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Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Welcome to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. My name is Alex Weiser. I'm the director of public programs of yivo. For those that don't know yivo, we're a very special place for the celebration and cultivation of Jewish history and Jewish culture. We have a library and archive which are used by researchers around the world with more than 23 million documents, over 400,000 books, and we bring to life the world of those collections with a variety of public programs like this, with classes like our Yiddish language instruction, and with exhibitions and much more. And Today we've got Dr. Avi Blitz here with us today for the Santa Ra, the most popular Yiddish book in history. Avi Blitz is a graduate of Oxford University and holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Indiana University. He has taught Hebrew, Yiddish, and Jewish studies in Europe, Israel, Latin America, and the U.S. he. He teaches Yiddish remotely through the Argentinian branch of yivo, which is in Buenos Aires. And he works with beginners, intermediate, and advanced students across the Americas. Jod, is there anything you'd like to add before we hand it over?
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Welcome. Thank you.
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All right, thank you so much. And a reminder to everyone, we will have a Q and A at the end. So if you have any questions, put those in the Q and A function.
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And don't think that by putting in them in the chat, they'll end up magically in Q and A. Put them in the Q and A so we know that they are questions that need an answer by Avi at the end of the talk. Okay?
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All right, Avi, the mic is yours. Thank you so much.
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I'm going to share my screen. Okay. All right. So today we're going. I'm going to speak a little bit about the Tsenarena. I'm going to tell you about the title, the audience, who the book was intended for. We'll look at three or four stories from the text. We'll talk about folklore. We'll talk about some of the different versions, some different editions of the Tsamirena, and hopefully, by the end of the talk, you'll have a good idea of what this book was and its place in Yiddish literature and what made it one of the most. The most popular book in the history of Yiddish. So it's called Sennarena, a phrase that comes from the Song of Songs. From Song of Songs 3, 11. Senna, Orena, Banot, Sionato uvayom simchat libor, which means, O maidens of Sion, go forth and gaze upon King Solomon. Wearing the crown that his mother gave him on his wedding day, on his day of bliss. So much has been made of this title. Sena Rena Vannunzion. It's a feminine commode. It's kind of like saying women go and see. And the idea is that, well, if it's in the feminine, then surely it must be a book for women, a bible for women. And indeed, this is what most. Most people think, and it's what. It's the impression we get from modern Yiddish culture. I want to show you a. I want to show you some. An excerpt from a story that I've been reading with some students recently. This is by Doris Shulner, and she says in the Weiber Schurschul is the voiren gesessen. Iber der. So Dvohra. The Zogorin sat at the head of the women's synagogue and recited the unsane toket. But she recited it as if from the tsenarena tavoire read with a fine voice. And we all devoured what she said, word by word. All the while bitter cries extended over the women's synagogue. Above all, I want to note how beautifully devoiry the zoghary imparted the tsenarena to us. Why am I starting with this? Well, because I want to show you some of the ideas we've got about the tsenerena that come from modern Yiddish culture. We have in this little excerpt, which is an autobiographical story, all the symbols of femininity that we imagine in the Yiddish world. The sogarin who is probably the rabbi's wife or the rabbi's daughter who leads the women in prayer. We've got bitter cries, which is a symbol of women's piety. We've got the tsenarena. Modern Yiddish is replete with images, with juxtapositions of the tsenarena with women's piety. We see it in Shlomir EP Chaim's by Mendele Mochis Forum. We see it in the 1937 film Der Day Book. We have a scene with a woman reading at Santarena and in An Ski's ethnographic questionnaire also the question is posed, do women still read the Tsanarena? Which is to say that in modern Yiddish culture, everyone imagined that this was a book for women. Toreshona's story, written in her new home in Chicago, looks back to her native Kyiv with nostalgia for a place where women read the tsinorana and wept. But this actually is A bit of a misrepresentation. The first misrepresentation is the title of the book. Here we have the frontispiece to the 1663 edition. And you can see here it says. And then underneath, Senna Orena Banatzion. So it's like the title is actually Hamishachum Shaytorah, and Senerena is a subtitle. And we see the same thing also in other editions. This one from 1710, Chamisha Chum Shey Torah B' Lashon Ashkenaz. And then Underneath here from 1711, Chamishachum shey Torah Balashonashkenaz. And this one, the subtitle here is really small. Senhora Binuncion is in little letters. So why was it called. Oh, why was it called Seniorena? Well, this was probably to distinguish it from earlier editions, earlier translations of the Chumash. Here in this slide, we see a Chumash from 1560. This is by Rabbi Judah ben Moshen of Talibresk, one of three translations of the Chumash into Yiddish that were made in the 16th century under the title Hamishachumsheitorah. So Tsenarana becomes Tsenarana to distinguish it