Early Yiddish Texts 1100-1750: With Introduction and Commentary

Early Yiddish Texts, 1100-1750

EARLY YIDDISH TEXTS 1100-1750 Edited by

Jerold C. Frakes

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan South Korea Poland Portugal Singapore Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Jerold C. Frakes 2004 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available ISBN 0-19-926614-x 1 3 5 7 9 108 6 4 2 Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddies Ltd., King's Lynn

Contents Chronological Listing of Texts Index of Texts by Genre Sources Cited: Manuscripts and Early Printed Editions Symbols and Abbreviations Introduction Acknowledgements

ix xvii xxix xxxvii xliii Ixxv

YIDDISH TEXTS WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES

1

Chronological Listing of Texts 1. <1105

2. 1272-3 3. 1290

4. 13th-14th c 5-9. 1382

Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac [Rashi], Glosses on the Bible and the Talmud [excerpts] Worms Mahzor Couplet The Short Arukh, Abridgement of Nathan b. Jehiel, The Complete Arukh [excerpt] Comments on Mahzor [excerpts] Cairo Genizah Codex [excerpts] 'Abraham thePatriarch'

10. 1385 11. 1392

'Joseph the Righteous' 'An Old Lion' Glosses of Gems on High Priest's Breastplate Duke Horant [excerpt] Jedidiah b. Hezekiah of Zurich, Urfehdebrief(Oath of Peace) Meir b. Baruch Halevi of Erfurt, Urfehdebrief (Oath of Peace)

1 3

5 6 8 10 25 29 32 33 43 45

12. 1396-7

13. 14th c. 14. 14th c. 15. 1435 16. 1460 17. < 1465 18. 1466 19. 1474

20. c.1475

21. < 1478 22. 1490

'Document Concerning all Powers of Bloodletting and Blood Vessels, According to the Writings of Physicians' 'Charm Against Labour Pains' 'Whither Shall 1 Go?' Jekuthiel [Kusyel] Judah b. Benusch, Urfehdebrief(Oath of Peace) Crossbow Inscription Traveller's Charm and Charm Against Knights Description of a Wrench and Tongs Remedies and Charms [excerpts] Zachariah b. Zodok and Eliezer b. Eliakim, Court Deposition in the Case of Mairlof Worth Letter to Pelein, Widow of Jacob of Worth Translation of Psalms [excerpts]

52

61 64 65 68 69 71 72

77

79 81

x

Chronological Listing of Texts

Translation of Immanuel of Salonica, Book of Remedies [excerpts] 86 24. 15th c. Glosses to Psalms [excerpts] 87 'Mighty is He' 89 25. 15th c. / 1526 Translation of 'Song of the Kid' 91 26. 15th c. Translation of 27. 15th c. Abraham b. Samuel ha-Levi ibn Hasdai, The Prince and the Monk [excerpts] 95 Mahzor; translated by 28. 15th-16th c. Translation of Isaac b. Mordecai Hacohen (Langosch) of Cracow [excerpts] 103 109 29. 15th-16th c. Medical Recipes [excerpt] 110 Song of Songs [excerpt] Glosses to 30. 15th-16th c. 112 Translation of 31. < 1503 Customs [excerpt] 32. 1504 Women's Commandments [excerpt] 115 33. 1507 Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita / Elye Bokher], Bovo ofAntona 120 [publ. 1541] [excerpts] 34. c.1510 Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia 140 Levita / Elye Bokher], 'The Great Fire of Venice' 35. c.1514 Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia 149 Levita / Elye Bokher], 'Hamavdil Song' Zalman the Scribe, 36. 1516 164 Debate Between Wine and Water' Israel b. 37. 1519 Rabbi Pethahiah Isserlein, Decisions and 168 Writings [excerpts] Jacob 38. 1523 170 b. Judah Weil [Mahariv], Responsa [excerpts] in Vidin to her daughter and Letter from 39. 1533 172 in Padua son-in-law Rabbi Anshel, The Second 40. 1534 174 Chariot [excerpt] 177 Prayer Book [excerpts] Translation of 41. 1535 42. 1541 Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita / 179 Elye Bokher], Tishbi [excerpt] 23. 1499

Chronological Listing of Texts

43. 1542

Translation of [excerpts]

xi

The Book of Virtues

180

44. 1542

45. 1543 46. 1544 47. 1544 48. 1544

49. 1545

50. 1546 51. 1549 52. 1553 53. 1554 54. 1554 55. c.1555

Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita / Elye Bokher], Nomenclatura hebraica [excerpts] The Book of Kings [excerpts] Translation of Pentateuch; translated by Joseph b. Jacob of Wetzlar [excerpt] Moses Esrim Vearba, The Book of Samuel [excerpts] Translation of Prayer Book for the Whole Year, translated by Joseph b. Yakar [excerpts] Translation of Psalms; translated by Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita / Elye Bokher] [excerpts] Translation of Yosifon; translated by Michael Adam [excerpts] Translation of Ashkenazic Siddur [excerpts] Translation of Meir b. Isaac Nehorai, 'Akdomous Milin' 'On the Ages of Life' 'Riddle' Gumprekht of Szczebrzeszyn, 'Hanukkah' [excerpt]

189 193 214 218

246

254 259 268 270 281 286 287

56. 1556

57. 1557 58. 1560

59. 1565 60. 1570 61. 1574

Jacob b. Moses Halevi Segal Moellin [Maharil], Responsa [excerpts] The Book of Daniel [excerpt] Translation of Pentateuch with Abridged Rashi; translated Judah by b. Moses Naphtali [Lob Brzesc Leyb Bresh] of Cremona [excerpts] Letter from Rachel b. Abraham to her son, Moses b. Eliezer 'The Binding of Isaac'

313 316

Zalman the Scribe, 'Debate Between Hanukkah and the Other Holidays'

328

295 297

305

xii

Chronological Listing of Texts

62. 1575

63. 1577 64. 1579

65. 1583

66. 1583

67. 1585 68. 1586

69. 1588

Solomon b. Jehiel Luria [Maharshal], Responsa [excerpt] Mordecai of Worms, Medical Reference Manual [excerpts] Anshel Levi, Midrash on the 'Sayings of the Fathers' [excerpts] Translation of Berechiah b. Natronai Ha-Nakdan, Fox Fables; Jacob translated by b. Samuel Bunim Koppelmann [excerpts] Translation of Lorenz Phryesen [Laurentius Fris], Spiegel der Artzney [excerpt] Briyo and Zimro Royzl b Joseph Levi [Fishl], 'With God's Help,' Preface to Moses Shtendl, translation of the Psalms Letter from Samuel Meisel to his Uncle Mordecai Meisel

334 335 337

349

354 355

368 370

70. 1590

71. 1591

72. 1593

73. 1593 74. 1594 75. 1595 76. 1596

77. 1597 78. 1597 79. 16th c.

Mordecai Samuel Jacob b. Jekuthiel, The Book of Good Speech [excerpts] Translation of Solomon ibn Judah Verga, The Sceptre of Judah [excerpt] Isaac Tyrnau. Translation of Customs', translated by Simon Levi Ginzburg b. Judah [excerpts] Jacob b. Eliezer (Ulma), 'A Bride's Song' Pariz and Viene [excerpts] The Book of Cows [excerpt] Moses Henochs [Yerushalmi] Altschuler, The Burning Mirror [excerpts] Joseph b. Elhanan Heilprun, Mother of the Child [excerpt] Sir Dietrich [excerpts] Pentateuch [excerpts] Translation of

372

375

382 387 393 415

420 431 432 447

Chronological Listing of Texts

80. 15th-16th c. 81. 16th c. 82. 16th c. 83. 16th c. 84. < 1600

85-7. c.l600

88. 1602

89. 1602 90. 1604

91. 1604-5

Vidvilt [excerpt] Preface to: Shvarts Kalman, Handbook on Laundry Translation of The Alphabet of Ben Sira [excerpt] Topics and Divisions [Methods of Talmud Study] [excerpt] Gitele, wife of Zalman b. Isaac, Midrash on the 'Sayings of the Fathers' [excerpts] Isaac [Eizik] Wallich Collection [excerpts] 'Jonah Play 'Pumay, You Dear Companions' Isaac [Eizik] Wallich of Worms, 'Memento Mori' Translation of Yiddish Selihot [Slikhous]; translated by Jacob b. Elijah Halevi of Teplitz [Toplitz] [excerpt] A Fine Book of Tales [Maysebukh} [excerpts] Moses Sertels ben Issachar Halevi, The Book of Good Doctrine [excerpt] Moses Sertels ben Issachar Halevi, The Book of the Well of Moses [excerpts]

xiii

453 460 462 465

468 472 473 479 482

486 488

496

500

92. 1605-15

93. 1609 94. 1618 95-6. 1619

Jacob b. Elijah Halevi of Teplitz [Toplitz]. 'A Very Fine, New Torah-Song' ' Rebecca b. Meit Tiktiner, The Nursemaid of Rebecca [excerpts] Medical Reference Manual [excerpts] Two Letters from Prague to Vienna Henoch b. Israel Letter from Aaron Hamershlag, to his son Sorel [Sarah] b. Moses to Letter from Leyb Sorel Gutmans her husband,

504

510 520 527 529 533

xiv

97. 1620

98. 1622

Chronological Listing of Texts

Isaac b. Eliakim of Posen, Book of the Good Heart [excerpts] Jacob b. Isaac Ashkenazi of Janov, Sene-Rene [Tsene-Rene] The Book of Esther)

540

Joseph b. Eleazar Lipman Ashkenazi, Lamentation on the Ukrainian Massacre

564

536

99. 1648

100. 1648

101. 1649 102. c.1650

103. 1650 104. 1650 105. 1650 106. 1654 107. 1660

Elhanan b. Abraham Hellen, The Song of Vints Hans [Megilas Vints] The Swedish Siege of Prague 'A Fine, New Song of Three Wives' Jacob b. Elijah Halevi of Teplitz [Toplitz], 'A Pious Song: Rebecca b. Meir Tiktiner, 'A Simhas-Torah Song' Moses b. Israel Naphtali Hirsh Forges, Paths to Zion [excerpts] 'Lamentation on the Death of the Young King' Nathan Nata b. Moses Hannover, The Book of Pure Speech [excerpt]

579 619 637 642 648 652 665 669

108. 1666

109. 1670

110. 1671

Jacob b. Benjamin Tousk [Taussig] of Prague, A Fine, New Poem on the Messiah 671 Translation of Samuel Issachar Baer Perlhefter, The Tent of lssachar, Commentary on: Jacob Weil (Mahariv), 685 Slaughtering and Inspection [excerpt] 'Proclamation of the Council 690 of the Four Lands'

111. 1671

112. 1671-9 113-14. 1676-9

Joseph b. Alexander Witzenhausen, A Fine Tale of King Arthur's Court [excerpts] 692 702 King Arthur's Court [excerpt] Amsterdam Bible Translations 713 1676-1679 Translated by Jekuthiel b. Isaac

Chronological Listing of Texts

115. 1686-7 116. 1687 117. < 1687 118. 1696 119. 1697

120. 1697 121. 1699 122. 1699 123. 17th c. 124. 17th c.

Blitz, Bible in Yiddish [excerpt] 1679 Translated by Joseph b. Alexander Witzenhausen, Bible [excerpt] Tuesday Courier I Friday Courier [excerpts] The Book of Grace Translation of After Meals [excerpts] Translation of Midrash Vayousha Ella b. Moses b. Abraham the Patriarch, Verse Colophon to Moses b. Menassah Eliezer b. Moses Wallich, Book of Fables [excerpt] 'A Fine Purim Play' Moses b. Meir Cohen, The Path of Moses [excerpts] Arye [Lob] Levi, The Book of Computations [excerpts] Hebrew-Yiddish Glossary [excerpts] Prayers and Supplications in Yiddish [excerpts]

xv

715

717 719 726 729 749

750 772

811 815 823 824

125. 17th c.

126. 17th c. 127. c.1700

A Dispute Among Men [Probate Briefs of Elijah Blin and Naphtali Hirts] [excerpt] 'Oath for "Bardon" Tax'

830 831

Taube (Toube), wife of Jacob Pan, b. Leyb Pitsker, A Fine, New Song in the Style of Tkhinous

834

128. 1700

129. 1705-6

Akiva Baer b. Joseph (Simeon Akiva Baer), The Mighty [God] of Jacob [excerpt] Sevi Hirsh b. Aaron Samuel Koidenower, The Correct Measure [excerpts]

848

Aviezer Selig of Lublin and Sevi Hirsh b. Jerahmiel Hotsh, The Inheritance of Sevi [The Yiddish Zohar] [excerpts]

857

843

130. 1711

xvi

131. 1691-1719

132. 1749

Chronological Listing of Texts

Glikl b. Leyb Pinkerle [widow of Chaim Hamil; Gluckel von Hameln] [excerpts] Isaac Wetzlar, Love Letter [Pillars of the World] [excerpts]

864 876

Index of Texts by Genre Texts are ordered by approximate genre and may appear more than once.

Bible: translation, paraphrase, adaptation 5. 'Abraham the Patriarch' (1382) 'Joseph the Righteous' (1382) 6. 22. Translation of Psalms (1490) 45. The Book of Kings (1543) Pentateuch; translated by 46. Translation of Joseph b. Jacob of Wetzlar( 1544) 47. Moses Esrim Vearba, The Book of Samuel (1544) Psalms; translated by 49. Translation of Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita Elye Bokher] (1545) Gumprekht of Szczebrzeszyn, 55. 'Hanukkah' (c.1555) 57. The Book of Daniel (1557) Pentateuch with 58. Translation of Abridged Rashi; translated by Judah b. Moses Naphtali [Lob Brzesc / Leyb Bresh] of Cremona (1560) 'The Binding of Isaac' (1570) 60. Pentateuch (16th c.) 79. Translation of Jacob b. Isaac Ashkenazi of Janov, 98. The Book of Esther] Sene-Rene [Tsene-Rene] (1622) Bible in 113. Translation of Jekuthiel b. Isaac Blitz Yiddish; translated by (1676-1679) Bible; translated by 114. Translation of Joseph b. Alexander Witzenhausen (1679) Midrash Vayousha(< 1687) 117. Translation of

10 25

81 193 214 218

254 287 297

305 316 447 540

715 717 729

xviii

Index of Texts by Genre

Conversation guide 44. Hebrew conversation guide from Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita Elye Bokher];, Nomenclatura hebraica (1542)

189

Customs 31. Translation of 72. Translation of

by 116. Translation of

Customs (< 1503) Isaac Tyrnau, Customs; translated Simon Levi Ginzburg b. Judah (1593) The Book of Grace After Meals (1687)

Disputation / Debate 36. 61

112 382 726

Zalman the Scribe, 'Debate Between

Wine and Water' (1516)

164

Zalman the Scribe, 'Debate Between Hanukkah and the Other Holidays' (1574)

328

Drama 85. 120.

'Jonah Play' (c.1600) 'A Fine Purim Play' (1697)

473 772

Epic

Midrashic Epic 'Abraham the Patriarch' (1382) 'Joseph the Righteous' (1382) The Book of Kings (1543) Moses Esrim Vearba, The Book of Samuel (1544) Gumprekht of Szczebrzeszyn, 55. 'Hanukkah' (c. 1555) The Book of Daniel (1557) 57. 'The Binding of Isaac' (1570} 60. Midrash Vayousha (< 1687) 117. Translation of 5. 6. 45. 47.

Secular Epic 9.

Duke Horant (1382)

Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita / Elye Bokher], Bovo of Antona (1507;publ. 1541) Pariz and Viene (1594) 74.

10 25 193 218 287 297 316 729 33

33.

120 393

Index of Texts by Genre

78. 80. 111.

xix

Sir Dietrich (1597) Vidvilt (15th-16thc.)

432 453

Joseph b. Alexander Witzenhausen, A Fine Tale of King Arthur's Court (1671) 112. King Arthur's Court (1671-1679)

692 702

Ethics and morality 32. Women's Commandments (1504] 43. Translation of The Book of Virtues (1542) 76. Moses Henochs [Yerushalmil] Altschuler, The Burning Mirror (1596) 93. Rebecca b. Meir Tiktiner, The Nursemaid of Rebecca (1609) 97. Isaac b. Eliakim of Posen, Book of the Good Heart (1620) 121. Moses b. Meir Cohen, The Path of Moses (1699) 129. Sevi Hirsh b. Aaron Samuel Koidenower, The Correct Measure (1705-1706) 132. Isaac Wetzlar, Love Letter [Pillars of' the World] (1749)

115 180 420 510 536 811 848 876

Fable 7. 64.

'An Old Lion'(1382) Anshel Levi, 'The Conceited

29

King' (1579) Berechiah b. 65. Translation of Natronai Ha-Nakdan, Fox Fables; translated by Jacob b. Samuel Bunim Koppelmann (1583) The Book of Cows (1595) 75. 82. Translation of The Alphabet of Ben Sira (16th c.; A Fine Book of Tales [Mayse-bukh] (1602) 89. Moses b. Menassah 119. Eliezer b. Moses Wallich, Book of Fables (1697)

346

349 415 462 488 750

Glosses, glossaries, orthography 1. Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac [Rashi], Glosses on the Bible and the Talmud (< 1105) 3. The Short Arukh, Abridgement of b. Jehiel, The Complete Arukh (1290) 8. Glosses of Gems on High Priest's Breastplate (1382)

1 Nathan

5 32

xx

Index of Texts by Genre

24. Glosses to Psalms (15th c.) 30. Glosses to Song of Songs (15th-16th c.) 33. Italian-Yiddish Glossary from. Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita / Elye Bokher], Bovo of Antona (1507; publ. 1541) 40. Rabbi Anshel, The Second Chariot (1534) 42. Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita/Elye Bokher], Tishbi(154l) 'How to Read Yiddish,' from: 43. The Book of Virtues (1542) 50. Michael Adam, 'How Yosifon] (1546) to Read and Write Yiddish' [in 70. Mordecai Samuel Jacob b. Jekuthiel, The Book of Good Speech (1590) Joseph b. Elhanan Heilprun, 77. Mother of the Child (1597) Moses Sertels ben Issachar 90. Halevi, The Book of Good Doctrine (1604) Moses Sertels ben 91. Issachar Halevi, The Book of the Well of Moses (1604-1605) Nathan Nata b. Moses Hannover, 107. The Book of Pure Speech (1660) 123. Hebrew-Yiddish Glossary (17th c.)

87 110

120 174 179 180 259 372 431 496 500 669 823

Historiography and historical poetry Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita / Elye Bokher], 'The Great Fire of Venice' (c.1510) Michael Yosifon', translated by 50. Translation of Adam (1546) Joseph 99. b. Eleazar Lipman Ashkenazi, Lamentation on the Ukrainian Massacre (1648) Elhanan b. 100. Abraham Hellen, The Song of Vints Hans [Megilas Vints] (1648) The Swedish Siege of Prague (1649) 101. 'Lamentation on the Death of 106. the Young King'(1654) Jacob b. 108. Benjamin Tousk [Taussig] of Prague, A Fine, New Poem on the Messiah (1666) 34.

140 259

564 579 619 665

671

Index of Texts by Genre 110.

'Proclamation of the Council of the Four Lands' (1671)

126. 131.

xxi

'Oath for "Bardon" Tax' (17th c.) Glikl b. Leyb Pinkerle [widow of Chaim Hamil; Gluckel von Hameln] (1691-1719)

690 831 864

Kabbalah 129.

Sevi Hirsh b. Aaron Samuel Koidenower, The Correct Measure (1705-1706) 130. Aviezer Selig of Lublin and Sevi Hirsh b. Jerahmiel Hotsh, The Inheritance of Sevi [The Yiddish Zohar] (1711) 132. Isaac Wetzlar, Love Letter [Pillars of the World] (1749)

848

857 876

Legal and para-legal texts Halakhah / 32. Women's Commandments (1504) 37. Israel b. Rabbi Pethahiah Isserlein, Decisions and Writings (1519) Jacob b. Judah Weil 38. [Mahariv], Responsa (1523) 56. Jacob b. Moses Halevi Segal Moellin [Maharil], Responsa (1556) 62. Solomon b. Jehiel Luria [Maharshal], Responsa (1575) Samuel 109. Translation of Issachar Baer Perlhefter, The Tent of lssachar; Commentary on: Jacob Weil (Mahariv), Slaughtering and Inspection (1670) 125. A Dispute Among Men [Probate Briefs of Elijah Blin and Naphtali Hirts] (17th c.)

115 168 170 295 334

685

830

Responsa Israel b. Rabbi Pethahiah Isserlein, Decisions and Writings (1519) Jacob b. Judah Weil 38. [Mahariv], Responsa (1523) Jacob b. Moses 56. Halevi Segal Moellin [Maharil], Responsa (1556) 37.

168 170 295

xxii

Index of Texts by Genre

62.

Solomon b. Jehiel Luria [Maharshal], Responsa (1575)

334

Civil jurisdiction 10. Oath of Peace of 11. Oath of Peace of

Jedidiah b. Hezekiah of Zurich (1385) Meir b. Baruch Halevi

43

of Erfurt (1392) 15. Oath of Peace of Jekuthiel [Kusyel] Judah b. Benusch (1435) 20. Court Deposition in the Case of Mairl of Worth (c. 1475), by Zachanah b. Zodok and Eliezer b. Eliakim 'Proclamation of the Council of the Four 110. Lands' (1671) 126. 'Oath for "Bardon" Tax' (17th c.)

45 65

77

690 831

Letters 21. To Pelein, Widow of Jacob of Worth (< 1478) 39. in Vidin to her daughter in and son-in-law Padua (1533) 59. Rachel b. Abraham to her son, Moses b. Eliezer (1565) Samuel Meisel to his Uncle 69. Mordecai Meisel(1588) Henoch b. Israel Hamershlag, to his son 95. Aaron (1619) Sorel [Sarah] b. Moses, to her husband, 96. Leib Sorel Gutmans (1619)

79

172 313 370 529 533

Liturgical texts, prayers, and blessings 2. Worms Mahzor Couplet (1272-1273) 3 4. Comments on Mahzor ( 13th-14th c.) 6 25. Translation of 'Mighty is He' (15th c. / 1526)I 89 'Song of the Kid' (15th c.) 26. 91 Translation of Mahzor, translated by 28. Isaac b. Mordecai Hacohen (Langosch) of Cracow (15th-16th c.) 103 177 41. Translation of Prayer Book (1535) Prayer Book for the Whole Year, 48. Translation of Joseph b. Yakar ( 1544) 246 translated by Ashkenazic Siddur (1549) 268 51. Translation of Meir b. Isaac 52. Translation of

Index of Texts by Genre

Nehorai, 'Akdomous Milin' (1553) 88. Translation of Yiddish Selihot [Slikhous]; translated by Jacob b. Elijah Halevi of Teplitz [Toplitz] (1602) 116. Translation of The Book of Grace After Meals (1687) 124. Prayers and Supplications in Yiddish (17th c.) 127. Taube (Toube), wife of Jacob Pan, b. Leyb Pitsker, A Fine, New Song in the Style of Tkhinous (c. 1700)

xxiii

270

486 726 824

834

Lyric 2. Worms Mahzor Couplet (1272-1273) 14. 'Whither Shall I Go?' (14th c.) 64 25. Translation of' 'Mighty is He' (15th c. / 1526) 89 'Song of the Kid' (15th c.) 26. 91 28. Verse transition ['colophon'] to the translation of Isaac b. Mordecai Hacohen (Langosch) of Cracow, Mahzor (15th-16th c.) 103 35. Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita / Elye Bokher], 'Hamavdil Song' (c. 1514) 149 Zalman the Scribe, 'Debate Between 36. 164 Wine and Water' (1516) 52. Translation of Meir b. Isaac Nehorai, 'Akdomous Milin' (1553) 270 'On the Ages of Life' (1554) 281 53. Judah b. Moses Naphtali 58. [Lob Brzesc / Leyb Bresh] of Cremona, Verse Preface to Yiddish 305 Pentateuch (1560) Zalman the Scribe, 61. 328 'Debate Between Hanukkah and the Other Holidays' (1574) Anshel Levi, 'The Conceited 64. 346 King' (1579) Royzl b. Joseph Levi 68. [Fishl], 'With God's Help', Preface to 368 Moses Shtendl, translation of the Psalms (1586) Jacob b. Eliezer (Ulma), 'A 73. 387 Bride's Song' (1593) Shvarts Kalman, 81. Preface to: 460 Handbook on Laundry (16th c.) 3 3

xxiv

86. 87. 92.

102. 103. 104. 106. 108.

118.

Index of Texts by Genre

'Pumay, You Dear Companions' (c. 1600) Isaac [Eizik] Wallich, 'Memento Mori' (c.1600) Jacob b. Elijah Halevi of Teplitz [Toplitz], A Very Fine, New Torah-Song' (1605-1615) 'A Fine, New Song of Three Wives' (c.1650) Jacob b. Elijah Halevi Teplitz [Toplitz], 'A Pious Song' (1650) Rebecca b. Meir Tiktiner, 'A Simhas-Torah Song' (1650) 'Lamentation on the Death of the Young King'(1654) Jacob b. Benjamin Tousk [Taussig] of Prague, A Fine, New Poem on the Messiah (1666) Ella b. Moses b. Abraham the Patriarch, Verse Colophon to (1696)

479 482

504 637 642 648 665

671 749

127. Taube (Toube), wife of Jacob Pan, b. Leyb Pitsker, A Fine, New Song in the Style of Tkhinous (c. 1700)

834

Medicine and magic 12.

13. 17. 19. 23. 29. 63. 66. 94.

'Document Concerning all Powers of Bloodletting and Blood Vessels, According 52 to the Writings of Physicians' (1396-1397) 61 'Charm Against Labour Pains' (14th c.) 69 Traveller's Charm and Charm Against Knights (< 1465) 72 Remedies and Charms (1474) Immanuel of Salonica, Book of Translation of 86 Remedies (1499) 109 Medical Recipes (15th-16th c.) 335 Mordecai of Worms, Medical Reference Manual (1577) Lorenz Phryesen Translation of 354 [Laurentius Fris], Spiegel der Artzney (1583) 520 Medical Reference Manual (1618)

Midrash Anshel Levi, Midrash on 'The Sayings

64. of the Fathers '(1579)

337

Index of Texts by Genre

Gitele, wife of Zalmen b. Isaac, Midrash on the 'Sayings of the Fathers' (< 1600) 128. Akiva Baer b. Joseph (Simeon Akiva Baer), The Mighty [God] of Jacob

xxv

84.

468

843

(1700)

Mishna and Talmud study Anshel Levi, Midrash on 'The Sayings of the Fathers '(1579) Topics and Divisions (16th c.) 83. 84. Gitele, wife of Zalman b. Isaac, Midrash on the 'Sayings of the Fathers' (< 1600) 64.

337 465 468

Newspaper 115.

Tuesday Courier / Friday Courier (1686-1687)

719

Prologues and epilogues Mahzor; translated by 28. Translation of 33.

44.

48.

49.

58.

64.

Isaac b. Mordecai Hacohen (Langosch) of Cracow, Transition ['colophon'] (15th—16th c.) Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita / Elye Bokher], Bovo of Antona, Title page, Preface, Epilogue; Colophon by Joseph and Elijah b. Isaac Behem of Rome (1507) Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita / Elye Bokher], Nomenclature! hebraica, Title page, Preface by Paulus Fagius (1542) Prayer Book for the Whole Year, Translation of Joseph b. Yakar, Title page, Preface, translated by Colophon (1544) Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita / Elye Bokher], Psalms, Title page, Preface (1545) Pentateuch with Translation of Abridged Rashi; translated by Judah b. Moses Naphtali [Lob Brzesc / Leyb Bresh], Preface (1560) Anshel Levi, Midrash on 'The Sayings of the Fathers', Epilogue to the Patroness (1579)

103

120

189

246

254

305 337

xxvi

Index of Texts by Genre

65. Translation of

Berechiah b. Natronai Ha-Nakdan, Fox Fables; translated by Jacob b. Samuel Bunim Koppelmann, Preface (1583) 68. Royzl b. Joseph Levi [Fishl], 'With God's Help', Preface to Moses Shtendel, translation of the Psalms (1586) 70. Mordecai Samuel Jacob b. Jekuthiel, The Book of Good Speech, Preface (1590) 74. Pariz and Viene, Title page, Prologue, Epilogue Colophon (1594) 78. Sir Dietrich, Title page and Colophon (1597) Shvarts Kalman, Handbook 81. on Laundry, Preface (16th c.) 84. Gitele, wife of Zalmen b. Isaac, Midrash on the 'Sayings of the Fathers', Preface (< 1600) 89. A Fine Book of Tales [Mayse-bukh], Title page and Preface (1602) 90. Moses Sertels ben Issachar Halevi, The Book of Good Doctrine, Preface (1604) 91. Moses Sertels ben Issachar Halevi, The Book of the Well of Moses, Preface (1604-1605) 92. Jacob b. Elijah Halevi of Teplitz [Toplitz], 'A Very Fine, New Torah-Song', Title page / Preface [? by Sarah b. Jacob] (1605-1615) Rebecca b. Meir Tiktiner, The 93. Nursemaid of Rebecca, Title page (1609) Isaac b. Eliakim of Posen, Book 97. of the Good Heart, Title page and Preface (1620; 99. Joseph b. Eleazar Lipman Ashkenazi, Lamentation on the Ukrainian Massacre, Preface (1648) The Swedish Siege of Prague, Title page (1649) 101. Moses b. Israel Naphtali 105. Hirsh Porges, Paths to Zion, Title page (1650) Jacob b. 108. Benjamin Tousk [Taussig] of Prague, A Fine, New Poem on the Messiah, Title page and Preface (1666) Joseph b. 111. Alexander Witzenhausen, A Fine Tale of King Arthur's Court Title page and Preface (1671) I Midrash Vayousha, Title page (< 1687) 117. Translation of

349

368 372 393 432 460 468 488 496 500

504 510 536

564 619 652

671

692 729

Index of Texts by Genre

118.

Verse Colophon to

120. 121.

xxvii

Ella b. Moses b. Abraham the Patriarch, (1696) 749 'A Fine Purim Play', Title page, Prologue (1697) 772 Moses b. Meir Cohen, The Path of Moses

(1699)

132.

811 Isaac Wetzlar, Love Letter [Pillars

of the World], Preface (1749)

876

Satire and humour 34.

35.

36. 53. 54. 61. 64. 86. 102.

120.

Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita / Elye Bokher], 'The Great Fire of Venice' (c. 1510) Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita / Elye Bokher], 'Hamavdil Song' (c. 1514] Zalman the Scribe, 'Debate Between Wine and Water' (1516) 'On the Ages of Life' (1554) 'Riddle' (1554) Zalman the Scribe, 'Debate Between Hanukkah and the Other Holidays' (1574) Anshel Levi, 'The Conceited King' (1579) 'Pumay, You Dear Companions' (c. 1600) 'A Fine, New Song of Three Wives' (c.1650) 'A Fine Purim Play' (1697)

140

149 164 281 286 328 346 479 637 772

Tale, prose narrative 27. Translation of

Abraham b. Samuel ha-Levi ibn yasdai, The Prince and the Monk (15th c.) Briyo and Zimro (1585) 67. Solomon ibn Judah 71. Translation of Verga, The Sceptre of Judah (1591) A Fine Book of Tales [Mayse-bukh] (1602) 89. Akiva Baer b. 128. Joseph (Simeon Akiva Baer), The Mighty [God] of Jacob (1700)

Technology 8. Glosses of Gems on High Priest's Breastplate (1382) 18. Description of a Wrench and Tongs (1466)

95 355

375 488 843

32 71

xxviii

Index of Texts by Genre

Shvarts Kalman, 81. Preface to: Handbook on Laundry (16th c.) [Lob] Levi, The Book of 122. Computations (1699)

460 815

Travel guide Moses b. Israel Naphtali Hirsh Forges, Paths to Zion (1650) Moses b. Meir Cohen, The Path of Moses 121. (1699)

105.

652 811

Sources Cited Manuscripts Amsterdam University Library, Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana MS Ros. 176, (late 16th c.) Basel Universitatsbibliothek MS A.N.IX.3,

(16th c.)

Berlin Staatsbibliothek, PreuBischer Kulturbesitz MSOr.Qu.310, (1490) (16th c.) MSOr.Qu.691, (16th c.) MS Or.Qu.696, MSOr.Qu.701, Glosses to (15th-16th c.) MS Or.Qu.867, Mordecai of Worms, Medical Reference Manual (1577) MS Or.Qu.960, Mahzor comments (13th-14th c.) MS Or.Oct.619; Medical Reference Manual (1618) MS Or.Oct.1127, (16th c.) Bern Burgerbibliothek 200, The Short Aruch (1290) Budapest Magyar Tudomanyos Akademia Konyvyara (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) Oriental Department, Kaufmann collection MS 397: (c.1555) Cambridge University Library Add. 547. T.-S. 10K22, Gems (1382) T.-S. Misc. 36.152, Letter from

(1504) Glosses of (1565)

xxx

Sources Cited

Trinity College F.12.44, F.I 2.45,

(16th c.) (16th c.)

Cologne Historisches Archiv der Stadt Koln W 332, IV,

(1396-7)

Frankfurt am Main Institut fur Stadtgeschichte Rachtungen 287 & 288 [(1392, Marz 19)], (1392) Stadt- und Universitatsbibliothek MS hebr. oct. 2, MS hebr. oct. 17, Hamburg Staats- und Universitatsbibliothek (1574) Cod. hebr. 250, Cod. hebr. 255, Cod. hebr. 289, Cod. hebr. 313,

Urfehdebrief,

(> 1743)

(1516)

(16th c.) (16th c.) (16th c.)

Jerusalem Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People CS 22,

Museo U. Nahon Di Arte Ebraica Italiana Haggadah Sereni, (15th c.) National and University Library MS Osroth Heb. 4° 781, MS 8° 1167, Leipzig Universtatsbibliothek B.H. 18,

(1697)

(1272-3) (late 18th c.)

Sources Cited London British Library Add. MS 27071, Or. 10086, Or. 10668,

xxxi

(15th-16thc.) (late 18th c.) (1777)

London School of Jewish Studies [formerly Jews' College] Montefiore, MS 134, fol. 88v: 'Charm Against Labour Pains' (14th c.) Sassoon Library MS 930, Milan Biblioteca Ambrosiana C. 282 inf.,

(18th c.)

(14th c.)

Munich Bayerische Staatsbibliothek

Cod. hebr. 100, (1585) Cod. hebr. 347, Cod. hebr. 390,The Short Arukh (15th c.)

(15th c.)

Hauptstaatsarchiv Reichsstadt Regensburg Urk. [1475 I 19], Court Deposition (< 19 January 1475) Reichsstadt Regensburg Urk. [1478] (olim Gemeiners // Nachlass: K.12/1): Letter to Pelein, Widow of Jacob of Worth (1478; New York Jewish Theological Seminary MS 2225, MS 2333, (1570) MS 4425,

(18th c.) (18th c.)

Metropolitan Museum of Art Rogers Fund 1904 (04.3.36), Crossbow Inscription (1460) [relief carving] Oxford Bodleian Library MS Heb. d. 15, Medical Recipes (15th-16th c.)

xxxii

MS Heb. e. 6, MS Mich. 182, MS Mich. 297, MS Mich. 311, MS Can. Or. 12,

Sources Cited

(1499) (early 19th c.; (late 18th c.' (1574)

(1554) (1544; MS Opp. 19, MS Opp. 300, Charms (1465) MS Opp. 322, (17th c.) MS Opp. 607 (c.1600) MS Opp. 656, (1535) (early 17th c.) MS Opp. 666, (1583) MS Opp. 690, (c.1574; MS Opp. 718, (late 16th c.) MS Opp. 733, MS Opp. 757, Hebrew-Yiddish Glossan MS Opp. add. 4° 136, Isaac [Eizik] Wallich song collection Paris Bibliotheque Nationale MS hebr. 92 (c. 1530), (< 1503) MS hebr. 586

MS hebr. 589 MS hebr. 750 [Ancien fonds 107],

(1579)

(16th c.) MS hebr. 934 [Ancien fonds 306], fol. 102v, Description of a Wrench and Tongs (1466) (16th c.) MS hebr. 1312 ;Sorbonne 244], (15th c.) MS hebr. 1333, Stuttgart Wilrttembergische Landesbibliothek (1474) Cod. HB XI 17, Vienna Haus-, Hof- and Staatsarchiv Turkei I (Turcica) 3, Konv. 2, Letter from Hs. Weiss 1002 (Suppl. 1174). Letters of

in Vidin(1533) (1619)

Sources Cited

xxxiii

Wroclaw Stadtarchiv Archivum Paristwowe, Dok.V.128 [destroyed in World War II], Urfehdebrief, f (1435) Biblioteka Uniwersytecka MS 248, Letter from

(1588)

Zurich Staatsarchiv des Kantons Raths- und Richtebucher der Stadt Zurich, vol. B VI 192, fol. 287v: Urfehdebrief, (1385)

Early Printed Editions Amsterdam

1648 1648 < 1649 1650 1651 1666 1660 1671 1676-9 1679 1686-7 1696 1699 1699

Augsburg 1543 1544 Basel 1557 1602 1602

[or Prague, 1650]

xxxiv

Sources Cited

1612 Cracow 1534 1578 1582 1586 1588

1590 1591 1593 1596

1597 1650

[or Prague]

Cremona 1556 1560

Dessau 1696 Frankfurt am Main

1697 1705-6 1711

Freiburg 1583 Hanau 1622 Ichenhauscn 1544 Ingolstadt 1652

Sources Cited

Isny 1541 1541 1542 1542 Lublin 1575 Mantua 1563 Prague 1526 1597 1602 1604 1604-5 1605-15 1607 1609 1609 1609 1611 1620 1648 1649 c. l650 c.1650 c.1650 1650 ? Prague,n.p., m.d.] [1654 1660 1671-9 1673 < 1687 1688-1715 c.!7th c. [? Prague] Sulzbach 1700

[or Amsterdam 1650]

xxxv

xxxvi

Sources Cited

Venice 1519

1545 1 546 1549 1549 1593

Verona 1594 1595 Wilhermsdorf 1670

1687 Wroclaw 1670

Ein schon Neu Lied I Vom Messia / Anfangs dem vermeinten jungsten Messiae im Morgenland I Schabbasi Zebhi, von Jakob Taussk I von Prag / Zu Ehren aufgesetzt I Und im Jahr 1666 in Amsterdam mit Jiidischer Schrift gedruckt; jetzo aber / Damit der Juden blinde Thorheit unter den Christen bekannter werde I Aus dem Hollandischen Judischen Exemplar, mit behaltenem Dialecto, Nachgedruckt in Bresslau I Im Jahre unseres wahren Messias I 1670. In der Baumannischen Erben Druckerey druckts Johan Christoph Jakob I Factor.

Zurich 1546

n.p, n.d. [1671] n.p., n.d. [late 17th c.] n.p., n.d. [c. 1700]

n.p., n.d. [c. 1654]

Allgemeines trauriges Weheklagen / uber den Todlichen Hinlritl Ferdinandi des 4. DeB Heyl. Rom. Reichs erwohlten und gekrohneten Konigs. Im Ton / Wie man der Kaiserin Lied singe / Oder in Dorothea weiB

Symbols and Abbreviations - text gap due to physical damage, letters partially visible and/or reading all but certain <> - editorial conjecture of reading ( ) - frequently used in the original documents to highlight Hebrew (or other non-Yiddish) vocabulary; all such parentheses in edited texts are original, not editorial .... - unclear reading, number of lost letters estimated by number of dots / - column end // - page end []

Baumgarten

Jean Baumgarten. Introduction a la litterature yiddish ancienne (Paris: Cerf, 1993). Baumgarten, Jean Baumgarten, 'Les Manuscrits Yidich de la 'Manuscrits Paris' Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris', in The Field of Yiddish: Studies in Language, Folklore, and Literature, ed. David Goldberg (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1993), 121-51. Malachi Beit-Arie and R. A. May, Catalogue of the Beit-Arie Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library. Supplement of Addenda and Corrigenda to Vol. 1 (A. Neubauer's Catalogue), (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). Beitrage zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und BGDSL Literatur. Solomon A. Birnbaum, 'Specimens of Yiddish Over Eight Birnbaum, Centuries,' in Yiddish: A Survey and a Grammar (Man'Specimens' chester: Manchester University Press, 1979), 143-89. Solomon A. Birnbaum, The Hebrew Scripts, Part One: The Birnbaum, Text (Leiden: Brill, 1971). Hebrew Scripts A. E. Cowley, A Concise Catalogue of the Hebrew Printed Cowley Books in the Bodleian Library (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929) [citation by page number]. Encyclopaedia Judaica: Das Judentum in Geschichte und EJ (Berlin) Gegenwart, 10 vols. (–Lyra), (Berlin: Eschkol, 1928–34). Encyclopedia Judaica, 16 vols. (Jerusalem: Keter, 1971). EJ Early Yiddish Texts [internal references by number to texts EYT included in this volume].

XXXV111

FOY I

Symbols and Abbreviations

The Field of Yiddish: Studies in Yiddish Language, Folklore, and Literature, ed. Uriel Weinreich (New York: Linguistic Circle of New York, 1954). FOY II The Field of Yiddish: Studies in Yiddish Language, Folklore, and Literature, ed. Uriel Weinreich, 2nd collection (The Hague: Mouton, 1965). Freimann Aron Freimann, Union Catalog of Hebrew Mauscripts and their Location, 2 vols. (New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1964-73) [citation by item number]. Lajb [Leo] Fuks, ed., The Oldest Known Literary DocuFuks, Oldest Documents ments of Yiddish Literature (c.1382), 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1957). Ginzberg, Legends Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 1 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1938–61). Peter Ganz, Frederick Norman, and Werner Schwarz, eds., GNS Dukus Horant, Altdeutsche Textbibliothek, Erganzungsreihe 2 (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1964). Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift. GRM Grilnbaum, Max Grunbaum, Judischdeutsche Chrestomathie, zugleich ein Beitrag zur Kunde der hebraischen Literatur (Leipzig: Chrestomathie Brockhaus, 1882; rpt. Hildesheim: Olms, 1969). Moritz Gudemann, Geschichte des Erziehungswesens und Gudemann, der Cultur der abendlandischen Juden wahrend des MitGeschichte telalters und der neueren Zeit, 3 vols. (Vienna: Holder, 1880-9; rpt. Amsterdam: Philo, 1966). Heikki J. Hakkarainen, Studien zum Cambridger Codex T.Hakkarainen, S. 10. K. 22; 1: Text. Turun Yliopiston Julkaisuja/Acta Studien Universitatis Turkuensis, ser. B, vol. 104 (Turku, 1967); 2: Graphemik und Phonemik. Acta, ser. B, vol. 174 (Turku, 1971); 3: Lexikon. Acta, ser. B., vol. 182 (Turku 1973). Microfiche collection of early Yiddish books, ed. Chone IDC Shmeruk, Inter Documentation Company, Jewish Studies Research Collections on Microfiche; P.O. Box 11205, 2301 EE Leiden, Netherlands [microfiche; citation by catalogue number; in earlier scholarship sometimes referred to as Yiddish Books on Microfiche or YBM, a title the collection no longer bears]. International Folklore Review: Folklore Studies from IFR Overseas. Journal of English and Germanic Philology. JEGP Journal of Jewish Studies. JJS

Symbols and Abbreviations

xxxix

Katz, 'Six Germane- Eli Katz, 'Six Germano-Judaic Poems from the Cairo Genizah' (Diss., UCLA, 1963). Judaic Poems' Kontroversen, alte und neue: Akten des VII. InternationKontroversen alen Germanisten-Kongresses Gottingen 1985, ed. Albrecht Schone. Vol. 5: Auseinandersetzungen um jiddische Sprache und Liter atur, Judische Komponenten in der deutschen Literatur—die Assimilationskontroverse, ed. Walter Roll and Hans-Peter Bayerdorfer (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1986). Herbert Loewe, Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Loewe Hebrew Character Collected and Bequeathed to Trinity College Library by the Late William Aldis Wright (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926) [citation by catalogue item number]. George Margoliouth, Catalogue of the Hebrew and the Margoliouth Samaritan Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols. (London: British Museum, 1899-1935; rpt. 1965). MGWJ Monatsschrift fur Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums. Modern Language Notes. MLN Adolf Neubauer, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in Neubauer the Bodleian Library and in the College Libraries of Oxford . . ., vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1886; rpt. 1994); Adolf Neubauer and Arthur Ernest Cowley, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906) [citation by item number]. Joseph Prijs, Die Easier hebraischen Drucke (1492-1866), Prijs ed. Bernhard Prijs (Freiburg: Urs Graf, 1964) [citation by item number]. Revue de la Bibliotheque Nationale. RBN Stefan C. Reif, Hebrew Manuscripts at Cambridge UniverReif sity Library: A Description and Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) [citation by page number]. Revue des Etudes Juives. REJ Rollwagenbuchlein Rollwagenbuchlein. Festschrift fur Walter Roll zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Jurgen Jaehrling, Uwe Meves, and Erika Timm (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 2002). Ernst R6th and Leo Prijs, Hebraische Handscriften. Teil Roth/Prijs la, Band VI, la of Verzeichnis der orientalischen

xl

Symbols and Abbreviations

Handschriften in Deutschland, ed. Wolfgang Voigt (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1982) [catalogue of Frankfurt, Stadt- und Universitatsbibliothek; citation by catalogue item number]. Sammlung Tychsen Die Hebraica und Judaica der Sammlung Tychsen der Universitatsbibliothek Rostock: die altjiddische (judischdeutsche) Literatur, ed. Hermann SuB and Heike Troger (Erlangen: Harald Fischer Verlag, 2002) [microfiche; citation by collection/catalogue number]. Sammlung Sammlung Wagenseil, ed. Hartmut Bobzin und Hermann Wagenseil SuB (Erlangen: Harald Fischer Verlag, 1996) [microfiche; citation by collection/catalogue number]. Staerk/Leitzmann Wilhelm Staerk and Albert Leitzmann, Diejudischdeutschen Bibelubersetzungen von den Anfdngen bis zum Ausgang des 18. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main: Kauffmann, 1923; rpt. Hildesheim: Olms, 1977). St. Moritz Steinschneider, Catalogue librorum hebraeorum in bibliotheca bodleiana (Berlin: Friedlaender, 1852-60) [citation by catalogue item number]. Moritz Steinschneider, Verzeichnis der hebrceischen Steinschneider, Handschriften Handschriften, vol. 2 of Die Handschriften-Verzeichnis Berlin der koniglichen Bibliothek zu Berlin, erste Abtheilung (Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1878); zweite Abtheilung (Berlin: Asher, 1897) [citation by item number]. Moritz Steinschneider, 'Judisch-Deutsche Literatur nach Steinschneider, einem handschriftlichen Katalog der Oppenheim'schen Serapeum Bibliothek (in Oxford) mit Zusatzen und Berichtigungen', Serapeum, 9 (1848), 313-36, 344-52, 363-8, 375-84; 10 (1849), 9-16, 25-32, 42-8, 74-80, 88-96, 107-12 (with index, 54-5, 57-9, 68-70); rpt. as book: Moritz Steinschneider, Judische-Deutsche Literatur (Serapeum, Leipzig 1843-1849) (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1961) [citation by item number]. Moritz Steinschneider, 'Jildische Litteratur und JiidischSteinschneider, Deutsch: judisch-deutsche Handschriften', Serapeum, 25 Serapeum (1864), 33–46, 49-62, 65-79, 81-95, 97-104; 27 (1866), Handschriften 1-12; 30 (1869), 129–0, 145-59 [citation by item number]. Moritz Steinschneider, Catalog der hebraischen HandSteinschneider, schriften in der Stadtbibliothek zu Hamburg (Hamburg: Handschriften Meissner, 1878) [citation by catalogue item number]. Hamburg

Symbols and Abbreviations

Steinschneider, Handschriften Munchen Striedl/Tetzner/Roth

xli

Moritz Steinschneider, Die hebrceischen Handschriften der K. Hof- und Staatsbibliothek in Muenchen, 2nd edn. (Munich: Palm, 1895) [citation by page number]. Hans Striedl, Lothar Tetzner, and Ernst Roth, Hebraische Handschriften, Teil 2 of Verzeichnis der orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland, vol. VI/2, ed. Wolfgang Voigt (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1965). Trierer Beitrdge Trierer Beitrage, Sonderheft 2: Fragen des alter en Jiddisch, ed. Hermann-Josef Muller and Walter Roll (Trier: Universitat Trier, 1977). Verfasserlexikon Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalter. Verfasserlexikon, 2nd edn., 10 vols., ed. Kurt Ruh et al. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1978). Johann Christof Wagenseil, Belehrung der JiidischWagenseil, Teutschen Red- und Schreibart (Konigsberg 1699). Belehrung Max Weinreich. Geschichte der jiddischen SprachWeinreich, Sprachforschung forschung (Diss., Marburg, 1923); ed. Jerold C. Frakes (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993). Jakob Winter and August Wunsche. Die judische Litteratur Winter/Wilnsche seit AbschluB des Kanons, 3 vols. (Trier: S. Mayer, 1894— 6; rpt. Hildesheim: Olms, 1965). Siegmund A. Wolf, 'Leseproben aus der alteren jiddischen Wolf Literatur', in Jiddisches Worterbuch (Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut, 1962), 35-87. Joseph Zedner, Catalogue of the Hebrew Books in the LibZedner rary of the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1867) [citation by page number]. Zeitschrift fur deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur. ZDA Zeitschrift fur deutsche Philologie. ZDP Zeitschrift fur die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland. ZGJD Zeitschrift fur hebroeische Bibliographie. ZHB Zeitschrift fur Mundartforschung. ZMF

2

(1917 (1928

(1923 (1926

xlii

Symbols and Abbreviations

1928 (1979 (1928-1926

3-1

7,6

(1943 -1504) (1814 (1985 | [citation by page number]

.(1928

(1913 (Codex Bodleiana 150-141 .T,(1926

1

,'Neubauer No. 1217) ,[1928] 2 .897 ,544-525

(1981 (1978 [Yiddish transla- | ;(1988 tion, revised and updated by the author, cited here unless otherwise indicated]. Biblical references are to the Revised Standard Version.

Introduction Several years ago when I found out that the published by the Argentine YIVO was still in print as a complete set, I immediately bought the hundred volumes. When I happened to mention the purchase to a colleague, whose field is modern Jewish intellectual history, she casually asked me if that was everything. It took a moment for me to realize that she was asking whether those hundred slender octavo volumes comprised the entire corpus of Yiddish literature. My brief explanation clarified the issue (and embarrassed both of us). While I was quite aware of the contempt with which most Jewish intellectuals have in the past regarded the Yiddish language and its literature (I had already written a book on the subject), I had until then never imagined the depth of misinformation concerning Yiddish literature on the part of intelligent, well-intentioned, but—on this topic—uninformed scholars in Jewish studies. If our non-Yiddishist colleagues imagine that all of Yiddish literature can be had in a hundred volumes, what might they imagine about Old and Middle Yiddish literature? In general they have heard of Glikl bas Leyb Pinkerle (Glikl Hamil; usually Germanized to Gluckel von Hameln), perhaps the the and the (the only four pre-modern titles included in the Buenos Aires reprints) and in some cases perhaps also the 773, but almost certainly nothing else. When I mention that from the period before 1800, there exist more than 200 manuscripts (most of which include multiple, sometimes dozens of texts each) and several hundred printed books,1 the eyes of my colleagues betray their scepticism. When I mention that I have been editing an anthology of Old and Middle Yiddish, and have included some 130 texts either excerpted or as integral texts, they are therefore sceptical that such things exist, that they exist in such numbers, and that they could be anything other than dull morality guides for traditional Jewish grandmothers. And therewith a key concept surfaces, for early Yiddish has, since the early Yiddish period itself, been characterized and dismissed as 'women's literature'. This conventional conception of the central issue—'Hebrew for men, Yiddish for women and the ignorant'—is, however, skewed. Instead of imagining that

1

Morris Lutzki lists more than 1,100 items in his catalogue of Yiddish printed books from the Bodleian Library in Oxford and from the British Library alone: ,1800 [unpublished]. There are not 1,100 different titles, how(1954 ever, for reprint editions are also included and numbered.

xliv

Introduction

since most Ashkenazic women of the Old Yiddish period were excluded from Hebrew they consequently constituted the audience for Yiddish, we should rather turn the issue around and recognize that, without respect to anyone's access to Hebrew, both men and women had access to Yiddish. Instead of imagining Hebrew literature as Literature and Yiddish as a sub-literary ersatz for the ignorant, we should acknowledge that the scope of texts in Hebrew is — viewed from the perspective of 'what kinds of texts do literate human cultures produce?' — quite narrow, with an audience consisting only of a small, educated (primarily) male elite. Perhaps we could view Yiddish, as Chone Shmeruk suggests, as a literature of the interstices: that which cannot be written in Hebrew.2 Whether for lack of a Hebrew-language audience or absence of a canonical paradigm, it is written in Yiddish, and this area of interstices is incidentally and rather astonishingly precisely that of the whole of belles-lettres. David Neal Miller recognizes the 'subversive maximalism' of Shmeruk's argument and remarks: 'Yiddish literature only fills the gap in the Jewish intralinguistic polysystem; that gap is Literature in any modern sense of the word.'3 In Max Weinreich's the first of his several magisterial surveys of broad-ranging topics in Yiddish studies for non-specialists, he condenses into a few sentences a justification for the present project that cannot be surpassed:

.[143-140

[If we live to see the publication of an 'Old Yiddish Text Series' that can demonstrate to each reader the extent of our [literary] heritage, then it will become clear that it is not that 'poverty-stricken pittance' that we have been led to believe. Instead, one will see that Jews of the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries created

2

.23-22 ,(1978 Miller, David Neal, 'Transgressing the Bounds: On the Origins of Yiddish Literature,' 95-103 in Origins of the Yiddish Language, ed. Dovid Katz, Winter Studies in Yiddish 1 (Oxford: Pergamon, 1987), here, p. 101. 3

Introduction

xlv

a broad and multifaceted literature that quite satisfied their intellectual needs. It is likewise a serious error to imagine that Jewish intellectual needs of that time were satisfied by [biblical paraphrase] and [ethical treatises] alone. It is a baseless misconception that up to the time of the Emancipation, Jews led exclusively religious lives and thought of nothing but Torah and the commandments. Thank heavens that Jewish unworldliness has always been much less dominant than we have been told. Indeed in its reflection of the daily life of Jews, Yiddish literature provides the most compelling evidence that love and life and the love of life were quite well known in the ghetto. While the authors of religious books themselves generally tended toward asceticism, ordinary Jews had a normal approach to life, and even within the ghetto Jewish children took delight in the spare sunlight that managed to reach them.] Despite these measured voices of reason, the cliches regarding early Yiddish as a literature of strict piety, almost exclusively reserved for pious women, persist. It would be unreasonable to imagine that the present volume could altogether change this rather astonishing situation. And while the primary purposes of a volume of several hundred pages of Yiddish texts necessarily have to do with scholarship in the field, I also hope that the breadth and depth of early Yiddish literature, as represented in this collection, will attract the attention of some readers beyond the academy who are unaware of the scope, historical importance, and literary and cultural value of this vast corpus of texts. The body of literature in Old and Middle Yiddish has been the focus of a great deal of attention in the last three-quarters of a century in numerous fields of scholarship. Yet, despite the pioneering work of Max Weinreich, Max Erik, Nokhem Shtif, Israel Zinberg (Yisroel Tsinberg), Eleazar [Elias] Shulman, Judah Joffe, Jakob Meitlis, Chone Shmeruk, Chava Turnianski, and Jean Baumgarten, among others, early Yiddish studies, as a discipline alongside its sister philological disciplines in medieval and Renaissance English, French, German, Hebrew, and Latin studies, is still in a significant sense in its infancy, particularly with respect to basic textual study. To illustrate with a personal anecdote: when I was in graduate school, one source of amusement among the small coterie of students in the Germanic Philology programme at the University of Minnesota was the remarkable array of grammatical compendia, dictionaries, and text collections of medieval European languages compiled in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by the adherents of the Neogrammarian school of scholarship. Without any diminution of our respect for the immense erudition of the scholar-authors of these well-bound and often-reprinted tomes, brimming over with lists and charts and paradigms of rules and densely packed footnotes detailing exceptions to those rules and exceptions to the exceptions, we could and did make gentle fun of what seemed to us their positivistic excesses. That amusement at their expense was possible for the simple reason that those volumes existed (and still exist). When, for instance, as a medievalist trained in the Latin, German, English, and Norse traditions, I need to 'look something up',

xlvi

Introduction

I have multiple grammars of these medieval languages, multiple dictionaries of varying scopes, periods, and geographical areas, multiple text anthologies, and text series. On the other hand, I cannot reach to my shelf for the Harvard Old Yiddish Grammar, nor the Oxford Old Yiddish Dictionary, nor the Princeton Guide to Early Yiddish Paleography, nor a volume from the Early Yiddish Text Series, for none of them exists, nor does anything comparable: there is not a single dictionary of Old Yiddish, no published grammar of the language, no paleographical manual, only one history of the literature published more recently than the 1930s, no Old Yiddish text series, and only one comprehensive scholarly anthology of representative texts (and it is 120 years old and in a distorting Germanized, Roman-alphabet transcription). For the reader of early Yiddish, there are practically no basic reference works. The scholarly implications of the previous sentence are, in this small corner of the scholarly world, quite simply staggering. When a reader of early Yiddish comes across a word that s/he does not understand, s/he cannot look it up. If the word derives from the Germanic component of Yiddish, one can pretend momentarily that the word is German, transform its specifically Yiddish orthography into a more or less corresponding medieval or early modern German form, and then look it up in a dictionary of an appropriate period of German—which will provide a variety of German senses of the German reflex of the word, which may or may not have some relation to the meaning of the early Yiddish word in its cultural context. Or, if the word stems from the Slavic component of Yiddish, then one can momentarily pretend that it is early modern Slavic and look it up in the relevant dictionary of Czech or Russian or Polish. Or, if the word derives from the Semitic component of Yiddish, one can pretend that it is rabbinical Hebrew and look it up in a variety of Hebrew dictionaries. But not one of them is a Yiddish dictionary, and the fact is, Yiddish is a language in its own right and has been for quite a number of centuries, and the definitions one finds in the excellent and, not surprisingly, Neogrammarian dictionaries by Lexer, Miklosich, and Jastrow, for instance, are not definitions of Yiddish words.4 At the same time, however, over the course of several generations there has been a great deal of work done in the field that is of lasting significance and value, despite the absence of comprehensive lexica and grammars specifically of Old and Middle Yiddish and, after the 1930s and until very recently, no comprehensive history of Old Yiddish literature. There are the magnificent older standards in literary history, generally intended for an educated lay audience:

4 Matthias Lexer, Mittelhochdeutsches Handworterbuch, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1872-8; rpt. Stuttgart: Hirzel, 1979); Franz Miklosich, Etymologisches Worterbuch der slawischen Sprachen (Vienna: Braumiiller, 1886); Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yenshalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, 2 vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1903; rpt. New York: Judaica Press, 1996).

Introduction

xlvii

Eleazar [Elias] Shulman's Max Weinreich's (already mentioned) and Max Erik's and Israel Zinberg's and more recently Chone Shmeruk's magisterial 5 and strictly scholarly In 1993 the very fine work of Jean Baumgarten appeared, which finally satisfied very many if not quite all of the current generation's needs for a comprehensive history of early Yiddish literature.6 Among lexical aids, there is much that is helpful, of course: the ongoing project of the begun under the editorship of Judah J. Joffe and Yudl Mark, does take early Yiddish into account, but has thus far in its four volumes progressed only to the end of the letter N, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. 7 In addition, there are the often excellent glossaries in numerous editions of Old Yiddish texts. Brief grammatical studies of early Yiddish also exist, for example the grammatical analysis in Eli Katz's edition of the earliest substantial codex of Yiddish texts.8 (1913 (1923

(1928 1928

(1979 (1926 (1943

1933 (1978 1988

6 Introduction a la litterature yiddish ancienne (Paris: Cerf, 1993); English translation: Introduction to Old Yiddish Literature, trans. Jerold C. Frakes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

7

-1961 ,

Due to the

nature of the Yiddish language, however, and particularly as a result of the number of prefixes beginning N, this already comprises almost a third of the dictionary. 8 Cambridge University Library, T.-S. 10K22: 'Six Germano-Judaic Poems from the Cairo Genizah' (Diss., UCLA 1963). Even in modern Yiddish studies, the basic tools of languagebased scholarship (literature, linguistics, intellectual history, theater, etc.) are all but lacking—there is no comprehensive descriptive grammar of the modern Yiddish language, there is not a single post-war scholarly history of the entire tradition of Yiddish literature (and the only one published before the Second World War was written by a chemical engineer (Israel Zinberg, whose encyclopedic hobby knowledge of the Yiddish tradition is the envy of all who have read his work); there is no functional dictionary of modern Yiddish beyond the brilliant but student-level dictionaries by Uriel Weinreich from a half-century ago, and the magnificent recent (1968 , volume by Yitskhok Niborski and Bernard Vaisbrot, (2002 which surpasses Weinreich's achievement in a variety of ways. The project of the — not quite on the model of the OED, but similar in most of its goals, functions, and scope—has, since Joffe's and Mark's brilliant beginning, published not a single volume in the last generation. There are also the language textbook grammars of modern

xlviii

Introduction

Among the desiderata in early Yiddish studies noted above is a text anthology. As Ber Borokhov, one of the founders of Yiddish philology at the beginning of the twentieth century, noted in his foreword to Basin's anthology P.iv), an anthologyis a necessary tool of culturalhistoryand literary study. While there are numerous anthologies—both popular and scholarly—of most medieval European literary traditions, no remotely comprehensive anthology devoted to early Yiddish texts has been published since Grunbaum's Chrestomathie in 1882,9 for which there are numerous reasons. In the fields of European philology of the past two centuries, it has generally seemed reasonable to publish an anthology of medieval and/or early modern texts at a point in the development of the study of the culture that produced the texts when the language has been comprehensively documented and codified, when the broad range of important literary texts has been edited in standard scholarly editions, and when the time is right to provide a representative selection of those texts within a single volume or two, both for experts in the field and scholars from related fields, in addition to advanced-level students and interested lay readers, or even for secondary school use. Thus ideally a historical anthology of literary texts should be able to refer to the standard lexica and grammars of the language, as well as to the standard histories of the literature of the period. In the field of Yiddish we are not yet quite so far advanced. In his brief anthology of texts that surveyed the entire history of Yiddish, Solomon Birnbaum reflects on why there has been no comprehensive anthology: The following short texts aim at providing no more than a very cursory glance at several periods and regions in the life of the Yiddish language. This material is not sufficient to illustrate its development. Not only would a whole long book of texts and discussion of these be needed for that, but research has not yet advanced to a stage when such a work can be successfully attempted. Many more years, or even decades, will have to pass before then. One of the reasons, of course, is that the amount of material at our disposal is scanty in relation to the expanse in space and time taken up by Yiddish. Quantitatively it is, however, not too small and it is virtually untouched by the philologist and linguist. The collection and editing of the texts and the attendant research—all this is still waiting to be done. l0 The first time Birnbaum presented his text collection was several decades ago,

Yiddish by Solomon Birnbaum, Praktische Grammatik der jiddischen Sprache (Vienna/Leipzig: Hartlebens, 1915; 4th rev. edn.: Grammatik der jiddischen Sprache, mit einem Worterbuch und Lesestiicken (Hamburg: Buske, 1984)); and Yiddish: A Survey and a Grammar (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1979); Yudl Mark's (1978 , and Dovid Katz's Grammar of the Yiddish Language (London: Duckworth, 1987). 9 Max Griinbaum, Judischdeutsche Chrestomathie, zugleich ein Beitrag zur Kunde der hebraischen Literatur (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1882). 10 Birnbaum, Yiddish: A Survey and a Grammar, 145.

Introduction

xlix

soon after the first wave of reactions to Lajb Fuks's publication of the treasurehouse of Old Yiddish literature from a manuscript recovered from the Fostat Genizah (now Cambridge, University Library, T.-S. 10K22). There has been sustained although scattered scholarly attention to the field since then, rendering Birnbaum's characterization of it as 'virtually untouched' no longer applicable: some texts have been edited and much attendant research has been done, although much basic work still remains, and the text editions are scattered through the publishing houses of the western world, are only briefly in print, of wildly uneven quality, and provided with variable kinds of apparatus. A second reason for the lack of any published anthology of Old Yiddish is that such collective anthologies have until recently long been out of style. Nineteenth-century-styled 'readers' were often both too specialized and 'reader friendly' to serve any but advanced student needs: they generally provided editions that accommodated the language of the original text to a kind of streamlined, supradialectal, so-called 'normalized' standard that never existed until the editing scholar invented it. Furthermore, since any selection of a few hundred pages of excerpted texts forcibly excises the texts from their cultural contexts and juxtaposes them with radically different types of texts from a vast geographical and chronological expanse, it has been widely suggested that such a selection cannot but misrepresent both the culture and the corpus itself.11 No wonder that such anthologies are sometimes viewed as obsolete and even methodologically unsound. There are many examples to choose from, some more and some less representative of this genre, such as Voretzsch's Old French, Sweet's or Bright's Old English, Braune's Old High German, Leskien's Old Church Slavonic, Harrington's Medieval Latin anthologies.12 As I noted above, 11 Among the many discussions of canon formation in recent decades, see Alan C. Golding's essay, 'A History of American Poetry Anthologies', in Canons, ed. Robert von Hallberg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 279-307, and Kathryn Hellerstein's

discussion of Yiddish anthologies, the work of Basin and Korman 'An anthologizer of poetry often has an (1928,

unstated agenda, which his or her selection of works and authors reveals. To a reader from a later period, the presence or absence of works and writers from an anthology is telling not only of the literary values of the times, but also of the broader political and cultural issues'; in 'Canon and Gender: Women Poets in Two Modern Yiddish Anthologies', Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 9 (1991), 9-23; rpt. in Judith Baskin, ed., Women of the Word: Jewish Women and Jewish Writing (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994), 136–52, here p. 150n. 12 Karl Voretzsch, ed., Altfranzosisches Lesebuch (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1921; 3rd edn. 1966); Henry Sweet, ed., Anglo-Saxon Primer 2nd edn. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1882), 9th revised edn. 1980, by Norman Davis; Frederic G. Cassidy and Richard N. Ringler, Bright's Old English Grammar and Reader, 3rd edn. (2nd corrected printing; New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1971); Wilhelm Braune, ed., Althochdeutsches Lesebuch, 15th edn. Ernst A. Ebbinghaus (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1969); August Leskien, ed., Handbuch der altbulgarischen (altkirchenslavischeri) Sprache. Grammatik—Texte—Glossar (Weimar: Hermann Bohlau, 1871; 10th edn., Heidelberg: Winter, 1990); Karl Pomeroy Harrington, ed.,

1

Introduction

however, Romanists, Germanists, Latinists, and Slavicists can afford to frown on such anthologies, for they can do so while using them. Beyond Grunbaum's volume, however, Yiddishists have no such published collection to praise or criticize. In any case, the usefulness of this particular brand of anthology has not only not died out but, amid complaints, they have continued to be reprinted even up to the present, some new ones are still added to the list from time to time, and in recent decades a trend toward rehabilitating the idea of compiling and publishing anthologies of medieval literature seems to be emerging.13 Thirdly and most importantly, the primary reasons for the disturbing lack of basic philological tools of scholarship in Yiddish, including an anthology of texts from the earliest period, stem from the systematic annihilation of European Jewry—and concomitantly all continental European schools of Yiddish studies—during the Holocaust. For as Yiddish studies began to come into its own in the decades before the Second World War, early Yiddish was without question its most active and productive subfield, and was, not surprisingly, concentrated in Warsaw, Kiev, Prague, Vienna, and Vilnius. When the Nazis and their willing helpers in various western, central, and eastern European countries murdered six million Jews, among the victims were many of the established experts in the field of early Yiddish studies, and many of their students. If, for a moment, we try to turn our attention from the incomprehensible human catastrophe of the Holocaust, and focus only on this single tiny corner of its devastation, then we must note that while all fields of Jewish scholarship suffered from the Holocaust—Jewish scholars and professionals in all fields were murdered by the Nazis without discrimination—Yiddish studies is a special case. For while there were academic scholars of the Bible, the Talmud, medieval Jewish philosphy, Sephardic poetry, the Haskalah, and so on living on six continents, Yiddish scholarship, and in particular scholarship focusing on early Yiddish, was concentrated in eastern Europe, where in the two decades before the beginning of the Second World War it flourished at an academic and even institutional level. As a result of the Holocaust, however, Old Yiddish studies seemed almost to die on the vine, and the field has never recovered from that devastation.

