Gotthard Deutsch's interesting historical musings on Rabbenu Tam's grandma's socks, Neo-Orthodoxy, Solomon Schechter and Napoleon

To contact us Click HERE
Moravian-American Reform Rabbi Gotthard Deutsch was a very entertaining writer. Two volumes of his articles were published in the work Scrolls, and they're just a lot of fun to read. But much much more remains, scattered in various periodicals. A voracious reader of traditional responsa, which he gleaned for sources and polemics, and countless other works, his articles were written in a kind of very whimsical, chatty, personal and arrogant way which I like. Can't beat a piece by Gotthard Deutsch for a good anecdote. For fun, someone should mine his articles the same way he mined the Sdei Chemed (his favorite). Maybe one day I will collect them. 
In any case, I came across a polemical article in the American Israelite (Sep. 4, 1913) in which Deutsch responds to his conservative critics, specifically, to Solomon Schechter. Now, Reform rabbis like Deutsch had something of an obsession with so-called Neo-Orthodoxy, because it seemed to pull the carpet out from the central arguments of Reform Judaism. Deutsch and many others believed that Neo-Orthodox Judaism is no more authentic, no more traditional, and no more continuous with pre-modern rabbinic tradition than Reform Judaism is, but unlike Reform, it is not honest because it pretends that it is. Furthermore, the half-measure reforms of Neo-Orthodoxy did nothing to solve the modern dilemmas of the modern Jews, let us say, because according to them Jews must still miss two months of working days out of the calendar year, and so on. People like Deutsch intentionally used the term Neo-Orthodox to highlight the discontinuity with what they saw as the genuine traditional Orthodoxy of old and, in Deutsch's case, of his own childhood. A Noda Beyehuda, a Chasam Sofer, a R. Mordechai Banet - they were really Orthodox.
Now, Solomon Schechter had given a speech in which he was talking about how "cultured conservative Jews . . . are sometimes stigmatized as neo orthodox." Schechter said that this taunt can only hit its mark if the idea of something like an orthodox Jew taking a college degree is something new, and a paradox. But, said Schechter, "a better knowledge of Jewish history  would have taught them that culture combined with religion was the rule with the Jews. Culture without religion was an exception."
Taking this personally, Deutsch assumed that it was he who was being told he needed "a better knowledge of history." So he wrote an article in which he listed source after source of traditional Orthodox rabbis who were decidedly against culture and secular education. 
Of course both positions can be defended in different ways, because the truth is that the truth is complex. Neither Schechter nor Deutsch wanted to truck in complexities, so there you have it. In any case, toward the end of his piece Deutsch has this wonderful nugget about history-as-dry-facts. And that's really the purpose of this post:

"...the idea that history in general...is a dry array of indifferent facts. This argument, used by an orthodox, is on one level with a statement ascribed to Rabbi J. J. Oettinger of Berling, who said of Zunz: "If you wish to know what color Rashi's trousers were you ask Zunz, but if you wish to know what Rashi taught, you ak me." Similarly one of the leading liberals is fond of amusing his audiences with an attack on those who write volumes on the color of the socks which Rabbenu Tam's grandmother wore on Sabbath Hanukah. You see that this is the same clever speculation on the vanity of the Philistine. He is to be told that he is just as well, or even better, off for not knowing the results of painstaking scholarship, and naturally, Mr. Philistine appreciates the compliment. 

The actual situation is this. There are indeed a number of facts that are brought out by historical research that are in themselves indifferent. At the same time it goes with these things, as with furniture in a well arranged household. Every piece has to have its place, because our aesthetic sense, our love of order, demands it so. It may be, and in all likelihood, it is is indifferent, whether Alfred Sutro, the English playwright, was born in 1870, as the Jewish Encyclopedia states, or in 1863, as I found out recently, but there is no reason why we should not state a fact correctly, as long as we know it. 

In some instances such a trivial fact may be a valuable point in determining an important historical fact. Napoleon was of late often praised as a liberator of the Jews. Quite recently someone published reminiscences of his physician in St. Helena, who reports that Napoleon claimed credit for his work in emancipating the Jews. The emancipation, however, took place in 1791, while Napoleon did not become first consul until 1799. In this way we establish proof that the reports of this physician are not reliable. 

In another instance somebody-again I do not name him because I wish my statement to be understood, free from all personal prejudice-claimed Zunz for the conservatives. Such a general statement is easily made, and not one out of a hundred, perhaps out of a thousand readers, will have reason for doubting. I prove with quotations from chapter and verse, that Zunz said, he had no interest in Judaism, that rabbis, priests, lamas, fortune tellers, etc., were all the same to him, that all he cared for was Jews. I further proved with chapter and verse that Zunz dated Leviticus from post exilic times, which would result in making Yom Kippur an institution with which Moses had no more to do than he had with Hanukah or with Thanksgiving. I admit that such insistence on cold facts is occasionally inconvenient, but it's the only sound method of presenting history.

It goes without saying that while I think Deutsch is right abut lots in this, once again, he is incapable of nuance and also it does not occur to him that his interpretation might be incorrect. To take the reminiscences of Napoleon's physician. Is it really the case that because France emancipated its Jews in 1791, and Napoleon only became first consul in 1799 that the physician made it up? Can we not imagine that Napoleon himself may have given himself more credit than was due him? My goodness, Napoleon exaggerate? Never! Or, perhaps, even though technically the emancipation  of Jews in France happened in 1791, Napoleon might have been referring to other acts and initiatives he took concerning the civil rights of the Jews in France and conquered territories? Dismissing the testimony of the physician (and presumably all else he said) because two dates do not work the way he thinks it should is more of a failure of deeper thinking, or at least imagination, than good critical historical thinking. Same with Zunz. While maybe it did not occur to him in 1913, Zunz's opposition to Reform-style reform may well have been more significant in how to characterize him overall than his view of rabbis or the Torah's origin. 

In honor of Purim, let's parody 19th century Reform prayerbooks

To contact us Click HERE
Or so this is. Here is a hilarious parody of a siddur review for Purim 1875 in the American Hebrew (February 19, 1875/ 14 Adar 5635). It's long, but in my opinion entirely worth reading.
The background is that in those times there was a glut of new siddurim, each purporting to be a new minhag, or liturgy, that somehow improved on both the traditional siddur and all the competing reformed versions. Although my guess is that two or three volumes of equal size can be written to exhaustively discuss the topic, especially to include America, the definitive work is Petuchowski's Prayerbook Reform in Europe: the Liturgy of European liberal and Reform Judaism. From reading that work, one thing which cannot fail to escape the reader's attention is that however sympathetic one may be toward the concept of prayerbook reform, if one is, the unavoidable result is dozens if not hundreds of liturgies. As far as I can tell, this was not the desired goal of any of the prayer book reformers. Many of them surely must have rationalized that there wasn't really a traditional liturgy anyway, but there were dozens, and indeed in polemical discussions this was often pointed out. However, these new siddurim were so different from one another that the unintended effect of all of them was to render the synagogue service unfamiliar to all. 
So here we have a review of "Pulver's New Prayer-Book." Although there was a Louis Pulver in Australia who produced books for Jewish children, he never produced a prayer book. This review is completely fictional, as are the other names and periodicals and so on which appear in it. It appeared, as I said, in 14 Adar edition of the American Hebrew.
So Caleb, the reviewer, says that he is grateful to receive such a beautiful book, and he is sure it will became famous, unlike the siddurim of Joram, Dumsprach, Kleinfuss and Swartzkopf (all fake). He hopes Pulver will succeed better in the "minhag making business" than his predecessors. Then he pulls out the knives and enumerates all of the shortcomings of this new siddur, the Prayers for the Congregation Men of Uprightness.
There's no point in rewriting the review, but one sentence is worth pointing out: 

"Look here, Pulver, in what respect does your prayer book excel the old Roedelheim tefila? It is more adapted to the spirit of the age, you think. Don't be a fool. Speak out what you mean. It has less Hebrew, yes, and more doggerel English and German."

In short, it is humorous, but a very serious statement and a sign of the times.

Interesting Purim-y thing in a book of Psalms printed in 1723

To contact us Click HERE
I was perusing R. Yechiel Michl Epstein's edition of Psalms (Frankfurt 1723) and I noticed the following on the last page:



































After the ma'amadot additions in this book, after the table for prayers at the very end, is a list of the verses recited aloud by the congregation at the megillah reading on Purim. The megillah itself is not printed in this book. The explanation I could think of was that in 1723 printed humashim or Bibles which included Esther, much less personal megillah scrolls, were sufficiently rare that many people - presumably women, especially  (?) - could be present at the megillah reading with no text to follow along with.So here, at the end of a book of Psalms, it was deemed appropriate to list these verses for those who had their Psalter with them, but no Esther so that they could say them aloud with everyone. What do you think?