from these earlier books, here's a bit more of the Cremona Chumash. The second misrepresentation in Dorothy's story is who actually read the Tsenarena? Was it for women? Was it for everyone who used it? To understand this, we have to think about what Yiddish meant in early modern Ashkenaz. And David Katz gives us a really nice way of thinking about a hierarchy of Jewish languages. In traditional Ashkenazi culture, we have at the bottom, Yiddish, then we've got Hebrew, and then Aramaic at the top. Who knew these languages? Well, scholars and rabbis, the religious elite all were versed in Aramaic, obviously, because they had to deal with the Talmud, the Gemara. They were reading Jewish law, men were versed in Hebrew, they were reading the Torah, and everybody was speaking Yiddish. So we have this kind of distinction between Loshen Kodesh, which is the holy language, Aramaic and Hebrew, and Mamelosh Yiddish, which is the language of everyone. And we kind of can think of this in a binary of Mameloshen being the women's language, and Lovshen Kodish being Fotorspach, the father tongue, the language of God. But actually, this is very neat. It's a neat way of thinking about languages. The truth is a lot more complicated. One way we can think about who was reading Yiddish and whether men were actually reading Yiddish is To look at the hagdomis to much old Yiddish literature, the hagdomis are the prefaces, the forwards. And it gets very complicated when we stop doing that. So in Mirkeves Hamishna, which is the first printed book in Yiddish from 1534, it's a kind of a dictionary of biblical terms. I think we can see here a little bit in the background. Alav means tsu' im aleah tsu ir. In the preface to this book, it says that women can use it to teach their sons. So Yiddish was being used by women and by the children too. In the Cremona Chumash that we just saw earlier, it says, for our many sins we have not studied enough. And the women, maidens and young girls see that the men have not learned, so they also do not learn. Men would like to learn that which they didn't or couldn't learn in their youth and in their old days. They want to study the weekly portion, but are ashamed to do so with the commentary of a rabbi. So Rabbi Judah, the author of this translation, wants his text to be useful for everyone, for men and also for women. Sefer Amidis, which is a book that explores the vices and virtues of human beings, of people, says that this book is for men and also for women. And the BrandSpiegel from 1602 by Moishe Chenof has a very long preface where Moishe Chenach talks about how men are so detached from religion, they're so removed from their customs. It laments men's lack of learning. And it says, or Branspiegel, I should mention, means burning mirror. And he says to his readers, you should treat this book like a mirror for your soul. Look into it and cleanse your soul. And then he gives us the famous phrase, dos buch wert ge mach teitsch ver weiber und manen die dos sein als weiber for women and for men who are like women, which means men who don't know Hebrew. Taich, by the way, is the term that Yiddish was known by. Yiddish wouldn't be called Yiddish for another 300 years. We could speak about the introductions and prefaces to old Yiddish literature for the whole hour. But suffice to say that the question of old Yiddish and gender is a fraught one over which much ink has been spilled. For example, Israel Zinberg, Volyna born Jewish historian, says that the idea that old Yiddish literature was for women is an exaggeration made by 19th century German scholars of Judaism. Shmuel Chani, who was born into a Lubavitch family and gave up his rabbinic studies to become one of the greatest Yiddish. Literary critics of the 20th century. Says that actually old Yiddish was just for women, was for women. David Katz says that with the Tsangirena, an erstwhile male world opened up to the female reader in one fell swoop. But Maurice Fierstein says it's much more complicated. He agrees with Zinberg, but he adds that Maskilim, Bundists, Hebraists, anti religious Communists of the 19th century, all of these people added to the perception that old Yiddish was just. It was a language for women. But Tsenarena says Maurice Feistein, was read by everyone. Max Ehrich calls Jacob Benitza Kashkenazi, the author of the Tsenarena, the Luther of the Middle Yiddish period. That's because he democratized Jewish knowledge for everybody. And actually, if we look at the different versions of the text and we look at the sophistication and breadth of the work, we'll realize how this could have spoken to everyone, not just women. So let's dive in and look at the text. I'm going to read to you a little bit from the Yiddish, and then we'll look at a translation, and then we'll discuss. Okay, so it begins in the Ert vistun lehr un finster unden opgrund un der kise Borchu is gestanden in luften iber divasse. Okay, so this means when God began to create heaven and earth. That's the Hebrew bit that we read in the beginning of the creation of heaven and earth. The earth was desolate, empty, and darkness was over the void. The Holy One's throne of glory hovered in the air over the water. Why did the Torah begin with the letter Bet? It teaches us that the world is similar to the Bet that has three sides and the fourth is open. So too is the world, the Holy One closed three sides, and on the north side, the Holy One did not make a heaven. Why? The Holy One wanted to say to the nations of the world, let your false gods come and let them close the fourth wall. Since you have chosen them as gods, let them them see what they can do. Okay, so go back to the text for a second. You can see that first of all, the text is arranged according to the parasha at the top. It's the first Parasha of the Chumesh. It begins in Hebrew and it's written in Meruba script. And