Mediaeval Latin (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1925); 2nd edn., Joseph Pucci (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). 13 Among others, Nandri? and Auty published a similar, two-volume grammar/text anthology of Old Church Slavonic some forty years ago: Handbook of Church Slavonic, Part 1: Old Church Slavonic Grammar, by Grigore Nandris. (London: Athlone, 1959); Part II: Texts and Glossary, ed. Robert Auty (London: Athlone, 1960); Gerhard Rohlfs published his Sermo vulgarix Minus (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1969) a decade later; Cassidy/Ringler revised Bright's Old English Grammar and Reader twenty years ago; Harrington and Voretzsch are kept, in print. Among recent titles of particular relevance to the present project is a Ladino anthology: Sefarad in my Heart: A Ladino Reader, ed. Moshe Lazar (Lancaster, California: Labyrinthos, 1999).

Introduction

li

The overt and profound linguistic antagonism of the state of Israel toward Yiddish did nothing to revive the field in the immediate post-war years, and Zionist anti-Yiddish propaganda is still dominant in quarters where other kinds of bigotry are not tolerated. In more recent decades the field has nonetheless begun to re-establish itself (particularly in England, France, Germany, Israel, and the United States) and return to some of the basic scholarly tasks interrupted by the devastation of the Holocaust. Max Weinreich managed to escape before the impending German invasion of Poland and bring his vast erudition to the New York branch of YIVO from Vilnius. Chone Shmeruk built Yiddish studies in Jerusalem from the ashes of his own Holocaust experiences. But these were already 'exile studies' and exiled studies that had to operate without the basic tools that must exist before work can be carried out on a broad basis, and they had to exist without the broad and deep culture of and in Yiddish that had characterized Ashkenazic life in eastern Europe in an unbroken tradition from the time of the Old Yiddish period itself. Two generations of scholars and scholarship had disappeared into the ovens, and with them also all continuity within the field. Where does one go now to study Old Yiddish? For a few years, it was possible at YIVO and Columbia University in New York (the Weinreich heritage), and several decades later there were two more decades of such work in Oxford (Dovid Katz and Dov-Ber Kerler). Up until the recent and sudden closure of the Yiddish department at Hebrew University, it was possible in Jerusalem (Chone Shmeruk, Chava Turniansky, and Sarah Zfatman). Now it seems that the only academic programmes in which early Yiddish figures significantly are in Dusseldorf (Marion Aptroot), and in a very restricted sense in Trier (Simon Neuberg, following the recent retirements of Erika Timm and Walter Roll). Even so, judging by the growing number of publications in the field, interest in early Yiddish seems to be growing year by year and decade by decade, with outposts now in France and in a variety of central European universities, in addition to some scholars in North America. Thus the basic premise of the present volume is that the wealth of early Yiddish literature is still all but inaccessible to all but dedicated experts in the field: as noted in the opening anecdote, many scholars and students, even those in Jewish studies and related fields, are unaware of the range of this large and culturally significant body of texts. And even those who are acquainted with the field have no convenient access to its broad range of texts. This gap in the scholarship is all the more disturbing, because in the last several decades the canon of early Yiddish has been so significantly expanded through discoveries of important manuscripts and unique exemplars of early printed texts that the field itself has been transformed in scope and significance. Three examples can give some idea of the kinds of texts recovered and/or published in the twentieth

lii

Introduction

century after the end of the interwar eastern European flowering of scholarship on early Yiddish: (1) the late fourteenth-century anthology of religious and secular Yiddish epic from the Fostat Genizah (published in 1957), which suddenly extended the period of mature Yiddish literary composition 150 years back in time, and thus completely transformed the scholarly conception of the literary culture of Ashkenaz itself; (2) the culturally significant (and highly entertaining) collection of fables from the mid-sixteenth century, the 7D tf'?/ (published 1984), which brought together Jewish, Christian, and international (particularly Middle Eastern) folkloric traditions into a single volume and demonstrates quite clearly the international nature of Ashkenazic culture and early Yiddish literature; (3) the magnificent Renaissance epic nwTi ]W r~)K9 (published 1988), heretofore known only in a fragmentary text, which as a literary composition is both the contemporary and—without exaggeration—in a significant sense the artistic peer of the great Italian Renaissance epics of Ariosto and Tasso. As already noted, there are in fact a few important published collections that include some Old Yiddish texts: Max Griinbaum's pioneering and scrupulously edited Judischdeutsche Chrestomathie comes closest to being an actual anthology of early Yiddish, for it includes a wealth of selections from both manuscripts and early printed editions, from a broad range of genres. All texts are, however, transcribed into a Germanized, Roman-alphabet form that masks their cultural identity. This remarkable and still important volume is in fact more of a cultural history with illustrative text excerpts than it is a text anthology per se. W i l h e l m Staerk and Albert L e i t z m a n n ' s Die judisch-deutschen Bibelubersetzungen also provides quite a number of texts, but, as the book's title indicates, the range is restricted to biblical literature alone, which constitutes only a very small segment of the broad spectrum of early Yiddish texts. Like Griinbaum, these editors also present the texts only in Germanized, Romanalphabet transcription. 14 M. Basin's yvyifB W7'' i/W' uiyvin ^D yjtftwcw includes a few-dozen pages of early texts, but since the collection was intended for a popular Yiddish-reading, lay audience, the editor drew his early Yiddish texts from earlier published editions that had been transcribed into the Roman alphabet (as in Grunbaum's Chrestomathie, for instance), which he then simply retranscribed into the Hebrew alphabet, creating in many cases texts that bear little resemblance to the original.15 The two-volume set was, however, quite popular and influential, and provided a broad spectrum of Yiddish-readers (not

14

Wilhelm Staerk and Albert Leitzmann, Die judisch-deutschen Bibelubersetzimgen von den Anfangen bis zum Ausgang des 18. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt a/M: Kauffmann, 1923; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1977).

1917

Introduction

liii

just in North America) with an important collection of Yiddish poetry from a period of five centuries. Solomon Birnbaum's Diejiddische Sprache: Ein kurzer Uberblick und Texte aus acht Jahrhunderten includes still fewer texts, which he transcribed into a very unusual ad hoc Roman-alphabet system designed to illustrate and propagate his idiosyncratic interpretation of Yiddish pronunciation. 16 Siegmund Wolfs Jiddisches Worterbuch includes still fewer texts, also in Germanized, Roman transcription.17 Nokhem Shtif s conception of 'early Yiddish literature' in his in fact focuses on quite a later period, and can thus legitimately be disregarded here.18 Four of these collections are over seventy-five years old, none besides Griinbaum and Staerk/Leitzmann includes more than a few-dozen pages of early Yiddish texts as conceived here, while all but Shtif present the texts in a deforming transcription. At the same time, however, we need not fault these pioneering editors for not providing a comprehensive anthology of Old and Middle Yiddish literature, since that was not by any means their purpose. In 1989 I published a book that was in large part a polemical critique of a century of Old Yiddish editorial practices that have generally insulted readers by treating them (us) as incapable of dealing with the texts in any but 'pre-digested', generally Germanized, Roman-alphabet transcriptions that functioned in overtly ideological programmes designed to appropriate the texts for German culture and deny all but their most minimal participation in Jewish culture.19 In some sense the present volume attempts to give concrete expression to the terms of my critique by presenting a representative collection of Old and Middle Yiddish texts that intends to provide a portrayal of the Ashkenazic (not German and not even German-Jewish) culture that produced those texts, and to define and shape a contemporary audience for early Yiddish. Any conception of a contemporary audience for early Y i d d i s h is problematical, of course, as a comparison with any of its sister disciplines clearly demonstrates. An anthology of Old French with notes and commentary in French is potentially useful not only for thousands of scholars worldwide in the fields of Old French, medieval German, English, Scandinavian, Latin, and Romance literatures, medieval history and philosophy, and so on, but also for tens of thousands of advanced secondary school and university students in the various

16

Field of Yiddish, 2nd collection, ed. Uriel Weinreich (The Hague: Mouton, 1965), 1-23; expanded version in Die jiddische Sprache: Ein kurzer Uberblick und Texte aus acht Jahrhunderten (Hamburg: Buske, 1974; rpt. 1997); rpt. in Yiddish: A Survey and a Grammar, 145-89. 17 Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut, 1962. 18

19

.(1929

The Politics of Interpretation: Alterity and Ideology in Old Yiddish Studies (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988).

liv

Introduction

French-speaking countries. But for whom should a collection of Old and Middle Yiddish texts be assembled? There are very few secondary schools taught in Yiddish (practically all of them in various orthodox communities, which would have little interest in early Yiddish), and no national universities, no Institutes for Advanced Yiddish Studies, no Yiddish-land, and not even a handful of full-scale university departments of Yiddish. Obviously, then, the audience for early Yiddish cannot be defined according to conventional standards; but that audience does exist, in fact in rather astonishing numbers. What, then, in a very practical sense, are the needs and purposes of this reader who takes in hand an anthology of Old Yiddish? What kinds of texts in what form should be included? Should they be in the Hebrew alphabet with the orthography and punctuation characteristic of the language norms that declined and finally disappeared two centuries ago? Or rather in a constructed standard of Old Yiddish spelling with a constructed standard of Old Yiddish punctuation —streamlined and highly 'edited'? Should there be either a facing-page translation of the original text, or perhaps translation alone? If translation is to be included, then what should be the language of the translation? Modern Yiddish? English? Israeli Hebrew? German? Should there be a Roman-alphabet transcription in addition to, or instead of, the Hebrew-alphabet original? Entangled in the network of endless problems with Roman transcription of early Yiddish texts is the unspoken assumption that the transcriber can specify the authentic Old Yiddish pronunciation of each and every word in each and every text: ironically, as long as the text (any text) remains in its original alphabet, its phonetic realization is obviously a matter for complex historical analysis. As soon as Old Yiddish pa> is transcribed into the Roman alphabet as schon, shon, shoyn, soin, shoun, sheyn, shen, schon (to suggest just a few possibilities), however, its pronunciation appears to have been unambiguously defined. Such a practice may well be tactically useful for some kinds of linguistic analysis, but it can hardly function as, or as if, an edition of the text. Since the present collection of texts is intended as a source book of original early Yiddish texts, Roman-alphabet transcription was never considered as a possible vehicle for the editions. Since there is a clear orthographical standard in these texts (which, compared with contemporaneous practice in medieval and early modern English and German, for instance, is remarkably stable over the course of several centuries) that functioned within a fairly narrow range of variation, orthographical normalization seemed unnecessary, certainly for a scholarly readership but also for any potentially conceivable non-specialist audience, so the orthography of the editions presented here is always that of the original text (with only very occasional emendations as indicated in the textual notes, when there is at least an arguable case of scribal or typesetter error).20 20

The fact that variation in Yiddish orthography has persisted even up to the present (e.g. in the YIVO vs. journalistic vs. haredi standards) might mislead the modern Yiddish-reader

Introduction

Iv

On the other hand, the value of translation into a modern language is clear. But, as noted above, the primary purpose of the present volume is to present a broad enough range of representative early Yiddish texts to characterize the extant corpus. Thereafter, a volume of translations that includes most of the texts edited here will follow and is currently in preparation. Just as the controversy concerning the appropriate metalanguage for the continues to rage (and obstruct progress), so one might argue about the appropriate language for the introduction, headnotes, textual notes, and glossary in the present project. One might, for instance, argue for modern Yiddish, since anyone who takes an anthology of Early Yiddish Texts in hand is likely to know some modern Yiddish; or Israeli Hebrew, since the founding fathers of the modern spoken idiom aspired to re-create in it the historical Hebrew language that has long functioned as the language of high culture among Jews and, more recently, of scholars and students of Jewish studies; or English, since it has now established itself as the mercantile and scholarly lingua franca in most parts of the world where there might be interest in early Yiddish. My choice of English is certainly one of convenience for me, but it also seems likely to serve the broadest possible range of potential readers. For even within the various subdisciplines of Jewish studies, there are relatively few outside the field of Yiddish whose knowledge of the modern language suffices to deal conveniently and fluently with the nuance that is necessary in the scholarly register. The traditional assumption that Hebrew is the language of culture for all Jewish men is almost certainly less true today than it was several hundred years ago, when it was already so much a problem that it was precisely this language barrier that gave much (if not most) impetus to the rise of Yiddish literature. Even today, with the advantages of both modern language-learning pedagogy and the existence of the state of Israel as a destination for the language-learner, and also despite all good intentions and all the effort expended, Hebrew is not a ubiquitously effective vehicle of communication even among scholars and students of Jewish studies. At the same time, however, one must note that while English has become quite a widespread medium of international scholarly communication among humanists

into imagining chaos in earlier Yiddish orthography, which would then be momentarily confirmed by a glance at a Middle Yiddish text from the late sixteenth century, for instance, which conforms to few of the twenty-first century orthographical norms of the various Yiddish standards. When one compares the orthography of a large number of Middle Yiddish texts, however, then it is clear that within a relatively restricted range of variation, Yiddish orthography was rather stable and remained so until at least the mid-eighteenth century. The same could be said for the slightly different 'standard' of the Old Yiddish period. This relative stability in Yiddish orthography over the entire course of the 650 years here surveyed is all the more apparent when one compares it with the orthographical variation in twelfth- through eighteenth-century English or German texts. Diacritical markings in texts edited here are preserved in the form most closely reproducible by current technology (without fetishing the technology itself).

Ivi

Introduction

in recent decades (quite a new phenomenon, of course), the actual effectiveness of communication in 'global English' is quite another issue and leaves much to be desired. For all these reasons, then, my use of English here is a compromise, but one that I think may be the least hindering of the options available. This project is intended to accomplish a specific and necessary task, a task that even a century-and-a-half after Steinschneider's pioneering work, a centuryand-a-quarter after Grunbaum's groundbreaking Chrestomathie, three-quarters of a century after the pioneering work by Weinreich, Erik, Zinberg, Mark, Birnbaum, a half-century after the early work by Shmeruk and Meitlis, and in the midst of the accomplishments of Chava Turnianski, Marvin [Mikhl] Herzog, Dov-Ber Kerler, Dovid Katz, and Jean Baumgarten, still needs to be done. This project does not pretend or even seek to displace or replace any of their work, but rather to supplement and complement it, to fill a gap in the field. Its inadequacies are many and reflect both the unwieldy scope of the project and its editor's own scholarly limitations. To be very specific, then, about the purpose of the present volume: it seeks to make an extensive and representative selection of the early Yiddish corpus accessible to a broad multidisciplinary audience, primarily but not exclusively within the academy: in Yiddish language and literary studies, of course, and in the wider fields of Jewish studies, but also in German and Germanic studies, comparative Semitic linguistics, the history of religions, drama, folklore, linguistics, medieval and Renaissance studies, comparative literature, and Slavic studies. Despite the seeming breadth of this potential audience, however, there will and can be only relatively small numbers of interested parties in any of these fields. Nonetheless, this collection of texts was conceived and consciously selected and edited in order to realize the specific purpose of catering to that broad-based audience by providing a representative corpus on a textually reliable basis for scholarly analysis by readers from a variety of fields. Each text is provided with an introductory headnote that identifies the author (insofar as that is possible), briefly situates the text in its cultural and historical context, and provides essential (i.e. not comprehensive) bibliographical information on manuscripts extant, published editions, and research studies. Brief texts are printed complete, longer works are excerpted, always taking care to present 'self-contained' or literarily comprehensible units (over fifty of the texts included are complete). With the exception of only a handful of texts, whose originals either are no longer extant or have remained inaccessible to me, I have edited all texts presented here anew based on direct autopsy of the earliest and best manuscripts and printed editions and provided with as full an apparatus as the text tradition and editorial history make appropriate; the exceptions were edited on the basis of photographic facsimiles of the texts.21 21

As Max Weinreich notes in the introduction to (n.p.), the philologist's insistence on autopsy of the original texts is easily justified, for it enriches his own understanding and

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Ivii

Depending on the nature of the textual tradition of each individual text, a critical edition may or may not be possible or desirable. In most cases it has seemed more appropriate to present a text as it actually existed and was read by its contemporaries than to attempt to compile an eclectic (i.e. critical) edition that was never known by any readers of the time.22 In any case, the editorial practice here is quite conservative, without approaching the detached method of the diplomatic edition. Likewise, there is no intent to present a variorum edition of any text; only relevant and significant variants from the textual tradition are indicated in the textual notes.23 With respect to the readings of earlier editors, one must acknowledge that it is the erudition of these founders of the field that enables us to gain any understanding of the vast and complex culture of Ashkenaz. If my readings on occasion improve on those of Weinreich, Zinberg, Birnbaum, or Shmeruk, it is generally due to the improvements in technology, transport, photography, and lighting that have made it possible for me to see the original text, when they were unable to do so, or to see it under better conditions than were available to them. Emendations and differing readings by previous editors are thus noted if and when they are for some reason significant (even in terms of the history of the field), but there is no attempt to catalogue the misreadings and unnecessary emendations made by earlier editors, which are here silently passed over. Some readers will chafe at my reticence to emend what seem to them obvious scribal or printing errors, particularly with respect to the orthography of whole and merged Hebrew. My own experience cautions against most such emendations, however, for a number of reasons. First, the impulse to emend generally comes from the editor's drive to standardize, usually based on the assumption (conscious or not), with respect to Yiddish, of an underlying

analysis of the text. Such study of the original form of the text quite simply provides the scholar with a broader range of information about the text. While that information may not always be relevant to the task at hand, one can only know that after having consulted the original. 22 While Colette Sirat may be somewhat too dismissive of the method of critical editions, her comments illustrate the prevailing tendency not only historically with respect to editions of Hebrew works, but in general in medieval studies in recent decades: 'It must be admitted that (whether from good sense or sloth) the construction of stemmas has barely attracted the attention of editors of Jewish texts.' And elsewhere: '. . . a solution is to reproduce the text of a single manuscript—a real text that was read and understood by medieval readers: this procedure enables the editor to concentrate on the significant variants, and to achieve a good edition in a manageable space of time, instead of labouring to construct an eclectic text thai replaces the idiosyncrasies of a medieval scribe by his own': Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, ed. and trans. Nicholas de Lange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 270 n. and 290-1. 23 In a slightly different context, Colette Sirat comments, often '[s]uch variants merely clutter the apparatus without serving any purpose whatever so far as the text is concerned', ibid. 290.

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Introduction

German(ized), standard Hebrew, or modern Yiddish form. Frequently in the first pages of a newly confronted early Yiddish text, one is moved to emend 'obviously' incorrect forms. Those forms then recur often enough in the subsequent pages to establish their own localized 'norm' such that their emendation becomes in itself an editorial standardization that masks rather than clarifies the text's own cultural Sitz im Leben. Secondly, the scribe's or author's errors themselves provide important cultural information. As long as it is a reasonable assumption on the part of the editor that the modern reader can understand and interpret the edited text, then editorial 'correction' would in fact falsify the text. Oftentimes, previous editors have provided that correction, which I cite in the textual notes while leaving the uncorrected form in the text itself; thus the puzzled reader can find a hint in the textual notes. That is not to say that I have never emended, and I can imagine that some readers will object even to the relatively few emendations that I have made. To them I can only respond that all emendations are indicated in the textual notes. It was only possible to include a fraction of the early Yiddish texts still extant, and from many of those texts it was also necessary to choose excerpts, sometimes of only a few pages from the several hundred pages of the complete text. Several sometimes conflicting principles of selection have thus been operative in compiling this volume. Insofar as feasible, the broadest range of text types—represented by the linguistically, historically, and literarily most important texts in Yiddish-language Ashkenazic culture from the earliest fragmentary evidence up to the end of the Middle Yiddish period in the mideighteenth century—have been selected: (1) both the length of the period from 1100 to 1750 and the scope of genres extant from that span of time are represented; (2) acknowledged masterpieces as well as little-known but culturally significant texts have their place; (3) texts written not just for but especially by women receive special attention; (4) there is a balance of the secular and religious; (5) 'literature' is understood in the broad sense employed by cultural historians, such that while the conventional genres of epic, lyric, and drama are included, treatises on accounting, obstetrics, and even a fifteenthcentury description of a carpenter's tools also have their place; (6) there is an attempt to account for the essentially multilingual nature of Ashkenazic culture; thus quadrilingual glossaries, bilingual Hebrew-Yiddish, Italian-Yiddish, Aramaic-Yiddish, French-Yiddish poems, letters, songs, prayers, and glosses are included as integral documents of the culture. Among the genres included are: Arthurian romance, heroic epic, satire, lyric, drama (Purim-shpil), biblical/midrashic epic, prayers and devotional literature, biblical translations, glosses and glossaries, medical texts, magical charms, legal texts, oaths, letters, legends, autobiography, travelogue, fables, riddles, and adventure tales. Many of the texts included in this volume have already been edited with full-scale

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lix

commentaries; some have been edited many times and even spawned their own cottage industries of commentary, supercommentary, and counter-commentary (hardly a new tendency in the Jewish tradition!), while many have either never been published or not been published for the last several centuries, or they have been published by modern scholarship but have been long out of print, or only in journals not widely available, or published in distorted, Germanized editions that mask some or all of the text's relationship with historical Ashkenazic culture. The spread of dates chosen for the texts included here is neither accidental nor altogether arbitrary, and not yet fully justifiable in terms of a scholarly consensus on periodization, for there has been little agreement in the periodization of Yiddish by scholars of the language and literature. Max Weinreich posits and elaborates quite a specific periodization of Yiddish over the course of the four lengthy volumes of his masterful

beginnings 0 0 0

to 0 to 0 to 0 to present

Early Yiddish Old Yiddish Middle Yiddish Modern Yiddish

Max Erik conceives of the problem slightly differently and thus posits a transitional period (1550-1590) between the first two 'flowerings' of Old Yiddish literature, with the decline of Old Yiddish literature beginning after the first decades of the eighteenth century (21 ,yco>tWtt ,pny). Dovid Katz's periodization differs both in the dates of demarcation and in the designations, in particular due to his remarkable success at deriving information from texts about the spoken language generally hidden behind them:25 beginnings 0 0 0

to 0 to 0 to 0 to present

Old Yiddish Middle Yiddish Early New Yiddish New Yiddish

;389-383 :2 ;11:1 ,(1973 | see also Marvin Herzog, 'Yiddish', Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edn., 'Germanic Languages', Macropaedia (1974), 26; Weinreich, Geschichte derjiddischen Sprachforschung, 32. Alexandra Derczansky concurs on this dating ('Les rapports du yidich ancien et de la litterature yidich ancienne', in Astrid Starck, ed., Westjiddisch: Miindlichkeit und Schrlftlichkeit/Le Yiddish occidental: Actes du Colloque de Mulhouse (Aarau: Sauerlander, 1994), 78-83, here p. 80), and cites Erika Timm, Graphische und phonische Struktur des Westjiddischen unter besonderer Beriicksichtigung der Zeit urn 1600, Hermea, n.s. 52 (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1987), without page number, as authority on this dating. 25 Dovid Katz, 'Protolanguage Theory: The Case of Yiddish', paper placed before the seminar on Topics in Linguistics and Philology, St Hugh's College, Oxford, 17 May 1988, 5.

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Dov-Ber Kerler also offers a more complex periodization of the later period, based on Katz and especially on his own linguistic analysis of the literary language: Early New Yiddish

New Yiddish

1650-1700 — Old Literary Yiddish 1700-1800 — Germanized Old Literary (or Western) Yiddish 1800-present — Modern Literary Yiddish. 26

The transition to Modern Literary Yiddish takes place, as Kerler demonstrates by means of a thorough analysis of numerous texts, as the literary language is overtly adapted in the latter decades of the eighteenth century from the central European literary standard that had been dominant for several centuries (and was no longer spoken by anyone) to a closer representation of the spoken language of eastern European Yiddish speakers. Of particular relevance in this volume are of course the descriptively significant boundaries of change in the language of Yiddish texts. Whether one posits distinct Old and Middle Yiddish periods in the language or not, most scholars agree that in the course of the eighteenth century the literary language assumed the form that we can recognize and define as Modern Yiddish. It has been common among scholars both to refer to all texts that originated before 1750 or even 1800 as 'Old Yiddish literature', and to distinguish between an Old and Middle Yiddish period. As the reader who proceeds through the present volume text-by-text will recognize, there is not and cannot be any given point at which there is a sudden and demonstrable change of literary or cultural period. The title of the present volume is thus also a compromise solution that attempts to account for the various scholarly conceptions of the period(s) of Yiddish literature up to the mid-eighteenth century. As even the most superficial glance at the Chronological Listing of Texts will indicate, there are dense clusters of texts around various dates in the course of the more than six centuries here surveyed, while other periods seem rather more sparsely represented. In some cases (particularly in the earlier periods) this state of affairs stems from the fact that there are few or no texts extant from those years; in other cases it may be that there is little that meets the criteria of selection outlined above. The relative dearth of texts included here from the

26

Dov-Ber Kerler, The Origins of Modem Literary Yiddish (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 15-16 and 255-6. Shlomo Berger's periodization is conceptually inconsistent, for he identifies the period up to 1500 as Old Yiddish, while he designates the period between 1500 and 1800 'Western Yiddish': 'Editing Pre-modern Yiddish and the "Absence" of Text', Variants: The Journal of the European Society for Textual Scholarship, 1 (2002), 219-26, here p. 219.

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Ixi

period after 1700 is perhaps most surprising, since it was precisely that period which for the first time produced an enormous number of Yiddish books. The justification for the sparse selection of texts from this period can be stated simply, although the cultural reality behind it is more complex: by the beginning of the eighteenth century a decline in both the scope and the quality of literature in Yiddish had set in, even as the quantity of publications began to increase rapidly. Max Weinreich, for instance, identifies the late seventeenth century as a period in which the quality of Yiddish literature declined, while in the eighteenth century it simply plummeted.27 Not until the beginning of the nineteenth century did it again begin to rise, when the gain in quality was as precipitous as had been the fall in the eighteenth century. Especially in the explosively creative conflict between the newly developing movements of Hasidism and the Enlightenment, and the staunch opposition to both by traditional Judaism (the D'Tuna) in eastern Europe, did modern Yiddish literature take its origin. But all that comes later: while il would be a gross exaggeration to claim that there was no creativity in eighteenth-century Yiddish literature, it was generally the case that older models were dominant, and thus that there were relatively few genres in which fundamentally innovative literature appeared in Yiddish for much of the century. It was rather the age of epigones, reprints, abridgements, and adaptations of texts from earlier periods. The conception of literature had also changed, from one characterized by an openness to (quasi-) secular ideas that were in some cases drawn from non-Jewish sources and adapted to the perceived needs and interests of a Jewish audience, to one in which there was generally a sharper focus on strictly traditional and often exclusively religious or moral issues. This thematic or ideological shift was in important ways also a geographical one: as the Jewish community in northern Italy gradually became almost exclusively Italianspeaking (or in some locales shifted to a Ladino-speaking majority, as the exiles from Iberia settled for briefer or longer sojourns), and thus disappeared from the sphere of Yiddish culture, and as Yiddish also began its decline as the spoken language of Jews in much of western and central Europe, the focus of Yiddishlanguage culture shifted decidedly eastward (and, conversely, to Amsterdam, particularly after the catastrophic wave of destruction and consequent exile of 1648-1649). While the first century of publishing in Yiddish (beginning in the second quarter of the sixteenth century) was marked, if not dominated, by the relatively small community of Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazic Jews in northern Italy, which had produced (compiled, composed, and printed) Yiddish books for a readership that stretched from Basel to Vilnius and Venice to Amsterdam, by the late seventeenth century the primary concentration of Yiddish speakers was in Poland and the Ukraine, and thus it was primarily that huge expanse of

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Introduction

territory that came to be the land both of production and consumption of Yiddish books. While Yiddish literature produced in northern Italy and the Germanspeaking lands made constant use of cultural materials from the non-Jewish dominant culture, as is quite obvious in the secular and quasi-secular works of Yiddish literature up through the end of the sixteenth century, with the shift toward the East such sources were no longer available immediately beyond the borders of the Jewish quarter, and no comparable Slavic influence on Yiddish literature is to be noted until (perhaps) the (re)secularization of Yiddish literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yiddish culture of the eighteenth century turns inward and undergoes a century of cultural turmoil and cultural development before, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, the literature again begins to flourish—not due to outside influences, but rather directly as a result of inner Ashkenazic cultural developments that were then additionally spurred by the Haskalah, the specifically Jewish form of the Enlightenment. With respect to dating the texts edited, several comments are necessary. In the nineteenth and even twentieth centuries scholars of Romantic and nationalistic tendencies in various European traditions often dated texts to the earliest conceivably defensible date, in order to make their nation's language and literature (seem) even more venerable and thus (from that perspective) enhance its cultural value and authority. Only occasionally has this tendency appeared among scholars of early Yiddish, and it has been rigorously avoided here. Printed books are as a rule explicitly dated, and that date can (in most cases) function as a clear terminus ad quem, the date by which the book and all of its printed contents existed. There are various exceptions to this general rule, however, and the following three examples clearly illustrate the often conflicting evidence and interpretive considerations in dating a text. The first is the case of the famous collection of Yiddish fables, the (EYT 75): in 1680 Shabbatai Bass identified the publication date of the Verona edition of the book as 1555, published by Abraham ben Mattathias, the date of which is confirmed by the Hebrew-alphabet title page of the recently rediscovered book, while the book's colophon confirms Abraham ben Mattathias [Bas-Sheva] as the publisher.28 The fact that historical information from elsewhere indicates that Abraham ben Mattathias was not printing books in Verona until forty years later clouds the issue, however. Furthermore, a note in Italian at the bottom of the book's title page—Con licenza de Superiori. 1595—both conflicts with the date in the

28

Shabbethai ben Joseph Bass, (Amsterdam 1680), I, 66, no. 13. Abraham ben Mattathias Bat-Sheva [Bas-Sheva] was the son of Mattathias Bas-Sheva, who published in Verona in 1594 in the printing shop of Francesco dalle Donne. See Eli Katz, ed., Book of Fables: The Yiddish Fable Collection of Reb Moshe Wallich, Frankfurt am Main, 1697 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994), 11-13.

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Hebrew-alphabet text on the same page and points toward a realistic date for Abraham ben Mattathias's participation in the publication. One might speculate that the (no longer extant) editio princeps of the was in fact published in 1555 and then reprinted by Abraham ben Mattathias forty years later in Verona without changing the Hebrew-alphabet date on the title page, but with the correct date in the official notice of permission to print by the Italian authority. The excerpt edited here nonetheless appears under the first confirmed date of publication, 1595, with a note explaining the complexities of the text's dating. A different complication arises in the case of Elia Levita's (EYT33), which was published with the author's direct collaboration in Isny (Bavaria) in 1541. It is edited in the present volume under the date 1507, however, and on good evidence: in both the preface and the colophon to the text, Levita makes clear that he finished writing the poem in 1507. Despite the fact that an extant manuscript of the poem provides evidence either of the author's later (but prepublication) revision of the poem or of very early textual 'corruption' of the original manuscript, it would seem pedantic to insist on the date 1541 here, since there is compelling evidence of an earlier date of initial composition. A third scenario is presented by the responsa of Jacob ben Moses Halevi Segal Moellin [the Maharil] (EYT 56), which were certainly composed in the early fifteenth century during the rabbi's life, but not published until more than a century later in Venice, 1549. That editio princeps is notoriously unreliable, however, so the source for the present edition is the Cremona edition of 1556, and the date assigned here is 1556 rather than the period of original composition or even the date of the first edition, because it is only in 1556 that the precise language use exhibited by the text is known to have existed, even though the document had circulated in various forms for some 125 years previously—out of the control of the author (in specific contrast to the situation with Levita's for instance). Thus, as the treatment of even these three texts indicates, similar types of evidence sometimes lead to different results in dating. In every case in which there is any question of the accurate dating of the text, however, there is an explanation in the headnote. With respect to manuscript texts, one can also often assume that the text was composed earlier than the oldest extant copy. But in the absence of other evidence (i.e. for a specific date of composition), the text is here simply dated to its earliest text witness. Thus the oldest extant version of the / 'The Binding of Isaac' (EYT 60) appears in a manuscript datable to c.1570 (New York, Jewish Theological Seminary [Judah Joffe Collection], Ms. 4425) and is here edited on the basis of a slightly later manuscript, dated 1579 (Paris, Bibliotheque National, MS hebr. 589). Even though it seems all but certain that the poem was composed in the fifteenth century; here it is thus dated to 1570. In the case of the book by Glikl bas Leyb Pinkerle [Hamil] (EYT 131), the earliest extant

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Introduction

manuscript is dated 1743, while the author herself specifies that she began writing the book in 1699 and ended it in 1719. Here the excerpts from her book are thus dated 1699-1719 (and ordered under the year 1719), despite the fact that the earliest extant manuscript dates from more than two decades later. The manuscript's 'title page' (added by her grandson) makes the claim that the manuscript was copied 'letter by letter' by his father from the original manuscript. Such claims are always to be viewed with some scepticism, and in the absence of the original, no final conclusion can be drawn, but in fact the care with which this manuscript was written and its generally consistent orthography seem consonant with dating the text to its year of completion in 1719. In general manuscripts are somewhat less consistently dated than printed books, and the significance of such dating is less transparent and univocal than the publication date of a printed book: understandably, a scribe who has just finished copying a book of 400 pages (or even a text of ten pages) may take pride in a job well done, or even be relieved at an onerous task completed, and there is in fact a common practice in a variety of cultural traditions of adding a colophon (generally) to the end of text, which may include some or all of the following items of information: the title of the text, author's name, scribe's name, the place and date (month, day, year, day of the week)29 of completion of the copy, the name of the copy's patron and/or recipient, and other personal or historical details. If a codex contains multiple texts, there may have been more than one scribe and each of the other items of information just noted may also differ; each such text may or may not have its own colophon. The dating by colophon of one text by one scribe need not (and generally does not) have much to do with the composition or copy date of another text written by a different scribe in the same codex. Sometimes multiple texts are copied into a single codex by a single scribe from multiple earlier manuscripts, including the original colophons of the texts copied, meaning that while this codex provides information about the date when the source manuscripts of those texts were copied, it provides us with no information concerning the date when the entire codex in hand was completed (beyond a terminus post quern 'date after which', i.e. the most recent date from the colophons), unless this final scribe also provides that information in his own colophon. In any case, the date assigned to texts edited here is that which has been determined by scholarship to be the most reasonable one. In the absence of evidence for a specific year, a more general date is assigned, based on more general types of internal and external evidence

29 There has been a great deal of inconsistency in the field of early Yiddish studies in the reckoning of dates in the civil calendar. Here, as is standard practice in historical studies, all dates in the civil calendar are reckoned according to the Julian calendar up to the introduction in October 1582 of Pope Gregory XIII's revised calendar; and according to that Gregorian calendar thereafter.

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Ixv

(e.g. '15th century' or even '15th-16th century')- The headnotes give not only the terminus post quern for texts (edited from both manuscript and printed editions) but also the likely date of composition (if that date is different and ascertainable). The orthographic conventions for the English form of names and words commonly used in Jewish studies contexts follow the norm established in the Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Keter, 1971). Thus, for instance, the Talmudic tractate is spelled Hagigah, not Chagiga or Khagige. With names, all options for transcribed forms lead to what might seem bizarre deformations. The speaker of the 'oath of peace' sworn in 1435, Jekuthiel Judah ben Benusch, for instance, was almost certainly never addressed by that name (except when called to read the Torah, and even then not quite in this phonetic realization), but was called [kusiel], as is evident from the text. Likewise every 'Sarah' was called [so're] and every 'Moses' was [mo'i/e]. Or were they? Old [West] Yiddish pronunciation (Moses = probably [mo:iufe]) was not, after all, the same as any of the modern eastern European dialects of Yiddish, and there remains some controversy about how Yiddish and Hebrew-derivative names in Yiddish were pronounced. The table of contents and headnotes of this anthology seem not the most reasonable places to conduct such a debate, so I choose here the best of both possibilities: Jewish names and Yiddish and Hebrew text titles are given in their Hebrew-alphabet forms as they appear in the texts themselves (and not according to the spelling conventions of our time) and in an equivalent [generally] English form. While the retention of the Hebrew-alphabet orthography of the original texts may occasionally be distracting, it need never confuse the sense. Due to the wide range of dates and genres of texts included, the table of contents consists of multiple types of indices: by date, genre, manuscript repository, and place of publication of early printed editions. In the first two listings, the authors' and/or translators' names are given if they are known. Texts are identified by title, if there is one, and that title is additionally provided with a translation or paraphrase, or in some cases another English title altogether, if such a title has become conventional in English. If the text has no identifiable title, and no scholarly convention has assigned one, an ad hoc descriptive title in English is assigned here. Thus the Old Yiddish epic adaptation of the biblical / The Book of Samuel, book of Samuel is identified as: providing the original text's title as indicated in the text itself , an alternate title of the original text that became conventional early on and now is the more common one in scholarship ( ), and an English equivalent. On the other hand, a text such as the , which carries the specific title , is here identified in English as A Fine Book of Tales [Mayse-bukh], for the latter title has become so conventional that to provide only the English

Ixvi

Introduction

translation as title would be confusing. Original titles are thus Romanized only in those cases in which the original title has become naturalized for some significant portion of an English-reading audience. In any case: the Hebrewalphabet form of names and titles (where they exist) is necessarily always definitive, while the Roman-alphabet and generally English-language form is supplementary and serves the convenience of the reader. The grouping of the texts by 'genre' must be understood only as an attempt to aid the reader, not to force either modern Western conceptions of genre (or the ancient Greek ones from which most modern conceptions derive) onto late medieval and early modern Jewish texts that are all but completely divorced from the traditions that define the terms 'epic', 'lyric', 'drama', 'history', and the modern concept of 'journalism'. Thus there is here a mixture of both terms and texts: and appear alongside 'responsa' and 'secular epic'; and a single text might reasonably be included under the rubrics 'lyric', and 'historiography', to give just one example of a multi-generic text. In manuscripts and early printed editions, poetic texts are not consistently divided into stanzas and rarely written or printed as a series of individual poetic lines. All evidently poetic texts are here divided into lines and, where compelling textual evidence indicates it is appropriate, stanzas. Vowel pointing in early Yiddish texts is very often quite unlike any of the many systems of vowel pointing known from either early masoretic or twentieth-century systems. In some texts, it is only whole Hebrew (that is, words that are used as Hebrew, not Hebrew-component Yiddish) that is pointed, sometimes also merged Hebrew (i.e. Hebrew-component Yiddish); sometimes names or words from non-Jewish languages are pointed; some particular phonetic combinations in Germaniccomponent Yiddish words are conventionally also pointed in early Yiddish (e.g. . Hebrew words differ quite often in both their consonantal orthography and vocalization (where it occurs) from both medieval and modern plene usage. All orthographical variations in the representation of vowels found throughout the Hebrew tradition are liable to be found in early Yiddish texts (and more besides), with various combinations of plene and strictly consonantal orthography. Furthermore, hataf vowels, for instance, when pointed, are most commonly pointed simply with a schwa and no indication of the hataf vowel itself. There has been no editorial attempt here to 'correct' what seems acceptable variation within the multiple orthographical traditions that intersect in the more than six centuries here surveyed. In some cases, however, the deviation from normative conventions seems unlikely to be simple variation; in such cases, I have emended the form and added a note. While the Hebrew alphabet does not have upper- and lower-case forms, it has no lack of possibilities for distinguishing various levels of text within a document (titles, paragraph headings, lemmata, headwords, main text vs.

Introduction

Ixvii

commentary vs. supercommentary, etc.). In manuscripts, square script and Ashkenazic cursive are the two primary scripts employed, in a variety of sizes. In printed texts, the font equivalents of the square script and the Ashkenazic semicursive (mashait/mashkit/vaybertaytsh) are most common, and the font based on the Sephardic semi-cursive (which later became known as 'Rashi script') is also found with some frequency.3030 While there seems no virtue in attempting to imitate the script or font forms themselves, some means of distinguishing them in modern editions does provide valuable information in understanding the visual and conceptual organization of the text. Unless otherwise noted in headnote or textual notes, font use in the present volume is as follows: plain square font represents Ashkenazic cursive in manuscript texts and the mashail (vaybertaytsh) font in printed books; bold square font represents square script/font; Sephardic semi-cursive ('Rashi') script/font is here generally represented by the admittedly non-traditional square script italics that are, however, conveniently available in current technology. Hebrew-alphabet scribal traditions require few comments. The general prohibition on the breaking and hyphenation of words at line-end, coupled with the tendency to preserve an unbroken left margin (in the Ashkenazic tradition it becomes almost an insistence on the aesthetic necessity of an unbroken left margin), led to the development of several strategies for filling the remaining space at the end of lines: some letters (D ,n ,K) could be horizontally elongated to fill the space. In the earliest substantial collection of Yiddish poetic texts (Cambridge, University Library, T.-S. 10K22), a character appears that resembles an arabic numeral 2 and seems to have functioned as an end-of-line filler in the source manuscript(s) of this codex. In yet another strategy (theoretically not permitted in biblical texts, which may not add, omit, or change any letter) the first letter or letters from the first word of the next line are used to fill the line out to the margin, and then that word is simply written or printed in full at the beginning of the next line, including the letters already used as filler on the previous line.31 Generally such markings have been incorporated into editions of Old Yiddish texts only when their editors were unacquainted with their function. Since line-end fillers are never significant semantically or otherwise textually, they are not preserved in the texts edited in the present volume and not indicated in the textual notes except when they have misled earlier editors into inaccurate readings or misinterpreting the manuscript, in which case a textual note indicates the problem. 30

Both whole and merged Hebrew words are sometimes also marked by enclosure in parentheses-like marks. 31 Steinschneider rather imprecisely designates this usage Zeilencustoden (Moritz Steinschneider, Die hebrceischen Ubersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher (Berlin: Kommissionsverlag des Bilbiographischen Bureaus, 1893; rpt. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1965), 34); before encountering his term, I grew accustomed to designating it 'line-end dittography'.

Ixviii

Introduction

Peculiarities of orthography are preserved here insofar as they do not obstruct comprehension of the text. In not a few cases, for instance, a D is thus retained in the edition even though the phoneme represented is almost certainly \p] and not [/]. When misunderstanding seems likely, however, the text is emended and a note added to indicate the reading of the original. Headnotes to the individual texts are not intended to be literary or historical analysis of the texts. The standard histories of Old Yiddish literature run to several hundred pages each, and any attempt to approximate them here even on an abbreviated scale would have lengthened an already large volume without accomplishing any of the necessary tasks of literary or cultural history. The function of the headnotes is to provide basic orientation by supplying the essential factual information, insofar as it is known and available: author, date of composition, date and current repository of manuscripts, publication information for the earliest editions, identification of genre, along with a basic historical and literary orientation, and bibliographical references to scholarly editions and research literature, including the standard histories of Old Yiddish literature, which are listed in Symbols and Abbreviations, above. Thus there is some variation in the length of headnotes, depending on how much information is available and relevant. In the case of many of the texts, the textual tradition itself is complex and bears directly on what form the edited text can take here; in those cases there is also succinct attention to textual criticism and (rarely) even codicology. In all cases where variant readings and editorial emendations are supplied in the textual notes to the edition, the sources of those variants are identified in the headnote.32 The bibliographical references included in each headnote provide the information necessary to locate the original text, essential editions, the relevant pages from the standard literary histories of early Yiddish (which sometimes focus on the specific text, sometimes on the genre without dealing with the specific text), and the most important research literature, supplemented by other publications that provide fuller bibliographical coverage, such that the reader is led to the larger body of scholarly research by means of these references. Nowhere is the intent to provide a comprehensive bibliography (which would be a large volume in itself—and is a very important desideratum in the field). The bibliographical entries are generally ordered chronologically;

32 In the textual notes, the current repositories of manuscripts and the place of publication of printed editions are as a rule abbreviated by the capitalized initial of the appropriate city. Thus, for instance, in the edition of the 1697 Purim play, the manuscript, Leipzig, Universitatsbibliothek B.H. 18 (EYT 120), is referred to in the textual notes simply as L. In the edition of the fable from Moses Wallich's O'bra ISO, the Frankfurt edition of 1697 is referred to as F, while the Verona edition of the TO K'J/7 from 1555 is referred to as V. If for any reason in a given text this practice would be imprecise, a specific note is added to that text's headnote to clarify the ad hoc practice there. Two texts from the Bodleian Library in Oxford, for instance, could be designated Ol and O2.

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Ixix

under the 'research' rubric are first listed chronologically the treatments in the standard histories and anthologies, before proceeding to other publications, which are then also listed in a separate chronological order. In order to facilitate the frequent change of reading direction required by the mixed Roman- and Hebrew-alphabet entries of the bibliographies (which well represents the basic facts of the field), I have separated distinct entries on a single line in the two alphabets at their juncture by the sign |. The reader will notice some variation in the orthography of citations from modern Yiddish scholarly literature, which display the broad spectrum of orthographical standards from the past century of scholarship. While I have preserved the alphabetical orthography of the original publications, I have accomodated the diacritical markings toward a YIVO standard.33 Since the information included under the rubric 'Source' may seem enigmatic to some readers, examples of both a manuscript source and a printed source are elucidated here. First, the format for manuscript entries is illustrated by the reference for the Traveller's Charm (EYT 17): Source: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Opp. 300 [olim 612], fol. 120v; Neubauer, 672.

The manuscript is found in the Oppenheimer collection of the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, Oxford, England, where it bears the signature (shelf mark) Opp. 300; since the manuscript was at some time past catalogued as Ms. Opp. 612, and readers may well still come across references to that now-outdated signature, it is included here in square brackets, marked by the standard bibliographers' term olim, Latin 'formerly'. The text itself is found on the verso of folio 120 of the manuscript. The manuscript is definitively described as item 672 of Adolf Neubauer's catalogue of Hebrew-alphabet manuscripts in the Bodleian Library (full reference in the list of Symbols and Abbreviations). It is to be assumed that all references to Neubauer's catalogue of manuscripts in the Bodleian also refer to the corresponding entry numbers in the supplement by Beit-Arie and May. There is a great margin for error in such information, as the

33 While there is no standardized convention in Yiddish and Hebrew orthography regarding the treatment of text titles, I have here simply imposed the conventions of North American English-language scholarship, in order to maintain consistency with the Roman-alphabet usage in this volume. Thus the standard bibliographical printing conventions of quotation marks or italics as identifications of a text as a 'poem', 'song', or 'play', vs. a separately published book are employed here, although the distinctions are quite often somewhat arbitrary. The titles of printed works published separately, no matter how brief, are here italicized (thus also the song, The Song of Vints Hans); texts in manuscript are judged by length and genre to determine their typographical representation here. As conventional in English, the titles of biblical books are not italicized; the titles of literary Yiddish adaptations based on biblical books (i.e. original compositions, not translations), on the other hand, are italicized here.

Ixx

Introduction

investigation of practically any catalogue of a major collection makes clear: manuscripts may, for instance, carry a catalogue entry number in addition to their signature/shelf mark; some scholars cite one, some the other; in referring to the catalogue, some may refer to the catalogue entry number, some to the catalogue page number. Major collections assembled over the course of several centuries may have been catalogued several times, each time according to varying principles and with different systems of numbering and signature assignment. Cryptic scholarly references from the last century-and-a-half may not always distinguish among catalogues and systems. In my insistence on autopsy of texts to be included (which ultimately requires decoding the labyrinth of cataloguing information that will lead to the actual text), I have attempted to ensure that the identification of library repository and signature are current and correct. The list of Symbols and Abbreviations (above) indicates where relevant whether reference numbers designate, for instance, page or item numbers. Very often not just the repository library has changed since texts were first cited in the research literature, but also signatures within libraries as collections are consolidated, reorganized, and rehoused. It has come to light in the course of this project that a great number of the repository libraries and signatures of early Yiddish texts have changed in the the past century (particularly during and in the years following the Second World War); some texts were destroyed during the war, and several more have, by means of reorganization of collections, been lost within the library, so that their signatures are no longer known, and thus their physical locations cannot be determined and will not be again in the future unless the texts happen to fall into the hands of someone who recognizes them and can make known their whereabouts. Secondly, the example of nwn ':w mxs (EYT 74) illustrates the citation format for printed editions: Source: Verona, 1594 [Mattathias (Mattityahu) ben Abraham Bat-Sheva/Francesco dalle Donne]; extant: (1) Verona, Biblioteca del Seminario Vescovile, Fonds Venturi, no. 192; (2) Cambridge, Trinity College, Loewe 158 [fragmentary]; (3) Milan, Biblioteca Braidense, Ebr. 1080 [fragmentary]; Cincinnati, Hebrew Union College Library, Collection Aaron Freimann [single folio].

Unless otherwise noted (as here, in the headnote to the text), the text on which the edition presented in this anthology is based is to be understood as the text's editio princeps. The text on which the edition of myn 'J1K rifts is based was published in Verona in 1594 by Mattathias ben Abraham Bat-Sheva in the publishing house of Francesco dalle Donne. Following the identification of the base text is information about the current repository of at least one exemplar of the text (usually among others that are extant in a variety of libraries), such that the reader can have direct recourse to a known existing copy.34 In the case of the

Introduction

Ixxi

example illustrated here, the wv 'm mxs, of which only four copies are known to exist (three of them fragmentary), all four copies are listed: by city, library, and signature (shelf mark) and/or library catalogue description (e.g. here 'Loewe 158', referring to the catalogue of Hebrew-alphabet manuscripts (as well as some printed books) in the library of Trinity College in Cambridge, England). Since the Oppenheimer collection at the Bodleian Library is the most important collection of early Yiddish (and Hebrew) printed books in the world, Moritz Steinschneider's catalogue of the holdings (which also includes descriptions of many printed books not in the Bodleian, as well as some few manuscripts) often functions as a de facto catalogue of early printed books in Hebrew and Yiddish, such that often it is only after checking in Steinsclineider that the scholar of early Yiddish looks further. Thus some texts included in the anthology that are not found in the Bodleian also carry a reference to Steinschneider's catalogue ('St.' + entry number). The inclusive folio or page numbers of each selection are indicated under the source rubric if the selection is a single continuous excerpt or integral text (unless the text comprises the entire book); if multiple selections are taken from a single text or title, their folio/page numbers are indicated before each such excerpt. Symbols employed in the editions and full references to abbreviated works of scholarship (such as Neubauer and Loewe, as above) to which frequent reference is made in the anthology are found in the list of Symbols and Abbreviations that follows the table of contents. A text edition may be provided with various types of notes, such as explanatory notes (that identify references and allusions to or citations of other texts, such as Bible, Talmud, or midrash, or identify people, places or events mentioned in the text), lexical notes that explain 'difficult' words, and textual notes that provide information about variant readings, problems in the text, or readings by previous scholars. Since the specific purpose and priority of the present volume is to provide reliable texts of a representative range of works from early Yiddish, it became clear early in the editorial work that considerations of space would not permit the inclusion of even the bare minimum of explanatory and lexical notes. One example may suffice to demonstrate the problem: in the literature of a culture whose piety is by definition text-based, one would be hard pressed to find many sentences without a citation of, reference, allusion, parallel, conscious opposition to, or other relationship with some text of the sacred tradition. Any attempt to include such

34 In identifying extant copies, it is clear that 1 have favoured the Bodleian Library, which has been the focal library for the present project during its concluding phases; since it was also the primary source of Chone Shmeruk's massive microform project on early Yiddish books (reference under the abbreviation 'IDC'), the reader may have convenient access to many of the cited books on microform.

Ixxii

Introduction

notes would double the size of the present volume without appreciably affecting the accomplishment of the project's intended purpose. On the other hand, the fact that the volume includes no glossary to provide aid in reading several hundred pages of occasionally quite difficult texts is without question a deficiency. There are a number of reasons for the absence of a glossary here, however: if this collection of texts is to have users from the range of fields one might expect will have occasional recourse to it, then anything less than a full glossary would be an unscholarly compromise unsatisfactory for practically all purposes, for simply glossing the Hebrew- Aramaic words at the foot of the page (for the Germanists), or the Germanic words that are no longer used in modern Yiddish (for the Yiddishists), or the 'difficult' words not found in the 'standard lexica' on the shelf of everyone who works in early Yiddish (Joffe/Mark, Weinreich, Niborski, Niborski/Vaisbrot, Jastrow, Lexer), would be incomplete, and to include all such categories would mean to gloss all Yiddish lexemes, which is of course what must be done, and what is currently in preparation and will appear in due course as a separate volume. This full-scale glossary does not appear simultaneously with the anthology, because it would have delayed the printing of this volume by several years. As noted above, the essential multilingualism that has characterized Ashkenazic culture from its beginning is also definitive of early Yiddish literature, and thus I have sought at all points to give this feature of the culture its due. As Chone Shmeruk has pointed out, it is only by taking into account the Hebrew literary tradition of the time that one can hope to understand Yiddish literary history:

[It is not possible to deal seriously and comprehensively with the history of Yiddish literature up to the end of the eighteenth century without taking into account the abundance of translations and adaptations of the multifaceted Hebrew literary tradition.]

To a lesser extent, however, the same is also true for other literary traditions and languages with which Ashkenazim had prolonged and productive contact. For that reason, in this anthology of early Yiddish there is much that is not strictly Yiddish—poems that are originally and essentially bilingual, with alternating Yiddish and Hebrew, or Yiddish and Aramaic, or Yiddish and JudeoItalian stanzas; texts in which Yiddish and whole Hebrew are used as the need arises, glosses in which French and Yiddish, or Yiddish and Latin are complementary, legal texts that exist in parallel Yiddish and German issues.

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Ixxiii

Such is already the case even in the earliest concrete evidence of the existence of Yiddish: in Rashi's glosses on the Bible and Talmud, where most of the Yiddish glosses occur alongside Tsarfatic glosses (the Jewish dialect of Old French), s that omitting the Tsarfatic glosses would quite obviously falsify the reader's impression of the context in which the Yiddish occurred and was read and understood (or not) 900 years ago. Early Yiddish is thus essentially a multilingual literature. But this term must be understood properly. The linguistic zealotry among the advocates of the Haskalah, Zionism, or Wissenschaft des Judentums, who viewed Yiddish as the 'accompaniment' to or uncultured maidservant of Hebrew, is only one manifestation of the phenomena relevant in contextualizing the multilingualism of the Ashkenazic culture that produced the texts here edited. When Elia Levita added a two-page glossary of Italian terms to the 1541 edition of the 7U-/di, it is not because they were not Yiddish words, for they certainly were, and would have been immediately comprehensible to and used on a daily basis by his contemporary Yiddish speakers in northern Italy. He glosses them for the simple reason that he seeks readers in the wider book market of the Yiddish-speaking communities north of the Alps, where Yiddish dialects will have had few of the Italian-component words he identifies.35 Likewise, to print only the Yiddish stanzas of the Yiddish-Hebrew, 'T^Tto' (EYT 73) or the Yiddish-Judeo-Italian 'p'to twsa TV [EYT 53] would be in some sense to falsify not only the specific conditions of their textual transmission, but also their cultural contexts and even content, for the Yiddish is not directly a translation of the Hebrew or Italian, nor is it simply a commentary on the quasisource text, but rather it seems that generally in bilingual Ashkenazic poems the 'commentary' goes in both directions, so that in reading such a bilingual poem, one experiences from stanza to stanza a dialogue of sorts as the poem constructs its own discourse via the give-and-take across the divide of the languages. One final example: the reasons why Chone Shmeruk argued that the Yiddish text of the '8H1 in' (EYT 26) is the original, while the Aramaic text that has become part of the Passover liturgy is the derivative translation, becomes clear in the juxtaposition of the two texts (even if one finds those reasons ultimately unconvincing). But even if that were not the case, the fact is that the earliest witness to the text is bilingual with alternating stanzas: either one taken individually is incomplete, not just from the perspective of the twenty-firstcentury cultural historian, but also, obviously, from the perspective of the late medieval culture that produced and made use of the poem. The distorting effects of the monolingual approach to the culture as a whole can be seen quite clearly,

35

Some of which in fact do not occur in the 7D-AG3 as extant, but must have occurred in his own earlier manuscript drafts; see Erika Timm, 'Wie Elia Levita sein Bovobuch fur den Druck ilberarbeitete. Bin Kapitel aus der italo-jiddischen Literatur der Renaissancezeit', Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, 72 [NF 41] (1991), 61-81.

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Introduction

for instance, in two distinct kinds of examples, motivated by different impulses: Leopold Lowenstein's survey and quasi-edition of Menahem Oldendorf's collection of lyrics, in which he prints many of the Hebrew poems and the Hebrew portions of the bilingual poems, while omitting their Yiddish portions or presenting them only in modern standard German translation, compared to Max Weinreich's edition of only the Yiddish portion of Elhanan bar Abraham Hellen's poem about the anti-Jewish riot in Frankfurt in 1614 (nxrn nvurn '737 [p'Jl Ji^s]) (EYT lOO).36 Weinreich's staunchly pro-Yiddishist position is as clear as was Lowenstein's equally staunch indifference or even antagonism to Yiddish from his perspective of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. The 'monolingual approach' appears in a slightly different form in the Roman-alphabet versions of early Yiddish texts published by some contemporary scholars from the field of Germanistic, who, for instance, gloss only the words of Hebrew-Aramaic origin, since for their German student readership their Germanized transcriptions function simply as German with some few intrusive 'non-native' vocabulary items. On the other hand, zealous adherents of ultra-secularist and/or Sovietized Yiddishism have also often de-emphasized the Semitic aspects of much of the context of early Yiddish texts. From all sides (but not from all scholars) one notes the attitude that a given text has and must have a single identity, it must be either the one or the other, but cannot legitimately be both. The fact is, of course, as the work of Chone Shmeruk, among others, has consistently demonstrated, that many early Yiddish texts are quite simply that: they are both, or often they have claims of multiple identity that go beyond the competing identities of Yiddish vs. Hebrew. This is not by any means to say that all was peace and harmony between the advocates of Yiddish and those of Hebrew during the Old and Middle Yiddish periods. Far from it. But whatever the state of conflict, the culture was multilingual, whether in twelfth-century Troyes, where Rashi studied texts in Hebrew and Aramaic with his international group of Tsarfatic- and Yiddish-speaking students, or in sixteenth-century Venice, seventeenth-century Amsterdam, or eighteenth-century Prague. To the extent that such multilingualism forms an integral part of the texts and their transmission history, 1 have sought to preserve it here, even when my own linguistic competence has been strained beyond its limits, for it enables us to understand deeper levels of cultural complexity and interconnections among various sectors of Ashkenazic society, and ultimately that is the purpose of this volume.

36 Leopold LSwenstein, 'Judische und jtidisch-deutsche Lieder', Jubelschrift zum siebzigslen Geburtstag des Dr. Israel Hildesheimer (Berlin: H. Engel, 1890), 136-8;

.192-140

A cknowledgements In the completion of a project of the fifteen-year duration and the 650-year, panEuropean scope of the present one, there are many to thank, including fellowship agencies, librarians and archivists, and professional colleagues. The Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung inadvertently supported this project in 1997-8 when 1 enjoyed a year under the sponsorship of Professor Dr Peter Schafer in the Institut fiir Judaistik at the Freie Universitat Berlin, engaged on the research for a different project, but also making use of the location and facilities to complete much of the central European manuscript research required for this project. In 2001-2, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Skirball Foundation (Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies), and the Zumberge Research and Innovation Fund (University of Southern California) generously supported the project and enabled its completion. In particular, I would like to thank the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies for the stipend and especially the peaceful working atmosphere. Unfortunately my tenure immediately followed the departure of Dov-Ber Kerler and Joel Berkowitz, the last representatives of the golden age of OCHJS as a major centre of Yiddish studies that began with Dovid Katz in the 1980s. For several months after their departure for positions in North America, there was no Yiddish presence at the Centre until the arrival of Dr Joseph Sherman to take up the position as Yiddish Fellow and ensure the continuance of (modern) Yiddish Studies on a firm footing in Yarnton. My thanks are also due my editor Hilary O'Shea, and Ruth Vincent and Enid Barker at Oxford University Press, for seeing a most difficult project through all stages of the publishing process. Without the generous aid of librarians expert in the field of Ashkenazic studies, no such project would have been possible. Of particularly aid were Richard Judd, Doris Nicholson, and the staff of the Oriental Reading Room in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and, in alphabetical order: Prof. Dr Leopold Auer (Direktor, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchivs, Osterreichisches Staatsarchiv, Vienna), Zachary Baker (Stanford University Library, Palo Alto), Joanna Ball (Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge), David Cassutto (Museo U. Nahon Di Arte Ebraica Italiana, Jerusalem), Dr Joachim Deeters (Historisches Archiv der Stadt Koln), Dr Pier Francesco Fumagalli (Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan), Orit Gafni (Museo U. Nahon Di Arte Ebraica Italiana, Jerusalem), Michel Garel (Division orientate des manuscrits de la Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris), Jan Gromadzki (Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, Uniwersytet Wrodawski, Wroclaw), Dr Birgitte Gullath (Abteilung fur Handschriften und Seltene Drucke, Bayerische

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Acknowledgements

Staatsbibliothek, Munich), Mirjam Gutschow (Amsterdam, Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana), Dr R. Hoppl (Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich), Steffen Hoffman (Universitatsbibliothek, Leipzig), Dr Manfred Huiskes (Historisches Archiv der Stadt Koln), Esra Kahn (London School of Jewish Studies), Gilnter Kroll (Handschriften- & Inkunabelabteilung, Stadt- und Universitatsbibliothek, Frankfurt am Main), Jean-Claude Kupperminc (Alliance Israelite Universelle, Paris), Andrzej Ladormirski and Joanna Madej (Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, Uniwersytet Wrod-awski, Wroclaw), Dr Ernst Petritsch (Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchivs, Osterreichisches Staatsarchiv, Vienna), Daniel Polakovic (Zidovske muzeum, Prague), Magdalene Popp-Grilli (Handschriftenabteilung, Wurttembergische Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart), Stuart W. Pyhrr (Arms and Armor, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), Anna Maria Reber (Burgerbibliothek, Bern), Dr Bernhard Reichel (Abteilungsleiter Altes Archiv, Institut fur Stadtgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main), Benjamin Richler (Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts, Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem), Moshe N. Rosenfeld (London), Gilles Rozier (Medem Bibliotheque, Paris), Thomas Streffmg-Hellhake (Institut fur Judaistik, Freie Universitat Berlin), liana Tahan (Hebrew Section, British Library, London), Godfrey Waller, (Cambridge University Library, Cambridge), P. Werner (Staatsbibliothek, Berlin). It is particularly gratifying to be able to thank a number of colleagues who have provided encouragement, information, and constructive criticism at particular moments or over the course of a longer period of time during the many years of this project: Marion Aptroot (Universitat Dilsseldorf), Franz Bauml (UCLA), Judith Baskin (University of Oregon), Jean Baumgarten (CNRS, Paris), Joel Berkowitz (SUNY Albany), Joseph Dan (Freie Universitat Berlin and Hebrew University Jerusalem), Jeremy Dauber (Columbia University), Edward Fram (University of Be'er Sheva), Sander Oilman (University of Illinois, Chicago Circle), Itsik Gordon (Workmen's Circle, Los Angeles), Kathryn Hellerstein (University of Pennsylvania), Mikhl Herzog (Columbia University), Dovid Katz (Vilniaus Universitetas), Dov-Ber Kerler (Indiana University), Max Kohn (Universite Paris VII), Daniel Kokin (Harvard University), Joseph Landis (Queen's College, New York), Abraham Lichtenbaum (YIVO, Buenos Aires), Lilke Majzner (Yiddish Culture Club, Los Angeles), Paul Mendes-Flohr (University of Chicago and Hebrew University, Jerusalem), Hilde Pach (Universiteit van Amsterdam), John Roger Paas (Carleton College), Peter E. Pohrmann (Merton College, Oxford), Joseph Rebhun (University of Southern California), Peter Schafer (Princeton University), Mordkhe Schaechter (Columbia University), Joseph Sherman (Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies), Hermann Suess, Barry Trachtenberg (SUNY Albany), Anna Verschik (Tartu University), Chava Weissler (Lehigh University), Diane Wolfthal

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Ixxvii

(Arizona State University), Seth Wolitz (University of Texas, Austin), and Bruce Zuckerman (University of Southern California). The comments and criticisms of the first systematic readers of this anthology—the students in the advanced seminars in early Ashkenazic literature that I taught in the Institut fur Judaistik at the Freie Universitat, Berlin (1997-8) and at Columbia University (2004)—have also been of great value at two rather different stages of the project, especially those most recently by Alec Burko, Alyssa Masor, Benjamin Sadock, Samuel Spinner, and Itay Zutra. Jerold C. Frakes Berlin—Oxford—New York—Los Angeles

1 Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac [Rashi] (< 1105) Glosses on the Bible and the Talmud [excerpts]

Rabbi Solomon b. Isaac [Rashi] (1040-1105) was born and spent his early years in Troyes, the capital city of Champagne. After his initial education and his marriage, he went to the centres of Rabbinical learning in the Rhineland for advanced studies under the famed Rabbis Jacob b. Yakar and Isaac b. Judah in Mainz and Isaac b. Eleazar Halevi in Worms. Thereafter he returned to Troyes, where he founded a school in 1070. In the course of his teaching and research he wrote immensely influential commentaries on the Bible and the Talmud. These works include more than 3000 Tsarfatic (the Jewish correlate of Old French) glosses and some thirty glosses in a Germanic language now generally identified as Yiddish (Timm), although some scholars maintain that these glosses are simply German or a Jewish-influenced German, rather than Yiddish per se, for the corpus is quite small, consists only of single words, and it is impossible to determine the exact pronunciation of the words with any accuracy and thus also their specific distinctions from German dialects of the period. Almost certainly such glossing derived directly from the teaching practice in the Rhineland, where difficult terms were also explained in Tsarfatic, which was in most cases the native language of the students, but also, less frequently, in Yiddish, which had developed among Jews in the German-speaking territories and was already the common language among Rhineland Jews. These latter glosses were often introduced with the phrase nDWN \\ufti 'in the language of Ashkenaz'. Recent scholarship has refuted the suspicions that the glosses were later additions to the tradition, and has eradicated the last doubts concerning the authenticity of the ascription of these glosses to the period of Rashi's life; most, if not all, of this small group of words are likely to be his own glosses. As such these glosses are the oldest known concrete evidence of the beginnings of the Yiddish language. The broad manuscript tradition of Rashi's commentaries extant today offers several, sometimes radically differing, orthographic variants of the glosses. The exhaustive study of the manuscript traditions by Darmesteter-Blondheim provide the forms of the glosses cited here. A number of the extant Germanic glosses are textually and/or linguistically problematic; with one exception, such glosses are here omitted.

