Thread by @yonibrander

1/ R. #ZerahEidlitz is an excellent place to start for this bc @AriLamm's whole push was to share idiosyncratic truths & show just how much more there is to learn & think abt.

For a century, great scholars painted him based on errors in texts, bad assumptions, & mistakes.

https://twitter.com/yonibrander/status/1562543476486520833

2/ If there is interest, tomorrow, I will show:
- Eidlitz's role in Emden-Eib controversy
- Emden's accusation that Eidlitz was a #Sabbatean
- Why scholars from Ortho. defenders of Eib. to Scholem dismissed Emden's allegation against Eidlitz
- Clear proof he was a Sabbatean

3/ First, a bit of acknowledgment, I got interested in #Sabbateanism when I was a kid & Dr. Sid (Shnayer) Leiman came to speak at my shul and took the time Shabbat afternoon to talk to me about it.

I kept up with the topic & took a course with him on the controversy.

4/ He pushed me to examine Eidlitz in my paper for the course and guided me through years of emails to sources and helped me think through issues.

He is an absolutely remarkable scholar. And I'm blessed to have had the opportunity to learn with him.

5/ I owe him a world of gratitude and am so thankful to him. That said, I would never represent myself as giving his opinion- he likely doesn't agree with everything I have or will say on the topic. I'm sure I will make mistakes that he never would.

6/ He has written a number of outstanding articles on focused aspects of the #Eibeschuetz controversy that more than speak for themselves. Leiman's articles are, as Moshe Idel told @MyShtender and me, that "last word" on every part of the controversy he writes about directly.

7/ So I take full responsibility for what I say.

Or, better, if you are upset, tell me. But blame @AriLamm, @StartUpRabbi, & @DBashIdeas- who pushed me to do this via words & memes.

If we ignite a new chapter in #Eibeschuetz controversy over- blame the #Jewish_Podfathers

8. Ok let's get started with talking about who R. #ZerahEidlitz was, his stature and works, and his role in the 1750s controversy over the alleged heretical beliefs of R. Jonathan Eibeschuetz, who was Eidlitz's beloved teacher and adopted father, and one of history's great rabbis

9. R. Zerah was born in Prague around Adar 5473 (1713), we know this from the Prague Mohelbuch housed at JTS (h/t to A. Putik who thanks Dr. Jerry @TSchwarzbard).

This birth year creates some problems for R. Jacob Emden's narrative- as we will see later.

10. Eidlitz's death year (though not date) has been subject to some confusion over the years. Let's see the problem and understand how there is confusion over the year of death of a prominent rabbi in a major city in the late 18th century.

11. If one looks at the literature (up until today) there is one date-the 12th of Iyyar that all sources give; however, they either list it as the 12th of Iyyar 5540/1780 or 12th of Iyyar 5546/1786.

12. Here are some recent examples that list his death-year as 5546/1786:
- Maoz Kahana's excellent book on the Noda B'Yehuda through the Hatam Sofer (2015)
- Rachel Elior's two-volume series on the Contemporaries of the Besht (2014)
- Die Rabbiner...im Deutschen 1781 – 1871

12.5 I know the pictures don't show up well unless you click them...but I try to show my work.

13/ Add to that a string of older works...including the Jewish Encyclopedia, Halaḥmi's Encyclopedia of Gedolei Yisrael, ha-Entsiklopedyah ha-lvrit, and many others- the majority of published works in Hebrew and English list 1786 as his death year.

14/ And, there is a pretty good reason for that, R. Zerah lived and died in Prague.

And he was buried in the old Prague Jewish cemetery. That part of the cemetery was destroyed long ago; but, his tombstone was transcribed as part of a project that was published as Gal-Ed.

15/ The transcription, made by M. W. Jeitteles sometime between 1828-1856, was published in Gal-Ed in 1856. The book, edited Lieben of the Chevra Kadisha, had bios by Simon Hock, a leading historian of Prague community & author of Die Familien Prags/Mishpeḥot ḳ.ḳ. Prag

16/ This is what it looks like:

You can see the year is meant to correspond with the gematria of the bolded יתלונן (not including the thousands place which is what the לפ״ק means) which comes to 546; thus, the year 5546.

17/ S. Hock's bio in the same volume states- based on trans. of the tombstone- that Eidlitz died in 1786.

(Note: a typo in birth year- the line should read "bereits 1725" not "bereits 1752.")

Gal-Ed's reproduction & note were basis for later writers

But it was a mistake!

18/ The work Eidlitz was best known for was the Or L'Yesharim, a collection of sermons we will deal with, which was published in 5545 (the year before 1786).

The year matches the Gematria of זרח בחשך (that's what the dots above it means)...but it refers to R. Zerah as זצוק״ל.

19/ More, in the intro, we are told that the sermons were taken to the publisher by R. Zerah's son- seemingly after his father's death.

And, again, in the approbation of R. Ezekiel Landau for the book- published in 5545- it refers to R. Zerah as המונח and זצ״ל.

20/ Likewise, his younger contemporary, R. Eleazar Fleckeles, the author of the Shu"t Teshuva M'Ahava, published his eulogy for R. Zerah in Olath Hodesh (vol. 3; 1793) and it notes it was given not in 5546, but 5540 (1780).

21. Further, in an amazing Teshuva (Noda B'Yehuda Tanina OC 122), R' Ezekiel Landau notes how he could not respond as he was caught off-guard by the sudden sickness & death of R. Zerah. (Klemperer has the stirring story from a communal tradition)

The Responsa is dated 5540/1780!

22. So what is going on here? Was it 5546 as the transcript of the tombstone reads? Or was it 5540- like the other evidence?

In fact, the tombstone בצל שד-י יתלנן with no vav in יתלונן.

This odd spelling meant that the gematria was equal to 540 not 546.

23. This variant spelling &, in turn, the true year of death as 5540, not 5546 was documented by leading scholars who would have been able to see it & noted that Gal-Ed had a mistake in it.

This example is from L. Lowenstein's bio of the Korban Netanel and his family (1898):

24. And, nearly, 40 years before the publication of Lowenstein's book on the Weil Family, G. Klemperer noted the mistake in Gal-Ed just a few years after Gal-Ed was published in his "Ḥaye Yehonatan" (Prague 1858).

Gal-Ed had erred by adding a vav to יתלנן.

25. So we have resolved the year of his death.

But there is more to the tombstone and much more to the character of Eidlitz, his relationship with Eibescheutz, and the brand of Sabbateanism that they were accused of.

(I will probably pick up a bit tomorrow).

@threadreaderapp unroll