The Legacy of the Etrog Man

One particular Yemenite-Israeli family has become synonymous with the famous fruit we are obliged to bless during the festival of Sukkot

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A fine example of an etrog. Photo by Dan Hadani, 1970, the Dan Hadani Archive, the Pritzker Family National Photgraphy Collection at the National Library of Israel

“It’s sour and bitter. It’s fun and fresh. I’d maybe add something sweet, and maybe add carbonation,” said Yali Ben David when asked how she liked the fruit drink she’d just consumed at a kiosk in Netanya’s Ir Yamim Mall on the last week of 5784 — a beverage she’d never tasted before.

The fruit drink? Etrog.

The yellow citron, which resembles a lemon but with bumps, returns to the consciousness of Jews this time of year, with the approach of the week-long festival of Sukkot (Tabernacles) that will begin the evening of Oct. 16. An etrog is one of four species — along with a palm branch and leaves from myrtle and willow trees — that the Bible commands Jews to gather on the first day of Sukkot. Later in history, Jews took to making a blessing while holding the Four Species at home or in a sukkah (a temporary hut built for the holiday) or at a synagogue, a custom that continues now.

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An etrog is held up for examination, 1978. Photo by Dan Hadani, the Dan Hadani Archive, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, the National Library of Israel

The relevant biblical verse, Leviticus 23:40, doesn’t specify a citron or any other species. “And you shall take for yourselves on the first day the fruit of the beautiful tree,” it states. But religious authorities in Talmudic times ruled that the etrog, native to Israel, was the designated fruit, and it’s remained one of the holiday’s symbols ever since.

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Etrogs on sale in a “Four Species” market, Tel Aviv, 1949. Photo by Rudi Weissenstein, all rights reserved to Pri-Or PhotoHouse, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, the National Library of Israel

In the days and weeks preceding Sukkot, traditionally beginning with the conclusion of Yom Kippur, celebrants buy the Four Species, which usually are sold together in stores and at tables set out on sidewalks. The most devoted among them seek out the choicest etrog they can find, even bringing magnifying glasses and jewelers’ loupes to carefully inspect each etrog and rule out those with seemingly minute blemishes. Some spend — take a deep breath here — thousands of dollars for a choice etrog.

More than that: Over the centuries, craftspeople designed wooden and silver boxes to hold etrogim during the holiday, and etrog cases remain a mainstay of Judaica in communities worldwide.

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A religious Israeli family and their etrog boxes. Photo by IPPA staff, the Dan Hadani Archive, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, the National Library of Israel

When the holiday ends, etrogim, whatever their value, usually are discarded or added to compost. Some people chop them, especially the peel, for etrog jam, akin to orange marmalade.

And that’s all I knew about the possibilities for an etrog.

That is, until I walked through Jerusalem’s Machne Yehuda market a decade ago and stumbled upon a small shop near Agrippas Street. Its name: The Etrog Man.

Intrigued by the idea that someone was so enamored of etrogim as to adopt the citron as a moniker, and lured by the man’s plastic dispensers of freshly squeezed fruit drinks, I approached. The owner pitched his concoctions, most of them made from etrog. He talked up one drink when he saw me viewing the dispenser with this sign: Viagra from Nature. Unsurprisingly, he touted it as an aphrodisiac.

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The late Uzieli Hazay, “the Etrog Man,” courtesy of https://www.etrogman.com/

I didn’t catch The Etrog Man’s name then or on a subsequent visit to his shop at the Allenby Street entrance to Tel Aviv’s Carmel Market.

I learned his name, Uzieli Hazay, only now, in mid-September, during a return visit to Machne Yehuda. Uzieli passed away two years ago, said his son, Or, who now runs the family business, which includes the two markets’ shops and a line of etrog-derived products he sells there and at special events, like the weeklong Machne Yehuda Festival at the Netanya mall.

There, he spritzed etrog facial skin spray onto my cheeks and — get this — into my mouth. I asked how the spray could be safe to ingest. “Because it’s natural,” he said.