2

1105

Source: Rashi's commentaries on the Talmud and Bible. Edition: Arsene Darmesteter, 'Les Closes franfaises de Raschi dans la Bible', REJ 53 (1907), 161-93; 54 (1907), 1-34 and 205-35; 55 (1908), 72-83; 56 (1908), 70-98; rpt. as Les Closes francaises de Raschi dans la Bible (Paris: A. Durlacher, 1909); Arsene Darmesteter and D, S. Blondheim, Les Closes francaises dans les commentaires talmudiques de Raschi, vol. 1: Texte des Closes (Paris: Champion, 1929) [here DB]; vol. 2: Etudes lexicographiques (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1937). Research: ;14-12 ,iy7^ ,-\v-\W\ ;263 ,202 ,140 ,20 ,:n3n:PX | Alexander Marx, 'The Life and Work of Rashi', in Rashi Anniversary Volume, ed. H. L. Ginsberg (New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1941), 9-30; I. A. Agus, 'Rabbinic Scholarship in Northern Europe, Rashi and his School', in The World History of the Jewish People, II, 2: The Dark Ages, ed. Cecil Roth (Tel Aviv: Jewish History Publications/New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1964), 189-248; Menahem Banitt, 'The La'azim of Rashi and of the French Biblical Glossaries', in ibid., 291—6; Erika Timm, 'Zur Frage der Echtheit von Raschis jiddischen Glossen', BGDSL 107 (1985), 45-81; Gernot Heide, 'Uber die Lexik alterer jiddischer Glossare', in Rdllwagenbuchlein, 345-68.

Talmud Text

Yiddish

Tsarfaticc

AvodahZarah 15b/DB972 Avodah Zarah 33b/DB lOOa Avodah Zarah 60a/DB 418 Bava Kamma 81a/DB 1050 Bava Mezia 21 a/DB 901 c Bava Mezia 73b/DB 892b Bava Mezia 116b/DB 447a Bava Batra 20b/DB 447b Bekhorot 8a/DB 703 Berakhot 28b/DB 1064ftis Gittin 55b/DB 892a Menahot 42b/DB lOOb Menahot 42b/DB lOOc Sukkah 39b/DB 577 Shabbat 120a/DB 617bis

1

ing it

The manuscript traditions differ on the identity of this word—some designat, others

1273-1272

3

Bible Text

Yiddish

Tsarfatic

Judges 3: 16 1 Kings5:23 2 1 Kings 6: 8 1 Kings 6: 9 2 Kings 1: 2 Job 13:27 Ezekiel 27: 7 Ezekiel 27: 24 Ezekiel 41: 7

2 / Worms Mahzor Couplet (anon. 1272-1273) [complete]

This brief text—a single couplet—is the oldest dated Yiddish text extant. It is found in a thirteenth-century mahzor manuscript (the holiday prayer book) from Worms, which was an important centre of medieval Jewish learning and an important source of mahzor manuscripts throughout Central Europe in the period. The mahzor text was written in 1272-3 by Simhah b. Judah of Nuremberg in Worms for his uncle, Baruch b. Isaac. The Yiddish couplet appears inside the 'hollow' horizontal strokes of the large letters at the beginning of the UVD (in Vo rfrDn) for the dew in the additional service on the first day of Passover (mm nV3N insm). The text, written (in red ink) by the same hand as the rest of the book, is precisely pointed in brown ink, and thus provides important information concerning both scribal conventions and perhaps also the pronunciation at the time. While it is a Yiddish text, a poetic text, and a text transmitted in, and in some sense as an integrated part of, a mahzor manuscript, it is nonetheless also 2

1 Kings 5: 23 [DB 5: 22]. Greek. The modem East Yidintroduced in some manuscripts as dish sense 'a Slavic language spoken by Orthodox (i.e. not Catholic) Christians', had of course not yet developed 4 i.e. Tsarfatic, not YidThe gloss is introduced in some manuscripts as dish. 3

4

1273-1272

necessary to recognize that the couplet does not form part of the prayer book proper, but is additive or supplementary. Thus it belongs rather to the class of Yiddish-language comments on, and directions for the use of, the prayer book that appear in a broad range of prayer books in the centuries hereafter, such as the excerpts also included in other selections below. [Jerusalem, National and Source'. University Library], Osroth Heb. 4° 781, vol. I, fol. 54r [92r according to the old foliation]. Facsimile edition: Heb. 4° 781/1 Cyelar Publishing English 1985 translation: 'The Versified Old Yiddish Blessing in the Worms Mahzor' ibi100-3d.,

Edition and research: 65 ,15-11 D'/?"!D ,pns;3tf; | Birnbaum, 'Specimens,' 149-51; Baumgarten, 323-7; Ernst Roth, 'Das Wormser Machsor', in Die alte Synagoge zu Worms (Frankfurt: Ner Tamid, 1961), 222; | 576-575 ,(1963-1962) 38 ;159-158 ,(1963) 47 24

;62-61 ,(1964) | Walter Roll, 'Das alteste datierte jiidisch-deutsche Sprachdenkmal: ein Verspaar im Wormser Machsor von 1272/73,' ZMF 33 (1966), 127-38; Malachi Bcit-Arie, 'The Worms Mahzor: Ms. Jerusalem, Jewish National and University Library Heb. 4° 781/1, Wiirzburg? (Germany), 1272,' in The Makings of the Medieval Hebrew Book: Studies in Palaeography and Codicology (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1993), 152-75.

3 The Short Arukh Abridgement of Nathan b. Jehiel, The Complete Arukh (anon. 1290) [excerpt]

The oldest extant dictionary of post-biblical Hebrew-Aramaic is the yny 730 D^wn by Nathan ben Jehiel, which was completed in Rome in 1101. In the centuries after its completion there were numerous abridgements of the work, the earliest extant of which is of great significance to Yiddish studies, for besides its abridgement of the original text and the addition of some Hebrew material and Tsarfatic (the Jewish correlate of Old French) glosses, it also provides a wealth of Yiddish glosses, which are often identified as U'JUP'ja ('in our language') or TJ3BM Titles ('in the language of Ashkenaz'). This abridgement is extant in two manuscripts, the earliest from the year 1290 (Bern, Burgerbibliothek 200), which records the glosses with vowel points, while the later one dates from the fifteenth century (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, cod. hebr. 390), is unpointed, and has the Yiddish glosses often in garbled form. The earlier manuscript includes 318 Yiddish glosses, of which 226 are integral to the original text, the remainder are marginal or interlinear additions, sixty-seven of which are by a hand contemporary with that of the original text, while the remaining twenty-five are by a later hand. While the manuscript provides no concrete information about the provenance of the copyist, Asher b. Jacob Halevi, information about him does exist elsewhere and indicates that he was from Osnabruck, studied in Franconia, and had connections to Cologne. The sample edited here comprises the glosses found on a single page of the Bern manuscript. Of particular interest here is the idiomatic updating of Rashi's reference to the Talmudic prohibition of Jewish attendance of the circus and theatre (m^norx nwtniz?) as 'associating with ~|Jin' D"Uin 'JIN (monks and nuns). Source: Bern, Burgerbibliothek 200 (1290), fol. 122v. Edition: Grlinbaum, Chrestomathie, 459-79 [1/4 of glosses excerpted from Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, cod. hebr. 390]; Erika Timm, 'Jiddische Sprachmaterial aus dem Jahre 1290: Die Glossen des Berner kleinen Aruch—Edition und Kommentar', Trierer Beitrage, 16-34 [edition of all Yiddish glosses, excerpted from context].

14

6

13

Research: ;122-112 ,]Ntf7Hi> | Steinschneider, Serapeum Handschriften, 439b [Nachtrage]; Joseph Perles, Beitrage zur Geschichte der hebraischen und aramdischen Studien (Munich: Theodor Ackermann, 1884), 45-112; David Kaufmann, 'Buxtorfs Aruchhandschrift wiederaufgefunden', MGWJ 34 (1885), 185-92, 225-33; Joseph Perles, 'Berner Handschrift des kleinen Aruch,' Jubelschrift zum 70. Geburtstag des Prof. Dr. H. Graetz (Breslau: Schottlaender, 1887; rpt. New York: Olms, 1973), 1-38; .232-161 ,(1990

fol. 122v:

4 Comments on 7ltnti /Mahzor (anon. 13th-14th century) [excerpts]

This mahzor (holiday prayer book) dates from the 13th-14th centuries and is written in two distinct hands. The Hebrew text is vocalized, and throughout the text there are marginal additions and comments, usually in Hebrew, but also several dozen in Yiddish. On fol. 159v, written in the same hand as the Yiddish glosses, one of the owners of the book is identified: 1 2

Timm

B interlinear above; this gloss is by the second hand, practically contemporary with the text's main scribe. 3 ] B ' interlinear above; Timm [-DK =] 4 0-UJn . . . JWIOttf ] B in right margin in the third (later) hand.

n"1 nsra 14-157013

1

HOT. The Yiddish glosses and comments are generally written on the outer margins, which have been heavily trimmed for binding, and thus practically none of these readings is complete. Some few Yiddish entries are found in the lower margin or between text sections in the body of the text and are thus largely or fully preserved. In general the Yiddish comments are the conventional simple identifications of when a particular prayer is used, when not, in what order; occasionally they are quasi-text critical, e.g. suggesting a change in word order. Source: Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, PreuBischer Kulturbesitz, MS Or. Qu. 960. Research: Griinbaum, 289-96; | ;81-72 ,lNtt'7ltff [in general on such texts]; Baumgarten, 319-62.

36r

I at beginning of

44r 61r

61v 62v 95r 97r

' This is a common comment in the manuscript: 63v, 65v (three times), etpassim.

5-9 Cairo Genizah Codex (anon. 1382) [excerpts]

The codex in which the following five texts are found is a remarkable volume that belongs to the Taylor-Schechter collection in Cambridge University Library (T.-S. 10K22).' The manuscript came to Cambridge in 1896, brought from the genizah of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fostat (Old Cairo) by Professor Solomon Schechter. It thus bears witness to yet another aspect of the geographical range of Yiddish language use in the course of several centuries, extending to the eastern Mediterranean and the Ashkenazic settlements particularly in Cairo and Jerusalem in the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries: see also the letter from Rachel b. Abraham (in Jerusalem) to her son Moses (in Cairo) in 1565, below (EYT 59). The paper manuscript of forty-two folios has suffered serious damage from moisture and worms, and throughout the codex edges of pages have worn away, and ink has faded, sometimes to the point of illegibility. Ultraviolet light improves the legibility significantly in some cases, and earlier editors seem to have worked primarily or exclusively on the basis of ultraviolet photographs (such as those reproduced as Fuks's facsimile edition) and/or microfilm. The editions of the five texts from the manuscript included here are based on direct autopsy of the manuscript itself, in particular with the aid of ultraviolet light. The legibility of the manuscript has, however, continued to deteriorate since Fuks's edition, unfortunately not least due to recent conservation procedures that have strengthened the general structure of some pages but have covered readings on damaged margins with reinforced edging, and overlaid other damaged areas with reinforcing tissue that obscures the text under incandescent light and itself appears phosphorescent under ultraviolet light, thus making many faint readings in these already physically damaged portions of the text illegible, now probably permanently.

' This codex has suffered from a great deal of scholarly imprecision in its designation. Fuks renamed the codex 'C.Y.' (= 'Cambridge Yiddish') instead of using its library signature, and other scholars have also referred to it as 'the Cambridge Yiddish codex', often without further specification. Since a number of quite important Yiddish codices are found in various Cambridge libraries, this designation is less specific than one might wish. Even among those who have cited the codex by its library signature, there has been a surprising lack of attention to accuracy (e.g. GNS: 'T.-S. K.22'; Josef Weissberg: 'T-10 K 22', in 'The Vowel System of MS Cambridge T-10 K 22 Compared with Middle High German,' Journal of Jewish Studies, 14(1963), 37-57.

Cairo Genizah Codex, 1382

9

The manuscript has been rebound since the descriptions by Fuks and Katz (fol. 14rv, for instance, is now correctly placed); the foliation is modern;2 at both the beginning and end of the manuscript an indeterminate number of folios is missing, and the final text of the codex, Q]~nn 01317, seems unlikely to have come to its conclusion on the folios still extant, although due to the poor state of the manuscript it is difficult to determine the content of the final folios.3 The entire codex was written in Ashkenazic cursive script with brown ink, with 20-9 lines per page. Punctuation generally consists of a mid-level point after the first line(s) of a couplet or stanza and a colon at its conclusion; often it is difficult to distinguish between a point at mid-level and one on the line. The codex includes eight texts: (1) 'urn ntra' 'Moses our Leader/Teacher', fos. lr-2r; (2) 'ITS? p' 'Paradise', fos. 2r-6v; (3) 'ir3K arms' 'Abraham the Patriarch', fos. 6v-17r; (4) 'P'lxn noi v 'Joseph the Righteous', fos. 17v-18v; (5) 'XTP1? o^x T"x' 'An Old Lion', fol. 19rv; (6) a Hebrew list of weekly Pentateuch readings, fol. 20v; (7) a bilingual Hebrew-Yiddish glossary of the gemstones on the high priest's breastplate, fol. 20v; (8) omn own Duke Horant, fos. 21r-^2v. Text 6 identifies the year as J"Qp; text 5 is dated more precisely with the Jewish date }"np i^OD '} (= 9 November 1382), Texts 3-5, 7, and a lengthy excerpt from 8 are included here; the first two texts of the codex are so severely damaged that they are difficult to read as integral texts, as is also the case with the final extant folios of text 8. While the entire codex was most likely copied by a single scribe, the individual texts were copied from pre-existing texts, some of which also included information about their scribes, which was then simply incorporated into this manuscript along with those texts. The first three poems identify their 'writer' as xiymw iin prx. Conventionally in early Yiddish texts, this designation identifies the scribe of a text, but it is also sometimes used to designate the author. There is no evidence here either for or against its possible usage to identify the author. Another such scribe (ormx lymiz;) is identified at the end of text 5, 'xir1? D"?N ]"X', who could conceivably have been the composer of text 3, 'irux nrmx' (cf. note to 24,1). The acrostic of the 'p'lxn f\ov' poem identifies only an unidentified 'punctator' ppl Thus, according to the sparse information at our disposal, we know only that there may have been one-three Isaacs, one or two Abrahams, and another unnamed 'punctator' responsible for the first five texts. Since it is quite likely that a professional scribe of the period 2

Both Katz's and Fuks's indiscriminate use of the terms 'page' and 'folio' makes for a great deal of unnecessary confusion. ' Most scholars have posited a lost folio between fos. 13 and 14; some also posit another between fos. 20 and 21, in order that this gathering, like the others of the codex, would have originally had eight folios. There is no textual justification for assuming a lost folio at the end of this gathering (between fos. 20-1), since no text of the extant codex is interrupted, and little justification for positing the loss of a folio at the beginning of the gathering, for the narrative disjunction at that point is minimal and not necessarily due to a loss of text. See Katz, 'Six Germano-Judaic Poems', 5-6.

10

1382

was also a 'punctator', it could well be the case that there were only two scribes, Isaac and Abraham, one of whom was also the no-longer identifiable 'punctator'. Thus, if, as suggested above, a single scribe is responsible for the writing of this entire codex and in copying the texts from another manuscript or manuscripts has simply included their dates and colophons identifying previous scribes, then the dating of this codex is necessarily also both more complex and later than the straightforward date of 9 November 1382 found in the text 'An Old Lion', for the codex could only have been copied after that date. Lines of the manuscript occasionally end with a graph resembling an arabic 111, which frequently functioned elsewhere in the Hebrew manuscript tradition to fill the line to the margin; but that could only have been the case in a previous exemplar of the text, for in this manuscript they do not consistently so function, since, although they occur only at line ends, they often occur before or after the margin. The sign is not reproduced in the edition here. While some of Katz's few erroneous readings are corrected in the portions edited here, his edition, based on ultraviolet photographs of the manuscript made under optimal conditions before the recent conservationist damage to the manuscript, still remains the only reliable edition of the entire manuscript, and until technology provides procedures to make darkness visible, it will remain the definitive edition.

5

/ 'Abraham the Patriarch' (anon. 1382) [complete]

While this poem is ultimately based on the biblical Abraham narrative, it is especially from the post-biblical midrashic traditions of Abraham's childhood recognition of the single god of the prefigured Hebrew tradition and his repeated destruction of the idols commercially produced by his father that this poem derives its motifs (cf. mi /7'Bvnj 38, 13; the Old Yiddish /77W7? /uwi on Genesis 11: 28). Despite its overt theological content, there is more than a hint of humour evoked especially by the 'tests' to which Abraham puts the sculpted idols. The poem comprises 105 four-line stanzas, rhymed AABB. On the codex, see the headnote to the Cairo Genizah Codex (above, p. 8). Source: Cambridge, University Library, T.-S. 10K22, fos. 6v-17r; Birnbaum, Hebrew Scripts, 306-7.

1382

11

Edition: Fuks, Oldest Documents, I and II, 25-67 [facsimile]; Katz, 'Six Germane-Judaic Poems', 91-112 [crit. edn.]; Hakkarainen, Studien, I, 48-69; Birnbaum, 'Specimens', 146-9. Research: ;48-3 .isaVw | Ginzberg, Legends, I, 183-308, esp. 213-17, and V, 207-69; | 199-182 ,139-133 ,36-33 ,fl'/773 ,praD!tf; | Baumgarten, 167-72; Moses Gaster, The Exempla of the Rabbis: Being a Collection of Exempla, Apologues and Tales Culled from Hebrew Manuscripts and Rare Hebrew Books (London: The Asia Publishing Co., 1924; rpt. New York: Ktav, 1968), 185; Dov Sadan, 'The Midrashic Background of "The Paradise": Its Implications for the Evaluation of the Cambridge Yiddish Codex (1382)', FOY II, 153-62; Walter Roll, 'Zu den ersten drei Texten der Cambridger Handschrift von 1382/1383', ZDA 104 (1975), 54-68; Walter Roll, '"Awroham owinu" ("Unser Vater Abraham")', Verfasserlexikon, I, coll. 573^1; Wulf-Otto DreeBen, 'Midraschepik und Bibelcpik: Biblische Stoffe in der volkssprachlichen Literatur der Juden und Christen des Mittelalters im deutschen Sprachgebiet', ZDP 100 (Sonderheft Jiddisch, 1981), 78-97; Chava Turniansky, 'On Old-Yiddish Biblical Epics', IFR 8 (1991), 26-33.

1,3 2,1 2,2 3,1 3,4

Fuks

Fuks

Katz

Katz

Katzi Katz Fuks Katz I Fuks C at line-end, following in following line; Katz

is Fuks

line-end dittography anticipating

1382

12

5

10

5,3 6,1 8,2 9,3 10,4

line-end dittography anticipating in C at line-end, following Katz the following line; Fuks Katz/Fuks Fuks is thus impossible C a hole in the page follows the 1; Fuks's reading Katz Katz Fuks

1382

13

15

the Katz Fuks are quite difficult to distinguish in the MS at this point; both readings are paleographically plausible may in fact be Fuks/Katz 15,4

11,3

14

1382

20

25

18.3 22,1 24.1

Katz/Fuks Fuks C the word is preceded by seven dots in the right margin, extending diagonally upward to the right, then vertically down; thus also in the couplet-initial acrostic of Perhaps here the author's and/or copyist's name is thus highlighted.

1382

15

30

C preceded by marginal dots, as above 24,1. Katz Fuks C preceded by two heavily inked and smeared letters, perhaps Uffl, then rewrit-

27.1 29,3 29,4

ten C letters may be lost after p, or the overline may indicate abbreviation at the Kat7 interlinear end of the line and page; Fuks above. Katz 'appears to be a scribal error for 31.1

30.2

1382

1<S

35

40

33,2

fuks

Katz

1382

17

45

44.2

Katz

1382

18

50

55

49.4 51,3 54,3 54,4

Katz/Fuks Fuks Fuks Fuks

Katz

1382

19

60

64,2

Katz

1382

20

65

70

66,2

Katz

conservation work has now strengthened Fuks Katz The posited lost the page but rendered nothing more legible beyond the two letters folio would follow the page-break at the end of this line (see headnotc). 70,4 Katz 70,1

1382

21

75

75,1 75,3 77,1 77,3 79,1

C interlinear above. C ~\ interlinear above. C preceded by a sign consisting of three parallel diagonal lines slanting down to the left, crossed by a single line slanting down to the right.

22

1382

80

85

80,3 82,1 82,3 85,1 86,2

Katz Fuks Fuks C interlinear above. C the second 'T is interlinear above.

1382

23

90

91,3 94,1

smudged and repeated interlinear above. Katz

24

1382

95

100

98,3 99,4 101,2

Fuks preceded by an ink blot. Katz

1382

25

105

6 'Joseph the Righteous' (anon. 1382) [complete]

The poem's content is based on the Joseph narrative in the book of Genesis, and especially on the widely known, post-biblical Jewish traditions, perhaps best exemplified in the midrashic sources on the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife. The poem is composed in rhymed couplets, each of which begins a new line in the manuscript, generally preceded by a diagonal row of

104,3

C preceded by a smeared 11, after which the entire word is written.

1382

26

'deformation' for the sake of the acrostic: (1. 21), (1. 29), (1. 43));2 11. 69-75 form the Hebrew word 'punctator', most likely indicating the profession of the copyist or perhaps even author of this text, whose name and patronymic would conventionally have formed the acrostic of 11. 45-67; such is not the case here, whether because the name has become garbled and lost in the process of text transmission, as suggested by earlier scholars, or more likely because the convention was simply not followed here. On the codex, see the headnote to the Cairo Genizah Codex (above, p. 8). Source: Cambridge, University Library, T.-S. 10K22, fos. 17v-18v; Birnbaum, Hebrew Scripts, 306-7. Edition: Fuks, Oldest Documents, I and II, 68-72 [facsimile]; Katz, 'Six Germano-Judaic Poems', 113-15 [crit. edn.]; Hakkarainen, Studien, I, 70-2; Chone Shmeruk, 'The Hebrew Acrostic in the Yosef Hatsadik Poem of the Cambridge Yiddish Codex', Michigan Germanic Studies, 3 (1977), 67-81 [crit. edn.]. Research: ;48-3 Ginzberg, Legends, II, 3-184, esp. 39-58 and V, 324-77;|; 199-182 ,36-37 Baumgarten, 167-72; Frederic Everett Faverty, 'The Story of Joseph and Potiphar's Wife in Mediaeval Literature', Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, 13 (1931), 81-127; Hans Priebatsch, Die Josefsgeschichte in der Weltliteratur: eine legendengeschichtliche Studie (Breslau: M. & H. Marcus, 1937); Pavel Trost, 'Zwei ;35-30 (1954) 2 Stucke des Cambridger Kodex T-S 10, K. 22', Philologica Pragensis, 4 (1961), 17-24; Pavel Trost, 'Noch einmal zur Josefslegende des Cambridger Kodex', Philologica Pragensis 5, (1962), 3-5; James W. Marchand and Frederic Tubach, 'Der Keusche Joseph. Bin mitteldeutsches Gedicht aus dem 13.-14. Jh.: Bin Beitrag zur Erforschung der hebraisch-deutschen Literatur', ZDP 81 (1962), 30-52; Peter Ganz, Frederick Norman, and Werner Schwarz, 'Zu dem Cambridger Josef, ZDP 82 (1963), 86-90; Dov Sadan, 'The Midrashic Background of "The Paradise": Its Implications for the Evaluation of the Cambridge Yiddish Codex (1382)', FOY II, 153-62; Wulf-Otto Dreefien, 'Midraschepik und Bibelepik: Biblische Stoffe in der volkssprachlichen Literatur der Juden und Christen des Mittelalters im deutschen Sprachgebiet', ZDP 100 (Sonderheft Jiddisch, 1981), 78-97; Chava Turniansky, 'On Old-Yiddish Biblical Epics', IFR 8 (1991), 26-33.

2

The form "in in 1. 15 may also constitute such a deformation.

1382

27

5

10

15

20

25

30

6 8 11 24 25 26

Kat2 ] Shmeruk ] C 1 is smeared and repeated interlinear above. Katz/Fuks ] ] K a t z [ ].

1382

28

35

40

45

50

55

60

65

70

38 45 5968

Katz Shmeruk omitted by Fuks. Fuks

1382

29

75

7 'An Old Lion' (anon. 1382) [complete]

Fables concerning a sick lion are quite common in a variety of fable traditions, in some of which the lion is healed by one or more of the other animals; in others he becomes the object of vengeance by his earlier victims among the other animals. In the Jewish tradition, in addition to the present version of the latter type, there is a similar fable in the twelfth-thirteenth-century Hebrew collection (Yiddish translation by by Berechiah ben Natronai Ha-Nakdan. Jacob Koppelmann 1583, see EYT 65), and again in the Yiddish (1555; EYT 75). This Yiddish version is the earliest transmitted fable in the Yiddish literary tradition. On the codex, see the headnote to the Cairo Genizah Codex (above, p. 8). Source: Cambridge, University Library, T.-S. 10K22, fol. 19rv; Birnbaum, Hebrew Scripts, 306-7. Edition: Wolf, 35-6; Fuks, Oldest Documents, I and II, 74-6 [facsimile]; Katz, 'Six Germano-Judaic Poems', 116-17 [crit. cdn.]; Hakkarainen,.5?MJ;e«, I, 73-4; L[ajb] Fuks, 'The Oldest Literary Works in Yiddish in a Manuscript of the Cambridge University Library', JJS 4 (1953), 176-81; Hans Peter Althaus, Die Cambridger Lowenfabel von 1382: Untersuchung und Edition eines defektiven Textes (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971), 8-19 [facsimile, crit. edn.]. Research: ;49-48 ,36-33 ,D^is ,praaw ;154-149 ,]Xrf>w \ Baumgarten, 167-72; Dov Sadan, 'The Midrashic Background of "The Paradise": Its Implications for the Evaluation of the Cambridge Yiddish Codex (1382)', FOYII, 153-62; Haim Schwarzbaum, The Mishle Shu'alim (Fox Fables) of Rabbi Berechiah

30

1382

ha-Nakdan: A Study of Comparative Folklore and Fable Lore (Kiron: Institute for Jewish and Arab Folklore Research, 1979), esp. 1-4; Erika Timm, 'Die "Fabel vom alien Lowen" in jiddistischer und komparatistischer Sicht', ZDP 100 (Sonderheft Jiddisch, 1981), 109-70; Erika Timm, 'Zur jiddischen Fabelliteratur des 16. Jahrhunderts', Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Div. C (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1982), 159-64.

5

10

15

20

Katz ( ) Althaus The ink is faded almost to illegibility, even Fuks under ultraviolet light. Both Fuks's and Althaus's readings are nonetheless clearly wrong, although Althaus is correct in his reading a *7 (extending far above the line into the upper margin); but it seems rather the second than the first letter of the word, for a vertical appears before the "?. with the faintest hint of a stroke preceding that vertical, just as the remains a speculative readfaintest hint of a U-like curved form appears after the ing, however. 2 Katz ( ) Hakkarainen vv/lkr Althaus ] Fuks 1953 23 24 Althaus 1

1382

31

25

30

35

40

45

50

55

60

32 42 49 54 56

Althaus Althaus ] Fuks/Katz C entire line repeated and stricken by scribe. Fuks/Katz ]Katz

Fuks/Katz

32

Gems on the High Priest's Breastplate 1382

65

70

8 Glosses of Gems on the High Priest's Breastplate (anon. 1382) [complete]

In Exodus 28: 15-21 and 39: 8-14 the twelve gems attached to the breastplate of the High Priest are listed, and their symbolic significance in relation to the twelve tribes of Israel is set forth. Beneath a listing of the weekly readings from the Torah in the codex of 1382 from the Fostat Genizah, a bilingual (Hebrew/ Yiddish) list of the gems is recorded. On the codex, see the headnote to the Cairo Genizah Codex (above, p. 8). Source: Cambridge, University Library, T.-S. 10K.22, fol. 20v; Birnbaum, Hebrew Scripts, 306-7. Edition', Fuks, Oldest Documents, I and II, 80 [facsimile]; Katz, 'Six GermanoJudaic Poems', 119 [crit. edn.]; Hakkarainen, Studien, I, 75. Research: ;36-33 ,0)773 ,pnvaw ;122-112 ,]xri7W \ Baumgarten, 167-72; David Simon Blondheim, Les Parlers judeo-romans et la Vetus Latina (Paris:

70 74

Fuks 1953 | Fuks 1953 Althaus

Althaus

Fuks 1957

Katz

1382

33

Champion, 1925), Ixxv; Dov Sadan, 'The Midrashic Background of "The Paradise": Its Implications for the Evaluation of the Cambridge Yiddish Codex (1382)', FOYII, 153-62.

5

9 Duke Horant (anon. 1382) [excerpt]

This narrative poem, preserved only as a fragment, derives from a cycle of heroic narrative surrounding the figures of Kudrun, Hagen, Hilde, and Horant, as it is attested particularly in the Middle High German literary tradition. The Old Yiddish 0]~Jjn ovn is, however, the only extant example of this particular version of the narrative. Despite (or perhaps because of) the lack of a German analogue or source, Germanistic interest in the text has been greater than perhaps in all other early Yiddish texts combined. The plot itself is an example of the motif of bridal quest or 'wiving': the commonly international (literary) process of providing a king or prince with a wife, ultimately for the utilitarian (in feudal society) purpose of producing an heir to the throne; this motif is particularly common in the so-called Spielmann 'minstrel' epics in Middle High German. As a result, this Yiddish poem was often viewed as an example of that genre until the definiand thus of the Yiddish tive refutation of the existence of the Jewish genre by Chone Shmeruk (1979). The character Horant is generally a minor fig-

1

7

Fuks Fuks

34

1382

ure in the tradition beyond the Yiddish poem, and is traditionally known as an almost supernaturally gifted singer. Here he appears as a vassal of King Itene and functions as the king's emissary and agent in the royal bridal quest. The poem is composed in a four-line stanzaic form that resembles the so-called Rabenschlacht-slanza in Middle High German literature (rhymed AABB; see Norman, in GNS, 85-6). In the surviving fragment of the poem there are approximately 260 identifiable stanzas (many of them severely damaged) before, on the manuscript's last pages, the text becomes only sporadically legible and then breaks off altogether. The poem's original length and the plot's ultimate shape can thus no longer be determined. The introduction to the narrative and the voyage of the wiving party to Greece to present the suit is here edited. The research literature on this text is vast. Only a representative selection is listed here; further bibliography in Frakes (1989). On the codex, see the headnote to the Cairo Genizah Codex (above, p. 8). Source: Cambridge, University Library, T.-S. 10K22, fos. 21r-26v; Birnbaum, Hebrew Scripts, 306-7. Edition: Fuks, The Oldest Known Literary Documents, 1 and II, 81-169 [with facsimile]; Katz, 'Six Germano-Judaic Poems', 120-63 [crit. edn.]; Hakkarainen, Studien, I, 77-120; GNS [Roman-alphabet transliteration with Germanizing Roman-alphabet transcription]. Research: ;120-97 ,36-33 Baumgarten, 167-72; Leonard Forster, 'Dukus Horant' (review of Fuks, The Oldest Known Literary Documents), in German Life and Letters, 11 (1958), 276-85; Jean Fourquet, 'Ernest-H. Levy et le Dukus Horant' (review of Fuks, The Oldest Known Literary Documents), in Etudes Germaniques, 14 (1959), 50-6; Max Weinreich, 'Old Yiddish Poetry in Linguistic-Literary Research', Word, 16 (1960), 100-18; Hans Neumann, 'Sprache und Reim in den judendeutschen Gedichten der Cambridger Codex T.S.10.K.22', in Indogermanica, Festschrift Wolfgang Krause (Heidelberg: Winter, 1960), 145-65; Dov Sadan, 'The Midrashic Background of "The Paradise": Its Implications for the Evaluation of the Cambridge Yiddish Codex (1382)', FOY II, 153-62; Manfred Caliebe, Dukus Horant: Studien zu seiner literarischen Tradition (Berlin: Schmidt, 1973); ,(1979) 100 ;271-251 | Jerold C. Frakes, The Politics ; 120-97 of Interpretation: Alterity and Ideology in Old Yiddish Studies (Albany: SUNY, 1989); Gabriele Strauch, Dukus Horant: Wanderer zwischen zwei Welten (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990).

1382

35

Introduction and Voyage:

1

5

2,2 2,4 5,3 7,2

GNS emend to Katz Katz/Fuks Katz

36

1382

10

15

Fourquet considers this reading a locus desperatus; Forster construes NUC'irt as 'sinnigste' and not as a form of 'singen'; GNS suggest aler best singende. for: 'da es sich um Horant handelt, muB singen irgendwie hineinspielen', Katz 10,4 Katz appears to be a scribal error for 15,2

8,3

1382

37

20

18,3

Fuks

38

1382

25

30

27 This stanza is written on the page's top margin; on the left margin is noted, 'here is lacking'], indicating scribal omission and the point of insertion. The stanza is noted by Katz, but deemed 'illegible' in his photographs of the manuscript; GNS transcribe as: 'er hwt <swwlf> .... stirq der : bidrb' der z twkhtr 'i gwn : er b...'.. nimnt sw wwib' gebn [:]' My reading is very tentative.

1382

39

35

35,3

interlinear above.

1382

40

40

45

45,1 46,3

Fuks Katz

1382

41

50

49,1 Neumann suggests adding n at the end of the line, to rhyme with 49,2 Fuks the first at bottom of fol. 25r, as if a catchword (not elsewhere in ms.), 50,1 the second as the first text word on fol. 25v. 52,1 added above line. with the final 1 stricken, and a 1 interlinear above; Katz suggests that 52,4 "the form should probably read

42

1382

55

60

interlinear above. Fuks GNS . Katz posits an (unspecified) omission after '"IDW, based on context; GNS add

55,2 57,1 59,3 after

59,4

preceded by a smeared

1385

43

65

10 Jedidiah b. Hezekiah of Zurich Urfehdebrief (Oath of Peace) (anon. 1385) [complete]

Among the various types of legal documents preserved from the medieval period is the Urfehdebrief or Oath of Peace/Oath of Truce. Under a variety of the first two letters seem the beginning of an incomplete 'the words . . . Katz remarks on which was then repeated after appear to be transposed'.

64,1-2

1385

44

conditions of release from jail or prison, citizens could be required to swear such an oath, which generally included clauses forbidding legal action against the authority that issued the document, seeking legal redress outside the jurisdiction of that authority, or attempting to exact vengeance on anyone involved in the subject's imprisonment. Often the document was simply an oath sworn by a convict upon release from prison that s/he would not seek vengeance on, or bring suit against, either the judge or the accusers in the case for which s/he had been imprisoned. In a few cases in which Jews were subject to such oaths, the r e s u l t i n g d o c u m e n t has been preserved in both Roman-alphabet and corresponding Hebrew-alphabet texts. The originary document seems always to have been the Roman-alphabet (German-language) document, which was the legal document of record. The Hebrew-alphabet documents were obviously prepared for the sake of contemporary Yiddish speakers, were understood by them, and thus they functioned in a Yiddish-language environment (although the extant oaths offer little grapho-phonemic evidence of major adaptation or translation per se). They function essentially in the linguistic environment of the Yiddish literary dialect of the Old Yiddish period and can reasonably be identified as early—and variant—examples of that literary dialect. In the text edited here, dated 5145 (=1385), only the Hebrew-alphabet text has been preserved, but it is clear that a German-language document was its original basis. Here Jedidiah b. Hezekiah of Zurich swears an oath of peace to the mayor, council, and city of Zurich, which was witnessed by Moses b. Paltiel Hayyim, Jacob b. Jacob, Isaac b. Isaac, and Samuel b. Meir, whose signatures, with the standard formula of having witnessed the oath, are added below the text. Source: Zurich, Staatsarchiv des Kantons, Raths- und Gerichtsbiicher der Stadt Zurich, 1385, vol. B VI 192, fol. 287v. Edition and research: Florence Guggenheim-Griinberg, 'Bin deutscher Urfehdebrief in hebraischer Schrift aus Zurich vom Jahre 1385', ZMF 22 (1954), 207-14; Florence Guggenheim-Griinberg, 'Urfehdebrief eines Ziircher Juden aus dem Jahre 1385', in Schweizerischer Israelitischer Gemeindebund, 1904-1954 Festschrift zum 50 Jahrigen [sic] Bestehen (Zurich: Federation suisse de communautes Israelites, n.d. [1954]), 264 and facing plate [facsimile]; Andreas Blauert, Das Urfehdewesen im deutschen Sudwesten im Spatmittelalter und in der fruhen Neuzeit (Tubingen: Bibliotheca Academica, 2000).

i

the MS page is torn, G-G emends to bvr(ij).

1392

45

11

Meir b. Baruch Halevi of Erfurt, Urfehdebrief(Oath of Peace) (anon. 1392) [complete]

Meir b. Baruch Halevi, rabbi in Frankfurt, was jailed for unknown reasons and then released at the behest of King Wenzel. At his release, most likely on 20 September 1392 (on the problems with the dating, cf. Guggenheim-Grunberg), he was compelled to swear an oath of peace, which has been preserved in both Roman- and Hebrew-alphabet texts. The former, composed in the standard chancery style of the time, is almost certainly more distant from the contemporary spoken (German) language than was the Yiddish text from Jewish speech of the time, which was probably written from dictation. The German text also includes a passage absent from the Yiddish text. The German document includes the 2 3 4

at line end, G-G emends to gvhvlf(vn). G-G 'gvlvbv.

5 6 7

(in her transliteration system precedes a line end.

46

1392

municipal seal of Frankfurt and the signatures of Rabbi Meir and his witnesses, all of which are absent from the Yiddish document. On the reverse of the German document is the note: 'der Judenmeister vz gefengnusz'. In general on Urfehdebriefe, see EYT 10. Source: Frankfurt am Main, Institut fur Stadtgeschichte, Rachtungen 287 (1392, Marz 19) [German document] and Rachtungen 288 [(1392, Marz 19)] [Yiddish document]. 1 Edition: Aron Freimann, 'Der Judenmeister Meiher von Erfurt wird vom Frkftr. Rat auf Verwendung des Konigs Wenzel aus dem Gefangnis entlassen und schwort Urfehde, in die auch die Frkftr. Juden inbegriffen sind. 1392. 19 Marz (23. Adar II 5152)', ZHB 11 (1907), 107-12 [edn. of both documents]; Isidor Kracauer, Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der Juden in Frankfurt am Main von 1150—1400, vol. 1: Urkunden, Rechenbucher, Bedebiicher (Frankfurt am Main: J. Kauffinann, 1914), nos. 408-9, 187-91 [edn. of both documents]; Florence Guggenhcim-Grtinberg, 'Zur Umschrift deutscher Mundarten des 14./15. Jahrhunderts mit hebraischer Schrift', ZMF24 (1956), 229-46 [edn. of Yiddish text in quasi-diplomatic transliteration; facsimile of both documents]. Research: Andreas Blauert, Das Urfehdewesen im deutschen Siidwesten im Spatmittelalter und in der frithen Neuzeit (Tubingen: Bibliotheca Academica, 2000).

German document: Ich Meiher von Erfort Jiide irkennen mich vffinlichen mit disem brieffe vur mich alle myn hen-en und erben also als mich die ersamen vursichtigen und wisen lude die Burgermeister und Rad zu Franckenfurd angefertiget und gefangen hattin von bruche wegin als ich widder sie vnd die iren getan han darumb der allerdurchluchtigeste Furste und herre • her Wentzlaw romischer kiinig zu allin ziten merer des Richs vnde Kunig zu Beheim • myn gnediger liebir herre • den egenanten Burgermeistern vnd Rade zii Franckenfurd geschr vnd begert hat mich 1

The signature of the two documents has commonly been identified in the research literature as Frankfurt am Main, Stadtarchiv E. Ugb. 43, which is not, however, the signature of a single document or group of documents, but rather the designation of an entire cataloguing category (Bestand) that includes more than two-dozen distinct signatures (e.g. E.Ugb.43.A or E.Ugb.43.Z.4) and several hundred, if not thousand, documents. According to Dr Bernhard Reichel, head of the department Altes Archiv (Institut fur Stadtgeschichte), the Urfehdebrief of Rabbi Meir of Erfurt, since it is in fact a legal document, was already moved in the nineteenth century to the cataloguing category Rachtungen. All use of the E.Ugb.43 signature since that time has thus been not just incomplete but simply inaccurate. Guggenheim-Griinberg correctly identifies the documents' location as 'Rachtungen 1392' (without noting the signature). The former Stadtarchiv in Frankfurt am Main is now called Institut fur Stadtgeschichte.

1392

47

solicher anfertigunge und gefengnisse ledig zu sagin • des ban die egenanten erbern wisen die Burgermeister und Rad zu Franckenfurd mir gnade getan vnd mich auch solichs gefengnisse und bedrengnisse ledig gelassin vnd gesagit • des ich myns obgenanten gnedigen herren des Romischen Kunigs • gnaden vnd den obgenanten Burgermeistern vnd dem Rade zii Franckenfurd mit flisze dancken und auch fur baszmer allwege zu danken ban • vnd han ein alt orphee getan vnd auch luterlich und gentzlich virczegin vmb alle vorgeshriben sache vnd waz sich von mynen wegin virlaiiffen hette • daz han ich gentzlich abgetan vnd dar vff virczegin • und darumb so han ich mich den obgenannten Burgermeistern Scheffin vnd Rade zu Franckenfurd virbunden und virbunden mich in in1 crafft disz brieffis widder sie die iren ire Jiiden die iczunt ire burger sin oder bij in wonen oder furbasz ire burger wurden oder bij in wonende wirden • noch ir gud noch alle • die in zu verentworten sten • iczund odir hernach nit zu time ich odir nymand von mynen wegin mit worten bann brieffin odir wercken noch mit keinen andirn sachin wie die gesin mochten • odir wie man die irdengken mochte ane alle bose funde • iz were dan mit willin vnd wissin des mererteils der Redde zu Franckenfurd vorg- Wo daz von mir odir von ymand anders vbirfarn wtirde mit worten oder mit wercken mit schrifften oder mit andern sachin • wie die gesin mochten, so sulde ich myme gnedigen herren dem Romischen Kunige dem riche und den obgenanten Burgermeistern, Scheffen vnd Rade zu Franckenfurd mit zwelffhundert gulden zu pene virfallin sin vnd in die auch unverczogenlich reichen vnde geben • als dicke des not geschee ane alle widderrede • doch werz daz dheiner er were furste herre ritter odir knecht myn erbin odir ymand anders, iz were Cristen odir Jiide den obgenanten Burgermeistern scheffin Rade iren burgern, denn iren oder die in zu virentworten sten iz weren die juden die iczunt ire burger sin odir bij in wonen odir noch ire burger wurden odir bij in wonende wurden • zusprechen odir leidegetun • daz doch ane mynen willin und wissin were • so sulde ich bestellen als vere ich mochte • daz daz abegetan wiirde ane alien virczog- wo des nit geschee • so sulde ich mich des intslahin und entschuldigen als mich der Rad vorg- heisset odir vffsetzet mit dem eide als hernach geschriben steet • wo ich des auch nit tede • so sulde ich dem Riche und in mit der obgenanten pene virfallin sin vnd in die geben ane hindernisse • als dicke des not gescheech2 • vnd wann odir zu wilcher zijd ich odir myn erbin dem Riche vnd in die virfallin pene als vorgeschr- stet nit gebin und reichten • wilch zijd sie mich dan ermanten mit brieffen odir boten so sulde ich zustunt gein Franckenfurt inkomen vnd dann vz nit komen ich odir myn erbin hettin dann die obgenante pene beczalt als dicke des not geschee • Auch globin ich bij der hernachgeschriben globede und eide nummer darnach zu steen mit worten odir mit wercken noch mit keinen andern sachin mich zu behelffin mit keynerley

1

in in ] Freimann ;'«; Kracauer />; with note, 2 gescheech ] Freimann gescheeth.

1392

48

friheid gnade odir herschaffi mich zu intledigen von dieser globede und eide • Alle diese vorgeschr- stucke, punkte und artickele semptlich vnd ir iglichen besundern han ich Meiher vorg- mit guden, frihen, vnbetwungen willin globet vnd myn hant ingelacht in hern Moises buch uff die zehin gebode vnd als hohe als ein jude geswern mag gesworn bij dem eide da myde her Moyses beswur die Judischeid Israhel • vnd bij dem Bann den Joseus det der Judischeid die selbin vorgeschr- stucke, puncte vnd artickele semptlich vnd besundern stede feste und vnuerbrochlich zil halden nach willin synne und meynunge der Burgermeister, scheffin vnd des Rades zu Franckenfurd vorg- vnd nit nach myme willin synne und meynunge • vnd auch darin nicht zu finden dan stede vnd feste zu halden 3 als vorgeschr- steet • Zu vrkunde vnd wahrheid 4 allir diser vorgeschr- dinge semptlich und besundern daz ich Meiher vorg- mich des irkennen stede und feste zu halden vnd ich daz globit vnd gesworn han als vorgeschr- steet • so han ich gebedin die Burgermeister Scheffin vnd Radt zcu Franckenfurd vorg- daz sie ir stede ingesz durch myner flisigen 3 bede willin an diesen brieff han gehangen • Vnd wir die Burgermeister Scheffin und Rad zu Franckenfurd irkennen uns daz wir unser stede ingesz durch meister meihers von Erfurt vorg- bede willin an diesen brieff han gehangen 6 • Vnd han ich meiher vorg- darzu zu mererme gecziignisse mich hervnder mit myner selbis hant geschr- vnd gezeichent vnd besiegilt als juden phlegin zu tun • Vnd han darzu zu mererme gecziignisse gebeden die erbern juden Suszkind von Wynheim Ber Simons son von Selginstad Joseph von Lechnicz • Selgman von Lenich Hircz von Heidelberg • Joseph von Selginstad • Abraham Diifel von Mentze • und Ansel von BabinhuB, daz sich auch ir iglicher mit siner selbis hant her vnder hat geschr- und gezeichnet • wand sie bij dieser vorgeschr- sache und irkenntnisse gewest sin daz ich daz globet und gesworn7 han als vorgeschr- steet • und ich Suszkind ven Wynheim Ber Symons son von Selginstad Joseph von Lechnicz Selgman von Lenich Hircz von Heidelberg Joseph von Selginstad Abraham Diifel von mencze und Ansel von Babinhufi irkennen vns daz wir alle semptlich und besundern bij gewest sin daz sich meister meiher vorg- der obgenanten sache semptlich und besundern irkant hat vnd daz globet vnd gesworen stede vnd feste zu haldin vnd han des durch des obgenanten meister meihers bede willin zu geczugnisse uns hervnder geczeichint und geschr- vnser iglicher mit seiner selbis hant als juden plegin zu tun • Dit8 is gescheen vnd geschr-, als man zalte von angange der wernt funffdusent vnd hundert iar vnd in dem zwey und funffczigesten iar, in 9 dem

3 4 5 6 7 8 9

halden ] Kracauer halden, und ich daz globit und gesworn han. wahrheid ] Freimann wahrhei. flisigen ] Frehmnnjliziges Kracauerflizigen. Vnd wir die Burgermeister . . . han gehangen ] Freiman omits. gesworn ] Freimann geswon. Dit ] Freimann omits. in ] Freimann / Kraucauer iu.

1392

zwelfften mande uff dem dryvndzwenczigsten tag uff den donrstag •

Yiddish document:

10

11 I2 13 14

15

omitted by Kracauer Kracauer Kracauer G-G vvegn. G-G z/gn.

49

1392

50

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

G-G byrgn 'nt. F second 1 interlinear above; Freimann / Kracauer byrst Kracauer Freimann G-G byrgnnt. Kracauer G-G 'jn. Freimann / Kracauer G-G vrnknbyrt. Freimann / Kracauer Freimann / Kracauer G-G vnd.

1392

28 29 30

Freimann / Kracauer Freimann / Kracauer F seems to have final

51

corrected to ] or vice versa; Freimann

gvveit. 31

with first word stricken.

G-G

12 'Document Concerning all Powers of Bloodletting and Blood Vessels, According to the Writings of Physicians' (anon. 1396-1397) [fragment, complete]

This remarkable single-page document (see frontispiece of this volume) functioned almost certainly as a medical practioner's vademecum and was folded so as to be convenient to carry along on the road. Its purpose is to describe the function and health benefits of bleeding patients at various sites of the body, to identify days of the calendar when bleeding is not beneficial or permissible, and to specify zodiacal connections to body parts and thus potentially beneficial and harmful bleeding sites. The document's author, copyist, and professional user(s) are unknown. The text, which is almost certainly based on a German-language source text (of a type still extant from the general period), is found on a single folio bearing the Hebrew title noted above. Due to the unusual and significant format of the document and to the current lack of a definitive edition of the text, more codicological detail has been supplied here in both headnote and textual notes than is otherwise the case in the anthology. The large-format parchment folio was at some point cut into pieces in order to be used as binding material for another book (or books). At present there are four extant fragments, all approximately the same height (29.5-30.5 cm), and fitting together approximately as two folio-sized pages (each 20-2 cm in width) that are joined in the middle by two narrow strips (approximately 2.5 cm in width). As the physical evidence of the text indicates, the original document was originally substantially larger. The separation into pieces has no relation to the placement or content of text on the page: when the fragments (hereinafter designated nos. 1, 2/3 (comprising the narrow middle strips, now joined into a single strip by adhesive), and 4, numbered from right-to-left) are laid out in the arrangement of the original document, the top and right margins cut through text fields, just as do the cuts that separate the extant fragments, while the bottom and left margins of the text seem to be the borders of the original document (the bottom margin has a triple border: yellow, black, red). Lines extending upward and diagonally to the upper edge of the extant fragments from headwords of various paragraphs with anatomical and zodiacal referents in fragments 1 and 4 toward a supposed central figure above the currently extant

1397-1396

53

configuration suggest that there may well have been a human figure drawn on one portion of the lost section of the text, to specific body parts of which these lines may have led (as is the case with similar extant Hebrew- and Germanlanguage documents; cf. Gold). The text is written on one side of the parchment only. There are eleven irregularly sized and shaped text fields on the extant fragments (cf. the diagram, below, of the text fields as numbered here, numbered 1-11, from right to left and top to bottom).1 The ink is generally black, but text fields 6 and 7 are written completely in red, and there are individual words in other text fields that are written and/or overlined in red; and text field 9 is organized into four columns, of which the first and last columns are written in red ink. The text fields are separated by coloured borders, consisting sometimes of lines, broader bands, or cross-hatched bands in more than one colour, with red, yellow, or black ink, or some combination thereof. Cuno suggests (p. 5) that the borders' colour and graphic composition are related to the content of the text fields, but does not identify that relationship. The right margin bisects the text of fields 1, 8, and 10. Fragments 1 and 4 have a great number of wormholes. In the preserved fragments there are three vertical folds and one horizontal fold. The text has undergone heavy use, as indicated by the wearing away of the ink and even the parchment along the folds, and especially at the points where the folds cross, where there are holes with text loss. In a number of places ultraviolet light makes possible the reading of otherwise poorly visible or invisible black ink (it has no effect on the legibility of text in red ink). The fold closest to the right margin is 4.5 cm from the edge at the top and 3 cm from the edge at the bottom. There is one horizontal fold, which is 17 cm from the bottom edge. The distance between the first fold from the right to the next fold is 14 cm, and to the next fold (on fragment 4) is also 14 cm; from there to the left edge (also probably document edge) is 12 cm. If the fold closest to the right margin were the width of the others, then (if this is the last fold of the document) there could be approximately 10 cm of text missing beyond the right margin. Based on the vertical and horizontal irregularities in text-field size, it is impossible to say if the same width of text is missing from each of the three texts that abut the right margin, for instance. But from text field 8 at least, it seems that perhaps not much is lost, since the final line which begins with the characteristic word ipll?o begins with the symbol that in two other instances (in text field 3) indicates the beginning of a line/paragraph. Cuno surmises that the extant fragments comprise only approximately the bottom half of the original document (p. 7). Words in red are here indicated by italics; square script is bold; all overlining in the manuscript is in red, whether of red or black text. On-the-line dots (periods) here are editorial and indicate the approximate numbers of letters lost due to wormholes,

' Birnbaum's numbering of the fields thus differs slightly from my own; the correspondences of those that differ are: mine/Birnbaum: 5/9, 7/5, 8/7, 9/10, 10/8.

54

1397-1396

holes due to folding, worn ink, etc.; mid-line dots are punctuation from the manuscript. Since it is unclear what the precise function of the sign \ is in this text, every instance of its use in the manuscript is here preserved. Perhaps it was a line-end filler in the source text from which this document was copied, but here it is not so clear, since it occurs in lines already as long as others where there is no such character, so the filler makes the 'filled' line longer than the others (cf., however, Cuno's assumption that it functions as a line filler here; p. 5). Because of the peculiar nature of the text format, manuscript lines are here preserved as in the original text. The non-alphabetical symbols used in the text (line fillers, paragraph beginnings, line and paragraph endings, etc.) are here presented in a form as similar as possible to that of the manuscript, but because of the complex composite nature of the text format, any detailed knowledge of those figures must obviously be gained from the document itself. The document, which dates from the earliest period of extant documents in Yiddish, has been edited in whole or part by two previous scholars, and an exhaustive edition has been announced by a third. Yet only two of the document's four now-extant fragments were known to the first two editors; the first editor (Dunner) was not equal to the task of dealing with an Old Yiddish text, while the second (Birnbaum) presented the text only in Roman-alphabet transliteration and transcription; 2 and the promised detailed edition (by Cuno) of all the now-extant fragments has not yet appeared. Birnbaum's attempts to reconstruct the text of the fragments that have been recovered since his edition was published are generally omitted here (although his reconstructions are on occasion surprisingly close to the mark), while his suggestions for reconstructions of text lost at the right margin are retained in the notes. Source: Cologne, Historisches Archiv der Stadt Koln, W* 332, IV. Edition: Lasar Dunner, 'Die hebraischen Handschrift-Fragmente im Archiv der Stadt Coin', ZHB 8 (1904), 84-90 and 113-17, esp. pp. 84 and 113-14; Solomon Birnbaum, 'Umschrift des altesten datierten jiddischen Schriftstiicks', Teuthonista [Zeitschrift fur deutsche Dialektforschung und Sprachgeschichte], 8 (1932), 197-207; Birnbaum, 'Specimens', 152. Research: ;211-208 .ix&Vntf | Baumgarten, 421^3; Isak Miinz, Die judischen Arzte im Mittelalter: Ein Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters (Frankfurt am Main: Kauffmann, 1922); Solomon Birnbaum, 'Das alteste datierte Schriftstuck in jiddischer Sprache', BGDSL 56 (1932), 11-22; ;235-223 ,(1932) 4 2

Leonard Singer Gold, ed., A Sign and a

Since Birnbaum's transliteration and transcription systems make use of a variety of special characters and fonts, they are cited here simply as in his system (i.e. without editorial marking of them as quotations via quotation-marks or italics); if both forms are cited, they are in the sequence: transliteration/transcription.

1397-1396

55

Witness—2,000 Years of Hebrew Books and Illuminated Manuscripts (New York: New York Public Library/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 34 and 202, No. 71; Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Ron Barkai, Les Infortunes de Dinah, le livre de la generation, la gynecologie juive au moyen age, trans. J. Barnavi and M. Garel (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1991); Hendrik Budde and Eva-Maria Rimme: 'Raum 6. Aschkenas—Mittelalter in rheinischen Stadten', in Judische Lebenswelten, Katalog, ed. Andreas Nachama and Gereon Sievernich (Berlin: Berliner Festspiele/Jtidischer Verlag/Suhrkamp, 1991), 123 [facsimile of fragment 3]; Klaus Cuno, 'Aspekte der Kolner AderlaB-handschrift von 1396/97 im Licht neuer Erkenntnisse', Jiddistik Mitteilungen, 9 (1993), 1-17; Joseph Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

56

1397-1396

Field 1:

5

10

15

20

Field 2:

25

1 3 6 13 21 27

perhaps as Birnbaum 'vn' . C due to a hole in the manuscript, the reading is difficult, but Birnbaum's understanding as brlus is almost certainly correct, the first dot and first symbol 1 are black, the second red. Birnbaum suggests <s>6. Birnbaum suggests <sl>Iku and translates the entire phrase: 'Ende des Blutaussehens'. C from this word there is a red line extending diagonally upward to the left to the upper edge of the fragment.

1397-1396

57

30

35

Field 3:

40

45

50

Field 4: 55

37-53 ] Text field 3 crosses all four fragments; fragments 2-4 have portions of two lines at the top, the beginnings of which have been lost in the cutting of fragment 1. 41 ]"N ] C from this word there is a red line extending diagonally up to the left to the edge of the fragment. The symbol preceding the paragraph's first word here (and in 1. 45) is inscribed on the band dividing text field 2 from this text field; it seems likely to be a symbol marking the paragraph; it appears also in text field 8, marking the Hebrew conclusion of the text field. ^ from this word there extends diagonally up to the left a red line to the upper edge 45 which is stricken. C preceded by of the fragment. C a red line extends diagonally upward to the right to the upper edge of the frag55 ment.

58

1397-1396

60

65

70

75

80

58 tTTUNID ] Binibaum reads tr'ghjjt/trogheit. 61 N'T ] C a red line extends diagonally upward to the right to the upper edge of the fragment. 65 T"N ] C a red line extends diagonally upward to the right to the upper edge of the fragment; the overlining is double, thin black above thicker red. Birnbaum reads 'vn' vvr ds 'vn'. . . ch/? der Ijndn, and notes that the words between ~IV7 . . . '31N are stricken; that is done with black ink, and the words are additionally either underlined or stricken with red as well; line initial 1D111? WIN is probably the error of the copyist whose eye strayed to the line beginning three lines later. 71 N'T ] C a red line meanders diagonally upward to the right to the upper edge of the fragment. ] Birnbaum reads par-nj-t. C a red line extends diagonally upward to the right to the upper edge of the fragment.

1397-1396

59

FieldS:

85

90

95

100

Field 6:

105

Field 7:

Field 8:

82 89 95 96 99 108

Birnbaum reads mvsk Birnbaum reads zjch'. Birnbaum reads nsn. interlinear above. Birnbaum reads zwjrnt. C the a is written at a fold in the parchment, which has worn into a hole; the left upper stroke of the letter is visible.

60

1397-1396

110

115

Field 9:

120

125

110 112 113 114

115 117 118

119

the overlining is here black. . .] Birnbaum reads zjhnd'/<der> zehende. Birnbaum reads 'ch/6ch. Birnbaum Birnbaum suggests: <-tage . der vunfzehende [vlinfzehende]>.. reads g-mijr-s ~lin ] Birnbaum suggests der <sibenzehende ist>. Birn]. . . ] Birnbaum reads «/n pVy ] Birnbaum zlgen Cuno baum reads ist . Birnbaum reads lr/ler. .] Birnbaum reads st'/<der dri-un'-zwenzig>ste BM1Q ] C perhaps W1Q1Q-- neither ot the final letters is in its customary form. Each word in this line is marked with two double slash marks (// //) above; the line following is a series of such double slash marks, some red, some black.

'Charm Against Labour Pains', 14th c.

61

130

Field 10:

Field 11: 135

13 'Charm Against Labour Pains' (anon. 14th century) [complete]

This Yiddish text is found in the lower margin of an early fourteenth-century parchment manuscript of the Hebrew nwoxn IDO, in which, among other contents, there is also a group of sympathetic charms, many of them, as the one here,

C preceded by a multiply stricken and Birnbaum reads k«/<mer>ken indecipherable letter. Birnbaum reads 'n'/on£ C followed closely by a 133 mid-point dot, too small to be a ^ and syntactically very unlikely to be punctuation; probably a stray dot of ink. 134 C next to last letter is on the cut; unclear. 132

62

'Charm Against Labour Pains', 14th c.

having to do with alleviating the pains of childbirth. The Yiddish charm is entered by a hand other than, and probably somewhat later than, that of the main text (fol. 88v). The text was then later painted over with a wash (now orange) which has nonetheless not made it illegible (a further Yiddish text in the left margin of the following page (fol. 89r) was more effectively painted over and rendered in large part illegible under incandescent light). The text demonstrates a clear and close relationship between Jewish and surrounding Christian society in this realm of popular culture, for, as the occasional Latin of the charm demonstrates, it clearly derives in part at least from the magical practice of Christians. The text is generally governed by rhyme, but not such that it need be considered (or set as) verse. Source: London, London School of Jewish Studies [formerly Jews' College], Montefiore MS 134 [olim Halberstam 115]' [msmxn IDO], fol. 88v; Hartwig Hirschfeld, Descriptive Catalgogue of the Hebrew Mss. of the Montefiore Library (London: Macmillan, 1904; rpt. Westmead: Gregg, 1969), no. 134, pp. 37-8. Edition: John A. Howard, 'Der "Barmuttersegen" wiederentdeckt', ZDA 108 (1979), 252-8. Research: ;47-42 ,yt>3>wyi ,pns | Baumgarten, 421-43; Moritz Gudemann, 'Vermischungen von Jiidischem und Heidnischem aus neuer und alter Zeit', MGWJ24 (1875), 269-73; Alois Milller, 'Bin mit hebraischen Buchstaben niedergeschriebener deutscher Segen gegen die Barmutter', ZDA 19 (1876), 473-8; Moses Caster, 'The Sepher assufoth (Codex Montefiore No. 115)', Judith Montefiore College, Ramsgate, Report for the Year 5653-1893 (London 1893), 31-74; John Howard, 'Der "Barmuttersegen"— Bin mittelhochdeutscher Spruch', Colloquia Germanica, 12 (1978), 211-32; Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; rpt. 2000).

1 Before becoming part of the Montefiore collection this manuscript belonged to the Halberstam collection, where its signature was Halberstam, no. 115. When that collection became part of the library of Montefiore College, it was recatalogued in 1904 by Hartwig Hirschfeld as MS 134. At the end of his entry, Hirschfeld also notes for the sake of clarity the former Halberstam signature, as he does for all manuscripts from that collection, here: 'H. no. 115.' As Esra Kahn, Head Librarian at the London School of Jewish Studies, reports: the codex has never been Montefiore 115 (which is the signature of a different codex altogether).Thus, while Moses Caster's designation of the codex as 'Montefiore 115' would normally carry great weight, it is nonetheless ultimately inaccurate (Howard's vehement insistence on that designation is no less so; cf. 1979, p. 253).

'Charm Against Labour Pains', 14th c.

63

2 WU'jlJ ] = 12/D1J both here and in the final line the conventional taboo on using the name of and designations for God results in a distortion the word. 3 Sl^n ] Gudemann NPH. 4 NPO ] Miiller suggests the first letter is marked for correction in the text and suggests JUT No such indication is visible in the manuscript; the mark above the D is a normal raphe. 5 KIND N"1?1! ] Gudemann interprets the first word as wilwa/te/wile 'fate' and the second as equivalent to Old High German tara 'damnum laesio'. It seems more likely a representation of a Latin expression filia/vilia terra (or terrae, cf. Miiller), particularly since the context is that of something beneath the speaker's feet. 6 • INI ] Gudemann 'ISI. 1 Iff1! 'in'TOtOJ ] Gudcmann's suggestion (attributed to Haupt) of the sense of the phrase ('penis') lacks plausibility. 8 Q^lt ] omitted by Howard. 9 TU'S TO ] Gudemann lira TQ and suggests 'mereminne = Meerweib' and cites the continuation of the marginalia on 89v of the manuscript: n 012/12 STUN '1 Oil H t?N~P X?1?? "T ^}yx ]rs N
14 'Whither Shall I Go?' (14th century) [complete]

This brief lyric is the oldest extant love song known in Yiddish. It is written on fol. Ir of a fourteenth-century (primarily parchment) manuscript of Rashi's commentaries on the Prophets and Hagiography (which begin on fol. Iv of the manuscript) that was originally in the collection of Pope Leo X's secretary, Pietro Bembo (born 1470), and is now in the Ambrosian Library in Milan. On fol. I r there is some indiscriminate scribbling, a number of pen trials, a few brief Hebrew notes, and this Yiddish poem. Bernheimer designates the poem: 'nota germanica lingua sed hebraicis litteris' ('a note in the German language but [written] in Hebrew letters'). The poem is written in an Ashkenazic cursive hand distinct from the formal book hand of the main text. The hand of the poem is characteristic of the earliest period in Old Yiddish texts and may well be a near contemporary of the main text. It seems that among the scholars who have printed a text of the poem only Berliner, Borochov, and Bernheimer actually saw the manuscript; Borochov's vowel pointings are due to his modern editorial intervention and are thus not taken into account here; Basin based his text on Borochov's edition; Zinberg based his text on Basin; Erik does not identify his source. Manuscript line ends are here editorially marked with /. While the ink is faint and the folio's exterior exposure (before binding) has led to noticeable wear and tear, the text is readily legible under natural and incandescent light, with the exception of the fourth word in line 5; ultraviolet light does much to clarify the problems with that word, as well. Source: Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, C. 282 inf., fol. Ir; Carolus Bernheimer, Fontes Ambrosiani in lucem editi cura et studio Bybliothecae Ambrosianae, V: Codices Hebraici Bybliothecae Ambrosianae (Milan: Biblioteca Ambrosiana, 1933), 23-4, no. 23 [Hebrew-alphabet text, with Germanized, Roman-alphabet transcription], Abraham Edition and research'. ;173 Berliner, Bin Gang durch die Bibliotheken Italiens, Vortrag (Berlin: Julius Benzian, 1877), 23 and 33 [rpt. in Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt am Main: J. Kaufmann, 1913), 3-29]; '

1435

65

5

15 Jekuthiel [Kusyel] Judah b. Benusch Urfehdebrief (Oath of Peace) (anon. 1435) [complete]

The document was composed on Monday, 5 Nisan 5195 (=4 April 1435). When it was rediscovered in the Wrodaw city hall in 1882, the left margin of the document had already been damaged by mice. The text's first editor, Brann, offered a speculative reconstructed reading of the damaged portions of the text on the basis of the corresponding German/Latin document 'Obligatio kussiel Judei';

1 2 3 5

^NT ] M "7N is a ligature. ]Tp ] Berliner fTp M there is room for the second \ but no visible ink on the page. TN ] Bernheimer TH . wnp ] M un ligature "I'TID ] Bernheimer "^"H Borochov ~](?)"ID translates as "ID; the under "I is faint and perhaps connected with the ascender of the "? in OU7T1? in the next line; the word's first letter is problematic, but under ultraviolet light it seems much more likely D than n; the horizontal mark above the letter then could be understood as a conventional raphe; under ultraviolet light it seems remotely possible that the third letter might be 1 rather than \ 6 DDIZ? ] Berliner O'DU?, Erik CP9W, Zinberg D"SB, Bernheimer DTIO; Borochov, Erik, and Zinberg gloss as DTDW; Berliner translates as spahl. 1 "in ] Erik omits, Borochov "1577 17157 ] M is in darker ink, perhaps later than original text.

