How to Buy a Jewish Manuscript in Four (Not So) Easy Steps

This story of the purchase of this Spanish Kabbalistic manuscript encapsulates much of the work done here at the National Library.

The manuscript in question

Dr. Yoel Finkelman, the curator of the Library’s Judaica Collection, reveals the four steps that are taken before deciding to add (or not to add) a new item to the Library’s collections.

Some time ago, an individual in the Hebrew book trade approached a worker in the National Library with a manuscript of Jewish interest that had been put up for sale. Today, that very manuscript sits among the many treasures of the Library, so that researchers and future generations might benefit from its preservation. Manuscripts appear for sale constantly, and despite a desire to do so, we cannot purchase everything. Given that budgets are limited, how did we arrive at a decision to purchase it and why did we make that decision?

We knew from the seller that the manuscript was written in Spanish in the late sixteenth or in the early seventeenth century and that it deals with Kabbalistic issues, particularly transmigration of souls and reincarnation. This already sparked our interest. The Spanish-language suggested a community not fluent in the Hebrew or Aramaic of standard Kabbalistic texts, and pointed broadly in the direction of Spanish exiles and crypto-Jews, perhaps in Italy or Amsterdam. But, the seller himself knew almost nothing else. Fortunately, he agreed to allow us to hold onto the manuscript temporarily while we looked into it.

Step one: determining the condition of the manuscript

The manuscript was not in good shape. The binding was torn, at least one entire quire (kuntres, in Hebrew) was missing from the beginning and end, many individual pages were torn, and there were a handful of wormholes and stains here and there. This required a trip to the National Library’s restoration lab, where the staff of book restorers examined the document closely.

Yes, the binding needs work, as do many pages, but the most serious problem was the feared fungus growing on several pages near the binding. Clearly, the book had gotten moist at some point or had been stored in damp surroundings, and fungi on books and manuscripts cannot be killed. At most, they can be cleaned before the books are stored in conditions where the fungi will not develop further (or infect other books). Still, we were told, if the manuscript is important enough, we can handle it.

We needed an expert’s advice, someone with a deep knowledge of the Spanish-speaking Jewish communities after the expulsion, expertise in Kabbalah, and experience with the work of manuscript identification. A leading scholar — who spends some of his time in Spain, some in Oxford, and some in our reading room – offered to help out. Was this the work of crypto Jews still in the Spanish peninsula working in secret, or was it the work of Spanish-speaking Jews, descendants of those expelled, in Amsterdam, Italy, or even South America?

Step two: figuring out what the manuscript is

The scholar spent several hours in my office examining the handwriting, searching the paper for watermarks that might identify the time and place, and trying to understand the content. The handwriting pointed, as we suspected, to the late sixteenth century, and on-site he recognized one of the papers that had been used in the binding as a popular Spanish translation of the Bible from the sixteenth and seventeenth century. And while the content certainly seemed to be about Kabbalah and reincarnation, he could not determine what text it might be. Could it be related to the school surrounding Abraham de Herrera, a sixteenth and seventeenth century Kabbalist who wrote in Spanish for communities of anusim in Italy and Amsterdam? Hard to tell, but our expert was skeptical, based on the style and content of the book. He wanted some time to think about it and get back to us.

A few weeks later he and a friend, another scholar working in various aspects of early modern Kabbalah, arrived in my office with computers in hand, prepared to dedicate several hours to solving the mystery. The second scholar concurred that the physical evidence of the codex pointed to what we already thought. But what, exactly, is the text, and how could we find out? Is it an original work or a translation, and if a translation, of what? If original, by whom, and with whom did he study Kabbalah and learn? Who is the intended audience?