A woman asked about the spray, and he repeated the routine on her. He requested that she extend her wrist, onto which he daubed some etrog creme. “It’s anti-aging [creme],” he told her.

She smelled it but left without purchasing a container. The etrog is good for the skin, Hazay explained later: It works on pigmentation, and helps teens with acne and older people with wrinkles. He also sells etrog soap, which presumably also is healthy. Less known are the benefits of his etrog beer. All of the packaged etrog paraphernalia feature caricatures of Uzieli.

The etrog’s becoming the basis of the Hazay family’s income merits a story, and this is it.

Uzieli Hazay was from Yemen, and as a child he and his family made aliyah — immigrated to Israel — in about 1950. They lived on Moshav Eshtaol, a few miles west of Jerusalem, where they grew produce and raised goats and cows. Interested in nutrition and healthy eating, Uzieli was drawn to the teachings of Maimonides, the 12th century rabbi and physician famed as Rambam, who touted the etrog’s qualities. In Uzieli’s youth, Hazay said, Yemenite parents wanting to eliminate their children’s stuttering would boil etrog peels and have them drink the liquid. Later on, Uzieli concocted beverages from boiled fruit and other products.

“He wanted to create drinks to strengthen the body, focus and energy,” Hazay said.

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Or Hazay peeks between some of the products he sells – etrog beer and etrog soap. Photo by Hillel Kuttler

At his Netanya kiosk at the busy mall, Hazay sliced what I knew was an etrog, which he called an “Askenazi etrog.” He then sliced an enormous, oval-shaped fruit that was not much smaller than an American football. Its green and beige surface was extremely bumpy. This, he said, was a “Yemenite etrog,” albeit one grown in Israel. The halves of each etrog species were so pulpy as to defy any expectation that quantities of juice hid within.

But they did, and Hazay’s three main etrog-based drinks at the kiosk were those combined with lemon juice, grapefruit juice — “It’s good for pregnant women,” Hazay told a female customer – or the leaves of khat (written and pronounced in Hebrew as gat). Hazay and Itamar Peled, Ben David’s boyfriend, said they knew from their Yemenite backgrounds that men and even boys in the Old Country chewed on khat for their stimulants, to keep them alert during long study sessions of Jewish religious texts.

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An etrog farmer, 1978. Photo by Dan Hadani, the Dan Hadani Archive, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, the National Library of Israel

Hazay buys his etrogim from farmers in Israel, Morocco and Calabria, Italy. He also grows his own at Eshtaol. Hazay said he has no idea of the quantity he uses in a month.

On this morning, Even Yehuda residents Guy and Hila Greenberg and their young daughters stopped by for a drink: etrog, grapefruit and khat whirred together with some cane sugar.

Guy Greenberg’s friend had tried it at the stand the day before and recommended it. The Greenberg couple enjoyed it, too, he said.

Another customer, Shlomo Hershko, stopped by 10 minutes later.

“What can I say? It’s not for me,” said Hershko, of Herzliya. “Some people like it; some, not.”

Hazay was nonplussed. His t-shirt read, “100 percent from nature and squeezed with love.”

Writer-editor Hillel Kuttler can be reached at [email protected].

When “The Hebrew Hammer” Struck Twice on Rosh Hashanah

Ninety years ago, American baseball star Hank Greenberg played on the Jewish New Year holiday, even hitting two home runs, but later sat out Yom Kippur

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Hank Greenberg in 1940, the Sporting News Archives

The lobby of Congregation Shaarey Zedek, in Southfield, Michigan, includes a display case dedicated to Hank Greenberg. Among the case’s contents are baseballs, pictures, autographs, programs and one of Greenberg’s bats from his career as a star player over 13 Major League Baseball seasons, 12 of them for the local team, the Detroit Tigers.

The headings above the synagogue’s display read, “Designated Mensch” and “Hank Greenberg is as famous for being Jewish as for what he did in the batter’s box.”