143:

66

Guggenheim-Grunberg occasionally modified Brann's reconstructions. Despite the often questionable results of such attempts at reconstruction, I have retained them enclosed in conjectural brackets <> in the edition here, which is based on the published facsimile. In general on Vrfehdebriefe, see EYT 10. Source: (1) Wroclaw, Archivum Panstwowe, Dok. V.I28 (destroyed in World War II) [Yiddish document]; (2) Lib. excessuum et Signaturarum de anno 1435, 27 [German/Latin document], Edition: Marcus Brann, Geschichte der Juden in Schlesien. III. Von 1400-1437, Jahres-Bcricht des jiidisch-theologischen Seminars FrankePscher Stiftung (Breslau: Th. Schatzky, 1901), 81-104 and xxxv-lxx [Yiddish and German/Latin texts, Ixviii-lxix]; EJ (Berlin), IX, coll. 117-18 [facsimile of the Yiddish text]; Florence Guggenheim-Grunberg, 'Zur Umschrift deutscher Mundarten des 14./15. Jahrhunderts', ZMF 24 (1956), 229-46 [here, pp. 244-6: edn. of Yiddish text in quasi-diplomatic transliteration]. Research: Andreas Blauert, Das Urfehdewesen im deutschen Sudwesten im Spatmittelalter und in der friihen Neuzeit (Tubingen: Bibliotheca Academica, 2000).

Obligatio kussiel Judei. An der Mitwoche vor dem Sontage Judica me etc. 1st vor vns komen kussiel Jude vnd hot globit williglichin vnd umbetwungin bey seyme hochsten Judisschen eyde vnd Rechte vnd gesworen mil vffgeracktin fingern ken der Sonnen von der vorclagungen wegen die her obir die Stat vnd vns geton hot / die Stat vnd vns alien des wider zu verantworten vnd vns entschuldigen vor den konige von Polan seine heren vnd Reten vnd Steten vnd Reten wo das gescheen ist vnd sust vor aller mannegleich geistlich vnd wertlich wo her unsir zu arge gedocht hot, vnd furbas mee keyne clage von solcher sachin wegen obir vns nicht zutuen heimlich noch offenbar durch sich seine frund noch sust durch nymandes andirs Sunder vns liebis vnd gutes zudancken, vnd hot sich dorobir vorwillet, ap her des nicht entete vnd breche, vnd des mit redlicher kuntschafft obirkomen wurde, des her sich nicht verantwerten kunde noch mochte das her leibes vnd gutes dorumb sal verfallen sein. lllius signature dedit Idem Judeus literam recognicionis hebrayce scriptum sub sigillo suo appendente per modum Reuerse. 11 '7 iV?x XT-n an 1ira Nrpa 'TN x:m ITP unra TIID^X X7V ^xvnp -px ^7 DDX-IP -px xm ?! ':nx xnxn torn1?: -px 2^7 in;1? ~mx pin

1

2

] Brann omits. l ] Brann n.

1435

i 4

67

; ] G-G v/?'.

j Brann ] Brann ran. 6 ] Brann KPB]; G-G [ijjn'. 7 Brann pNT; G-G z 'chn 8 ] B ^ interlinear above; Brann "["111; G-G dvrjch. 9 ] Brann inn. 10 Brann WITIN UHtfPN] unj|>TN]; G-G [njjmnds ['ndrs. In the first lacuna, a portion of 0 is visible, with space for two, not four lost letters; G-G's reconstruction of the text lost at the margin is also more likely both for the available space and the idiom. II Brann }^. 12 Brann ID'Viyi. 13 Brann NTl[)!TI; G-G vvfrd'. 14 Brann [Mi'ia. IS Brann 1W. 16 ] G-G 'jn. 17 11H ] Brann omits. 5

16 Crossbow Inscription (anon. 1460) [complete]

This ornate presentation crossbow is a fine example of late medieval weaponry craftsmanship, with Italian influence in the incised patterns on the stock. Its original owner was Ulrich V. 'der Vielgeliebte' ('the Much Beloved'), Count of Wurttemberg (1413-80), and the dual escutcheons of the houses of Wurttemberg and Savoy on either side of the stock must be understood in the context of the Count's marriage to his third wife, Princess Marguerite of Savoy (1420— 1479), daughter of Amadeus VIII (first Duke of Savoy), and widow of Louis IV of Wittelsbach, in 1453. The beechwood stock measures 68 cm in length; the composite crossbow (65 cm in length) has a whalebone and yew core bound by a sheath of tendon covered by 'snakeskin'-decorated birchbark, with strengthening insets of horn at its ends, while the stock has several inlaid ivory lozenges with relief carvings: (1) on the right, the arms of Wurttemberg with helm and crest, beneath which in a text scroll: 'Gloria • in excelfis deo • Et • in terra • pax in • hominibus • bone uoluntatif • Laudamus • te • Benedicimus • te • 1460 f ('Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will; we praise Thee and bless Thee 1460 f; the first part from Luke 2: 14); toward the butt of the stock, a male figure raising his hat. (2) On the left side, the arms of Savoy with helm and crest, beneath which in an interwoven text scroll: 'O maria • graciofa • dei • m[ate]r • generofa • Dig[n]a • laude • gloriol'a • sis • pro • nobis • fpeciofa • MCCCCLX f ( a Marian hymn: 'O kind Mary, noble mother of God, worthy of praise, you are full of glory, for us splendid 1460 t'); toward the butt of the stock, a female figure raising her left arm. (3) On the top, near the nut is the monogram of the Christian nomen sacrum 'Ihf. On the underside of the stock: (4) near the bow, the figure of St. Michael, and (5) above the trigger is a plaque measuring 2x4 cm in which an S-shaped text scroll is inscribed with a five-word, Hebrew-alphabet text. The first reading of the Hebrew-alphabet text, by Dr. [Christian David] Ginsburg and E. A. Wallis Budge, was in fact 'without success', as reported by de Cosson (451): 'Hab gasath zarab harab therze'. The more accurate second reading by Professor Bezalel Narkiss (Hebrew University), filed in unpublished notes in the Metropolitan Museum, is taken into account here. The artist responsible for the Yiddish inscription is unknown, and the general cultural function of the text remains obscure. Its sense may be interpreted in multiple ways, depending on whether the verb 'have' is construed

Charms, 1465

69

as indicative or imperative, and whether the second word is understood as 'God' or 'good.': '[I] love God and [I] have courage', which would seem appropriate for such a weapon inscribed with sacred texts; or: '[1] love well and fl] have affection', which would likewise seem appropriate as a celebration of marriage. Source: New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund 1904 (04.3.36). Research: Baron C. A. de Cosson, 'The Crossbow of Ulrich V., Count of Wurtemburg, 1460, With Remarks on Its Construction', Archaeologia 5 (1893), 445-64 [photograph, pi. XXXIV]; Helmut Nickel, Arms & Armor From the Permanent Collection (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002), 40-1.

17 Traveller's Charm and Charm Against Knights (anon. < 1465) [complete]

On the final folio of a codex whose main text, ]Vp wio 1DO by Rabbi Samuel Schlettstadt (late fourteenth century), was written in 5153 (= 1392-3), are fourteen brief texts that were added later in a different hand: three Hebrew poems (120r), Hebrew recipes for medical remedies (with a few Yiddish words), and two charms in Yiddish (120v). The book contains indications regarding three owners (2r). The first one writes: The second may be identified in tne acrostic or tne nrst Hebrew poem at the end of the codex: r"?3 nira 13 n^x, thus son of the first owner. The last signatory owner, trivia nty'^x, indicates that the codex was in his possession in the year rm (5)225 (= 1465). All texts on 120rv are written in the same hand (with i

I Initial n closely resembles fl in mi, while initial n of the final word is clearly n. Narkiss Din. The final letter does not substantially differ from the inscription's two other 3; non-final 3 in final position but not as an abbreviation would also be more than slightly unusual. 2

J

70

Charms, 1465

the possible exception of the final three texts on 120v (nos. 12-14 of the additional texts). Texts nos. 8-9 on 120v are the Yiddish charms. If the texts on 120rv (even excepting nos. 12-14) are the autograph of T^n HU/a in rrVx, then they were most likely added to the original codex during his possession of it, which occurred sometime between the date of the completion of the original codex and the date by which we know the codex was in the possession of , i.e. between 1393 and 1465. Source: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Opp. 300 [olim 612], fol. 120v; Neubauer, 672. Edition: 49-46 , Research: ;47-42 ,yD3'&yj jp'TS \ Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion (New York: Behrmann's Jewish Book House, 1939; rpt. New York: Atheneum, 1979); Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; rpt. 2000). I. The first text must be viewed in the larger context of the tradition of the n^'DD ~I~nn, the prayer recited upon setting out on a journey, to protect the traveller from the dangers of travel. The Talmud traces the practice of such a prayer from the prophet Elijah; the form of the prayer in the Talmud is: 'May it be Thy will, O Lord my God, to lead me forth in peace, and direct my steps in peace and uphold me in peace, and deliver me from the hand of every enemy and ambush by the way, and send a blessing on the works of my hands, and cause me to find grace, kindness, and mercy in Thy eyes and in the eyes of all who see me. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hearkenest unto prayer' (Ber 29b). The present text is a fixed formula, with its triple invocation of the name of God —twice in Yiddish, once in Hebrew— is clear evidence for the text as incantation of the type known as "pin nTW, medieval Hebrew examples of which date back at least to R. Avigdor Katz (d. c.1275).

II. The second charm interestingly uses the term 'conjure' (NTW3), and presents a typical example of conjuring, via the performance of a symbolic event which is to render harmless a similar actual event. Since the enemies identified here are horsemen, this incantation may well have originated as a charm to protect against the depredations of medieval knights.

Wrench and Tongs, 1466

71

5

18 Description of a Wrench and Tongs (anon. 1466) [complete]

Beneath the colophon at the end of a copy of Kalonymus ben Kalonymus's Hebrew translation of Averroes' commentary on Aristotle (dated 1466), there is a fourteen-line Yiddish text written in the hand of the main text's scribe; it was thereafter quite thoroughly and multiply stricken, but has remained legible. The text describes one iron tool used to tighten and loosen screws, nuts, and bolts and another for extracting nails, thus providing a rare glimpse of the technical vocabulary used by fifteenth-century Jewish artisans, which is otherwise quite poorly represented in the extant corpus of texts. Source: Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS hebr. 934 [Ancien fonds 306], fol. 102v. Edition: Baumgarten, 'Manuscrits Paris', 138-9. Research: Malachi Beit-Arie and Colette Sirat, Manuscrits medievaux en caracteres hebraiques (Jerusalem/Paris: CNRS, 1979), 122.

1 2

3

conjecture Weinreich. Weinreich

Weinreich i

1474

72

19 Remedies and Charms (anon. 1474) [excerpts]

Medical charms are of many kinds: those whose effect derives from the power of the recited biblical text (bibliomantid), of sacred names (mats), particularly of angels (especially Gabriel, Michael, Raphael), or the significance of numerology (gematria); there are also remedies based on magic and those that have actual or presumed medicinal or cosmetic benefit (salves, herbal decoctions, poultices, washes, etc.). A selection of examples of various types is included here from a manuscript marked as belonging to the 'Monasterium Weingartense' in 1659; it comprises 156 folios, many of whose gatherings were bound out of sequence and i 2 3

first word stricken. with line-end dittography, and also a darker, ''-like stroke between the T and p, thus Baumgarten 5 first word seems to be stricken, 6 with first two letters stricken. 7 line end dittography; Baumgarten 4

8

1474

73

upside-down, and then numbered in reverse order. The manuscript once included 1,252 numbered items (Hebrew numeration), of which the first 1,248 were by one copyist, the remainder by another (further unnumbered items were also added thereafter). The first pages of the manuscript are now lacking, amounting to the first 260 items. Due to the faulty order of binding, the index is found between pp. 31 and 65. At the end of the listing of remedy recipes is found the entry: ^one-and-a-half lines lost] Thus the copy of the book was finished in the city of Mestre, on the mainland across the lagoon from Venice, on the 1 Adar (5)234 (= 18 February 1474). The manuscript interestingly also includes many marginal annotations, translations, and comments written in Middle High German (in the Roman alphabet). The Yiddish items selected here are identified by their numbers in the manuscript. Bernstein's readings do not aspire to scholarly precision, and thus their variation from my own is generally not noted here. Source: Stuttgart, Wurttembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. HB XI 17; Striedl/Tetzner/Roth, 605. Edition'. 1474 '1509 "selected edition] 361-330 ,(1953) 4 Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum Handschriften, 421; ;211-208 ;47-42 ;400 Baumgarten, 421-43; Isak Miinz, Die iudischen Arzte im Mittelalter: Ein Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters (Frankfurt am Main: Kaufftnann, 1922); ,(1932) 4 ;235-223 | Mordecai Bernstein, 'Two Remedy Books in Yiddish from 1474 and 1508', in Studies in Biblical and Jewish Folklore, ed. Raphael Patai, Francis Lee Utley, and Dov Noy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960), 289-305 [selected translation]; Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Ron Barkai, Les Infortunes de Dinah, le livre de la generation, la gynecologic juive au moyen age, trans. J. Barnavi and M. Garel (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1991; Joseph Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

fol. 32v:

1474

74

fol. 42v:

fol. 43v:

fol. 44r:

fol. 48r:

fos. 53v-54r:

fol. 57r:

fol. 58v:

i 2 3

the 3 is stricken. S S interlinear above. S preceded by

all stricken.

1474

fol. 62v:

fol. 63 r:

fol. 80r:

fol. 88r:

fol. 91 r:

fol. 130r:

4

1IN ] S preceded by unclear word: ]D / IT / "|^, perhaps stricken.

75

76

1474

fol. 130v:

fol. 134r

fos. 135v-136r:

fol. 136v:

fol. 137v:

fol. 144v:

5

with first letters stricken.

1475

77

fol. 145v:

20 Zachariah b. Zodok and Eliezer b. Eliakim, Court Deposition in the Case of Mairl of Worth (c.1475) [complete]

On 19 January 1475, the Jewish defendant, 'Mairl, Jud von Werde' (= Worth), accused of sexual assault on Gutlen Eberls (Eberlin Judin), was freed from prison in Regensburg, upon condition of his producing a stipulated document within six months, attesting to his innocence by 'Nachman Juden, Student von Besen'. While that document was not present in the file when it was published by Moritz Stern in 1931/32, an undated deposition by two other Regensburg Jews concerning Nachman's testimony was found there (in both Yiddish and German). The document was written by Zachariah, the first of the signatories. Raphael Straus orders the document chronologically 'urn 1500', which seems logically quite unlikely, since it is clearly connected with the case from 1474-5, as indicated in other Regensburg documents concerning this same Mairl (ed. by 6 TD ] S interlinear above.

78

1475

Straus, p. 32, item 116; p. 49, item 171). While the date '1475 Januar 19' on the archive's catalogue card of this double document seems unlikely to identify the date of this particular document, that date has now become an essential part of the document's signature: Reichstadt Regensburg Urk. [1475 I 19] in the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv.' The editions by Stern and Straus are compared here. The punctuation mark in the German document resembles the sign / and is here so indicated. Source: Munich, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Reichsstadt Regensburg Urk. [14751 19]. Edition and research'. Moritz Stern, 'Aus Regensburg. Urkundliche Mitteilungen', Jahrbuch der Judisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt), 22 (1931/32), 20-3 [Yiddish and German documents]; Raphael Straus, ed. Urkunden und Aktenstucke zur Geschichte der Juden in Regensburg 1453-1738, Quellen und Erorterungen zur Bayerischen Geschichte, n.s. 18 (Munich: Beck, 1960), p. 249, item no. 713 [Yiddish document only]; Solomon Birnbaum, 'Ubersetzungen der hebraischen Texte und Umschriften der altjiddischen Texte', in ibid., p. 456, item no. 713 [Roman-alphabet transcription of Yiddish document only].

1 When edited by Stern, the document was part of the holdings category, 'Haus- und Familiensachen'. under 'Juden in Regensburg Faszfikel]. 29', which was not a signature of a single document but rather comprised a large collection of documents from the years 1430—5, in which this document from post-January 1475 had been misfiled, as noted by Stern at the time. This category of holdings was dissolved and reorganized during the 1950s; most of its documents (this one as well) were reclassified and placed in the larger category, Reichsstadt Regensburg Urkunden; some few documents from the original Faszikel 29 that carried exact dates were reclassified and placed in the category, Hochstift Regensburg Urkunden. Thanks only to the expertise and dedication of Archivoberrat Dr R. Hoppl was this double document again finally located and its current signature verified. 2 Stern 3 Stern 4 Stern 5 damage to document; Stem

79

Letter to Pelein, 1478

Wir hernach geschri an ende des bri bekenen / das wir gehort haben von Nachman dem Juden / das er bekennt hat und gesagt hot mit guten freyen willen on nott und on betzwencknuO / das Mair Werd kain rate noch tatt nit hat und auch nye gehabt hat / an der schmehung und schaden / der fraw Gutlen Eberlein widerfaren ist / da man sie ilberfallen hot in irer earner / und der obgemelt Nachman nam auch6 auff seinen aid hoch und theur on geverde / das alles das obgemelt ein gantze warhait ist / und das er das nyemant zu lieb noch zu laid gesagt und geschworn hot / und auch nit von myet noch von gabe wegen / wenn nur von gantz warhait und gerechtikait wegen / Zu warer urkund haben wir das als betzewgt mit 7 unserer agner handtgeschrifft trewlich on geverd alles state und veste / Zacharias Sodocks sune / und leser Gotzen sune8 /

21 Letter to Pelein, Widow of Jacob of Worth (anon. < 26 November 1478) [complete]

For the historian, early Yiddish letters are significant sources of information and provide a window into the daily lives of Jewish communities several centuries ago. While one does not normally consider letters as literary texts, Yiddish (and Hebrew) letters of the period were participants in what was often an elaborate epistolary literary form, replete with citations from Hebrew texts of the sacred tradition, German songs, Yiddish poetic diction, and puns and complex wordplay. The writing of letters was in general of paramount importance to Ashkenazic communities over the course of the centuries. As Robert Bonfil has 6

auch ] M aufauch with the first word stricken. mit ] M preceded by illegible word, stricken. 8 Zacharias Sodocks sun und Leser Gotzen sune ] M preceded by Sachar, stricken; Straus transcribes Zacharias Sodeke Sne and Leser Getze Sne. 7

80

Letter to Pelein, 1478

noted (Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy, trans. Anthony Oldcorn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 234-5]) '[Ljetter writing [was made] one of the pillars of primary education. Children were habituated to write a letter a day to their fathers, even when they lived under the same roof. It was the custom to write letters to one's relatives, to one's friends, to everybody. They wrote about everything . . .' In general the editions and scholarly publications on early Yiddish letters are among the most exact, competent, and rigorous of any scholarship in early Yiddish studies: the editions by Landau/Wachstein, Turniansky, and Guggenheim-Griinberg have set standards that other scholars can only aspire to approximate. The earliest letter to be included here is of great historical interest (although without literary aspiration): in February 1478, Pelein, the widow of Jacob of Worth, was imprisoned in Regensburg, accused of having bought, tortured, and then resold communion hosts that had been stolen by a certain Christoph from a church in Passau. She was not released until 26 November, at which time a letter to her that had presumably been smuggled to her in prison was found in her cell. It became part of the official legal file and is now preserved in the Bavarian National Archives. The document is written on parchment and preserved in a paper envelope inscribed: 'Das zettelain hierin hat man in der Jacob judin vancknusz gefunden' ('the little note inside was found in the cell of the wife of Jacob the Jew'). Source: Munich, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Reichsstadt Regensburg Urk. [1478] (olim Gemeiners //Nachlass: K.12/1). Edition'. Birnbaum, 'Specimens', 155-6; Moritz Stern, 'Aus Regensburg. Urkundliche Mitteilungen', Jahrbuch der Judisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt), 22 (1931/32), 32-40; | ^T1 nx 'JIVD vosVv osY ,avani3 na'ro 109-106 ,(1939 nyom) 2 ,;tf7J,v!> K»7" [edn. and Roman-alphabet transcription]; Raphael Straus, ed. Urkunden und Aktenstucke zur Geschichte der Juden in Regensburg 1453-1738, Quellen und ErSrterungen zur Bayerischen Geschichte, n.s. 18 (Munich: Beck, 1960), p. 170, item no. 502 [edn. and Roman-alphabet transcription]; Solomon Birnbaum, 'Ubersetzungen der hebraischen Texte und Umschriften der altjiddischen Texte', in ibid., p. 456, item no. 502 [Roman-alphabet, quasi-phonetic transcription]; Erika Timm, Von Raschi zu Moses Mendelssohn: Zeugnisse des Jiddischen. Begleitheft zur Ausstellung (Trier: Universitat Trier, 1986), 4 [facsimile and Germanized, Roman-alphabet transcription]. Research: Alfred Landau and Bernhard Wachstein, eds., Judische Privatbriefe am dem Jahre 1619, Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der Juden in Deutsch-Osterreich, 3 (Wien/Leipzig: Braumuller, 1911); Andrew Lloyd Sunshine, 'Opening the Mail: Interpersonal Aspects of Discourse and

1490

81

Grammar in M i d d l e Yiddish Letters' (Diss., Columbia, 1992); Bjorn Berghausen, 'Das Lied von Deggendorf-Fiktion eines Hostienfrevels', Juden in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters: Religiose Konzepte-Feindbilder -Rechtfertigungen, ed. Ursula Schulze (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 2002), 233-53.

22 Translation of Psalms (anon. 1490) [Psalms 14, 17,22,85,99]

This manuscript is the oldest dated Yiddish translation of the Bible in Germany. Max Weinreich identifies it as one of the three most important works in Old Yiddish, along with the and the 113-0^70 (41 jy^KDW). The manuscript includes translations of 113 of the Psalms (pp. 3-133), the extant text beginning with the end of Psalm 4 and ending with the beginning of Psalm 116. According to Staerk/Leitzmann (p. 96), the translation and the scribal hand date from the fifteenth century, the latter of which is confirmed by the date 1490 in the entry on p. 1 (= fol. 2r; the first folio is unnumbered): 'Reuerendus ac Religiosus pater Wolfgangus pr^positus C^nobij canonicorum seu Regulariu In Rorfbach?] ordinis Diuj Augustinj. hoc psalterium conscribj fecit per quendam Jud^um. Anno dominj Millesimo quadringentesimo Nonagesimo' ('The reverend and i 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Straus ' entvferstj. Straus Stern Birnbaum 1939 emends to Stern Birnbaum 1960 "pp // kox.The letter is distinctly a t. Stem Sterr Stem Stern

1490

82

holy father Wolfgang, leader of the community of canons regular of the order of St Augustine in Rorbach, had this psalter written by a certain Jew. In the year of the Lord 1490'). Birnbaum nonetheless dates the text to c. 1410 on paleographical grounds (1964). The Psalms arc written, as was traditional in Jewish biblical texts, continuously (without division into verses); successive chapters are divided only by between one and four colon-like double dots. Individual Psalms are numbered in the margin both in Arabic numerals (in red ink, according to the numeration of the Vulgata, followed by the abbreviated first words of the Vulgata translation), and (for many of the Psalms) in Hebrew numerals (in black). The translation demonstrates the common tendency in late medieval translations of the Psalms toward a literalness replete with caiques and often transgressing into incomprehensibility unless one has the Hebrew text and its syntax in mind. The numbering of the Psalms is a complex intercultural historical problem, not to be treated here, except to note that the numbers provided with the texts (both Arabic and Hebrew) are those found in the manuscript. Source: Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, PreuBischer Kulturbesitz, MS Or.Qu.310; Steinschneider, Handschriften Berlin, 11/1, no. 50. Edition: Staerk/Leitzmann, 95-100 [Psalms 18, 22, 51, 90]; Birnbaum, 'Specimens', 152-3 [Psalm 6]. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum Handschriften, 429 [and Nachtrage]; •1 16 110 98 79 65 9.8 Baumgarten, 109-61; Nechama Leibowitz, 'Die Ubersetzungstechnik der judisch-deutschen Bibeliibersetzungen des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts dargestellt an den Psalmen', in BGDSL 55 (1931), 377-463; rpt. 1971 [Diss., Marburg, 1931]; Salomo Birnbaum, 'Die jiddische Psalmenubersetzungen', in Hans Vollmer, Fritz Jiilicher, and Willy Liidtke, eds., Die Psalmenverdeutschung von den ersten Anfdngen bis Luther: Beitrdge zu ihrer Geschichte: mil tabellarischen Ubersichten, Materialien zur Bibelgeschichte und religiosen Volkskunde des Mittelalters, n.s. 6 (Potsdam: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, 1932-3), 4-19, tablesl and II; Shlomo Noble, (1943 'Sacred and Secular in the Language of the Yiddish Bible Translation', Yivo Annual of Jewish Social Science, 1 (1946), 274-82 ,(1964 Jean Baumgarten, 'Les Traductions ;190-165,(1977 de la Bible en yidich (XVIe-XVlIe siecles) et la Zeenah ureenah (Bale 1622) de Yaakov ben Ishaq Achkenazi de Janow', REJ 144 (1985), 305-10; Marion Aptroot, 'Bible Translation as Cultural Reform: The Amsterdam Yiddish Bibles 1678-1679' (Diss., Oxford, 1989).

1490

83

Psalm 14 [p. 10]: dixit insipiens

Psalm 17 [pp. 13-16]: diligam te D[o]m[in]e[m]

i 7

3

B B

B " interlinear above.

1490

84

Psalm 22 [pp. 20-1]: d[o]m[inus] pascit me

4 5 6

B n uncertain. B note in left margin to be inserted here: DS7. with final two words stricken. B

1490

85

Psalm 85 [pp. 92-4]: inclina d[omi]ne 9 [1D]

Psalm 99 [pp. 108-9]: jubilate

7 8 9

10 11 12

13 14 15

Staerk/Leitzmann laut. Staerk/Leitzmann zi. B lacking. B POTB interlinear above. B unicufac interlinear above (as Vulgata [ < Hebr.]). ] B ?yn interlinear above. ] B langtsam interlinear above. ] B zornig interlinear above. B ancille interlinear above.

1499

86

23 Translation of Immanuel of Salonica, Book of Remedies (1499) [excerpts]

This lengthy compendium, compiled by Immanuel of Salonica (263 folios), is based on texts in a variety of languages: Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Arabic; the copy was completed on 23 Adar 5259 (= 5 March 1499). Source: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Heb. e. 6; Neubauer, 2784. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum Handschriften 421; ;211-208 ;400 Baumgarten, 421-43. ;43

fos. 30r-31r:

16

1 2 3 4 5

B atria interlinear above (as Vulgata). with first instance stricken. final 1 corrected by scribe from ~\. with second word stricken. with the first word stricken. with the first three words stricken.

15

87

fol. 122r:

24 Psalms Glosses to (anon. 15th century) [excerpts]

The consecutively written glosses to the Psalms found in this manuscript are primarily in Hebrew, but include occasional word glosses in Yiddish. The text comprises glosses on Psalms 1-143, designated 'Vocabularium hebraicum supra psalterio' ('Hebrew glossary of the Psalms') by a later but still early entry on the page following the conclusion of the glossary (p. 178). The excerpts below omit text that lacks Yiddish glosses (here indicated by . . .). Source: Berlin, PreuBischer Kulturbesitz, MS Or.Qu. 310; Steinschneider, Handschriften Berlin, I I/I, no. 50. Research: S t e i n s c h n e i d e r , Serapeum H a n d s c h r i f t e n , 429 land N a c h ;122-112 trage]; Nechama Leibowitz, ;(1943 'Die Ubersetzungstechnik der jiidisch-deutschen Bibelubersetzungen des 15.

6 7

o o

with the latter word stricken. with Ihe former word stricken.

88

15

und 16. Jahrhunderts dargestellt an den Psalmen' (Diss., Marburg, 1931), in BGDSL 55 (1931), 377-463, rpt. 1971; Salomo Birnbaum, 'Die jiddische Psalmenilbersetzungen', in Hans Vollmer, Fritz Jillicher, and Willy Ludtke, eds., Die Psalmenverdeutschung von den ersten Anfangen bis Luther: Beitrage zu ihrer Geschichte: mil tabellarischen Vbersichten, Materialien zur Bibelgeschichte und religiosen Volkskunde des Mittelalters, n.s. 6 (Potsdam: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, 1932-3), 4-19, tables I and II; Shlomo Noble, 'Sacred and Secular in the Language of the Yiddish Bible Translation', Yivo Annual of Jewish Social Science, \ (1946), 274-82; | mn

Jean Baumgarten, 'Les Traductions de la Bible en yidich (XVIe-XVIIe siecles) et la Zeenah ureenah (Bale 1622) de Yaakov ben Ishaq Achkenazi de Janow', REJ 144 (1985), 305-10; Marion Aptroot, 'Bible Translation as Cultural Reform: The Amsterdam Yiddish Bibles 1678-1679' (Diss., Oxford, 1989); ' Gernot Heide, 'Liber die Lexik :232-161 ,(1990 alterer jiddischcr Glossare', in Rollwagenbiichlein, 345-68. Psalm 1-2 [p. 141]:

Psalm 11 [p. 143]:

25 Translation of

'Mighty is He' (anon. 15th century / 1526) [complete]

This hymn of praise has been a part of the Passover celebration for many centuries. Its serial specification of divine attributes is typical of some traditions of Hebrew hymn composition. The earliest manuscript attestation of the Yiddish translation is the fifteenth-century version, written in an extremely ornate hand at the end of a Haggadah now in Paris, while the earliest of the printed Yiddish versions is included in the Haggadah printed in Prague 1526, which also makes this text the earliest integral Yiddish text printed. Both versions are edited here. The bilingual 'Kin TTX' is not the only such text in the early tradition of the Passover Haggadah: bilingual versions of 'ini1 ^ 7ns' and the 'SHI in' (EYT 26) in manuscript date from the early period as well, and also began to appear in printed versions at an early stage. It is not accidental that it is in a part of the liturgy that is practised in the home (and not in the synagogue) and intended for the entire family that one first finds Yiddish being integrated into the liturgical tradition: while the synagogal liturgy was translated into the vernacular many times over the course of the following centuries, texts in Yiddish never became a central and integral part of that liturgy, while the domestic liturgical space was by contrast more open to the vernacular. As is traditional in the Hebrew text, the Yiddish translation also includes an alphabetical acrostic, formed by the initial letters of the adjectives designating the attributes of God (o and n are lacking in both versions; but cf. note, below). ;71-55 Research: Wagenseil, Belehrung, 105; ,53 ;89-87 ,69 ,52-50 , ;279 ,3 ;94 ,21 Baumgarten, 61, 106, 323^4; Moi'se Schwab, 'Un manuscrit hebreu de la Bib:iliotheque Nationale de Paris', Journal Asiatique, 19 (1892), 172-85; MoTse Siichwab, 'Manuscrits du Supplement Hebreu de la Bibliotheque Nationale', REJ 37 (1898), 127-36; The ;130-121 .T ,1 .m ,(1928) Earliest Illustrated Haggadah Printed by Gershom Cohen at Prague, ed. Lazarus Goldschmidt, trans. Immanuel Goldschmidt (London: Barmerlea, 1940); ,(1971 ;120-115 I H. Troger, 'Bin Siddur der Universitatsbibliothek Rostock und

1526

90

15

Varianten des Liedes Almechtiger Got in Italien des 16. Jahrhunderts', Jiddistik Mitteilungen, 13 (Trier, 1995), 1-11. Fifteenth-century manuscript'. At the end of a manuscript of the Passover Haggadah, copied by Abraham ben Moses Landau, the Yiddish poem is copied in the same formal Ashkenazic script used for the entire text. Zinberg's printing of the text was not intended to be a precise reproduction of the orthography of the manuscript (he added vowel pointing in a few cases, for instance, when it eased the modern reader's access); thus his readings are included here only when they illuminate a problematic reading. Source: Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, Hebr. 1333. fol. 39v. Edition: Baumgarten, 'Manuscrits Paris', 141; | 44

Prague edition ~ 1526: Source: Haggadah, Prague, 1526 fGershom b. Solomon and Gronim Katz (Cohen)]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian, Opp. fol. 1303; St. 2672; Cowley, 559; The Passover Haggadah, Prague 1526. T"D~i JN1D MOD ^ /7II/7 (Jerusalem: Makor, 1972), n.p. (final page) [facsimile]. Edition: Johannes Buxtorf, Synagoga Judaica (Hannover, 1622) [text in Hebrew and Latin in chapter 18]; Johann Christof Wagenseil, Tela Ignae Satanae (Altdorf 1681), 381 [Yiddish]; Wagenseil, Belehrung, 105 [Yiddish]; Johann i

Baumgarten/Zinberg Baumgarten 7inberg 3 Baumgarten 4 I Baumgarten 5 is P only the right-hand vertical shaft of the double-shaft visible; sufficient space is available for the left-hand shaft, which is no longer visible. BaumZinberg' garten 6 Baumgarten/Zinberg 7 Baumgarten 8 Baumgarten/Zinberg 9 Baumgarten 10 P the final three letters are only faintly visible and subject to other interpretation; Baumgarten P

15

91

Jacob Schudt, Juedische Merkwuerdigkeiten (Frankfurt am Main 1714-17), II, 230-1 [Yiddish text in Roman alphabet]: ;53 1 '1648 :52-50 ;38-37 ,(1927) | Uriel Weinreich, College Yiddish (New York: YIVO, 1948), 102-4.

5

10

26 'Song of the Kid' (anon. 15th century) [complete]

The Neo-Aramaic has played an important and entertaining role at the close of the traditional Ashkenazic Passover celebration for the past several centuries. The song comprises ten stanzas, in each successive one of which a further narrative detail is added. The song has attracted a variety of interpretations over the centuries (including one by the Gaon of Vilna), most tending toward allegorical exegesis that ends with Israel's hope for the Messiah. While the basic motif of the song is widespread in the folklore of many cultures, and the earliest Jewjsh version may well be much older, the earliest transmitted text witness from 1

Weinreich Weinreich P followed by two space-fillers at the line's end; the first is U, the second resembles an inverted 2. Weinreich 3 normative initial p altered tor the sake of the acrostic. 5 Weinreich notes that the reading in later editions, Kin, which preserves the acrostic, is 8 probably original.

92

15

the Jewish tradition is an illustrated Ashkenazic Haggadah manuscript that dates from the fifteenth century, where both the Yiddish and the Aramaic versions are written in Ashkenazic cursive on the final three pages (the Aramaic in slightly larger and bolder script than the Yiddish text). In the bottom margin of the first page of the poem's text there is a sketch of a cat holding a mouse in its mouth. There has been some controversy concerning both the early witness to the Yiddish text and the faulty state of the Aramaic text. Based on a variety of types of evidence, Chone Shmeruk (Szmeruk) has, however, attempted to demonstrate that the song was originally composed in Yiddish and that the Aramaic is an attempt not exactly to translate but rather to approximate (as was customary in bilingual Ashkenazic texts) that original. Here the text is presented as it stands in the earliest manuscript, with the Aramaic translation preceding the Yiddish; in each case, as traditional, the text is not divided into poetic lines. As used in the notes,'Y' and 'A' identify the Yiddish and the Aramaic texts, respectively. Source: Jerusalem, Museo U. Nahon Di Arte Ebraica Italiana, Hagaddah Sereni, fos. 46v^l7v. Edition: Wagenseil, Belehrung, 108-10; | ;65-64 ] Chone Szmeruk, 'The Earliest Aramaic and Yiddish Version of the 'Song of the Kid" (Khad Gadye)', FOY I, 214-18 [Roman-alphabet transliteration; one facsimile page from MS. facing p. 1191. ;81-79 'Had Gadya', Research: ;94 ;71-55 EJ, VII, 148-50 [facsimile of one page from MS]; Baumgarten, 326.

1

1Y

2

2Y

J interlinear above. with initial group of letters stricken. 3 2Y the upper stroke of X is visible, thereafter there is space for the remainder of the word, but the space is blank.

15

4

i 6 7 8

9

3y

4Y

Szmeruk d?. J unclear mark following 1; Szmeruk reads slvg fslvjg ?].

5Y

6Y 6Y

6Y

the first' is interlinear above. Szmeruk gfsjn [dz]. with latter word stricken.

93

94

15

,o ii

7Y 9Y

Szmeruk J the is at best faint, perhaps simply spots on a very spotted section of

the page. 12 9Y with unclear final letter and suggests Szmeruk reads is clearly ], the penultimate more likely W than D. 13 10A Szmeruk Invr?. 14 10Y Szmeruk dz [d?].

the final letter

27

Translation of Abraham b. Samuel ha-Levi ibn Hasdai, The Prince and the Monk (15th century) [excerpts]

The tale originally derives from a Pahlavi narrative (remotely based on the life of the Buddha) about a prince who becomes an ascetic: a prince is sent by his father to a palace on an island in order to prevent the fulfillment of a prophecy that the son would convert to Christianity and become a monk. The son eventually convinces the father to let him return to the mainland, where he becomes aware of evil in the world, which distresses him greatly. A disguised monk gains access to the prince, and through his teaching the prince comes to choose the life of an ascetic. The tale was adapted into Greek and Latin and thence into the Christian European vernaculars. The Jewish versions differ, for their line of transmission comes through the Arabic tradition, where the text took the maqama form of mixed rhymed prose and metrical verse. The specific Arabic source version is, however, either no longer extant or has simply not yet been identified. The Hebrew version preserves the form (and the metre) of the Arabic source and consists in large part of philosophical discussions between the monk and prince, which ultimately result in the prince's adopting the monk's Christian faith. For the inserted aphoristic verse passages, the Yiddish version employs folksong form, one brief example of which occurs in the excerpt here edited. Both Zinberg and Erik note that the text is one of the most important works of Old Yiddish literature. Besides the early Yiddish version in manuscript, there is also a printed edition that includes both the original Hebrew and a Yiddish translation (Frankfurt am Main 1769). Its text differs from the manuscript edited here, which can date no earlier than the second half of the fifteenth century (the date of the paper's watermark). The punctuation is generally a mid-level point, which is sometimes slightly elongated diagonally (apostrophe-like) and sometimes almost slash-like; since the distinctions are quite fluid, and there is no indication of distinct function, punctuation here is simply indicated by a mid-level point. Source: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, cod. hebr. 347; Steinschneider, Handschriften Munchen, 198.

96

15

.[chapter 161 68-55 . 1926 Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum Handschriften. 393 [and p. 951; Winter/Wilnsche, 554-7 [sporadically abridged and heavily Germanized paraphrase in Roman transcription of chapters 24 (from Frankfurt 1769 edn.) and 13 (from Munich, cod. hebr. 347)]; | ;47-45 ;171-155 Baumgarten, 394; ;232--219 ;335-323 ,174-173 H. Peri (Pflaum), Der Religionsdisput der Barlaam-Legende: ein Motiv der abendlandischer Dichtung: Untersuchung, ungedruckte Texte, Bihliographie der Legends, Acta Salamanticensia, Filosofia y letras, vol. 14/3 (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1959); Wulf-Otto Dreesen, 'Die altjiddische Bearbeitung des Barlaam-Stoffes', ZDP 93 (1974), 218-33; Wulf-Otto DreeBen, ' B e n h a - m e l e c h w e h a - n o s i r ' , Verfasserlexikon, I, c o l l . 686-7 21 ;123-111 ,(1986) | Erika Timm, Graphische und phonische Struktur des Westjiddischen (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1987), 557; Dov-Ber Kerler, The Origins of Modern Literary Yiddish (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 146-79.

Chapter 13 (fos. 5r-9r):

M there is some indication that the text was corrected by the scribe to Winter/wunsche minder.

15

3 4 5

6

M here not catchword; repeated also at top of next page. M interlinear above 1'N which is stricken. 1 Mt with first letter group stricken. M preceded by 1, which is stricken. M preceded by unidentifiable stricken letter.

97

98

15

7 8 9 10

M

with first word stricken. with first word stricken. M interlinear above, so faint as to be doubtful reading: IS. M followed by DK stricken. M

15

99

11 These lines, as is usual in the manuscript with the inserted poetic lines, are written in a smaller script and indented as a block. 12 M followed by unidentifiable stricken letter. 13 with last two letters stricken. M 14 M interlinear above. 15 M in left margin with insertion mark here.

100

16

15

with first word stricken. M M interlinear above; on the line is: the last two words of which are stricken; all four should be stricken as scribal transference from the next line. 18 M with final letter stricken. 19 M added in left margin with insertion mark here. 17

15

20 21 22 23 24 25 26

M unclear whether N is corrected by scribe from or to 37. M the 1 may be stricken. with first word stricken. M with I1? stricken. M M twice. which is stricken. M in right margin just before line-initial added interlinear above stricken

margin. 27

M corrected by scribe from

101

in left

102

28 29

30

15

with first word stricken. M in left margin, with mark to insert here instead of M with first word stricken. with first group of letters stricken. M

M

which is stricken

28 Translation of

' Mahzor; translated by Isaac b. Mordecai Hacohen (Langosch) of Cracow (15th-l 6th century) [excerpts]

In this remarkable illuminated holiday prayer book (including the Megilloth), the headwords of the prayers are in Hebrew, while the text is otherwise entirely in Yiddish. The headwords are generally elaborately illuminated, often with zoomorphic motifs, in multicoloured (red, black, blue, white, lavender) ribbon patterns (including beast's heads (fol. 132rv) and human heads (fos. 58r, 366v)). After the first two-dozen folios the headwords are often sketched in black ink, but not consistently painted. The black ink has often eaten through the paper and left holes. The main text of the prayers is supplemented by comments and directions on usage in smaller script, often (especially toward the beginning of the codex), in red ink. The passage edited here comprises the of the fifth day following Rosh Hashanah and the transitional comment by the translator that follows. This comment is in the style and form of a colophon, although it appears in the middle of the codex: it is set in verse and identifies the manuscript's scribe (? and translator) and the composer of the inserted transitional poem, Isaac b. Mordecai Hacohen (Langosch) of Cracow. Generally on the phenomenon of Yiddish translations of prayer books, see EYT 48. Source: London, British Library, Add. MS 27071; Margoliouth, II, 329-30 (entry n. 684). Edition: Margoliouth, II, 330 (part of the verse transition/colophon only); 128-128 Grunbaum, 289-96. Baumgarten, 319-62; Research: ;84 ,38 ;58^5 ,(1940) 16 ,(1981-1980)50 ;462-456 56 135-127 ,(1987-1986) ,(1991) 1 ;92-69 I Leonard Prager and Brad Sabin Hill, 'Yiddish Manuscripts in the British Library', The British Library Journal, 21 (1995), 81-108.

104

fos. 184v~186v:

16-

15

16-

i 2 3

15

L preceded by p which is stricken. L interlinear above. L the first shuruk angles down from right to left.

105

106

16-

15

5

10

15

4

1

L the line is in red ink. L the section beginning with this word and extending to the bottom of the manuscript page is hour-glass shaped on the page and enclosed by a scalloped border.

107

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

25 26 28 30 31 36

Margoliouth omits. Margoliouth Margoliouth L corrected by scribe from

108

16

15

55

60

65

70

75

80

63 65 67

68 75

L these words are written in Ashkenazic cursive in red ink with black pointing. Margoliouth L the section beginning with this word is enclosed on the right side by border scalloping with vines; at the bottom left of the page is a manicula pointing up to the beginning of the next page. with first two letters stricken and HD interlinear above. L corrected by scribe froir

29 Medical Recipes (anon. < 15th-16th century) [excerpt] This manuscript includes as its primary text a lengthy treatise on urinology in 188 sections (fos. 9v—113v). Bound before and after this treatise are other remedies and recipes in various other hands. On medical texts in the Jewish tradition, see EYT 12,19,23,29,63,66,94. Source: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Heb. d. 15; Neubauer, 2783. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum Handschriften, 421; | ;211-208 ,] | Baumgarten, 421-^3;) ;235-223 ,(1932) 4 , Isak Miinz, Die jiidischen Arzte im Mittelalter: Bin Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters (Frankfurt am Main: Kauffmann, 1922); Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Ron Barkai, Les Infortunes de Dinah, le livre de la generation, la gynecologie juive au moyen age, trans. J. Barnavi and M. Garel (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1991); Joseph Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). fol 117r:

i 2

with X stricken. with 'll stricken.

30 Glosses to ' Song of Songs (anon. 15th-16th century) [excerpt]

The codex from which this text is taken is a collective manuscript which includes several sets of glossaries of individual biblical books. In almost all of them Hebrew is the dominant language of the glosses, in some the only language. There is, however, throughout most of the manuscript a varying frequency of Yiddish glosses, which in one of the glossaries to the Song of Songs becomes quite dense (there are also marginal Hebrew glosses and comments throughout this glossary, added later and not included here). This glossary is arranged with the Hebrew lemmata in a column on the right, followed in a broader column to the left by the Yiddish and usually also Hebrew glosses. The Hebrew lemmata are generally listed in the order in which they occur in the biblical text (i.e. the conventional Ashkenazic mode of biblical glossaries, as opposed to the conventionally alphabetical Sephardic mode). Steinschneider conservatively dates the manuscript to the 15th-16th century, as opposed to both Staerk/Leitzmann's much earlier dating, and Birnbaum's dating to c. 1390 on paleographical grounds (1964). Source: Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, PreuBischer Kulturbesitz, MS Or. Qu. 701, fos. 82v-84r; Steinschneider, Handschriften Berlin, 11/2, no. 146. Edition: Staerk/Leitzmann, 39-43 and 50-7; Birnbaum, 'Specimens', 151 [Psalms 5: 13-7:51. Research: S t e i n s c h n e i d e r , Serapeum Handschriften, 425, 433; ;122-112 | Karl Habersaat, Zur Datiemng der judisch-deutschen HoheliedParaphrasen: Bin bibliographisch-kritischer Versuch (Berlin: Gebruder Knauer, 1933; or Berlin: private printing, 1933); Karl Habersaat, Die judischdeutschen Glossare und Paraphrasen zum Hohenlied (1394-1788) nach Drucken und Handschriften (Rome: private printing, 1938); Karl Habersaat, Materialien zur Bibliographie des Hohenliedes (Freiburg: Mors und Singler, 1945); Karl Habersaat, Die altesten jiddischen Hohelied-Handschriften von 1394 bis 1590 nebst Chronologic der jiddischen Handschriften (Freiburg in Breisgau: private printing, 1964;

111

•232-161 1990 Gernot Heide, 'Uber die Lexik alterer jiddischer Glossare," in Rollwagenbuchlein, 345-68.

5

10

15

20

25

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O preceded, in the space between the columns in the same ink and hand as the marginal glossator, by O preceded between the columns, in the ink and hand of the marginal glossator, by 28 15

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40

45

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31 Translation of Customs (anon. < 1503) [excerpt]

is a religious practice that is common in a particular locale By definition a but is not made obligatory by normative regulation. As local customs over time grew to be distinct from one place to another, there was a tendency to record the 38

O added interlinear above V between V and p.

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local usage, sometimes specifically as a monument to that particular body of local religious practice, sometimes as a codification of the customs pertaining to a single, specific practice (e.g. circumcision). The first such collection of local usage dates from the eighth century and records the difference in customs between Palestinian and Babylonian communities. Medieval Ashkenazic collections tended to record usage according to a specific rabbinical authority. The compilation by Isaac Tyrnau of the customs of his teachers, Abraham Klausner and Sar Shalom (Sholem) of Vienna (Neustadt), became the model for the whole of the subsequent Ashkenazic tradition. The lines of authority and filiation in the complex textual history are generally quite difficult to ascertain, for there is no single text tradition, and in fact there was clearly no prevailing sense of a need to preserve such a tradition. Instead, there is rather a surprising amount of freedom and even creativity in copyists' omissions of entire sections, rearrangement of multiple sections, substitution of local material for that found in the source manuscript, and incorporation of glosses from the source into the main body of the new copy, etc., such that each such text is in most respects sui generis. Such is also the case to a lesser degree with printed books of customs. The entire genre is characterized by its attempt to make accessible the full practice of Jewish life to all members of the community, male and female, Hebrew-literate and those who could read only Yiddish. Thus there were Yiddish translations of the Hebrew books by the early sixteenth century, if not earlier. Secondly, the genre demonstrates a remarkable openness to illustration, and many of the books are profusely illustrated, as is the case with the manuscript excerpted here, which was written in northern Italy. The scribe indicates that his father died 3 Adar (5)263 (= 30 January 1503), providing a terminus post quern for the completion of the copy. The text is quite important in terms of cultural history, for it is one of the earliest fully illustrated Yiddish manuscripts (many of the illustrations in colour), which thus provides a wealth of pictorial information on the artist's conception of Jewish custom; secondly, the text is fully pointed, so that it likewise provides a great deal of at least indirect information concerning the pronunciation of Yiddish in northern Italy at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The illustrations are simple, naive, often zoomorphic; some are coloured with a red, yellow, or green wash; most of the drawings illustrate the rituals described by the section of the text in which they appear. Source: Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS hebr. 586 [Sorbonne 204], fos. 117r-118r; Baumgarten, 'Manuscrits Paris', 127-31 [facsimile of fol. 117r, title]. Edition: Grunbaum. 340-5. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 149; Steinschneider, Serapeum Hand,81-72 , Freimann, schriften, 406 [and Nachtrage]; ;37

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5548;|;116 ,71 ,65 200-197 ,(1959) 28

Baumsarten, 308-9, 315;

1964

A. Epstein, 'Die Wormser Minhagbucher', Gedenkbuch Kaufmann, ed. Marcus Brann (Breslau: Schottlaender, 1900; rpt. in 2 vols., Jerusalem: Makor, 1970), 303-7; Jean Baumgarten, 'Prieres, rituels et pratiques dans la societe juive ashkenaze: la tradition des livres de coutumes en langue yiddish (XVIe siecle)', Revue de I'Histoire des Religion, 218 (2001), 369^103.

1 This rubric is enclosed in an elaborate figured border at the bottom of 117r, below which are depicted the sun (or star), moon (both with faces), two human figures with upturned faces, and another figure (a spirit ?) with an upturned face. On 117v, where the text begins, in the right margin there is portrayed a man standing in front of a stool, wearing a skullcap and a long robe, with his hands raised to shoulder level, palms toward the body, bowed from the shoulders before a Torah ark in the form of a cylindrical tower with a pennant bearing a star of David above its ramparts, with an arched double door below; the caption is: The robe is painted (gouache) grey, the man's face and hands are beige, as is the stool. 2 stricken.

32 Women's Commandments (anon. 1504) [excerpt]

The commandments imposed specifically on women, dealing with (ritual cleanliness, the taking of dough, and lighting candles) are dealt with throughout the sacred textual tradition, especially in the Talmud, and medieval commentaries. The separate treatment specifically addressed directly to women in the vernacular was, however, strenuously opposed by rabbinical authorities, e.g. by a fifteenth-century rabbinical decision expressed by Rabbi Jacob b. Moses Halevi Segal Moellin [the Maharill. Nonetheless, there are five early manuscripts and eleven separate early printed editions of the (Romer-Segal), which demonstrates clearly that the book is to be reckoned among the most widespread of early Yiddish books (as demonstrated also by the 1595 censor's list from Mantua). The first printed text of women's commandments that appeared under the title was printed in Venice in 1552 by Daniel Adelkind; in its subtitle, and often as the title of other editions and versions and similar books, there appeared the words There were many later editions in northern Italy and central and eastern Europe. The 1552 edition comprised 123 chapters in fifty-two folios. The publisher's father, Cornelius Adelkind, wrote the afterword, in which he indicates that the book's composition was much older and that their edition was based on earlier manuscript versions from Germany. The manuscript excerpted and edited here (Cambridge, University Library, Add. 547) represents precisely that earlier tradition, to the extent that, despite some orthographical differences and altered rhyme words, the one text can almost always be used to supply the missing words of the other text. In the 1535 Cracow edition of David Ha-Cohen notes that he had two primary sources, one by Judah Mintz and the other by Samuel of Worms, which are in fact well reflected in the two manuscript traditions, the first represented by Cambridge, University Library, Add. 547 and the second by Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, MS 2511; Paris, Alliance Israelite Universelle, MS 9; and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Can. Or. 12. The latter tradition treats matters more extensively. Samuel of Worms lived well into the 1530s and was thus probably too young to have authored such a work, to take a stand against the Maharil, and to have the manuscript copied in Italy by 1504 (the date of the Cambridge manuscript), for which reasons Agnes Romer-Segal attributes this

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manuscript to the tradition of Judah Mintz; Edward Fram concurs and attributes the later and more extensive tradition to Samuel of Worms. As the genre developed, the manuals came to treat practically every aspect of were, surthe daily life of a Jewish woman (although some issues, such as prisingly, not treated here), forming a veritable encyclopedia of conduct and practice, composed in a simple and clear form, and based on numerous stories, exempla, and tales drawn from the aggadic and midrashic traditions. These books are thus of a hybrid genre: they are in part books of customs, in part books of moral didacticism, and in part halakhic manuals. The text from which a selection is edited here is the earliest extant manuscript, which pre-dates the publication of the which exercised a significant influence on later editions. This early text focuses very strictly on the practice of fulfilling the commandments and includes practically no narrative exempla of the commandments and no added narrative material at all. Thus in its organization of the subject matter, as well as its limited scope, this text differs radically from the later, more expanded text types. The manuscript comprises ninety-two folios and contains three separate texts (the others: a eulogy of virtuous women, and an ethical discourse on the Mishnaic text The treatise on women's commandments (fos. 1-44) is rubricized up to fol. 23r; thereafter blank space is left for rubricization which was not filled in; the text that was to be rubricized is thus lost); following fol. 44 there are eight folios lost, in the course of which this text ends. It is often difficult to determine whether a given early Yiddish text is composed in rhyming prose or a form of rhymed and loosely poetic lines. The selection edited here is the opening section of the book, which has been set as prose. The manuscript's = 15 final colophon identifies the copy's date of completion as July 1504) (fos. 90v-91r), and the text's author or scribe as 91r). Source: Cambridge, University Library, Add. 547, fos. 4r-7v; Reif, 182-3 (SCR 292). Edition: Grilnbaum, 165-277; Edward Fram, ed., My Dear Daughter: Rabbi Benjamin Slonik and the Popularization of Jewish Law for Women (forthcoming). Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum 200; Steinschneider, Serapeum Hand; 105-86 schriften, 414; ;260-259 116,53-48 150-149 ,133 ,44 ,27 ;24-17 ;96 ,83-82 ,78 ,65 ,56-53 Baumgarten, 274-8; Solomon B. Freehof, 'Devotional Literature in the Vernacular: Judeo-German, Prior to the Reform Movement', Central Conference of American Rabbis — Yearbook, 33 (1923), 375-424;|(1943) 20 .

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;42-41 ;223-212 ,(1967) 58 M. I. Goldwasser, 'Azhoras noshim': A Linguistic Study of a Sixteenth Century Work (Diss., Columbia University, 1968), Working Papers in Yiddish and East European Jewish Studies, 33 (New York: Max Weinreich Center for Advanced Jewish Studies/YIVO, 1982) 1975 ;790-779 ,(1978) 53 '1595 Agnes Romer-Segal, 'Yiddish Works on Women's Commandments in the Sixteenth Century', Studies in Yiddish Literature and Folklore, Research Projects of the Institute for Jewish Studies, Monograph Series 7 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1986), 37-59.

i 2

C the 1 corrected by scribe from T. C second D corrected by scribe from 11.

118

3 4 5 6

1504

with latter words stricken. with NJ stricken. with first letter group stricken. with first word stricken.

1504

7 8

with first letter group stricken. with 13 stricken.

119

33

Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita / Elye Bokher] Bovo of Antona (1507; published 1541) [excerpts]

(1469-1549) is one of the most interesting European Elia(s) Levita men of letters of the Humanistic period. As is the case with many other Humanists, his biography could almost function as a cultural history of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries in central Europe and northern Italy. He was born near Nuremberg, was active on both sides of the Alps as teacher, publisher, printer, author of scholarly texts as well as popular romance and biting satirical diatribes; as mentor, friend, and colleague of the great men of church and synagogue, university and the arts. He worked tirelessly for decades in the new printing industry in both Germany and Italy—as lector, editor, translator, scholar, and poet. Among others he worked with Paulus Fagius, Johannes de Kampen, Sebastian Milnster, and Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo, and counted other famous Humanists in Padua, Venice, and Rome as his students in Hebrew and Aramaic, from whom he in turn learned at least some Latin and Greek. By means of his grammar and lexica of Hebrew and Aramaic, (Rome, 1518), (Isny, 1542; EYT44), he made Jewish literary and (Isny, 1541), cultural traditions more accessible to Jews, but also especially to the then developing Christian scholarship on Jewish textual traditions, in particular, the Bible, Talmud, and Kabbalah. His translation of the Psalms into Yiddish (Venice 1545; EYT49) was not the first translation of the book, but broadened the effort to make this primary text of the Jewish tradition available to Jews unable to read Hebrew. As a pioneer in the research into the origin and development of the Venice, 1538), he made a lasting contribution masoretic tradition to the development of textual criticism in biblical studies. As a romancier he created one of the masterpieces of early Yiddish literature, As he notes in his preface, his source was a Romance-language the (probably Tuscan) version of the popular tale. That narrative began its literary life as an Anglo-Norman text which was thence adapted into a number of other

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languages. While Levita's text was not published until 1541, he indicates in the preface that it was written thirty-four years earlier, and in the epilogue he specifies that it was completed in Nisan (5)267 (= March 1507). This tale of the heroic adventures of the noble Bovo, exiled from his homeland by the machinations of his murderous mother, his wanderings through the world (as far as Babylon), and the love story of Bovo and Druziane, their separation, his triumphant return home, and the final reunion with Druziane and his two sons, proved, at least for the next two centuries, to be one of the most beloved tales in the Yiddish literary tradition. The selection here edited comprises somewhat more than a tenth of the text, and consists of the complex resolution of the narrative's plot intrigues. The text was reprinted numerous times (with and without adaptation) even into the twentieth century. The entire romance comprises 5,262 lines, divided into 650 ottava rima stanzas, plus prologue, epilogue, and Italian-Yiddish glossary. The verse form, rhyming ABABABCC, was derived from the Italian poetic tradition and, in the Bovo ofAntona, made its entry into Yiddish significantly before its adaptation into other European traditions. In addition to the editio princeps (Isny, 1541), which the author himself saw through publication, there is a sixteenth-century manuscript fragment extant that preserves a version that pre-dated Levita's 1541 revision (st. 238-590; Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS hebr. 750, fos. 123-57; another early manuscript known in the early twentieth century has been lost since World War II). The text includes numerous Italo-Yiddishisms, such that the author added a two-page glossary to the end of the text, most likely in order to make this specialized vocabulary accessible to Yiddish-speaking readers outside Italy, and thus increase the book's potential audience. For other texts by Elia Levita, see EYT 34,35,42,44,49. Source: Isny, 1541; extant: Zurich, Zentralbibliothek; Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS hebr. 750 [Ancien fonds 107], fos. 123-57 (16th c.); Freimann, 1180; Baumgarten, 'Manuscrits Paris', 137-8. Edition: ;27-20 facsimile of Isny 1541 edn. 1949 Birnbaum, 'Specimens', 161-2. 122-112 Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 22; 112-82 195-179 ;409~406 .56-141 ,120-97 ,73-72 171-149 Weinreich, Sprachforschung, 51-67; Baumgarten, 216-28; Joseph Zedner, 'Levita's Historic vom Ritter xm', i^ran Hebrceische Bibliographic, 6 (1863), 22-3; Adolf Wolf, Das gegenseitige Verhciltnis der gereimten Fassungen des festlandischen Bueve de Hantone (Diss., Gottingen, 1912); Meier Schiiler, 'Das Bovo Buch', ZHB 20 (1917), 83-94;

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'1962 G. E. Weil, Elia Levita, humanists et massorete, 1469-1549 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1963); Benjamin Hrushovski (Harshav), 'The Creation of Accentual Iambs in European Poetry and their First Employment in a Yiddish Romance in Italy (1508-09)', in For Max Weinreich on his Seventieth Birthday (The Hague: Mouton, 1964), 108-46; Jerry Christopher Smith, 'Elia Levita's Bovobuch: A Yiddish romance of the early 16th century' (Diss., Cornell, 1968); Jean Baumgarten, 'Un poeme epique en yidich ancien: le Bovo b u k h ( I s n y 1 5 4 1 ) d ' E l i e B a h u r L e v i t a ' , R B N 2 5 ( 1 9 8 7 ) , 14-31; |, ;232-161 Erika Timm, 'Wie Elia Levita sein Bovobuch fur den Druck tiberarbeitete. Bin Kapitel aus der italo-jiddischen Literatur der Renaissancezeit', GRM12 [NF 41] (1991), 61-81; Claudia Rosenzweig, 'La letteratura yiddish in Italia: L'esempio del Bovo de-Antona di Elye Bocher', Acme: Annali della Facolta di Lettere e Filosofia dell'Universita degli Studi di Milano, 50/3 (Settembre-Dicembre 1997), 159-89; Claudia Rosenzweig, 'II poema yiddish in versi "Bovo d'Antona" in una versione manoscritta del XVI secolo', Medievo Romanzo, 26/1 (ser. 3, no. 7) (2002), 49-68

Title page:

Prologue:

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Final episodes: 587,5

587,5 587,6

124

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590

587,7 588,1 588,2 588,5 588,7 588,8 589,6 589,7 590,2 590,3 590,5 590,6-591,3 P there is a concave tear from the bottom of the page that damages the text, the resulting remnant of the text, organized according to poetic lines, beginning at is as follows:

1507

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126

1507

595

1507

127

600

128

1507

605

1507

129

610

130

1507

615

1507

131

620

132

1507

625

1507

133

630

134

1507

635

1507

135

640

136

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645

1507

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650

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Colophon:

5

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Glossary:

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139

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23

The lemmata of the second page of the glossary, beginning here, are set without font, unlike the punctated square punctation in the Ashkenazic mashait script of the first page.

34 Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita / Elye Bokher], 'The Great Fire of Venice' (c.1510) [complete]

The exact date of the fire whose consequences prompted this poem is not made clear by the text, and thus it has been the subject of some controversy, especially since early sixteenth-century Venice presents several possibilities in earthquake, munitions explosions, and accidental fires. The subject of the poem as it has been transmitted seems less about the fire itself than about its aftermath, particularly the subsequent pillaging of the shops of the Rialto. As the final stanza indicates, the poem was composed as a Purim song, and thus it is not surprising to find elements of the lampoon and the author's biting wit (known especially from the Hebrew-language prefaces he added to his own writings and those of others that he edited), here in his mocking of the behaviour of his fellow Venetians and especially of the same figure, Hillel Cohen, who is the object of the poetic persona's ire in the (EYT 35); here the speaker claims that Cohen accused him of having participated in the looting. In the absence of any corroborating evidence for the detailed events described in the poem (including even the existence of Cohen), it is not possible to determine to what extent the poem's scenario is historical (as opposed to fictional) and thus relevant to Levita's biography. The poem is composed in ottava rima, the stan(EYT 33), although zaic form also chosen by Levita for his romance, the here the rhyme scheme differs slightly: ABABCBCD, for each stanza ends with the quasi-cantical refrain of the holy name, here conventionally transformed, in order to avoid the tetragrammaton, which had early been protected by taboo: conventionally one of the acceptable substitute forms was here that substitute form has been further modified to '"max. The poem is to be sung to the 1 tune of the sabbath hymn, , sung at table in the home. The two manuscript witnesses of the poem differ radically in their length: the Cambridge manuscript (16th century) has thirteen stanzas, while the Oxford manuscript (1553) has twenty-five; it seems clear that stanzas are lost from both the middle and the end of the poem. With this text, unusually in the early Yiddish tradition, there is good reason and adequate material to produce a critical edition, which is the form the present edition takes: the Oxford manuscript functions as the base

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text (only substantive variants from the Cambridge manuscript are noted); stanzas in C that differ radically from O are added in the notes. On Elia Levita, see the headnote to the entry (EYT 33); for other texts by Elia Levita, see EYT 35,42,44,49. Source: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Can. Or. 12, fos. 258r-261v (B, 1553); Neubauer, 1217; Cambridge, Trinity College Library, F.12.45 [olim MS Addl. 136], fos. 2r-3v (C, 16th century); Loewe, 136; | 14-12 Edition: 6 , .368-343 ,[1966] ,[16] ,112-81 Research: ;181-180 205-178 Baumgarten, 215, 45' ,(1926) 1 .2 ;144-143 ;178-177 Gerard E. Weil, El Levita: Humaniste et Massorete (1469-1549) (Leiden: Brill, 1963), 57-66, 148, 188-9.