Gotthard Deutsch's interesting historical musings on Rabbenu Tam's grandma's socks, Neo-Orthodoxy, Solomon Schechter and Napoleon

To contact us Click HERE
Moravian-American Reform Rabbi Gotthard Deutsch was a very entertaining writer. Two volumes of his articles were published in the work Scrolls, and they're just a lot of fun to read. But much much more remains, scattered in various periodicals. A voracious reader of traditional responsa, which he gleaned for sources and polemics, and countless other works, his articles were written in a kind of very whimsical, chatty, personal and arrogant way which I like. Can't beat a piece by Gotthard Deutsch for a good anecdote. For fun, someone should mine his articles the same way he mined the Sdei Chemed (his favorite). Maybe one day I will collect them. 
In any case, I came across a polemical article in the American Israelite (Sep. 4, 1913) in which Deutsch responds to his conservative critics, specifically, to Solomon Schechter. Now, Reform rabbis like Deutsch had something of an obsession with so-called Neo-Orthodoxy, because it seemed to pull the carpet out from the central arguments of Reform Judaism. Deutsch and many others believed that Neo-Orthodox Judaism is no more authentic, no more traditional, and no more continuous with pre-modern rabbinic tradition than Reform Judaism is, but unlike Reform, it is not honest because it pretends that it is. Furthermore, the half-measure reforms of Neo-Orthodoxy did nothing to solve the modern dilemmas of the modern Jews, let us say, because according to them Jews must still miss two months of working days out of the calendar year, and so on. People like Deutsch intentionally used the term Neo-Orthodox to highlight the discontinuity with what they saw as the genuine traditional Orthodoxy of old and, in Deutsch's case, of his own childhood. A Noda Beyehuda, a Chasam Sofer, a R. Mordechai Banet - they were really Orthodox.
Now, Solomon Schechter had given a speech in which he was talking about how "cultured conservative Jews . . . are sometimes stigmatized as neo orthodox." Schechter said that this taunt can only hit its mark if the idea of something like an orthodox Jew taking a college degree is something new, and a paradox. But, said Schechter, "a better knowledge of Jewish history  would have taught them that culture combined with religion was the rule with the Jews. Culture without religion was an exception."
Taking this personally, Deutsch assumed that it was he who was being told he needed "a better knowledge of history." So he wrote an article in which he listed source after source of traditional Orthodox rabbis who were decidedly against culture and secular education. 
Of course both positions can be defended in different ways, because the truth is that the truth is complex. Neither Schechter nor Deutsch wanted to truck in complexities, so there you have it. In any case, toward the end of his piece Deutsch has this wonderful nugget about history-as-dry-facts. And that's really the purpose of this post:

"...the idea that history in general...is a dry array of indifferent facts. This argument, used by an orthodox, is on one level with a statement ascribed to Rabbi J. J. Oettinger of Berling, who said of Zunz: "If you wish to know what color Rashi's trousers were you ask Zunz, but if you wish to know what Rashi taught, you ak me." Similarly one of the leading liberals is fond of amusing his audiences with an attack on those who write volumes on the color of the socks which Rabbenu Tam's grandmother wore on Sabbath Hanukah. You see that this is the same clever speculation on the vanity of the Philistine. He is to be told that he is just as well, or even better, off for not knowing the results of painstaking scholarship, and naturally, Mr. Philistine appreciates the compliment. 

The actual situation is this. There are indeed a number of facts that are brought out by historical research that are in themselves indifferent. At the same time it goes with these things, as with furniture in a well arranged household. Every piece has to have its place, because our aesthetic sense, our love of order, demands it so. It may be, and in all likelihood, it is is indifferent, whether Alfred Sutro, the English playwright, was born in 1870, as the Jewish Encyclopedia states, or in 1863, as I found out recently, but there is no reason why we should not state a fact correctly, as long as we know it. 

In some instances such a trivial fact may be a valuable point in determining an important historical fact. Napoleon was of late often praised as a liberator of the Jews. Quite recently someone published reminiscences of his physician in St. Helena, who reports that Napoleon claimed credit for his work in emancipating the Jews. The emancipation, however, took place in 1791, while Napoleon did not become first consul until 1799. In this way we establish proof that the reports of this physician are not reliable. 

In another instance somebody-again I do not name him because I wish my statement to be understood, free from all personal prejudice-claimed Zunz for the conservatives. Such a general statement is easily made, and not one out of a hundred, perhaps out of a thousand readers, will have reason for doubting. I prove with quotations from chapter and verse, that Zunz said, he had no interest in Judaism, that rabbis, priests, lamas, fortune tellers, etc., were all the same to him, that all he cared for was Jews. I further proved with chapter and verse that Zunz dated Leviticus from post exilic times, which would result in making Yom Kippur an institution with which Moses had no more to do than he had with Hanukah or with Thanksgiving. I admit that such insistence on cold facts is occasionally inconvenient, but it's the only sound method of presenting history.

It goes without saying that while I think Deutsch is right abut lots in this, once again, he is incapable of nuance and also it does not occur to him that his interpretation might be incorrect. To take the reminiscences of Napoleon's physician. Is it really the case that because France emancipated its Jews in 1791, and Napoleon only became first consul in 1799 that the physician made it up? Can we not imagine that Napoleon himself may have given himself more credit than was due him? My goodness, Napoleon exaggerate? Never! Or, perhaps, even though technically the emancipation  of Jews in France happened in 1791, Napoleon might have been referring to other acts and initiatives he took concerning the civil rights of the Jews in France and conquered territories? Dismissing the testimony of the physician (and presumably all else he said) because two dates do not work the way he thinks it should is more of a failure of deeper thinking, or at least imagination, than good critical historical thinking. Same with Zunz. While maybe it did not occur to him in 1913, Zunz's opposition to Reform-style reform may well have been more significant in how to characterize him overall than his view of rabbis or the Torah's origin. 

In honor of Purim, let's parody 19th century Reform prayerbooks

To contact us Click HERE
Or so this is. Here is a hilarious parody of a siddur review for Purim 1875 in the American Hebrew (February 19, 1875/ 14 Adar 5635). It's long, but in my opinion entirely worth reading.
The background is that in those times there was a glut of new siddurim, each purporting to be a new minhag, or liturgy, that somehow improved on both the traditional siddur and all the competing reformed versions. Although my guess is that two or three volumes of equal size can be written to exhaustively discuss the topic, especially to include America, the definitive work is Petuchowski's Prayerbook Reform in Europe: the Liturgy of European liberal and Reform Judaism. From reading that work, one thing which cannot fail to escape the reader's attention is that however sympathetic one may be toward the concept of prayerbook reform, if one is, the unavoidable result is dozens if not hundreds of liturgies. As far as I can tell, this was not the desired goal of any of the prayer book reformers. Many of them surely must have rationalized that there wasn't really a traditional liturgy anyway, but there were dozens, and indeed in polemical discussions this was often pointed out. However, these new siddurim were so different from one another that the unintended effect of all of them was to render the synagogue service unfamiliar to all. 
So here we have a review of "Pulver's New Prayer-Book." Although there was a Louis Pulver in Australia who produced books for Jewish children, he never produced a prayer book. This review is completely fictional, as are the other names and periodicals and so on which appear in it. It appeared, as I said, in 14 Adar edition of the American Hebrew.
So Caleb, the reviewer, says that he is grateful to receive such a beautiful book, and he is sure it will became famous, unlike the siddurim of Joram, Dumsprach, Kleinfuss and Swartzkopf (all fake). He hopes Pulver will succeed better in the "minhag making business" than his predecessors. Then he pulls out the knives and enumerates all of the shortcomings of this new siddur, the Prayers for the Congregation Men of Uprightness.
There's no point in rewriting the review, but one sentence is worth pointing out: 

"Look here, Pulver, in what respect does your prayer book excel the old Roedelheim tefila? It is more adapted to the spirit of the age, you think. Don't be a fool. Speak out what you mean. It has less Hebrew, yes, and more doggerel English and German."

In short, it is humorous, but a very serious statement and a sign of the times.

Gotthard Deutsch's interesting historical musings on Rabbenu Tam's grandma's socks, Neo-Orthodoxy, Solomon Schechter and Napoleon

To contact us Click HERE
Moravian-American Reform Rabbi Gotthard Deutsch was a very entertaining writer. Two volumes of his articles were published in the work Scrolls, and they're just a lot of fun to read. But much much more remains, scattered in various periodicals. A voracious reader of traditional responsa, which he gleaned for sources and polemics, and countless other works, his articles were written in a kind of very whimsical, chatty, personal and arrogant way which I like. Can't beat a piece by Gotthard Deutsch for a good anecdote. For fun, someone should mine his articles the same way he mined the Sdei Chemed (his favorite). Maybe one day I will collect them. 
In any case, I came across a polemical article in the American Israelite (Sep. 4, 1913) in which Deutsch responds to his conservative critics, specifically, to Solomon Schechter. Now, Reform rabbis like Deutsch had something of an obsession with so-called Neo-Orthodoxy, because it seemed to pull the carpet out from the central arguments of Reform Judaism. Deutsch and many others believed that Neo-Orthodox Judaism is no more authentic, no more traditional, and no more continuous with pre-modern rabbinic tradition than Reform Judaism is, but unlike Reform, it is not honest because it pretends that it is. Furthermore, the half-measure reforms of Neo-Orthodoxy did nothing to solve the modern dilemmas of the modern Jews, let us say, because according to them Jews must still miss two months of working days out of the calendar year, and so on. People like Deutsch intentionally used the term Neo-Orthodox to highlight the discontinuity with what they saw as the genuine traditional Orthodoxy of old and, in Deutsch's case, of his own childhood. A Noda Beyehuda, a Chasam Sofer, a R. Mordechai Banet - they were really Orthodox.
Now, Solomon Schechter had given a speech in which he was talking about how "cultured conservative Jews . . . are sometimes stigmatized as neo orthodox." Schechter said that this taunt can only hit its mark if the idea of something like an orthodox Jew taking a college degree is something new, and a paradox. But, said Schechter, "a better knowledge of Jewish history  would have taught them that culture combined with religion was the rule with the Jews. Culture without religion was an exception."
Taking this personally, Deutsch assumed that it was he who was being told he needed "a better knowledge of history." So he wrote an article in which he listed source after source of traditional Orthodox rabbis who were decidedly against culture and secular education. 
Of course both positions can be defended in different ways, because the truth is that the truth is complex. Neither Schechter nor Deutsch wanted to truck in complexities, so there you have it. In any case, toward the end of his piece Deutsch has this wonderful nugget about history-as-dry-facts. And that's really the purpose of this post:

