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I
Prof. Katsh's 'Ginze Mishna' Gets Scholarly Acclaim
One of the greatest stimuli
to modern Jewish scholarship
was the discovery, in the last
quarter of the 19th Century.
of the so-called Cairo Geniza.
Before that fortunate discov-
ery, the Gaonic period was
indeed a dark age. Very little
was known about the true
position of the heads of the
Babylonian Yeshivot in the
Jewish world, in that period,
about the existence of schol-
ars and schools in the Holy
Land. and the relationship of
the leaders of both scholarly
DR. ABRAHAM KATSH
centers to the Jews of Egypt
Tunisia. Italy and Spain. The
flourishing economic, social,
political and cultural life of
the Jewish communities all
along the shores of the Medi-
terranean. was completely
shrouded in obscurity.
"Ginze Mishna" by Dr. Abraham Katsh, just pub-
lished in Hebrew in Jerusalem, is receiving international
acclaim. Noted Israeli scholars and many of the most
prominent liebraists elsewhere have acclaimed it as a
notable contribution to scholarly research. In his review
of "Ginze Mlshna" in the current issue of Jewish Quar-
terly Review (April 1972), Prof. Irving A. Agus of
Yeshiva University wrote:
• • •
• • •
The latest book by Dr.
writings—were discovered in
that lumber room and even- ' Abraham I. Katsh, "Ginze
sh "
o t - . tes a contin-
tually were deposited in sev-
praise-
eral of the great libraries of uation of this
the world. The possibility ,orthy effort. This large
thus presented itself, for 20th hook contains 159 photostats
Century scholars, to redis- of pages of Mishnaic texts-
cover large areas of the life : all the fragments of such
and activities of the Jews of texts of the Antonin Geniza
the middle ages and to gain collection, now housed in the
: new knowledge and under- Saltykov - Shchedrin Library
standing of a very important in MOSCOW. The photostats
period in the life of that peo- are arranged in the order
ple.
their material appears in the
Thus began a new era in standard text of the Mishna;
Jewish scholarship. Several and on the page facing each
outstanding scholars began to photostat, is given the trine
ectiones culled from that
i devote their time and effort
, to collecting, deciphering. standard text (Vilna ed.),
and the text appearing in the
• copying,
interpreting
publishing those documents Babylonian Talmud (Vilna
• that fell within their special ed.), in the Jerusalem Tal-
field of interest. The publica- mud, the manuscript printed
tion of great collections of by W. If. Loco, and the man-
Geniza material by A. Har- uscript of Kaufmann. There
kavy, Louis Ginzberg, Jacob are also included the van-
Mann, Israel Davidson, Sim- ' ants, printed in the margin
i ha Assaf and D. S. Goitein, of the Vilna edition of the
'have been the result of this Mishna, of the Muenchen
enormous effort and concen- manuscript of the Talmud.
i tration. These men have of the Dikdukei Sof erim of
made available to the schol- Rabbinowitz, of the commen-
■
Suddenly a great light be-
gan to shine from the musty
and dusty bundles of manu-
scripts that many centuries arty world a large accdmu- tary of Rashi and of the To-
ago had been discarded and lation of rich source materi- s a phot.
deposited in the lumber room al that will eventually lead
In his English introduction
of a synagogue in old Cairo. to a comprehensive knowl-
Many tens of thousands of ledge of a very important the author describes the vari-
old documents, stemming period in human history.
ous collections of Jewish
mainly from the 10th through
the 13th centuries and con-
sisting of biblical texts, tal-
mudic material, private and
public letters, court records.
sons in Jerusalem who re-
By MURRAY 2UCKOFF
contracts, accounts and other
quire care in institutions for
JTA News Editor
the chronically ill, but there
(Copyright, 1972, JTA Inc.)
Cartan's 8 Day
Russian-born artists have are only 140 places available.
Independent Vacation to
established a club in Tel Aviv In addition, 1 400 of the city's
20,000 aged require institu-
to provide immigrant artists
tional care but only 850 beds
with a place in which to train are available. These' are
and work. During the eve- some of the findings on the
ning the artists will provide needs of Jerusalem's aged
per per con
entertainment for the public. released in a report by a
municipal committee cover-
Double
There are some 250 artists
Occ upancy
ing the period 1971.'72. Be-
among the recent Soviet ar- cause of these shortages,
Round trip Detroit Lon-
rivals, many of them singers many patients are transfer-
don air transportation
and a circus animal trainer. red to out-of-town institutions
via Now York
In October an ensemble of 120 or an attempt is made to ar-
17 Saturday
will make its debut in Mann range for home care.