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Hank Greenberg of the Detroit Tigers takes a swing, 1940, the Sporting News Archives

The New York-raised first baseman, nicknamed “The Hebrew Hammer,” achieved plenty at bat during his career, slugging 331 home runs (leading the American League in four separate seasons), hitting for a .312 average, winning two Most Valuable Player awards, and starring on two World Series-winning teams. The player earned enshrinement in the National Baseball Hall of Fame as an all-time great.

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“Designated Mensch” – The lobby of Congregation Shaarey Zedek, in Southfield, Michigan, includes a display case dedicated to Hank Greenberg.

Greenberg, whose parents had immigrated from Romania, was the first Jewish superstar in America’s national pastime in an era when his contemporaries included such legends as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio and Bob Feller.

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Hank Greenberg was the most famous Jewish baseball player of his era. This article appeared in The Kentucky Jewish Chronicle on April 15, 1938, the Historical Jewish Press Collection at the National Library of Israel

The best-known episode connected to Greenberg’s Jewish identity occurred when he weighed whether to play in the Tigers’ crucial games in September 1934 that fell on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. This autumn marks the 90th anniversary of that High Holy Day season.

The situation echoed a generation later, when Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax, another Jewish star from New York, opted not to face the Minnesota Twins in the first game of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur. Koufax pitched the next day and lost the game, but the Dodgers captured the championship.

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Sandy Koufax, star pitcher for the L.A. Dodgers, pictured on a 1962 Bell Brand baseball card, via Wikimedia

Greenberg split the dilemma in 1934: He played on both days of Rosh Hashanah, but didn’t play on Yom Kippur. Greenberg even split the split: He attended services at Shaarey Zedek (the Conservative synagogue then was located in downtown Detroit) the morning of Rosh Hashanah’s first day before heading to Navin Field to play that afternoon against the Boston Red Sox.

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Greenberg was one of the most dominant sluggers in the game during his era. This article appeared in the November 22, 1940 issue of ⁨⁨the J. Jewish News of Northern California, the Historical Jewish Press Collection at the National Library of Israel

He became a hero by smashing two home runs in Detroit’s 2–1 win. The Tigers lost at home to the New York Yankees when Greenberg sat out for Yom Kippur a week later. The next month, the Tigers reached the World Series.

According to a newspaper article at the time, Greenberg was swayed by phone calls from Tigers officials, including owner Frank Navin. Greenberg feared disappointing his team by sitting out on Rosh Hashanah.

“I hope I did the right thing. Maybe I shouldn’t have played. It’s a sacred day,” Greenberg told a teammate later that day.

The article quoted Greenberg as saying, “There wasn’t any way of getting a dispensation” by a rabbi to play. Other accounts had Greenberg seeking, and obtaining, a rabbinical waiver.

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“I hope I did the right thing. Maybe I shouldn’t have played. It’s a sacred day” – Greenberg faced a dilemma on Rosh Hashanah. This article appeared in the September 14, 1934 edition of The American Jewish World.

Greenberg might have consulted with Shaarey Zedek’s rabbi at the time, Abraham Hershman, said Aaron Starr, the current rabbi at the congregation, where Greenberg sometimes worshipped in its Detroit and Southfield locations.

“Rabbi Hershman was a halachic, observant Jew, so I often wonder about the permission given,” said Starr.

“Because [Hershman] was a baseball fan, maybe he offered a lenient p’sak [religious ruling], but I’m not sure on what halachic grounds. Or, maybe Mr. Greenberg found the rabbi he wanted [to rule favorably].”

In his autobiography, Greenberg wasn’t definitive regarding his actions. He wrote that he “wasn’t sure what to do” and implied that he played after reading in a newspaper article that a rabbi had found a Talmudic allowance for him to participate. A few paragraphs later, Greenberg wrote that he “caught hell from my fellow parishioners” who telephoned throughout the night to complain that he had played.

Greenberg no doubt faced complex social pressures. Jewish assimilation in the United States was still very much an issue, and religious accommodation wasn’t a given. Jews could lose their jobs by refusing to work on Shabbat. A leading figure at the time was Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest in Greenberg’s Detroit, who preached pro-Nazi and anti-Jewish views in national radio addresses.

