Sacred Trash

by Adina Hoffman

  The lectures Schechter was “feverishly preparing” became Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology (London, 1909); their initial publication was in the JQR in three installments between 1894 and 1895. On Schechter and the Higher Criticism, see “The Law and Recent Criticism” and “The Study of the Bible,” in Studies I and II; Schechter, “Higher Criticism, Higher Anti-Semitism,” in Seminary Addresses and Other Papers (Cincinnati, 1915); D. Fine, “Solomon Schechter and the Ambivalence of Jewish Wissenschaft,” Judaism 46/1, 1997; Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel, J. Sutherland Black and Allan Menzies, trans. (Edinburgh, 1885). The first German edition was published (under a different title) in 1878.

  Much of the so-called source critical approach would prove to be sound, and Jewish scholars would adopt it. For more on this, see Marc Zvi Brettler, How to Read the Bible (Philadelphia, 2005); Starr, Catholic Israel; Paul Mendes-Flohr, “Jewish Scholarship as a Vocation,” in Proceedings of the International Conference Held by the Institute of Jewish Studies, University College, London, 1994, A. L. Ivry, E. Wolfson, and A. Arkush, eds. (London, 1998). See also L. H. Silberman, “Wellhausen and Judaism,” Semeia 25, 1983; and Kugel, How to Read the Bible.

  Schechter’s comments about the “German dogs” and Wellhausen are quoted in Starr, Catholic Israel. See also Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies (London, 2006). Schechter’s first article was “Antisemitische Ethnografie,” Die Neuzeit 21, 1881; an English translation appears in Starr. Schechter’s comments on Wissenschaft in England are from a letter to Gottheil, July 10, 1883, JTSA Schechter 101/7.

  For more on Schechter’s relation to Zunz, see Schechter, “Leopold Zunz,” Studies III (Philadelphia, 1924), and Starr, Catholic Israel. On Ben Sira’s importance for Jewish literary tradition, see Reif, “The Discovery of Ben Sira,” and R. Jefferson, “A Genizah Secret.”

  The descriptions of the Book of Ben Sira and its author are as follows: “A kind of rabbinic self-help manual,” The Bible, D. Norton, ed. (London, 2006); “the first of the Paitanim,” Schechter and C. Taylor, The Wisdom of Ben Sira: Portions of the Book of Ecclesiasticus (Cambridge, 1899); “a tissue of old classical phrases,” Taylor, The Wisdom of Ben Sira; “to adapt the older Scriptures,” Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira (Anchor Bible); “Polonius without Shakespeare,” The Bible, Norton, ed.; “tedious,” E. Fleischer, “Hebrew Poetry in a Biblical Mode in the Middle Ages” [Heb], Te’uda 7, 1991; “an idiom which is … hideous,” H. L. Ginsberg, “The Original Hebrew of Ben Sira 12:10–14,” JBL 74/2, 1955; “the most attractive book,” The Apocrypha: An American Translation, Edgar J. Goodspeed, trans., Moses Hadas, introduction (New York, 1938/1989); “a self-conscious … artist,” Menahem Kister, “A Contribution to the Interpretation of Ben Sira” [Heb], Tarbiz 59/3–4, 1990; “The chapters containing the praise of wisdom,” Schechter, Expositor 5/4, July 1896. On Ben Sira and the Jewish liturgy, see Cecil Roth, “Ecclesiasticus in the Synagogue Service,” Journal of Biblical Literature 71/3, 1952.

  Quotations from Ben Sira are given in the RSV (with changes), and are from (in order): 1:1–3, 24:2–6, 24:7–8, and 24:30–33. “Let us now praise famous men” is Ecclesiasticus 44:1–2. For more on this “teachable, practical sort of knowledge,” see especially chapter 38 of Ben Sira, and The Wisdom of Ben Sira (Anchor Bible); also Segal, and James Kugel, Great Poems of the Bible: A Reader’s Companion with New Translations (New York, 1999). Schechter’s comment about Judaism’s not knowing itself is from “Saints and Saintliness,” Studies II.