"...the idea that history in general...is a dry array of indifferent facts. This argument, used by an orthodox, is on one level with a statement ascribed to Rabbi J. J. Oettinger of Berling, who said of Zunz: "If you wish to know what color Rashi's trousers were you ask Zunz, but if you wish to know what Rashi taught, you ak me." Similarly one of the leading liberals is fond of amusing his audiences with an attack on those who write volumes on the color of the socks which Rabbenu Tam's grandmother wore on Sabbath Hanukah. You see that this is the same clever speculation on the vanity of the Philistine. He is to be told that he is just as well, or even better, off for not knowing the results of painstaking scholarship, and naturally, Mr. Philistine appreciates the compliment. 

The actual situation is this. There are indeed a number of facts that are brought out by historical research that are in themselves indifferent. At the same time it goes with these things, as with furniture in a well arranged household. Every piece has to have its place, because our aesthetic sense, our love of order, demands it so. It may be, and in all likelihood, it is is indifferent, whether Alfred Sutro, the English playwright, was born in 1870, as the Jewish Encyclopedia states, or in 1863, as I found out recently, but there is no reason why we should not state a fact correctly, as long as we know it. 

In some instances such a trivial fact may be a valuable point in determining an important historical fact. Napoleon was of late often praised as a liberator of the Jews. Quite recently someone published reminiscences of his physician in St. Helena, who reports that Napoleon claimed credit for his work in emancipating the Jews. The emancipation, however, took place in 1791, while Napoleon did not become first consul until 1799. In this way we establish proof that the reports of this physician are not reliable. 

In another instance somebody-again I do not name him because I wish my statement to be understood, free from all personal prejudice-claimed Zunz for the conservatives. Such a general statement is easily made, and not one out of a hundred, perhaps out of a thousand readers, will have reason for doubting. I prove with quotations from chapter and verse, that Zunz said, he had no interest in Judaism, that rabbis, priests, lamas, fortune tellers, etc., were all the same to him, that all he cared for was Jews. I further proved with chapter and verse that Zunz dated Leviticus from post exilic times, which would result in making Yom Kippur an institution with which Moses had no more to do than he had with Hanukah or with Thanksgiving. I admit that such insistence on cold facts is occasionally inconvenient, but it's the only sound method of presenting history.

It goes without saying that while I think Deutsch is right abut lots in this, once again, he is incapable of nuance and also it does not occur to him that his interpretation might be incorrect. To take the reminiscences of Napoleon's physician. Is it really the case that because France emancipated its Jews in 1791, and Napoleon only became first consul in 1799 that the physician made it up? Can we not imagine that Napoleon himself may have given himself more credit than was due him? My goodness, Napoleon exaggerate? Never! Or, perhaps, even though technically the emancipation  of Jews in France happened in 1791, Napoleon might have been referring to other acts and initiatives he took concerning the civil rights of the Jews in France and conquered territories? Dismissing the testimony of the physician (and presumably all else he said) because two dates do not work the way he thinks it should is more of a failure of deeper thinking, or at least imagination, than good critical historical thinking. Same with Zunz. While maybe it did not occur to him in 1913, Zunz's opposition to Reform-style reform may well have been more significant in how to characterize him overall than his view of rabbis or the Torah's origin. 

In honor of Purim, let's parody 19th century Reform prayerbooks

To contact us Click HERE
Or so this is. Here is a hilarious parody of a siddur review for Purim 1875 in the American Hebrew (February 19, 1875/ 14 Adar 5635). It's long, but in my opinion entirely worth reading.
The background is that in those times there was a glut of new siddurim, each purporting to be a new minhag, or liturgy, that somehow improved on both the traditional siddur and all the competing reformed versions. Although my guess is that two or three volumes of equal size can be written to exhaustively discuss the topic, especially to include America, the definitive work is Petuchowski's Prayerbook Reform in Europe: the Liturgy of European liberal and Reform Judaism. From reading that work, one thing which cannot fail to escape the reader's attention is that however sympathetic one may be toward the concept of prayerbook reform, if one is, the unavoidable result is dozens if not hundreds of liturgies. As far as I can tell, this was not the desired goal of any of the prayer book reformers. Many of them surely must have rationalized that there wasn't really a traditional liturgy anyway, but there were dozens, and indeed in polemical discussions this was often pointed out. However, these new siddurim were so different from one another that the unintended effect of all of them was to render the synagogue service unfamiliar to all. 
So here we have a review of "Pulver's New Prayer-Book." Although there was a Louis Pulver in Australia who produced books for Jewish children, he never produced a prayer book. This review is completely fictional, as are the other names and periodicals and so on which appear in it. It appeared, as I said, in 14 Adar edition of the American Hebrew.
So Caleb, the reviewer, says that he is grateful to receive such a beautiful book, and he is sure it will became famous, unlike the siddurim of Joram, Dumsprach, Kleinfuss and Swartzkopf (all fake). He hopes Pulver will succeed better in the "minhag making business" than his predecessors. Then he pulls out the knives and enumerates all of the shortcomings of this new siddur, the Prayers for the Congregation Men of Uprightness.
There's no point in rewriting the review, but one sentence is worth pointing out: 

"Look here, Pulver, in what respect does your prayer book excel the old Roedelheim tefila? It is more adapted to the spirit of the age, you think. Don't be a fool. Speak out what you mean. It has less Hebrew, yes, and more doggerel English and German."

In short, it is humorous, but a very serious statement and a sign of the times.

Gotthard Deutsch's interesting historical musings on Rabbenu Tam's grandma's socks, Neo-Orthodoxy, Solomon Schechter and Napoleon

To contact us Click HERE
Moravian-American Reform Rabbi Gotthard Deutsch was a very entertaining writer. Two volumes of his articles were published in the work Scrolls, and they're just a lot of fun to read. But much much more remains, scattered in various periodicals. A voracious reader of traditional responsa, which he gleaned for sources and polemics, and countless other works, his articles were written in a kind of very whimsical, chatty, personal and arrogant way which I like. Can't beat a piece by Gotthard Deutsch for a good anecdote. For fun, someone should mine his articles the same way he mined the Sdei Chemed (his favorite). Maybe one day I will collect them. 
In any case, I came across a polemical article in the American Israelite (Sep. 4, 1913) in which Deutsch responds to his conservative critics, specifically, to Solomon Schechter. Now, Reform rabbis like Deutsch had something of an obsession with so-called Neo-Orthodoxy, because it seemed to pull the carpet out from the central arguments of Reform Judaism. Deutsch and many others believed that Neo-Orthodox Judaism is no more authentic, no more traditional, and no more continuous with pre-modern rabbinic tradition than Reform Judaism is, but unlike Reform, it is not honest because it pretends that it is. Furthermore, the half-measure reforms of Neo-Orthodoxy did nothing to solve the modern dilemmas of the modern Jews, let us say, because according to them Jews must still miss two months of working days out of the calendar year, and so on. People like Deutsch intentionally used the term Neo-Orthodox to highlight the discontinuity with what they saw as the genuine traditional Orthodoxy of old and, in Deutsch's case, of his own childhood. A Noda Beyehuda, a Chasam Sofer, a R. Mordechai Banet - they were really Orthodox.
Now, Solomon Schechter had given a speech in which he was talking about how "cultured conservative Jews . . . are sometimes stigmatized as neo orthodox." Schechter said that this taunt can only hit its mark if the idea of something like an orthodox Jew taking a college degree is something new, and a paradox. But, said Schechter, "a better knowledge of Jewish history  would have taught them that culture combined with religion was the rule with the Jews. Culture without religion was an exception."
Taking this personally, Deutsch assumed that it was he who was being told he needed "a better knowledge of history." So he wrote an article in which he listed source after source of traditional Orthodox rabbis who were decidedly against culture and secular education. 
Of course both positions can be defended in different ways, because the truth is that the truth is complex. Neither Schechter nor Deutsch wanted to truck in complexities, so there you have it. In any case, toward the end of his piece Deutsch has this wonderful nugget about history-as-dry-facts. And that's really the purpose of this post:

"...the idea that history in general...is a dry array of indifferent facts. This argument, used by an orthodox, is on one level with a statement ascribed to Rabbi J. J. Oettinger of Berling, who said of Zunz: "If you wish to know what color Rashi's trousers were you ask Zunz, but if you wish to know what Rashi taught, you ak me." Similarly one of the leading liberals is fond of amusing his audiences with an attack on those who write volumes on the color of the socks which Rabbenu Tam's grandmother wore on Sabbath Hanukah. You see that this is the same clever speculation on the vanity of the Philistine. He is to be told that he is just as well, or even better, off for not knowing the results of painstaking scholarship, and naturally, Mr. Philistine appreciates the compliment. 