They found a few dates written here and there, which helped confirm the 16th-17th-century range. But the work was made difficult by the fact that the opening quire was gone and there were not any clear chapter headings. They tried some educated guesswork, opening several fifteenth and sixteenth-century Kabbalistic texts and trying to find parallels here and there, but without success. Finally, we were able to find a foothold: a handful of places in the manuscript where the scribe had written some words in Hebrew, even a quote or two from a biblical verse. Let’s find digital copies of contemporaneous Kabbalistic texts, they suggested, and search for those particular words in Hebrew. After half an hour of trial and error, they hit a jackpot. Those same Hebrew words appeared in R. Hayyim Vital’s Sha’ar Hagilgulim. Within minutes it was clear, this text, or at least much of it, contains, among other things, a Spanish translation of parts of Vital’s major work on reincarnation.

Step three: determining the importance of the manuscript

The discovery of the nature of much of the work was critical, but how important is this translation? Certainly, the two scholars said, this translation is interesting, but only a full-fledged study of the manuscript could fully determine its significance in the history of Kabbalah. Is it worth performing such a study? Absolutely, they said, and therefore the manuscript could make an important contribution to the National Library’s collection.

Just to be sure, though, we turned to one other leading scholar of Kabbalah and asked his opinion. He looked at photos of about ten pages of the document, and I met with him to discuss it. He concurred with what the other scholars had said but added something else significant. He felt certain that it is not connected to Herrera, in which case it might be even more interesting than we thought since it could point to students of Kabbalah that we do not yet know of. (In passing, he mentioned two other Kabbalistic manuscripts in his possession, which he lent us to digitize for the Library’s collection, including a translation of the same Sha’ar Hagilgulim into Romanian.)

Step four: provenance and haggling over the price

The person who brought the manuscript to the Library suggested a particular price. It struck us as a bit high, particularly given the bad physical state of the manuscript and the necessity to invest funds in repairing it. More than that, our manuscript budget remains limited. We turned to the middleman with two important issues. First, we wanted to contact the owner directly and speak to him about the provenance (origin) of the manuscript. How did he come to own it, how long has he owned it, and why is he selling it? We needed to receive written guarantees that the manuscript belonged to him and that we were not dealing in goods that might be stolen. Second, we indicated that we simply could not afford the asking price. After several rounds back and forth, we reached an agreement much closer to what we wanted to pay, and a contract was signed.

After the purchase was completed, the manuscript underwent a thorough process of disinfection, in order to kill any bookworms or other lifeforms that might have been living in its pages. Then, the restoration lab did whatever was necessary to fix the binding and the torn pages and to clean as much of the fungus is possible. A unique box was constructed to protect the manuscript, and it has now been photographed in high-quality so that scholars can work on it without damaging the manuscript or risking the spread of the fungi to other books. You can view the manuscript here.

If you know a Spanish-speaking Kabbalah-scholar or graduate student looking for a challenging research project, put them in touch with us.

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Naming the Soldiers: A Special Joint Project by the National Library and Facebook

A special project by the National Library in collaboration with Facebook Israel in honor of the country's 71st Independence Day - come identify and tag your loved ones, family members and friends in these rare and historic images of IDF soldiers from the National Library collections

The National Library of Israel | 07.05.19

Among the many treasures preserved in the National Library of Israel are thousands of photographs documenting the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces throughout the history of the State of Israel. As part of the massive digitization project undertaken by the Library in recent years, these old photographs are being brought back to life, with the yellowing negatives being converted into high resolution images.

However, in many cases the Library is lacking information relating to the identities of the soldiers appearing in the photographs – and that’s where you come in…

Last summer, the National Library and Facebook Israel launched a joint project dedicated to making Israel’s cultural treasures accessible to the general public. As part of this ongoing initiative, today we are uploading a series of photo albums featuring images of IDF soldiers taken during Israel’s various wars in the past. We hereby invite the public to identify and tag their loved ones, family members and friends who served in these wars. In this way, their names will be commemorated in the history pages of the State of Israel, their memories preserved for the benefit of future generations alongside other Israeli cultural treasures of at the National Library.