Departures
Auditorium, Tel Aviv. The
* * *
club in Rehm- Yordei Ilas-
According to a report by
sira is named Moldovanks
after the old Jewish quarter Agence France Presse, the
via TWA
from Nov. 4
in Odessa. It will provide not Jordanian newspaper, "Ar-
thru Mar. 31. 1973
only entertainment but also Rai," denounced Israel's
meals cooked by a new im- "high wages policy" which
INCLUDES
migrant who specializes in it claims is aimed at under-
7 Nights in
: mining the "patriotic feelings
Jewish-Russian cuisine.
London at the
of Arabs in the occupied
• •
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What would you do if you territories."
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•
• •
won 50.000 II. ($12,000) in a
18—Friday, Sept. I, 1972
london
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Get-acquainted Reception/ All
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BEE KALT
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national lottery. A former
resident of the Muazi refugee
camp in Gaza who won this
E sum here had a ready an-
.
swer. . ow I can have three
wives," said Mahmoud
Nlatsri, a building worker
I now living in Jaffe. The win-
: ner, incidentally, is currently
a bachelor.
i
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1
1.) MILE
GREENFIELD
The West Bank experienc-
ed an unprecedented boom
last week—a wedding boom.
More than 100 weddings took
place, marking a weekly
record. Twenty-nine of these
weddings were held last Fri-
day in Hebron. The marriage
boom is attributed in part to
the economic upswing in
the region and partly to the
summer visits program under
which prospective brides and
grooms came from neighbor-
ing countries.
•
• •
Sixty per cent of persons
receiving welfare assistance
in Tel Aviv's southern slum
area are "second generation"
aid recipients, according to
Acting Mayor Ariel Amiad.
The municipal welfare de-
partment is currently dealing
with 13,000 families compar-
ed to 10,700 in 196G-70. There
is also an increase in the
2101
4
rE3C.C.CF-07.0.11r—C.
'
manuscripts found in the li- 41i
braries of Russia. He gives a
brief history, and describes silk
the content, of the Guenzburg
stt
collection, the Friedliana
collection, the two Firkowich
collections, and, in more de-
tail, the Antonin collection
from which the published
material was taken. In his
Hebrew introduction the au-
Mlle
thor briefly explains the ori-
gin, and the present condi-
tion, of Geniza material. He
It
Cr 14
fin e eri ct ry
'Cr
describes his manner of pre-
senting the V arrae le rti ones ,
and cites a number of exam-
ples where the Geniza manu-
scripts differ significantly
from the printed version of
the Mishna.
This manner of presenting
Geniza manuscripts thus in-
troduces an entirely new
Also on Any
method of presenting such
material. Whereas all previ-
P $ 3
ous scholars printed their
transcriptions of the Geniza
1!.Bee
texts, and whenever part of a
4678 Woodward Ave Royal Oak, Mich. 48077
manuscript was illegible or ;
torn away, they would insert,
F •
in square brackets, their sug-
4t•
• • - -
- • -
gested readings—Dr. Katsh
44:0:4:1120€3CK-CCO:*=::
47
Ae
*:`.
Z
-
.
printed photostats of the man- '--:*::
uscripts and, on the opposite
page, presented his readings
only of those parts of the
text that differed from the
versions listed above. This is
indeed a highly praiseworthy
method of publishing impor-
tant Geniza material — it
clearly eliminates the possi-
bility of introducing mis-
takes, and wrong readings,
into the text of the printed
material.
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The Jewish National Fund
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recently fenced-off section of
the "Ftaffah Approach" for
another Jewish settlement.
The land, 800 dunams (200
acres) near the existing set-
tlement of Moshav Sadot A.
is being leveled by four bull-
dozers operated by a private
contractor. Houses for the
new moshav are already un-
der construction and the first
residents will be moving in at
the beginning of 1973.
Assimiliation
As long as the great Jew-
ish masses remain in their
position of inequality
even
the relatively few Jews who
have entirely surrendered
their Jewish identity, in the
vain attempt to escape indi-
viduality from the fate of the
Jewish people, will be more
painfully affected by the po-
sition of the Jews than the
masses, who feel themselves
only unfortunate but not de-
grade. —Moses Hess, in
,
"Rome and Jerusalem,"
(1862).
Jews are different because
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