  Quotations from, and information about, D. S. Margoliouth’s writing on Ecclesiasticus come from his An Essay on the Place of Ecclesiasticus in Semitic Literature (Oxford, 1890); D. S. Margoliouth, The Expository Times 16, 1904; A. Di Lella, The Hebrew Text of Sirach (The Hague, 1966); Gilbert Murray, “David Samuel Margoliouth, 1858–1940,” in Proceedings of the British Academy 26, 1940; “the kind of beautiful mind,” Irwin, For Lust of Knowing.

  Schechter’s article was “The Quotations from Ecclesiasticus in Rabbinic Literature,” JQR 3/4, 1891. “I do not pretend to understand [them]” refers to Margoliouth’s reconstructed Hebrew passages; see Schechter, Expository Times, Jan.–Feb. 1900. For more on all this see Mathilde Schechter’s memoir.

  In 1964, Yigal Yadin discovered at Masada badly damaged leather fragments of a scroll containing the Book of Ben Sira; the text was “invisible to the naked eye,” but infrared photographs showed that the Hebrew of these first-century B.C.E. fragments was almost identical to that of the Geniza’s Hebrew text and confirm its authenticity. This is the earliest extant copy of the Hebrew Ben Sira. For more on the Ben Sira manuscripts from Masada and Qumran, see Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira (Anchor Bible); Reif, “The Discovery of Ben Sira”; and Y. Yadin, The Ben Sira Scroll from Masada (Jerusalem, 1965) and Eretz Israel 8, 1967, Hebrew section. Also, Reif, “Reviewing the Links between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Cairo Genizah,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls, T. Lim and J. Collins, eds. (Oxford, 2009).

  The only text we have for the passage mentioning Ben Sira’s “house of learning” is a translation from the Syriac, so the authenticity of the term is questionable. See M. Kister, “A Contribution to the Interpretation of Ben Sira” [Heb]. Also Shaye J. D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Louisville, 1987); James Aitken, “Hebrew Study in Ben Sira’s Beth Midrash,” in Hebrew Study from Ezra to Ben-Yehuda, W. Horbury, ed. (London, 1999); and Elias Bickerman, The Jews in the Greek Age (Cambridge, 1988).

  Ben Sira’s first name is sometimes given in English as Jeshua, Joshua, or Jesus. Segal believes his name was Shimon (Simon). There is also uncertainty with regard to the various other parts of his name. Some sources have Yeshua (Jesus) bar Shimon Asira, others Yeshua ben Elazar ben Sira, and others still Shimon ben Yeshua ben Elazar ben Sira.

  Schechter describes Ben Sira’s world as “a world very much like ours” in “Jewish Life in the Time of Ben Sira,” Studies II. For background on the way in which Ben Sira absorbed “elements of the surrounding Hellenistic society,” see Bickerman, The Jews; James Aitken, “Biblical Interpretation as Political Manifesto: Ben Sira in His Seleucid Setting,” JJS 51/2, 2000; Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira (Anchor Bible); D. Stern, introduction to Poetics Today 19/1, 1998; and B. Mack, Wisdom. Quotations from Ben Sira about “the full range of life’s pleasures, subtleties, and trials” are from 31:27, 22:17, 43:13–14, and 43:18.

  Di Lella in the Anchor Bible writes of the “gnawing, unexpressed fear” felt by Jews of Ben Sira’s day. See James Aitken, “Biblical Interpretation as Political Manifesto,” for a somewhat different perspective. Also Schechter, “Jewish Life in the Time of Ben Sira,” Studies II. It seems clear from the grandson’s preface that the Greek translation was prepared two generations later in Egypt for Jews who had lost direct contact with the wisdom tradition of Hebrew.

  D. S. Margoliouth describes the “miserable trap” in The Origin of the “Original” Hebrew of Ecclesiasticus (London, 1899). In other words, Margoliouth thought it was not a medieval copy of an ancient book, but a contemporary high-medieval Hebrew version of a much earlier Greek or Syriac translation. Margoliouth, it should be noted, was joined in his skepticism about the authenticity of Schechter’s Ben Sira fragment by several Jewish scholars of the day.