The National Library collection includes more than 2.5 million photographs documenting the history of the Land and State of Israel. This is the world’s largest collection of Israeli photographs spanning a period of over 150 years. This unique assortment of photographs in fact includes several different collections, most notably the Dan Hadani Collection – an archive of more than a million photographs documenting almost every event in the history of the country. For decades, Dan Hadani and his team of press photographers documented political and cultural events, as well as wars and periods of national mourning. The photographers accompanied IDF soldiers during the liberation of the Old City of Jerusalem in the Six Day War, during the battles in Sinai and the Golan Heights in the Yom Kippur War, and during Operation Peace for Galilee in Lebanon. Wherever soldiers were sent to fight and defend the State, these photographers would follow.

Dan Hadani donated the collection to the National Library, where it will be preserved for future generations, but the Library staff encountered a problem: the information accompanying the photographs was not always complete. In many cases, it includes only the location and date of the photograph – “1982, Peace for Galilee”, is a typical example. In light of this, the Library decided to turn to the general public, and with the help of Facebook Israel we are now distributing these photographs to as many people as possible – so that they can help provide the most important information of all – who are the soldiers who appear in the pictures and what are the stories behind them.

“We are happy to share with the Israeli public the important task of preserving the culture and heritage of the State of Israel,” says Yaron Deutscher, head of the National Library’s Digital Access Division. “We are confident that through this cooperation with Facebook, which enables us to extract these cultural treasures from the archives of the Library and make them accessible to large audiences, a great deal of information will be gathered, enabling students, researchers and the general public to know more about what has happened here since the establishment of the State.”

Ahead of Israel’s Independence Day, the photographs are being uploaded to the National Library’s Facebook page, while the information received from the public will be preserved in the Library’s catalog, alongside cultural treasures of the State of Israel and the Jewish people, so that the sons and daughters of future generations will be able to know and understand more about what has transpired here over the past 71 years. This is a long-term project, and in the coming months we will share more and more images with the public.

Adi Soffer-Teeni, GM of Facebook Israel: “Today in the digital age we see a change in the ability to tell the story of the establishment of the State. We can now tell that story in a profound way that makes the history and the people who were there tangible and accessible to the public. A state’s past is one of the greatest assets it has and it outlines what it is and what it will be. This treasure trove of images tells the story of the State throughout its various stages and connects us to the people who were there and thanks to whom we are now celebrating our 71^st Independence Day. I am very excited about this and I hope that we will be able to connect names to faces in these exceptionally rare photographs.”

Click on the links below to see the full albums

The War of Independence

The Sinai Campaign

The Six Day War

Soldiers in the Negev desert, 1967, photo: IPPA staff, the Dan Hadani Collection

The War of Attrition

The IDF in Sinai, photo: IPPA staff, the Dan Hadani Collection

The Yom Kippur War

Soldiers enjoying a performance by singer Dvora Havkin, photo: IPPA staff, the Dan Hadani Collection

Operation Peace for Galilee (The First Lebanon War)

Soldiers returning from Lebanon, 1982, photo: IPPA staff, the Dan Hadani Collection

The IDF in the 1970s

The Women's Corps, 1970, photo: IPPA staff, the Dan Hadani Collection — The Women’s Corps, 1970, photo: IPPA staff, the Dan Hadani Collection

The IDF in the 1990s

A soldier prays at the Western Wall, 1989, photo: IPPA staff, the Dan Hadani Collection

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The Mother Who Stayed Behind to Defend Her Home During Israel’s War of Independence

Zipporah Rosenfeld, a fighter and a mother, faced an impossible dilemma: family or country?

Chen Malul | 07.05.19

History of Israel Israel's Wars Israeli Memorial Day War of Independence

Zipporah Rosenfeld immigrated to Israel from Europe as a survivor of the Holocaust. Like many of her generation who lived in the shadow of the catastrophe, Zipporah felt a sense of urgency to start her own family. She had met her husband Yehiel while still in Europe. After the war, the coupled decided to immigrate to Palestine and settle in Gush Etzion (the “Etzion Bloc”, in English), a cluster of settlements in the West Bank, south of Jerusalem. Their first child, Yossi, was born there. Despite the Etzion Bloc’s location in the midst of a hostile Arab population, its Jewish residents felt they had found a place they could call home. Over time, they began to develop economic ties and a life of co-existence with the neighboring Arab villages.