1

Title 1] 0 this line is written in darker ink and in a hand different from that of the main text. The poet's name is underlined in the same ink; C the title is: 1,1 1,6 1,8 2,1 2,2 2,3 2,4

stricken Shmeruk Shmeruk

142

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5

3 C lacking. with last letter stricken. 3,1 which is stricken. 3,3 O preceded by C 4,1 5 C lacking. Shmeruk 5,8

1510

6,5 6,8

143

Shmeruk

7,1

Shmeruk 7,3 7,4 7,5 7,7 7,8 8 C lacking 8,8 9-10] C differs substantially from 0 [C 10 follows C 11]:

Shmeruk

144

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10

Shmeruk emends 9,5 O preceded by stricken 10,1 C I O placed after stanza Erik/Shmeruk emend to 10,5 thus C: O 11,2 thus C; O 11,311,5 11,6 Shmeruk 12,1 12.2 C :

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145

15 12,3 12,4 13,1 13,4 13,5 14,1 14,5 14,6 14,7 14,8 15,1

C 15 differs significantly from 0:

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and adopts the whole line from C. Shmeruk reads as 15,6 16-24 Clacking. without a note. Shmeruk modifies to 17,2 18,3-4

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147

20

22,2 22,6

with stricken. Erik/Shmeruk emend to

148

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25

23,6 25,1 25,3 25,6 25,7

| Shmeruk emends to Shmeruk emends to C lacking.

35

Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita / Elye Bokher] 'Hamavdil Song' (c.1514) [complete]

Although there is no mention of Purim in the text, this poem displays the characteristics of conventional satirical Purim poems, including Levita's other brief (EYT 34). The poetic persona here vents his poem in Yiddish, ire on a fellow Venetian, the Hillel Cohen, who, it is claimed, had spread libellous rumours concerning him (there is no corroborating evidence for the actual historical existence of Cohen, who may have been one of Levita's contemporaries or perhaps simply a fictive character invented for the satirical purrecited at the pose at hand). The poem's title is the same as the traditional end of the evening service on the sabbath after marking the division between the sacred and the profane, followed by the post-sabbath night. The contains an acrostic of the name of the author Isaac the Younger, probably Isaac ben Judah ibn Ghayyat (Spain, 1030-89), and comprises ten couplets, in which the first three hemistichs rhyme, while the last ends with the word 'night'. In Levita's poem, here set as quatrains, the same rhyme structure is employed, and each stanza closes with the same word, The verse form itself depends on accent (ictus), not syllabic count, with four heavily accented syllables per line. The poet here demonstrates his characteristic satirical wit and the conventional compounding of meaning via numerological parallel (gematrid), that is, associating two or more words via the sum of the numerical value of their individual alpha-numerical letters. Thus, the numerical value of both first and last names of his rival, , equal 75, just as does the value of , which is additionally an anagram of In each stanza the poet then repeats and contorts Hillel's name and associates it both with darkness/obscurity and with the profane realm following the sabbath. The number 75 is then also given as the year about to begin, [5]275, corresponding to the civil calendar's 1514-15); and is also identified as the number of stanzas in the composition. There are two manuscript witnesses of the poem: the Oxford manuscript (1553) comprises fifty-five stanzas and indicates the beginning of each stanza

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with a horizontal line with hooked end in the right margin. The Cambridge manuscript (16th century) has sixty-eight-and-a-half stanzas; one folio is missing at its end. It seems likely that Cambridge manuscript presents a text closer to the poet's original composition: more of the original stanzas are transmitted and more correctly transmitted in the poem's established poetic form (without defective stanzas and verses). Working backwards from the poem's claim that it consists of seventy-five stanzas, Shtif eliminated as not original parts of the composition: stanza 3 from the Oxford manuscript and stanzas 4, 36, and 37 from the Cambridge manuscript. He then constructed a probable structure of the original form of the poem, based on the extant stanzas in both manuscripts, but transmitted in neither of them: 1OC1 2O2 3C2 4C3 5OC5 6O4/C6 7-25 - C7-25 26-35 - 06-15/C26-35 36-66- O16-46/C38-68 67-75 - O47-55

The present edition takes the Cambridge manuscript as its base text (when possible), with variants from O indicated in the notes. Shtif s proposed structure is also assumed in the edition here, with all stanzas identifed by manuscript and order in that manuscript (stanzas excised by Shtif as inauthentic are included here in place, but without inclusion in the overall numbering; here Xl-4). (EYT 33); for other On Elia Levita, see the headnote to the entry texts by Elia Levita, see EYT 34,42,44,49. Source: Cambridge, Trinity College Library, F. 12.45 [olim MS Addl. 136], fos. 4r-9v (16th c.); Loewe, 136; Oxford, Bodleian, MS Can. Or. 12, fos. 203r207r (copied 1553); Neubauer, 1217; | 14-12 Edition: ;158-150 ,(1926) 1 Birnbaum, 'Specimens', 158-9.

Research: ;195-179 Baumgarten, 215, 454; ;179-148 ,(1928

112-81

205-178 Gerard E. Weil, Elie

Levita: Humaniste et Massorete (1469-1549) (Leiden: Brill, 1963), 57-66 and 148.

1514

151

OCl

1

02 7

C2

3

C3

4

03 Xl

C4 x2

Title The line identifying the author is lacking in C. 1,2 1,3 1,4 with final letter stricken. 2,1 2,3 0 followed by illegible stricken letter.

152

1514

C5

5

C6

6

C7

7

C8

8

C9

9

5 ] corresponds to O5:

6 ] corresponds to O4:

153

1514 CIO

10

Cll

11

C12 12

C13 13

C14

14

CIS

15

C16

16

11,1

Shtif

1514

154

C17

17

CIS

18

C19

19

C20

20

C21

21

C22

22

18 Stanza has a nonconforming rhyme scheme ABBA it as

Shtif reads

and interprets

1514

155 C23 23

C24 24

C25 25

O6/C26

26

C27 27

O8/C28

28

26,2 26,3 26.4

27

28,1 28,2

corresponds to O7:

156

1514

O9/C29

29

O10/C30

30

C31 31

O12/C32

32

O13/C33 33

30,1

31

32,2 32,3 32,4 33,1 33,3

corresponds:

1514

157

O14/C34 34

015/C35

35

C36 x3

C37

x4

O16/C38

36

017/C39 37

34,3 35,1 37,2 37,4

158

1514

O18/C40

38

O19/C41

39

O20/C42

40

O/21C43

41

O22/C44 42

O23/C45

43

38,1 38,4 39,2 40,1 40,4 42,1 42,2 43,4

lacking.

1514

159

O24/C46

44

O25/C47 45

026/C48 46

O27/C49 47

O28/C50

48

O29/C51

49

44,1 45,1 46,2 47,1 47,3 48,2 48,3 49,3

160

1514

O30/C52

50

O31/C53

51

O32/C54

52

O33/C55

53

O34/C56

54

O35/C57

55

52,3 54,3 55,4

lacking, lacking.

161

1514

O36/C58

56

O37/C59 57

O38/C60

58

O39/C61

59

O40/C62

60

O41/C63

61

56,3 58,1 58,2 58,3 59,1 60,2 60,3 61,3

lacking.

162

1514

O42/C64

62

043/C65

63

O44/C66

64

O45/C67

65

O46/C68

66

O47/C69

67

62,2 63,1 64,2 64,3 64,4 67,1

the second B interlinear above. lacking.

1514

163

O48

68

049

69

050

70

051

71

O52

72

053

73

67,3

is the last word of the line; is the catchword of the next page; the fragment in C ends here. The remainder of the edition is from 0 Shtif suggests possible erroi 67,4 corrected by scribe perhaps to to complete the sense and 71,3-4 form a single line in the manuscript; Shtif proposes rhyme of 71,3.

164

1516

O54 74

O55

75

36 Zalman the Scribe, 'Debate Between Wine and Water' (1516) [complete]

Debate and dispute on theological and other issues has a literary tradition as old as the Talmud in Jewish culture, and there are some indications already in the Torah. Poetic expressions of such disputes in Hebrew date from Abraham ibn Ezra's twelfth-century dispute between the Sabbath and the holidays. Thereafter the tradition broadened and took on the proportions of a full-scale literary genre. Altogether there are some ninety such texts extant that predate the modern period. In Yiddish there are four such poems before the end of the sixteenth century: In addition to the text edited here: Zalman the Scribe's debates between Hanukkah and the other holidays (EYT 61), Menahem Oldendorf's debate between the good impulse and the evil impulse, Elijah Loants's debate between

75,3

with the second word stricken; Shtif speculates that the scribe, automatically completed the common designation of the after having written prophet with the second word of the appellation, only to catch himself and strike the incorrect word.

1516

165

wine and water Basel, 1599). Texts of this genre have several salient characteristics: (1) the initial composition was bilingual Yiddish/Hebrew; (2) the texts are not translated one to the other, and are rarely verbally equivalent one to the other, but are often rather more like complements to each other, comprising a dialogue between the two texts; (3) the text type was adopted from the Hebrew literary tradition; (4) the verse form of both the Yiddish and Hebrew texts was taken from the Germanic, not the Hebrew, literary tradition. The collection of lyrics that includes this poem was compiled by Menahem b. Naphtali b. Judah Oldendorf, a Torah scribe who was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1449. He spent some of his life in Italy. In 1504 he prepared a mahzor for a patroness, Dame Hanlein, in Mestre on the Italian mainland, across from Venice (cf. the mahzor copied by Isaac Langosch in 1504, EYT 28). The collection was completed, as Oldendorf indicates after poem no. 42, when he was 67 years old (24 Kislev (5)277 = 19 November 1516); it originally consisted of forty-three poems, but due to lost pages the first eighteen are now missing. The poems have various authors; only four of them are by Oldendorf himself (two Sabbath poems, a satirical poem about the uselessness of money, and the debate between the good and evil impulse). The poems are predominantly in Hebrew, but five are bilingual, with both Hebrew and Yiddish versions. The author of this poem (no. 28 [ro] in the collection) is identified in the acrostic of both the Hebrew and the Yiddish versions of the poem. In stanza 5,6 of the Hebrew text, the markings above the two words ]Q Vf also clearly indicate his name. This poem is structured in sixteen seven-line stanzas, alternating Hebrew and Yiddish, rhymed ABABCCC. The Hebrew stanzas are preceded by a diagonal row of four or five dots upwards toward the right margin with a final dot turning back down the page. As used in the notes, 'H' and 'Y' identify the Hebrew and the Yiddish texts, respectively. Source: Frankfurt, Stadt- und Universitatsbibliothek, MS hebr. oct. 17, fos. 12v-14r(o/«i cod. Merzbacher 25); Roth/Prijs, 17. Edition: ;13-10 ,ro>p | Leopold Lowenstein, 'Jildische und judisch-deutsche Lieder', Jubelschrift zum siebzigsten Geburtstag des Dr. Israel Hildesheimer (Berlin: H. Engel, 1890), 136-8 [edn. of Hebrew poem, German translation of Yiddish poem]; continuation in A/GfK/(1894), 79-84; ,19-13 ,(1946 .180-172 ,(1938) 13 ,205-178 Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 56; ;134-133 ,100-99 ,77-76 ,58-57 Baumgarten, 195, 456-7; 173-160 ,(1963) 47

166

1516

:223-212 ,(1967) 58 Moritz Steinschneider, 'Rangstreitliteratur. Bin Beitrag zur vergleichenden Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte', Sitzungsberichte der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissemchaften in Wien, 106/4 (Vienna: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1908); Chava Turniansky, The Evolution of the Poetical Contests in Ashkenaz', in Studies in Yiddish Literature and Folklore (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1986), 60-98, see esp. 70-2.

1

2

3

4

Lowenstein Sohn. 1,1Y Lowenstein 1,4H Lowenstein 1,7H 2,6Y Lowenstein omits the line. Lowenstein gewesen. 2,7Y 3,6H 4,2Y Lowenstein bitter

1516

167

5

6

7

8

4,5Y 5,1Y 5,6Y

Lowenstein geschnitten. F W is interlinear above. Lowenstein ktissen.

37 Israel b. Rabbi Pethahiah Isserlein, Decisions and Writings (1519) [excerpts]

Israel Isserlein, the most important rabbi in the German lands during the fifteenth century, was born in 1390, probably in Regensburg. His father died in his early youth, after which he lived with his uncle in Wiener-Neustadt, who, along with Isserlein's mother, died during the persecutions in Vienna in 1421. He spent some years in Italy and then returned north, first as head of the yeshivah in Styria (Marburg) and then in 1445 as rabbi to Wiener-Neustadt, where he spent the rest of his life in piety and asceticism. He had numerous students, many of whom later became important rabbis in their own right, such that Isserlein was known as an authority in many communities, which then consulted him on a variety of legal and practical issues. The breadth of the enquiries directed to him and the care of his responses, of which 267 have been preserved, present a broad picture of Jewish life of the period. One of his students organized his responsa during his lifetime for publication, together with a second work, on which his fame is primarily based, both of which were published together in Venice, 1519. He died in 1460. The Yiddish passages included in the text constitute the earliest evidence for Yiddish in a printed book. Except for the infrequent letters/words in square script (here bold), the entire text is in Sephardic semi-cursive ('Rashi') font (here it is represented by standard square font). Source: n.p., n.d. [Venice: Bomberg, 1519] [VI]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 4°. 528 [olim 496], unpaginated; Venice, 1546 [Giustinianus] [V2]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 4°. 658 (2) [olim 682]; St. 5459,6-7; Cowley, 282. Edition: 1 ;5^1 ,(1924) ,(1929 .129-128 Research: Giidemann, Geschichte, III, 14, 18, 23, 29, 85, 87, 93; Baumgarten; 61; Abraham Berliner, 'Rabbi Israel Isserlin', MGWJ 18 (1869), 130-5; |

1519

169

.(1979

(fol. 16r)

(fol. 40v)

(fol. 48r)

(fol. 58r)

i 2 3 4 5

Rubashov

V2 V2 Venice 1546 here bu VI

6 7 S

V

later

V2

in both instances.

V2 V2 V2 has the usual

narkings on each word to indicate quoted Yiddish

38 Jacob b. Judah Weil [Mahariv], Responsa (1523) [excerpts]

Jacob b. Judah Weil, a student of Jacob Moellin (V'nna Maharil), was one of the great halakhic authorities of the first half of the fifteenth century (d. < 1456). He was rabbi and/or head of a yeshivah in Nuremberg, Augsburg, Bamberg, and Erfurt and was widely consulted on halakhic issues, thus producing a great number of responsa (first publ. Venice 1523, including 193 items). The responsa provide a great deal of information about Jewish life of the time, in particular the organization of Jewish communities in Germany. In one case from Ulm, dating from the first quarter of the fifteenth century, dealing with the slander of Rabbi Zelikman by Rabbi Zimlin, occasional words and phrases in Yiddish from the testimony of witnesses are cited (and set off from the Hebrew text in parentheses). There are also three slightly longer passages in Yiddish; the first and last are set off from the main text, such that for the length of each of the passages there is a double column of Yiddish (left) and its Hebrew translation (right). The last passage is the text of the public apology imposed on Zimlin by the Jewish court. The edition of Venice 1549 (in which the mp^n mwnw ISO was first published) is the source of the excerpts edited here (the case is item no. 147 [rap]; fos. 57r-61r). In that edition the entire text (Hebrew and Yiddish) is set in Sephardic semi-cursive ('Rashi') font (here standard square font). Source: Venice, 1549 [Cornelius Adelkind]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian, Opp. 4°. 521 (3); St. 5631,1; Cowley, 307. Edition, 17 ,(1929 ;128-125 | Birnbaum, 'Specimens', 153 [second passage] Research'.

,(1926

(1926 7925 .288-286

1523

l.fol. 59r:

2. fol. 60r:

3. fol. 60v:

i 2

V Rubashov

171

39 Letter from in Vidin to her daughter and son-in-law (1533)

in Padua

[complete]

This letter is found in a cache of six letters (three Yiddish and three Hebrew) that were written in the Turkish-held territories of the Balkans to addressees in Italy. The letters were intercepted en route and never delivered. Almost certainly all six letters were written in 1533; while two are not explicitly dated, their contents make the posited dating in 1533 plausible. Two of the Yiddish letters, including the one edited here (no. 4 in Ginsberg's edition), were written by women. The letter edited here presents an interesting (though not unprecedented) nonstandard orthography both in the Germanic component: n ,[^^7] ^ ,[TO] •>» [in]; and the Hebrew-Aramaic component: [niDin] BOTH. Currently all but two of the letters (nos. 2 and 4 in Ginsberg's edition) are inaccessible ( ? lost or misplaced) in the archive in Vienna. On early Yiddish letter-writing in general, see EYT21. Source: Vienna, Haus-, Hof- and Staatsarchiv, Turkei 1 (Turcica) 3, Konv. 2, fo 224rv. ',1533 Edition: ,(1938) 13 .344-325 Research: Alfred Landau and Bernhard Wachstein, eds., Judische Privatbriefe aus dem Jahre 1619, Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der Juden in Deutsch-Osterreich, 3 (Wien/Leipzig: Braumuller, 1911); Andrew Lloyd Sunshine, 'Opening the Mail: Interpersonal Aspects of Discourse and Grammar in Middle Yiddish Letters' (Diss., Columbia, 1992).

1

Ginsberg

1533

2

3 4

5 6 7 8

173

V the first letter is corrected by the scribe, rendering it hardly legible; Ginsberg with note on the difficult reading. Ginsberg V twice. V twice. Ginsberg uxyn. Ginsberg V hole in page; Ginsberg

174

1534

40 Rabbi Anshel, The Second Chariot (1534) [excerpt]

This is the earliest extant printed Yiddish book (i.e. a book substantially in Yiddish, as opposed to one that simply includes scattered words or a few texts in Yiddish): a bilingual Hebrew-Yiddish biblical concordance published in Cracow in 1534 by Samuel, Asher, and Eliakim Helicz. The phrase that forms the book's title has been interpreted in a broad range of senses (including the kabbalistic) over the course of time; here, the most basic, biblical sense is represented by the English rendering. The Yiddish-language preface, which explains the use of the book for studying the Bible, is unusual (there is also a brief afterword in Hebrew). The identity of the author is disputed. Steinschneider suggested the printer Asher Helicz, while M. I. Goldwasser (p. 3) suggested Rabbi Anshel ben 9 10

V interlinear above. Ginsberg

1534

175

Eliakim ha-Levi Tsion, the head of the yeshivah in Padua and Venice in 1518-20. There are some 13,000 entries in the book's (unpaginated) 170 quarto pages, ordered alphabetically according to the Hebrew root. Each page is arranged in three columns; each of these columns itself consists of two columns: the Hebrew lemmata in the first, the Yiddish glosses and text reference in the second. The entry and the gloss are both cited in the inflected form of the particular biblical usage. According to the preface, the compiler intended to provide at least one usage for each form that occurs in the Bible. The book was based on the earlier Yiddish glossing tradition. The second edition of the book was entitled Three selections are edited here from various sections of the book (lines are numbered here consecutively only for the sake of convenience of reference). When successive entries come from the same biblical book, only the first is so identified, while the subsequent entries are simply to chapter and verse; incomplete or omitted text references are here supplied in editorial brackets < >. Source: Cracow, 1534 [Samuel, Asher, and Eliakim b. Chaim Helicz (unfoliated); extant: Oxford, Bodleian, Opp. 4°. 1073; Universitatsbibliothek Rostock, Sammlung Tychsen, CIc-5361; St. 4423,1; Cowley, 40; IDC J-4360/1. Edition: Grilnbaum, 554-5; Staerk/Leitzmann, 61-2; Birnbaum, 'Specimens', 169. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 376; Grunbaum, 23; ;122-112 •62-61 ,26-25 ,22-21 ;123-115 ;86-85 ,76-75 Baumgarten, 19, 37, 61, 71, 109, 129; 13 ;324-313 ,(1938) 33 ;520-509 ,(1958-1957) | M. I. Goldwasser, 'Azhoras noshim': A Linguistic Study of a Sixteenth Century Work (Diss., Columbia University, 1968), Working Papers in Yiddish and East European Jewish Studies, 33 (New York: Max Weinreich Center for Advanced Jewish Studies/YIVO, 1982); .232-161 ,(1990

5

176

1534

10

15

20

25

30

23

41 Translation of / Prayer Book (anon. 1535) [excerpts]

This manuscript includes both the prayer book (fos. 1-116) and a collection of (fos. 117-42); the beginning of the prayer book is lacking (the first complete prayer is The collection also includes the Haggadah and the Hoshanot. At the beginning there is damage to the bottom outside corner of folios, with resulting text loss through fol. 13v. The two texts edited here are the from the beginning of the common evening service and from the Yom Kippur service. The prayer book was copied by Benjamin b. Azriel and was completed on 17 Teveth 5296 ( = 12 December 1535). Inscriptions in the book indicate that it was owned at various times by Eliezer ben Uri, Nathan ben Menahem, and Mordecai ben Nathan. On the phenomenon of Yiddish translations of the see EYT 48. Source: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Opp. 656 [olim 1489 A]; Neubauer, 1214. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum 338-40, suppl. 361; Steinschneider, Baumgarten, 319-62; Serapeum Handschriften, 424; ;71-55 ;94-93 ,85 ,64 ,44 ;58-45 ,(1940) 16 ;462^t56 ,(1981-1980) 50 ,(1987-1986) 56 ;135-127 .92-69 ,(1991) 1

fol. 37v:

178

fos. 79r-80r:

1535

42 Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita / Elye Bokher], Tishbi (1541) [excerpt]

The title of this alphabetically arranged glossary of terms from Rabbinical Hebrew is the by-name of the prophet Elijah, and thus refers to the glossary's compiler, as well; in addition, the numerical value of is 712, which is the number of terms glossed in the work. The selection edited here is taken from the letter T. The often lengthy (Hebrew) lexical entries for the Hebrew lemmata are here omitted (as are entries without a Yiddish gloss), while only the Yiddish and Romance glosses, which generally come near the end of entries, are edited. On Elia Levita, see the headnote to the entry (EYT 33); For other texts by Elia Levita, see also EYT 34,35,44,49. Source: Isny, 1541 [Paulus Fagius/Elia Levita] (unfoliated), extant: Oxford, Bodleian, Opp. 4°. 1092; St. 4960, 46; Cowley, 173; Universitatsbibliothek Rostock, Sammlung Tychsen, CIc 3020.2. Edition: Grunbaum, 479-521. Research: ; 112-81 ;122-112 ;195-179 .232-161 ,(1990

5

10

1542

180

43 Translation of

/ The Book of Virtues (anon. 1542) [excerpts]

An anonymous Hebrew text, written in fourteenth-century Germany and circulated widely in manuscript (published in Prague in 1581 and reprinted some twenty-five times over the course of the next four centuries), probably served as the source of the Yiddish text, although there is some controversy over which is the original of the other. The text has been attributed to Yom Tov Lipmann Miihlhausen, philosopher, kabbalist, and chief rabbi of Bohemia, but the ascription is very poorly founded. In any case, the text derives from the movement of The Yiddish version is one of the most important and extensive of the sixteenth-century books in Yiddish. It is quite characteristic of the earliest examples of the genre in Yiddish: the material is dense, abstract, and includes little in the way of illustrative narrative; only later did the tradition of narrative exempla become an integral part of the genre. The text is divided into sections identified as 'scales' or 'measures' by which generally focus alternately on extension also 'virtues') and gates a single cardinal virtue or vice: pride, humility, contempt, insolence, love, hate, compassion, cruelty, joy, sadness, calm, anger, reason, jealousy, enthusiasm, idleness, nobility, avarice, memory, forgetfulness, silence, lying, truth, hypocrisy, slander, repentance, Torah. The text exerted an enormous influence on the development of Jewish ethical literature and Yiddish literature across a wide spectrum of genres. The text is of great importance in the history of Yiddish for a second reason, as well: at the book's conclusion there is a brief presentation in Yiddish of the rules of writing and reading Yiddish, which thus constitutes one of the initial fledgling attempts to describe the linguistic system of the Yiddish language. The book is dedicated to a female medical practitioner named Morado in Gilnzburg

1542

181

(Bavaria). While there are extant manuscripts of the Yiddish text, they seem (with one possible exception) to derive directly from the 1542 printed edition. The Hebrew-Aramaic words that were set in square font were supplied with vowel points by the printer. In the copy of the text in the Bodleian Library (also IDC J-43-87/1), the remaining vocabulary of the Hebrew-Aramaic component of Yiddish was provided by a later reader rather consistently with inked vowel points through many sections of the work (including the one excerpted here), which in microform reproductions of the text cannot consistently be distinguished from the printer's pointing. Only the vowel pointing of the original edition, based on autopsy of the 1542 edition, is included here. Source: Isny 1542 [Paulus Fagius]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 4°. 955 [olim 1216]; St. 3412; Cowley, 515; IDC J-43-87/1. Edition: Giidemann, Geschichte, III, 227-38 [Germanized, Roman-alphabet transcription]. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 139; Steinschneider, Serapeum, Handschriften 404d ("Nachtraeel: Giidemann, Geschichte, III, 146; ;115-103 ;284-270 ;223-222 ,105-86 ;52 Weinreich, Sprachforschung, 81-8; ,50 ,44 ;84 ,58 ,56 Baumgarten, 38-9, 264-71; Leopold Zunz, Zur Geschichte und Literatur (Berlin: Veit, 1845), 109-30, 149-57, 191; Solomon B. Freehof, 'Devotional Literature in the Vernacular: Judeo-German, Prior to the Reform Movement', Central Conference of American Rabbis—Yearbook, 33 (1923), 375-424; ,(1929 3 [3 ; 184-173 ;(1975 Seymour J. Cohen, trans., Orchot Tsaddikim = The Ways of the Righteous (New York/Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1969; augmented edn. New York: KTAV, 1982) [translation of the Hebrew text]; .232-161 ,(1990

Chapter 5: Love (fos. 21r-26r):

182

1542

1542

183

184

1

1542

1542

185

186

1542

1542

fos. 99r~100r:

2

3

187

188

1542

44

Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita / Elye Bokher], Nomenclatura hebraica (1542) [excerpts]

This booklet of sixty-three pages has a title page bearing both Hebrew and Latin titles. The book consists of a series of quadrilingual glossaries: Yiddish, Hebrew, Latin, German, each ordered (generally) alphabetically according to the Yiddish word. The German and Latin glosses were added by Paulus Fagius, the book's publisher. There are a dozen such lists, including: nouns, descriptive terms for such as abstract nouns humans diseases, medicines, time references signs of the zodiac and celestial bodies, designations of practitioners or craftsmen, designations of the elite and bureaucrats relatives, verbs, common words and finally a Hebrew conversation guide that inadvertently provides some information about Yiddish, as well. Several selections are edited here from various sections of the text (lines are numbered here consecutively only for the sake of convenience of reference). On Elia Levita, see the headnote to the entry (EYT 33); for other texts by Elia Levita, see EYT 34,35, 42,49. Source: Isny, 1542 [Paulus Fagius/Elia Levita] (unfoliated); St. 4960,44; Cowley, 173. Edition: nnrn maw Nomenclatura Hebraica, ed. Moshe N. Rosenfeld, n.p., n. publ., 1988 [facsimile only]. ;112-81 Research: ;195-179 ;122-112 Baumgarten, 20, 37, 40, 66, 211.

Title page:

' The Yiddish text occasionally uses V in place of 13; all such instances are here emended to italicized

1542

190

N O M E N C L A T U R A H E B R A I C A AVTORE H E L I A LEuita G e r m a n e Grammatico, in gratiam omnium tyronum ac Jtudioforum linguae Janet ImpreJJum IJn? Anno M. D. XLII. //

Preface :

AD LECTOREM En nomenclaturam hebraicam Heliae Leuite Hebrasi, quam ille Juperiori anno cum mecum in Germania ejjet, me hortatore, pro tyronibus et Jtudiofis linguas hebraicas obiter congefjit, Et quia totus in hoc incumbo, ut quibuscunque rationibus pojjum, Janctam linguam apud eius Jtudiojos, pro mea uirili commendem ac promoueam. Arbitratus autem fuerim ijtud ip/um etiam aliquo modo fieri, Ji quod in alijs linguis facimus, etiam in lingua Jancta rerum uocabula hebraice fonare dijcamus: curaui, ut libellus ijte, quern in eum ujum Helias confecit, in communem Jtudiojorum utilitatem excufus prodiret: qui ut eo gratio e/Jet, adiunxi ip/e hebrasis latina et germanica uocabula, que iuxta feriem alphabeticam hoc ordine collocantur. Primus ordo continet germanica uocabula, hebraicis tamen typis, quibus ludaei Germani cum germanica Jcribunt, utuntur. Secundus ordo pure hebraica. Tertius latina. Quartus ordo noftra germanica. Quod J"i hanc meam operulam ftudio/is gratam ejje intellexero, operam dabo, ut a me quoque breui habeant librum colloquiorum hebraicorum, nee non et confcribendarum epijtolarum. Vale. Ex Ij'na Men/e lulio, anno Jalutis M. D. XLij //

Glossary [excerpts]: A

Artzet Apotecker Seugam Hebam

Medicus Pigmentarius Nutrix Obstetrix

5

B

Baumaister Beck Bader Fursprech Bott

6

Aedilis Pistor Balneator Aduocatus Legatus

10

1542

Vatter Muter Son Dochter Kinder Enickel Bruder Schwoster Aiden Schnurr Vetter Mumlen Man weib Schweher Schwiger Schwager Gefchwey Freunde Gefchlecht Gejind Geburt GeJ'chwisterig kndr

Hebrew conversation guide:

191

Pater Mater Filius Filia Liberi Nepos Prater Soror Gener Nurus Patruus Patruelis Mas Mulier Socer Socrus Affmis Sororia Confanguinei Familia Domeftici Generatio Confobrini

15

20

25

30

35

192

i

1542

45 (anon. 1543) [excerpts]

The Old Yiddish Book of Kings, which thematically follows the Book of Samuel (EYT 47), was published the year before that book. The narrative is based on the subject-matter of the biblical book of Kings, the post-biblical Jewish traditions, particularly concerning Solomon, and also to a significant degree on the medieval conception of heroic action as represented in Germanic epic. The anonymous author of the Book of Kings is almost certainly not also the author of the Book of Samuel, for the former author is far less interested in battle scenes than in ethical and didactic topics and in moralizing. Like the author of the Yiddish Book of Samuel, however, he too was well-versed in the traditions of Jewish culture, the Bible, the Talmud, the standard commentaries, and midrashic material, as well as having extensive knowledge of non-Jewish secular epic literature (as is demonstrated in the poetic style and form of his own work). The two epics are composed in the same poetic form: four-line stanzas of two rhyming couplets (AABB), in which each line is divided rhythmically into two halflines of three primary accents each. This form is based on the stanza characteristic of the Middle High German Nibelungenlied, which differs only in that its final half-line has four accents; Weinreich terms the form the Hildebrand-stanza With its 2,262 stanzas, this is the longest poem in Old Yiddish (99 literature. There is one early manuscript of the text, known by the name of its former owner as the Wilmersdoerffer Codex, now in the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, Amsterdam, University Library, MS Ros. 176 [W], from the late sixteenth century; and three printed copies: (1) Augsburg 1543 [A], extant: London, British Library; (2) Cracow 1582 [K], reprinting of A; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library; (3) Prague 1607 [P], reprinting of K; extant, Vienna, Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek. The relationship of the early texts is straightforward; A is the basis of all extant texts: W is copied from A; K is based directly on A; P is a reprinting of K. This being the case, only A is of primary textual significance, and thus only very few variants from the other texts are here noted, e.g. when they clarify a reading in the Augsburg edition. Source: Augsburg, 1543 [? Paulus Aemilius or Chaim b. David Schwartz (Shahor)]; St. 1243-5; Cowley, 115.

194

1543

Edition: L. Fuks, ed., Das altjiddische Epos MelokJm-Buk, 2 vols. (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1965) [facsimile of Augsburg 1543]; Staerk/Leitzmann, 241-61;

.n27 Research: ;122-121 ;135-134 ;48-3 ,(1928) 3-2 ;579-573 Ginzberg, Legends, IV, 123-91 and VI, 277-315; ;85-84 ,28-27 ;199-192 ,116-114 Baumgarten, 175-92; Max Griinbaum, Neue Beitrdge zur semitischen Sagenkunde (Leiden: Brill, 1893), 229-30; Georg Salzberger, Die Salomo Sage in der semitischen Literatur: ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Sagenkunde ( B e r l i n : Max H a r r w i t z , 1907); ;274-246 ,(1938) 13 ,(1967) 59 ;215-208 Wulf-Otto DreeBen, 'Midraschepik und Bibelepik: Biblische Stoffe in der volkssprachlichen Literatur der Juden und Christen des Mittelalters im deutschen Sprachgebiet', ZDP 100 (Sonderheft Jiddisch, 1981), 78-97; Chava Turniansky, 'On Old-Yiddish Biblical Epics', IFR 8 (1991), 26-33; |,(1992) 51 ;134-131 | Gertrud Zandt, 'Zum Melochimbuch, einem Epos in jiidischdeutscher Sprache', in Amsterdamer Beitrdge zur alteren Germanistik, 43/44 (1995), 589-600; Simon Neuberg, 'Reimstudien zur jiddischen MidraschEpik', in Rollwagenbuchlein, 391^09.

Solomon and Ashmedai [fos. 16r-21r]

255

1543

195

260

265

260,3

196

1543

270

1543

197

275

280

275,4 279,1

A Fuks emends to

which, however, then disturbs the rhyme with

198

1543

285

290

1543

199

295

200

1543

300

305

299,2

1543

201

310

315

202

1543

320

1543

203

325

330

204

1543

335

340

1543

205

345

344,1 347,1

206

1543

Queen of Sheba [fos. 27v-31r] 465

470

468,2 471,2

1543

207

475

480

208

1543

485

485,1

1543

209

490

495

491,1 492,2 492,4

Fuks suggests emendation Fuks. W lacking

A

emendation Fuks.

210

1543

500

1543

211

505

510

212

1543

515

520

519,1

W

1543

213

525

522,2 523,4 526,1

W lacking. Fuks W lacking.

46 Translation of Joseph b. Jacob of Wetzlar, Pentateuch (1544) [excerpt]

This large volume (433 folios) includes the entire Pentateuch (fos. 1—399r) and a paraphrase of Esther in rhymed prose (fos. 400r-433v; edited by Landau in Roman transcription). The first was finished 9 Adar 5304 ( = 3 February 1544), by Joseph b. Jacob of Wetzlar for the daughter of Naphthali Levi and wife of Commentary taken from the Midrash and Rashi appears sporadically in the margins or is incorporated into the central text. Vowel pointing is included on proper names. The translation is in general markedly more idiomatic than the Pentateuch of the sixteenth-century Berlin manuscript (EYT 79). The text is written in double-columned pages (columns are here separated by the selec/ , pages as usual by //) and is organized by weekly pericopes and ends in Marginal glosses are marked here { } tion here begins in and inserted into the text where marked in the manuscript. Source: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Opp. 19 [olim 111], fos. 51rb-55rb; Neubauer, 170. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum 347 ;48-3 Baumgarten, 109-61; Leo Landau, 'A Hebrew German (Judeo-German) Paraphrase of the Book Esther of the Fifteenth Century', JEGP 18 (1919), 497-555; Nechama Leibowitz, 'Die Ubersetzungstechnik der jiidisch-deutschen Bibelubersetzungen des 15, und 16. Jahrhunderts dargestellt an den Psalmen', in BGDSL 55 (1931), 377-463; rpt. 1971 (Diss, Marburg, 1931);) Shlomo Noble, 'Sacred and Secular in the Language of the ;(1943 Yiddish Bible Translation', Yivo Annual of Jewish Social Science, 1 (1946), 274-82; Jean Baumgarten, 'Les ;190-165 ,(1977 Traductions de la Bible en yidich (XVIe-XVIIe siecles) et la Zeenah ureenah (Bale 1622) de Yaakov ben Ishaq Achkenazi de Janow', REJ 144 (1985), 305-10; Erika Timm, 'Blitz and Witzenhausen', *39-*66 in: .(1993

1544

215

Joseph's Interpretation of Dreams in Egypt [Gen. 40: 1^1:46]

i 2 3 4

O added slightly to the left of the main text, but not altogether in the the margin, thus clear that it was written along with the text, not added later. 0 added in margin with insertion mark here. 'N with first words stricken. with first word stricken.

1544

216

5

with first word stricken, with first word sloppily written (not stricken) and thus repeated and

6

written correctly.

1544

7

217

218

1544

47 Moses Esrim Vearba, The Book of Samuel (1544) [excerpts]

The Old Yiddish narrative of the which was also known already in the sixteenth century as the is considered the masterpiece of Old Yiddish midrashic epic. The epic comprises 1,792 four-line stanzas of two rhyming couplets (AABB) each (plus a colophon of twelve rhymed couplets), with each line divided rhythmically into two half-lines of three primary accents each.1 The melody to which the poem was performed became quite famous and was used as the melody for the performance of numerous other poems in the Jewish tradition, The vexed problem of the author's which were then identified as (Moses 'of the identity has not been definitively resolved. The Twenty-Four Books'), named at the end of the Paris manuscript as the author, is now generally identified with an emissary of that name who was sent from Palestine to Turkey in 1487 to collect money for the poor of Jerusalem. Weinreich, however, rejects that identification and dates the original composition of the poem to the period 1300-1480. If one does nonetheless accept that identification, then the suggestion that the poem originated as early as the beginning of the fourteenth century must be abandoned, while what has become the conventional scholarly dating of the text (based on language use and topical 1

This form is based on the stanza characteristic of the Middle High German Nibelungenlied, which differs only in that its final half-line has four accents; Weinreich terms it the Hildebrand-stanza (99

1544

219

references) to the late fifteenth century would match well. Based on the epic itself, it is clear that the author knew not only the biblical book of Samuel and the post-biblical Jewish traditions (particularly those concerning the primary heroic characters Samuel, Saul, and David), the Bible (the twenty-four books = and rabbinical literature intimately, but was also well acquainted with medieval Christian epic of the type often termed 'minstrel epic' or Spielmannsepos, best known from medieval Germany, for the text is imbued with the conventions of that genre. Among the selections edited here, the final one presents an excerpt illustrating the heroic deeds of Joab in Rabbah, which have no biblical basis, but are in fact quite well known in the post-biblical sacred Jewish tradition, and also, for instance, in the (EYT 89), almost exactly as in The text is preserved in a complex tradition of manuscripts and printed editions. Manuscripts: (1) Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS hebr. 92 [P] (c.1530), fragmentary, contains 7,091 lines (plus 66 lines in foreword); (2) Hamburg, Staats- und Universitatsbibliothek, Cod. hebr. 313 [H] (1st quarter of 16th c., northern Italy), fragmentary, contains 5,745 lines (cf. Steinschneider, Handschriften Hamburg, cat. no. 33); (3) lost fragment (four folios, 16th c.) from collection of Rabbi Nathan Forges, Leipzig [N] (description and Roman transcription in Staerk in MGWJ (1918)). Printed editions'. (1) Augsburg, 1544 [A] (1,792 four-line stanzas and 24-line afterword), extant: London, British Museum; (2) Mantua, 1563 [m] (fragmentary), extant: Hamburg, Staats- und Universitatsbibliothek; (3) Cracow, 1578 [k], extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. add. 4°. II. 175; (4) Cracow, 1593 [kl], rpt. of k, extant: Vienna, Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek (lacking st. 1-37); (5) Prague, 1609 [p], extant Hamburg, Staats- und Universitatsbibliothek (five folios lacking); (6) Basel, 1612 [b] [Konrad Waldkirch], extant: Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, PreuBische Kulturbesitz (fos. 1-8 lacking) [Prijs 208]; (7) Ingolstadt, 1562 (German translation published by Paulus Aemilius). The texts HPN derive from a common, probably already corrupted source; A derives from a different, also corrupted source; m derives from both A and the manuscript traditions; kklp derive from m; b is based largely on tnkklp, but also sporadically revises the text significantly. The editio princeps, Augsburg, 1544, provides the base text edited here; there has been no attempt to construct a critical edition that might pretend to the state of the author's 'original'. No textual notes are incorporated here from HPN, since those texts represent a different recension and thus offer no textual variants in the strict sense (but rather a different text). The texts of pmkb also differ in myriad minimal ways from A; at the same time, only rarely do they offer substantive contributions to the construction of the text. Thus only illustrative variants are offered here from those texts. While a large textual apparatus is appended to Falk's edition, it does not present nearly a full apparatus of variants.

220

1544

Source: Augsburg, 1544 [? Paulus Aemilius or Chaim b. David Schwartz (Shahor)]; St. 1237^13; Cowley, 115. Edition: Staerk/Leitzmann, 241-61; Felix Falk, ed., Das Schmuelbuch des Mosche Esrim Wearba: Ein biblisches Epos aus dem 15. Jahrhundert, Einleitung und textkritischer Apparat von Felix Falk, aus dem NachlaB herausgegeben von L. Fuks, 2 vols. (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1961) [facsimile of Augsburg, 1544]; | ;T27-327 Wolf, 37-8; Birnbaum, 'Specimens', 154-5. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum Handschriften, 427 [and Nachtrage]; ,82-79 ;111-68 ;48-3 ;133-123 ;222-221 ,121-112 ;32-16 ; 199-182 ;579-573 ,(1928) 3-2 91 ,83 ,33 ,28-27 Baumgarten, 175-88; Baumgarten, 'Le Manuscrits . . . de Paris', 123-5; Felix Falk, 'Die Bucher Samuelis in deutschen Nibelungenstrophen des XV. Jahrhunderts', Mitteilungen zur jildischen Volkskunde 11, (1908), 79-85, 97-116, 129-50 [French trans.: Melanges bibliographiques sur les livres de Samuel en strophes de Nibelungen, precedes d'un expose general sur la litterature judeo-allemande (Leipzig: Kaurmann, 1909)]; Ginzberg, Legends, IV, 55-121 and VI, 245-76; Nathan Siisskind, 'Das Smuel Buch. Eine jiidisch-deutsche Umdichtung der zwei Bucher Samuelis im Stile der mittelhochdeutschen Heldendichtung. Teil I: Untersuchung der Sprache, der Quellen und der Liedtechnik nebst Teilherausgabe des Textes der Pariser Handschrift (Hebreu 92) mit Kommentar, die ersten 350 Strophen umfassend' (Diss., New York University, 1942);

,(1964 ,(1960) 22 ;5-3 | Wulf-Otto DreeBen, 'Midraschepik und Bibelepik: Biblische Stoffe in der volkssprachlichen Literatur der Juden und Christen des Mittelalters im deutschen Sprachgebiet', ZDP 100 (Sonderheft Jiddisch, 1981), 78-97; Jean Baumgarten, 'Une chanson de geste en yidich ancien: Le Shmuel bukh\ RBN 13 (1984), 24-38; Barbara Konneker, 'Zum literarischen Charakter und der literarischen Intention des altjiddischen Schmuelbuchs', Kontroversen, 3-12; Chava Turniansky, 'On Old-Yiddish Biblical Epics', IFR 8 (1991), 26-33; Wulf-Otto DreeBen, 'Goliaths Schwestern und Bruder', in Rollwagenbuchlein, 369-89; Simon Neuberg, 'Reimstudien zur jiddischen MidraschEpik,' in ibid., 391-409.

1544

221

1. David and Goliath [fos. 19v-22v] 321

325

321,2 A 323 b lacking. 326-7 blacking.

222

1544

330

335

1544

223

340

224

1544

345

350

349 b lacking.

1544

225

355

360

226

1544

365

A the upper stroke of the K is lost, so that the letter appears as a 3. 367-8 blacking 364,1

1544

227

370

375

371 blacking.

228

1544

2. Saul and the Witch [fos. 41v-43r] 716

720

722,1-4 pmkb lacking.

1544

229

725

730

724,2 pmkb 729-30 pmkb lacking.

230

1544

735

731,1-2 k lines reversed.

1544

231

740

745

743 p lacking.

232

1544

3. David and Bathsheba [fos. 70r-74v]

1227

1230

1544

233

1235

1240

1237 pmkb

1241,1

pmkb

1544

234

1245

1243,1 pmkb 1248,3 pmkb

1544

235

1250

1250,2

pmkb

1252 1254,4 1255

pmkb lacking.

p lacking several folios (st. 1255-352) hereafter; m also damaged, lacking st. 1255-73. 1255,3-4 kb

236

1544

1260

1258,2

1544

237

1265

1270

1267,2 1268 kb

1270 kb lacking. 1271 kb

238

1277 kb

1544

239

1280

1285

1282 m lacking. 1286 9 mkb lacking, with variant stanzas.

1544

240

1290

1290,1 1291,3-4 mkb lacking. 1293,1-2 mkb

1544

241

1295

1300

1301,1

1544

242

1305

4. Joab in Rabbah [fos. 74v-76r] 1307

1301,4 mkb

1544

243

1310

1315

1544

244

1320

1323,2 1323.3-4 mkb

1544

245

1325

1330

246

1544

1335

48 Translation of Whole Year, translated by (1544)

Prayer Book for the Joseph b. Yakar

[excerpts]

While this book is often cited as the first example of the prayer book translated into Yiddish, that is by no means the case, as the selection edited above bears witness (EYT 41), and as Joseph bar Yakar, the compiler/translator of this book, indicates in the preface, when he notes that he has chosen the best of earlier such books as the sources for his own compilation. But this volume is in fact the first Yiddish translation of the complete prayer book to have appeared as a printed book (as opposed to manuscript). In the case of the Yiddish-language TITO, one is confronted with a classic case of the book's contents being historically less significant than the existence of the book in itself—it is less important how,

1544

247

exactly, the prayers are translated than that the entire was translated and published in the mid-sixteenth century, which is, due to the staunch rabbinical opposition to the vernacularization of the sacred textual tradition, quite astonishing. Of course such a prayer book was never intended (and could hardly have functioned) as a substitute for the Hebrew for men, but rather simply enabled those men who did not understand the Hebrew of the prayers to have some comprehension of what they were saying in prayer, and also rendered the synagogal service comprehensible to women, who in only relatively rare cases understood Hebrew well enough to understand the The assumption of the title page—that the audience of the book was women alone—was simply a convenient fiction in a society in which all men were obligated to know Hebrew, but, as many documents of the time—including this book's preface—make quite clear, a great percentage of them did not. The compiler/translator, for instance, there makes use of the common modesty trope in which he claims that he was not himself well educated (he claims to be an 'ignoramus'), and additionally, ultimately on the basis of the Talmudic suggestion that praying without understanding the prayers is the practice of a fool, he offers the prayer book in the vernacular. In addition to several representative translations of prayers, the book's title page, preface, and colophon are here included in their entirety, since they provide valuable information about the purpose and creators of the book. The original printing was unfoliated; a modern hand has numbered the folios. The title page, such as it is, is not a conventional title page, for it does not identify the book as such, but rather begins simply as an advertisement to potential buyers of the book. The only extant copy of the 1544 edition has pervasive black and light-brown ink underlinings, marginal comments, vowel pointings, numberings of items, etc.; almost all of the comments are in Latin or German. In a microfilm of the text, it is often impossible to determine whether a particular vowel pointing is original or not, since the original printing also points many Yiddish words and does not always point as one might expect in Hebrew words (often added by the later commentator). Autopsy of the original text alone enables one to distinguish the original printed pointings from those added later by hand. Source: Ichenhausen, 1544 [Chaim b. David Schwartz (Shahor)]; extant: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, rar. 1732. Wolf, Edition: Grunbaum, 296-321; Staerk/Leitzmann, 142-8; ;28 ,36-7; Birnbaum, 'Specimens', 162 P| salms 6 Hebrceische Research: Moritz Steinschneider, 'Deutsche Gebetbucher', Bibliographic, 12 (1872), 125-9; Steinschneider, Serapeum, 338^0, suppl. ;71-55 361; Steinschneider, Serapeum Handschriften, 424; ;281-279 ,117-113 ;42 ,85 ,64 ,44

248

;94-93 Baumgarten, 353-56; ;135-127 ,(1987-1986) 56 .92-69,(1991)

Title page (fol. Ir):

5

10

Preface (fos. lv-2r):

5

10

15

1544

249

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

55

250

1544

60

65

70

75

80

85

90

90

Grunbaum als.

1544

Prayers: (fos. 2v-3v):

251

252

From

From

1544

section (fol. 63v):

section (fol. 116v):

1544

253

Colophon (fol. 167v):

5

10

15

20

25

254

1545

49 Translation of Psalms Translated by Elijah b. Asher Halevi Ashkenazi [Elia Levita / Elye Bokher] (1545) [excerpts]

While Elia Levita's translation was the first published Yiddish translation of the Psalms, it was by no means the first Yiddish translation. His version was based on the earlier manuscript traditions of translation, as exemplified in the translation of 1490 (EYT 22) excerpted above, which, as Levita indicates in the preface, render the Psalms 'according to grammar', i.e. quite literally and according to the syntax of the Hebrew Bible. Levita's translation is somewhat more idiomatic, but is in fact still quite literal. As the preface further explains, the translation was suggested to Levita by Cornelius Adelkind in Venice and then printed by him as well. He also identifies his audience directly as female and divides the psalter into seven sections, so that a woman can read one section every day and thus follow the practice of re-reading the entire psalter every week. The translation was well received and was reprinted a number of times, serving as a model for other translators, although as soon as the more idiomatic style of translation developed, the popularity of this style receded. On Elia Levita, see the headnote to the entry Mlo:i!O S33 (EYT 33); for other texts by Elia Levita, see EYT 34,35, 42, 44. Source: Venice, 1545 [Meir Parenzo/Cornelius Adelkind] (unfoliated); extant: Oxford, Bodleian, Opp. 12°. 167; St. 1268; Cowley, 115 and 173; Zedner 126;IDCJ-43-94/l. Edition: Griinbaum, 552-4, 53-87 [preface, Psalm 18, 104]; Staerk/Leitzmann, 148-55.

255

1545

Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 360 and 363; 48-3 116 ,110 ,98 ,79 ,65 ,28 144 185-184; Baumgarten, 63-9, 86, 127-8, 139, 193, 209; Nechama Leibowitz, 'Die Ubersetzungstechnik der judisch-deutschen Bibeliibersetzungen des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts dargestellt an den Psalmen', in BGDSL 55 (1931), 377-463; rpt. 1971 (Diss., Marburg, 1931); Shlomo Noble, ;(1943 'Sacred and Secular in the Language of the Yiddish Bible Translation', Yivo Annual of Jewish Social Science, \ (1946), 274-82; Gerard E. Weil, Elie Levita: Humaniste et Massorete (1469-1549) (Leiden: Brill, 1963);

(1964 Jean ;190-165 ,(1977 , Baumgarten, 'Les Traductions de la Bible en yidich (XVIe—XVIIe siecles) et la Zeenah ureenah (Bale 1622) de Yaakov ben Ishak Achkenazi de Janow', REJ 144 (1985), 305-10; .135-127 ,(1987-1986) 56, Title page:

Preface:

5

10

256

1545

15

20

Psalm [14]:

Psalm [17]:

1545

257

258

Psalm [23]:

Psalm [86]:

1545

1546

259

Psalm [100]:

50

Translation of

Yosifon Translated by DTK *7NDft / Michael Adam (1546) [excerpts]

This historical narrative was attributed by Rashi to Josephus Flavius, the Jewish historian of the Hellenistic period, which then became the traditional ascription, although the text was actually written in Hebrew in southern Italy during the tenth century. The author begins by relating the peoples of the table of nations from Genesis 10 to peoples of his own day, proceeds to a sketching of the founding of Rome, and then goes on to the history of the period of the Second Temple, ending with the fall of Masada. The author's primary sources were Latin verand sions of Josephus' the Latin Apocrypha, medieval chronicles, and, perhaps less importantly, a knowledge of Talmudic literature. The author was a talented

260

1546

historian and storyteller who commanded an excellent biblical Hebrew style. In the twelfth century, the book was adapted, revised, even rewritten, and the revised version became the basis of all printed editions. The Yiddish translation is both quite faithful to the Hebrew original and idiomatic in its use of Yiddish, which was an unusual combination of characteristics in the mid-sixteenth century. The translator, Michael Adam, was most probably also responsible for the translation of the Pentateuch, Haftarot, and Megillot that appeared in (Zurich, 1546). The early Yiddish printing of Constance 1544, and the is quite richly illustrated with fifty woodcuts, such that it has been the claimed as the most beautiful printed book in Old Yiddish. Due to the astonishing scope of the book's contents, it is provided with a detailed table of contents. The selections edited here include (1) portions of the adventures of Alexander the Great in Asia. The cycle of legends—in Greek, Latin, and the vernaculars—that had grown up around the figure of Alexander since antiquity had developed as one of its essential features a broadly exoticizing depiction of distant lands almost as if conceived as modern science-fiction, which included a bigoted and denigrating depiction of the cultures that inhabited those lands as irrational, sub-human, animal-like races. Neither the author of the Hebrew nor his Yiddish translator was immune to this tradition; (2) the Maccabean Wars; (3) a brief description of how to read and write Yiddish that was added to the first edition of the Yiddish text (the essential passages of which are pirated from [Isny 1542], EYT43). the relevant section of Source: Zurich, 1546 [Christoph Froschauer]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, O.I.8. Art.Seld.; Opp. 4°. 1402 [olim 1685]; St. 6033,11; Cowley, 32, 332; IDCJ-43-139/1. Edition: Grilnbaum, 345-57, 556-7; edition of Hebrew text: Wout J. van Bekkum, ed., A Hebrew Alexander ;(1978 , Romance, according to ms. London, Jews' College, no. 145 (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peelers, 1992). ;223-222 ,140-129 Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 88; ;378-373 ;266-259 ,111-110 ,151 ;223 Baumgarten, 39, 69, 74, 88, 134; 2 ,(1928 168-135 2 1928 515-511 ,(1974

1546

Alexander the Great and the Amazons (fos. 78v-80v)

261

262

1

1546

1546

2 3

Gloss printed in right margin: Gloss printed in right margin:

263

1546

264

The Maccabean Wars (fos. 114r-116r)

4 5

Gloss printed in margin:

1546

6 7

265

266

1546

'How to Read and Write Yiddish': 8

8 The edition was foliated by the printer beginning with the text proper; thus all introand the table of contents) is ductory matter (the prefatory note, the Hebrew unnumbered; the gathering mark of the prefatory note is LLI 2. In Bodleian O.l.S.Art.Seld, the note is found on the second actual leaf (r and v) of the book, immediately following the title page, while in Bodleian, Opp 4° 1402, all 'preliminary' matter is bound at the end of the volume.

1546

9

Isaiah 40:29.

267

51 Translation of

Ashkenazic Siddur (anon. 1549) [excerpts]

This prayer book was printed by Cornelius Adelkind in Venice in 1549, and while it is primarily in Hebrew (as is to be expected), it nonetheless rather surprisingly has a Yiddish-language title page and numerous Yiddish-language chapter headings and directions and remarks about how to prepare for and execute various aspects of liturgical usage. Of this last type are the three pages, predominantly in Yiddish, found in the section on Passover, here edited. As is often the case with early Yiddish texts, it is difficult to determine here whether the text is conceived as rhymed verse that is only sporadically metrical or simply as rhymed prose; here it is set as prose. The bold Hebrew font here represents the square font of the original text; the standard square font here represents the Sephardic semi-cursive ('Rashi') font of the original. On the phenomenon of Yiddish translations of the see EYT 48. Source: Venice, 1549 [Cornelius Adelkind]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian, Opp. 8°. 664 [olim 579]; St. 2080; Cowley, 532. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 338-40, suppl. 361; Steinschneider, Serapeum Handschriften, 424; ,85 ,64 ,44 ;71-55 ;94-93 Baumgarten, 319-62; 1648 (1928-1927) 268N-267N 296-294 ,265-263 ,38-26 (1928 ;58-45 ,(1940) 16 50 7H ;462-456 1981-1980 .92-69 ,(1991)

Title page (fol. Ir):

1549

Excerpt from Passover liturgy (fos. 267r-268v):

269

270

1553

52 Translation of Meir b. Isaac Nehorai, 'Akdomous Milin' (anon. 1553) [complete]

This difficult and dense Aramaic poem, composed by R. Meir ben Isaac Nehorai of Worms (eleventh century), was originally recited on Shavuot in the Ashkenazic synagogue rite before the targum of Exodus 19-20 (the theophany at Sinai and Ten Commandments), in the following manner: Exodus 19: 1 was read

1553

271

in Hebrew, followed by followed by alternating Hebrew and targum, two or three verses at a time. The poem now generally precedes the reading of the Torah, in order to avoid breaching the injunction against interrupting that reading. The poem consists of forty-five couplets, the first twenty-two of which form a double alphabetic acrostic, while the remainder form an acrostic of the poet's name and a blessing: The poem presents a mystical view of God's creation of the world, praise of God as lawgiver, an explanation of Israel's faithfulness to God through all tribulation, and an eschatological description of the end of days and the world to come. The text is often now printed with the final two letters of each Aramaic versealong the left margin, thus emphasizing via the first and last letters of the alphabet that Torah study is cyclical and endless. Various Yiddish translations were executed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Two of the earliest translations are edited here from manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford: Opp. 607 (copied by Simon b. Judah ha-Cohen) and Can. Or. 12. They are both distinct from the translation by Meir b. Isaac Hazzan (Cowley, 419) that became the standard in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century printed editions. In these manuscript versions, as was common practice in bilingual Jewish texts in the European manuscript tradition, the original text (here clearly the Aramaic text) alternates with the translation, stanza by stanza (or as here, couplet by couplet). In inconsistent fashion and scattered through the text of manuscript Opp. 607, one notes the practice of including syntactical construe marks, which specify word-by-word or phrase-by-phrase translation equivalents of the original text. Three methods are employed: corresponding words or syntactic elements of the two texts are marked interlinearly with corresponding letters of the alphabet; the original text is marked with letters, while the Yiddish text is divided into corresponding units (by raised-dot punctuation) without interlinear alphabetical marking; the Yiddish text is so divided without any marking of the Aramaic text. The Yiddish translation of MS Opp. 607 does not reproduce the acrostic of the original, but is so very literal as often to make the Yiddish comprehensible only by means of comparison with the Aramaic; its purpose is clearly to elucidate the original text rather than to stand as a text on its own. It thus obviously corresponds to that body of quasi-gloss-like texts characteristic particularly of the earliest period of Yiddish translation of holy texts. The edition here is arranged as in the manuscripts—with alternating Aramaic couplet and translation (here with both translations; the numbering of the couplets is an editorial addition) thus: (a) Aramaic from Opp. 607, (b) Yiddish translation from Opp. 607, (c) Yiddish translation from Can. Or. 12. Beginning on fol. 5v (1. 28) of Opp. 607, the beginnings of some (Yiddish and/or Aramaic) stanzas are marked by a row of (four or five) dots extending up diagonally into the right margin from the line's first word. The first word of each Aramaic couplet is writ-

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ten in square script (excepting the first word of the poem). The edition of the Aramaic text here tends toward rather a strict reproduction of the manuscript form, thus preserving some forms that deviate noticeably from both standard grammar and the standard modern edition, in order to illustrate this particular text tradition (the standard forms are specified in the notes). Sources: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Opp. 607 [ohm 1261], fos. lr-9r [c.1600]; Neubauer, 1216; Oxford, Bodleian Libary, MS Can. Or. 12, fos. 110r-116r[1553];Neubauer, 1217; I 14-13 Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 16, 24; Steinschneider, Serapeum 71-55 Handschriften, 389; Ernst Daniel Goldschmidt, 'Akdamut Millin', £711, 479-80.

1

2

3

2,1 3,2

Can. Or. 12 Opp. 607

standard modern editions

+1553

273

4

5

6

7

8

Can. Or. 12 Can. Or. 12 final word stricken. 8,1 modern standard edition

5,3 6,3

Can. Or. 12

with

274

1553

9

10

11

12

13

9,2 10,2 10,3

11,2 12,1 12,3 13,1 13,3

with final word stricken, Opp. 607 is added interlinear above. with first letter group and the single Can. Or. 12 stricken. Opp. 607 preceded by two letters stricken. Can, Or. 12 Can. Or. 12 twice, first stricken. Can. Or. 12 Can. Or. 12 preceded by

stricken

1553

275

14

15

16

17

18

19

] Opp. 607 V is punctated with both, and ] repeated in unpointed cursive above the line (one underneath the other) both and Lan. (Jr. standard edition ! with strickei 18,2 Opp. 607 '

15.1 16,1

initial N is pointed with modern Opp. 607 Can. Or. 12

276

1553

20

21

22

23

24

19,2 20,1 21,1 22,1 24,1

Opp. 607 preceded b' Can. Or. standard modern edition standard modem edition Can. Or. 12 DN.

which is stricken.

1553

277

25

26

27

28

29

standard modern edition standard modern edition standard modern edition

25,1 26,1 27,1

Can. Or. 12 Can. Or. 12

standard modern

edition Opp. 607 letter stricken before final p Opp. 607 twice; the first, in cursive, is smeared and marked for deletion; the second is in square Can. Or. 12 standard modern edition 29,1

27,2 28,1

29,2

Opp. 607 added interlinear above.

278

1553

30

31

32

33

34

30,1 31,1 31,2 32,3 33,2 33,3 34,1

standard modern edition Can. Or. 12 Can. Or. 12 Can. Or. 12 with first word stricken. Opp. 607 with first word stricken. Can. Or. 12 Opp. 607 Can. Or. 12 twice, first stricken. standard modern edition Can. Or. 12

1553

279

36

37

38

39

36,1 36,2 37,1

standard modern edition which is stricken. Opp. 607 preceded by Opp. 607 interposed between the words is WB which has been stricken Can. Or. 12 Can. Or. 12 modern standard editioi 39,1

280

1553

40

41

42

43

39,3 40,1

Can. Or. 12 preceded by cursive

stricken

modern standard edition

Can Or. 12

, stricken. Opp. 607 preceded by standard modern edition Can. Or. 12 Can. Or. 12 modern standard edition standard edition Can. Or. 12 standard modern edition 43,1 Opp.607 preceded by VI, stricken. 43,2

40,2 41,1 42,1

modern

1554

281

44

53 On The Ages of Life' (anon. 1554) [complete]

This poem offers a fascinating variation on the common theme of bilingual lyric in Ashkenazic culture: after a summarizing 'preface', the poem comprises twelve pairs of alternating Old Yiddish and Judeo-Italian (Italkit, Italiot, Italikian) quatrains, rhymed AABB. Based on a variety of evidence, it is clear that the Yiddish version is a translation from the Judeo-Italian; both derive from a Hebrew source (xairun). While this language combination is quite rare in the texts extant from the period, it demonstrates what is otherwise well documented: the long duration of the Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazic settlement in northern Italy. The poem's quasi-philosophical topic is a traditional one: the life of humans is divided into twelve periods, extending up to the age of 100. Through the first half of life, humans increase in strength, only then to become progressively weaker. Each age of life is addressed by a bilingual pair of stanzas, introduced by an initial word that identifies the representative symbol of the particular

44,1 44,2 45,1

Can. Or. 12 standard modern edition Opp.607 followed by two stricken letters. Can. Or. 12 standard modern edition

Can. Or. 12 '

282

1554

period of life: in all of which, except the first and last, humans are compared to animals (king, lion, etc.)- While the general topic is a common one in both European literatures and the Jewish tradition, strong similarities between the treatment of the topic in this poem and the midrashic literature clearly indicate its primary dependence on that Jewish tradition. The subject term beginning each Yiddish stanza is written in a (generally) larger script that inconsistently approximates the form of square script; the remainder of the stanza is written in Ashkenazic cursive. The manuscript, copied by Kalonymus b. Simeon (dated: Venice, middle of Shevat [5]314 = midJanuary 1554), includes a wide variety of text types, including biblical books, tales, two songs by Elia Levita, hymns, and prayers. Leo Landau speculated (without specific evidence) that Elia Levita could also have been the author of the poem. Landau printed the Italian text (possibly Mantuan dialect, with some Venetian features) as reconstructed by Cesare Foligno. The Italian text, which still awaits its definitive edition with adequate commentary, is here edited from the manuscript, with the relevant comments and emendations by Landau/Foligno indicated in the footnotes. Source: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Can. Or. 12, fos. 21 lb-213b; Neubauer, 1217; | 14-13 ,1!3J132. Edition: Leo Landau, 'A German-Italian Satire on the Ages of Man', MLN 31 (1916), 465-71 [edn. in quasi-Middle High German transcription]. Research: Leo Landau, 'Some Parallels to Shakespeare's "Seven Ages'", JEGP 19 (1920), 382-96; | ,TDU> ;125-124 ,nyiD ,pnaff ;205-178

1,2Y 1,21

Landau emends to tor. Landau places second uri in parentheses.

1554

283

2

*}j

4

1,31

2,11 2,21 2,31 2,41 3,21 3,31

3,41 4,1\ 4,3\

preceded by "IBS which has been stricken by the scribe. Landau reads the first words of the line as unge umport, which he deletes and then emends the entire line to port' grando amor. Landau el [a] ani; he comments: 'The MS. may have had elaani; one a standing for modern ha'. The MS offers no such evidence. Landau deletes and comments: 'MS. gimtre (?).: Landau reads Sown, emends to sun and comments 'the suggestion is very tentative' Landau purcel. Landau dicret. Landau comments: 'Dr. Cowley suggests a possible slip of the pen transforming an m into an a. We would then have mj dret\ the original must have had mat or ma'. The regrouping of the other letters is self-evident'. Landau emends to cabret. O prededed by 1"0 Q which is stricken by scribe. Landau suocht.

284

1554

5

6

7

4,21 4,31 5.31 5,41 6,11 6,41 7,11

Landau: 'probably to be read cresciut. Landau: st' in guart de tanto. Landau reads as pat and then emends to fat. Likewise in 6,31 sopizent/sofizent; 7,21 piuli/fluli; 7,31 pa/fa; 10,41 and \\,31 par/far. O an ink smear partially obscures the text; the second word may read , as Landau indicates in the note (el liglis kat) but omits from the text. the first word of the following Yiddish stanza, here 0 preceded b' stricken Landau excises and includes only in note, followed by a question-mark. which is stricken. O preceded by

1554

285

8

9

10

11

8,21 8,41 9,3Y 9,4Y 9,11 9,41

Landau mancad. O twice, first stricken 1 0 twice, the first smeared by ink spill and stricken | 0 twice, the first smeared by ink spill and stricken. O twice, first stricken. Landau emends to simpr.

1554

286

12

54 'Riddle' (anon. 1554) [complete]

Riddles were among the most characteristically Jewish amusements during the medieval period. The Jewish literary traditions are also rich in short riddling texts. Proverbs 30 comprises a series of riddles, while Ezekiel 17 includes an elaborate moral enigma. A common form of the expression of quasi-gnomic wisdom in the Talmud itself takes the form of riddles. In the Oxford, Bodleian Library, manuscript, Can. Or. 12, a large compendium of Yiddish lyric, satire, and

11,4Y 12,11 12,21 12,31 12,41

O

Landau reads cumpii mid and suggests emendation to cumpid. Landau comments: 'I cannot see the meaning' 1 ,andau vich. 0 preceded by N, stricken.