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From Hank Greenberg, Hall-of-Fame Slugger, by Ira Berkow, illustrated by Mick Ellison, the Jewish Publication Society, 1991. The National Library of Israel has numerous books about Hank Greenberg in its collections.

The dilemma occurred in the second full season for Greenberg, then just 23. “Early on, he just wanted to be known as a player. He didn’t want the extra burden [of representing American Jewry], but he grew to accept it,” said retired N.Y. Times columnist Ira Berkow, who edited Greenberg’s 1989 autobiography, The Story of My Life, published three years after Greenberg’s death at 75.

Greenberg was close with several Shaarey Zedek congregants. Larry Katz, a current worshipper, said in a recent phone interview that Greenberg frequently was a dinner guest of Lou and Edith Blumberg and practiced his batting swing opposite the couple’s large mirror. Greenberg apparently never visited Israel, although his son and daughter bought him round-trip airline tickets as a 70th-birthday gift.

About a decade ago, Rabbi Starr led a discussion at the congregation’s Hebrew school about Greenberg’s High Holy Days dilemma.

“It was using his example and asking about what does it mean to be a Jewish hero,” he said.

“With every swing of his bat, he knocked away some of the antisemitism in America and raised the level of pride of Jews,” Starr said. “It was one of his most significant contributions.”

Writer-editor Hillel Kuttler may be reached at [email protected].

The Search for a Jewish Book That Was Ordered to Be Destroyed 470 Years Ago

This incredible story begins with a quarrel among printers in 16th century Venice, which soon escalated to the point of burning Hebrew books on the orders of the Inquisition. The story continues with a globe-spanning search for a particular book saved from that fire. How does it end? With a twist of course…

Rescued from the flames: Commentary on Pirkei Avot, Rabbi Judah Lerma, Venice 1553

The smell of smoke reached the noses of the Jews of Rome as they stood in synagogue for Rosh Hashanah prayers on September 9, 1553. The smoke was coming from the Campo de’ Fiori, where thousands of volumes of the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud were burned on the orders of the Inquisition.

It all started a few years earlier, with an ostensibly marginal event in the history of Italian Jewry. Marco Antonio Giustiniani, scion of an aristocratic family in Venice, opened a new print shop, becoming a business rival of Daniel Bomberg’s famous printing press, which had enjoyed a monopoly on the printing of Hebrew books, and especially the Babylonian Talmud, for 30 years. Giustiniani printed an edition that was almost identical to Bomberg’s Talmud, with a few important additions. The competition between them grew more and more intense, and within three years Bomberg was forced to shut down his business.

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Tractate Makot, Babylonian Talmud, Giustiniani Press, Venice 1550

But hostility in the Hebrew printing sector only increased after this. Rabbi Meir Katzenellenbogen, the Rabbi of the Ashkenazi community in Padua, who was also known as the Maharam of Pauda, sought to publish Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah with his own glosses. Giustiniani refused for reasons of commercial viability but printer Alvise Bragadin agreed to take up the project. Following his printing of the book, Giustiniani copied the glosses to his own edition. Two editions, by Bragadin and Giustiniani, came out in 1550.

Giustiniani explained in his book’s introductions that his aim was to lower the prices. Bragadin, meanwhile, accused his competitor of attempting to take over the market, raising prices, and ruining his work.

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Bragadin accuses Giustiniani of fraud. Printed at the beginning the second part of his published edition of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah

From here onward, things only got more complicated. The Maharam turned for advice to Rabbi Moshe Isserles, the Rema, in Krakow. The Rema ruled that Bragadin was in the right and forbad the purchase of Giustiniani’s editions of the Mishneh Torah. Still, scholars believe that Bragadin was not entirely above board, either, as it appears that either he or his workers also copied corrections from Giustiniani’s edition without providing credit or an explanation.