then it goes into Mashkit or Vaibataich. It's a font that was developed in the 16th century and fell out of fashion in the mid-19th century for Yiddish. This initial, this introduction, this beginning of the text immediately takes us deep into the world of Jewish folklore. Isn't this just a midrash? You might ask, what has midrash got to do with folklore? Isn't folklore to do with oral storytelling? Well, not necessarily. Jewish society is always highly literate and folklore is woven into the fabric of our classical texts, particularly Agadic Midrash stories from the Talmud, the Great Commentary and beyond. And I want to read you just a little bit from Howard Schwartz, who's going to explain how Jewish texts and folklore work together. A largely unrecognized but quite extensive mythology is embedded throughout Jewish literature. The primary myths portrayed in the Bible, especially those in Genesis, became the focus of mythic elaboration. The biblical text packs a maximum amount of meaning into a minimum number of words, thereby compelling interpretation. An ancient rabbinic method of exegesis called midrash, which sought out and inevitably found the solution to problems perceived in the biblical text, resulted in the creation of an abundant mythology that eventually took on a life of its own. Often the transformation that takes place between the early periods of Jewish myth and their later evolution is considerable, almost constituting a new set of myths based on the old ones. The son of all these generations of reimagining of Bible is a Jewish mythology as rich as that of other great ancient cultures. These myths may appear either in fully developed form or as widely scattered fragments. Often when these fragments are collected from the extant sources and pieced back together, they reveal extensive elaboration of the original myths, often in unexpected directions. And indeed the Tsenarena is full of such fragments of Midrash stories pieced together. It's a book that sifts biblical Talmudic Midrashic literature and presents a seamless text that reflects the folkloric beliefs of early modern Ashkenazi society. Oh, sorry. We have, for example, in this, what we just read, reference to the Kisat Koved, the heavenly throne. This does not appear in the Hebrew. The Kiser Koved is actually from Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, an 8th or 9th century midrash. We have a story about the fourth corner of the world being left open so that the gods of other people can come and complete it. A kind of challenge to the other religions of the world, which is a very old myth. Another version of the myth exists in Midrash Hagadol, a 14th century collection of Midrashim where the letter bet is described as having three sides closed and a fourth open, because it teaches us that in life we're not supposed to ask what's above us, what's below us, and what's ahead of us. Stories about letters dominate many folk traditions. Turning letters into pictorial symbols and connecting them to poetic narratives echoes ancient practices of casting runes, reading tarot, cleromancy, lithomancy. Connected to this is also Gematria. We find stories about letters in the Talmud. For example, in Tractate Shabbat, there's a story about the Gimel and the Dalit, who represent the ideals of giving charity. Gimel gives and Dalit humbly accepts with his back to Gimel. In Abraham Abulafiya's Sefer haot from the 13th century, stories about letters take on a truly transcendental power. The Tsen arena is full of stories about letters. In an elaboration of a commentary by Rashi, for example, the Tsenarena says that the letter hey shows us the journey we all take. When we die, we all fall out the bottom, except there's a little opening here that means if you've been good, you can pass up into heaven. We have a story in the Tzenirena about the letter Yud, the smallest letter in the Alphabet. The yud, from the phrase yenavelt, which means the other world. It shows how the mighty will be humbled when they are cast down into yenavelt. Yenavelt. By the way, there are two terms for the world to come. Olam haba, olam hava, and yenevelt. One is the good place, and one is the not so good place. So if you go to the not so good place, the yud from Yenavelt shows you that you'll be brought low and humbled in that awful place. And this particular story's quite fascinating because the stories about letters are usually connected to Hebrew terms. But here the Tzenarena gives us a kind of midrash on a Yiddish term. When the Israelites paint blood over their doors, when the angel of death passes over Egypt. It's actually a letter chet, and it stands for Chaim, meaning life. Perhaps you've heard these stories before. Perhaps you got them from a teacher when you were a child. Maybe that teacher got them from a teacher from a previous generation who might have heard them from the Tzenrena. This is the interplay between storytelling, the text, and folklore. The opening to the Tanarena remained unchanged for 200 years. And then this. This is from an edition published in 1895 in Vilna. So we have that same opening. In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. And then the translation in the beginning that the earth was void and empty, and the heavenly throne of gods hovered in the air over the water. And then Undarun heizich ditoire on mit der Beis. Why does the Torah begin with the letter Beis, so weizen as der Beis is bracha to show that the bet stands for the word bracha, which means blessing. That's why God began with a letter base. This story actually appears also in the edition we saw earlier. But gone here is the story about the fourth corner of creation. The question is why? Well, I always say Yiddish encompasses every impulse in modern Jewish history. The Hasidic, the Misnagdic, the Orthodox, the Maskilic, the Zionist, the Bundist, the