The Partition Plan put an end to all that. According to the border plan, Gush Etzion would remain outside the borders of the Jewish state. Yet, even with the sweeping approval of the plan by most of the member states of the United Nations, the Palestinian representatives and the Arab countries made clear they were willing to fight with any means at their disposal in order to prevent the partition plan from being implemented.

The Rosenfeld family, the Historical Archives of Gush Etzion

Over the years, there have been quite a few grievances aired surrounding the representation of the National Religious sector in the context of commemoration of Israel’s War of Independence. However, the group whose story has been suppressed perhaps more than any other is that of the religious Zionist women who bore the burden of caring for the children during wartime, with many risking (and sometimes even forfeiting) their lives in defense of their homeland.

The Women of Religious Zionism and the Building of the Nation

Even before the war, National Religious women, including the women of Gush Etzion, took an active part in the building of the country. It was a significant departure from the traditional conception of the role of the religious Jewish woman. The women of Gush Etzion, like many National Religious women, welcomed their new responsibilities in building the nation. During the period of calm before the war, the women of the Gush trained and took up defensive positions when the men were out patrolling the surrounding area.

Women of Gush Etzion at target practice. Photo: Gal Rattner

However, with the outbreak of fighting and the Arab Legion’s attack on Gush Etzion, most of the mothers and children were evacuated.

British armored vehicles used during the evacuation of women and children from Gush Etzion, the Historical Archives of Gush Etzion

The female fighters who remained were all unmarried, with the exception of two, one of whom was eventually evacuated before the fall of the Gush. Zipporah Rosenfeld, the only mother who stayed behind to help in the defense of her home, was caught in a terrible dilemma.

A group of men and women manning a guard post during the siege on Gush Etzion, the Historical Archives of Gush Etzion

When the fighting began, she hurried to send her only son Yossi along with the other evacuees from the Gush. She chose to remain with her husband and protect her home with her own body. Almost to the end, Zipporah debated whether to leave and join her little boy or stay and fight. “We left the decision until the ambulances arrived. I’m torn. I must decide between my duty as a mother and my obligation to my fellow members under siege” (Lilach Rosenberg-Friedman, Revolutionaries against Their Will, 324 [Hebrew]). As one of the fighters, she saw with her own eyes the severe shortage of people able to use a rifle, and therefore decided to delay her evacuation. Eventually, the siege by the Arab Legion prevented the possibility of evacuation and Zipporah and her husband Yehiel were killed in the final battle of the Etzion Bloc.

Yehiel, Yossi and Zipporah Rosenfeld before the start of the battles for Gush Etzion, the Historical Archives of Gush Etzion

Along with Zipporah and Yehiel, another 127 soldiers were killed in the last and most difficult battle over Gush Etzion, which took place on May 13, 1948. Among the fatalities were twenty-two women, the highest number of female fatalities in a single battle in all of Israel’s wars. Dozens of women from across the Etzion Bloc were taken captive by the Jordanian Legion. They were taken with the remaining men to Umm al Jamal, a prisoner-of-war camp on the eastern side of the Jordan River. The women were released six weeks later, while the men only returned to the territory of the fledgling state nine months after being captured.

After the fall of the Etzion Bloc, the survivors were taken captive by the Jordanians. The women were released after six weeks, while the men remained in captivity for nine months, the Historical Archives of Gush Etzion

Our collective national memory of the War of Independence reserves a place of honor for secular female fighters who sacrificed their lives for the nation. It is worth asking: What of the memory of the religious female fighters of the War of Independence? Why has the memory of fighting women — women like Zipporah Rosenfeld, who contributed equally to the war effort and who helped to strengthen the morale of the fighters on the battlefield—been relegated to the shadows? The pressing need for armed combatants in the period when the young state fought for its existence justified the enlistment of female fighters from the National Religious sector. The participation of women in battle did not stem from a change in the National Religious perception of the proper role of women in society, but from necessity. Indeed, immediately following the war, the leadership of the National Religious sector exerted heavy pressure to exempt religious women from army service.

