26 days since Black Shabbat.

I'm constantly talking to family/friends in Israel, making donations, keeping on with our plans for aliyah plus the only other thing I can do: share the truth on social media.

Here are my observations re: social media from the past 26 days 🧵 I thought Twitter, I mean X, was dead; it's not. It's still the first place I see a lot of (real) news surface. This is borne out by the many tweets embedded in live news update feeds.

Across the Jewish world, Bible codices were gloriously illuminated - that is, book versions of Tanach as opposed to Torah scrolls, where decorations other than Tagin (crowns on the letters) are of course prohibited.



We see some of the most elaborate depictions of scenes from Tanach not in illuminated Hebrew Bibles but rather in the Sefardi haggadot that we looked at in last week's thread.

https://twitter.com/tamar_marvin/status/1673191120191524865?s=20

Kicking off my famous Hebrew manuscripts series with Masoretic codices - Tanach with nikud, taamim & masora.

Thanks to @Sothebys for inadvertantly "sponsoring" this thread. 😜 I swear I had this planned before anyone ever cavorted with Codex Sassoon, which we'll get to shortly. @Sothebys Let's start in Tverya (Tiberius). Say, 9th century.

There are two major schools striving to preserve the correct reading tradition of Tanach.

Maran Yosef Karo was a dreamer.

In his dream, the Torah, which in his troubled times had become not merely like the two Torahs of Hillel and Shammai's day, but "like innumerable Torahs" (אלא כתורות אין מספר), would become whole again. He would trace each halachic conclusion down to its roots, detailing its sources such that each decisor could follow its ins and outs, leading to unified rulings.

Maran sat down to this task in 1522. He was 34 years old.

In Parashat Miketz, when Yosef asks his brothers about the health of his aged father, he uses the somewhat unusual turn of phrase השלום אביכם הזקן. Why did Yosef use the word "shalom" in this context?

R. Ovadia Sforno, a physician by trade, answers using his medical knowledge. Sforno glosses, "Is there wholeness for you in the health of the body, since indeed health is achieved in the harmony of opposing forces, which is when no force overpowers its contravening force."

This is straight-up Galenic humoral theory.

R. Ovadia di Bertinoro, "The Bartenura," was a brilliant but not unconventional scholar. He is best known for his commentary on the Mishnah, heavily premised on Rashi's comments contained within the latter's larger Talmud commentary.

Yet Bartenura was on the leading edge. The images above show a modern manuscript in which handwritten leaves of Bartenura on Mishnah Avot are interspersed with the 1708 Magdeburg printed edition of Pirkei Avot (British Library Ms. Or. 10011).

I read this over Shabbat. Watching how a historian puts together Israeli history is fascinating. It's kitchen-table history to me. My grandparents' and parents' stories.

"'It happened at midnight' that I came out of the Egypt of the kingdom of Portugal and came to the kingdom of Castile, to the city on the edge of its border, Segura de la Orden."

So wrote R. Yitzchak Abravanel in 1483. He was 46 years old. He had just lost everything. ויהי כחצות הלילה אני יוצא מתוך מצרים מלכות פורטוגא״ל ואבוא אל מלכות קאשטילי״א עיר קצה גבולה פה שיגור״ה דיל״ה אורדי״ן
- ר' יצחק אברבנאל, הקדמה לנביאים ראשונים

This was only the first dramatic reversal of fortune Abravanel would be compelled to endure.

Stuff I google on motzash, part 1.

(Nope, Google, nope.) Stuff I am now reading: "Uprooting the Timaeus: Maimonides and the Re-medicalization of Galenism"

(Guess I have to break out the Medical Aphorisms)

cambridge.org/core/books/abs…

R. Yaakov ben Asher, son of the Rosh, was, it seems, a quiet person. He was not the eldest and did not inherit the choice position of rabbi in Toledo from his famous father, probably in part by inclination. And yet, it was the quiet Tur who would change history. Born around 1269 in Germany, Tur fled the rapidly deteriorating position of Jews there along with his father in the early years of the 14th century, when he was in his thirties. They were eventually compelled to settle as far afield as Spain.

"...There are three pillars of halachic decision upon which the house of Israel rests...and they are the Rif, the Rambam, and the Rosh of blessed memory."

So says R. Yosef Karo in his introduction to Beit Yosef.

We've seen Rif and Rambam's outsize influence. What about Rosh? sefaria.org.il/Beit_Yosef%2C_…

There is no question that Rosh is a giant among poskim, on whose shoulders we stand. But what about his contemporary, Rashba? Or Ramban, whose tradition defined later Sefardi Torah? Or the many others the Mechaber mentions in the same introduction?

