welcome from 1593’:

The longtime custom of the prefatory poem has mostly died out, except in books that are entirely poetic. Since ancient times, such poems were the means by which the reader was enticed to buy the work. . . .

The ‘improved, expanded, and illustrated’ Minhogimbukh of 1593, the old Book of Customs, which inspired this book, included a delightful prefatory poem that describes, commends, and celebrates the book’s contents; one can’t imagine a more concise rendering. The poem comprises thirty-five long lines (seventy lines written in the standard English form), each a rhymed couplet. . . .

The following translation of the original Minhogimbukh poem was rendered into rhyming English especially for this book by the British poet Arthur Boyars, the son of a noted cantor. It is faithful to both the substance and spirit of the Yiddish original. (pp. xxxi-xxxii)

I shall give the beginning and end, omitting the lengthy summary of many of the customs and facts found in the middle (pp. xxxii, xxxiv):

All praise be to the Lord our God
Who brought us to this present road
With laws and customs fit for printing
And lovely pictures fit for minting.
Near and distant are their sources,
From starters to those who’ve done their courses.
Even those who cannot lift or read it
Will soon find out they really need it.
All will be pros alike and know the ruling
For every possible occasion, and no fooling!
Just like Rabbi Ḥutzpis, on one leg standing
Learned the whole Torah—a thing demanding!
As if he’d spent a lifetime learning
And got the answers right, simply by yearning!
. . .

Therefore buy our Book of Customs and don’t delay,
And then make sure you use it night and day.
On Tishah b’Av as well as Purim.
On Rosh Hashanahs and Yom Kippurim;
Whatever joy or pain’s your measure
This book will prove your greatest treasure.
Our God of blessed name guard us from all that’s vile,
Return Your people Israel from long Exile!

Amen.

As many Logismoi readers will no doubt have guessed, I for one am fully convinced that the custom of the prefatory poem must be revived. I don’t know how serious critics would rate my powers as a poet, but I would be willing to take commissions for prefatory poems. After all, I’m not sure what ‘serious critics’ would make of the Minhogimbukh’s preface either!

What Israel Means to Me, Apparently

A funny thing happened to me about a year and a half ago. My dad gave me a package that had arrived at his house, where I had lived until my senior year in college, addressed to me from Jewish Lights. Inside was the book A Dream of Zion: American Jews Reflect on Why Israel Matters to Them, ed. Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2007). There was also a letter which read (and by the way, the creative use of bold-faced type is theirs):

October 3, 2007

Dear Contributor to A Dream of Zion:

Enclosed please find your complimentary copy of A Dream of Zion: American Jews Reflect on Why Israel Matters to Them. On behalf of Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin and Jewish Lights Publishing, thank you for your contribution to this valuable resource.

If you would like to obtain additional copies for family, friends or colleagues, we will extend to you a special contributor’s discount through November 15, 2007. The retail price is $24.99. Your cost will be at a 50% discount: $12.50 per copy, plus shipping and handling. An order form is enclosed with this letter for your convenience. You may mail it to Jewish Lights Publishing, P.O. Box 237, Woodstock, VT 05091 or fax it to us at 802-457-4004. Or if you prefer, you can call us with your order at 800-962-4544 or visit our website at http://www.jewishlights.com/.

We hope you’ll help us spread the word about A Dream of Zion by mentioning the book to colleagues and friends.

Very truly yours,
Stuart M. Matlins
Publisher and President

Now, I didn’t recall contributing to such a book, and since I’m not a Jew (though I am an American) I would be surprised if anything I had written had been included. So at first I thought they had simply put the wrong label on the package or something.

But upon closer inspection, the mistake went deeper. The book is an anthology of very personal reflections, grouped according to the thrust of the contributor’s view (to summarise: Ancestral Home, Refuge from Anti-Semitism, Part of My Faith, Light Unto the Nations, Historical Perspective). They are not titled, but simply headed by the name and a brief bio of the individual contributor, all except those in the final section being names that were previously unfamiliar to me (saving only Arthur Kurzweil). But on p. 160, in the ‘Light Unto the Nations’ section, I found the following contributor:

Aaron Press Taylor is a student at Brandeis University where he transferred after three semesters at Yeshiva University. He is an alumnus of the Reform youth movement and its various leadership programs, and has spent significant time in Israel.

It occurred to me that JL either has two Aaron Taylors in their database, or they only have one—me. The only reason they have me in there is that at some point during my freshman year in college, I bought a copy of Abraham Joshua Heschel’s A Passion for Truth (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 1995) at a now sadly defunct local bookshop. I never did read the book (which I believe sadly perished in a 2000 mould tragedy), but I did fill out a postcard with my name, address, and interests and received at least one catalogue. Apparently what had happened was that when they looked for Aaron Press Taylor’s address in their database in order to print out a label, they saw ‘Aaron Taylor’ and thought they had found their man.