The actual situation is this. There are indeed a number of facts that are brought out by historical research that are in themselves indifferent. At the same time it goes with these things, as with furniture in a well arranged household. Every piece has to have its place, because our aesthetic sense, our love of order, demands it so. It may be, and in all likelihood, it is is indifferent, whether Alfred Sutro, the English playwright, was born in 1870, as the Jewish Encyclopedia states, or in 1863, as I found out recently, but there is no reason why we should not state a fact correctly, as long as we know it. 

In some instances such a trivial fact may be a valuable point in determining an important historical fact. Napoleon was of late often praised as a liberator of the Jews. Quite recently someone published reminiscences of his physician in St. Helena, who reports that Napoleon claimed credit for his work in emancipating the Jews. The emancipation, however, took place in 1791, while Napoleon did not become first consul until 1799. In this way we establish proof that the reports of this physician are not reliable. 

In another instance somebody-again I do not name him because I wish my statement to be understood, free from all personal prejudice-claimed Zunz for the conservatives. Such a general statement is easily made, and not one out of a hundred, perhaps out of a thousand readers, will have reason for doubting. I prove with quotations from chapter and verse, that Zunz said, he had no interest in Judaism, that rabbis, priests, lamas, fortune tellers, etc., were all the same to him, that all he cared for was Jews. I further proved with chapter and verse that Zunz dated Leviticus from post exilic times, which would result in making Yom Kippur an institution with which Moses had no more to do than he had with Hanukah or with Thanksgiving. I admit that such insistence on cold facts is occasionally inconvenient, but it's the only sound method of presenting history.

It goes without saying that while I think Deutsch is right abut lots in this, once again, he is incapable of nuance and also it does not occur to him that his interpretation might be incorrect. To take the reminiscences of Napoleon's physician. Is it really the case that because France emancipated its Jews in 1791, and Napoleon only became first consul in 1799 that the physician made it up? Can we not imagine that Napoleon himself may have given himself more credit than was due him? My goodness, Napoleon exaggerate? Never! Or, perhaps, even though technically the emancipation  of Jews in France happened in 1791, Napoleon might have been referring to other acts and initiatives he took concerning the civil rights of the Jews in France and conquered territories? Dismissing the testimony of the physician (and presumably all else he said) because two dates do not work the way he thinks it should is more of a failure of deeper thinking, or at least imagination, than good critical historical thinking. Same with Zunz. While maybe it did not occur to him in 1913, Zunz's opposition to Reform-style reform may well have been more significant in how to characterize him overall than his view of rabbis or the Torah's origin. 

A description of the internet* from 1889

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*Okay, not exactly, but it is the same kind of breathless, optimistic description of emerging technology. 
An interesting reflection from 1889 on cutting edge technology, like the phonograph, and its presumed future uses. I'm sure there a thousand like it, but I thought the call to study electricity in every school as a basic, necessary form of education is interesting, like calls to teach computer programming. From the Jewish Messenger.

In honor of Purim, let's parody 19th century Reform prayerbooks

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Or so this is. Here is a hilarious parody of a siddur review for Purim 1875 in the American Hebrew (February 19, 1875/ 14 Adar 5635). It's long, but in my opinion entirely worth reading.
The background is that in those times there was a glut of new siddurim, each purporting to be a new minhag, or liturgy, that somehow improved on both the traditional siddur and all the competing reformed versions. Although my guess is that two or three volumes of equal size can be written to exhaustively discuss the topic, especially to include America, the definitive work is Petuchowski's Prayerbook Reform in Europe: the Liturgy of European liberal and Reform Judaism. From reading that work, one thing which cannot fail to escape the reader's attention is that however sympathetic one may be toward the concept of prayerbook reform, if one is, the unavoidable result is dozens if not hundreds of liturgies. As far as I can tell, this was not the desired goal of any of the prayer book reformers. Many of them surely must have rationalized that there wasn't really a traditional liturgy anyway, but there were dozens, and indeed in polemical discussions this was often pointed out. However, these new siddurim were so different from one another that the unintended effect of all of them was to render the synagogue service unfamiliar to all. 
So here we have a review of "Pulver's New Prayer-Book." Although there was a Louis Pulver in Australia who produced books for Jewish children, he never produced a prayer book. This review is completely fictional, as are the other names and periodicals and so on which appear in it. It appeared, as I said, in 14 Adar edition of the American Hebrew.
So Caleb, the reviewer, says that he is grateful to receive such a beautiful book, and he is sure it will became famous, unlike the siddurim of Joram, Dumsprach, Kleinfuss and Swartzkopf (all fake). He hopes Pulver will succeed better in the "minhag making business" than his predecessors. Then he pulls out the knives and enumerates all of the shortcomings of this new siddur, the Prayers for the Congregation Men of Uprightness.
There's no point in rewriting the review, but one sentence is worth pointing out: 

"Look here, Pulver, in what respect does your prayer book excel the old Roedelheim tefila? It is more adapted to the spirit of the age, you think. Don't be a fool. Speak out what you mean. It has less Hebrew, yes, and more doggerel English and German."

In short, it is humorous, but a very serious statement and a sign of the times.

Gotthard Deutsch's interesting historical musings on Rabbenu Tam's grandma's socks, Neo-Orthodoxy, Solomon Schechter and Napoleon

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Moravian-American Reform Rabbi Gotthard Deutsch was a very entertaining writer. Two volumes of his articles were published in the work Scrolls, and they're just a lot of fun to read. But much much more remains, scattered in various periodicals. A voracious reader of traditional responsa, which he gleaned for sources and polemics, and countless other works, his articles were written in a kind of very whimsical, chatty, personal and arrogant way which I like. Can't beat a piece by Gotthard Deutsch for a good anecdote. For fun, someone should mine his articles the same way he mined the Sdei Chemed (his favorite). Maybe one day I will collect them. 
In any case, I came across a polemical article in the American Israelite (Sep. 4, 1913) in which Deutsch responds to his conservative critics, specifically, to Solomon Schechter. Now, Reform rabbis like Deutsch had something of an obsession with so-called Neo-Orthodoxy, because it seemed to pull the carpet out from the central arguments of Reform Judaism. Deutsch and many others believed that Neo-Orthodox Judaism is no more authentic, no more traditional, and no more continuous with pre-modern rabbinic tradition than Reform Judaism is, but unlike Reform, it is not honest because it pretends that it is. Furthermore, the half-measure reforms of Neo-Orthodoxy did nothing to solve the modern dilemmas of the modern Jews, let us say, because according to them Jews must still miss two months of working days out of the calendar year, and so on. People like Deutsch intentionally used the term Neo-Orthodox to highlight the discontinuity with what they saw as the genuine traditional Orthodoxy of old and, in Deutsch's case, of his own childhood. A Noda Beyehuda, a Chasam Sofer, a R. Mordechai Banet - they were really Orthodox.
Now, Solomon Schechter had given a speech in which he was talking about how "cultured conservative Jews . . . are sometimes stigmatized as neo orthodox." Schechter said that this taunt can only hit its mark if the idea of something like an orthodox Jew taking a college degree is something new, and a paradox. But, said Schechter, "a better knowledge of Jewish history  would have taught them that culture combined with religion was the rule with the Jews. Culture without religion was an exception."
Taking this personally, Deutsch assumed that it was he who was being told he needed "a better knowledge of history." So he wrote an article in which he listed source after source of traditional Orthodox rabbis who were decidedly against culture and secular education. 
Of course both positions can be defended in different ways, because the truth is that the truth is complex. Neither Schechter nor Deutsch wanted to truck in complexities, so there you have it. In any case, toward the end of his piece Deutsch has this wonderful nugget about history-as-dry-facts. And that's really the purpose of this post:

"...the idea that history in general...is a dry array of indifferent facts. This argument, used by an orthodox, is on one level with a statement ascribed to Rabbi J. J. Oettinger of Berling, who said of Zunz: "If you wish to know what color Rashi's trousers were you ask Zunz, but if you wish to know what Rashi taught, you ak me." Similarly one of the leading liberals is fond of amusing his audiences with an attack on those who write volumes on the color of the socks which Rabbenu Tam's grandmother wore on Sabbath Hanukah. You see that this is the same clever speculation on the vanity of the Philistine. He is to be told that he is just as well, or even better, off for not knowing the results of painstaking scholarship, and naturally, Mr. Philistine appreciates the compliment. 

The actual situation is this. There are indeed a number of facts that are brought out by historical research that are in themselves indifferent. At the same time it goes with these things, as with furniture in a well arranged household. Every piece has to have its place, because our aesthetic sense, our love of order, demands it so. It may be, and in all likelihood, it is is indifferent, whether Alfred Sutro, the English playwright, was born in 1870, as the Jewish Encyclopedia states, or in 1863, as I found out recently, but there is no reason why we should not state a fact correctly, as long as we know it. 

