A Most Remarkable Jewish Library

Over the course of his life, Rabbi David Oppenheim (1664-1736) collected thousands of books, manuscripts, and documents, which the historian Joshua Teplitsky has called “history’s most enduring and remarkable Jewish library.” Reviewing Prince of the Press, Teplitsky’s recent book about Oppenheim’s collection, Rachel L. Greenblatt writes:

[This] was an era of private libraries, collected by princes and nobles, and Oppenheim was Jewish nobility. He was born to a wealthy, learned merchant family in Worms, Germany, the heart of Central Europe’s Jewish settlement from medieval times. He chose to pursue the rabbinate, a career that culminated in Prague, where he presided as chief rabbi during the last twenty years of his life. His close family circles included leading “court Jews,” financiers whose proximity to the rulers of German principalities propelled them to great influence in their own communities as well. . . .

This combination of Judaic erudition, wealth, and extensive social and rabbinic networks perfectly positioned Oppenheim to buy expensive books, an activity he had already begun in earnest by his late teens. He purchased from local sellers, bought up small collections, had books sent to him, received them as gifts, and commissioned manuscript copies. As he gained influence, his contemporaries would offer him books in return for contacts or favors.

From 1703 on, Oppenheim housed his collection in Hanover, Germany, far from Prague, where censorship and Talmud-burnings threatened. . . .  Among the thought-provoking gems of Prince of the Press is Teplitsky’s observation that, while away from his collection, Oppenheim carried a codex catalog with him, a list that functioned in some sense as a virtual replication of its contents. . . .

Once collected, books and their contents also traveled outward—scholars visited to consult them in situ, used them as sources of legal precedent and interpretation for rabbinic courts, or discussed them in correspondence. Printing houses published some of the manuscripts, distributing them ever more widely.

After Oppenheim’s death, the collection remained in his family until 1829, when it was acquired by Oxford’s Bodleian Library, where it remains to this day.

Read more at Moment

More about: Books, Czech Republic, History & Ideas, Jewish history, Oxford

 

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society