1555

287

other texts, there is also a brief collection of riddles (fos. 214r-215r). The one included here is typical in its structure and focus. Source: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Can. Or. 12, fol. 215r; Neubauer, 1217; 14-13 ,ianox. Research: 15 .3 ju&iw yv'MKm ,VO'3N -W j'iPSOiJ^a'a' .^OW ;207-206 ,]XKbw ;229-225 ,(1925) | August Wiinsche, Die Ratselweisheit bei den Hebraern, mit Hinblick aufandere Volker (Leipzig: O. Schulze, 1883); Israel Abrahams, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1896; rpt. 1958), 384-7.

55 Gumprekht of Szczebrzeszyn, 'Hanukkah' (c.1555) [excerpt]

Two poems by Gumprekht, a teacher originally from the Lublin region who lived in Venice, are preserved in a single manuscript, both of which are addressed, as was conventional, to 'pious women and girls', specifically in this case to mto, daughter of nnato, with the purpose of elucidating the origin of the Jewish holidays of Hanukkah and Purim. In each case he recasts in Yiddish poetic form the founding stories of the holidays, and in each case those stories have undergone a great deal of augmentation through midrashic elaboration. The first 1

with first word stricken.

288

1555

poem (fos. Ir-lOr), in nine-line stanzas (rhymed ABABCCDDD) presents the Jewish resistance to and ultimate rebellion against Antiochus' persecution. Among the casualties of the Jewish attack are, rather anachronistically, subjects of Holofemes (i:niD''1?x), who then seeks vengeance by besieging Jerusalem, only to be beheaded by Judith in a streamlined version of that post-biblical tale. The second poem (fos. 1 lr-30v) is a poetic reworking of the book of Esther in fourteen-line stanzas (AABCCBDEDEFFGG), based on the ^ti? mrm and the midrashic tradition. This poem is so very close in narrative structure and content to the VDW-un-nwnK' of 1697 (EYT 120), that one could easily imagine Gumprekht's text itself being dramatized as a Purim play, and he does in fact associate the text directly with Purim plays (11. 511-14). Gumprekht claims that he wrote the first poem quickly and thus had no time to compose a new melody, but rather uses the melody of the song: ixon ipNl"i "tin TT oin tz/xn p^T^O ~|X, which was widely known among his contemporaries in Germany, but apparently not in Venice. The reference to the burning of books in Venice (in the prologue to the Esther poem) suggests dating the texts to the period of disturbances in Venice from 1553 to 1563. While the scribe is unidentifed, a certain Isaac is identified on the last page as owner of the manuscript in the year (5)340 ( = 1579-80). Here the Judith section and the concluding Hanukkah section of the first poem are edited. Source: Budapest, Magyar Tudomanyos Akademia Konyvyara (Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Oriental Department, Kaufmann Collection, MS 397, fos. 6r-10r; Max Weiss, Katalog der hebraischen Handschriften und Bucher in der Bibliothek des Prof. Dr. David Kaufman (Frankfurt am Main: J. Kauffmann, 1906), 132. Edition: Moritz Stern, ed., Lieder des venezianischen Lehrers Gumprecht von Szczebrszyn [sic] (urn 1555), "iVsnpHin "|X13W 17BQ"0 nav / Deutsche Sprachdenkmaler in hebraischen Schriftcharakteren, 1 (Berlin: Hausfreund, 1922), 9-17. Research: Grunbaum, 380-5; | ;31-28 ,7^)3 ,pnaw ;48-3 ^TO^TO | Baumgarten, 453; Chone Shmeruk, 'Purim-Shpil', EJ XIII, 1396-404; \rnna ,p>nau? son rraipxn ^BIT) xna yoim DWSJI r-^m ^ TT/T/T ,1750-1697 ,B"7"j D"x-i/?a ;133 ,(1979 pwtf? D^xi^'n n^ix^n | Wulf-Otto Dreefien, 'Midraschepik und Bibelepik: Biblische Stoffe in der volkssprachlichen Literatur der Juden und Christen des Mittelalters im deutschen Sprachgebiet', ZDP 100 (Sonderheft Jiddisch, 1981), 78-97; Chava Turniansky, 'On Old-Yiddish Biblical Epics', IFR 8 (1991), 26-33; Jutta Baum-Sheridan, Studien zu den westjiddischen Estherdichtungen (Hamburg: Buske, 1996).

1555

289

25

25,9 28,7

B twice, first incomplete and stricken. B preceded by J-like mark and space for one letter, thus perhaps

290

1555

30

29,9 32,3

B preceded by i8!3, stricken. B a later hand has placed two dots above X1! and one dot above "TO, indicating, according to Stern, that the words should be transposed: ITT TO.

1555

291

35

B stricken by later hand; most of correction on margin lost through trimming: B twice, first stricken. 36.7

34,7

292

1555

40

1555

42,4 44,9

B preceded by U-like mark. Stern emends to V"N, with note; also in 45,5

293

294

1555

45

45,5

B later hand corrects to

1556

295

56 Jacob b. Moses Halevi Segal Moellin [Maharil], Responsa (1556) [excerpts]

The Maharil was born in Mainz in the mid-fourteenth century and died in Worms in 1427. He studied in Austria before returning to Mainz to succeed his father as rabbi. There he founded a yeshivah at which were trained the most prominent rabbis of the next generation, including Jacob Weil. The foremost scholar of the Talmud of his time, Moellin was the leader of the Jewish communities in the German-speaking lands, and he was consulted on halakhic issues by communities throughout central Europe. His rulings became the basis of the traditions followed in many such territories thereafter. He was a famous lin, made a scholarly study of astronomy according to the general scientific practice of early modern science, wrote Hebrew poetry, and was also the author of a famous and influential collection of Dnraa (V'Tra 730, Sabbioneta, 1556). The Yiddish of the responsa is anything but literary, but it is generally quite idiomatic and as good an indication of spoken Yiddish of the period as is extant. His 49.3 1""7 r™ ] B the first three letters are stricken by a later hand and replaced by UtOTQ, interlinear above. The stricken letters are now difficult to decipher; Stem l""7"lXi. 49.4 T\nyo ] B stricken by later hand and replaced with 'N'jlTN p"7p, interlinear above.

296

1556

responsa date from the first quarter of the fifteenth century but were not published until the Venice edition of 1549. The early published editions were apparently based on a poor manuscript and are consequently error-ridden. The excerpts here are taken from the edition of Cremona in 1556 and all come from a single entry (IX, fos. 43r-46v). Source: Cremona, 1556 [Vincenzo Conti]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian, Opp. 4°. 625; St. 5567,9; Cowley, 300. Edition:

.196-115 ,(1929: Research: Gtidemann, Geschichte, III, 17-30 and 129-225 [on Isserlein and responsa]; | ;32 .nsaa'S | Baumgarten, 103, 274, 307; | £J"7" /to ,"?S"i3 IDV ; 1 977 ,WH" '17rail7 - niDW1? m'H'n - | Sidney Steiman, Custom and Survival: A Study of the Life and Work of Rabbi Jacob Molin (Moelln) (New York: Bloch, 1963).

fol. 43r:

fol. 44r:

fol. 44v:

fol. 46r:

1

maxi ] Rubashov

2

TO 1 Rubashov omits.

57 The Book of Daniel (anon. 1557) [excerpt]

This anonymous text presents a version of the biblical narrative of Daniel based especially on post-biblical midrashic sources that explicitly position the tale in the larger context of the culture of exile, which is defined by the cycle of sinpunishment-forgiveness-sin. The passage excerpted here is from the end of the text, as it moves from the Babylonian to the Persian context and beyond: to the Jewish return from exile under Cyrus and the rebuilding of the Temple. The poem comprises 496 four-line stanzas (plus an eight-stanza preface and a colophon), rhymed AABB, typical of early Yiddish midrashic epic. While scholars date the composition of the poem to the fifteenth century, the first edition of the poem was not published until 1557, in Basel; three further printed editions from the sixteenth and seventeenth century and one manuscript from 1600 followed, all of which derive directly from the edition of 1557; that editio princeps is the basis of the edition here, with readings from the derivative texts included only when they clarify a reading in the Basel edition. The Hebrew numbering of the stanzas is retained here. Source: (1) Basel, 1557 [Jakob Kiindig], pp. 92-100 (B); extant: Basel, Universitatsbibliothek, FA VI 34 (2); Prijs, 97; (2) Cracow, 1588 [Isaac b. Aaron Prostitz] (C); extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, 4°. W. 67. Th. (4) [not in the Oppenheimer collection, as mistakenly attributed by DreeBen/ Milller]; IDC J43-80/1; (3) Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Opp. 607 (olim Opp. 1261) [copy of B]; (4) Prague, 1609 [Judah Leib and Azriel, sons of Moses Shad] (PI); extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 4°. 1429; IDC J-43-16/1; (5) Prague, 1673 [Jacob and Joseph, sons of Judah Bak] (P2): Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 4°. 173 and Opp. Add. 4°. II. 227; St. 1294-8; Cowley, 116. Edition: Wulf-Otto DreeBen and Hermann-Josef Miiller, Doniel: Das altjiddische Danielbuch nach dem Easier Druck von 1557, 2 vols., Litterae 59 (Goppingen: Kummerle, 1978) [with facsimile of Basel, 1557 (vol. II), Germanizing Roman-alphabet transcription, introduction, and glossary (vol. I)]Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum Handschriften, 432; Ginzberg, Legends, IV, 326-61 and VI, 413-50; | ,28-27 ,;>^3 ,J?TIBU? ;199-182 ,0^1D ,pnyaw ;88-87 | Baumgarten, 67, 86, 140, 174, 209; Benno Fischer, Daniel und seine

298

1557

drei Gefahrten in Talmud und Midrasch (Diss., Bern, 1906; Temesvar 1906); | 3-2 ;586-585 .DU> ,(1928) | Leib Fuks, 'Met Jiddische Danielboek', Nieuw I.sraelietisch Weekblad, 108/1 (9 September 1972), 33; Wulf-Otto DreeBen, 'Midraschepik und Bibelepik: Biblische Stoffe in der volkssprachlichen Literatur der Juden und Christen des Mittelalters im deutschen Sprachgebiet', ZDP 100 (Sonderheft Jiddisch, 1981), 78-97; H.-J. Muller, 'Zur Edition des altjiddischen "Donielbuchs"', Trierer Beitrdge, 57-62; Wulf-Otto DreeBen, 'Zur altjiddischen Synonymik', Trierer Beitrage, 63-7; Chava Turniansky, 'On Old-Yiddish Biblical Epics', 1FR 8 (1991), 26-33.

Daniel at the Court of Ahasuerus (Xerxes) Cyrus and the Second Temple

437

440

439,4

CPI

1557

299

445

446,3

300

1557

450

449,1 DreeBen '[si] *Ester hamalca rift* [zu] Hassach, 450,1 450,4 451.1

der der kunigsn diner was.'

1557

301

455

454,3 B 458 B stanza misnumbered nyo. 459,3 | BCP1P2 DreeBen adds vwne/(cf. Ezra 1:11). 459,4 |CP1

302

1557

460

465

460,2

BCP1P2 DreeBen changes to Scheschbazar (cf. Ezra 1: 8 ff).

1557

303

470

469,3

1557

304

475

477,3

B

58 Translation of: Pentateuch with AbridgedRashi Translated by: wsna rr1? K"ij?an Djnpa ^Tftl n^a p miTT Judah b. Moses Naphtali (Lob Brzesc / Leyb Bresh) of Cremona (1560) [excerpts]

While Leyb Brzesc's translation was ultimately based on the Augsburg and Constance translations of 1544, he radically transformed their slavishly literal style into a somewhat more idiomatic Yiddish style, which nonetheless in many respects still adhered to the older literal syntactic tradition of biblical translation. In order to broaden the appeal of his book, the editor integrated midrashic material into the text; added as the outer column to the page in a smaller mashait font is a Yiddish translation of an abbreviated version of Rashi's commentary on the Bible (here it is printed following the text of the biblical translation). The translation of Rashi's commentary is even more idiomatic than the biblical translation, probably since it had no long tradition of biblical translation style restricting it. The preface to the translation comprises twenty-four rhymed verses, printed in square font and with vowel pointing, thus providing a great deal of information about Yiddish pronunciation of the period. As as result, Judah Joffe remarks (with some hyperbole) that the page represents: 'what in my sober opinion is the most important (single page) printed document for the pronunciation of sixteenth-century Western Yiddish.' Because of the unusual arrangement of the preface on the page, the original formatting is here retained. Source: Cremona, 1560 [Vincenzo Conti]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian, Opp. fol. 109; St. 1189, 5748; Cowley, 115, 367; IDC J-43-22/1. Edition: Staerk/Leitzmann, 114-30; Wolf, 42-3. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 348; Grunbaum, 12, 53-75, 155-8; ;220 ,yti3>wyi ,pns ;48-3 .ixabntr? | Baumgarten, 80, 109-61; Nechama Leibowitz, 'Die Obersetzungstechnik der judisch-deutschen Bibeliibersetzungen des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts dargestellt an den Psalmen', in BGDSL 55 (1931), 377-463; rpt. 1971 (Diss., Marburg, 1931); |

306

1560

;(1943 ^vn 1 1 Shlomo Noble, 'Sacred and Secular in the Language of the Yiddish Bible Translation', Yivo-Annual of Jewish Social Science, 1 (1946), 274-82; Judah A. Joffe, 'Dating the Origin of Yiddish Dialects', FOY I, 102-21 [facsimile facing p. 118]; | ]ix ]2;J3isVTnvn i x' .VD^S^mu mn ,(1977 ,Tmran yiypn in^wn1) /TO 37 IDO ,' "nrfoi nrss" iin TID ISXHDWIXX:! -iDon] 175-112 ,(1982) 3 n^w ,'nutria wv 'OIDT' .pna^ wn ;190-165 ;[12 | Jean Baumgarten, 'Les Traductions de la Bible en yidich (XVIe-XVIIe siecles) et la Zeenah ureenah (Bale 1622) de Yaakov ben Ishak Achkenazi de Janow', REJ 144 (1985), 305-10; Erika Timm, 'Blitz and Witzenhausen', *39-*66 in: .(1993

Preface (fol. lv):

9 the patach is clear under the worm hole. 23-24 library tape reinforcing the deteriorating and edge of the page covers all but the last four letters of the first column of 1. 23 and all of

1560

Noah (fos. 4v-6r):

the first column of 1. 24; the text is legible via back-lighting.

307

308

1

1560

1560

309

310

2

1560

C the upper stroke of the X is missing, such that it appears as a 3 .

1560

3 4 5

311

312

1560

59 Letter from Rachel b. Abraham to her son, Moses b. Eliezer (1565) [complete]

This letter is one of a group of seven letters written during the 1560s and preserved first in the Fostat Genizah and now in Cambridge University Library. Rachel (Rokhl) b. Abraham from Prague, who was living in Jerusalem, wrote six of the letters, five of them to her son Moses in Cairo, and the other to Rabbi Jacob Katz in Venice. The remaining letter was a reply written by Moses to his mother on the same page as one of his mother's letters. While the letters provide a wealth of direct information about the practicalities of life in the Yiddishspeaking Ashkenazic settlements in the Jewish communities of Jerusalem and Egypt during the sixteenth century, they also afford a glimpse of the world-view of a pious, devoted, and above all intelligent citizen, wife, and mother in the Jewish community of Jerusalem of the period. The prefatory material to Turniansky's edition is an exhaustive (and definitive) study of the letters and their social and historical context. The letter edited here is written on both recto and verso of the page; the verso is written in slightly unusual manner (probably due to the particular folding of the page as a letter), in that the top and bottom halves of the page are written in opposite orientations, i.e. the one is 'upside down' in relation to the other. The letter is to be read thus: first the recto, then the page is turned from bottom-to-top (not side-to-side) to read the verso (below identified as Verso a), then rotated 180 degrees to read the continuation of the verso (below identified as Verso b). On early Yiddish letter writing in general, see EYT21. Source: Cambridge, University Library, T.-S. Misc. 36.152. Edition: = 72-65 ,(1941) 7 ; ;237-230 ,(1946 .210-149 ,(1984)4, Research: ;137-136 ,fl>/773 ,pnaw | Alfred Landau and Bernhard Wachstein, eds., Judische Privatbriefe aus dem Jahre 1619, Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der Juden in Deutsch-Osterreich 3 (Wien/Leipzig: Braumuller,

314

1565

1911); Andrew Lloyd Sunshine, 'Opening the Mail: Interpersonal Aspects of Discourse and Grammar in Middle Yiddish Letters' (Diss., Columbia, 1992).

Recto:

i

Turniansky

2

3 4

with final letter stricken. Turniansky omits.

5 6

Turniansky Turniansky 8 C interlinear above. 9 C added in right margin with insertion mark here. 10 and comments Turniansky reads with the from Her reading is due to her combination of the first ' in the second letter is the line above; there is not enough space for Turniansky's reading smeared, the space for the third empty, the fourth, if it is a fourth, is an unusual The word remains a crux. 7

1565

315

Verso a:

" In the left margin near the bottom of the page, there are some dozen letters (illegible) written perpendicular to the main text. 12 Turniansky 1""7[X]. 13 ] C The word is badly smeared. Turniansky reads l[ ]ll and offers several possible reconstructions. Under ultraviolet light, the reading t^'ll (one of the possibilities proposed by Turniansky) seems all but certain. M C "IT V'll with first word stricken; Turniansky reads first word "73. 15

Turniansky ST.

16

Turniansky 1"S\ Turniansky reads IT H^n n. Turniansky n. C interlinear above. Turniansky reads the letters as stricken. Turniansky l"TT.

17 18 19 20 21

60 'The Binding of Isaac' (anon. 1570) [complete]

This text presents a version of the traditional story of the averted sacrifice of Isaac from Genesis 22, among whose functions is the testing by the Hebrew god of Abraham's faith and the renewal of the divine covenant with Abraham, his son Isaac, and their future descendants. In this case, as elsewhere in the early Yiddish treatment of biblical motifs, the biblical source material underwent significant modification in the course of time as it became part of a broad tradition of legendary tales. It appears here in a form replete with post-biblical motivic supplements from the Talmud and a broad range of midrashic texts. The text comprises eighty quatrains (rhymed AAAA, BBBB, etc., a form derived from Hebrew poetry), each of which is marked by a series of three or four dots/hooks ascending diagonally from the onset of the stanza's first line up into the right margin. Of the five early text witnesses, three are of major significance: Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS hebr. 589 [P, c.1579, < Italy]; New York, Jewish Theological Seminary [< Judah Joffe Collection], MS 4425 [J, c.1570]; Hamburg, Staats- und Universita'tsbibliothek, cod. hebr. 250, fos. 114r-120v (Steinschneider, Handschriften Hamburg, 209) [H, 1574].1 As a whole, the extant witnesses present a very complex text tradition that ultimately defies the methods and advantages of critical editing. The edition by Matenko/Sloan (in Romanalphabet transcription) is based on the Paris manuscript and offers a selection of readings from the other manuscripts. DreeBen, on the other hand, attempts to construct a stemma, chooses the Hamburg manuscript as his base text, and then constructs an extremely eclectic edition on the general model of a critical edition (in Germanized, Roman-alphabet transcription), but not resulting in a critical edition; his apparatus includes selected variants from all text witnesses. Although the Paris manuscript clearly differs significantly from the lost original composition, it nonetheless presents the most complete early text witness, while DreeBen's argument in favour of the advantages of the Hamburg over the Paris manuscript remains unconvincing. In general the text tradition presents such variation in diction, phraseology, syntax, and stanzaic structure that the various texts could be accounted for only by means of parallel editions. The Paris

1

Additional early text witnesses, not taken into account here: Jerusalem, National and University Library, Heb. 8° 3182 (late 16th c.), includes only st. 1-13, 15-18 and 20; a printed edition, Prague [?], c.1680 [extant: Oxford, Bodleian, 8°. 624 (4); St. 3640; Cowley 333].

1570

317

manuscript is thus edited here without attempting either to force the critical method on this resistant tradition or to present variant readings from other manuscripts that do not lead to a fuller understanding of the text itself. The text is here dated 1570, because the earliest text witness (J) is datable to that year. On the manuscript, see EYT 64. Source: Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS hebr. 589 [Sorbonne 158] [P, c.1579, < Italy], fos. 125v-130r; H. Zotenberg, Catalogues des Manuscrits Hebreux et Samaritains de la Bibliotheque Imperiale (Bibl. Imper. Manuscrits Orientaux Ser. 1) (Paris 1866), 62; Baumgarten, 'Manuscrits Paris', 134-7; | 22,15-14/inns*. Edition: Staerk/Leitzmann, 271-4; Percy Matenko and Samuel Sloan, 'The Aqedath Jishaq; A Sixteenth Century Epic; with Introduction and Notes', in Percy Matenko and Samuel Sloan, Two Studies in Yiddish Culture (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 1-70 [includes ten facsimile plates of the Paris MS]; Wulf-Otto DreeBen, Akedass Jizhak; Ein altjiddisches Gedicht uber die Opferung Isaaks', mil Einleitung und Kommentar kritisch herausgegeben (Diss., Hamburg), Hamburger Beitrage zur Geschichte der Juden, 2 (Hamburg: Leibniz, 1971): Birnbaum. 'Specimens'. 157-8. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 85; Grunbaum, 226; | 48-3 :135 ,123-120 ,nrara ;126-124 J/K3W.J Ginzbers, Legends, I, 271-86 and V, 248-55; I ;199-181 ,ovis ,pnj7Dtf Baumgarten, 172, 371, 377; .a opxa ;318-312 ,213-208 ,[5671] 25

Wulf-Otto DreeBen, 'Midraschepik und Bibelepik: Biblische Stoffe in der volkssprachlichen Literatur der Juden und Christen des Mittelalters im deutschen Sprachgebiet', ZDP 100 (Sonderheft Jiddisch, 1981), 78-97; Chava Turniansky, 'On Old-Yiddish Biblical Epics', IFR 8 (1991), 26-33.

1

318

1570

5

P either final D is stricken or changed to 1, or vice versa. The latter seems most likely, based on the dominant morphology of the text. 8,2 NT I Matenko/Sloan da.

5,1

1570

319

10

15

16,2

Matenko/Sloan/wn.

320

1570

20

25

22,1

P interlinear above.

1570

321

30

33,3

Matenko/Sloan/o/-.

322

1570

35

40

36,1 37,3 40,2

P corrected by scribe from P IN interlinear above; '"pN is not stricken P interlinear above.

Matenko/Sloan voii(e)r.

1570'

41,4

with the first group of letters stricken.

323

324

1570

50

55

with first group of letters stricken, 49,4 corrected by scribe from 56,1 57 P above this stanza, at the top of the page, is written and stricken:

1570

325

60

65

1570

326

70

67,4 70.4 71,4 72,2

Matenko/SIoanyor. corrected by scribe from with first group of letters stricken at line end.

1570

327

75

80

73.4 79,4 80,3

Matenko/Sloan zuftn. Matenko/Sloan liizn. P ink blotch obscures letter, reading likely.

328

1574

61 Zalman the Scribe 'Debate Between Hanukkah and the Other Holidays' (1574) [complete]

In this particular text, both the Yiddish and the Hebrew versions include the acrostic: pm pX identifying the author, who is almost certainly the same Zalman who composed the 'Debate Between Wine and Water', which is transmitted in a manuscript dated 1517 (EYT36, cf. also on the genre of debate poems). Thus, while the transmitted manuscript of the 'Debate Between Hanukkah and the Other Holidays' dates from more than a half-century later, the text's composition was certainly much closer in date to Zalman's other debate poem. The poet is knowledgeable in both the Hebrew poetic tradition and contemporary German practice. Each Hebrew stanza ends with a two-line biblical citation. The three Colophon] following the conventional treble closing formula Matenko/Sloan read ' i i ' g' g' Pixl Salt', which they interpret as: the abbreviated Hehrew-Aramaic formula 'may the Lord strengthen me that I have lived to see the completion', along with the designation of Pixl (Pinkhas) Shalit, the scribe. There is, however, no indication that the last two words constitute a name, nor is there any reference to a which he scribe or writer here. Shmeruk, on the other hand, reads as interprets as [= 1579] (180 Such a use of the name of the month (February) from the civil calendar would have been quite exceptional at the time anywhere but in northern Italy, which is in fact the probable provenance of this manuscript, and there it had become rather common beginning in the late sixteenth century (cf. Colette Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, ed. and trans. Nicholas de Lange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 220). But the dating itself is not possible, since 3 February 1579 was a sabbath, not a Tuesday ('1 'V). The reading of the final letter of the next to last word as ~l is quite problematic, since the letter form is different from any other "I in the text: it seems more likely a "?, although an unusual one "?. Since the final two letters of the word are written as a ligature, the distinction between 3 and 3 disappears, so that one must decide which letter is correct on the basis of context—a context that is, alas, lacking.

329

1574

manuscripts of the poem are all quite error-ridden. The text of Bodleian manuscript, Mich. 311 is here taken as the base text, with substantive variants from the other two manuscripts noted. Shmeruk provides full vocalization of the Hebrew text in his edition (without manuscript evidence); neither that vocalization nor his frequent orthographical imprecisions are noted here. The poem is composed in seven stanzas of thirteen lines each, rhymed AABCCBDEDEFGF. As used in the notes, 'H' and 'Y' identify the Hebrew and the Yiddish texts, respectively. Source: (1) Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Mich. 311 [olim 666]; fos. 107r-108r [M]; Neubauer, 377; (2) Basel, Universitatsbibliothek, Hs. AN.IX.3 [B]; Moi'se Schwab, 'Manuscrits hebreux de Bale', REJ 5 (1882), 250—6 [here, p. 250: '2° Sans cote, in-4°, papier. . .']; (3) Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Opp. 718 [olim 81], fos. 51v-54r [O]; Neubauer, 272. Edition: ,(1963) 47 .176-160 Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum Handschriften, 398; | ,58-57 ; 134-133 ,100-99 ,77-76 | Moritz Steinschneider, ;96-51 'Rangstreitliteratur. Em Beitrag zur vergleichenden Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte', Sitzungsberichte der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, CVI/4 (Vienna: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1908); Chava Turniansky, 'The Evolution of the Poetical Contests in Ashkenaz', in Studies in Yiddish Literature and Folklore (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1986), 60-98, see esp. pp. 70-2.

,1Y ,3H ,4H ,7Y ,8Y ,9H

Shmeruk OB lacking.

O lacking.

Shmeruk corrected by scribe to

interlinear above.

1574

330

2

3

Shmeruk

1,10H

lacking. UIH

L12-13Y

2,1Y 2,2H 2,5H 2,6Y 2,7H 2,8Y 2,9H 2.11H 2.12Y 2,13H 3,1H ' 3,2Y ' 3,4Y ' 3,5Y i

M interlinear above OB lacking. with

OB thus

lacking

OB lacking.

stricken. Shmeruk Shmeruk reads Shmeruk

OB lacking. OB lacking.

1574

331

4

3,6Y 3,7H 3,8Y

Shmeruk line lacking.

Shmeruk

3,10V 3,11Y 3,12H 3,13Y 4,1H 4,2Y with first word stricken; above the y is a colon-like mark; 4,3Y above the 1 is a dot, indicating a reversal of their positions Shmeruk 4,4Y

4,5H 4,6H 4,711 4,8H 4,9H 4.10H 4,11H 4,12-13H 4,13Y

with first three letters stricken

with first word stricken. 4,12YO

332

1574

5

6

5,1H 5,3H 5,4Y 5,5Y 5,6H 5,8Y 5,9H

with 1 stricken

thus B

5,10H 5.11H 5,12-13H B garbled 5,13Y ace. to Deut. 33: 20 (thus O) B 6,1H 6,2Y 0 lacking 6,4H 6,5H 6,6H B B lacking 6.9Y 6,10Y

OB lacking

Shmeruk emends to

OB lacking.

B lacking

333

1574

7

O lacking. 6,1111 B 6,12V B 6,13Y O 7,1Y 7,3Y 7,4H O ; 7,5Y 7,6Y 7,7Y O 7,8H lacking. 7,9-1 OH Wrinkle in page renders the reading difficult but still legible; the lines are added as for well in a different hand, which differs in 7,1 OH 7,9H 7.1 OH which is stricken 7.11H M preceded by

7,12Y T

M after

is stricken

62 Solomon b. Jehiel Luria [Maharshal], Responsa (1575) [excerpt]

Relatively few biographical details are known of Luria's life. He was born c. 1510, perhaps in Poznan, and died in 1573 (or 1574). He was orphaned early and then educated by his maternal grandfather. He became rabbi and head of the yeshivah at Ostrog at the age of 40. Some twenty years later he went to Brisk (Brest-Litovsk) and then Lublin, where he was head of a yeshivah. In 1567 he founded his own yeshivah, where he trained many of the most prominent rabbis of the next generation. The breadth of his knowledge of the Jewish textual tradition, coupled with a strict critical method in dealing with sources, characterizes his works. He composed a wide variety of works, including glosses on, and textual emendations of, the Talmud, and commentaries on liturgical and halakhic texts. Most of his responsa date from the years 1554-73, many of which have extensive passages of testimony in Yiddish; one illustrative example, dated 8 Shevat (5)315 (= 31 December 1554), is edited here; the book itself was published 25 Shevat (5)335 (= 5 February 1575). Source: Lublin, 1575 [Kalonymos Jaffe]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian, Opp. 4°. 629; St. 6950,25; Cowley, 660. Edition and Research: Simon Hurwitz, ed., The Responsa of Solomon ;143-139 ,(1929 Luria (Maharshal): The Legal Decisions of the Famous 16th Century Sage (New York: Bloch, 1938).

Mordecai of Worms, Medical Reference Manual, 1577

335

63 Mordecai of Worms, Medical Reference Manual (1577) [excerpts]

This collection of medical texts is quite typical for the period, comprising at least three variants of the genre, bound together (altogether 184 folios) and including recipes for medical remedies and what now would be deemed treatment by means of psychologically infused placebos (or quackery, depending on one's tolerance of such practices). The book served as a reference manual for a medical practitioner in the late sixteenth century: the owner, compiler, copyist, and perhaps author of some parts of the collection was Mordecai of Worms: (fol. 19r). The manuscript was finished on 24 Sivan (5)337 (= 9 June 1577) in Lendershauscn, near Hafifurt in Bavaria (cf. fol. 170r). Source: Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, PreuBischer Kulturbesitz, MS Or. Qu.867 [unpublished (post-Steinschneider) provisional catalogue, p. 226] Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum Handschriften, 421; | ;211-208 Baumgarten, 421-43; Isak Milnz, Die ;47-42 400 judischen Arzte im Mittelalter: Ein Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichle des Mittelalters (Frankfurt am Main: Kauffmann, 1922); | i 2

3

Rubashov

Rubashov corrects to Rubashov omits. with a blank space in text); the case is dated

in the

336

Mordecai of Worms, Medical Reference Manual, 1577

,(1932)4 18 ;235-223 | Mordecai Bernstein, 'Two Remedy Books in Yiddish from 1474 and 1508', in Studies in Biblical and Jewish Folklore, ed. Raphael Patai et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960), 287-305; Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Ron Barkai, Les Infortunes de Dinah, le livre de la generation, la gynecologie juive au moyen age, trans. J. Barnavi and M. Garel (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1991); Joseph Shatzmillcr, Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

1. From a treatise on the treatment of disease via symptoms in urine (fol. 46r):

2. Remedies (fol. 57v):

1579

337

3. Treatment of bites by a rabid dog (fol. 118r):

64 Anshel Levi, Midrash on the 'Sayings of the Fathers' (1579) [excerpts]

This text comprises a midrashic commentary on the Mishna tractate the 'Sayings of the Fathers', a type of gnomic wisdom collection that is known from many cultures. At first glance, the text seems unusual in the early Yiddish corpus, for midrashic commentary on the Mishna was not yet generally conhad in fact a tradiceived as an appropriate topic for a work in Yiddish, but

338

1579

tion of more open accessibility, even to study by women (as is also witnessed by the sixteenth-century commentary on the text by Gitele, EYT 84). The manuscript was written in 1579 by the compiler, translator, scribe, and teacher Anshel Levi, who had emigrated to Italy from his birthplace in Germany. The manuscript was written for a patroness named Perl(en), daughter of Samuel Favisha (Feybush), and was intended specifically to aid women in learning to read and write. This was not the first Yiddish translation of the rmx (e.g. Joseph bar Yakar's in his published in Ichenhausen 1544 [EYT 48], and Kalman b. Simon Pascal's of 1554, in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Can. Or. 12), but it differs from the earlier ones in its more idiomatic rendering of the original. The method customary in early Yiddish moral books of combining edifying passages from moralistic literature, Talmudic passages, medieval commentary (here especially Rashi, Maimonides, and Obadiah ben Abraham Yare di Bertinoro), is characteristic of this text as well, which consists of three sections: the translation and midrashic elaboration of the Mishna tractate Jinx (from which the first three excerpts here are taken), followed by the popular epic, (edited as a separate selection, EYT 60 above),' and concluding with a collection of midrashic tales (from which the final two excerpts here are taken). The final text edited here, an exemplary tale in twenty-eight rhymed couplets, deals with a king—a recurring central character in many such tales—and the motif of the poem is widespread in medieval European literatures: the vain king whose singing reminds one of the braying of an ass (Antti Aarne, The Types of the Folktale, trans. Stith Thompson (Helsinki: Academia scientiarum fennica, 1961), nos. 72 and 1834). Despite the ubiquity of the tale, there is no reason to deny authorship of this particular Yiddish poetic version to Levi (but see Maitlis, p. 169, n. 1). This version of the tale has been thoroughly adapted to a Jewish milieu and ends with the conventional wish for the coming of the Messiah. Source: Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS hebr. 589 [olim Sorbonne 158]; Baumgarten, 'Manuscrits Paris', 134-7; | 15-14 Edition'. .(1978 Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum Handschriften, 419 [and Nachtrage]; 154-149 ,83-82 ,33-32 ,102-100 ,94 ,44 ;115-114 | Baumgarten, 370-7; Simon Hopkins, 'A Fragment of Pirqe Avot in Old Yiddish', Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress of Jewish Culture, Div. C (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1982), 153-7; Erika Timm, 'Zur jiddischen Fabelliteratur des 16. Jahrhunderts', ibid., 159-64; |,(1983) 52 ,

1

although edited from this manuscript, is placed above under the date The 1570, which is the date of that text's earliest manuscript witness.

1579

339

;467-459 (1994 [English translation: Eli Yassif, The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999)].

Good and Bad Wives

2

The Mishna reads:

3

Maitlis

fos. 8v-9v)2

4

A note in the right margin begins here (in the same hand as the main text), with no indication of its insertion point in the text; Maitlis inserts it here:

5

6

with the first word stricken. Maitlis here and in all other instances

1579

340

Rabbi Akiva's Marriage

7 8

9

fol. 36r-v)8

with the former letter group stricken. The Mishna reads:

P interlinear above. P thus begins a lengthy text in the left margin that also fills the bottom margin and continues on the following verso's top and right margin; the marginal text ends with the insertion sign /:/, which occurs at this point in the main text. 11 Maitlis notes 10

1579

12

341

P both bottom and top of fol. 36 have been trimmed, resulting Maitlis reads in an indeterminable number of lines lost on the recto below and verso above. 13 P interlinear above. 14 P corrected by scribe from 15 P the first letter is lost under an ink blotch Maitlis 16 with first word stricken.

1579

342

Life Passages

17

fos. 76r-77r)17

The Mishna reads:

is

P interlinear above. P below this line, in the lower margin is written, in the same hand as the main text, but with a darker ink: 19

20

P interlinear above. P in left margin: 22 the similarity of the scribe's 1 and t in general, and in this instance in particular, makes this reading ambiguous Maitlis 23 P interlinear above. 24 is added in the left margin after is added in the right margin, before Maitlis and 21

P interlinear above.

1579

343

Rabbi Johanan and Resh Lakish (fos. 92v-94v):

26 27 28 29

.10 31 32 33

P corrected by scribe from Maitlis P interlinear above.

(stricken) and added interlinear above.

added in left margin, continuous from P appears as catchword on 93r, but not in text on 93v. P interlinear above. P corrected by scribe from now illegible word. Maitlis

344

34 35 36 37 38 39

1579

P added in right margin with indication of this insertion point. P corrected by scribe from P corrected by scribe from appears in text in 94r. P appears as catchword on 93 v, but only P perhaps with stricken.

1579

Rabbi Akiva and the Dead Man (fos. 130v-131v):

40 41 42

Maitlis

345

1579

346

'The Conceited King' (fol. 133r):

5

10

43 44

11

with first N smudged and first group of letters stricken. Maitlis Maitlis

1579

347

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

16 25 31

with final two letters stricken in the same ink as the text. P perhaps corrected by scribe to Maitlis P corrected by scribe from

1579

348

55

Epilogue on the Patroness (fol. 134v):

5

10

15

20

25

30

22

P interlinear above.

1583

349

35

40

45

65 Translation of Berechiah b. Natronai Ha-Nakdan, Fox Fables Translated by Jacob b. Samuel Bunim Koppelmann (1583) [excerpts]

Berechiah lived at the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth centuries in Normandy and England. He is identified by some as the Benedictus le Puncteur of Oxford who presented Richard I with a gift in 1194. While the epithet Ha-Nakdan indicates that he earned his living at least in part as a punctator of Hebrew books, he also compiled Hebrew ethical treatises, translated scientific books from Latin into Hebrew, and wrote philosophical analyses. His which he most famous work is, however, the collection of fables, 32

interlinear above.

350

1583

translated and adapted from a variety of sources, including Marie de France's late twelfth-century Old French Ysopet. The Yiddish translation of Berechiah's Hebrew text was executed by Jacob Koppelmann, identified on the title page as from Brzesc who was also known as the composer of an Esther poem and of the Hebrew works (Freiburg, 1584) and (Cracow, 1594). In 1583 he was living in Frankfurt am Main; he died in 1598. The book is identified on the title page as: While Berechiah's collection includes 107 fables, Koppelmann's comprises 137 (although the title page claims, in both Yiddish and Hebrew, only 136), including 106 from Berechiah and 31 adapted by Koppelmann from elsewhere, primarily from non-Jewish sources. Two fables are edited here: the first one, 'The Fox and the Fish' (no. 3 in Koppelmann's collection), was translated from Berechiah (no. 6). In the Jewish tradition the story derives ultimately from the Talmud it is the only fable in the to derive from the Talmud), where it is narrated by Rabbi Akiva. The second fable edited here, 'The Old Man with Two Wives' (no. 136 in Koppelmann) is not present in Berechiah's collection and was probably taken by Koppelmann from a German source, as exemplified, for instance, in the H. Steinhowel translation of Aesop's fables (no. 113; first published in Strasbourg, 1508). While the text often strays from verse form toward rhymed prose, it is set here as verse. Source'. Freiburg im Breisgau, 1583 [Israel Sifroni]; extant: Paris, Alliance Israelite Universelle, D 1389. Edition: Wolf, 47-8 ['Fox and Fish']. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum 213; Griinbaum, 254; | ;154-149 Baumgarten ;33-31 ;368-367 ;296-295 68, 169, 393-9; Haim Schwarzbaum, The Mishle Shu'alim (Fox Fables) of Rabbi Berechiah ha-Nakdan: A Study of Comparative Folklore and Fable Lore (Kiron: Institute for Jewish and Arab Folklore Research, 1979), esp. 25-41; Erika Timm, 'Zur jiddischen Fabelliteratur des 16. Jahrhunderts', Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Div. C (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1982), 159-64. Translation: Melchior Hanel, Parabolae Vulpium Rabbi Berechiae Nikdani (Prague, 1661); Moses Hadas, Fables of a Jewish Aesop (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967).

1583

351

Title page (fol. Ir):

Preface (fol. 2r):

5

10

15

20

352

1583

25

Fable no. 3, 'The Fox and the Fish' (fol. 3r—v):

5

10

15

20

25

30

1583

353

35

40

45

Fable no. 136, 'The Old Man with Two Wives' (fol. 60v-61r):

5

10

66 Translation of Lorenz Phryesen [Laurentius Fris], Spiegel der Artzney Anonymous translation: (1583) [excerpt]

Lorenz Phryesen (c. 1480-1532) was a Dutch physician from Colmar who was a personal acquantance of Paracelsus and later became city physician in Metz. His Spiegel dei- Artzney was one of the most important medical compendia of the sixteenth century. The fact that it was written in the vernacular and not Latin was unusual for medical texts of the period. The Yiddish version of this lengthy medical treatise (428 folios) was copied by Moses b. Jacob for his father-in-law Sholem b. Yo'etz b. Uri Shraga (fol. 359r), which he finished on 17 Av 5343 (= 5 August 1583). Of the 241 paragraphs indicated in the index, the text actually includes only 239, the last twelve of which are later additions to Phryesen's treatise. In 1695 (? or 1645), the codex was in the possession of Judt Hayam in Bingen. One section of the treatise focuses on descriptions of foodstuffs (such as pomegranates, onions, and herring) and their preparation, which provides the selection edited here. Source: Oxford, Bodleian, MS Opp. 690 [olim 1648], fol. 69v; Neubauer, 2136. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum Handschriften, 422 [and Nachtrage]; Baumgarten, 421-43; ;211-208 ;400 ;45^t3 Isak Milnz, Die judischen Arzte im Mittelalter: Ein Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters (Frankfurt am Main: Kauffmann, 1922); Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early ;235-223 ,(1932) 4 Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Ron Barkai, Les Infortunes de Dinah, le livre de la generation, la gynecologie juive au moyen age, trans. J. Barnavi and M. Garel (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1991); Joseph Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

1585

355

67 Briyo and Zimro (anon. 1585) [complete]

This remarkable story combines a number of well-known motifs: a quasiSolomonic judgment that demonstrates the young judge's acuity and justice, the knight's journey to the bewitched Other World by means of a magical horse, the star-crossed lovers whose union is blocked in this world (often due to parental prohibition), the riddling hero who saves his life by his wits while in the power of the enemy leader, the hero's journey to the Other World to retrieve his beloved (here with the twist that he returns alone only to go back to her in the Other World), the prohibition on eating anything in the Other World, the sword in the stone, etc. The tale is also a love story without equal in early Yiddish literature. We might note that it is practically contemporary with Shakespeare's great love stories for the stage, and even with the romance of Pariz and Viene (EYT 74) on the broad canvas of Renaissance epic. This is a tale that is, however, not light-hearted as Pariz un Viene, but rather has the intensity of emotion and tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, while at the same time taking advantage of the specific contemporary Jewish conception of the afterlife to propose a postmortem uniting of the lovers by means of a wedding in Paradise. The text also offers one of the few instances in early Yiddish literature of a female character with a significant speaking role. Although the tale combines motifs known from a variety of international, pan-European narrative traditions—quite a charac-

1

B preceded by

stricken.

356

1585

teristic practice during this period of Ashkenazic culture—the tale remains essentially Jewish and quite specifically a sixteenth-century Yiddish tale, for most such motifs are also found in the Jewish tradition. The story takes place during the time of Jewish kings (thus seemingly the late Maccabean period), with a king named Hyrcanus (II ?) and high priests in Jerusalem (thus seemingly before the destruction of the Second Temple) and popes in Rome, an obvious anachronistic twist, but no more strikingly so than is commonly found in other sixteenth-century European tales—Christian or Jewish—about antiquity. The motif of the proud father's refusal of his daughter as bride to a suitor of lesser status is a staple of medieval and early modern epic and romance. There are three primary strands of the text tradition: (1) a manuscript from 15851: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, cod. hebr. 100; copied by Isaac b. Judah Reutlingen from an earlier, probably already printed version; two printed editions—(2) Venice 1597 [Gerson Bak at di Gara; actually printed in Prague; abridged version] (fragmentary; first gathering only); formerly extant: Frankfurt, Stadt- und Universitalsbibliothek, Jud.Germ 782 [lost]; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Heb.e.116 (14) [lost]; (3a) Prague, 1620-60 [probably Jacob Bak's sons]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 8°. 1100 [olim 882]; St. 3915; Cowley, 405 [St. and Cowley date c.1661]; (3b) Prague, 1620-60 [Jacob Bak's sons]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 8°. 1058 (12) [olim 840]; St. 3914; Cowley, 405 [St. and Cowley date 1657-60].2 The three traditions are distinct enough that no critical edition is possible. Here only the manuscript of 1585 is edited. The pointing in the manuscript is often so faint as to be invisible on microfilm and all but invisible in the manuscript; stray dots and stains and imperfections in the paper masquerade as pointings; and often the pointings themselves are so imprecisely written that only with the aid of a magnifying glass can a reasonable decision be made (this is especially the case with . and T , which practically never has a clear descender). Source: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. hebr. 100, fos. 67r-73v; Steinschneider, Handschriften Munchen 61-2; | 46-45 ,34-33 ,18-15 Erika Timm, ed. 'Beria und Simra: Eine Edition: ; 178-147 jiddische Erzahlung des 16. Jahrhunderts', Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch, n.s. 14 (1973), 1-94 [Germanized Roman-alphabet transcription]; rpt. in Erika Timm, Graphische und phonische Struktur des Westjiddischen

1

-separates the and The manuscript's colophonthus provoking some doubt as to whether the latter is to be construed as part of the date; if so, then the year is [5]345 (= 1585), if not. then [5]340 (= 1580); Timm dates the text'1580 (oder 1585?)'. 2 An additional early text presents a modernized version of 3ab and thus has no text-critical value: Frankfurt an der Oder 1732; extant: London, British Library, 1979c.ll.

1585

357

unter besonderer Beriicksichtigung der Zeit um 1600 (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1987), Appendix IV, pp. 521-53. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum Handschriften, 411-12; | ;171—155 ;353-347 Baumgarten, 64, 370, 455; ,122-112 ,11-1 ,(1924)

(1926 7925 (1929 ,

1

75 ; 162-153

,(1926

3

184-173 ,(1938) 13 ;245-232 | Erika Timm, 'Zwischen Orient und Okzident: Zur Vorgeschichte von "Beria und Simra"', Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch, n.s. 27 (1986), 297-307.

!

The two vowels might well both he_ . M a hole in the manuscript and stain surrounding the hole obliterates the f and part of the following N. Timm adds Simra atter un ' 2

358

3

1585

Erik M scribal correction from 5 M the word is written beyond the text frame in the left (inner) margin. 6 Erik 7 Timm changes to im without note. 8 with first word stricken. 9 M beginning here a pasted repair strip along the margin covers the first letters of each of the next nine lines; with back lighting they are legible through the strip. 10 M scribal correction of V to I! M a hole and stain. 4

1585

12 13 14 15 16 17 IS 19 20

M with first word stricken. Timm adds ich after di'. M interlinear above. with latter stricken. Timm do. with first word stricken. M an ink stain obscures the last letter Erik Erik omits.

359

360

21

22 23 24 25 26 27

1585

Timm kam zu, with note that the latter word is lacking. M the second and third letters are a single ink blotch. with the final word stricken. with first word stricken. Timm majestot. with latter word stricken. Mthe is smeared but likely reading.

1585

28 29

with first word stricken. Timm schlofst.

30 31 32

Timm uri'. with first word stricken.

361

362

33 34 35 36 37

1585

Timm do. Timm emends to was. with first word stricken. Erik omits. M twice.

1585

38

Erik U57T1.

39 40

with final letter stricken.

41 '12 43 44 45

Bodleian, Opp. 8°. 1100 Timm emends to mevutal. M twice with first word stricken

363

364

46 47 48 49 50 5]

1585

M corrected by scribe from Timm so wer si. M an ink blotch obscures the with last three words stricken. M word is under a repair strip. M the last letter is under a repair strip.

1585

52

Erik omits.

53 54 55 56 57 58

M corrected by scribe from with last word stricken. Erik Erik omits. Timm schrak.

365

366

1585

59 60 61

back light.

Bodleian, Opp. 8° 1100 M a repair strip covers the beginning of the last three lines of page; legible with

1585

367

5

10

62

Timm do.

63 64

1 8 10 12

with first word stricken. with first word stricken. M scribal correction from M preceded by unclear word, stricken. Erik

68 Royzl b. Joseph Levi [Fishl], 'With God's Help' Preface to Moses Shtendl, translation of the Psalms (1586) [complete]

This poem forms part of the introductory matter to a translation of the Psalms by Moses Shtendl of Hannover (Cracow, 1586). The poem's author describes her copying of the manuscript and active role in the publication of Shtendl's verse translation into Yiddish (in the Tm of the Royzl Fishl lived in Cracow; nothing more is known of Moses Shtendl. The book was never reprinted for the Jewish community, although Wagenseil did publish a Germanized version in 1705. While it was not the purpose of the Korman volume to present scholarly editions, his presentation of this text is quite unusual, for the text's original orthography is radically distorted, but not modernized, while almost half of the poem is arbitrarily and silently omitted. It should thus be considered a 'rendering' rather than an edition. Source: Cracow, 1586 [Isaac b. Aaron]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 4°. 422 (2), fol. 2r \plim 414]; St. 1280, 6573; Cowley, 115, 494; IDC J-43121/1; Erlangen, Universitatsbibliothek, RAB-I 192; Sammlung Wagenseil, VK210. Wolf, 45-7 Edition: Staerk/Leitzmann, 207-13; | ;353 ,6-5 29 [Psalms 1-2]. ;411 ,274 Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 361; ;87 | Baumgarten, 83, 166; Kathryn Hellerstein, ,(1964 'Songs of Herself: A Lineage of Women Yiddish Poets', Studies in American Jewish Literature, 9 (1990), 138-50; in Jiddische Philologie: Festschrift fur Erika Timm (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1999), *7-*21.

1586

369

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

7-16 Korman omits. 15 38

38-47 Korman omits.

370

1588

40

45

69 Letter from Samuel Meisel to his Uncle Mordecai Meisel from Tymbarg (near Cracow) to Prague (1588) [complete]

The cache in which this letter is found contains seven letters, all written in the period of two weeks between the week preceding Rosh Hashanah and Succoth in 5348-9 (1588). The letters were almost certainly confiscated at some point and never delivered; they were preserved in the city archives of Wroclaw (now incorporated into the University Library), where they are bound into a volume of the correspondence of the Wroclaw physician Crato von Kraftliern. The letters have several authors and addressees. All except the first letter have to do with one of the many instances of plague that broke out in Cracow during the sixteenth century. This outbreak at the end of the month Elul (5)348 (= September 1588) lasted between two and three weeks and caused a number of deaths (sources vary between sixty and 600). As the letters document, a few hundred Jewish families managed to flee the city to various places around the area in order to escape from the plague itself, of course, but more importantly from the expected anti-Semitic attacks on the Jewish quarter that so often accompanied outbreaks of plague (in this instance, the first deaths from the plague occurred in the Jewish quarter). With the exception of the first letter (written from Prague to Cracow), the letters are written by these Cracow refugees to their relatives in Prague or from Cracow residents to these refugees (in Elkish). Among these

1588

371

families were some fifteen that fled to Tymbarg (modern Polish Timburg; in the letters, variously: variously designated a town or village i located a few miles outside of Cracow in Galicia. The Jews feared not just the Poles in Cracow but also the king's soldiers originally 'Hungarian', who served in both Hungary and Poland), who patrolled the streets and countryside to prevent Jews from leaving the plague-ridden city. The letters present only a fleeting glimpse of Jewish life at the time in both Cracow and Prague, but one that provides a great number of vivid details of that life. Edited here is letter no. 5 from the cache, written on 11 Tishri (5)349 (= 2 October 1588), from Samuel Meisel of Cracow, who had fled with his family to Tymbarg, addressed to his uncle Mordecai Meisel in Prague. On early Yiddish letter writing in general, see EYT 21. Source: Wroclaw, Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, nr. 248, fol. 168./167r-v [the folios have been numbered twice by two distinct hands (one underlined), both later than the texts!. Edition: 1588 .61-41 ,(1937 Research: Alfred Landau and Bernhard Wachstein, eds. Judische Privatbriefe aus dem Jahre 1619, Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der Juden in Deutsch-Osterreich, 3 (Wien/Leipzig: Braumiiller, 1911); Andrew Lloyd Sunshine, 'Opening the Mail: Interpersonal Aspects of Discourse and Grammar in Middle Yiddish Letters' (Diss., Columbia, 1992).

Recto:

i 3 3

Weinryb Weinryb Weinryb

1590

372

Verso:

70 Mordecai Samuel Jacob b. Jekuthiel, The Book of Good Speech (1590) [excerpts]

This trilingual (Hebrew-Yiddish-Italian) glossary comprises sixteen doublecolumned pages. In the preface the author notes that a father is obligated to teach 4 S 6

This Eliezer Morawtschik is the writer of letter no. 2 of the cache. Weinryb omits. Weinryb

1590

373

his child Hebrew at an early age, and then comments that as soon as the boy begins to learn Hebrew, he should learn Yiddish too, and while he is doing that, he might as well learn 'Italian'. A ten-page glossary follows, which ends with the names of the Italian numerals (in Hebrew script). The text itself ends with two Hebrew poems, one with the acrostic of Mordecai's name, the second with the acrostic of the printer. Source: Cracow, 1590 extant: Oxford, Bodleian, Opp. 4° 1048; St. 3448, 6239; Cowley, 455, 702; IDC J-43-81/1. Edition: Wolf, 48-9. Baumgarten, 37-8, 94; Research: ;122-112 89 ,73 .232-161 ,(1990

Preface (fol. Iv):

5

10

15

20

24 C damage to the page, reading speculative.

374

1590

25

30

35

40

45

Glossary (fol. 3v):

5

1 The language headings appear only on the first page of the glossary; the third is labelled in the first column of glosses, then in the second column, 4 C

1591

375

10

71 Translation of Solomon ibn Judah Verga, The Sceptre of Judah (anon. 1591) [excerpt]

The book's title page identifies the author as Solomon b. Judah Verga, a Jewish historian from Spain who lived in the second half of the fifteenth and first quarter of the sixteenth century. Few facts concerning his life are known, and most details found in biographical sketches remained unconfirmed. After the expulsion from Spain, he settled in Lisbon, where he was forced to live as a converso, although he did not in fact convert. In 1506 he went to Rome with the first may Portuguese converses allowed to leave the country. While his have been composed before he left Portugal, it was more likely written in the 1520s, a compilation of the persecutions suffered by the Jews from the destruction of the Second Temple to his own time, based on a variety of historical manifesting in many sources, including and Maimonides' respects an analytical method that foreshadows much later developments in scholarly study. He devotes attention to both the causes of anti-Semitism and potential remedies, but in the end remains resigned to its existence and continuation. The focus of the book is on individual instances of persecution, which are by definition narratives; in addition he intersperses many disputations and dialogues, many of which he invents himself, on the basis of known historical circumstances and situations. Thus the work provides a broad range of possibility for literary composition. As a participant in some sense in the traditions of the Renaissance, he is openly critical of the learned tradition of the Jews, parodies some of the authorities, and subjects the Talmud to a severe critique.

376

1591

The original Hebrew work, first published 1554 by the author's son Joseph, is one of the outstanding achievements of Hebrew literature of the Renaissance. It is likely that Solomon ibn Verga died in Flanders, perhaps en route to the Ottoman Empire. The translator of this first Yiddish version, published in Cracow, 1591, is unknown. Source: Cracow, 1591 [Judah Leyb (Lob) b. Mordecai and Samuel b. Moses Levi], fos. 29r-34r; extant: Oxford, Bodleian, 4°. 1423; IDC J-43-103/1 [< Amsterdam 1648]; St. 6982,9; Cowley, 664; Erlangen, Universitatsbibliothek, RAB-1 189; Sammlung Wagenseil, VK 204 [< Amsterdam 1648]. Edition: Grilnbaum, 357-61; Hebrew text: .(1947-1946 Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 281; | ;378-375 | Fritz Baer, Untersuchungen uber Quellen und ;91 ,73 Kompositionen des Schebet Jehuda (Berlin: C. A. Schwetschke, 1923); Francisco Cantera Burgos, Chebet Yehuda, La Vara de Judd Salomon ben Verga (Granada: Lopez Guevara, 1927); Yosef Hayyim Yerushalmi, The Lisbon Massacre of 1506 and the Royal Image in the 'Shebet Yehudah' (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1976).

1591

I

c

377

378

1591

1591

379

1591

380

A thus C

2 3

C

1591

4

c

381

382

1593

72 Translation of Translated by

Isaac Tyrnau, Customs Simon Levi Ginzburg b. Judah (1593) [excerpts]

As discussed in more detail above (EYT 3l), a is a non-obligatory religious practice. Bodies of local customs came to be codified beginning in the eighth books developed in Ashcentury in Palestine, and a distinct tradition of kenaz. Toward the end of the fourteenth century, Isaac Tyrnau, who was most likely born in Vienna, compiled a collection of in Hebrew concerning practices and codes of conduct for the entire year. He based his compilation on the customs of his teachers, Abraham Klausner and Sar Shalom of Neustadt. One of his fellow students was Jacob Moellin (Maharil), whom he contacted in 1420 concerning a divorce—one of the few facts known about his life. He died by the mid-fifteenth century, if not before. His collection of exerted widespread influence throughout much of central and eastern Europe and eventually became the model for the tradition throughout Ashkenaz. First published in Venice in

1593

383

1566, it was often reprinted. The second printing of the Yiddish translation by Simon Levi Ginzburg b. Judah appeared in Venice in 1593. In the preface he states as his purpose the compilation of a common book of customs for the entire year. Two sections are edited here: and The printer, Giovanni di Gara, appended a to the end of this volume, just as he did to his edition of the that he published in 1588. The by Jacob bar Eliezer Ulma follows as a separate entry below (EYT 73), following the excerpts from the Source: Venice [Giovanni di Gara] 1593; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 8°. 625 [olim 563]; St. 3679, 5526; Cowley, 292; IDC J-43-56/1. Edition: Grlinbaum, 340-5. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 149; | ,71 , ;81-72 ;116 | Abraham Epstein, Die Wormser Minhagbiicher: Gedenkbuch zur Erinnerung an David Kaufmann ( B r e s l a u : S c h o t t l a n d e r , 1900), 303-7; | Morris Epstein, 'Simon Levi Ginzburg's Illustrated Customal (Minhagim Book) of Venice, 1593, and its Travels', Proceedings of the Fifth World Congress of Jewish Studies [1969], 4 (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1973), 197-218; Jean Baumgarten, 'Prieres, rituels et pratiques dans la societe juive ashkenaze: la tradition des livres de coutumes en langue yiddish (XVle siecle)', Revue de I'Histoire des Religions, 218 (2001), 369-403.

How to kasher (fos. 17v-19r):

1

This text is accompanied by a woodcut in which a man is immersing a vessel into a large cauldron suspended above an open fireplace in a kitchen, while a women stands by holding a tray of various other vessels.

384

1593

1593

385

Baking matzah (fos. 21r-22r):

2

This section is accompanied by a woodcut of a baking shop with three bakers, one inserting a braided loaf into an oven with a long-handled paddle, while the two others knead loaves on a kneading table. 3

V

1593

386

4 5

V V

73 Jacob b. Eliezer (Ulma), 'A Bride's Song' (1593) [complete]

The poem which appears as an appendix to Simon Levi Ginzburg b. Judah's Yiddish translation of Isaac Tyrnau's (EYT 72), comprises thirty-two alternating stanzas of Hebrew and Yiddish, each of thirteen lines; the rhyme scheme is AABCCBDDBEEEB. The poem seems to have close relation to the repertoire of the who praises the merits of the bride and groom, but also reminds them systematically of their gender-specific duties, almost in the tone of texts. The Hebrew text is painstakingly pointed; the initial contemporary word of each stanza in both the Hebrew and Yiddish texts is set off from the remaining text; both are printed in square font, the initial word of the Hebrew stanzas is also in a larger font. Source: Venice [Giovanni di Gara], 1593; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 8°. 625 [olim 563]; St. 3679, 5526; Cowley, 292; IDC J-43-34/1. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum 97; | ;162-157 | Baumgarten, 330-1; J. Bolte, 'Bin judisch;59 deutsches Lied des 17. Jahhunderts', ZGJD 4 (1890), 92-3; .[19 175-112 ,(1982) 3

1

388

1593

2

3

4

3.5Y

V damage to the page.

1593

389

5

6

7

5,4H 5.9H 6.3H

V V overinked and smeared letter. V second letter illegible, the is, however, clear.

390

1593

8

9

10

1593

391

11

12

13

11,12V

V a hole in the page; reading uncertain.

392

1593

14

15

16

13 V bottom right margin of page lost; portions of the text of 13,9-1011 and 13,1,3,6,7Y are lost.

1594

393

74 Pariz and Viene (anon. 1594) [excerpts]

This poem was generally attributed to Elia Levita (without specific evidence) until the discovery in 1986 by Anna Maria Babbi of a complete copy of the Verona 1594 edition of the text, printed by Mattathias (Mattityahu) ben Abraham Bat-Sheva (Bas-Sheva) in the publishing house of Francesco dalle Donne. Prior to that discovery, only fragmentary portions of the text (primarily the copy in Trinity College, Cambridge, which lacks the first third of the text) had been known. The complete text includes a preface, however, in which Elia Levita is mentioned in the third person both as the printer of numerous important books and apparently as this author's mentor, who himself expresses his sadness at Levita's departure from 'this land' (= his death?). The conventional scholarly attribution of the text to Elia Levita thus seems at least complicated (for it might well be an elaborately ironic subterfuge—certainly not unthinkable for Levita), if not altogether untenable. Pariz and Viene nonetheless 16,I3Y from context and rhyme.

V bottom left margin of page is lost; text conjectured

394

1594

clearly derives from and participates in the same north Italian Renaissance cultural milieu in which Elia Levita wrote his Bovo of Antona (EYT 33), and like that text, this one is also an adaption of an Italian romance into Yiddish in ottava rima stanzaic form. In this case, however—as is not the case with Levita's the Yiddish masterfully entertaining but hardly intellectually ambitious version utterly transforms its source into a veritable masterpiece of Renaissance or quasi-Humanist poetic narrative, carefully crafted in 717 stanzas, organized into ten cantos. The conventional plot of the vassal's son who must prove himself before being granted the princess as bride is transformed from hackneyed cliche into a complexly layered and dramatically progressing, politically serious, and delightfully humorous tour de force. This central theme is the focus of the selection edited here, which also includes one excursus characteristic of the beginning of cantos, in which the poet—quite in the tradition, and under the direct influence, of Ariosto's Orlando furioso—steps back momentarily from the narrative in order to provide some commentary on its significance in a larger social and moral context. While there was until recently no available edition of the poem, now there are two editions for scholarly use—a facsimile of the edition of Verona, 1594, and the definitive critical edition by Shmeruk, as well as Timm/Beckmann's student edition for German readers (with Germanized transcription). The primary font used in the Verona, 1594 edition is the Sephardic semi-cursive (so-called 'Rashi') font (here unmarked); the occasional use of square font in the original is here indicated by bold. Source: Verona, 1594 [Mattathias (Mattityahu) ben Abraham Bat-Sheva/ Francesco dalle Donne]; extant: (1) Verona, Biblioteca del Seminario Vescovile, Fonds Venturi, no. 192; (2) Cambridge, Trinity College, Loewe 158 [fragmentary]; (3) Milan, Biblioteca Braidense, Ebr. 1080 [fragmentary]; (4) Cincinnati, Hebrew Union College Library, Collection Aaron Freimann [single folio]. Edition: Valerio Marchetti, Jean Baumgarten, and Antonella Salomoni, eds., Elia Bahur Levita, Paris un Viene, Francesco Dalle Donne, Verona 1594 (Bologna: Universita degli studi di Bologna, Dipartimento di discipline storiche; Arnaldo Forni Editore, 1988) [facsimile of Verona, 1594]; | X3n [Italian translation of the introduction: (1996 'Studi su "Paris un Viene'", Rassegna Mensile di Israel, 62/1-2 (1996), 93-124]; Erika Timm and Gustav Adolf Beckmmann, Paris un Wiene: Ein jiddischer Stamenroman des 16. Jahrhunderts von (oder am dem Umkreis von) Elia Levita (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1996) [Germanized, Roman-alphabet transcription]. 102-82 ;202-195 Research: ; 191-172 144-143 ,120-97 Baumgarten, ;72

1594 228-50; 75 196-187

(1926

395

(1926 7925

25

;571-564 (1928 3-2 Benjamin Hrushovski, 'The Creation of Accentual Iambs in European Poetry and their First Employment in a Yiddish Romance in Italy (1508-09)', in For Max Weinreich on his Seventieth Birthday (The Hague: Mouton, 1964), 108-46; Anna Maria Babbi, 'In margine alia fortuna del Paris e Vienna', Quaderni di Lingue e Letterature (Verona), 11 (1986), 393-7; ,[1989] 126 16 210-208 ;37-29 ,(1997) 4 Armin Schulz, Die Zeichen des Korpers und der Liebe: 'Paris und Vienna' in der jiddischen Fassung des Elia Levita (Hamburg: Kovac, 2000).

Title page (fol. Ir):

Prologue (fos. 2r-3r): 1

1

The following three lines frame a woodcut of a knight, lady, and servant before a portal. to the left; the third, to the right; the second, . . . The first, below. This last line of the page was in large part trimmed away during the binding of the book; only its first few words can still be read. 2 Shmeruk emends to V

396

1594

5

1,4 2,1 2,7

Shmeruk emends to V V Shmeruk emends to

1594

6,2

Shmeruk emends to

397

398

1594

10

1594

399

Canto5(fos. 26v^31v):

250

251.8 Here follows a woodcut, with the captions:

Shmeruk emends

to

and

to

1594

400

255

253,6

Shmeruk reads

and emends to

1594

401

260

259,2 259,5

V V

Shmeruk emends to Timm reads rer and emends to red. Shmeruk

402

1594

265

1594

403

266,8 Hereafter is a two-panelled woodcut, depicting, as the captions indicate:

267,4 267,6 267,8

V V V

mil.

Shmeruk emends to Timm reads wu and 'emends' to was. Timm does not note the ms. reading, but prints Shmeruk emends to

404

1594

270

274,1 Preceded by woodcut (same as previous), with captions:

1594

405

275

274,5 275,6

V V

Shmeruk emends to Timm reads asiir and 'emends' to oiir.

1594

406

280

278,6 279,4 279,7 280,5 281,3

V

Timm reads schaden and emends to schaiden. Shmeruk Shmeruk emends to Shmeruk emends to V Timm reads piir and emends loftir. Shmeruk emends to Shmeruk emends to V

1594

407

285

Shmeruk emends to 282,8 V 286,8 Followed by woodcut, with captions;

408

1594

290

288,8

Shmeruk emends to

for the sake of rhyme.