In some instances such a trivial fact may be a valuable point in determining an important historical fact. Napoleon was of late often praised as a liberator of the Jews. Quite recently someone published reminiscences of his physician in St. Helena, who reports that Napoleon claimed credit for his work in emancipating the Jews. The emancipation, however, took place in 1791, while Napoleon did not become first consul until 1799. In this way we establish proof that the reports of this physician are not reliable. 

In another instance somebody-again I do not name him because I wish my statement to be understood, free from all personal prejudice-claimed Zunz for the conservatives. Such a general statement is easily made, and not one out of a hundred, perhaps out of a thousand readers, will have reason for doubting. I prove with quotations from chapter and verse, that Zunz said, he had no interest in Judaism, that rabbis, priests, lamas, fortune tellers, etc., were all the same to him, that all he cared for was Jews. I further proved with chapter and verse that Zunz dated Leviticus from post exilic times, which would result in making Yom Kippur an institution with which Moses had no more to do than he had with Hanukah or with Thanksgiving. I admit that such insistence on cold facts is occasionally inconvenient, but it's the only sound method of presenting history.

It goes without saying that while I think Deutsch is right abut lots in this, once again, he is incapable of nuance and also it does not occur to him that his interpretation might be incorrect. To take the reminiscences of Napoleon's physician. Is it really the case that because France emancipated its Jews in 1791, and Napoleon only became first consul in 1799 that the physician made it up? Can we not imagine that Napoleon himself may have given himself more credit than was due him? My goodness, Napoleon exaggerate? Never! Or, perhaps, even though technically the emancipation  of Jews in France happened in 1791, Napoleon might have been referring to other acts and initiatives he took concerning the civil rights of the Jews in France and conquered territories? Dismissing the testimony of the physician (and presumably all else he said) because two dates do not work the way he thinks it should is more of a failure of deeper thinking, or at least imagination, than good critical historical thinking. Same with Zunz. While maybe it did not occur to him in 1913, Zunz's opposition to Reform-style reform may well have been more significant in how to characterize him overall than his view of rabbis or the Torah's origin. 

On an unusual attempt to sell the Hebrew poems of a living poet to Moses Mendelssohn's son, as the work of his father

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The other day I did one of my "Who am I?" posts (link), and the answer, which no one guessed but my thanks to those who tried, was Moses Mendelssohn of Hamburg (or, Mendelson, as he actually spelled his name). Here was the complete picture in which he is captioned:


































You can find this picture in the Jubilee volume of the Israelit commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, here. Mendelson (1780-1861), who was really surnamed Frankfurt, was Hirsch's maternal uncle. The reason why he is holding a book with the title Columbus is because Mendelson's chief work was his translation of Campe's Die Entdeckung von Amerika into Hebrew, which was his מצי×�ת ×”×�רץ החדשה, printed in Altona in 1807. The rest of Mendelson's output was mostly scatterings of poems and little articles in various journals. Notable exceptions included a short, anonymously published pamphlet, which contained a lengthy poem called בקשת הלמדין, featuring the letter lamed in each word, and what is supposed to be a Torah commentary called Schuschan-Eduth of which, I think, only one of two projected volumes appeared. I haven't seen this book, but the interesting introduction to this volume, as well as the aforementioned בקשת הלמדין, and basically most of his poems and essays, many of which are quite clever and fascinating, were collected and published after his death as ×¤× ×™ תבל - מוסר השכל, which was printed in Amsterdam in 1872. (The Torah introduction from Schuschan Eduth is, for some reason, two essays on preachers - basically parodying and excoriating the new style praedigers (preachers) and the old style maggidim.)
His book about Columbus has many interesting things about it, naturally, so here are a couple. In his introduction he writes about meeting Wessely in his hometown of Hamburg the year before the latter died. The aged master, certainly seen as the expert Hebrew poet of the age, gave him advice in writing Hebrew. Do not, he told him, merely cobble together biblical verses. Although we should understand this ourselves, Mendelson explains that he in fact means the newfangled melitzah style, which consisted of little more than that, weaving together pre-existing phrases from the Bible into a confusing and imprecise text that was supposed to be meaningful and poetic.
The book also includes a neat little glossary in the beginning, for naturally in a work such as this using Hebrew in new ways would be required. Clearly desiring to write only in Hebrew, or as much as possible, Mendelson explains, for example, that when he writes Rifat he means England! - and gives his source for the identification of this biblical land with England as Ben Gorion. Similarly, he used Elul for August - which is not at all something unusual.You find this quite often; Adar is March and so on. However, his glossary is the only time where I saw someone who used the Hebrew months this way point out that he is well aware that the months are not a perfect match, but that most of the days overlap in the Hebrew and English months. He uses the term Dagim Me-ofafim for flying fish, Kumar Romi for pope - although there is a Hebrew word for pope, ×�פיפיור, this word is not pure Hebrew (See E. Ben Yehuda Milon v. 1 pg. 346). Mendelson used Mored Ha-har for waterfall (and he adds in parentheses that he knows that the rabbinic Hebrew term is Hardalit (sort of) but apparently chooses not to use it because its origin is Greek).
Finally, the book also comes with a - not quite haskama, but a rishyon, apparently some formal necessity for printing a Hebrew book in Altona at the time, by its rabbi, Zvi Hirsch Zamosc (d. 1807), who was the last rabbi of the united triple community Altona-Wandsbeck-Hamburg. Zamosc gives his license and says something like "Whomever wishes to read it, those people who are edified by reading stories like this, permission is granted." The rishyon is given to "the delightful bachelor, maskil, the honorable Moses, son of the wonderful rabbi Mendel F"F [Frankfurt]."
In any case, hopefully people are still reading because here is where the fun part begins. In 1841 Moses Mendelssohn's son Joseph placed advertisements in journals and newspapers all over Germany requesting the public's assistance on a project in which he was engaged, namely the printing of his father's collected writings. So he asked the public to please send him any manuscript they might have written by his father, and he will purchase them for a fair price, or to send and he ensures its safe return. Here is an example of such an ad:


































One of the people who responded sent him some Hebrew poems by Moses Mendelson. Of Hamburg. And this person wanted to charge Joseph Mendelssohn for them and, as we shall see, he knew full well that they were written by the living poet - who was his friend, in fact - and not by the philosopher who had been dead for nearly 60 years. Joseph showed them to one of the editors who had been hired for the project, one Heymann Jolowicz, and he realized the deception. The story was originally reported in a Hamburg newspaper, but I cannot find this newspaper. So instead I will give you the version as it is was given in a "Hey, isn't this crazy!" kind of story in an American periodical called Bizarre, in 1855 (and this story was in fact copied from a French magazine from the same year, not the Hamburg newspaper).


























































As you can see, the story does not identify who made this deception; he is but "Dr. H..... of Berlin." The story makes a big deal about how Jolowicz (his last name cheerfully Americanized to "Jallowitz") was a great detective, and knew how rare poetic verse was in the Mendelssohn oeuvre. He discovered that Dr. H had actually published a Hebrew periodical 40 years earlier, and had included Hebrew poetry by Moses Mendelson of Hamburg, and these that were sent to Joseph Mendelssohn were unpublished poems by MM of Hamburg, that Dr. H tried to pass off as authentic. Actually, I am a little bewildered by how this deception was meant to happen for it seems that MM of Hamburg nearly always signed his work the same way, Moshe ben ha-torani ve-harabbni mohr"r Mendel F"F, or some variety. Not to mention that they were not in Moses Mendelssohn's handwriting. Were they supposed to be copies? Didn't Dr. H expect questions? While I guess Dr. H maybe thought he could fool Joseph Mendelssohn, it doesn't seem like it would have been a great feat for Jolowicz to detect the fraud and so of course he did.
But anyway, although Dr. H is not identified, we realize exactly who it is. But first, a portrait of Joseph Mendelssohn from 1830, aged 60:


























Dr. H, who tried to sell poems under false pretenses, is none other than Dr. Jeremias Heinemann, a very interesting individual whom, I will have to guess, was in financial straits when he tried to sell the work of his living friend off as the original Hebrew poems of Moses Mendelssohn himself. Heinemann was an educator and scholar, a publisher, a bible commentator, involved in the earliest stages of Reform as a member of the Westphalian consistory, moved away from that early position to the point that even Rabbi Akiva Eger was willing to give a haskama of sorts to his edition of Mendelssohn's Pentateuch, see below, and someone who had spent a good deal of his life involved with Mendelssohn's writings - both Mendelssohns, in fact. Here is a portrait of Heinemann's father, a rabbi named Rabbi Meinster (or Joachim) Heinemann (1747-1825). And yes, I give this because I don't have one of Dr. Heinemann himself:

Here is Rabbi Akiva Eger's haskamah - or really not-quite haskamah - to one of the volumes of Heinemann's chumash, called Mekor Hachajim, published in Berlin between 1830 and 1833 Although we will acknowledge that he is not exactly turning cartwheels with enthusiasm, reportedly Rabbi Akiva Eger did order a copy, as he listed in the subscribers. However, one might also grant that it is possible that Heinemann simply sent him a copy. I often wonder if the big league rabbis actually ordered the copies they are listed as having subscribed to or if, at least in some cases, they are listed because a copy was simply sent to them. You know, it's like how a musician struggles for years then makes it big and suddenly Gibson is sending them truckloads of free gear. In any case, it is certainly a nice letter and it is much more than a sentence or two. No wonder Heinemann printed it.




