secular religious leftist. I think that this text omits a story about the fourth corner of the world being left open as a challenge, because it may be a masculic edition, a text that belongs to proponents of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment people who perhaps were open to other cultures and didn't want to challenge the religions and beliefs of their neighbors. So the anthological style of the Tsanarana meant that it was easy for later redactors to edit the material, adding, taking away and changing the text to suit different ideologies and new generations of readers, ensuring the continued popularity of the work. Okay, time for another story. This one comes from Megillus Esther. Okay, so Megillus Esther in the Tsenarena is a book that's full of outrageous, sometimes outrageous Midrashim, as we'll see. And I want to read you this one. This actually comes from the Sudhilkov edition of the tanarena, published in 1819. Sudyikov. Today it's called Studilkiv in Ukraine. It's about 100 miles away from Berdichev. And for those of you who know a bit about Hasidic history will know that that's kind of the lands of Hasidism. Indeed, Chonish Merok said that this is a Hasidic version of the text. If what we just saw was a Maskilic version, this is actually from a Hasidic sphere. So let's have a read. This means Mordechai was a foster father to Hadassah. The Yalkut in the portion of Noah said Esther was very young, and Mordecai sought someone to nurse Esther, but he could not find any woman. Mordecai took his own breast and gave it to Esther to nurse, and he raised her with his milk. When the maiden came into the house, he considered her a daughter. This somewhat wild at text disappears in the 1895 Vilna edition, the one that I called Maskilig. The question is, why? Was it too irrational for the late 19th century editors of that particular tnerena?
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Or.
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Perhaps the story in some way perpetuates the hated antisemitic myth of a feminized Jewish male. We might remember the myth of the anti Semitic myth that Jewish men were not quite like real men they might have menstruated during Holy Week. So maybe this text was erased in reaction to that. Sadly, we can't be sure. We can't ask the editors what they were thinking when they took this out. But it's quite fascinating to consider why these changes happen in the English too. We can see that I've put in square brackets that this version that Maurice Feistein bases his translation on, the 1711Amsterdam edition, has things that the version that we just saw from Sudelkoch doesn't have. It says, Mordechai had no evil inclination to Esther. So while Sudikof readers can just enjoy the wild story about Mordechai for its own right, the readers of the Amsterdam edition were told by the text. Lest you think this is just a Bordipurim story, actually this is really a story about how Mordechai was pious. We are told how to understand the story. And this is something that the text does a lot. It controls how we read. Very often, the voice of the Tsenarena will come in. We'll have a midrash, and then the voice of the Tsenarena will come in and say, this means that der Teirat is the reason for this is. And for example, there's a story about Deborah in the field judging Israel. And the text says she was outside, because if she'd been inside, then maybe people would think that she was with a strange man. So the text is always concerned to tell us what we should take away from the stories and to impart a kind of a moral lesson. Let's have another story, this one. Hold on. Esfahreng Meister an einsar. Let's see what happens. There was a story about a nobleman who was on a long journey far from his wife. The nobleman took a precious stone named Topaz. He commanded his wife, take the topaz and wear it on your neck, expecting that you should remember me, since I would be away. The woman took the topaz and hung it on her neck. She engaged in illicit sex while her husband was away. When the nobleman came home, the nobleman said, where is the tupas? She showed it to him and it was split apart. Since the topaz cannot tolerate illicit sex, it will split if someone wears it and has illicit sex. The nobleman said to his wife, why is this stone split? She was so embarrassed that she did not know what to answer. This story appears as part of a string of stories that the tsenarena weaves around the stones that are described in the priestly breastplate in Parashatzaveh. And it evinces anxiety about sexual propriety, which is a perennial theme in the book. It recalls also folk beliefs about magic and the natural world. Barakot in Tractate Barakot in the Babylonian Talmud, Ravhona says that we have, all of us have 1000 demons to our right and 1000 demons to our left. And early modern Ashkenaz was no different. It was a place full of dangers, Debukim, Shadim, demons, evil eyes. And people did use stones to protect them. They thought of these stones as stevenshis fragments of shooting stars. And actually the rabbinic authorities permitted people to use them. They permitted women to wear them on Shabbat because they believed that they would protect them. The Tsenarena sifts the textual tradition from material most relevant to its pedagogical mission. Why does it give us this explanation of a topaz, for example? There are other sources. There are many, many other stories in Jewish folklore about topaz. A topaz can turn evil into good. Bahia Ben Asher, Rabbeinu Bachia, who is a medieval Spanish commentator whom the tsenarena draws on a lot. He says that the topaz is good for digestion. If you're having trouble digesting food, you can wear a topaz and it'll help you. The Izbitza rebbe is much later, of course. Mordechai Leiner says that the topaz can give us Torah knowledge. The choice to