  The phrase “I am all Sirach now” appears in Meir Ben-Horin, “Solomon Schechter to Judge Mayer Sulzberger: Part I,” Jewish Social Studies [JSS] 25/4, 1963. That letter was from April 1898; Schechter had already written to Sulzberger in January of that year about the need to “save our literature from the goyim,” adding that he wanted to oversee the preparation of “a scientific edition of the Apocrypha from a Jewish point of view.” (All quotations of Schechter and Mathilde’s letters to Sulzberger in what follows come from Ben-Horin’s article.) “Sirach” derives from the Greek Sirachides, or son (or grandson) of Sira. See John J. Collins, “Ecclesiasticus,” in Oxford Bible Commentary, J. Barton and J. Muddiman, eds. (Oxford, 2001).r />
  4. Into Egypt

  Mathilde and Schechter’s letters to Sulzberger are dated Jan. 3, 1897, and Dec. 22, 1896, respectively. For more on Mathilde, see JTSA Schechter archive: her memoir (box 28/1-11); her novel (box 28/12); her correspondence (box 27). See also Bentwich, Solomon Schechter, and Mel Scult, “The Baale Boste Reconsidered: The Life of Mathilde Roth Schechter (M. R. S.),” Modern Judaism 7/1, 1987.

  Much of the detail in this chapter is drawn from Schechter’s letters to Mathilde, from the period of his Egyptian adventure. These letters are all contained in JTSA Schechter archive, box 26. Our thanks to Itta Shedletzky for help with translation of the German parts of Schechter’s letters. For further explanation of what led Schechter to Cairo, see his “A Hoard of Hebrew Manuscripts”; Gibson, “Dr. Solomon Schechter”; Marx, “The Importance of the Geniza”; Adler, “Ecclesiasticus”; Jefferson, “A Genizah Secret.” Additional descriptions of his time in the Geniza come from his letter to Francis Jenkinson, Jan. 12, 1897, CUL Add. 6463 (E) 3416.

  Information about Taylor comes from J. E. Sandys and John D. Pickles, “Charles Taylor,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Reif, A Jewish Archive; Mathilde’s memoir; Charles Taylor and the Genizah Collection: A Centenary Seminar and Exhibition, Stefan Reif, ed. (Cambridge, 2009). Schechter’s obituary for Taylor from Jewish Comment is quoted in Bentwich, Solomon Schechter.

  Details of Schechter’s preparations for his trip come from Mathilde’s Jan. 3, 1897, letter to Sulzberger; Agnes Lewis to Mathilde Schechter, Feb. 7, 1897, JTSA Schechter 27/33; Schechter, “A Hoard”; an undated letter from Schechter to Elkan Adler, which says “many thanks for your kind letter to the rav in Cairo” (he quotes “lamdan and tzaddik” here), JTSA Schechter 1/15.

  Information about the Cattaui family comes from Samir Raafat, “Dynasty: The House of Yacoub Cattaui,” Egyptian Mail, April 2, 1994; Gudrun Krämer, The Jews in Modern Egypt, 1914–1952 (London, 1989); Elkan N. Adler, “Notes on a Journey to the East,” JC, Dec. 7, 1888. In his “Hoard of Hebrew Manuscripts,” Schechter mistakenly refers to Moise Cattaui as Mr. Youssef M. Cattaui. For more on the relationship of Cairo’s Jewish aristocracy to the Geniza, see Reif, A Jewish Archive; Amitav Ghosh, In an Antique Land (London, 1992).

  For more on the question of what Schechter took from the “other genizot,” see Schechter to Mathilde, Jan. 20, 1897; Schechter to Sulzberger, Jan. 19, 1897. The scholar Nehemia Allony claimed that Schechter got many of the fragments from the graveyard of al-Basatin. Habermann (The Geniza [Heb]) quotes Allony as saying “he took little from the Ben Ezra synagogue and most of it he took from the cemetery at al-Basatin.” This claim is unsubstantiated by Schechter’s letters.