This commercial rivalry quickly devolved into a religious firestorm revolving around the printing of the Talmud. According to scholar Meir Benayahu, Bragadin planned to print an edition of the Talmud after Giustiniani had already done so. To prevent this, Giustiniani turned to Pope Julius III in Rome on the grounds that Bragadin’s Talmud contained anti-Christian content. In response, Bragadin said the same of Giustiniani’s Talmud. The Pope convened a council, which decided on August 12, 1553 to burn all Talmudic books on the next Rosh Hashanah.

The books of the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud were then burned in the Campo de’ Fiori in Rome on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, in 1553. The Pope then ordered this be done in all other Italian cities. In the following months, books were burned in Bologna, Venice, Ancona, Ferrara, and elsewhere. Officials of the Inquisition, who carried out the order, were not choosy in deciding which Talmudic volumes to burn, which meant that they simply burned most of the Hebrew-language books they found in the Jewish homes they searched. Only in May 1554 did a Papal order go out clarifying that only Talmudic books containing anti-Christian texts should be burned, and that Jews were permitted to hold other books which did not contradict the view of the Church.

Could it be that the only book to survive ended up at the NLI?

One of the books which went up in flames was the new volume by Rabbi Judah Ben Samuel Lerma: a commentary on Pirkei Avot (Masechet Avot). Two weeks after his book’s print run ended in Venice, the fire was lit in Rome. A month later, books were burned in Venice, with all 1,500 copies of Rabbi Lerma’s new book going up in flames instead of being sold to customers. But Lerma did not give up, and sat down to write his book anew:

They burned all the books I printed … Not one page was left to me from that printing, neither from the copy, and I was forced to go back and write it from my mind as in the beginning. And after I wrote three chapters of it, I found one book from the printing in the hands of Gentiles who took it from the fire, and I bought it with dear money and I saw that I was granted this by God, May He Be Blessed, and I made the second more complete than the first and I added many interpretations of wisdom…

(From the introduction to the second edition)

Fortunately for Rabbi Lerma, he managed to get his hands on a single copy of the first edition. The second edition came out in 1554 and was called Lechem Yehudah or “The Bread of Judah”. It was longer and included sermons integrated between the chapters.

A few years ago, I searched for Lechem Yehudah in the National Library’s online catalog. I saw that we had two copies: according to the catalog, they were published in 1554 by Tuvia Puah’s print shop in Sabbioneta, Italy.

Then I noticed something strange: there was another copy of the commentary on Pirkei Avot. From 1553.

Could it be that the only copy of the first edition, which somehow survived the flames in Rome, was here at the National Library of Israel?

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Two editions of the book in the National Library catalog. One from 1554, and the other – 1553

I immediately ordered the book from our Rare Books Collection. It arrived within an hour. It wasn’t large, and had a simple grey cover. I opened it carefully and excitedly… but to my disappointment and surprise, it was a blurry photocopy rather than the original book. I looked through various inventory lists to see where we got it, but all they said was “copy.” Thank you, Captain Obvious.

So the only copy of Rabbi Lerma’s first edition was not in our collection. But we did have a photocopy, which meant the original was somewhere to be found. But where?

I searched catalogs in Israel and abroad, but in vain. The photocopy contained no stamp or registry number of a library. It could be the original was in the hands of a private collector or an institution disconnected from the global library network. I couldn’t find anything.

Plot twist: an anonymous tip

In 1850, Rabbi and bibliographer Eliakim Carmoly (1802-1875) printed a book in Frankfurt called Divrei Hayamim Kibnei Yihya which tells the story of the family of Don Yosef Nassi, who were Portuguese conversos. The book lists his descendants and the story of his family in Italy. It mentions how his great grandson, Rabbi Gedaliah, wrote a book called Shalshelet HaKabbalah, where he also addressed the burning of books in Italy. Rabbi Carmoly noted in a comment that he added the story of Rabbi Lerma from the introduction to the second edition of his book. And here’s where it gets interesting:

And here according to these things [the introduction to Lechem Yehudah – D.L.], the reader will deduce that only one book remained of the first printing bought by the author with dear money, and this is not [true – D.L.], for we saw two and three of these books.