Well, I realised that if I did nothing, the real Aaron Taylor may be left wondering where his complimentary contributor’s copy was (as I myself wondered on another occasion when I discovered a book had been published containing a paper I’d written). I called the number on the letter and explained everything to the nice, presumably Jewish girl on the other line. I was told that the real Mr Taylor would be sent his copy and that I could keep mine, despite being neither Jewish nor a contributor.

Although the premise of the book strikes me as something like a high school essay assignment—‘What Israel Means to Me’—I read a few of the pieces, and they certainly are thought-provoking. Mr Taylor’s essay, largely focusing on his sense of being spiritually drawn to Israel despite being ‘usually rational, sometimes even agnostic’ (p. 161), ends with the suggestion that he will help ‘to fulfill the Jewish hope that Israel will ultimately stand as a beacon, just and upright in its values among the nations’ (p. 162). But then, of course, Arthur Green among others feels that despite Israel’s successes, its ‘stand as a beacon’ has been marred by ‘the essential moral failing of Israel—its inability to deal fairly with the rights and even the full humanity of the other people with whom it shares a homeland’ (p. 153). Finally, Ariel Beery’s essay highlighted for me one of the essential differences between Jews and Christians, who have ‘no continuing city’ on earth (Heb. 13:14). Beery is firmly convinced, ‘We Jews are not just a spiritual community—we are a people, one that will only fulfill its collective potential with a state in which we can hammer out the details’ (p. 173). This seems to me to be hitching one’s wagon to a falling star. But no one asked what Israel means to me.

Magical Helpers & Rabbi Loew of Prague

I was watching The Sword in the Stone with my kids yesterday evening, and I noticed there is a scene where Merlyn (I use T.H. White’s spelling) is using magic to do the young Arthur’s kitchen chores, complete with animated brooms and mops working on their own. I remarked to the children that after seeing ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ piece from Disney’s Fantasia, I’d be afraid to use magic for something like that.

This reminded me of something I’d read quite some time ago. For those who are not aware, the Disney piece uses music (Paul Dukas’s L’apprenti sorcier, 1897) and a story which are both based on a short ballad by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Der Zauberlehrling (1797). While it seems to be commonly accepted that Goethe’s poem is in turn based on a story from the Φιλοψευδής ἤ Ἀπιστῶν of Lucian of Samosata, I was fascinated to discover a footnote that mentioned it in Gershom Scholem’s essay, ‘The Idea of the Golem’ (On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, trans. Ralph Manheim [NY: Schocken, 1969], pp. 158-204). First, Scholem gives the following synopsis of an old story about the famous Rabbi Loew of Prague:

The story is that Rabbi Loew fashioned a golem who did all manner of work for his master during the week. But because all creatures need to rest on the Sabbath, Rabbi Loew turned his golem back into clay every Friday evening, by taking away the name of God. Once, however, the rabbi forgot to remove the shem. The congregation was assembled for services in the synagogue and had already recited the ninety-second Psalm [Ps. 91 in the LXX], when the mighty golem ran amuck, shaking houses, and threatening to destroy everything. Rabbi Loew was summoned; it was still dusk, and the Sabbath had not really begun. He rushed at the raging golem and tore away the shem, whereupon the golem crumbled into dust. The rabbi then ordered that the Sabbath Psalm should be sung a second time, a custom which has been maintained ever since in that synagoguge, the Altneu Schul. The rabbi never brought the golem back to life, but buried his remains in the attic of the ancient synagogue, where they lie to this day. Once, after much fasting, Rabbi Ezekiel Landau, one of Rabbi Loew’s most prominent successors, is said to have gone up to look at the remains of the golem. On his return he gave an order, binding on all future generations, that no mortal must ever go up to that attic. (Scholem, pp. 202-3)

Then, after the words ‘Altneu Schul’, we find the following footnote:

. . . Much has been written about this legend of Rabbi Loew, which has attracted many writers. Our first literary record of it is in 1837, when it was used by Berthold Auerbach. We have already stressed (Note 1, p. 189) that Judah Rosenberg’s The Miraculous Deeds of Rabbi Loew with the Golem are not popular legends but tendentious modern fiction. For the versions current in Prague, cf. Nathan Grün, Der hohe Rabbi Löw und sein Sagenkreis, Prague, 1885, pp. 33-8, and Fr. Thieberger, The Great Rabbi Loew of Prague, London, 1955, pp. 93-6. It was later related in Bohemia that Goethe’s ballad, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, was inspired by a visit of Goethe to the Altneu Schul in Prague; cf. M.H. Friedländer, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Juden in Mähren, Brünn, 1876, p. 16. Friedländer speaks of this as a ‘well-known’ tradition. I have never been able to find out whether there is anything in it. (Scholem, p. 203, n. 1)