"And so, the time has come up to me, myself, on this day, at the fulfillment of 5000 and 60 years, which is the 51st year since my birth..."

So wrote R. Menachem ha-Meiri at the end of his introduction to Pirkei Avot, after detailing the chain of masora beginning with Moshe. Manuscript: a fragment of Magen Avot (on Provençal minhag) from the Cairo Geniza, Library of the Alliance Israélite Ms. III C 48 (Paris).

A.M. 5060 is 1300 C.E.

In explaining why he undertook the daunting task of commenting on the Torah, despite feeling unequal to the task, Rabbenu Bachya ben Asher says, "I took off the robes of idleness and put on the clothing of productivity...what can I do, for my soul longs for Torah." Rabbenu Bachya's Torah commentary remains widely popular to this day, beloved for its clarity, emotional depth, ethical valence, and Kabbalistic teachings.

Manuscript: Rabbenu Bachya's Torah Commentary, Cambridge University Library (UK) Ms. T-S NS 167.8 [Cairo geniza fragment]

So apparently there's a thing in physics known as "the Rashba effect."

iopscience.iop.org/journal/1367-2…

I assure you I understand absolutely none of it. But it's perfect. Let's run with it. In my world "the Rashba effect" describes a consummate type of integration. Integration of Sefaradi and Tosafist, of internal (traditional) and external ("secular"), of Kabbalah and philosophy, of public life and the world of the beit midrash. Want to understand Jewish history in the long 13th century? It's the Rashba effect.

I read these over Shabbat. Essential Papers are outdated by this point but still a killer series. Never read the Talmud one because medievalist. One thing that stands out is how basic academic Talmud has to start. Pages of (brilliant) exposition of stuff anyone who spends time with Gemara knows intuitively

The centuries-old push-pull between Bavel and Eretz Yisrael came to its effective end in a place no Amora could have imagined: the desert of Tunisia, at the hands of Rabbenu Chananel, who commandeered his dual Italian-African background to bring the two traditions together. That's a real, colorized photograph of the main street of Kairouan (al-Qayrawan), where Rabbenu Chananel lived, from c. 1899. It's by Photoglob Zürich and is now in the Photochrom Print Collection at the U.S. Library of Congress. Doesn't it look like CGI?

600 years after he put down his pen, Yitzchak Or Zarua's masterpiece was published. Sort of.

But his Torah changed the world. It comes down to us as an authoritative early source of Ashkenazi tradition.

This is the story of R. Yitzchak ben Moshe of Vienna, the Or Zarua. Yitzchak Or Zarua referred to his native land, as did his countrymen, by the unflattering moniker "the land of Canaan." Medieval Bohemia was, indeed, the hinterland of Ashkenaz, much different from the cosmopolitan region it would grow into later on.

"Rabbi Yitzchak the son of the renowned Rabbenu Tam’s sister was the composer (בעל) of the Tosafot which he learned and taught in his yeshiva." This is how R. Menachem Ibn Zerach introduces Ri in Tzedah la-Derech. He goes on to explain that 60 scholars assembled in Ri's yeshiva. Tzedah la-Derech is a fascinating work: it was designed as a halachic study guide for genteel baalei batim, it was part of a 14th-century codifying trend among emigres displaced by expulsions and violence, and we know all this from its meaty historical introduction.

Do not be fooled by the name, Tam. Yes, the Rashi family had a tradition of piety and humility. Yes, he shared a name with Yaakov the tam (mild), dweller of tents. But Rabbenu Tam was fierce. Never backing down from an argument, leaving his fingerprints all over the Talmud, Rabbenu Tam declared his views with confidence.

He also once called his own beit midrash the greatest in the land (see Tosafot to Gittin 36b ד"הדאלימי לאפקועי).

I read this over Shabbat. I picked up this book because of a topic I'm a little obsessed with, how and why - and therefore where - do we draw the line of legitimate knowing (aka epistemology, aka the demarcation problem)? It explores this question through the strange case of Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky.

The two brothers lived in a small town in Champagne, tending their vineyards and sheep. The younger is familiar from the pages of the Talmud, where his acronym ר"ת - Rabbenu Tam - occurs constantly in our Tosafot.

But we're here to see the elder brother. Rashbam. We occasionally consult Rashbam as we make our annual way through the Torah. Perhaps without us knowing, he accompanies us through the tenth chapter of Pesachim (the one about the seder) - it's his commentary printed where we usually find Rashi's, his famous grandfather's.