And to prove that he personally saw such a copy, Rabbi Carmoly described what was written on the cover, also noting the number of pages, the book’s physical size and even the precise date upon which its writing was completed.

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Rabbi Eliakim Carmoly

So there were at least two copies of this unique book somewhere in the world. But I had no leads, and I eventually just forgot about them.

One day while sitting at the NLI’s reference desk, a man approached me for help in locating a particular book. During our conversation, the matter of the Rome book burning came up, and he asked me if I knew the story of Rabbi Lerma’s book. I said that I did, adding that I knew there was an existing copy, but had no idea where it was. The man smiled and said the book could be found in Oxford. He then got up and left, and I never saw him again. My curiosity was rekindled.

I then checked the online catalog of the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, trying all sorts of spelling variations. I still came up empty.

More recently, I contacted the staff at the Bodleian regarding their collection. The librarian explained that antique Jewish books are not included in the online catalog but are instead registered in the printed Cowley catalog. Sir Arthur Ernest Cowley was an English librarian and Orientalist who ran the Oxford Library 100 years ago. One of his most famous works is A Concise Catalogue of the Hebrew Printed Books in the Bodleian Library. The Cowley catalog is written in English and claims to be a complete and precise list of all Jewish and Hebrew books at Oxford, as of 1927. Cowley worked 13 years to prepare it. On page 363, under Judah Lerma, I found both Rabbi Lerma’s books, the first of which is the 1553 edition of his commentary on Pirkei Avot.

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From the Cowley catalog. The two books from 1553 and 1554 with their shelf numbers at Oxford]

The book’s shelf number in the catalog attests to its origin, as Opp. is short for Oppenheim, a reference to the book collection of Rabbi David Oppenheim (1664-1736), who was the Rabbi of Prague, owner of a huge and important book collection, and an author of books himself.

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Rabbi David Oppenheim

When he became the Rabbi of Prague, he left his large library with his father-in-law in Hanover, Germany. When he passed away in 1736, his granddaughter inherited the collection and later sold it to a relative in Hamburg. When the collection was put up for sale again, the books were listed under a catalog entitled Kohelet David. Page 208 mentioned Rabbi Lerma’s book from 1553.

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From Kohelet David, Rabbi David Oppenheim book catalog

In 1828, Rabbi Oppenheim’s collection was sold at a particularly low price to Oxford University and delivered in 34 boxes.

I turned to the deputy curator of the Judaica collection at Oxford. She checked the book for me and even sent over a photograph of the cover. You can see that despite some scribbled technical notes that have been added here and there, it’s clearly the same book that we have a photocopy of. The book saved from the Inquisition at Venice is now on the shelves of the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The lost book had been found!

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Right: Photocopy at the National Library of Israel. Left: the original book. (Courtesy of the Bodleian Library at Oxford)

But this incredible discovery at Oxford was not the end of the story. Remember how Rabbi Carmoly said there was more than one copy he saw? Well, I found another! And it was not simple at all.

The National Library’s Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts has been cataloging Hebrew manuscripts for 70 years. The National Library of Israel itself has some 14,000 physical Hebrew manuscripts in its collection. There are some 110,000 additional Hebrew manuscripts spread around the world, all of which are cataloged at the National Library, with copies of each one also preserved in our collection, in the form of either a digital scan or a photocopy.

One of the Jewish manuscript collections found abroad is that of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, Italy. The library, which is based on the private collection of the noble Medici family, was opened to the public in 1571. Like other such collections, the Medici collection is also cataloged by us based on the Laurentian catalog from 1757.

Among the manuscripts we have cataloged is one titled “A Commentary on Pirkei Avot by Judah Lerma: Venice Press, 1553″ (פרוש מסכת אבות ליהודה לירמא: דפוס ויניציאה, 1553) which I found. And so it turned out that among the manuscripts in the old catalog was a single printed book, another copy of Rabbi Lerma’s original book which was ordered burned by the Inquisition! According to the description, the book is attributed to Rabbi Isaac Abarbanel even though the true author is mentioned – “Iudas ben Samuel Lerma”. The book contains no direct reference to Abarbanel and the source of the error is unclear.