1594

409

295

295,7

V

Shmeruk emends to

410

1594

296,8 Here follows a woodcut, with the caption:

297,3 297,6 298,6 288,8

Shmeruk emends to Timm emends to eich. Shmeruk emends to Shmeruk emends to V

1594

411

300

Canto6(fos. 31v-32v):

299,7 Shmeruk emends to Shmeruk emends to 300,1 Shmeruk emends to Concluding line, canto 5

412

1594

305

1594

413

Epilogue (fos. 71 v-72r):

5

10

Shmeruk emends to 308.4 V Shmeruk emends to V 308,6 Epilogue 1 The rhymed lines of the epilogue/colophon are printed continuously in the original edition; here they are set as verse.

414

1594

15

20

25

30

IN VERONA, Per Francesco dalle Donne. MDXCIIII.

13

V

Shmeruk

I These two lines are printed vertically, the first to the right of the woodcut of the printer's emblem in the centre of the page, the second to the left. The final two lines, in Roman alphabet, are horizontal, below the woodcut.

75 The Book of Cows (anon. 1595) [excerpt]

While this collection of fables has long been called Ku(h)-bukh by scholars, the first element of its title is actually plural— as the recent recovery of the 1595 edition makes clear. It was first mentioned in the preface to the (Basel, 1602) [EYT 89] as a profane book that was to be displaced by the edifying tales of the Although the book was listed in the 1680 bibliography of Shabbatai Bass as published in Verona 1555 by Abraham b. Mattathias BatSheva (Bas-Sheva), and the Hebrew-alphabet title page of the recently recovered edition of the text confirms that information, it is nonetheless suspect, since Abraham ben Mattathias was not active until forty years later in Verona. The Italian censor's mark at the bottom of this title page—Con licenza de Superiori. 1595—confirms the later publication date. Nonetheless, one might well conjeeture that the first edition of the did in fact appear in 1555 and was reprinted by Abraham ben Mattathias forty years later in Verona without changing the Hebrew date on the title page, while the censor's mark was of course contemporary with the actual printing (cf. Katz, Book of Fables, p. 13). In the absence of direct evidence of such a printing history, however, the text is here dated 1595. The text comprises thirty-five tales in sixty-seven folios, each accompanied by an explicitly framed 'moral of the story'. The fables themselves derive from two fable traditions: the Aesopic (the sources of which were: Berechiah ben Natronai ha-Nakdan's late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century Hebrew (Yiddish translation: EYT 65), and Ulrich Boner's Edelstein (1461)) and the Arabic maqama (a narrative in rhymed prose with interspersed poems; via Arabic ultimately from Indian sources, but directly from Isaac b. The majority of the Solomon ibn Sahula's twelfth-century Hebrew are longer than their sources, however, and tend toward fables in the humour, earthiness, and an interest in the details of Jewish daily life of the time not characteristic of the source. While didactic fables had long been part of the Jewish literary tradition, the appearance of this Yiddish collection offers corroborative evidence of the popularity of the genre throughout Ashkenazic Europe during the period. The fact that the book was condemned as a morally corrupting social influence within a half-century of its initial publication indicates its great popularity. The number of woodcuts included in the book is little less than astonishing: eighty-three in sixty-seven folios, a concentration that is

1595

416

far greater, for instance, than that of the Old Yiddish (Zurich, 1546) [EYT 50], which is generally considered one of the most heavily illustrated of Old Yiddish books. In the following edition of fable no. 15 from the collection, 'The Ailing Lion', the text has been compared with the corresponding fable in the of Moses Wallich (Frankfurt am Main 1697, here F) [EYT 119], which in most respects is a reprint of the (for a more detailed description of the relationship of the two texts, see the headnote to the selection from Wallich's book, below); strictly orthographical differences between the two texts are not indicated in the notes. Source: Verona, 1595 [Abraham b. Mattathias/Francesco dalle Donne], fos. 20r-21r (extant: undisclosed private collection; cf. Rosenfeld). Edition: Moshe N. Rosenfeld, ed., The Book of Cows: A Facsimile Edition of the Famed Kuhbuch, Verona 1595 (London: Hebraica Books, 1984). Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum 212; | ;300-295 . 154-149 | Baumgarten, ;372-358 270-296 ,150 394-400; Haim Schwarzbaum, The Mishle Shu'alim (Fox Fables) of Rabbi Berechiah ha-Nakdan: A Study of Comparative Folklore and Fable Lore (Kiron: Institute for Jewish and Arab Folklore Research, 1979); Erika Timm, 'Die "Fabel vom alten Lowen" in jiddistischer und komparatistischer Sicht', ZDP 100 (Sonderheft Jiddisch, 1981), 109-70; Erika Timm, 'Zur jiddischen Fabelliteratur des 16. Jahrhunderts', Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Div. C (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1982), 159-64) ;10-6 ,(1982) 5/44 , ,(1985) 188 ;183-181 | Eli Katz, 'Das "Kuhbukh" und das "Sefer Mesolim": Die Uberlieferung eines mitteljiddischen Textes', BGDSL \ 12 (1990), 81-95; Eli Katz, ed., Book of Fables: The Yiddish Fable Collection of Reb Moshe Wallich, Frankfurt am Main, 1697 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994).

15. 'Curing the Sick Lion'

1 At the top of the page, before the beginning of the fable, there is a woodcut of a lion, two stags, a boar, a fox, a wolf, and an unidentifiable canine-like animal. 3

F

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11 13 14 18 24 32

F F F V F F

F

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75 52 57 64 65 65 67 71

F F F F

F F F

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F 80 84 F F 85 86 F F 92 F 93 96 F lacking. 98 V F 108

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no

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76 Moses Henochs [Yerushalmi] Altschuler The Burning Mirror (1596) [excerpts]

was written by Moses Henochs (b. Henoch) Yersuhalmi The Altschuler of Prague specifically for a female audience (unlike many early Yid-

109 111 121

F F F

1596

421

dish books, in whose prefaces it is only conventional to claim a female readership). Little is known of the author's biography: his son Henoch was 69 years old in 1633, so Moses must have been born some time before the middle of the sixteenth century; he seems to have still been alive in 1610. In its seventy-six chapters that which has little to do with women's affairs is abbreviated or omitted altogether, while that which is directly relevant to the lives of Jewish women is given full treatment (ritual hygiene, sexual matters, rearing children). In this respect, the book is encyclopedic in its scope, for it seeks to provide a complete handbook for all the duties incumbent on women. Interestingly, however, the book's unacknowledged assumption is that its reader is financially quite well-todo, for its perspective and assumptions are of a standard of living far beyond the means of the vast majority of the Jewish populace. Thus in the book's discussions, it is simply assumed that the reader's family has not just sufficient but in fact abundant food; likewise it is assumed that the family has multiple servants, that clothing is sumptuous, etc. Despite this severe restriction on its practicality for the majority of its readership, the book became extremely popular and inspired a number of similar books. One of them, the by Isaac ben Eliakum of Posen (Prague 1620; EYT97), displaced Moses Henochs Altschuler's in popularity (at least in Poland) almost immediately after its publication. Edited here are chapters 3, 'Why I wrote [the book] in Yiddish', and 38, 'When they lie down, how they should be modest in bed'. Both extant copies of the Cracow, 1596 edition are fragmentary at the beginning of the text: the copy in the Rosenfeld collection lacks chapter 3, while the copy in the Martin-BuberInstitut includes chapter 3. Here, chapter 38 is edited from the Cracow, 1596 edition, while chapter 3 is edited from the Basel 1602 edition, in order to present another stage in the text's printing history. Source: Cracow [Isaac ben Aaron Prostitz (Prossnitz)], 1596; extant: London, Moshe N. Rosenfeld Collection (fragmentary); Cologne, Martin Buber Institut, DR3, Inventory no. 5663 (fragmentary); Basel, 1602 [Konrad Waldkirch]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Mar. 102; St. 6473,1; Cowley, 469; Prijs, 175; Steinschneider, Serapeum, 33; Susanne Oevermann, 'Prosnitz und kein Ende', Jiddistik Mitteihmgen 3 (April 1990), 1-9; IDC J-43-11/1; Erlangen, Universitatsbibliothek, RAB-I 179; Sammlung Wagenseil, VK200. Edition: Grunbaum, 230-8; Sigrid Riedel, ed., Moses Henochs Altschul-Jeruschalmi 'Brantspigel': Transkribiert und ediert nach der Erstausgabe, Krakau, 1596 (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1993) [Germanized, Romanalphabet transcription]. 105-86 294-287 182-179 Research: | Baumgarten, 254-86 passim; Solomon B. Freehof, 'Devotional ;96 ,44

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422

Literature in the Vernacular: Judeo-German, Prior to the Reform Movement', Central Conference of American Rabbis—Yearbook, 33 ( 1 9 2 3 ) , 375-424; 17

; 177-173 ,(1926) Moses Caster, 'The Maassehbuch and the Brantspiegel', in Jewish Studies in Memory of George A. Kohut, 1874-1933, ed. Salo Wittmayer Baron and Alexander Marx (New York: Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1935), 270-8; (1975 ;621-617 ,(1980) 55 Sassona Dachlika, '"Brantspigel": Ethik im alten Aschkenas', Judischer Almanack, 1995 (1994), 60-8.

Chapter 3 (fos. 12v-13r):

1596

Chapter 38 (fos. 134v-139v):

423

424

1

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1596

2

damage to page; reading from B.

3 4

damage to page, reading from B

425

426

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5 6

Riedel uweoso

1596

7

Riedel teutscht.

427

428

8

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Riedel triiben.

1596

9 10 II

Riedel schmor. Riedel odom. " catchword is 13"N B 1"N IP'X; Riedel ainer ain.

429

430

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1597

431

77 Joseph b. Elhanan Heilprun, Mother of the Child (1597) [excerpt]

This book is an introduction to Hebrew grammar for 7-year-olds While it consists primarily of grammatical paradigms of a variety of types, with accompanying Yiddish explanations, there are some paradigms that illustrate more abstract concepts, such as the excerpt here, which presents the underlying conception of grammatical 'person', via a paradigm of Yiddish nominative personal pronouns. Source: Prague, 1597; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, 8°. 373 (5) [olim 325] (unfoliated) and 8°. 448 (5) [olim 393] (fragment); St. 5926,1; Cowley, 333. Baumgarten, 129; Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 15; | ;122-112 .232-161 ,(1990

432

1597

78 Sir Dietrich (anon. 1597) [excerpts]

The legends of the Gothic King Theodoric, who ruled Italy in the fifth-sixth century, were enduring and multifaceted in the course of the Middle Ages and, especially in the German and Norse traditions, provided the motivation for a broad range of literary texts. The present text, structured in thirteen-line stanzas (rhymed AABCCBDEDEFGF), is an example of the widespread practice in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of adapting epigonic German epic into Yiddish. In this case, as typically, neither the source text, the Sigenot published in Nuremberg in 1560, nor the Yiddish adaptation has great artistic merit. Some have viewed this text as the one to which one finds ubiquitous references among as the paramount example of profane early Yiddish authorsliterature to be shunned by the pious reader, e.g. in the prefaces to the (Basel, 1602) (EYT 89), to Michael Adam's train translation (Constance, 1544), Elias Levita's translation of the Psalms (1545) [EYT 49], and the Yiddish translation of the Song of Songs (Cracow, 1579). Such admonitions from early Yiddish was either popular or prefaces need not, however, indicate that successful entertainment. It could well be the case, as Shmeruk argues, that such invective was simply an anti-romance literary convention with little basis in actual reading habits traceable to a particular text. In any case, this narrative well illustrates one type of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century (minimalist) Jewish

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adaptation of German narrative into Yiddish. Generally such texts (both source and resulting Yiddish text) were in prose and belonged to the chapbook genre (see Paucker). While is in verse, it nonetheless functionally resembles the low-level adventure narrative characteristic of the chapbook. The excerpt edited here constitutes the conclusion of the poem, in which Hildebrant, who had been captured earlier by the giant Signot, escapes, kills the giant, and frees Dietrich, who had been captured and imprisoned still earlier. Source'. Cracow [Isaac b. Aaron Prostitz (Prossnitz)], 1597; extant: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, rar. 110. Edition: John A. Howard, ed., Dietrich von Bern (1597) (Wurzburg: Konigshausen und Neumann, 1986), [facsimile edn. with accompanying Germanized Roman-alphabet transcription!. 104-102 Research: ;64-54 103 ,62 ;96 ,72 : : 120-97 ,45-36 Baumgarten 193-5 Joseph Perles, 'Bibliographische Mittheilungen aus Miinchen', MGWJ 2f [n.s. 8] (1876), 350-75; ;122-112 ,11-1 ,(1924) ,(1928)3-2 ;557-554 | C. F. Jones, 'Dietrich von Bern as a Literary Symbol', PMLA 67 (1952), 1094-102; Arnold Paucker, 'Yiddish Versions of Early German Prose Novels', JJS 10 (1959), 151-67; Arnold Paucker, 'Das deutsche Volksbuch bei den Juden', ZDP 8 (1961), 302-17; Wulf-Otto DreeBen, 'Goliaths Schwestern und Briider', in Rdllwagenbiichlein, 369-89.

Title page (fol. Ir):

Stanzas 158-96 (fos. 18r-22v): 158

434

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160

158,13 159,2 159,3

Howard suggests v/7. Howard suggests darbei. Howard suggests stunde.

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162,2

Howard suggests das eine.

435

436

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165

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437

438

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170

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175

440

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Howard suggests

15<

44':

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185.13

444

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187,

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445

446

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194,3

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Colophon (fol. 22v):

79 Translation of Pentateuch (anon. 16th century) [excerpts]

This translation presents a text distinct from both of the editions published in 1544 (Augsburg and Constance, the latter by Michael Adam), as well as the 1679 Amsterdam translation, and indeed from all other known Yiddish biblical translations, although there are clear (and complex) lines of affiliation (cf.

196,7 197,9-12 printing smudge.

C these words near the left margin are obscured by

448

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Staerk/Leitzmann and Timm). This manuscript includes both the Pentateuch and Haftarot, the former of which is translated in the literal style that is common in many traditions of b i b l i c a l translation, such that frequently the text is incomprehensible unless one has the Hebrew text in mind or on the desk beside the translation, while the translation of the Haftarot is not only less literal but also seems far less concerned with accuracy. Thus it is of the same type as the 1544 Augsburg and Constance translations, but distinct for the same reason from the Cremona 1560 Pentateuch, which utilizes a more idiomatic Yiddish. The manuscript almost certainly originated in southern Germany. The format is a common one in Old Yiddish translation: the first word of the passage (verse) to be translated is given in Hebrew, followed by the translation itself. The Hebrew verse incipits are in vocalized square script, otherwise the text is in Ashkenazic cursive (the vocalization of the Hebrew incipits often differs from that of the textus receptus).^ Source: Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Preufiischer Kulturbesitz, MS Or. Qu. 691; Steinschneider, Handschriften Berlin, II/2, no. 145. itaerk/Leitzmann, 107-14; Baumgarten, 109-61; Research: ;48-3 Nechama Leibowitz, 'Die Obersetzungstechnik der jiidisch-deutschen Bibelubersetzungen des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts dargestellt an den Psalmen', in BGDSL 55 (1931), 377-463; rpt. 1971 [Diss., Marburg, 1931]; Shlomo Noble, 'Sacred and Secular in the Language of the ;(I94: Yiddish Bible Translation', Yivo Annual of Jewish Social Science, 1 (1946), 274-82: Jean Baumgarten, 'Les ; 190-165 ,(1977 Traductions de la Bible en yidich (XVIe—XVIIe siecles) et la Zeenah ureenah (Bale 1622) de Yaakov ben Ishak Achkenazi de Janow', REJ 144 (1985), 305-10; Erika Timm, 'Blitz and Witzenhausen', *39-*66 in: .(1993

' The first and last folios of the extant text are missing, but it is clear from the 16th-century century Hebrew numbering that another text originally preceded this text, because the eighth folio is numbered V = 19; a modern hand has numbered the previous folios correspondingly 12-18, but that is accurate only for their current placement in this book, for between 18v and 19r there is a text gap from Gen. 7: 16 to 15: 6, so it is clear that there were originally other pages between 18 and 19; in addition, the first folios are incorrectly bound; their order should be (according to current numbering) 12, 14, 15, 13, 16. The Hebrew page numbering extends from 19-291; a modern hand has numbered the folios (Arabic) prior to and following these folios in pencil; fol. 129 is also missing from the text. The codex comprises altogether 339 fnlir><;

16

The Garden of Eden (fos. 12rv and 14r-15v; Gen. 2: 7-3: 24)

2

text continues on fol. 14r.

449

450

116

451

Judah and Tamar (fos. 56v-58v; Gen. 38)

452

16

The Ten Commandments (fol. 106 rv : Exod.20)

3 4

Genesis

(qre perpetnum). witn tirst word stncKen.

16

453

80 Vidvilt (anon. 15th-16th century) [excerpt]

This Arthurian romance of Gawain and his son Vidvilt, based ultimately on Wirnt von Gravenberg's Middle High German Wigalois (thirteenth century), proved to be one of the most enduringly popular secular narratives in Yiddish literary history, with numerous manuscript versions, printings, and reprintings, in rhymed couplets, ottava rima, and prose, over the course of three-and-a-half centuries. Since the earliest versions of the text differ significantly from one another, there is no possibility of producing a critical edition. In order to illustrate three of the early traditions, excerpts from three texts have been selected and edited here. So that the reader might gain some sense of the general plot as it is elaborated across the three versions, the three excerpts are here selected such that they form a quasi-continuous narrative of the first part of the tale (read in the order: EYT 111,80,112). The anonymous poet of the earliest extant version (EYT 80) composed mor than 4,200 lines in rhymed couplets (without structuring the couplets into stanzas or quasi-stanza-like groups of couplets, as did Joseph Witzenhausen, EYT i l l ) . The manuscript edited here (Cambridge, Trinity College MS F. 12.44) is one of the three extant sixteenth-century manuscript versions of this recension of the text (the others are: Hamburg Staats- und Universitatsbibliothek, Cod. hebr. 255 (Steinschneider, Handschriften Hamburg, 327) and Cod. hebr. 289 (Steinschneider, Handschriften Hamburg 288)) all probably of north I t a l i a n provenance. The three manuscript versions are closely related and follow Wirnt's plot rather closely through the first three-quarters of the narrative (while abbreviating much and generally eliminating specific Christian reference), only to offer quite a different conclusion. The language is typical of the tendency in early Yiddish epic toward the avoidance of vocabulary from the Semitic com-

16

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15

ponent. The Cambridge manuscript in quarto contains eighty-five (paper) folios which record a single text; the manuscript has clearly lost its first folio (and thus the assigned title is editorial); folio 7 is blank. The hand is sixteenth-century Ashkenazic cursive. On the final folio of the manuscript the scribe is identified as Sheftl of Kojetein in Moravia fol. 84r). Characters' names are marked in the manuscript with a superscript mark—as is otherwise in the early Yiddish tradition customary only for nomina sacra. As was not uncommon in the nineteenth century, the manuscript was treated at some time in the past with an acidic reagent in order momentarily to enhance readability, which has nonetheless resulted in the significant long-term deterioration of legibility. Additionally, the condition of the paper has deteriorated such that the recto sides of twenty of the folios have been reinforced with backing, thus covering the text and making it inaccessible to reading. Nonetheless, with the exception of the reinforced pages (which are quite inaccessible with current technology), the text is still quite legible. While the edition of the manuscript by Irving Linn was an admirable and pioneering work, it is also marked by numerous types of fundamental errors; his frequent misreadings are not here noted. Source: Cambridge, Trinity College, F. 12.44, fos. 3v-8r (11. 222-404); Loewe, 135. Edition: Leo Landau, Arthurian Legends, or the Hebrew-German Rhymed Version of the Legend of King Arthur, Teutonia, 21 (Leipzig: Avenarius, 1912) [edn. of the Hamburg MSS in Germanizing, Roman-alphabet transcription]; Irving Linn, 'Widwilt, Son of Gawain' (Diss., New York University, 1942) [edn. of the Cambridge MS: Hebrew-alphabet text, with accompanying Germanizing, Roman-alphabet transcription], Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 266; Steinschneider, Serapeum ;81-65 Handschriften, 420 [and Nachtrage]; | ;61-51 ; 142-91 ;112-105 ,79-78 ;67-64 Baumgarten, 76-8, 195-7; Meir Schiller, 'Der "Artushof" ; 120-97 und Josel von Witzenhausen', ZHB 8 (1904), 117-23, 145-8, 179-85;

(1926 7925

125

175 ;140-129

(1926 Curt Leviant, King ,564-562 ,(1928) 3-2 Artus: A Hebrew Arthurian Romance of 1279 (New York: Ktav, 1969); WulfOtto DreeBen, 'Zur Rezeption deutscher epischer Literatur im altjiddischen: Das Beispiel "Wigalois"-Artushof, in Deutsche Literatur des spdten Mittelalters: Hamburger Colloquium 1973, ed. W. Harms and L. P. Johnson

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(Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1973), 116-28; Christoph Cormeau, 'Die jiddische Tradition von Wirnts Wigalois', Zeitschrift fur Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 8/32 (1978), 28-44; Robert G. Warnock, 'Wirkungsabsicht und Bearbeitungstechnik im altjiddischen "Artushof", ZDP (Sonderheft Jiddisch, 1981), 98-109; Edmund Reiss et al., Arthurian Legend and Literature: An Annotated Bibliography (New York: Garland, 1984), 318; Robert G. Warnock, 'Friihneuzeitliche Fassungen des altjiddischen "Artushofs"', Kontroversen, 13-19; Robert G. Warnock, 'The Arthurian Tradition in Hebrew and Yiddish', King Arthur Through the Ages, ed. Valerie M. Lagorio and Mildred Leake Day (New York: Garland, 1990), 1, 189-208; Robert G. Warnock, ' Widwilt', in The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, ed. Norris J. Lacy et al. (Chicago/London: St. James Press, 1991), 512-13; Wulf-Otto Dreefien, 'Wigalois-Widuwilt. Wandlungen des Artusromans im Jiddischen', in Astrid Starck, ed., Westjiddisch: Mundlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit/Le Yiddish occidental: Actes du Colloque de Mulhouse (Aarau: Sauerlander, 1994), 84-98; Wulf-Otto DreeBen, 'Widuwilt', in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters, Verfasserlexikon, 2nd edn., ed. Burghart Wachinger et al. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1999), X, coll. 1006-8; Wulf-Otto DreeBen, 'Goliaths Schwestern und Briider', in Rollwagenbuchlein, 369-89.

225

230

235

240

456

)16-

15

245

250

255

260

265

270

275

280

277

C final 0 is a correction from now illegible letter.

16

15

457

285

290

295

300

305

310

315

285 293 304 315

Linn emends to. Linn Linn Linn emends to

mag

458

16-

15

320

325

330

335

340

345

350

355

360

16

15

459

365

370

375

380

385

390

395

367 372 Reading likely, the paper has decomposed and disappeared in the shape of the applied ink from both sides of the folio.

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81 Preface to: Shvarts Kalman, Handbook on Laundry (16th century) [complete]'

This book of sixty-nine folios is introduced by a rhymed preface in which the ^enerai tasks involved in laundering are described. The handbook itself consists af a series of circular, numerical diagrams in the centre of each of which there is sasted a cut-out drawing of a hand with a pointing index finger (some of the lands are now missing). Each such chart is headed with the name of a particular item to be laundered (e.g. various categories of and the maniculae point to a number on the chart, indicating, according to Baumgarten, 'la quantite d'habits que 1'on doit mettre a lessiver dans le cuvier'. The book most likely comes from Italy, as the inclusion of the Italian phrase (1. 25) suggests. Source: Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS hebr. 1312 [Sorbonne 244], fol. Irv. Edition: Baumgarten, 'Manuscrits Paris', 139-41 (edn. of 11. 1-40 of preface only). Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum Handschriften, 414 [andNachtrage].

404 Fol. 7rv is blank; thus 1

Text only; diagrams omitted.

appears on fol. 8r.

16

461

5

10

15

20

25

30

•?^

40

22

Baumgarten

462

1C

45

50

55

82 Translation of The Alphabet of Ben Sira (anon. 16th century) [excerpt]

Some of the proverbs from the book of the Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus 'The Wisbut the second-century dom of Ben Sira', are included in the / Simeon ben Jesus Ben Sira who wrote the apocryphal book seems unrelated to the legendary Ben Sira around whose exploits the latter book is organized. It is impossible to determine when and where this highly original and sophisticated narrative text was composed, although it is likely that it was in the Middle East 58 The final words of the verse are lost through trimming of the page at the bottom: perhaps something like

463

during the Geonic period after the rise of Islam. It was already influential during Maimonides' life, for he attacked the work. There are at least four quite different recensions of the text extant, their differences probably due to changes to the text by the censoring actions of scribes and editors over the course of several centuries. The censors were so successful in expurgating the book that some recensions of it circulated for centuries more or less accepted as part of the midrashic tradition. The text is generally satirical, regularly derogatory to biblical and Talmudic characters (including Solomon), frequently pornographic, and occasionally even heretical. The text is divided into four parts: the pseudobiography of Ben Sira from the time of his conception (both son and grandson of the prophet Jeremiah) to the age of 1 year; his teacher's attempt to teach the 1year-old child the alphabet, to which the child responds with an epigram for each letter; the adventures of Ben Sira's life at the Babylonian court of Nebuchadnezzar; and the twenty-two alphabetically arranged satirical and heretical epigrams that gave the work its title. The last three parts were originally all structured in twenty-two sections (according to the alphabet), plus twelve additional paragraphs. The earliest extant Yiddish version is from the sixteenth century. Within a century thereafter, printed editions in Yiddish with quite variant forms and formats had already become widespread. The excerpt here presented is the entry for a in the translation's first alphabetical series, edited from a sixteenthcentury manuscript now in Berlin. Not surprisingly, in view of the diversity of the Hebrew text traditions, comparison of the Berlin manuscript with other early Yiddish editions makes clear that a critical text that accounts for the entire tradition is practically impossible: the texts either vary so radically that they are not comparable, or they seem distinct translations of the same or a similar source text, but not otherwise closely related. Source: Berlin, PreuBische Staatsbibliothek, MS Or. Qu. 696, fos. 7v-9r; Steinschneider, Handschriften Berlin, 131. Edition: Hebrew text: ;(1984 ,cmxa partial translation of the Hebrew text: Norman Broznick, 'The Alphabet of Ben Sira', Rabbinic Fantasies: Imaginative Narratives from Classical Hebrew Literature, ed. David Stern and Mark J. Mirsky (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990; rpt. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 167-202. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 27; | 75 Baumgarten, 66, 374.

464

1

16

with the two final vowel points reversed; see the same word below, with the vowels correctly placed.

16

465

83 Topics and Divisions [Methods of Talmud Study] (anon, late 16th century) [excerpt]

The manuscript in which this text is found includes two distinct collections/treatises on the same subject of the a'pi^n ('fine distinctions') method of Talmud study (brought to Poland by Jacob ben Joseph Pollack in the late fifteenth century). The first text, from which the excerpt edited here is taken, treats its subject in sixty paragraphs and probably originated in Lvov, where Joshua Falk and Meir Lublin were important teachers in the late sixteenth and

2

B

with first word stricken.

466

16

early seventeenth centuries. It is written partly in Hebrew and partly in Yiddish (a similar book on the same subject is ppfin 'JT7, copied in Prague, 1508; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Opp. 390 (olim 842a); Neubauer, 853). The text was copied in Fulda in the late sixteenth century by Azriel b. Isaac and was owned by Benjamin b. Menahem of Worms (fol. 53). While neither the title nor the title page of the codex is contemporary with the text, that title is nonetheless appropriate and retained here. Source: Oxford, Bodleian, MS Opp. 733 [olim 278], fos. 3r-6r; Neubauer, 854. Research: Louis Jacobs, 'The Talmudic Argument', 52-69, and David WeissHalivni, 'The Amoraic and Stammaitic Periods', 127-160, in Essential Papers on the Talmud, ed. Michael Chernick (New York: New York University Press, 1994).

1 The text is headed with a quasi-title, ending with the word \X~\r\; the other words are lost above the torn edge of the page.

16

2 3 4

O preceded by TNI, the dots indicating a mistake to be stricken. O the 0 is interlinear above _) interlinear above.

467

84 Gitele, wife of Zalman b. Isaac, Midrash on the 'Sayings of the Fathers' (< 1600) [excerpts]

This codex of thirty-six folios comprises a text that documents the early textual stages of a long tradition in Yiddish which associates the Mishnaic 'Sayings of the Fathers' with Ashkenazic women. An excerpt from the midrash on the same text by Anshel Levi (1579) is included above (EYT 64). While it was generally not thought appropriate for women to study the Mishna, the text of the 'Sayings of the Fathers' clearly had exceptional status in this respect at least by the early modern period, when multiple Yiddish translations of both the Mishnaic text itself, as well as commentaries on the text, appeared, making the text accessible to all Yiddish-speakers, 'both men and women', as the preface to this text specifies (1. 4). The selections here are the brief verse preface and the sixth chapter (consisting of mrPis incorporated into the Mishnaic text after its original composition). Source: Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, PreuBischer Kulturbesitz, MS Or. Oct. 1127 [unpublished, post-Steinschneider, provisional catalogue, 35 (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Orientabteilung)]. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum Handschriften, 419 [and Nachtrage]; ;115-114 | Baumgarten, 370-7; Simon Hopkins, 'A Fragment of Pirqe Avot in Old Yiddish', Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress of Jewish Culture, Div. C (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1982), 153-7; |,(1983) .467-459

Preface (fol. 4r):

1600

469

5

10

Chapter 6 (fos. 33r-34v):

4 6

B

B

with first three letters stricken at line end. with first three letters stricken

470

1600

1600

I 2

B B

with the first group of letters stricken. with the H stricken.

471

85-87 Isaac [Eizik] Wallich Collection (c.1600) [excerpts]

This collection of 114 pages comprises fifty-five poems, twelve of which were composed in Yiddish, while the remainder are of German origin (many of them quite well known in German folksong traditions) and were transcribed into the Hebrew alphabet. Because the authorship of the final song of the manuscript is claimed by Eizik Wallich of Worms a community leader in the Jewish quarter in Worms who lived in the late sixteenth century and died probably in 1632, it has been assumed (by Kirchheim, Neubauer, and Rosenberg) that he was also the collector of the songs brought together in the manuscript (Matut notes the lack of evidence for this assumption). The collection presents a remarkable documentation of at least some of the range of popular song known and sung in the Jewish communities of the Rhineland at the turn of the seventeenth century, and differs from the Oldendorf collection (EYT 36) precisely in this more popular and less learned character. Among the texts included in the collection are a drama (the from the year 1598), wedding songs, and even love songs. The authors include Isaac Kitl Leyb Kutnit Joseph b. Benjamin, and Solomon of Prague. The pagination and the fanciful title page (watercolour and beasts) crafted by Raphael Kirchheim during his preparation of the 1875 sale catalogue for G. B. (Eliakim) Carmoly's collection provides the descriptive but garbled title, [sic], assigned to the codex. At least one leaf must be missing after p. 38, since its catchword does not match that of p. 39; pp. 29-31 should be bound before pp. 17-28. Source: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Opp. add. 4°. 136; Neubauer, 2420. Edition: Felix Rosenberg, 'Ueber eine Sammlung deutscher Volks- und Gesellschaftslieder in hebraischen Lettern', ZGJD 2 (1888), 232-96; 3 (1889), 14-28 [selections in Germanized, Roman-alphabet transcription]; | ,TDN3 .43-35 Research: ; 109-104 ;205-178 ;169-163 Baumearten, 195, 456; ;61-60 ;94-87 ,80-72 ,(1923 W. E Lockwood, 'Die Textgestalt des jiingeren Hildebrandliedes in judischdeutscher Sprache', BGDSL 85 (1963), 433-47 [Roman-alphabet trans-

1600

473

literation and Germanized transcription of the 'Hildebrantlid' from this manuscript]; Wilhelm Heiske, 'Deutsche Volkslieder in jiddischem Sprachgewand', in Festschrift zum 75. Geburtstag von Erich Seemann, ed. Rolf Wilhelm Brednich (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1964 = Jahrbuch fur Volksliedforschung 9 (1964), 31-44; B. Mordechai-Ansbacher, 'Wallich', EJ, XVI, coll. 256-7; 1 ,1750-1697 . ,(1979 ; 130-103 | Diana Matut, 'The "Wallich Manuscript"—A Sixteenth-Seventeenth Century Folk-Song-Collection: Its Nature and Significance', Diploma Thesis [unpublished], Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, 29 May 1999.

85 'Jonah Play' (anon, c.l 600) [complete]

That this text was conceived as a drama is indicated both by the quasi-stage directions at several points 1. 102) and otherwise by the lack of identifications of speakers as integral parts of the text itself (as opposed to such identifications (inconsistently) by means of stage directions; thus leaving it as a collection of speeches by generally unidentified speakers). The Yiddish text is based directly on the German Jonah play Jonas, Ein lustigs / auch kurtzes / und nicht minder nutzes Spiel by Simon Rothen and Balthasar Klein (Schweinfurt, 1582; extant: Cracow, Biblioteka Jagiellonska, Yq 766), but has been reduced in length by its Jewish adaptor by some 80 per cent in that he has excised all instances of both topical allusion and post-biblical Christian interpretation (e.g. prefigurations of Christ), which, taken together, comprised most of the German text. The resulting Yiddish text is, however, not simply a skeletal version of the Christian original, but rather demonstrates a number of further adaptations and elaborations, such that it becomes an independent text in its own right. Shmeruk's characterization of the text as a 'dramatic failure' is overly harsh. The manuscript text is divided into stanzas, each of which is written continuously without line breaks and ends with the remainder of the last manuscript line filled out to the margin with a series of colons and slash marks; the stanza divisions are here retained and indicated by a double colon. Based on the German play,

474

1600

Rosenberg adds bracketed identifications of the speakers that are lacking from the Yiddish play; for the sake of ease in comprehending the text as drama, those bracketed German identifications are also included in the present edition. Butzer posits a displacement of the scenes of Jonah's dialogues with God and the gatekeeper (11. 71-97, Butzer, p. 66). Despite the play's direct derivation from a German source text and its close linguistic relationship with that text, it nonetheless illustrates, almost a century earlier than the otherwise earliest extant complete Purim play (EYT 120), the type of dramatic text that developed into the literary Purim play, the importance of contact with the non-Jewish surrounding culture in the development of the tradition of the literary Purim play, one of the modalities of German-to-Yiddish literary adaptation, and, finally, the cultural barriers that mediated influence from that quarter and often prevented those contacts from being directly influential. That the deity has a speaking role would have caused staging difficulties in a traditional Jewish community, which could nonetheless have perhaps been overcome by the same means as in twenty-firstcentury Purim plays, in which the deity's voice comes from offstage. The text's original stage directions and identification of speakers are here included in the line count. Source: Oxford, Bodleian, MS Opp. add. 4° 136, pp. 2-6; Neubauer, 2420, Edition: Felix Rosenberg, 'Ueber eine Sammlung deutscher Volks- und Gesellschaftslieder in hebraischen Lettern', ZGJD 2 (1888), 273-7 [Germanized, Roman-alphabet transcription]; Evi Butzer, Die Anfange der jiddischen purim shpiln in ihrem literarischen und kulturgeschichtlichen Kontext (Hamburg: Buske, 2003), 207-12. 177-177. Research: ,384-336 ; 150-135 Baumgarten ;210-199 ,186 ;269 ,237 ,235 ,20 441-77; ;i928-1923 3 ,7750 ;1940 ;389-141 ,(1948 18 ;38-28 ,(1940) 15 ,(1959 ;1756-1653 1750-1697 on the earliest fragments of 130-103 ,19-13 ,(1979. Purim plays]

Areumentator:

1600

475

5



10

<Jonas> 15

20

<Schiffknecht> 25

<Jonas>

8 10 13 18

Rosenberg sun. Rosenberg hin. Rosenberg zwen. Rosenberg ach.

1600

476

<Schiffherr>

<Jonas> 30

<Schiffherr>

<Schiffregent> 35

<Schiffknecht>

40

<Jonas>

45

<Schiffleut> 50

32 41 49

Rosenberg frumen. Rosenberg mechten hinein (also 1. 50).

with first word stricken

Rosenberg

1600

477

55

60

65



70

75



<Jonas> 80 Rosenberg (haben) kein. Rosenberg emends to bin ich. with first letter stricken Rosenberg suggests ubel tive difficulties. ivith the first 3 stricken 74 54 61 62 65

Butzer reads

with consequent interpre-

Rosenberg emends to embor.

1600

478

85

<Ein boscr Bube>



90

95

100

105

85 89 91 92 106

with first letter stricken. with B stricken; Rosenberg Heia, juchhe. Butzer Rosenberg sind

1600

479

110

115

86 'Pumay, You Dear Companions' (anon, c.l 600) [complete]

This poem celebrates the putatively free and easy life of eating and drinking of the yeshivah student, which is here given some licence by the reference to Purim. The song's seven-line stanzas have the rhyme structure ABABCCX, the last line a refrain (except in the last stanza). This song is closely related to the one that follows it in the manuscript, a historical poem concerning the retreat of Henri of Anjou from Poland, composed in 1574. Source: Oxford, Bodleian, MS Opp. add. 4°. 136, pp. 12-14; Neubauer, 2420. Edition: Felix Rosenberg, 'Ueber eine Sammlimg deutscher Volks- und Gesellschaftslieder in hebraischen Lettern', ZGJD 2 (1888), 279-81 [Germanized,

107 108 113 115

Rosenberg nun. Butzer Rosenberg uf. Rosenberg ich.

480

1600

Roman-alphabet transcription]; | ;37-36 Evi Butzer, Die Anfange der jiddischen purim shpiln in ihrem literarischen und kulturgeschichtlichen Kontext (Hamburg: Buske, 2003), 213-16. Research: .144-143 ,137, 115 205-178

1

twice, first stricken. 1,2 2,1 Whole line as catchword at the foot of p. 12, stricken on p. 13. with first letter group stricken. 2,6 2,7 Rosenberg omits line. with first letter group stricken 3,6 3,7 4,5

with first letter group stricken. Rosenberg gexpiesen.

Butzer

1600

481

5

6,2 6.6 7,1 7,7 8,7

Rosenberg zigen. N with first letter stricken

the V corrected from N.

482

1600';

87 Isaac [Eizik] Wallich, 'Memento Mori' (anon, c.l 600) [complete]

This reflective poem, quite characteristic of one strain of Jewish and Christian poetry of the period (especially the genre of ars moriendi), has no title in the manuscript; thus its first line is substituted for a title here, while in English the ad hoc title common among such poems in the non-Jewish European tradition is here editorially assigned. The poem comprises fourteen six-line stanzas, rhymed AABCCB. Source: Oxford, Bodleian, MS Opp. add. 4°. 136, pp. 113-14; Neubauer, 2420. Edition: Felix Rosenberg, 'Ueber eine Sammlung deutscher Volks- und Gesellschaftslieder in hebraischen Lettern', ZGJD 2 (1888), 281-4 [Germanized, Roman-alphabet transcription]. Research: .205-178

1

9,2 9,5 9,6 1,2

Butzer omits. with first letter group stricken the 1 is, as traditionally, quite long, extending far below the line. with first two words stricken, one above the other.

1600

483

5

1,4 1,5 3,5 6,1 6,3

Rosenberg omits. Rosenberg omits. In the original composition, probably U"t, as the rhyme indicates Rosenberg seit. with first word stricken. with first word stricken.

484

1600

10

Rosenberg gar 8,5 Rosenberg das geld verfurt. 10,4 10,5 Rosenberg omits as 'unverstandlich' 11,3 Rosenberg: und (well ich nun) mufi scheiden.

1600

13,3 13,4

seems corrected from

485

88 Translation of Yiddish Selihot [Slikhous] Translated by Jacob b. Elijah Halevi of Teplitz [Toplitz] (1602) [excerpt]

The translator (author ?) was known as and was a famed comare non-statutory poser of pious songs (see below, EYT 92 and 103). The prayers for the forgiveness of sin that are recited on all fast days and during the days of Penitence (beginning before Rosh Hashanah and extending through Yom Kippur). While individual examples of such prayers must have existed earlier, the oldest extant order of mrroo (in Hebrew) dates from the ninth century. The practice of reciting has expanded in the course of time and now displays considerable variation from one community to another Source: Prague, 1602 [Moses b. Bezalelj; extant: Bodleian, Opp. fol. 1273 [olim 1102], fol. 41 rv; St. 2911, 5524,2; Steinschneider Serapeum, 228; Cowley, 292, 569; IDC J-43-112/1. Edition: Wolf, 52-4; Hebrew text with English translation: Abraham Rosenfeld, The Authorized Selichot for the Whole Year, 2nd edn. (London: I. Labworth, 1957); Y. Lavon and A. Gold, The Complete ArtScroll Selichos (Brooklyn: Mesorah, 1992). Baumgarten, 319-62; Research: ;93-92 ,85 ,64 ;71-55 .92-69 ,(1991)

1602

1

487

488

1602

89 A Fine Book of Tales [Mayse-bukh] (anon. 1602) [excerpts]

This anonymous collection of stories, folktales, jests, and legends originates ultimately from a variety of Jewish oral and written traditions of the Middle Ages, including much material from Talmudic aggadah and midrash, and much Judaized material from non-Jewish traditions. While a number of collections of tales had existed earlier, the earliest extant edition of this collection in this form was published in Basel in 1602. The printer of this edition, Jacob b. Abraham of Mezhirech (Jacob Pollak), a compiler of religious textbooks, printer, publisher, and bookseller, claims both that his is the first edition of the book and that it includes more than 300 tales, although the collection, which certainly existed in manuscript earlier, had perhaps also been printed earlier and subsequently been abridged prior to the production of the Basel edition, for in fact that edition includes only 255 tales. This particular incarnation of the collection comprised stories that had been compiled in the late sixteenth century (not before 1580), for it borrowed several stories from the that was published in Basel by Jacob Luzzato in that year. In general the collection is designed for a broad audience, as is clear from the undemanding language and style of the stories. Its purpose was to provide the common people with a collection of pious stories (in pointed opposition to many other collections of stories in circulation at the time), to be a vernacular aggadah, and thus simultaneously to teach ethical principles and entertain (the moral of the tale is often made explicit at its conclusion). There are three primary types of tales included: the main section comprises narratives that originate in the Talmud and midrash, drawn ;w, the collection of narrative material abstracted from the primarily from Talmud. The second tale type comprises a cycle of twenty-seven legends and

1602

489

narratives focused on Rabbi Samuel and his son Rabbi Judah the Pious, the great mystics of medieval Germany and the authors of the The third type consists of a variety of narrative materials, including medieval tales about Rashi, Maimonides, and the 'Jewish pope'. The was immensely popular and one of the most influential books on all subsequent narrative traditions in Ashkenazic culture. By 1763 there had already been twelve editions. As Erik points (EYT 47) and the out, like the J13 ;EYT 98), the is more than a literary text, it constitutes an entire literary school or tradition that provided Ashkenazic culture with one of its primary storehouses of narrative up to the end of the eighteenth century. Source: Basel, 1602 [Jacob b. Abraham of Mezhirech (Miendzyrzecz) (Jacob Pollak)/Konrad Waldkirch]; extant: London, British Library, 1954.c.42; Zedner, 505-6; Prijs, 178; | 39-36 ,pnDX. Edition: Grunbaum, 385-458 (no. 143 on pp. 407-11); Staerk/Leitzmann, 321-8; Wolf, 49-50 [title page and preface]; Astrid Starck, ed. and trans., Un beau livre d'histoires. Eyn shon Maysebukh: Fac-simile de /'editio princeps de Bale (1602), 2 vols. (Basel: Schwabe & Co., 2003). Research: Moritz Stcinschneider, 'Das "Maase-Buch"', Serapeum, 27 (1866), 1-12 [= Steinschneider, Serapeum Handschriften, unnumbered item]; ;364-353 ,346 ;171-145 ;203-179 ;141 ' ;226-210 | Baumgarten, 365-88; ;72-71 Jakob ;131 .3 ,(1927) Meitlis, Das Ma 'asebuch, seine Entstehung und Quellengeschichte: Zugleick ein Beitrag zur Einfuhrung in die altjiddische Agada (Berlin: Rubin Mass, 1933; rpt. New York: Olms, 1987); Moses Caster, 'The Maassehbuch and the Brantspiegel', in Jewish Studies in Memory of George A. Kohut, 1874-1933, ed. Salo Wittmayer Baron and Alexander Marx (New York: Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1935), 270-8; Use Z. Sand, 'The Vocabulary of the Mayse-Bukh: A Sample Glossary to a Middle Yiddish Text' (unpublished M.A. thesis, Columbia University, 1956); Jakob Meitlis, Maaseh in the Yiddish Ethical Literature (London: Shapiro, 1958); Use Z. Sand, 'A Linguistic :(1961 Comparison of Five Versions of the Mayse-Bukh (16th-18th Centuries)', in FOYII, 24^8; Astrid Starck, 'Das "ma'asseh-buch": Platz der jiddischen Literatur in der deutschen Umwelt', in Begegnung mil dem 'Fremden.' Grenzen—Traditionen—Vergleiche: Akten des VIII. internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses, ed. Eijiro Iwasaki (Tokyo 1990/Munich: ludicium, 1991), XI, 474-86; Astrid Starck, 'Erzahlstrukturen in der fruhen jiddischen Prosa', in Jiddische Philologie: Festschrift fur Erika Timm, ed. Walter Roll and Simon Neuberg (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1999), 157-73; Astrid Starck, 'La

490

1602

Femme dans le Mayse-bukh (1602)', in Le Yiddish: Langue, culture et societe (Paris: CNRS, 1999), 38-64; Astrid Starck, 'Mayse-bukh et metamorphose', in Bulletin du centre de recherche franqais de Jerusalem, 8 (2001) 49-68; 'Heb. 8° 5245 .152-126 ,(1979) 28 : Translation: Moses Gaster, Ma 'aseh Book: Book of Jewish Tales and Legends, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America,1934); | apjr .(1969,:

Title page and preface (fol. Irv):

1602

Tale 143 (fos. 82v-86r):

1

B the upper stroke of the *] is lacking, such that it appears as a ].

491

492

1602

1602

493

494

1602

1602'

2 3

495

496

1604

90 Moses Sertels ben Issachar Halevi The Book of Good Doctrine (1604) [excerpt]

The compiler of this glossary of Hebrew words found in the biblical books of the prophets and the hagiography refers in the text's rhymed preface to the still well('the Torah is the best merchandise') and known proverb notes at the beginning of the section on the Song of Songs that with this glossary in hand, it is possible for anyone to have access to the Scriptures even without a teacher, although, as he remarks, teachers can also make use of the book with their pupils. But more importantly, fathers can use it for studying with their sons. What is most dangerous from the point of view of the traditional rabbinate, however, he also notes: even women can buy it and learn to read the Bible for themselves. Sertels published two extensive Hebrew-Yiddish dictionaries: the first, (1604), covers the Bible except for the Pentateuch and the Five (EYT 91), published the following year by Scrolls, while the second,

1604

497

the same publisher, Moses ben Bezalel, covers the Pentateuch and the Five Scrolls. They are intended to help remedy what he viewed as the abysmal state of Jewish education at the time, which stressed the Talmud almost to the exclusion of the Scriptures. Despite Sertels's efforts and the multiple developments in the methods of teaching the Bible in traditional Ashkenazic society from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, however, the complaints about the focus of the schools on the Talmud to the exclusion of a workable knowledge of the Bible continue over the centuries.

Source: Prague, 1604 [Moses b. Bezalel], fol. 2rv; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 4°. 1040 (2); St. 6553,10; Cowley, 493; IDC J-43-39/1; Erlangen, Universitatsbibliothek, RAB-I 137 (2); Sammlung Wagenseil, VK 187/2. Edition: Griinbaum, 559; Staerk/Leitzmann, 65-72. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 134; I ;415-414 ,398 ,176 ,158 Baumearten, 37, 125, 130-2 ;237 232-161 ,(1990 Preface:

5

10

15

498

1604.

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

55

60

1604

49S

65

70

75

80

91 Moses Sertels ben Issachar Halevi, The Book of the Well of Moses (1604-1605) [excerpts]

In the preface to the work, the compiler, Moses Sertels ben Issachar Halevi, laments that since parents in his day only want their children to demonstrate a knowledge of the Talmud, the children no longer understand and are no longer taught in the to undertand the Pentateuch. It is at best unsystematically taught in the schools, without a grounding in grammar and vocabulary. Furthermore, the teachers are itinerant; the boys have no instruction during the holidays; and no single weekly pericope is ever learned in its entirety. The book's title page gives the publication date as 1605, while the colophon identifies it as 1604; it seems likely that the colophon's date specifies the completion of the work for the printer, while the title page specifies the year when the work was actually published. Sertels's glossing method is illustrated clearly even in the briefest of excerpts (e.g. here the glosses on Genesis 1: 1-14, the first three days of Creation): the Hebrew lemma is defined in Yiddish, followed with some frequency by sometimes lengthy digests (in Hebrew) from the commentary tradition (primarily from Rashi). Source: Prague, 1605 [Moses b. Bezalel]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 4°. 1040 (1) [olim 1315]; IDC J-43-4/1; Erlangen, Universitatsbibliothek, RAB-I 137 (1); Sammlung Wagenseil, VK 187/1; St. 6553,1; Cowley, 492. Edition: Grunbaum, 557-8; Staerk/Leitzmann, 65-72. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum 353; | ,176 ,158 122-112 :237 Baumgarten, 37, 130-4, 415-414 ,398; 62 142

Preface (fol. 2rv):

1605-1604

501

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

502

1605-1604

45

50

55

60

65

70

75

80

1605-1604

503

85

90

95

Glossary (fol. 3r):

5

10

15

20

14

Baumgarten hamayim.

504

1615-1605

92 Jacob b. Elijah Halevi of Teplitz [Toplitz] 'A Very Fine, New Torah Song' (1605-1615) [complete]

The author was known as (preface, 1. 8), a famed composer of pious songs (Prague, 1650; EYT 103); he also translated (Prague, 1602; EYT 88). After the title page, the song is organized into forty-nine three-line stanzas, rhymed AAA, BBB, CCC, etc.; each stanza begins with the word and ends with each of these words is separated from the remaining text by several spaces on the line, or, in the case of often by punctuation or by placing the last word on a separate line (here the two words are in all cases separated from the remaining text by extra space, as is the general practice in the original text). The second word of each of the first twenty-two stanzas begins with a letter that forms part of an alphabetical acrostic (the acrostic is disturbed by hypercorrection of to and to in st. fifteen and twenty-two); stanzas twentythree and twenty-four also seem to begin a further acrostic, but then the pattern and and the letter are, without a disappears. Inconsistently the words discernible reason, printed in square font in the Prague edition; this peculiarity is not retained here. The book was printed in the house of the famous Bak family of printers, set in type, as the prefatory lines indicate, by one of the family's daughters, Sorel. Source: Prague, 1605-15 [Jacob Bak]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 8°. 460 (1) [olim 405]; St. 3700, 5524,1; Cowley, 292; IDC J-43-130/1. 306-305 ,171 Research: 2Q5-\7$

1615-1605

505

Title page:

5

Text: 1

5

506

1615-1605

10

15

1615-1605

507

20

25

508

1615-1605

30

35

1615-1605

509

40

45

510

1609

93 Rebecca b. Meir Tiktiner, The Nursemaid of Rebecca (1609) [excerpts]

The author, whose name points to a family connection with Tiktin (Polish Tykocin), is identified on the title page as the daughter She lived and died in Prague probably in the mid-sixteenth century. The purpose of the book, which was published posthumously, is to instruct women in proper behaviour, but also, as noted in the book, to demonstrate to them and everyone else that a woman is capable of both understanding and writing an ethical guide. The book is divided into seven 'gates' (i.e. sections), covering instructions for women's household duties and their relations with the various people in their lives: husbands, children, in-laws, etc. Source'. Prague, 1609 [Gershon b. Bezalel]; extant: Erlangen, Universitatsbibliothek 4° RAB-I, 167 (1), Sammlung Wagenseil VK 90/1; St. 6817,1. ;319-314 ;274 Research'. ; 105-86 ; 102-101 ,70-65 | Baumgarten, 84, 277; I. C. Lufft, De Rebecca Polona Eruditarum in Gente Judaica Fceminarum Rariori Exemplo (Altdorf, 1719); Solomon B. Freehof, 'Devotional Literature in the Vernacular: JudeoGerman, Prior to the Reform Movement', Central Conference of American Rabbis—Yearbook, 33 (1923), 375-424;

;(1975 .23-13,(1978) 5-4

49,1 49,2

1609

511

Title page (fol. Ir):

5

10

15

Chapter 1 (fos. 2v-8r):

1

standard text

512

2

1609

The usual practice in this text of enclosing certain Hebrew words in parentheses is not always carried out; in those cases there is extra spacing left in the text on both sides of the Hebrew word, as here. ^

1609

4

P here and in the next instance of this word, 1 is interlinear above.

513

514

1609

1609

515

516

1609,

1609,

517

1609

518

5

p-

1609

6 7 8

519

94 Medical Reference Manual (anon. 1618) [excerpts]

This collection of texts served as a reference manual for a medical practicioner at the beginning of the seventeenth century (see fol. 236r: The 381 folios of the book comprise twelve sections; among them: general health rules with reference to famous physicians (e.g. Isaac Israeli, Maimonides, Averroes, Avicenna, Hippocrates, Galen); a physiological treatise on the human body; a remedy book for internal and external diseases; an obstetrical treatise (with multiple drawings of foetal positions in utero); a manual on the treatment of wounds; recipes for the preparation and use of dyes, salves, and liquid plantextracts; a treatise on herbs and their medical use; descriptions of animals and their quasi-magical properties; descriptions of the properties of gemstones; a lexicon of herbs (Yiddish-Latin, Latin-Yiddish). In addition, the manual includes a four-colour drawing of the human body with labelled body parts (in part Hebrew-Yiddish, much lost through trimming, very faded ink; the figure is drawn wearing briefs, fol. 46r). The clear indications of the Latin tradition behind some of the texts is another sign of the sporadically common traffic in medical texts between Jews and Christians, and concomitant translation of Hebrew to Latin and vice versa (Steinschneider, 'Allgemeine Einleitung', 740). Source: Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, PreuBischer Kulturbesitz, MS Or. Oct. 619 [unpubl. provisional catalogue, p. 8] Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum Handschriften, 421; | ;211-208 ;47-42 B a u m g a r t e n , 421-43; M o r i t z ;400 Steinschneider, 'Allgemeine Einleitung in die jiidische Literatur des Mittelalters (Vorlesungen)', Jewish Quarterly Review, 15 (1903), 302-29; 16 (1904), 373-95, 734-65; 17 (1905), 148-63, 354-69, 545-82 [rpt. as book: Amsterdam: Philo Press, 1966]; Isak Miinz, Die jiidischen Arzte im Mitlelalter: Ein Beitrag zur Kultwgeschichte des Miltelalters (Frankfurt am Main: Kauffmann, 1922): Ron Barkai, ;235-223 ,(1932)4 A Medieval Hebrew Treatise on Obstetrics', Medical History, 33 (1988), 96-1 19; Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An

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Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Ron Barkai, Les Infortunes de Dinah, le livre de la generation, la gynecologie juive au moyen age, trans. J. Barnavi and M. Garel (Paris: Cerf, 1991); Joseph Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Ron Barkai, A History of Jewish Gynaecological Texts in the Middle Ages, Brill Series in Jewish Studies (Leiden: Brill, 1998).

1. Obstetrical Treatise (fos. 164v-169v):

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4. The Properties of Gemstones (fos. 278v-290r): The Hebrew names of gems are glossed in Yiddish (if the Hebrew and Yiddish designations are different), followed by a brief description of the appearance and geographical source of the stone, as well as its physical effect on humans. The treatise begins with descriptions in Hebrew, but then within a few pages Yiddish comes to dominate.

(fol. 280r):

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Two Letters from Prague to Vienna, 1619

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95-96 Two Letters from Prague to Vienna (1619) [complete]

The collection in which these two letters are found comprises the contents of a single packet of letters which includes forty-seven larger and smaller pages, on which are written letters from members of the Prague Jewish community to members of the Vienna Jewish community, most of which are in Yiddish (the remainder in Hebrew). The cache of letters presents modern researchers with a unique means of access to Jewish Prague on 22 November 1619, for almost all of the letters were written on that day in that city (only a few of them were written a few days earlier) and addressed to recipients in the single city of Vienna. While no historically significant information unknown from other sources can be derived from these letters, they provide a nuanced, personal insight into the lives of central European urban Jews of the time, in particular into the private lives of families. In a number of the letters there is direct address of the issue of correspondence and letter delivery between Vienna and Prague. The disappointment and even irritation of the writers of the letters included here due to their not receiving letters on a regular basis from absent family members clearly indicate that the possiblity (and expectation) of frequent delivery of correspondence, at least in these larger Jewish communities, was present, while at the same time, both their response to the lack of mail delivery and the fact that this cache (among others) remained undelivered demonstrates just as clearly that there was low security in the private system. Striking in the style of the letters is the high proportion of formulaic phrases, some predictably from the Semitic component of Yiddish, but many also from the Germanic component (often in rhymed

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verse). While letters, particularly of an earlier period, were in some sense formal compositions and rarely as colloquial as conversation, there are certainly colloquial elements to be found in these letters, which occasionally even provide examples of what must have been quite idiomatic speech patterns of the time. The phonetic spelling, particularly the non-standard orthography of some words from the Semitic component, provides some information about the relative levels of (Hebrew) literacy of some of the correspondents. Some of the letters are written in part in a cipher, which is decoded and explained by Landau/Wachstein (in an added appendix) and slightly differently by Borokhov. Two of the longer letters have been selected here, for the sake of the lively portrayal of family relations, the interaction of business and traditional expectations for a young man's studies, and the emotional stress on marital relations caused by the often lengthy absence of a husband travelling on business (letters numbered 3a and 45a, according to the numbering in the edition by Landau and Wachstein). On early Yiddish letter writing in general, see EYT21. Source: Vienna, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Hs. Weiss 1002 (Suppl. 1174). Edition'. Alfred Landau and Bernhard Wachstein, eds., Judische Privatbriefe aus dem Jahre 1619, Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der Juden in Deutsch-Osterreich, 3 (Wien/Leipzig: Braumuller, 1911) [with 8 facsimile plates and dual pagination for the Hebrew-alphabet and Roman-alphabet sections of the book; for the letters here edited: Yiddish, pp. 4-8 and 53-6; Roman transcription, pp. 7-14 and 89-92]; Birnbaum, 'Specimens', 166-8 [Landau/Wachstein, nos. 1,12, 34], Research: Andrew Lloyd ,(1913-1912) ;356-351 Sunshine, 'Opening the M a i l : Interpersonal Aspects of Discourse and Grammar in Middle Yiddish Letters' (Diss., Columbia, 1992).

95 Henoch b. Israel Hamershlag to his son Aaron (1619) [complete]

The author's daughter-in-law, Frumet, died at a young age. Among well-known who was called people mentioned in the letter arc Joel Sirkes Nathan b. Solomon Spira after his major work, Isaiah Horowitz author of Chief Rabbi of Prague and author of and the father of the letter's author, Israel Hamershlag who was a respected scholar and head of the Prague community; he died in Venice while on a journey to Palestine on 5 Elul 5375 (= 30 August 1615). The letter is number 3a in the edition by Landau/Wachstein.

i 2

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Two Letters from Prague to Vienna, 1619

K) 17 18 19 20 21 22

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On the right margin:

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96 Sorel [Sarah] b. Moses to her husband, Leyb Sorel Gutmans (1619) [complete]

The letter mentions the coronation of Friedrich von der Pfalz (mistakenly dated 28 Heshvan 5380 (= 5 November 1619); it actually took place on Monday, 4 November 1619). The letter is number 45a in the edition by Landau/Wachstein.

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Two Letters from Prague to Vienna, 1619

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97 Isaac ben Eliakim of Posen, Book of the Good Heart (1620) [excerpts]

This book of morals is divided into twenty chapters in which the rules for leading one's life according to the law are systematically expounded, including: behaviour in the synagogue, prayer, correct observance of the sabbath and holidays, child-rearing, and the proper choice of a wife. As this last item demonstrates, the book was explicitly addressed not just to women, as were many of the behavioural guides of the period, but also to men. Often the book directly addresses its readership as 'householders and women'. While in most ways retaining a strictly traditional perspective on gender relations, the author nonetheless insists that men and women have equal rights—in a vague sense, never defined specifically. Not surprisingly, however, for a book of morals, the book is in general quite conservative in its perspective, claiming that any book that does not focus on the Torah and the commandments consists of nothing but confusion and is sinful to read. At the same time, the author nonetheless insists that those who do not know Hebrew well enough to comprehend the prayers should pray in a language that they understand, whether Yiddish or Italian. The book attracted a wide readership—also among influential rabbis who recommended the book—and almost immediately replaced the ^sw o)~a (EYT 76) in popularity. Source: Prague, 1620 [Jacob Bak's sons and brothers]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. fol. 1130; St. 5344,1; Cowley, 264; IDC J-43-40/I; Sammlung Wagenseil VK 19; Amsterdam, 1651; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, S.1.12.Th.Seld.; Cowley, 264. Edition: Winter/Wiinsche, III, 541-2. 187-182,153-149,127 Research: ;301-294 ;155 ,112 ,44-43 | Baumgarten, 86, 256, 271, 304, 364, 471; .(1975 Title page:

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98 Jacob b. Isaac Ashkenazi of Janov, Sene-Rene [Tsene-Rene] (1622) The Book of Esther, complete]

While the cultural importance of this book is too complex a topic to be treated is certainly one of the most influential books in the hisfully here, the tory of Yiddish literature and indeed Ashkenazic culture, for there is no doubt that this Yiddish book—in its many editions over the course of almost four centuries—has been read more than any other Yiddish book and perhaps as much as all other Yiddish books of all periods and genres combined. While the book is the epitome of the cultural myth that Old Yiddish literature was was written and published by men, 'women's literature', the addressed to both men and women (as the preface explicitly states), and read by both men and women regularly, indeed religiously, since its publication. It

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became the Bible for Hebrewless readers, women among them, and almost immediately ousted all previously published, literal translations of the Bible, and was so popular that it made the Ashkenazic book market unreceptive to the even more idiomatic translations that appeared during the decades following its publication. It quite simply dominated the Ashkenazic vernacular market into the twentieth century, when Yiddish as the vernacular of the majority of Ashkenazim declined. Even at the beginning of the twenty-first century, however, it has remained the unrivalled vernacular Bible of choice among Yiddish-speaking religious Jews. The origin of the work is in several respects shrouded in shadows. Little biographical information exists about the book's author/translator, Jacob b. Isaac Ashkenazi of Janov. In fact, since a number of towns named Janov exist in various parts of Poland, it is not even certain which one was his place of origin. It is likewise unclear when he was born, and even the year of his death is not agreed upon by scholars (1620-8). The text itself was probably written in the late sixteenth century, but it is not clear when its first edition was published. Most likely it appeared around the beginning of the seventeenth century, but the earliest extant edition (1622) is identified on the title page as published in Basel, although in fact it was actually printed in Hanau; thus occasionally there are still mistaken references to two editions of 1622 (see Prijs, Die Easier hebraischen Drucke). The frontispiece of this edition indicates that earlier editions, one from Lublin and two from Cracow, were at the time already out of print (and none of the three is now extant). Subsequent to this shadowy beginning, however, the publication history of the book spreads far and wide, extending through more than 210 editions up to the present. Strictly speaking, the is not actually a translation of the Bible, but rather in large part a biblical paraphrase with extensive incorporated commentary, which was drawn from a broad range of the learned Jewish tradition, (literal exegesis) and particularly midrash and Talmud, a combination of (interpretation), along with aggadic material from the midrash and other traditional materials. It seems that Bahya b. Asher ben Hlava's commentary on the Torah was the author/translator's main source; even the author's method, which generally avoids philosophy and kabbalah, resembles that employed by Bahya. The title of the work is derived from Song of Songs 3: 11: ('Go forth, O daughters of Zion, and behold'). The selection edited here, the entire book of Esther, clearly demonstrates the midrashic and homiletic style and method of the Hanau (Basel), 1622, fos. 27r-34r; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Source: Opp. fol. 113; St. 5545,6; Cowley, 297; Prijs, 319; IDC J-43-148/1. Edition: Staerk/Leitzmann, 296-307; Birnbaum, 'Specimens', 171 [Exodus 3: l];Grunbaum, 192-223.

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Research'. Steinschneider, Serapeum, 244; ;48-3 162-150 ;274-270 ;23 0-223 ,186 ,170-168 ,164-147 ,115 ,112 ,102 ,44-37 179-177,23-22 ;258 I Baumgarten, 145-53; Sal Goldschmidt and A. Marmorstein, 'Zeene ureene', Mitteilungen zur judischen Volkskunde, 13 (1910), 37-47; 14 (1911), 49-63, 130-5; 15 (1912), 49-71, 16/1 (1913), 21-5; 16/4 (1913), 14-31; 17 (1914), 9-10, 92-5, 121-8; Leo Landau, 'A Hebrew-German Paraphrase of the Book of Esther', JEGP 18 (1919), 497-555; Nechama Leibowitz, 'Die Ubersetzungstechnik der jiidisch-deutschen Bibeliibersetzungen des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts dargestellt an den Psalmen', in BGDSL 55 (1931), 377-463; rpt. 1971 [Diss., Marburg, 1931]; |, Shlomo Noble, 'Sacred and Secular in the Language of the ;(1943 Yiddish Bible Translation', Yivo Annual of Jewish Social Science, 1 (1946), 274-82; '(1850-1786) (1964 7622 1968 Chava Turniansky, 'Ze'enah ;76-73 ,(1969) 29 ,38-33 ,(1966) 26 Ure'enah', EJ, XVI, 967-8; Jean ;190-165 ,(1977 Baumgarten, 'Les Traductions de la Bible en yidich (XVIe- XVIIe siecles) et la Zeenah ureenah (Bale 1622) de Yaakov ben fshaq Aschkenazi de Janov', REJ 144 (1985), 305-10; Julius Carlebach, 'Ze'nah Ur'enah: The Story of a L'Ey/ah, 23 (1987), 42-7; Joseph P. Schultz, Book for Jewish Women 'The "Ze'enah u-Re'enah": Torah for the Folk', Judaism, 36/1 (1987), 84-96; Harvey Minkoff and Evelyn B. Melamed, 'Was the First Feminist Bible in Yiddish?' Moment, 16/3 (1991), 28-33 and 52; Erika Timm, 'Blitz and Witzenhausen', *39-*66 in: Dorothy Bilik, ;(1993 'Tsene-rene: A Yiddish Literary Success', Jewish Book Annual 51 (1993-4), 96-111; Jutta Baum-Sheridan, Studien zu den ;282-275 (1994) 3i ,11 westjiddischen Estherdichtungen (Hamburg: Buske, 1996); Simon Neuberg, Pragmatische Aspekte der jiddischen Sprachgeschichte am Beispiel der 'Zenerene' (Hamburg: Buske, 1999). Translation: Miriam Stark Zakon, trans., The ;(1973 Weekly Midrash: Tz'enah Ur'enah—The Classic Anthology of Torah Lore and Midrashic Commentary, 2 vols. (Brooklyn: Mcsorah, 1994); Jean

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Baumgarten, trans. Le commentaire sur la Torah = Tseenah ureenah, 2nd edn. (Lagrasse: Verdier, 1994).