In any case, so here's what happened. In the late 1810s Heinemann had a periodical called Jedidja. It was not a Hebrew journal, as Bizarre says; it was in German. However, it did have quite a nice amount of Hebrew material, poems and so on. It notably contains a little poetic translation by none other than Leopold Zunz, a very early literary production by him. Here it is:










































So this poem, Halayla (the night), is a translation of Sommernacht (Summer Night) by Klopstock. Compare the above with an English translation of Sommernacht:










































So Jedidja. Many interesting things, including work by Moses Mendelson of Hamburg. I will show the following, though, because I love finding English in non-English works. So here we have the following. What happened was, in 1815 the Duke of Sussex became a Patron of the Jews' Hospital and Orphan Asylum in London (link), which had the Hebrew title נוה הצדק. Sussex, a son of King George III, was a real ohev yisrael, which was not necessarily common in England at the time without a missionary motive, and a collector of Hebrew books.  In 1817 at the annual meeting of Jews' Hospital, Sussex came, apparently, and to celebrate this momentous occasion - poetry! And pageantry. A Hebrew poem was composed, and perhaps read, along with an English poem to be "recited by One of the Girls of the Institution." Another poem was written by Shalom Hakohen, one of the patron saints of the Haskalah (last editor of Hameasseph, later to publish Bikkurei Haittim, and several noted works of his own) who was living in London at the time (on him, and the London Chief Rabbi's haskamah to his book for children, see here). So the next year in Berlin Heinemann printed the poems for this occasion, including the English ode to be recited by a girl. Try to imagine a little Jewish orphan girl with her London accent of whatever manner it was, in 1817, reciting,
"Behold, we cry, our smiles of health,Our moral minds, our means of trade;Here have ye treasured up your wealth,And thus your offerings are repaid."
















































I should have given this above, but here is the title page for Jedidja:















































Now, in addition to publishing many letters by Mendelssohn (the first one) it also included a poem or two by Mendelson of Hamburg. Here is the end of one:





















Now, some 20 years later Heinemann revived the Jedidja periodical in Berlin. In the second go-around he included much interesting material, some recycled, some new. Apparently he was strapped for cash, or at least had a lot of copies of his Chumash Mekor Hachajim he was trying to sell, because he kept including ads for it, and descriptions of it. It is of some interest that he felt like pointing out that it included a map of Israel, following the Vilna Gaon:
















































In any case, only a few years earlier (1833) the following appeared in one of the volumes of the Chumash Mekor Chajim; a friendly letter from Moses Mendelson of Hamburg. That is, they were firm friends.



So it was that Dr. Jeremias Heinemann in Berlin allegedly tried to sell Joseph Mendelssohn Hebrew poems written by his friend Moses Mendelson of Hamburg, and this deception was discovered by Heymann Jolowicz whom, I might add, was one of the Reform rabbis in the synod I posted about the other day (link). His grand contribution to the Simchat Torah question was: "We should read Vezot Habracha once every three years." 
It should be noted that when the Collected Writings of Mendelssohn were published a couple of years later, the volume which included the entire German translation of the Pentateuch (in German, not Hebrew letters) came with an extensive introduction by Jolowicz, and he mentions Heinemann's Berlin edition of the Chumash in very nice terms, but does not mention this attempted fraud. Truth be told I feel a little badly about it myself, seeing as how even Jolowicz saw fit not to mention it. But as I said, I strongly suspect that Heinemann was motivated by economic desperation and should not be judged harshly.
Since previously I had mentioned Jolowicz's prize comment that  "We should read Vezot Habracha once every three years," and he was a better scholar than that suggests, we should talk about him. Eventually he moved to England, where his credentials as a learned scholar enabled him to receive a government stipend (interestingly, the materials relating to this process are online - it involved testimonials, a sponsor, personal statements, and a list of his published work). I would just like to call attention to a paper he delivered for the German Oriental Society in England in 1855. Here is the title page of the published version:
In the introduction, W. H. Black recommends the paper, writing that that "For many years I have been convinced that the printed text of some parts of the Hebrew Scriptures may be fairly subject to critical emendation, especially the Psalms, and other poetical portions of the Bible." He continues, that Jolowicz presents the evidence for the position that the Bible contains errors in need of emendation from rabbinic sources.
In the paper itself, Jolowicz refers to the different Versions, and the variants found in the collations of Kennicott and De Rossi, which prove that the text as found in the manuscripts have been subject to corruption. But also "the Talmudists, and the latter Rabbis, as well as the Chaldee parphrast [sic] Jonathan ben Uziel, not only knew various readings most strikingly different from our Canonical Text, but also determined by the interpretations of the same most important usages of religious life." He begins by declaring that the Talmud gives as authors of the books mostly different people from those for whom the books are named. The reason he mentions this is to set the stage for the idea that certain words had to have been interpolated by later copyists, such as Proverbs 25:1 ("King of Judah") words which, as he points out, are missing in some manuscript variants found by Kennicott. He continues by asserting that many "among the most orthodox and greatest authorities of post-Talmudical rabbis . . . did not less practice a strict criticism of the Biblical Text." And conveniently he writes "But this subject will be more conveniently treated of in another place." He goes on to list several dozen variants implied by the Targum called Jonathan, and in the Talmud, Midrash and Zohar, and a few instances in Rashi. He closes with a much-cited passage in Massechet Sopherim, which shows that there were variant readings in the Torah. He closes by quoting a letter from Leib Dukes which notes that one of the Oppenheim manuscripts at Oxford actually contains a masoretic note which gives an interesting variant for Number 12:16, saying that this variant is a more correct reading. Jolowicz notes that one such text corrected according to this manuscript was listed by Kennicott. The paper may be read here.
EDIT: To give Heinemann more his due as an interesting and creative person, I'd to call attention to the second half of my post here, where I refer to an interesting book by him which "I have never seen anything quite like," I wrote, and that "on the face of it it seems like one of the most effective methods of learning what the prayers mean that I have ever seen." Do take a look.
EDIT II: Another angle. Here is fascinating poem by Moses Mendelson of Hamburg, in tribute to Johannes Gutenberg on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Gutenberg's use of moveable type printing. This was printed in the Algeimeine Zeitung des Judentums May 2, 1840. Click them to enlarge and read:




What makes this all the more interesting is that Heinemann printed the same poem in his revived Jedidja in 1842. And there is no mention of Mendelson's authorship, not on the poem and not in the table of contents. Here is the first page from that reprinting. 


 

Gotthard Deutsch's interesting historical musings on Rabbenu Tam's grandma's socks, Neo-Orthodoxy, Solomon Schechter and Napoleon

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Moravian-American Reform Rabbi Gotthard Deutsch was a very entertaining writer. Two volumes of his articles were published in the work Scrolls, and they're just a lot of fun to read. But much much more remains, scattered in various periodicals. A voracious reader of traditional responsa, which he gleaned for sources and polemics, and countless other works, his articles were written in a kind of very whimsical, chatty, personal and arrogant way which I like. Can't beat a piece by Gotthard Deutsch for a good anecdote. For fun, someone should mine his articles the same way he mined the Sdei Chemed (his favorite). Maybe one day I will collect them. 
In any case, I came across a polemical article in the American Israelite (Sep. 4, 1913) in which Deutsch responds to his conservative critics, specifically, to Solomon Schechter. Now, Reform rabbis like Deutsch had something of an obsession with so-called Neo-Orthodoxy, because it seemed to pull the carpet out from the central arguments of Reform Judaism. Deutsch and many others believed that Neo-Orthodox Judaism is no more authentic, no more traditional, and no more continuous with pre-modern rabbinic tradition than Reform Judaism is, but unlike Reform, it is not honest because it pretends that it is. Furthermore, the half-measure reforms of Neo-Orthodoxy did nothing to solve the modern dilemmas of the modern Jews, let us say, because according to them Jews must still miss two months of working days out of the calendar year, and so on. People like Deutsch intentionally used the term Neo-Orthodox to highlight the discontinuity with what they saw as the genuine traditional Orthodoxy of old and, in Deutsch's case, of his own childhood. A Noda Beyehuda, a Chasam Sofer, a R. Mordechai Banet - they were really Orthodox.
Now, Solomon Schechter had given a speech in which he was talking about how "cultured conservative Jews . . . are sometimes stigmatized as neo orthodox." Schechter said that this taunt can only hit its mark if the idea of something like an orthodox Jew taking a college degree is something new, and a paradox. But, said Schechter, "a better knowledge of Jewish history  would have taught them that culture combined with religion was the rule with the Jews. Culture without religion was an exception."
Taking this personally, Deutsch assumed that it was he who was being told he needed "a better knowledge of history." So he wrote an article in which he listed source after source of traditional Orthodox rabbis who were decidedly against culture and secular education. 
Of course both positions can be defended in different ways, because the truth is that the truth is complex. Neither Schechter nor Deutsch wanted to truck in complexities, so there you have it. In any case, toward the end of his piece Deutsch has this wonderful nugget about history-as-dry-facts. And that's really the purpose of this post:

"...the idea that history in general...is a dry array of indifferent facts. This argument, used by an orthodox, is on one level with a statement ascribed to Rabbi J. J. Oettinger of Berling, who said of Zunz: "If you wish to know what color Rashi's trousers were you ask Zunz, but if you wish to know what Rashi taught, you ak me." Similarly one of the leading liberals is fond of amusing his audiences with an attack on those who write volumes on the color of the socks which Rabbenu Tam's grandmother wore on Sabbath Hanukah. You see that this is the same clever speculation on the vanity of the Philistine. He is to be told that he is just as well, or even better, off for not knowing the results of painstaking scholarship, and naturally, Mr. Philistine appreciates the compliment. 