include this particular story tells us about the concern of the text, the text's desire to control its readers, and specifically, perhaps in this case, also women. It says that if you do something bad, you'll be found out. This text kind of supports the idea that the Tzenirena was a chumash for women, because it seems to be the case that they're the ones over whom control is being exerted. But There are almost 300 editions of the tslerina. It was published, edited, changed, and the text was not stable, either for linguistic reasons or for Ideological reasons, as we saw 20th century editions of the text published in Vienna. Early 20th century editions published in Vienna don't include this story of the dalliance that was discovered by a gemstone in its most radical iteration, a French TSENERENA Published in 1846, 50 years before our masculic version from Vilna changes almost everything. This text was put together by Alexandre Qurange, one of the founders of the Alliance Israelite Universelle. And the text evinces the values of the French Revolution to which Qraonge so dearly held. For example, it's set out like a play. And if the early editions of the Celerena seek to tell us how to read the stories, what we should be taking away from the stories, this one does the exact opposite. Here it says that the father is reading to the children. And it says, I'm not going to read to you in French, but I'll translate it. Each of us has our way of seeing, of feeling. We're all differently impressed by the things that touch us, by the objects that surround us. And if we were called upon each one of us to share that which interested us the most in a narrative, you would be surprised, my children, by the difference of opinions that present themselves among us. Not to linger too long outside the confines of Yiddish land, however, I just want to point out that this French senorana raises again the issue of readership. It says here, show the children the picture. And we're reminded by the picture of images from the earliest editions of the Tsena orena. Was the tsenarena used to educate children? Was that its purpose? Indeed. In Jerusalem talked in discussions I've had with ultra Orthodox Jews. I've been told that mothers will read this text to their children. But maybe this reads too much into the pictures. The tradition of illustrating Yiddish books goes back to the 16th century, and some editors of the Tsenarena react strongly against the pictures. In the 1711Amsterdam edition, the editor praises the usefulness of the pictures for young readers before thanking God that his edition of the Zenarena will not include any illustrations. This speaks to the very nature of the text and why it's so hard to pin down. Chaver Toniansky calls it an open source. It's a text that can accommodate different elements. Things can be removed and added. There are paratextual elements like the pictures, and these variances trace the relationship between the storytelling traditions and Jewish storytelling, shadushnas and the folk. The alterations in the text reflect the vicissitudes of Yiddish speaking life. And ideology. In his 1897 work Shalom Al Israel, Eliezer Zweifel wrote that the Jewish life in the modern world has been shaped by the conflict that began in the time of the Besht, the Balsentov, the Gaon, Eliyahu and Mendelssohn. And as the Tsenarena was refracted through the prisms of Hasidism, Lithuanian Orthodoxy and the Jewish Enlightenment, it took on new forms and changed. As we've seen, some editions may be more, let's say, rational. I don't want to use that word, but want of a better word. Some of the texts are very didactic. Some seem targeted for children. Some editions include a siddha, part of the siddha for Shabbat morning at the beginning, indicating that the text may have been used in the synagogue. Other editions include calendars, indicating that perhaps the tsenerena was used, had a practical use in the family. If we go back to our Hasidic text, the 1819 Sudilkov edition, this includes Abraham ibn Ezra's Sabbath epistle from a medieval Spanish text which describes the Sabbath bride visiting the philosopher in a dream. The Sabbath Bride is a Kabbalistic myth from the Middle Ages, and it kind of supports the idea that this text was indeed a Hasidic version. Why would Kabbalah support the idea that this was Hasidic? Because Hasidism, which began in a small corner of Volyna in the 1700s, drew heavily from the Kabbalah and was a mystical movement. And it also raised up the status of Yiddish Hasidism. In the Hasidic cloys, stories would be told in Yiddish. The rebbes would give their droshes in Yiddish. So Yiddish was the male language among Hasidim. Our perception of this book has been shaped by writers like Doroshoner, Mendele an Ski, the modern Yiddish culture that we spoke about at the beginning of this talk. They've all contributed to this idea that this was just a woman's text. But who really read the Tsenarana? Everyone. Men, women, children, in the synagogue, in the home, in the Hasidic cloys. The text's success was down to its ability to change and adapt to new generations. Another reason is simpler. One of my teachers says that we're not just Homo sapiens, we are homo misas. Meissa is the Yiddish word for a story, and the Tsenarena is the ultimate storybook. So today we've spoken about the representation of the text in modern Yiddish culture. We spoke about the title, we talked about old Yiddish readership who read old Yiddish. We looked at a few of the stories and spoke about differences between the stories and the different versions. And we looked at some of the different paratextual elements of the book, pictures, the extra text that were included. So I hope this topic has piqued your interest and perhaps made you want to go and see Senna Urena for yourselves. Okay, so I guess now we can have some questions.