I of course turned to the Laurentian library, where they explained that sometimes old printed books end up in the manuscript collection. This specific book appears to have been in their library from its beginnings in the sixteenth century. A few years after the catalog was printed, the printed books were then delivered to the Magliabechiana Library, which is today the Florence National Library.

I immediately went to their digital catalog, and once again, it was far from easy. Titles of Hebrew books in the catalogue are written phonetically using Latin letters rather than in Hebrew. This is what is written in the title:

Pyrwš Mskt ʼbwt ʼšr ḥbr h.r Yhwdh yzyyʼ bn ʼyš ḥyl rb pʻlym km.r Šmwʼl Lyrmh sprdy zlh.h

Or as we would say:

Peirush Masechet Avot Asher Hiber Harav Yehudah YZYY”A [Yireh Zera Ya’arich Yamim Amen] Ben Ish Hail Rav Pe’alim Kemoreinu Rav Shmuel Lermah Sefardi zlhh (zichro lechayey ha’olam haba).

“A Commentary on Pirkei Avot Written by Rabbi Judah […] son of an exemplary and industrious man, our teacher Rabbi Shmuel Lerma Sefardi, may his memory be a blessing for the world to come”

Rabbi Carmoly was right. There were at least two surviving copies of the book – one in England and one in Italy.

Maybe I will get to visit these libraries and see the books for myself. In the meantime, we will need to get a better scan than the old one we have. And this time, to avoid the need for such exhaustive searches, we should really note the source.

The Jerusalem Talmud: The Beta Version of the Gemara 

The Babylonian Talmud and Jerusalem Talmud had roughly the same starting point, so why did only one of them become a canonical book?

Drawing by E.M. Lilien

The Babylonian Talmud and Jerusalem Talmud are like the Coke and Pepsi of Jewish literature.

They were created in the same period and deal with the same subjects, but one achieved eternal glory and the other is a bit… bleak.

What makes a book canonical? One thing’s for sure: It’s not the book itself.

Let’s begin with a story:

For hundreds of years, Jews were forced to accept the fact that Seder Kodashim, one of the six orders of the Jerusalem Talmud, simply didn’t exist.

Some were sure it had disappeared, and some thought it had never existed. Until one day in the year 1905, when it simply popped up, out of nowhere

The mysterious copy was signed by the printer “Shlomo Algazi, AKA Friedländer.”

Algazi, who presented himself as a “pure Sephardi,” claimed that a single copy of Seder Kodashim had ended up in the possession of his brother in Turkey, and that he had copied it. The book was a huge success and the money started flowing in. But that’s when things started to go wonky.

The buyers soon noticed all sorts of puzzling details. The language and style matched the rest of the Jerusalem Talmud, but there was hardly any new information presented in these hundreds of new pages. Suspicions were raised.

Slowly, readers began to realize that the entire book simply contained variations on existing sources, and Algazi was accused of forgery.

He of course denied any wrongdoing and explained that the fact that the new order lacked new information was exactly the point! He argued that since the text already appeared in other places, no one thought it was worthwhile to preserve Seder Kodashim in its own right.

The readers weren’t convinced and even debated whether it was better to hide the book away or burn it. The lively debate reached its peak when rabbis published pamphlets in favor of Algazi, with sharp titles like “Avenging Sword” and “Answer to the Fool.”

But it soon emerged that these pamphlets were written by none other than Shlomo Algazi, AKA Friedländer. Ultimately, Algazi confessed that he hadn’t actually found the book, and that he in fact wrote it himself.

He then also admitted that he wasn’t exactly Sephardi and that his name wasn’t Shlomo. He confessed that his real name was Zosia and that he was just an ordinary man from the very Eastern European town of Beshankovichy.

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Drawing by E.M. Lilien

When I heard this story, I chuckled. But I was also curious about how such a large part of the Jerusalem Talmud could simply disappear. Seder Kodashim is one of the six orders of the Mishnah, upon which both the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud are based. 