The actual situation is this. There are indeed a number of facts that are brought out by historical research that are in themselves indifferent. At the same time it goes with these things, as with furniture in a well arranged household. Every piece has to have its place, because our aesthetic sense, our love of order, demands it so. It may be, and in all likelihood, it is is indifferent, whether Alfred Sutro, the English playwright, was born in 1870, as the Jewish Encyclopedia states, or in 1863, as I found out recently, but there is no reason why we should not state a fact correctly, as long as we know it. 

In some instances such a trivial fact may be a valuable point in determining an important historical fact. Napoleon was of late often praised as a liberator of the Jews. Quite recently someone published reminiscences of his physician in St. Helena, who reports that Napoleon claimed credit for his work in emancipating the Jews. The emancipation, however, took place in 1791, while Napoleon did not become first consul until 1799. In this way we establish proof that the reports of this physician are not reliable. 

In another instance somebody-again I do not name him because I wish my statement to be understood, free from all personal prejudice-claimed Zunz for the conservatives. Such a general statement is easily made, and not one out of a hundred, perhaps out of a thousand readers, will have reason for doubting. I prove with quotations from chapter and verse, that Zunz said, he had no interest in Judaism, that rabbis, priests, lamas, fortune tellers, etc., were all the same to him, that all he cared for was Jews. I further proved with chapter and verse that Zunz dated Leviticus from post exilic times, which would result in making Yom Kippur an institution with which Moses had no more to do than he had with Hanukah or with Thanksgiving. I admit that such insistence on cold facts is occasionally inconvenient, but it's the only sound method of presenting history.

It goes without saying that while I think Deutsch is right abut lots in this, once again, he is incapable of nuance and also it does not occur to him that his interpretation might be incorrect. To take the reminiscences of Napoleon's physician. Is it really the case that because France emancipated its Jews in 1791, and Napoleon only became first consul in 1799 that the physician made it up? Can we not imagine that Napoleon himself may have given himself more credit than was due him? My goodness, Napoleon exaggerate? Never! Or, perhaps, even though technically the emancipation  of Jews in France happened in 1791, Napoleon might have been referring to other acts and initiatives he took concerning the civil rights of the Jews in France and conquered territories? Dismissing the testimony of the physician (and presumably all else he said) because two dates do not work the way he thinks it should is more of a failure of deeper thinking, or at least imagination, than good critical historical thinking. Same with Zunz. While maybe it did not occur to him in 1913, Zunz's opposition to Reform-style reform may well have been more significant in how to characterize him overall than his view of rabbis or the Torah's origin. 

No Tefillin, No Leah - San Francisco Jewish wit Maftir on yahrzeits, Rabbi Jacob Joseph and 19th century American Yiddish

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The San Francisco correspondent for the American Israelite signed his dispatches Maftir, but he was actually Bavarian-born Isidor Nathan Choynski (c. 1835 - 1899). Here is Maftir:

From the book Jewish Voices of the California Gold Rush: A Documentary History, 1849-1880 by Ava Fran Kahn.
His pieces were quite witty and irreverent. Here is one fascinating piece from December 21, 1888, where he tells of his attempt at getting an aliya in shul on his father's yahrzeit, only he had no tefillin, even though he did own a pair written by "the finest sofer of Vilna" - so  "No Tefillin, no Leah." (Leah = 'liyah = aliyah)
Worth reading. I included another little excerpt from elsewhere in his column, because he refers to Rabbi Jacob Joseph, newly brought to New York to be Chief Rabbi as "the chief Chariff of the nation, His Excellency, Reb. Joseffele Yankele." Rabbi Jacob Joseph was, of course, known as R. Yaakov Charif in his native Vilna, and being a charif, a sharp Talmudic dialectician was deemed hilariously irrelevant to those American Jews who could not fathom appointing a maggid from Vilna as an alleged Chief Rabbi of the Jews in New York, much less seeing him - or anyone - as a chief rabbi of the United States.



















































































Also of interest to Maftir was the emerging Yiddish press in America, and he frequently pointed out what he thought were hilarious examples of American Yiddish. Thus, in one column from 1879 he refers to an expression by the editor of the Yudishe Gazetten:

On an unusual attempt to sell the Hebrew poems of a living poet to Moses Mendelssohn's son, as the work of his father

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The other day I did one of my "Who am I?" posts (link), and the answer, which no one guessed but my thanks to those who tried, was Moses Mendelssohn of Hamburg (or, Mendelson, as he actually spelled his name). Here was the complete picture in which he is captioned:


































You can find this picture in the Jubilee volume of the Israelit commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, here. Mendelson (1780-1861), who was really surnamed Frankfurt, was Hirsch's maternal uncle. The reason why he is holding a book with the title Columbus is because Mendelson's chief work was his translation of Campe's Die Entdeckung von Amerika into Hebrew, which was his מצי×�ת ×”×�רץ החדשה, printed in Altona in 1807. The rest of Mendelson's output was mostly scatterings of poems and little articles in various journals. Notable exceptions included a short, anonymously published pamphlet, which contained a lengthy poem called בקשת הלמדין, featuring the letter lamed in each word, and what is supposed to be a Torah commentary called Schuschan-Eduth of which, I think, only one of two projected volumes appeared. I haven't seen this book, but the interesting introduction to this volume, as well as the aforementioned בקשת הלמדין, and basically most of his poems and essays, many of which are quite clever and fascinating, were collected and published after his death as ×¤× ×™ תבל - מוסר השכל, which was printed in Amsterdam in 1872. (The Torah introduction from Schuschan Eduth is, for some reason, two essays on preachers - basically parodying and excoriating the new style praedigers (preachers) and the old style maggidim.)
His book about Columbus has many interesting things about it, naturally, so here are a couple. In his introduction he writes about meeting Wessely in his hometown of Hamburg the year before the latter died. The aged master, certainly seen as the expert Hebrew poet of the age, gave him advice in writing Hebrew. Do not, he told him, merely cobble together biblical verses. Although we should understand this ourselves, Mendelson explains that he in fact means the newfangled melitzah style, which consisted of little more than that, weaving together pre-existing phrases from the Bible into a confusing and imprecise text that was supposed to be meaningful and poetic.
The book also includes a neat little glossary in the beginning, for naturally in a work such as this using Hebrew in new ways would be required. Clearly desiring to write only in Hebrew, or as much as possible, Mendelson explains, for example, that when he writes Rifat he means England! - and gives his source for the identification of this biblical land with England as Ben Gorion. Similarly, he used Elul for August - which is not at all something unusual.You find this quite often; Adar is March and so on. However, his glossary is the only time where I saw someone who used the Hebrew months this way point out that he is well aware that the months are not a perfect match, but that most of the days overlap in the Hebrew and English months. He uses the term Dagim Me-ofafim for flying fish, Kumar Romi for pope - although there is a Hebrew word for pope, ×�פיפיור, this word is not pure Hebrew (See E. Ben Yehuda Milon v. 1 pg. 346). Mendelson used Mored Ha-har for waterfall (and he adds in parentheses that he knows that the rabbinic Hebrew term is Hardalit (sort of) but apparently chooses not to use it because its origin is Greek).
Finally, the book also comes with a - not quite haskama, but a rishyon, apparently some formal necessity for printing a Hebrew book in Altona at the time, by its rabbi, Zvi Hirsch Zamosc (d. 1807), who was the last rabbi of the united triple community Altona-Wandsbeck-Hamburg. Zamosc gives his license and says something like "Whomever wishes to read it, those people who are edified by reading stories like this, permission is granted." The rishyon is given to "the delightful bachelor, maskil, the honorable Moses, son of the wonderful rabbi Mendel F"F [Frankfurt]."
In any case, hopefully people are still reading because here is where the fun part begins. In 1841 Moses Mendelssohn's son Joseph placed advertisements in journals and newspapers all over Germany requesting the public's assistance on a project in which he was engaged, namely the printing of his father's collected writings. So he asked the public to please send him any manuscript they might have written by his father, and he will purchase them for a fair price, or to send and he ensures its safe return. Here is an example of such an ad:


































One of the people who responded sent him some Hebrew poems by Moses Mendelson. Of Hamburg. And this person wanted to charge Joseph Mendelssohn for them and, as we shall see, he knew full well that they were written by the living poet - who was his friend, in fact - and not by the philosopher who had been dead for nearly 60 years. Joseph showed them to one of the editors who had been hired for the project, one Heymann Jolowicz, and he realized the deception. The story was originally reported in a Hamburg newspaper, but I cannot find this newspaper. So instead I will give you the version as it is was given in a "Hey, isn't this crazy!" kind of story in an American periodical called Bizarre, in 1855 (and this story was in fact copied from a French magazine from the same year, not the Hamburg newspaper).


























