  Information about Henriques derives from Henriques to Schechter, April 5, 1898, JTSA Schechter 4/11; Bentwich, Solomon Schechter; Jefferson, “The Historical Significance.” For more on Raffalovich, see Reif, A Jewish Archive; Jefferson, “Historical Significance”; Jenkinson diary, Dec. 4, 1898, CUL Add. 7421.

  Agnes and Margaret’s account of their Cairo trip are as follows: “the microbe,” Lewis, In the Shadow; “your dear Husband,” Agnes Lewis to Mathilde Schechter, Jan. 21, 1897, JTSA Schechter 27/33; “We have no doubt,” Margaret Gibson, “On Two Hebrew Documents of the 11th and 12th Centuries,” from the Cambridge Antiquarian Society’s Communications 10, WGL/6/10; “tea to meet the rabbi,” Agnes Lewis to Mathilde Schechter, Feb. 7, 1897, JTSA Schechter 27/33.

  5. Sorting

  Francis Jenkinson’s biography is culled from Stewart, Francis Jenkinson; Stephen Gaselee, “Francis Jenkinson,” The Library 4/3, Dec. 1, 1923; “Francis Jenkinson,” The Library Association Record, Dec. 1923; Stephen Gaselee, “Francis Jenkinson,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (1922–30); David McKitterick, “Francis Jenkinson,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004); Reif, “Jenkinson and Schechter at Cambridge: An Expanded and Updated Assessment,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 33, 1993; and especially Jenkinson’s diaries (from which all the quotes here come). These are from 1897–1900. (See CUL Add. 7420, 7421, 7422, 7423.)

  Information about Oxyrynchus and Flinders Petrie comes from Deuel, Testaments of Time; Peter Parsons, City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish: Greek Papyri beneath the Egyptian Sand Reveal a Long-Lost World (London, 2007); Flinders Petrie, Seventy Years in Archaeology (New York, 1932); Drower, Flinders Petrie; Mathilde’s memoir; Ann Rosalie David, The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh’s Workforce (London, 1986).

  Details of Taylor’s presentation of the manuscripts to the library are drawn from the CUL Syndicate Minutes, June 9, 1897; May 11, 1898; Reif, A Jewish Archive. The designated £500 is worth some $40,000 today.

  The description of Schechter at work with the fragments is Mathilde’s, from her memoir; Bentwich recycles it almost verbatim in Solomon Schechter. The nose-bag quote is H. F. Stewart’s, in Francis Jenkinson.

  Suum Cuique’s letter appeared in the London Times, Aug. 4, 1897; Schechter’s response was published there on Aug. 7, 1897. Schechter wrote to Elkan Adler, Aug. 5, 1897, JTSA Schechter 1/15. His letters to Sulzberger are Aug. 5, 1897, and undated, Bentwich, Solomon Schechter.

  On the “now-iconic photograph” (which appears on p. 89 and on the cover of this book) and more on the process of sorting, see Reif, “One Hundred Years of Genizah Research at Cambridge,” Jewish Book Annual 53, 1995–96; “Facts and Fictions about Aquila,” JC, Oct. 15, 1897; Schechter, “A Hoard” and “A Hoard … II,” Studies II; letters to Sulzberger, e.g., Aug. 5, 1897, Aug. 30, 1897, Jan. 14, 1898.

  For more on Schechter’s decision to leave England for the United States, see, for instance, his letters to Sulzberger, April 16, 1897, May 9, 1897, June 26, 1898; Schechter to Cyrus Adler, Aug. 6, 1899, JTSA Schechter 1/11. Montefiore’s critique appears in J. B. Stein, Lieber Freund: The Letters of Claude Goldsmid Montefiore to Solomon Schechter, 1885–1902 (Lanham, 1988).