It isn’t even the only part that is missing from the Jerusalem Talmud. Entire chapters from other tractates have been lost over the years. Moreover, if you compare the Jerusalem Talmud to the Babylonian Talmud, you discover that the discussions in the former are much less developed and have been less thoroughly edited.

What happened? How is it possible that we have the Babylonian Talmud as a complete and developed work, while the Jerusalem Talmud seems like something you might have ordered on Ali Express?

I found the answer in this letter:

Discovered in the Cairo Genizah, the letter was written approximately 1200 years ago by a Babylonian Jewish sage named Pirqoi Ben Baboi. Aside from the fact that his name is particularly fun to say, he provides a glimpse into an interesting moment in the history of the Jerusalem Talmud.

At the time that Ben Baboi wrote the letter, a halakhic struggle was underway between the rabbis of the Land of Israel and those residing in Babylon. Ben Baboi tried to convince the Jews of the Holy Land to adopt Babylonian Halakha, as embodied in the Babylonian Talmud. However, the community in Israel stood by the Jerusalem Talmud, which was created in the city of Tiberias, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Upon encountering this resistance, Ben Baboi then redirected his efforts to communities outside the Land of Israel that were still undecided between the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds.

In a letter to the community in the North African city of Kairouan, he writes that it is forbidden to follow the Halakha as it appears in the Jerusalem Talmud.

Take the following as a somewhat shocking example of differences in the two Talmuds’ halakhic rulings.

According to the Babylonian Talmud, an engaged couple is forbidden from being alone together to prevent them from engaging in forbidden relations before the wedding. In contrast, the Jerusalem Talmud allows the couple to meet alone before the wedding and even engage in intimate relations. Why? When the Land of Israel was under Roman rule, it was decreed that the local governors had the “right of the first night” with every virgin. The Jews of the Land of Israel preferred the bride and groom to consummate their marriage before this could happen, and thus possibly prevent rape.

Ben Baboi argues that customs of this nature are reasonable when facing harsh decrees imposed by the authorities. However, once the decrees are no longer imposed, it is forbidden to continue following them. He asserts that the entire Jerusalem Talmud is filled with these types of irrelevant rulings.

Lilien The Samaritan
Drawing by E.M. Lilien

There’s another issue as well: Even before the Talmuds were written down, they were transmitted orally from generation to generation. Ben Baboi claims that due to the harsh political situation, oral transmission in the Land of Israel was fragmented; People transmitted the knowledge, stopped when Torah study was prohibited by the rulers, and then tried to pick up where they had left off when it was permitted again.

What that means is that various fundamental principles which weren’t written down, or details that were handed down orally from generation to generation, simply dissipated over time. Imagine trying to reconstruct the Passover Seder without ever having experienced it. You might manage to understand more or less what’s happening, but a lot will be lost in the process.

Ben Baboi’s letter was another step towards the downfall of the Jerusalem Talmud. Its standing was questionable, so fewer copies were made, fewer people worked to interpret it, and it hardly ever served as a basis for halakhic rulings. Editors did not continue to refine the text over generations, as was the case with the Babylonian Talmud, and halakhic discussions came to a halt at an early stage, as can be seen in the book itself.

I find this process fascinating. The two Talmuds had similar starting positions and the Jerusalem Talmud even possessed a certain advantage. But one failed because the audience didn’t engage with it, and that engagement was essential.

Books aren’t preserved simply because they are “important” or “sacred”. A pile of words becomes a canonical text only if people consider it meaningful. The point here isn’t about the book itself; the encounter between people and the book is the whole story.

What’s interesting to me about studying old texts isn’t so much the content itself. After all, it’s not really relevant to my life. What interests me is understanding what happens in the space between a book and its readers – both those who preserved it until now and those who are currently trying to interpret it.

In other words, every encounter with a text enriches the text itself – the interpretation, the editing, and the meanings attributed to the words. When I read a text that has passed through many hands, I don’t just see the book placed before me; I engage in a dialogue with everyone who has engaged with it previously. And that’s pretty awesome.