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99 Joseph b. Eleazer Lipman Ashkenazi, Lament on the Ukrainian Massacre (1648) [complete]

This sequence of brief poems describes the destruction of Jewish communities and massacres of Jews that occurred during the campaign conducted by Bogdan Chmielnicki (1595-1657) during the year 1648 in the Ukraine. Chmielnicki coupled his intent to free the Ukraine from Polish rule with a systematic campaign to annihilate all Jews in the territory. Hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed, tens of thousands of Jews were slaughtered, and tens of thousands more displaced and/or exiled. The Yiddish poem proper on this catastrophe comprises seventy-eight quatrains (rhymed AAAA, BBBB, CCCC, etc.), to be sung to the tune of It is preceded by a verse preface of comprising twenty-two rhymed couplets and followed by a poetic an introductory sentence and thirty-seven rhymed couplets, plus a colophon (these three sections are numbered separately here). According to the poem's preface, the lament was originally composed in Hebrew, but since much of its potential audience could not read that text, it was then translated into Yiddish. The putative Hebrew original has, however, remained untraceable. The Joseph b. from the Eleazer Lipman Mensher community ol Kremzir (in Moravia), who identifies himself in the poem's acrostic (st. 23—63, following the conventional alphabetical acrostic in the first twenty-two stanzas), would thus be the Yiddish translator and not the author. In any case, whether Joseph is the author or merely the translator of the first sixty-six stanzas concerning the Chmielnicki massacres of 1648, he is almost certainly responsible for the appended stanzas 67-74, in which the pogrom in his home city of Kremzir in 1643 is described with a vividness that suggests that he was an eyewitness of the massacres or perhaps had heard the reports of eyewitnesses. The text was printed twice (Prague, 1648, and Amsterdam soon thereafter); the latter edition differs only in one sentence from the first edition. Sporadically some of the text of the Prague edition has been lost due to trimming the edges of pages for binding. Source: [Prague], 1648, extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 8°. 460 (8) [olim 405]; St. 3693, 5912,2; Cowley, 329; IDC .1-43-37/1; Amsterdam [after

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1649]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 8°. 647; St. 3694, 5912,2; Cowley, 329;IDCJ-43-38/l. Edition: 218-192, Research'. Steinschneider, Serapeum, 38; ;140-129 ;130-129 ;390-388 Leopold Lowenstein, 'Historische Lieder'. ZHB 14 (1910), 125-7; | ;76-5 ,(1927 1949

384-371 ,(1988) 53/4

161-143 ,(1984) 4 Yiddish trans.:

;382-357 ,(1990 English trans.: 'Yiddish Literature and Collective Memory; the Case of the Chmielnicki Massacres', Polin, 5 (1990), 173-80; Chava Turniansky, 'Yiddish Song as Historical Source Material: Plague in the Judenstadt of Prague in 1713', in Jewish History: Essays in Honour ofChimen Abramsky, ed. Ada Rapoport-Albert and Steven J. Zipperstein (London: P. Halban, 1988), 189-98.

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100 Elhanan b. Abraham Hellen, The Song of Vints Hans [Megilas Vints] (1648) [complete]

This historical song is based on events which took place in Frankfurt am Main in the years 1614-16, when the city's Jewish community numbered around 2,000. The restrictions on Jewish life, especially economic practice, were so strict that the only profession permitted to Jewish residents was usury, which there (as elsewhere) tended to arouse anti-Jewish feeling among the non-Jewish populace, such that there was a strong popular movement in the years prior to the events of 1614 that advocated expelling the Jews from Frankfurt. The economic, political, and social situation of the Jews in the city was at the time, however, far more complex than the popular opposition to Jewish money-lending can explain. In any case, the city council consistently supported the Jews and their continued residence in the city. Even so, by Shavuot of 1614 there had already been a barely averted attack on the Jewish quarter, and on 1 September of the same year a riot broke out, with an angry mob, led by Vincentz (Vints-Hans) Fettmilch, storming the gates to the Jewish quarter, destroying and pillaging as it went. Eventually the Jews were 'allowed to leave', i.e. they were expelled from the city by the mob (1,380 left at that time; some left later, and some few remained in hiding in the city). Astonishingly, it seems that only two Jewish deaths resulted from the riot, while one of the attackers was killed during the widespread and courageous armed Jewish resistance to the attacks. Order was eventually restored, and at the emperor's order the mob's leaders were arrested and imprisoned—for insurrection against the state (i.e. not for their violence against the Jews). Although there was some movement to allow the Jews to return to the city soon after the riot, it was not until 1615 that a restricted number of Jews reentered the city (and began the repair of the ruined Jewish quarter), and permission for the re-establishment of the entire community was not actually issued until 2 March 1616, to become effective one week later, at which time the leaders of the riot were tried, sentenced, tortured by mutilation, executed by decapitation, and their severed heads mounted on stakes on the gate to the bridge over the Main; Fettmilch was additionally drawn and quartered and the four parts of his corpse hung up in four different streets of the city to serve as a warning to

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potential rebels. Thereafter the Jews were escorted with some fanfare back into the Jewish quarter. Thus the Jewish populace as a whole did not return to the city, and Jewish community life did not begin to return to any state of normalcy, until some eighteen months after expulsion. The poem, which was composed in 1616, soon after the execution of the riot's perpetrators, is an unusually long example of the widespread seventeenth- and eighteenth-century genre of the historical poem/song. Max Weinreich also claims that this is perhaps the best example of the genre in Yiddish, both because of its artistic qualities and its historical accuracy. As was the case with a great many such Ashkenazic historical poems of the period, this song was a bilingual composition even in its origin. Little is known of the author, who died no later than 1624. The poem was intially published soon after the events (perhaps already in 1616) in an edition that is, however, no longer extant. The first extant edition of the poem is the reprint of the first edition, published in Amsterdam, 1648 (it was reprinted a number of times thereafter). The poem comprises 103 stanzas of eight hemistichs each in Hebrew and 103 corresponding eight-line stanzas in Yiddish; both the Hebrew and Yiddish poems are rhymed ABABCDCD. The composition was sung to the tune of the then famous song (the evidence for whose original melody is discussed, with musical notation, by Weinreich; see also Ulmer). This poem was incorporated into the Jewish tradition of'supplementary Purims', which, in a number of Jewish communities throughout Europe, similar to the actual holiday of Purim, were based on local events of threat to and deliverance of the Jewish community, remembered and thus also celebrated via the reading of a text recounting the event. The became a part of the Frankfurt community's annual cycle of celebration and remained so into the nineteenth century: among other things, the text was read on the 20th of Adar and children were shown the site where Fettmilch's corpse was displayed. In the 1648 edition, the publisher often used a square-script font and occasionally a Sephardic semi-cursive ('Rashi') font for Yiddish words of Semitic derivation. Otherwise, the conventional Ashkenazic semi-cursive mashait font is used for Yiddish, while square-script is used for the text of the Hebrew version of the poem. Wagenseil printed the Yiddish text only, while Schudt printed both the Hebrew and Yiddish texts. Weinreich edited the Yiddish text only, but had no access to the 1648 edition and thus attempted, on the basis of the editions by Wagenseil and Schudt, to 'reconstruct' the text's original orthography. Thus, while his commentary and notes are of great scholarly value, variant readings from his text are not included here. Readings unclear in the Hebrew text of Amsterdam 1648, as well as significant variants in the Hebrew by David Gans (and text are noted from the edition included in the occasionally Schudt). Insofar as it is possible to distinguish Ulmer's frequent

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misreadings from her emendations, the latter are noted here. In the textual notes to the present edition, references to the Hebrew text are numbered by hemistich, to the Yiddish text by line. Source: Amsterdam, 1648 [Judah b. Mordecai and Samuel b. Moses Levi]; extant: A m s t e r d a m , B i b l i o t h e e k v a n d e U n i v e r s i t e i t , B i b l i o t h e c a Rosenthaliana, Ros. 15 D 133; St. 4930,2; IDC J-43-53/1; Erlangen, Universitatsbibliothek, RAB-I 223 (4); Sammlung Wagenseil, VK 283/5; St. 4930,1; Cowley, 170. Edition: Wagenseil, Belehrung, 111-49 [Yiddish text only]; 1692 [Hebrew text only; fos. 70v-73vl; Johann Jacob Schudi Judische Merckwiirdigkeiten, III. Theil (Frankfurt am Main 1714), 9-62 [Yiddish and Hebrew texts with German translation]; | opNtt ;34—31

;(1963-1962 | Rivka Ulmer, Turmoil, Trauma and Triumph: The Fettmilch Uprising in Frankfurt-am-Ma in (1612—1616) According to Megillas Vintz, A Critical Edition of the Yiddish and Hebrew Text Including an English Translation (Bern: Peter Lang, 2001). Research'. ;311-308 ;391-385 ;140-129 96-93 Baumgarten, 403-21; Isidor Kracauer, 'Die ;107 Juden Frankfurts im Fettmilch'schen Aufstand 1612-1618', ZGJD 4 (1890), 127-69, 319-65; 5 (1892), 1-26; Leopold Lowenstein, 'Historische Lieder', ZHB 14(1910), 125-7; | Horst Karasek, Der Fedtmilck-Aufstand, oder: Wie die Frankfurter 1612/14 ihrem Rat einheizten ( B e r l i n : W a g e n b a c h , 1979); Arno Lustiger, ' D e r ;152 ,(1984) 4 Fettmilchaufstand in Frankfurt und die Juden', in Scheidewege. Rudolf Pfisterer zum 70. Geburtstag (Diisseldorf: Der kleine Verlag, 1985), 23-31; Christopher R. Friedrichs, 'Politics or Pogrom? The Fettmilch Uprising in German and Jewish History', Central European History, 19 (1986), 186-228; Jean Baumgarten, 'Le Ghetto assiege, 1'insurrection de 1616 centre les Juifs de Francfort d'apres un poeme en yiddish ancien, la Megi/at vintz', Parde.i, 5 (1987), 141-58; Chava Turniansky, 'Yiddish Song as Historical Source Material: Plague in the Judenstadt of Prague in 1713', in Jewish History: Essays in Honour ofChimen Abramsky, ed. Ada Rapoport-Albert and Steven J. Zipperstein (London: P. Halban, 1988), 189-98; Christopher R. Friedrichs, 'The Anti-Jewish Movements in Frankurt and Worms, 1612-1617: Local Crisis and Imperial Response', Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Div. B (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1990), II, 199-206; Der Fettmilch-Aufstand. Burgerunruhen und Judenfeindschaft in

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Frankfurt am Main 1612—1616, ed. R. Brandt et al. (Frankfurt am Main: Historisches Museum Frankfurt, 1996); Rainer Koch, '1612-1616. Der Fettmilch-Aufstand. Sozialer Sprengstoff in der Biirgerschaft', Archiv fur Frankfurts Geschichte und Kunst, 63 (1997), 59-79. Title page:

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101 The Swedish Siege of Prague (anon. 1649) [complete]

This poem represents the siege of Prague by the Swedes near the end of the Thirty Years War. Insofar as it is possible to determine the events of the siege (and their order and timing), the poem seems rather an accurate representation. It is, however, by no means merely a historical report, but rather participates in the literary genre of historical song as problematized by Shmeruk. The language of the poem seems a closer representation of the spoken Yiddish of the time than many contemporary poetic texts. The edition is based on the only complete version of the poem (Prague, 1649, preserved in the Bodleian Library), while significant variants are included from the other extant edition (strictly orthographical variants are not noted), preserved in the Wagenseil Collection of the Universitatsbibliothek in Erlangen (Neuberg provides no compelling evidence for his claim that the undated edition in Erlangen is the source of the Prague edition of 1649; cf. p. 7). The poem proper comprises eighty-eight stanzas of six lines each, with the rhyme scheme: AXABBA (Neuberg misconceives the stanzaic

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structure by combining the second and third lines, thus restructuring the poem as AABBA; cf. p. 97). Source: (1) Prague, 1649, extant Oxford: Bodleian Library, Opp. 8°. 635 [P]; Steinschneider, 3660; Cowley, 666; IDC J-43-111/1; (2) n.d., n.p.; [fragmentary, lacks fos. 2-3, st. 7-31,4]; extant: Erlangen, Universitatsbibliothek, RAB-I 225 (6) [E]; Sammlung Wagenseil, VK 282/6. Edition: Simon Neuberg, ed. Das Schwedesch lid: Ein westjiddischer Bericht uber Ereignisse in Prag im Jahre 1648, jidische schtudies 8 (Hamburg: Buske, 2000) [Yiddish text with Germanized, Roman-alphabet transcription]. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 283; | ;140-129 ^Nn^Utf | August Hartmann, Historische Volkslieder und Zeitgedichte vom sechzehnten bis neunzehnten Jahrhundert, vol. I: Bis zum Ende des dreifligjahrigen Krieges (Munich: Beck, 1907; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1972); Leopold Lowenstein, 'Historische Lieder', ZHB 14 (1910), 125-7; K. Spiegel, 'Die Prager Juden zur Zeit des DreiBigjahrigen Krieges', 107-86, in Die Juden in Prag: Bilder aus ihrer tausendjahrigen Geschichte, Festgabe der Loge Praga des Ordens B'nai B'rith, zum Gedenktage ihres 25jahrigen Bestandes, ed. Samuel Steinherz (Prague, Komissionsverlag 'Die Bucherstube', 1927); ;161-143 ,(1984) 4 Chava Turniansky, 'Yiddish Song as Historical Source Material: Plague in the Judenstadt of Prague in 1713', in Jewish History: Essays in Honour of Chimen Abramsky, ed. Ada RapoportAlbert and Steven J. Zipperstein (London: P. Halban, 1988), 189-98.

Title page:

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P 20,3 P 20,5 21.4 P 22 Neuberg attempts to account for the stanza's disturbed rhyme scheme by combining 11. 4 and 5 and positing a missing line after 1. 3, which he 'reconstructs' as: wu nemt men dn asofllgolt. 22,2

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102 'A Fine, New Song of Three Wives' (anon., c.1650) [complete]

This unusual song of three women who go out to a tavern without their husbands and drink to their hearts' content without regard for the late hour, their conventional duties at home, or the family budget, might initially suggest to a twentyfirst-century reader a seventeenth-century conception of women's potential emancipatory practice. But even from the beginning, there is a sense that this is to be a didactic exemplum, and such is in fact the case, for the moral precept is in fact made quite explicit, although rather surprisingly, no overt punishment of the three women is incorporated into the narrative itself. The poem has the improvisational tone, satirical sense, and irregular verse form characteristic of the work of a ]rm. Perhaps it is in that context that one should seek the ambience of this song. The attempt here to suggest a poetic structure is based on the original text's punctuation, rhyme, and quasi-metrical considerations: a thirteenline preface, followed by eighteen stanzas, generally of eight-lines each, rhymed ABABCCXC, with frequent variation in individual stanzas. The 1650 edition of the poem is printed on four pages, at the top of the first of which is the title printed as here; this title also appears as header on the second and fourth pages; as the header of the third page, however, one finds: Source: Prague, 1650; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 8°. 556 (2); St. 3667; Cowley, 666; IDC J-43-42/1. Research: 205-178 [generally on this type of text].

5

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P the catchword at the foot of the previous page is

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P uncertain reading; poor inking and worn text render all readings at the bottom right corner of the page difficult; some are now lost.

640

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103 Jacob b. Elijah Halevi of TepHtz [Toplitz] 'A Pious Song' (1650) [complete]

On the author, see EYT 88 and EYT 92. This poem treats the theme of the inevitability of human sin, death, and punishment, but then turns to the possibility for men and women to fulfill the commandments (here described briefly for both sexes), thus preventing eternal punishment. The author is identified on the first page of the text as as This is published in the second composition in the booklet, Prague in 1650. The poem is introduced without a title simply with the words: the title assigned here is thus simply adapted from the original title of the booklet containing the two (actually three; cf. EYT 104) songs. The poem consists of thirty-seven stanzas of five lines each (st. 6 is a four-line exception), rhymed AABBB. Source: Prague, 1650, extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library 8°. 460 (2b) [olim 405], fos. 3r-6v; St. 3637; 5524,1; 6817,3; Cowley, 292, 591; IDC J-43-134/1. Research: 205-178

1

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104 Rebecca b. Meir Tiktiner, 'A Simhas-Torah Song' (1650) [complete]

This hymn is to be sung by women in the synagogue while the scroll of the law is prepared for (the ceremonial procession with the Torah). Despite the fact that the book in which this poem appears does provide it with a title the poem itself is introduced with no title, simply with: The poem consists of forty rhyming couplets, in which each verse is followed by the refrain The initial letters of the first twenty-two couplets form an alphabetical acrostic; at some point in the tradition a copyist (or typesetter) 'corrected' the spellings and thus disturbing the acrostic (similarly disturbing the to acrostic was a change from n to 1 in line 73). In the remaining eighteen couplets, identifying the the acrostic takes the form of . author by name. Rebecca Tikhtiner (= Tykocin, Poland) lived in Prague and probably died there in the mid-sixteenth century. She composed not only this poem but also an ethical guide for Jewish women, which was published in 1609 and became very popular (EYT 93). The was printed twice in Prague in 1650, once as the third text in the booklet entitled -IT1? (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 8°. 460 [PI]; see also EYT 103), noted above, and once by itself (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 8°. 650 [P2]). Each of the texts includes errors of a number and type that indicate that neither presents the original text with much accuracy. Shmeruk took P2 as the basis of his edi-

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tion; PI, which seems slightly less error-ridden, forms the basis of the present edition (all substantive variants from P2 are noted). Source: Prague, 1650, extant: Oxford, Bodleian Opp. 8°. 460 (2c) [olim 405], unfoliated [fos. 7r-8v] [PI]; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp 8° 650 [P2]; St. 3637; 3696; 5524,1; 6817,3; Cowley, 292, 591; IDC J-43-134/1. Edition'. ,70-56 .23-13 ,(1978) 5-4 ;205-178 Research: ;320-319 Baumgarten, 336.

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P2 Shmeruk emends the first word to

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P2 23 26 P2 PI lacking P2 27 P2 33 P2 lacking. 36 P2 37 P2 38 P2 lacking. 41 P2 lacking. 42 P2 lacking. 52

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P2 P2 lacking, Shmeruk emends to 1"1 for the sake of the acrostic.

P2

P2 P2 P2

Shmeruk emends to

105

Moses b. Israel Naphtali Hirsh Forges Paths to Zion (1650) [excerpts]

This brief booklet in four chapters is a remarkable source for information concerning seventeenth-century Jewish travel in general, and Jewish life in Jerusalem of the period in particular. The first and longest chapter deals with expectations of accommodation and travel conditions and prices along the various routes, local customs that directly affect Jewish travellers, consumer goods available in Jerusalem, expected standard of living and conceptions of household 'necessities'. Advice is even given about when, where, and at what price one should buy clothing, food, etc. The final chapters of the booklet deal with the in Jerusalem. specific order of prayer, study, and Source'. Amsterdam or Prague, 1650 (unfoliated); extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 4°. 1003 [later pagination, here title page and 1-8]; St. 6482; Cowley, 470; Erlangen, Universitatsbibliothek, RAB-I 197 (7); Sammlung Wagenseil, VK 184/7. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 47; | ;139-138 Cecil Roth, 'Travellers and Travels to Erez Israel', EJ, XV, coll. 1351-9; ;304-267 ,(1976 Jean Baumgarten, 'Jerusalem in Seventeenth-Century Travellers' Accounts in Yiddish', Mediterranean Historical Review, 7 (1992), 219-26; Jean Baumgarten, 'Jerusalem dans quelques recits de voyages en langue yiddish (XVIIIe siecle)', Yod, 31-2 (1990), 115-43; Jean Baumgarten, 'Image du monde sefarade dans des recit de voyage vers la Terre Sainte en langue yiddish (XVIe-XVIIe siecles)', in Esther Benbassa, ed. Memoires juives d'Espagne et du Portugal (Paris: Publisud, 1996), 223-37. Title page:

1650

Text:

1 2

A/P The title page is followed by full-page woodcut that represents Jerusalem. | A/P

653

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i rura

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106 'Lamentation on the Death of the Young King' (anon. 1654) [complete]

This lament is the second of two poems in a booklet, entitled on the death of Ferdinand IV (9 July 1654), the son of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III and elder brother of the future Emperor Leopold I. They participate in the long European tradition of poetic lamentations on the death of a beloved or revered person, whether personal, as with family members, or political, as with rulers, which became especially significant as a genre in early modern Europe. As is clear from the language of the poems, they are based directly on German originals. The German basis of the second of the Yiddish poems was published as the first of three laments on a single broadsheet, the whole bearing the title Al/gemeines trauriges Weheklagen / uber den Todlichen Hintritt Ferdinandi des 4. Deft Heyl. Rom. Reichs erwohlten und gekrohneten Konigs. Im Ton / Wie man der Kaiserin Lied singe / Oder in Dorothea weifi. While the overt Christian references in the poem are modified or excised according to the general Jewish practice in the process of adapting German texts into Yiddish during the period, the specific vocabulary preserved in final stanza is nonetheless quite surprising, for it is difficult to imagine it in any but a Christian context. The second of the Yiddish laments, along with the German source song, are edited here. The poem is included here as an example of a widespread translation/adaptation genre in the Middle Yiddish period of poems that go beyond topical, that is, immediate historical, interest in order to focus even more specifically on the births, lives, marriages, and deaths of members of the imperial families. While the lives of ordinary Jews were—however slightly—even farther removed from the happenings of the imperial court than were the lives of ordinary Gentiles, such poems as these were nevertheless transcribed into the Hebrew alphabet with some measure of adaptation in content and published with some frequency during the course of the eighteenth century. The lament comprises ten stanzas of eight lines each, inconsistently rhymed: ABABCDCD.

Source: n.p., n.d. [? Prague, 1654]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Opp. 8°. 1103 (37) \_olim 885], fos. 3r-4r; St. 3648, Cowley, 666; Allgemeines trauriges Weheklagen / uber den Todlichen Hintritt Ferdinandi des 4. Deft Heyl. Rom.

666

1654

Reichs erwohlten und gekrohneten Konigs. Im Ton I Wie man der Kaiserin Lied singe / Oder in Dorothea weifl (n.p., n.d.; extant: Zwickau, Ratschulbibliothek, inventory number: 43.1.9 [86]). Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 272; | ;142-141 Leopold Lowenstein, 'Historische Lieder', ZHB 14 (1910), 125-7; ;161-143 ,(1984) 4 | Chava Turniansky, 'Yiddish Song as Historical Source Material: Plague in the Judenstadt of Prague in 1713', in Jewish History: Essays in Honour ofChimen Abramsky, ed. Ada Rapoport-Albert and Steven J. Zipperstein (London: P. Halban, 1988), 189-98; John Roger Paas, The German Political Broadsheet 1600-1700, v o l . V I I I (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004).

Allgemeines trauriges Weheklagen \

TRaur Himel / traur in Leyde / verbirg dein schonc Zier / sezt bin al deine Frewde / hilff traurig seyn darfur / bekleyde dich mit Wolcken die dick beysafnen stehn / ein Regen lafi drauff folgen / an statt der Augen-Thran. O Sonn Mond vnd ihr Sterne / zieht an ein traurigs Kleyd / all Frewd sey von euch feme / tragt Leyd mit vnserm Leyd / verkehret ewre Stralen / in finstere gestalt / laBt alle Schonheit fallen / der Todt gibt hierzu Gwalt. Der Todt defi trauten Helden / deB Konigs Ferdinand / den ich mit Leyd thue melden / weil er nun wol bekandt / dieser Todt bringt vns leyder / in Leyd und Traurigkeit /

2,5

P

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ich kan nichts sagen weiter / vor grosserm Hertzenleyd. Dieser Todt soil deBgleichen / euch bringen Traurigkeit / weil durch ihn thut abweichen / von vns in schnelligkeit / die allerhochste Zierde / vnnd Freud der Christenheit / Ferdinandus der Vierdte / nunmehr fur Frewd ein Leyd. 5

O allerschoneste Rosen / wie dorrst du ab so gschwind / was hat dich angeblasen / fur ein vergiffter Wind / der dir dein Farb benofnen / vnd dich so welck gemacht / vnd von dem hochsten stammen / zum Untergang gebracht. Ach Wien klag und beweine / dein Ungliickseligkeit / durch Zaher auB dein Steinen / vor inniglichen Leyd / weil diese Ros ohn Mackel / in dir zum Tod vergifft / O trauriges Spektackel / das Land und Leut antrifft. Ihr Vogel trauret alle / die ihr in Liifften schwebt / ihr Berge mit weheschallen / die stiffi klaglich erheb / ewren Landtsfursten zu beklagen / im gantzen Oesterreich / daB er zum Grab getragen / wurde ein Todte Leich.

4,4 7,8

P

PI

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Kom Adler kom herbey zugleich/ stifn an das Toden-Gsang / durch Ungern / Boheim und Oesterreich / laB schallen deinen Klang / erweiche alle Hertzen / der Teutschen Nation / daB sie mit sondern schmertzen / dein Weheklag horen an. O hochsterleuchte Sonne / der werthen Christenheit / gezieret mit der Crone / Irrdischer Herrligkeit / der Hiffiel hat miBgonnet / vns deine Dignitet / vnd dich daher versonnet / mit Gottes Mayestat. 10

9,6

P

O vive Ferdinande / du Fiirst der Seligkeit / beruhmt in alien Landen / wirst du seyn allezeit / der Konig aller Konig / hat dich erst recht gekront / vnd mit der Cron der Glori / in Ewigkeit versohnt.

107 Nathan Nata b. Moses Hannover The Book of Pure Speech (1660) [excerpt]

This book comprises fifty-four folios (including the title page) comprising a quadrilingual glossary (Hebrew, Yiddish, Italian, Latin) that is arranged in four columns per page. All entries in all the languages are written in the Hebrew alphabet, with extensive pointing. The glossary is organized not alphabetically or according to the divisions of a received text, but rather is divided into twenty thematically conceived sections The selection edited here is from the first section, on 'the heavens and all things that proceed from them'. The author's name clearly refers to the residence of one of his ancestors in Hannover at some time in the past, but his own father lived in Saslaw (Volhynia), where he fell victim to the massacres of Jews that took place during Chmielnicki's rebellion against Polish rule in the Ukraine (cf. Nathan's r Venice 1653). The author managed to escape the same fate, moved to Prague, then to Venice, and then back to central Europe, where he served as rabbi in several Jewish communities along the Moldau. He was living in Ungarisch-Brod when he was killed during the Turkish conquest of the city on 14 July 1663. Due to his sojourn in Italy, Nathan may well have been responsible for the Italian, if not the Latin glossing (for one or both of which he may also have had a collaborator), while the Hebrew and Yiddish glosses are certainly to be attributed to him. His Yiddish entries break with the tradition of glossing via the early Yiddish literary dialect (with its heavy reliance on German literary language) and reflects, to a far greater extent than had been the case with other glossaries, the state of Yiddish pronunciation during his own time (although specific dialectal information in the entries is nonetheless quite scanty). The inking and printing process seems to have resulted in an abundance either of inadvertent markings or unusual 'double pointings'. While it seems likely to be the former (e.g. the practically ubiquitous i and i), to the extent that the markings are identifiable and interpretable, they are here indicated. Source: Prague, 1660 [sons of Judah Bak], unfoliated [fol. 2r]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Opp. 4°. 1091; St. 6637,23; Cowley, 506. Edition: Wolf, 56.

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122-112 Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 378; | ;283 ,261 Weinreich, Sprachforschung, 114-121; Baum;380-379 garten20, 38,211,433,456; ,(1990 .232-161

108 Jacob b. Benjamin Tousk [Taussig] of Prague, A Fine, New Poem on the Messiah (1666) [complete]

The author, who is identified in the poem as Jacob Tousk (Taussig) of Prague, belonged to the great mass of Jews who believed that Shabbatai Sevi (SabseTsvi) was the messiah. At the time the poem was published (July 1666), Shabbatai Sevi had already been arrested and imprisoned in Gallipoli (which posed no problem in principle for believers, as becomes clear from the treatment in this poem). The poem exemplifies both the genres of historical and occasional poetry prompted in some way by a contemporary event. Such poems often lack great artistic ambition, but can nonetheless be of significant historical value (as is the case here). Other than his name, there is no information extant concerning the author. Here he either posed as, or was in fact, a simple man whose unsophisticated concerns mirror those of the great numbers of Jews throughout Europe, north Africa, and western Asia who believed that Shabbatai Sevi was the messiah. There is no indication of any kabbalistic sophistication, and absolutely none of antinomian intent: as far as this believer is concerned, there is nothing remotely heretical or rebellious about the messianic movement; it is simply a matter of the fulfilment of prophecy and is welcomed from within the bounds of traditional piety. One might view this poem as the authentic voice of a significant segment of the people during this period of widespread catastrophe and chaos among world Jewry. The text comprises a brief prose preface, followed by seventy-five quatrains (rhymed AABB; each with an appended refrain of, generally and concluding with a final couplet. The poem includes an acrostic, begininning with the alphabet and continuing with a complex identification of the poet (also noted on the title page and st. 74,4). The poem fills fos. Ir—1 Ir of the booklet in which it originally appeared, while the mystical of Isaac Luria is found on fol. 1 lv-12r. In addition to the Amsterdam (1666) edition of the poem, there is also a Romanalphabet transcription (Wroclaw, 1670) with clear anti-semitic impulse and intent. 1 The clarifying expansions and modernizations incorporated by Weinreich into his edition are not noted here. 1 I am at a loss to understand Weinreich's claim (pp. 231-2) that st. 61-2 are lacking in the Bodleian Opp. 8° 654 copy of the Amsterdam, 1666 edition, which leads him to supply the

672

1666

Source: Amsterdam, 1666; extant Oxford, Bodleian Opp. 8°. 654 \plim 567], fos. Ir-llr; St. 3652, 5628; Cowley, 306. '1666' Edition: ,(1926) ;252-219 ;898-897 ,(1928) 3-2 ,172-159 .r

(1961 [includes: D.G., Ein judisches Lied von dem neuen morgenlcindischen Meflia, Schabbasi Zebhi genannt (1733); facsimile edn. of both texts]. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 125; ;205-178 ,140-129 ;391-390 •96-93 ;319-316 Leopold Lowenstein, 'Historische Lieder', ZHB 14 (1910), 125-7; expanded English ;(1957 translation: Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676, trans. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973): ,(1974 (1991 ;376-374 ,(1934-1933) Chava ;161-143 ,(1984) 4 Turniansky, 'Yiddish Song as Historical Source Material: Plague in the Judenstadt of Prague in 1713', in Jewish History: Essays in Honour of Chimen Abramsky, ed. Ada Rapoport-Albert and Steven J. Zipperstein (London: P. Halban, 1988), 189-98.

Title page:

stanzas from the Wroclaw Roman-alphabet version which he 'retranscribes' into the Hebrew alphabet for inclusion in his edition. The stanzas in question are in fact present and in place in Opp. 8° 654 (fol. 9v). Weinreich's further conclusion that the Amsterdam, 1666 edition thus could not be the first edition of the poem, since the later Wrodaw edition was transcribed from a 'complete' edition, then seems untenable.

1666

673

5

10

15

20

1

674

1666

5

10

1666

675

15

676

1666

20

677

25

30

27,1

Weinreich

678

1666

35

32,3

1666

679

40

680

1666

45

50

46,2

Weinreich

1666

681

55

54,4

682

1666

60

1666

683

65

70

684

1666

75

72,2

A lacking; cf. Weinreich.

109 Translation of Samuel Issachar Baer Perlhefter, The Tent oflssachar Commentary on: Jacob Weil (Mahariv), Slaughtering and Inspection (1670) [excerpt]

Jacob b. Judah Weil, a student of Jacob Levi Moellin Maharil), was one of the great halakhic authorities of the first half of the fifteenth century (d. < 1456). He was rabbi and/or the head of the yeshivah in Nuremberg, Augsburg, Bamberg, and Erfurt and was widely consulted on halakhic issues, thus producing a great number of responsa (first published in Venice, 1523 (EYT 38), including 193 responsa). His treatise on slaughtering and examination, was intended for the use of ritual slaughterers (first published in a reprinted edition of his responsa, Venice, 1549). He explains the law in the briefest of terms, while detailing local custom in addition. The treatise was accepted as definitive halakhic authority and was reprinted in a bewildering number of editions with an ever-changing variety of commentaries and supplementary texts. Several Yiddish commentaries/translations were executed, the earliest perhaps by Moses Shohet (Prague, c. 1640), followed soon after by Alexander b. Mordecai (1667). In the edition excerpted here, the base text is set of Samuel in the middle of the page, surrounded by the commentary, Issachar Perlhefter (a Prague scribe), the Hebrew text on the outside margin and on the inside margin. its Yiddish translation (by Perlhefter, here designated The first passage of the base text and the accompanying Yiddish commentary are here excerpted (this passage, with its two accompanying commentaries, accounts for approximately the first quarter of the fifty-six-page text). In the original edition, the base text is set in square font; the Hebrew commentary in Sephardic semi-cursive ('Rashi') font (not included here); the Yiddish in Ashkenazic semicursive (mashaii) font; with square font for lemmata and 'Rashi' font for citations from the Hebrew commentary. Source: Wilhermsdorf, 1670 (unpaginated, fos. 3r-7r); extant: Erlangen, Universitatsbibliothek, RAB-I 197 (9); Sammlung Wagenseil VK 184/9; St. 5631, 33 and 68-9; Cowley, 307-9. Baumgarten, Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 286; | ;25-48

686

1670

55, 306; ,(1943) 20

.42-41

i 2

standard editions

1670

3

687

688

1670

1670

4

689

690

1671

110 'Proclamation of the Council of the Four Lands' (anon. 1671) [complete]

The Council of the Four Lands = Greater and Lesser Poland, Lvov province, the province of Volhynia), along with the Council of the Land of Lithuania represented the most important European examples of Jewish governmental (quasi-)autonomy in both territorial reach and duration of existence (from the mid-sixteenth century to 1764). The original reason for the existence of the Council was to organize the collection of taxes imposed on Jews by the Polish government. That the Council assumed other responsibilities in the course of time was tacitly recognized by the Polish government, such that eventually the purpose of the Council could be described as primarily twofold: to provide liaison between the interests of the Jewish communities and the Polish governmental institutions, and to provide necessary legislation for the Jewish communities themselves. The Council of the Four Lands met twice annually, at the fairs in Lublin and Yarostew (less often during the eighteenth century). In practice one of the recurring items of interest in the Council records is the attempt by the Council to impose centralized control on far-flung Jewish communities, especially by denying power to local authorities, punishing 'sedition', and controlling the 'common rabble'. Whatever semblance of representative assembly the Council might represent is in general illusory, however, for at least a third of Jewish communities in Poland were denied the vote, and during some of the later periods of the Council's existence, the electorate consisted of no more than 1 per cent of Jewish households. In 1764 the Polish Sejm passed legislation that established a different system for collecting the Jewish poll tax, thus eliminating the legal basis for the existence of the Council. It never met again.

1671

691

Only relatively few remnants of the of the Council of the Four Lands remain (published by Halperin/Bartal). The original book of records of the Council of the Four Lands had long since disintegrated when Simon Dubnow reported on the document edited here and printed an edition of it in 1929, based on two individual pages of the Dp3S that came into his possession in 1894. Two Council decrees from 1671 were written on those pages. Such proclamations were read forth at the Yarosfew fair (Galicia) at the Council's assembly, and thereafter in all synagogues in Poland At the time that these two decrees were issued in 1671, the Council was once again (after the catastrophes of 1648 and its aftermath) beginning to assert its authority and enforce discipline among the Jewish communities of Poland, as the first of the decrees, here edited, indicates clearly. Source and edition: Simon Dubnow private archival document [current location unknown; presumed destroyed in World War 11]; facsimile accompanies his article: ,'1671 ;702-699 (1929

.127-123 ,(1990 | Simon Dubnow, 'Council of the Four Lands', Research: ; 140-129 Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1903), IV, 304-8 [plus facsimiles of other documents]; Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, 'Councils of the Lands', £/,V, coll. 995-1003.

i 2

Halperin/Bartal lacking. the word is at the right margin of crumbling edge; HalDubnow

perin/Bartal 3 D interlinear above.

692

1671

111

Joseph b. Alexander Witzenhausen A Fine Tale of King Arthur's Court (1671) [excerpts]

The first printed version of the Vidvill narrative was the adaptation by Joseph Witzenhausen, the well-known Hebrew printer (Amsterdam, 1671, printed by It was reprinted at least six times in the course of the subsequent century. The poet produces a text longer than the older Yiddish-language source by some thousand lines and modernizes its language, adding much vocabulary from the language's Semitic component. The couplets in the text proper are irregularly grouped into sections; the line count of the text here edited is continous without reference to the sections. The text is here compared with the editions by Wagenseil in his Belehrung der Judisch-Teutschen Red- und Schreibart,

1671

693

157-66 (Konigsberg, 1699) [a dual language, Yiddish/German, edition] and Leo Landau, Arthurian Legends. Incidental differences of orthography and adverbials are not noted. So that the reader might gain some sense of the general plot of the entire first part of the Vidvilt narrative, as it is elaborated across the three versions excerpted in this anthology, the three excerpts were selected such that they form a quasi-continuous narrative of the first part of the tale (read in the order: EYT 111,80, 112). Source'. Amsterdam, 1671 [David Tartas], fos. Ir—4v; extant: Erlangen, Universitatsbibliothek, RAB-I 244 (1); Sammlung Wagenseil VK 277/1; [later edns. St. 6024,2-6; Cowley, 350-1]. Edition: Wagenseil, Belehrung, 157-66 [Hebrew-alphabet text, with facing-page Roman-alphabet Germanization]; Leo Landau, Arthurian Legends, or the Hebrew-German Rhymed version of the Legend of King Arthur, Teutonia, 21 ( Leipzig: Avenarius, 1912) [Germanized, Roman-alphabet transcription]. Research: see EYT 80.

Title page:

5

10

Preface:

6 The title page in Wagenseil ends with line 6.

694

1671

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

20

Wagenseil

1671

695

45

50

Text:

5

10

15

20

25

696

1671

30

35

40

45

50

55

60

65

1671

697

70

75

80

85

90

95

100

105

698

1671

110

115

120

125

130

135

140

145

1671

699

150

155

160

165

170

175

180

185

700

1671

190

195

200

205

210

215

220

196-201 Landau omits.

1671

701

225

230

235

240

245

250

255

Wagenseil Landau bin ich. 230 236 Wagenseil adds line: war ich eich, ginedigr kenig, hab gesworn.

Landau:

702

1679-1671

260

112 / King Arthur's Court (anon. 1671-1679) [excerpt] This oltava rima stanzaic version of Vidvilt romance (rhymed ABABABCC) was printed in the shop of Israel ben Judah Katz in Prague between 1671 and 1679. The poem consists of 580 stanzas in ottava rima, which links it clearly with the northern Italian tradition of the and Elia Levita's and it was in fact probably composed in Italy. This version of the narrative makes a number of oblique references to Jewish life, and in more than a few cases overtly de-heroicizes elements essential to courtly narrative by substituting mundane details from daily life. Unusually for the Yiddish printing practice of the period, a comma is here commonly used as a punctuation mark. So that the reader might gain some sense of the general plot of the entire first part of the Vidvilt narrative, as it is elaborated across the three versions excerpted in this anthology, the three excerpts were selected such that they form a quasi-continuous narrative of the first part of the tale (read in the order: EYT 111,80, 112). Source: Prague, 1671-9 [Israel b. Judah Katz]; extant Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp 4°. 1422 (1) [olim 1696], fos. 3v-7r; Cowley, 42 [dates the text 'c.1652-69']. Research: see EYT 80.

36

36 Due to the loss of much of the bottom of the first folio [Ir is the title page with verse preface; the text itself begins on Iv], the subsequent stanza count is not altogether certain: the first five stanzas (on fol. 1 v) are preserved entire or in part, and there is space for two more stanzas on the lost lower portion of fol.lv. Thus it is quite likely that the excerpt edited here, beginning on fol. 3v, begins with st. 36.

1679-1671

703

40

704

1679-1671

45

44,1-3 P the page has been trimmed somewhat diagonally at the bottom by the binder, resulting in the loss of text.

1679-1671

705

50

706

1679-1671

1679-1671

707

55

708

1679-1671

60

1679-1671

709

65

710

1679-1671

70

71,8

1679-1671

711

75

712

1679-1671

80

Amsterdam Bible Translations, 1676-1679

713

113-114 Amsterdam Bible Translations by Jekuthiel b. Isaac Blitz (1676-1679) and Joseph b. Alexander Witzenhausen (1679) [excerpts]

The first complete Yiddish version of the Hebrew Bible was not published until the seventeenth century in Amsterdam, a major centre of Jewish life in the seventeenth century, as well as the most important centre of Jewish book publishing of the time. In the years 1676-9, there were two translations of the complete Bible published in the city:1 by Jekuthiel ben Isaac Blitz at the shop of Uri Phoebus ben Aaron ha-Levi (1676-9) and by Joseph ben Alexander Witzenhausen at the shop of Joseph Athias (1679); both Yiddish translations appeared without the Hebrew original. Compared with the existing printed versions at the time, they are vastly superior in design and typography. In method they already anticipate the translations of coming centuries, for both their prefaces criticize the existing tradition of including rabbinical and talmudic exegesis in the text itself. They favour a return to the 'purity and clarity' of the and a rejection of original source, and thus a return to a literal sense 83,2 1

P

Sholem ben Abraham, who work at the shop of Isaac ben Aaron Prostitz in Cracow in the sixteenth century, had the idea for a complete translation of the Bible into Yiddish, but the project was never realized (see: 230

714

Amsterdam Bible Translations, 1676-1679

exegetical interpretation They both favour an idiomatic rendering of the original, rather than the traditional word-for-word translation. While they nonetheless made use of many expressions inherited from the earlier tradition of biblical translation, they did move markedly toward a more idiomatic rendering based on the contemporary spoken language. Herewith they both distance themselves quite openly from the primary characteristics of the traditional and the already famous and beloved Both of these translations were products of an educational reform movement that insisted on the primacy of the original source text over the commentary and aggadic traditions that dominated Jewish primary education of the time, by means of which children were rushed through a superficial study of Hebrew via the Pentateuch and Prophets and then moved on to the Mishna and Gemara before they could understand the Hebrew language and certainly before they had any grasp of the Bible as a text or collection of texts that formed the foundation of Jewish religion and life. In particular, the Amsterdam translators point quite explicitly to the different and more effective tradition of the Sephardim in their education of Jewish boys as a model to be emulated. Interestingly, while neither of these translations was able to oust the from its position of popularity, and thus exercised almost no influence on their own or any later period, it was precisely in reaction against these two translations of the Bible that Moses Mendelssohn undertook his own translation into New High German. The complex relationship of the two translations (they are practically identical for some fifty-three-and-a-half chapters; Exodus 21: 2-Numbers 7: 45) is analysed in detail by Marion Aptroot. The texts are edited here from the first edition of Blitz's text (1676-9) and from the 1687 edition of Witzenhausen's translation, which is, except for updated publication information on the reverse of the title page, identical to the 1679 edition. ;239-231 Research: ;158 ;161-159 Baumgarten, 155-61; Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden von den altesten Zeiien bis auf die Gegenwart (Leipzig: Oskar Leiner, 1868; rpt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1998), X, 303-4; Gustav Karpeles, Geschichte der jiidischen Literatur (Berlin: Oppenheim, 1886), II, 1008-9; Lajb Fuks, 'De twee gelijktijdig te Amsterdam in de 17e eeuw verschenen Jiddische Bijbelvertalingen', Het Boek, 32 (1955-7), 146-65; 1 1680 ;50-31 ,(1973)| Jean Baumgarten, 'Deux bibles en yiddish editees a Amsterdam (1676-1679)', in Jean-Robert Armogathe, ed., Le Grand Siecle et la Bible, Bible de tous les temps, 6 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1989), 297-313; Marion Aptroot, 'Bible Translation as Cultural Reform: The Amsterdam Yiddish Bibles (1678-1679)' (Diss., Oxford, 1989);

1679-1676

715

;38-3 ,(1990 39*-66*, in .(1993

Erika Timm, 'Blitz and Witzenhausen',

113 Translation of / Bible Translated by Jekuthiel b. Isaac Blitz (1676-1679) [excerpt]

Source: Amsterdam [Uri Phoebus], 1679, fol. Ir; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. fol. 108. Edition: Staerk/Leitzmann, 161-71 [Genesis 1: 1-19, pp. 165-6]; Grunbaum, 102-20 [> Proverbs],

i

Staerk/Leitzmann dem.

716

2

1679-1676

Staerk/Leitzmann haben.

1679

717

114 Translation of /Bible Translated by Joseph b. Alexander Witzenhausen (1679) [excerpt]

This edition was reprinted in 1687 and was also used in the Biblia pentapla (Wandsbeck, 1711) alongside the Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reform Protestant, and Dutch Parliament (Staatenbijbel) versions. The square brackets that appear in the text are those of the original edition, which are employed to indicate words that have no exact equivalent in the Hebrew original, but are added editorially by the translator to clarify the meaning (as explained among the other symbols in the preface). Source: Amsterdam [Joseph Athias], 1679; extant: London, Shimen Abramsky collections; [ed. here from the reprint, Amsterdam, 1687; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. fol. 107, fol. la; St. 1179; Cowley, 114]. Edition: Staerk/Leitzmann, 172-7 [Genesis 1: 1-19, pp. 172-3]; Grtinbaum, 102-20 [< Proverbs].

718

i

1679

A In the right margin:

1687-1686

719

115 Tuesday Courier / Friday Courier (1686-1687) [excerpts]

The first Yiddish newspaper known to have existed was the / which was published twice a week in Amsterdam in 1686-7 in issues of four pages in quite a small format (15/2 x 9 cm). It was not until the

2

720

1687-1686

early seventeenth century that newspapers in any language had begun to appear in Europe. Generally they were weeklies, although a few already had two issues per week. It was, however, not until the beginning of the eighteenth century that dailies began to appear. The is extant for the sixteen-month period extending from 13 August 1686 to 5 December 1687. Its articles consist primarily of reports from correspondents in the Holy Roman Empire (which is also usually the first rubric of each issue), Italy, Poland, France, and the Netherlands. Much of the reporting concerns the ongoing European religious wars of the period: between Catholics and Protestants, with much of the reporting from northern Italy and Switzerland, and in eastern Europe between Christians and Muslims, i.e. the Turks, whose ships operated in the western Mediterranean and even the English Channel, and whose territory at the time encompassed most of southeastern Europe, extending through Greece and the entire Balkan Peninsula up to within a few dozen miles of Vienna, a hundred miles of Cracow, two hundred of Kiev, and including the entire Crimean Peninsula. There is often almost an air of hysteria in the reports: e.g. when a French passenger ship is seized and all its passengers are enslaved by Turks; when a long Christian siege of a Turkish-held city finally ends in success, its announcement in Rome is celebrated by sounding all church bells of the city simultaneously. There is war correspondent-like reportage of land mines, explosions, nobility dead and wounded, sorties, failed sabotage, etc. 'Local news' is interspersed, but it often consists of nothing more than a report of 'local' casualties on a distant battlefield. There are in addition reports of a destructive storm in Venice, the French king's bout with fever, the names of French aristocrats who have fallen out of favour, the invention of a manual bilge pump that can prevent simple leaks from sinking ships, the annual winter rising of the Tiber that flooded the Jewish quarter in Rome. What the paper reports is, page after page, simply an astonishing record of international (European, north African, west Asian) political, military, and diplomatic news. Despite the fact that the paper is exclusively in Yiddish, which assumes a predominantly if not exclusively Jewish readership, only rarely is there a report on specifically 'Jewish issues'. When such issues are reported, however, there is no attempt to disguise a clear Jewish perspective on the events, as is seen in one of the articles included below. Each issue begins with the newspaper's title and the date, according to the Jewish year and both the Jewish and Christian day and month. Most issues end with identification of the paper's editor and place of issue, e.g. Selections are here edited from several issues of the paper during the months of its run. Source: Amsterdam, 1686-7 [Uri Phoebus]; formerly extant: Amsterdam, Portugees Israelietisch Seminarium Ets Haim, Livraria Montezinos (lost; no other known exemplar); IDC J-261-1.

1687-1686

Research: •266-265 Baumgarten, 74; ;133 ,'1687-1686 ,1936-1686

721

;232

;401 ;683-679 ,(1928) 33

;19-7 ,(1937 ;327-310 ,(1969 J. Cahan, 'Amsterdam, Cradle of the Jewish Press?' Proceedings of the Symposium on the Jewish Press: Why? Past, Present, Future (Amsterdam 1985), 17-23; 300 ,(1986 8-7/92 121 :133-127 ;199-124 ,(1987) .371-363 ,(2000 6

722

1687-1686

1687-1686

723

724

1687-1686

1687-1686

725

116 Translation of The Book of Grace After Meals (1687) [excerpts]

In the strictest sense, the comprises the four blessings and attendant petitions recited after a meal at which bread has been eaten. The phrase has, however, also come to designate the codification of the entire liturgical range of blessings, prayers, and supplications, which then eventually expanded into the popular genre of that itself eventually came to be designated and comprised widely ranging collections of Hebrew blessings and songs for (strictly) domestic liturgical practice (often also including the Haggadah). Beginning at least by 1648 (Amsterdam; extant Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp 4°. 1366; St. 2609), there were also printed editions that included Yiddish translations (the primary text is the Hebrew, while the Yiddish translation is printed on the outside margin of the page in a small mashait font). The 1687 edition here etc. in both Hebrew and Yidexcerpted includes dish and is profusely illustrated with quite interesting woodcuts. In the excerpt edited here, both the Hebrew and Yiddish texts are included for the first two blessings of the book; thereafter, only the Yiddish text is included. The printing quality especially of the Yiddish text is quite poor, such that many letters are simply not well enough inked to have printed; generally they are quite obvious, however, and thus easy to supply without speculation. Source: Wilhermsdorf, 1687 [Isaac Judels]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 4°. 1360; St. 2618, Cowley, 557; IDC J-43-302/1. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 31; | ;79-73 ;71-55 , Baumgarten, 319-62; ;151 ,91 ,71 ;92-51 ,(1982) 10 ,(1991) 1 .92-69

fos. lv-2r:

1687

fol. 5r:

i

W catchword is

727

728

fol. 21rv:

1687

117 Translation of

Midrash Vayousha (anon. < 1687) [complete]

This midrash on the Song of Moses, beginning vi»vi (Ex. 14: 30), was originally composed in Hebrew and first printed in Constantinople in 1519. The earliest Yiddish translation/adaptation was printed sometime before 1687 in Prague, while the second was printed 1688-1715 (both dates according to Steinschneider) in the same city. While all Old Yiddish epic poetry based on biblical characters and themes was heavily dependent on the post-biblical midrashic tradition, this Old Yiddish poem is one of the few that is based directly on the midrash to the exclusion of the Bible. The two Yiddish editions are all but identical; the earlier print is the basis of the edition here, with variants from the later text indicated in the notes. The poem is structured in ninety-two seven-line stanzas generally rhymed ABABACC, with sixteen exceptional ABABXCC stanzas; both rhyme schemes are common sixteenth-century stanzaic forms, the first known from Elia Levita, Martin Luther, and Hans Sachs, among others, while variations of the latter are also known from the works of Luther and Sachs. Such similarities prompted Landau to suggest that the poem was originally composed in the sixteenth century; the archaic style and diction tend to support that view. Source: n.p., n,d. [Prague, < 1687]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 4°. 938 (3) [PI]; St. 3738; Cowley, 435; n.p., n.d. [Prague, 1688-1715]; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 8°. 796 (5) [P2]; St. 3739; Cowley, 435. Edition: Leo Landau, 'Der jiddische Midrasch Wajoscha', MGWJ12 [N.F. 36] (1928), 601-21; (1929 , ;242-223 | Hans Niedermeyer, 'Der altjiddische Midrasch Wojoschah'. Judaica,2\ (1965), 26-55. Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 140; | ;124-119 .risaru ;48-3 , Baumgarten, 173; ;199-182 ;126-125 ;585 .w,( 1928) 3-2 ,(1962) 42 ;282-278 | Wuif-Otto DreeBen, 'Midraschepik und Bibelepik: Biblische Stoffe in der volkssprachlichen Literatur der Juden und Christen des Mittelalters im deutschen Sprachgebiet', ZDP 100 (Sonderheft Jiddisch, 1981), 78-97; Chava Turniansky, 'On Old-Yiddish Biblical Epics', IFR 8 (1991), 26-33.

1687

730

Title page:

5

10

Text: 1

1,3 1,5

P2 P2

1687

731

5

8,4

P2

1687

732

10

9,3 11,3 11,6 11,7 12,3

P2 P2 P2 P2 P2

1687

733

15

1687

734

20

18,6

P2

1687

735

25

24,2 28,1 28,2

P2 P2

P2

1687

736

30

28,3 30,3

P2 P2

1687

737

35

33,5 37,3

P2 P2

1687

738

40

38,7 39,4 42,4

Landau P2 !

bedragn.

1687

739

45

44,1

Landau

do.

1687

740

50

48,2 49,6 52,2 52,3

P2 P2 P2

Landau

P2

sein.

1687

741

55

54,5

Landau

eign.

742

1687

60

1687

743

65

62,7 63,4 63,7 65,3 65,4

P2 P2 P2 lacking. Landau reads ich and 'emends' to sie (1928), but reads P2 lacking.

(1929).

1687

744

70

67,7 70,2 70,4 71,7

Landau Landau P2 lacking.

wil. minnet.

1687,

745

75

73,1

1687

746

80

77,2 80,1

P2' P2

1687

747

85

86,3

P2 lacking.

748

1687

90

87,2 89,1 90,3

P2 Landau omits (1928) P2

(1929).

1696

749

118 Ella b. Moses b. Abraham the Patriarch Verse Colophon to (1696) [complete]

Moses b. Abraham the Patriarch from Nikolsburg, who converted to Judaism (as the conventional 'patronymic' adopted by converts, indicates) and became a printer of Jewish books (in Amsterdam, Dessau, and Halle), engaged two of his young daughters, Ella and Gella, to typeset in his shop. Among the pieces of evidence that they have left us of their work in their father's shop (cf. Steinschneider), each of them also typeset the prayer book (Ella set only the Yiddish translation; Gella, both the Hebrew text and the Yiddish translation) and added a verse quasi-colophon to her work in which she identifies herself and gives some few details of her work and life. The prayer book set by the elder daughter, Ella, was published in 1696, when she was 9 years old; her 'colophon' follows the sabbath prayers and precedes the weekly pericopes. Fourteen years later (1710), Ella's sister, Gella (then 11 years old), typeset the same prayer book and added an even longer poem to its conclusion. Thus two young girls speak to us in their own voices across three centuries. 92,3 dar. Landau 92,5 92 PI following the final stanza is a woodcut of Moses with his staff extended over the reed sea as it closes over the advancing Egyptian troops led by Pharoah.

750

1697

Source: Dessau, 1696; extant: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Opp. 4°. 1184, fol. 174v; St. 2207, 8093, 8832; Cowley, 540. Edition: ;79 ,341 ,19-18 in Jiddische Philologie: Festschrift fur Erika Timm, ed. Walter Roll and Simon Neuberg (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1999), 7-20, here 18-20. Research: ;274 .(15 #) 14-13 ,(1933

5

119 Moses b. Menassah Eliezer b. Moses Wallich, Book of Fables (1697) [excerpt]

With some relatively minor omissions and revisions, this collection of thirty-four fables in rhymed couplets is a reprint of the Yiddish (Verona 1595; EYT 75): the title page and colophon of the two editions are distinct, as are the prologues and epilogues; the first five fables follow a different sequence in the two texts, which causes a logical problem in the epimyth to fable no. 6 in Wallich's collection; and tale no. 35 from the earlier collection is omitted by Moses Wallich. He revises and expands his source materials in a variety of ways, but in general he eliminates archaic linguistic forms while at the same time replacing both Hebraisms and Italicisms with Germanisms (cf. the textual notes below). He also eliminates the comparatively liberal tonality of the north Italian which was often expressed in sexual allusion, and de-emphasizes specifically Christian and Jewish cultural practice (least noticeable in the fables derived from

1697

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Isaac b. Solomon Abi Sahula's where Jewish cultural practice is often the direct focus of the fable). In order to distinguish his work from the earlier which was castigated in the preface to the for its immorality, Wallich went so far as to solicit and obtain a rabbinical approbation for his edition. The fable here selected (no. 30 in the collection) belongs to the tale-type 'Lover blackmails adultress' (K1582 in Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk section II. The woodcuts of the Literature)', see also are recut copies of the woodcuts of the (although in mirror image reversal). The fable edited here is illustrated with ten woodcuts, each bearing a caption. The geographical details of the tale are inconsistent: it begins with a reference to England (1. 1), then later refers to the 'nearby' Bohemian Forest (I. 471), and later still to towns in Bavaria and (possibly) Baden-Wilrttemberg (1. 562). Texof Verona, 1595 [here V] are indicated in the tual variants from the notes. Source: Frankfurt am Main, 1697, fos. 42v-48r; extant: Oxford, Bodleian, Opp. 4°. 1112 [olim 1393]; St. 6580; Cowley, 495. Edition: Eli Katz, ed., Book of Fables: The Yiddish Fable Collection of Reb Moshe Wallich, Frankfurt am Main, 1697 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994) [facsimile with facing-page English translation]; Ruben Beatus, trans., Die Fabeln des Kuhbuches in Ubertragung (Berlin: Soncino facsimile edition with German translation]. Gesellschaft, 1926) 154-149 Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum, 212; Stith Thompson, Motif Index of ;(1946 Folk-Literature, 6 vols. (Helsinki: Academia scientiarum fennica, 1932-6; rev. edn. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966); Haim Schwarzbaum, ;(1977 The Mishle Shu 'alim (Fox Fables) of Rabbi Berechiah ha-Nakdan: A Study of Comparative Folklore and Fable Lore (Kiron: Institute for Jewish and Arab Folklore Research, 1979); Erika Timm, 'Die 'Fabel vom alten Lowen' in jiddistischer und komparatistischer Sicht', ZDP 100 (Sonderheft Jiddisch, 1981), 109-70; Erika Timm, 'Zur jiddischen Fabelliteratur des 16. Jahrhunderts', Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Div. C (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1982), 159-64.

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5

10

15

20

25

1 Before the first line of the text, the first woodcut appears and bears the caption:

also 11, 18, 22, 262, 351, 354, 367, 493, 509, 530,

9

542, 553, 555. 10 12 13 15 19 20 24 25 28

also 28, 32, 50, 52, 100, 133, 175, 271, 286, 330, 368, 417, 447, 465, 484, \86, 512, 527, 550, 558, 575, 581

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30

35

40

45

50

55

31 33 35 38 39 42 42

also 46,61,66, 117, 162,280,311,372,399,421,464.

In V the section ends with: he second woodcut appears after 1. 42 and bears the caption:

In V the caption is:

48

754

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60

65

70

75

80

85

61 63 64 67 69 76 87 89

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755

90

95

100

105

110

115

120

94

96 99 104 109 111 116 118

The section in V ends with 94 and bears the caption:

The third woodcut appears after 1.

also 105, 107, 111,244,293,336,427,578,588.

756

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125

130

135

140

145

150

122 The fourth woodcut appears following 1. 122 and bears the caption:

123 129 135 136 149 152

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155

160

165

170

175

180

185

154 V lacking. 157 160 167 173 180 187

758

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190

195

200

205

210

215

220

188 199 207 216 219 220 222

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235

240

245

250

255

223 225 228 238 239 240 248 250

760

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265

270

275

280

285

258 V ends with

264 265 276 281 282 287-8

The fifth woodcut appears following 1. 258 and bears the caption:

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290

295

300

305

310

315

320

292 295 310 312 318 320

762

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330

335

340

345

350

355 327 330 334 335 340 349 350

354 355

The sixth woodcut follows 1. 350 and bears the caption:

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360

365

370

375

380

385

357 359 366 Vends

367 370 375 378 381 384

The seventh woodcut follows 1. 366 and bears the caption:

764

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390

395

400

405

410

415

388 394

397 401 402 403 404 407

The eighth woodcut follows 1. 394 and bears the caption:

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420

425

430

435

440

445

450

422 425 430 431 432 439 440

766

1697

455

460

465

470

475

480

485

457 463 468 474 478 479 487

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490

495

500

505

510

515

520

488 489 491 494 V the section ends with bears the caption:

503

The ninth woodcut appears after 1. 494 and

768

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530

535

540

545

550

525 526 527 528 537 538 548 551 552

1697

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555

560

565

570

575

580

585

561 564 584 587

770

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595

600

605

610

615

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591 592 597 601 604 612 617 V lacking. 623 V the section ends with

The tenth woodcut appears following 1. 623

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625

630

635

640

645

650

and bears the caption:

626 628 629 633 636 637 647 651 652

772

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660

120 'A Fine Purim Play' (anon. 1697) [complete]

The manuscript of this play was copied in 1697 in Nuremberg by the converted Jew, Johann Christian Jakob (formerly Moses Cohen, or Katz) of Cracow for the collection of Johann Christoph Wagenseil. As was the case with the majority of the Purim-plays extant up to the mid-eighteenth century, this play is also a so'Ahasuerus Play', a dramatization of the (adapted) book of called Esther, which provides the biblical basis for the holiday of Purim; it is the first extant complete example of such a play. As with most early Yiddish literature based on biblical narrative, the Purim-play also made significant use of postbiblical Jewish traditions. Additionally, contemporary non-Jewish drama also exercised a significant influence on the genre, especially with respect to the often ribald comedy. The play is composed primarily in rhyming couplets, but there are occasional prose passages, especially in the monologues by Mordecai (and Mordecai's dream), which provide a clear hint of the common stage practice of the time, in which Mordecai's role was in large part improvised, ideally by an accomplished comedian. The play has extensive and elaborate stage directions in 659 660 664

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Hebrew. The line-numbering from Shmeruk's standard edition of the play, and thus also his division of lines of prose, is preserved here to the extent possible (thus stage directions do not constitute separate lines in the line count; in the verse preface I have added numbering not in Shmeruk; on other differences, cf. note to 1. 1131 below). The most common mark of punctuation resembles a slash mark: / . To avoid confusing it with editorial use of slashes, this mark of punctuation is here represented as a raised dot. Stage directions and identifications of speakers appear in the manuscript in square script and include numerous abbreviations, which are expanded at their first occurrence and thereafter left as in the manuscript: in contexts in which the unexpanded abbreviated forms or absence of stage directions might cause confusion, they are expanded or added in «brackets» (generally based on Shmeruk's practice); this is especially the case with the identification of speakers when not indicated in the manuscript. Source: Leipzig, Universitatsbibliothek B.H. 18 [olim Leipzig, Stadtbibliothek 35], fos. 141r-153v. 1750-1697 Edition: .210-155 ,(1979 Research: Steinschneider, Serapeum Handschriften, 417; I ; 177—172 ;210-199 •424^17 ,384-336 150-135 ;269 ,237 ,235 ,20 Baumgarten, 441-77; Moritz Steinschneider, 'Purim und Parodie', MGWJ46 [n.s. 10] (1902), 176-87, 275-80, 372-6, 473-8, 567-82; 47 [n.s. 11] (1903), 84-9, 169-80, 279-86, 360-70, 468-74; 48 [n.s. 12] (1904), 242-7, 504-9; | 3 ,7750 ;(1928-1923 ;452-425 ,[1928] 2 Bernard Dov Weinryb, 'Zur Geschichte des alteren jiidischen Theaters: Uber die Leipziger Hs. des Ahasveros-Esther-Spiels)', MGWJ 80 [n.s. 44] (1936), 415-24; Ginzberg, Legends, IV, 363-448 and VI, 451-81; | ,(1948 1940 ;389-141 ;38-28 ,(1940) 15 , (1959 ;1756-1653 | Ahuva Belkin, '"Habit de Fou" in Purim Spiel?' Assaph: Studies in the Theatre, 2/c (1985), 40-55; Jutta Baum-Sheridan, Studien zu den westjiddischen Estherdichtungen (Hamburg: Buske, 1996), esp. 79-82; Jerold C. Frakes, 'The Earliest Yiddish Purimshpil is Traced to Leipzig', in Yale Companion to Jewish Writing and Thought in German Culture, ed. Sander L. Oilman and Jack Zipes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997),

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55-60; Evi Butzer, Die Anfange der jiddischen purim shpiln in ihrem literarischen und kulturgeschichtlichen Kontext, jidische schtudies, X (Hamburg: Helmut Buske, 2003).

Title page:

5

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15

Preface 15

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Play:

5

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25

30

776

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45

50

55

60

65

70

59

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777

75

80

85

90

95

100

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110 Shmeruk emends to

75

on the basis of 11. 67, 78 and

1.58. 77 96

Shmeruk suggests emendation to Shmeruk

(1708),

778

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115

120

125

130

135

140

145

121 130

Shmeruk suggests emendation to Shmeruk

1697

779

150

155

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180

153 163 166 177

Shmeruk Shmeruk suggests

L L

780

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220

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255

260

265

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270

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285

290

295

300

305 280

L

Shmeruk

1697

783

310

315

320

325

330

335

340

339 340

1 Thus L Shmeruk reads Shmeruk emends to

and emends to

784

1697

345

350

355

360

365

370

375

380

385

1697

785

390

395

400

405

410

415

420

425

414

Shmeruk emends to

786

1697

430

435

440

445

450

455

460

465 437 452

with last four words marked for deletion.

1697

787

470

475

480

485

490

495

500

505

1697

788

510

515

520

525

530

535

540

545 544

Shmeruk emends to

1697

789

550

555

560

565

570

575

580

555 575

790

1697

585

590

595

600

605

610

615

620

1697

791

625

630

635

640

645

650

655

660

665

792

1697

670

675

680

685

690

695

700

705 666

Shmeruk

1697

793

710

715

720

725

730

735

740

709 729

Shmeruk

794

1697

745

750

755

760

765

770

775

780

785

1697

795

790

795

800

805

810

815

820

825

796

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830

835

840

845

850

855

860

865

849

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870

875

880

885

890

895

900

905

798

1697

910

915

920

925

930

935

940

945

1697

799

950

955

960

965

970

975

980

985

960 961

800

1697

990

995

1000

1005

1010

1015

1020

1025

993

Shmeruk suggests emendation to