As you can see, the story does not identify who made this deception; he is but "Dr. H..... of Berlin." The story makes a big deal about how Jolowicz (his last name cheerfully Americanized to "Jallowitz") was a great detective, and knew how rare poetic verse was in the Mendelssohn oeuvre. He discovered that Dr. H had actually published a Hebrew periodical 40 years earlier, and had included Hebrew poetry by Moses Mendelson of Hamburg, and these that were sent to Joseph Mendelssohn were unpublished poems by MM of Hamburg, that Dr. H tried to pass off as authentic. Actually, I am a little bewildered by how this deception was meant to happen for it seems that MM of Hamburg nearly always signed his work the same way, Moshe ben ha-torani ve-harabbni mohr"r Mendel F"F, or some variety. Not to mention that they were not in Moses Mendelssohn's handwriting. Were they supposed to be copies? Didn't Dr. H expect questions? While I guess Dr. H maybe thought he could fool Joseph Mendelssohn, it doesn't seem like it would have been a great feat for Jolowicz to detect the fraud and so of course he did.
But anyway, although Dr. H is not identified, we realize exactly who it is. But first, a portrait of Joseph Mendelssohn from 1830, aged 60:


























Dr. H, who tried to sell poems under false pretenses, is none other than Dr. Jeremias Heinemann, a very interesting individual whom, I will have to guess, was in financial straits when he tried to sell the work of his living friend off as the original Hebrew poems of Moses Mendelssohn himself. Heinemann was an educator and scholar, a publisher, a bible commentator, involved in the earliest stages of Reform as a member of the Westphalian consistory, moved away from that early position to the point that even Rabbi Akiva Eger was willing to give a haskama of sorts to his edition of Mendelssohn's Pentateuch, see below, and someone who had spent a good deal of his life involved with Mendelssohn's writings - both Mendelssohns, in fact. Here is a portrait of Heinemann's father, a rabbi named Rabbi Meinster (or Joachim) Heinemann (1747-1825). And yes, I give this because I don't have one of Dr. Heinemann himself:

Here is Rabbi Akiva Eger's haskamah - or really not-quite haskamah - to one of the volumes of Heinemann's chumash, called Mekor Hachajim, published in Berlin between 1830 and 1833 Although we will acknowledge that he is not exactly turning cartwheels with enthusiasm, reportedly Rabbi Akiva Eger did order a copy, as he listed in the subscribers. However, one might also grant that it is possible that Heinemann simply sent him a copy. I often wonder if the big league rabbis actually ordered the copies they are listed as having subscribed to or if, at least in some cases, they are listed because a copy was simply sent to them. You know, it's like how a musician struggles for years then makes it big and suddenly Gibson is sending them truckloads of free gear. In any case, it is certainly a nice letter and it is much more than a sentence or two. No wonder Heinemann printed it.




























In any case, so here's what happened. In the late 1810s Heinemann had a periodical called Jedidja. It was not a Hebrew journal, as Bizarre says; it was in German. However, it did have quite a nice amount of Hebrew material, poems and so on. It notably contains a little poetic translation by none other than Leopold Zunz, a very early literary production by him. Here it is:










































So this poem, Halayla (the night), is a translation of Sommernacht (Summer Night) by Klopstock. Compare the above with an English translation of Sommernacht:










































So Jedidja. Many interesting things, including work by Moses Mendelson of Hamburg. I will show the following, though, because I love finding English in non-English works. So here we have the following. What happened was, in 1815 the Duke of Sussex became a Patron of the Jews' Hospital and Orphan Asylum in London (link), which had the Hebrew title נוה הצדק. Sussex, a son of King George III, was a real ohev yisrael, which was not necessarily common in England at the time without a missionary motive, and a collector of Hebrew books.  In 1817 at the annual meeting of Jews' Hospital, Sussex came, apparently, and to celebrate this momentous occasion - poetry! And pageantry. A Hebrew poem was composed, and perhaps read, along with an English poem to be "recited by One of the Girls of the Institution." Another poem was written by Shalom Hakohen, one of the patron saints of the Haskalah (last editor of Hameasseph, later to publish Bikkurei Haittim, and several noted works of his own) who was living in London at the time (on him, and the London Chief Rabbi's haskamah to his book for children, see here). So the next year in Berlin Heinemann printed the poems for this occasion, including the English ode to be recited by a girl. Try to imagine a little Jewish orphan girl with her London accent of whatever manner it was, in 1817, reciting,
"Behold, we cry, our smiles of health,Our moral minds, our means of trade;Here have ye treasured up your wealth,And thus your offerings are repaid."
















































I should have given this above, but here is the title page for Jedidja:















































Now, in addition to publishing many letters by Mendelssohn (the first one) it also included a poem or two by Mendelson of Hamburg. Here is the end of one:





















Now, some 20 years later Heinemann revived the Jedidja periodical in Berlin. In the second go-around he included much interesting material, some recycled, some new. Apparently he was strapped for cash, or at least had a lot of copies of his Chumash Mekor Hachajim he was trying to sell, because he kept including ads for it, and descriptions of it. It is of some interest that he felt like pointing out that it included a map of Israel, following the Vilna Gaon:
















































In any case, only a few years earlier (1833) the following appeared in one of the volumes of the Chumash Mekor Chajim; a friendly letter from Moses Mendelson of Hamburg. That is, they were firm friends.



So it was that Dr. Jeremias Heinemann in Berlin allegedly tried to sell Joseph Mendelssohn Hebrew poems written by his friend Moses Mendelson of Hamburg, and this deception was discovered by Heymann Jolowicz whom, I might add, was one of the Reform rabbis in the synod I posted about the other day (link). His grand contribution to the Simchat Torah question was: "We should read Vezot Habracha once every three years." 
It should be noted that when the Collected Writings of Mendelssohn were published a couple of years later, the volume which included the entire German translation of the Pentateuch (in German, not Hebrew letters) came with an extensive introduction by Jolowicz, and he mentions Heinemann's Berlin edition of the Chumash in very nice terms, but does not mention this attempted fraud. Truth be told I feel a little badly about it myself, seeing as how even Jolowicz saw fit not to mention it. But as I said, I strongly suspect that Heinemann was motivated by economic desperation and should not be judged harshly.
Since previously I had mentioned Jolowicz's prize comment that  "We should read Vezot Habracha once every three years," and he was a better scholar than that suggests, we should talk about him. Eventually he moved to England, where his credentials as a learned scholar enabled him to receive a government stipend (interestingly, the materials relating to this process are online - it involved testimonials, a sponsor, personal statements, and a list of his published work). I would just like to call attention to a paper he delivered for the German Oriental Society in England in 1855. Here is the title page of the published version:
In the introduction, W. H. Black recommends the paper, writing that that "For many years I have been convinced that the printed text of some parts of the Hebrew Scriptures may be fairly subject to critical emendation, especially the Psalms, and other poetical portions of the Bible." He continues, that Jolowicz presents the evidence for the position that the Bible contains errors in need of emendation from rabbinic sources.
In the paper itself, Jolowicz refers to the different Versions, and the variants found in the collations of Kennicott and De Rossi, which prove that the text as found in the manuscripts have been subject to corruption. But also "the Talmudists, and the latter Rabbis, as well as the Chaldee parphrast [sic] Jonathan ben Uziel, not only knew various readings most strikingly different from our Canonical Text, but also determined by the interpretations of the same most important usages of religious life." He begins by declaring that the Talmud gives as authors of the books mostly different people from those for whom the books are named. The reason he mentions this is to set the stage for the idea that certain words had to have been interpolated by later copyists, such as Proverbs 25:1 ("King of Judah") words which, as he points out, are missing in some manuscript variants found by Kennicott. He continues by asserting that many "among the most orthodox and greatest authorities of post-Talmudical rabbis . . . did not less practice a strict criticism of the Biblical Text." And conveniently he writes "But this subject will be more conveniently treated of in another place." He goes on to list several dozen variants implied by the Targum called Jonathan, and in the Talmud, Midrash and Zohar, and a few instances in Rashi. He closes with a much-cited passage in Massechet Sopherim, which shows that there were variant readings in the Torah. He closes by quoting a letter from Leib Dukes which notes that one of the Oppenheim manuscripts at Oxford actually contains a masoretic note which gives an interesting variant for Number 12:16, saying that this variant is a more correct reading. Jolowicz notes that one such text corrected according to this manuscript was listed by Kennicott. The paper may be read here.
EDIT: To give Heinemann more his due as an interesting and creative person, I'd to call attention to the second half of my post here, where I refer to an interesting book by him which "I have never seen anything quite like," I wrote, and that "on the face of it it seems like one of the most effective methods of learning what the prayers mean that I have ever seen." Do take a look.
EDIT II: Another angle. Here is fascinating poem by Moses Mendelson of Hamburg, in tribute to Johannes Gutenberg on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Gutenberg's use of moveable type printing. This was printed in the Algeimeine Zeitung des Judentums May 2, 1840. Click them to enlarge and read:




What makes this all the more interesting is that Heinemann printed the same poem in his revived Jedidja in 1842. And there is no mention of Mendelson's authorship, not on the poem and not in the table of contents. Here is the first page from that reprinting.