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B
Thank you so much. This was a wonderful talk and there's a lot of really interesting questions already. And I'll just say that if you're out there in the audience, you have a question, please put it in the chat. Sorry, not in the chat, but in the Q and A, so we'll be able to keep track of it. So there's a bunch of questions about just different sources for further study. You mentioned that you'd call it an open source. And so which are the textual sources that people should be looking to for getting to know this? And also, what is your feeling about translation into English or other languages? And there are some specific questions about the Firestein translation. Rebecca Glaser says, what do you think of Firestein's translation of the Tsenerana? Does it lose something in being translated out of Yiddish? Is there a critical Yiddishness to the Tsinorana as a text? Or is there value in an English translation outside of a scholarly research application? And I'll just mention also there's the artscroll on translation. I wonder if you have any thoughts about that which is clearly meant for, you know, application, not. Not for research. Yeah. So for the few questions.
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A
Yeah, good questions. Well, regarding Maurice Feierstein's translation, it is out of this world. I mean, it really is exceptional. He gives references to where things come from. He he sourced where the Midrashim and which part of the Talmud and which parts of the stories, which commentators the text is. It really is an archaeology of the entire text. So it is extremely useful. And it's extremely useful also in conjunction with the different versions. If you look at it and you think, well, why did that text disappear? How did it change? Why did this little instruction disappear in that later edition? So I think it's a great tool and a fabulous starting place to see just also how broad the Tsenarena is and the breadth of sources that Jacob and Isaac Ashkenazi draws from in this text.
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B
And do you have any thoughts about the ArtScroll translation or.
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A
I think you said it was for practical application. Of course, I know the article. It's a lovely edition. I think it has illustrations in it too. Right, let's see. Yeah, I'm pretty sure.
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B
Yes, there are some. Absolutely. Yeah.
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A
Yes, I think it has. That's right. From the older editions. Yeah.
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B
Yeah. Wonderful. Okay. So you spoke about literacy and about the different kind of, you know, levels of literacy in Yiddish versus Hebrew versus Aramaic. How common was literacy period, though, you know, among. Among women, but also among men.
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A
That's a very hard question to answer. If we consider literacy, if we consider Yiddish within the question of literacy, then I think the numbers shoot up and we can certainly say that Jewish communities were far more literate than their non Jewish counterparts. If we consider Yiddish, if we don't, then it obviously changes. And I think the prefaces that I talked about at the beginning of the talk, like Moishe Chanock from the Brand Spiegel, who's lamenting the loss of Jewish knowledge, it's a very, very common way to start these old Yiddish texts. It's a very common theme in the Musa sforim of the 17th century. So I think people were. It's kind of like the idea that every generation is less good than the one that came before it. Right. So, yeah, there is kind of loss of Hebrew learning.
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B
Yeah. Before we move on to a different topic, there's a bunch more questions about just versions for study now, like what is, for example, one question. What is the latest version or edition of the Tsangarana? And yeah. Who. Who is publishing it? Who's reading it today? Is it still being read today other than by scholars?
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A
Still being read today? In fact, if you go to Mersharim in Jerusalem, you can buy a copy. And it's from my conversations with ultra Orthodox Jews there. Some of them will give this book to their betrothed, their fiance, as a kind of a wedding gift. I think the edition I saw in Mercer in was published in 2006. It's a beautiful leather bound edition. So it is still being published.
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B
And in terms of Yiddish students that are curious to read it, is there a particular edition you would point them to?
- [44:01]
A
Oh, that's a very good question because obviously if you saw from the text that I showed you, it can be difficult to read. You've got issue of Maskit, which is a different script. Yiddish orthography isn't really standardized until Mendela comes along and that whole process of standardizing orthography begins. So it's hard. But I think a modern version, the most recent version. Why not? Could be a good one to start with. Yeah. Or the 1711Amsterdam edition with Morris Fierstein's translation. I think that those two together could be a nice place to start.
- [44:45]
B
Oh, wonderful. And someone just asks, speaking of Morris Fierstein, is there. Do you have the exact name of that book for those that want to.
- [44:52]
A
I think it's just called Senna Orena, a critical translation, or Stein. Let's just have a look. I'll tell you right now. Yes. Senna Urena e A critical translation into English. Yeah.