The children of Gush Etzion’s founding generation, like Yossi Ron, the son of Zipporah and Yehiel – most of whom were evacuated with the outbreak of fighting – have been working for years to correct this historical bias and to remind all of us—the National Religious sector and the Israeli public in general—of the worthiness of remembering and cherishing the memory of the religious female fighters and those who fell in battle.

Pictures: The Historical Archives of Gush Etzion

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Visit Archive Network Israel and find over a million historic photographs, manuscripts, documents, recordings and videos that tell the story of the State of Israel.

The Kabbalistic Ceremony That Helped to Identify the Fallen Soldiers

When the thirty-five fallen soldiers of a legendary military convoy were brought for burial at Mt. Herzl, following Israel's War of Independence, only twenty-three could be identified with certainty. To resolve the problem, Rabbi Aryeh Levin performed a little-known Kabbalistic ritual.

Chen Malul | 06.05.19

History of Israel Israel's Wars Israeli Memorial Day War of Independence

The funeral of the Convoy of the Thirty-Five, 1948. Photo: Historical Archives of Gush Etzion

Twice, the funeral procession descended from the village to the lower slopes of the hill above the wadi, to where a mass grave had been dug in the young pine forest. Those carrying the stretchers with the dead, soldiers, members of the settlement, and relatives walked silently down the sloping path. A heartbreaking sight was a mother walking silently behind a stretcher, her hand supporting the head of her only son, which protruded slightly from under the cover draped over the stretcher—as if her son were alive and his mother’s caress would soothe him (“Yoman Kfar Etzion” [Hebrew], January 18th, 1948).

On the night between the 15^th and 16^th of January, 1948, thirty-five members of a convoy, commanded by Danny Mass, set out on a mission to deliver supplies to besieged Gush Etzion (the “Etzion Bloc”, in English), a cluster of settlements in the West Bank, just south of Jerusalem. Before dawn the unit was discovered and surrounded by thousands of Arab fighters. All thirty-five members of the convoy were killed in a battle that lasted the entire day. They have come to be known in Hebrew as the Lamed-Heh (ל”ה), after the two letters which together indicate the number thirty-five.

A Hebrew obituary notice for the fallen "35 Heroes of the Nation" — A Hebrew obituary notice for the fallen “35 Heroes of the Nation”

Twelve Graves Remained Unidentified

Two days later, the bodies were discovered by Hamish Dugan, chief of the British police in Hebron. He intended to bring them to burial in Kfar Etzion, but before he could so, Arabs residents of the nearby village of Surif mutilated the bodies beyond recognition. This led, later, to the problem of identifying the dead.

The funeral of the Convoy of the Thirty-Five, 1948. Photo: Historical Archives of Gush Etzion

A few months after the end of the War of Independence, in late 1949, the Chief Rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces, Shlomo Goren, initiated a mission to bring the bodies of Gush Etzion’s fallen defenders, including the Convoy of the Thirty-Five, for reburial at the national military cemetery on Mount Herzl.

The burial site of the Thirty-Five on Mt. Herzl

The bodies had been identified for the temporary burial in Kfar Etzion with great effort, but after the fall of Gush Etzion, the burial details were lost including the information of who was buried where. As a result, when the bodies were brought for permanent burial at Mount Herzl it was necessary to re-identify the bodies, and only twenty-three of them could be determined with certainty. Twelve graves remained unidentified. The families of these twelve fallen soldiers approached Rabbi Tzvi Pesach Frank, the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, who suggested they contact Rabbi Aryeh Levin and ask him to perform a Kabbalistic ceremony known as Goral HaGra [“The Lottery of the Vilna Gaon”] in order to identify the bodies.