  Details of Schechter’s departure from Cambridge come from Schechter to Jenkinson, Dec. 29, 1901, CUL Add. 6463 (E) 4963; letter to Schechter from the members of the Cambridge Hebrew Congregation, March 18, 1902 (JTSA Schechter 2/37); Agnes Lewis to Jenkinson, Jan. 24, 1903 (CUL Add. 6463 [E] 5309); Bentwich, Solomon Schechter; David Starr, “The Importance of Being Frank: Solomon Schechter’s Departure from Cambridge,” JQR 94/1, 2004. For more on the manuscripts he took to JTS, see Stefan Reif, “The Cambridge Geniza Story: Some Unfamiliar Aspects” [Heb], Te’uda 15, 1999; Schechter to Jenkinson, Aug. 28, 1902 (CUL Add. 8809/1902/2).

  6. Palimpsests

  I

  Information on Francis Burkitt is drawn from J. F. Bethune-Baker, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and Soskice, Sisters of Sinai. For details about palimpsests of the sort Burkitt worked with, see M. Sokoloff and J. Yahalom, “Christian Palimpsests from the Cairo Geniza,” Revue d’histoire des Texts VIII, 1978. On Burkitt’s bicycle crash, see “Schechter Anecdotes Gathered by F. I. Schechter in England,” JTSA Schechter 29/17.

  Quotations by Margaret and Agnes are as follows: “There is nothing that does not leave its mark,” Gibson, How the Codex; “ ‘ill-scented’ ammonium,” Gibson, How the Codex; “the action of common air,” Lewis, In the Shadow; “like mending broken chain,” Margaret Gibson to Rendel Harris, Feb. 17, 1895 (WGL 5/5). See also Lewis and Gibson, Palestinian Syriac Texts from Palimpsest Fragments.

  Burkitt’s comments on the palimpsests are drawn from his Fragments of the Books of Kings, According to the Translation of Aquila (Cambridge, 1897) and from Burkitt, “Aquila,” JQR 10/2, 1898. See also Schechter’s letters to Sulzberger of April 16, May 9, Aug. 5, 1897.

  On Aquila’s translation see, “Bible, Translations, Ancient Versions,” Encyclopedia Judaica [EJ] 4. In addition to being published in book form by Cambridge University Press, the palimpsests were written about on several occasions in the London Times (e.g., Aug. 3, 1897, Dec. 30, 1897, and April 12, 1898), and in the New York Times on May 7, 1898. Mention is repeatedly made in both of th
e Greek and Hebrew texts.

  Information about Davidson is drawn from a variety of sources, especially C. Davidson, Out of Endless Yearnings (New York, 1946). Davidson’s other key work is his monumental Thesaurus of Medieval Hebrew Poetry, which appeared in four volumes between 1924 and 1938 and cataloged every published (printed) medieval Hebrew poem known at the time. See Davidson, Thesaurus of Medieval Hebrew Poetry, introduction by J. Schirmann (New York, 1970).

  For more in English on the history of the term piyyut, see Laura S. Lieber, Yannai on Genesis (Cincinnati, 2010), and “Piyyut,” Encyclopedia of Judaism 3. Yannai’s only known extant poem was part seven of the piyyut beginning “Onei pitrei rahamatayim,” in Z. M. Rabinovitz, The Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Yannai according to the Triennial Cycle of the Pentateuch and the Holidays 1 [Heb] (Jerusalem, 1985). The section was preserved by recitation in Ashkenazic communities on the Sabbath preceding Passover. This is the hymn mentioned by Ephraim of Bonn. For more on Yannai, and his relation to Kallir, see Davidson, Mahzor Yannai (New York, 1919). Wertheimer’s Yannai finds were published in Ginzei Yerushalayim 2.

  The evidence relating to Davidson’s discovery is circumstantial and secondhand. See his wife’s memoir, and Shuly Rubin Schwartz, “The Schechter Faculty” in Tradition Renewed, Wertheimer, ed. “Grotesque” is Menahem Zulay’s description in “The Master Hymnist,” in Eretz Israel and Its Poetry [Heb]. See also Solomon B. Freehof, “Synagogue Poetry: Mahzor Yannai, a Work of the Seventh Century,” American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literature 37/2, 1921.