- [45:10]
B
Okay, so there's a lot of different questions about that, but for the record, that's the, that's the recommended English translation. Okay, fantastic. How much, another viewer asks, how much did the Santa Raina stay a part of Jewish life across, you know, the immigration that happened in the 20th century, both to America, but also to, you know, pre state Israel and the modern state?
- [45:39]
A
Yeah, for sure. That's a good question. The Tsenarena was published, I think, in the. There were several editions published in Tel Aviv in the 40s which showed that in the post war period, I think Immediately after, in 46, 47, there are a couple of editions published. So it's still relevant here. I don't know, maybe the reasons why it was published so soon after the war, maybe reclaiming our traditions. There's all sorts of reasons why it could be the case. Also in America, there was an edition published in New York in 27 and several editions in New York actually. So I think it definitely survived Jewish migration, but I think maybe less and less people read it.
- [46:30]
B
Yeah, but it's interesting to think about the way that it filtered into education, like the anecdote you gave, where people kind of hear these stories, but they don't necessarily know where they, they came from. Do you have any, any other thoughts about that or about the way that, you know, you know, you talked about how we're, how these stories in it came from Midrash. But do you have any thoughts about how it's the role that the Tsen arena played in kind of perpetuating the Midrash and, and making it widespread?
- [46:59]
A
That's a, that's a very hard thing to answer too, because, I mean, if we talk about folklore, obviously we've got these texts in the Tanarena, we can see how they change from version to version sometimes. And really the changes can be very minute. But this was the source for a lot of these stories. People were reading it to children, they were reading it at home. It was kind of like the Meise book is another example of a book that was widely read and people were getting stories From. And obviously telling these stories again to. To children, maybe without a copy of the book or maybe in a forum where they didn't have access to the text, they were talking from memory. So that's how these stories get passed around, right? I mean, yeah. It's kind of fascinating to think how transmission happens along those lines.
- [47:52]
B
There's two kind of opposing questions that I could ask you to consider together. One viewer asks, can you talk about the entertainment value of this text and the way that perhaps that shifted over time? And another viewer posits, well, isn't the idea that's enormous to give Jews a way to live by Jewish law? So, yeah, these are two opposing takes. I wonder your thoughts on that question.
- [48:17]
A
Yeah, yeah, I think, first of all, I think it's extremely, as we saw, it's very entertaining. We've got lots of little stories, Midrashim, sometimes extremely wild stories. And yeah, it's kind of like we didn't have Netflix back then. So people read stories. So absolutely it had entertainment value. With regards to the law, I think the tsenarena is concerned with the relationship between men and women, between Jews and non Jews. It's concerned with cash roots. It's concerned with the community. And I think those things come up again and again and again. You'll have a story in the tsenarena, and then it'll tell you how to interpret the story. This means that you should give tzedakah. This means that you should make sure you're never in a home alone because maybe somebody would suspect you of doing something. It's always concerned with how you're seen. What's your role in society, in the Jewish community, I think that is really the emphasis in terms of law. It's more about. I guess it's about behavior. It's less about the finer points. The Kleiner pitcher of halakha, for that, you'd go and study the Talmud, I guess. But there is certainly a legal dimension to this. It was a book that was read, but the stories were taken as truth in some cases. You know, this is if I spoke about the stones in Parashatzaveh. This was serious stuff. People believed this. There are stories in the tsenarena about the evil eye. That was a very serious thing. The tsenarena says that we're in exile because of the evil eye that was cast on us. And how do you get rid of the evil eye? You give charity.
- [50:15]
B
So, yeah, I was speaking about the story of the Topaz stone. One viewer asks, are the characters in that little vignette, are those Jews or non Jews? Is that a relevant question to be asking? And if so, yeah. How does that kind of relate to the nature of this as a moral story?
- [50:38]
A
I'm not sure that that's really relevant. Whether they're Jewish or not, There are stories in the Tzen arena about kings and ministers, and we see things that may sort of have a non Jewish tone. I think in the text it says, which means the minister was going away. Can we imagine that a minister was Jewish or not? What would people reading this text in the 1600s have thought? Would they have believed that this was a Jewish minister? I'm not sure. I think the moral of the story is more important than the Jewishness. I think in that case at least fascinating.
- [51:22]
B
Going back to the actual text of it itself, two questions about the text. One is, is the Yiddish more modern in the more modern versions? You know, in terms of the orthography and other features of the Yiddish in perhaps it's easier to read. One fewer posits. And another question about the Yiddish is how much of the actual, you know, we saw that quote of Boratius at the beginning. How much do we actually get the kind of chumish in its original versus Yiddish.