The Verses that Miraculously Provided Answers

Rabbi Aryeh Levin was known for his kindness. He was called the “Rabbi of the Prisoners” for his habit of writing letters to prisoners and visiting them every Sabbath to visit them in their jail cells to lift their spirits during the British Mandate period. He was particularly known for his visits to the imprisoned members of the underground movements and those headed for the gallows. He also regularly visited the Hansen Leper Hospital in Jerusalem’s Talbiyeh neighborhood to offer encouragement and comfort to the residents. He himself participated in the funeral arrangements and identification of the bodies before the burial of the fallen of Kfar Etzion in 1948.

Goral HaGra, a ritual attributed to the Vilna Gaon (Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Zalman), is conducted by randomly opening a bible and linking the verses on the page to the matter at hand. The purpose of the ceremony is to find answers to a question of great importance. If there is no hint in the verse, one skips to the next verse that begins with the last letter of the previous verse.

Rabbi Aryeh Levin. Photo: the Eddie Hirschbein Collection at the National Library of Israel

At first, Rabbi Levin refused to perform the mystical ritual, but after being convinced that it would help the bereaved families gain a measure of closure—he acquiesced. The Rabbi was given both a list of the fallen whose burial places were unknown and a sketch of the unidentified graves (there was no need to dig up graves or desecrate the existing burial sites). He went over the sketch, one grave at a time, and tried to affix a verse to each.

The bible printed in Amsterdam in 1701 used by Rabbi Aryeh Levin for the ceremony. Photo from the book *Ish Tzadik Haya* by Simcha Raz

According to the book by Simcha Raz, Ish Tzadik Haya (“There was a Righteous Man” [Hebrew]), the Rabbi’s work was miraculously swift. At first, a few general verses appeared that contained hints of the letters Lamed-Heh followed by eleven verses in rapid succession that hinted at the names of the dead according to the order of their burial in the sketch. Some of the verses even contained the specific name of the deceased. In others, there was a clear hint. No verse was found for the body of the twelfth fallen soldier, Jacob Kotik z”l, but at this point there was no need, since the identification of the other eleven left no doubt as to where he was buried.

A record of the *Goral HaGra* ritual performed for the twelve graves at the burial site of the Thirty-Five on Mount Herzl. From the book *Ish Tzadik Haya*.

Twelve Candles Illuminated the Eastern Wall

Journalist Yitzhak Dish described the ceremony:

“It was Thursday, night time. They went upstairs to the yeshiva located in the attic of the small, modest house of Rabbi Aryeh, in the Mishkenot Yisrael neighborhood (a small neighborhood near the Mahane Yehuda market). In the darkened hall, twelve candles were lit, which illuminated the eastern wall next to which was the Torah Ark. Those present included: Rabbi Aryeh along with his son-in-law and son. Two of the parents of the deceased were also in attendance: Mr. Reuven Mass and Mr. Yitzhak Dov HaCohen Persitz. They began with the recitation of Psalms.

A sacred silence prevailed. The burning candles added to the sense of awe. They opened the Bible randomly without looking for a particular page. After each opening, they leafed through it again, seven times, and repeated the act seven times and decided that the findings would determine to whom each grave belonged before marking the tombstone. And this is the rule that was followed: the last verse on the page must include the name or a hint of the name of one of those whose identity is being sought.”

The article published in *Herut* on May 21^st, 1965. Click on the picture to read the article [Hebrew].

Sometimes it’s best to let the departed be. Through the generations, various rabbis have voiced reservations about this custom, which is supposedly aided by magical means. Despite the progress of science, to this day none of the members of the families of the twelve have asked for the bodies to be identified using more advanced methods such as DNA markers, and the fallen of the Convoy the Thirty-Five remain buried based on the identification determined by the Goral HaGra.

Rabbi Levin lived for years on Mount Gerizim Street in the Mishkenot Yisrael neighborhood in Jerusalem. After his death, this street as well as streets in other cities in Israel were named after him. In July 2005, the Israel Coins and Medals Corporation issued a commemorative medal and a stamp bearing his portrait was also published.