- [51:57]
A
Those are good questions. Okay, so with regards to the ease of reading, the Tsangarena remained pretty much unchanged for 200 years. When printing was in the great centers of Yiddish printing, like Amsterdam and Frankfurt. When Yiddish printing moved east to places like Vilna, that's when the Cenarena, the language of the Tsenerena, was changed and brought much more in line with the spoken language of its readers. So there is an argument, I mean, I think Maurice Pleistein says that Honeshmeruk's idea about the Hasidic Tsenerana is a bit of an exaggeration because actually these changes were linguistic. I'm not sure that's entirely true. I think there are definitely content changes to the tsenera. So it's not just linguistic, it's also content. But the language was easier to read, certainly in the newer versions because it was brought in line with the spoken language. Much more. And with regards to how much Chumash is in the Tsenarena that can vary from parsha to parsha, it's organized according to the weekly reading. And sometimes you can just have a tiny fragment of text and then reams of stories. So sometimes more than others, it changes. It's worth looking at, though. Go and see.
- [53:27]
B
Yeah, that's the theme of these Questions, and I'll just say we're running out of time. We'll do a few more questions. But it's obviously a really interesting topic and because it's elicited so many questions here. So my apologies in advance for the many that we don't get to. One question is about the geographic spread of the Tsenarena and also the Jewish ethno kind of ethnic Jewish or different Jewish language relationship to it. For example, was this text known to Sephardic communities or communities speaking other Jewish languages, such as Ladino? We spoke today about it being accessible in Yiddish, of course, and also English and French. Are there other kind of contours of that to think about in the Jewish world?
- [54:22]
A
I don't think there's a Judeo Arabic version of this. I think there was. There's something. Meamloez is a kind of the Sephardi text, which is often compared to the Tsenarena, which is also a collection of midrashim. I'm not sure sure how much the Sephardi world would have known about the Tsangarena. Certainly with regards to its centers of printing, they were Vilna, Lwow, Vienna, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, as I mentioned before and after the. In the 20th century, New York and Israel too. But I guess today perhaps there's more awareness among Sephardi Jews about the Tsalarena, especially in religious communities. In Mersharim, you find some. I mean, there are Sephardi Jews who become Hasidic, who join Hasidic groups, and in some Hasidic groups in Jerusalem, there is a lot of respect for Yiddish, and people really strive to try and learn it.
- [55:33]
B
Um, so, yeah, there are so many great questions, but that might be a good place for us to stop. Thank you so much, Avi. This has been really fascinating and we really enjoyed it.
- [55:44]
A
Thank you. Thank you so much.
- [55:46]
B
All right, well, we'll edit the recording there, but I can leave the room open for a few minutes if you want to take a look at any of the other questions and if anyone wants to share anything with the chat. We've got a nice big audience here today. Um, and my apologies again to the many questions we didn't get to. It was really a ton of. A ton of really interesting questions. I'm. I'm curious myself.
- [56:08]
A
Oh, were other gemstones mentioned in the Bible that are referenced in the Senate? Yes. Oh, yeah, all the ones in the. From Parashatetzaved about the priestly breastplate and the cena tells what each stone will do. And, oh, wow. Yeah. I can't remember all of them. I just remember that the ruby is a good one. If you're pregnant, the ruby will look after you. Make sure you do. Yeah. So there's things about sapphires which bring knowledge and all sorts of things. Yeah.
- [56:44]
B
Wonderful. Yeah. There's lots of interesting questions about the afterlife and about literacy. More people want to talk about ArtScroll. But another day, perfect day.
- [56:57]
A
Okay.
- [56:58]
B
All right. Well, thank you so much, Avi. It's been a pleasure.
- [57:01]
A
Thank you.
- [57:02]
B
And I look forward to reading the dissertation.
- [57:04]
A
Oh, absolutely. I will send it. All right. Thank you, Alex. Thank you.
- [57:09]
B
All right. Take care.
- [57:10]
A
Take care. Good night, everybody.
- [57:12]
B
Bye.
- [57:12]
A
Bye.
- [57:13]
B
And just for those out in the audience, I'll just remind you we've got a lot of great talks coming up. The talk this Thursday with Miriam Trinh has actually been postponed until next Thursday. So we're off on Thursday, but we'll be back next Tuesday and again next Thursday. Let me just pull up the calendar here. So on Tuesday, we've got Shachar Pinsker on When Yiddish Was Young in Israel. And then next Thursday, rather than this Thursday, we've got Chaya Mirim Trin about two poetry and prose. And that brings us to the close of this year's Yiddish Civilization lecture series. You can watch the past events on our YouTube channel and stay tuned for our fall announcement. We're going to be off for August, planning lots of exciting stuff and back in September with a lot of really interesting lectures and panels and concerts and theatrical readings. So stay tuned. More about that to come. Thank you all for joining us.