Young Rabbis and All About Olives Young Rabbis and All About Olives Marc B. Shapiro I am currently working on a book focused on the thought of R. Kook, in particular his newly released publications. A book recently appeared titled Siah ha-Re’iyah, by R. David Gavrieli and R. Menahem Weitzman. It discusses a number of important letters of R. Kook. In addition to the analysis of the letters, each of the letters is printed with explanatory words that make them easier to understand. We are also given biographical details about the recipients of R. Kook’s letters. Here is the title page. In reading the book, I once again found myself asking the question, how can intelligent people sometimes say nonsensical things? On p. 252 the book states that R. Menahem Mendel Cohen studied in yeshivot in Tiberias and Safed, and was appointed as chief rabbi of the Ashkenazic community of Cairo in 1896 when he was only ten years old! How is it possible for anyone to write such a sentence, that a ten-year-old was appointed as a communal rabbi? Let me explain what happened here, but first, I must note that the name of the man we are referring to is not R. Menahem Mendel Cohen, but R. Aaron Mendel Cohen. Here is his picture, which comes from a very nice Hebrew Wikipedia article on him. As for R. Cohen being appointed rabbi at age ten, whoever prepared the biographical introduction must have had a source which mistakenly stated that R. Cohen was born in 1886. Since this source also said that he became rabbi in Cairo in 1896, this means that he was ten years old was he was appointed rabbi. Yet we can only wonder how the authors did not see the obvious impossibility of a ten-year-old being appointed rabbi of Cairo, which should have led them to investigate a little further. Simply by googling R. Cohen’s name in Hebrew, the Wikipedia article will come up, and it tells us that R. Cohen was born not in 1886 but in 1866. Thus, instead of a ten-year- old rabbi he is now thirty years old. With regard to young rabbis, let me repeat, with some slight edits, something I wrote in an earlier post here. In terms of young achievers in the Lithuanian Torah world, I wonder how many have ever heard of R. Meir Shafit. He lived in the nineteenth century and wrote Sefer Nir, a commentary on the Jerusalem Talmud, when not many were studying it. Here is the title page of one of the volumes, where it tells us that he became rav of a community at the age of fifteen. The Hazon Ish once remarked that the young Rabbi Shafit would mischievously throw pillows at his gabbaim![1] Regarding R. Jacob Schorr [mentioned earlier in the original post] being a childhood genius, this letter from him to R. Shlomo Kluger appeared in Moriah, Av 5767. As you can see, the letter was written in 1860 (although I We .(תר”ך can’t make out what the handwriting says after are informed, correctly, that R. Schorr was born in 1853, which would mean that he was seven years old when he wrote the letter. This, I believe, would make him the greatest child genius in Jewish history, as I don’t think the Vilna Gaon could even write like this at age seven. Furthermore, if you read the letter you see that two years prior to this R. Schorr had also written to R. Kluger. Are there any other examples of a five-year-old writing Torah letters to one of the gedolei ha-dor? From the letter we also see that the seven-year-old Schorr was also the rav of the town of Mariampol! (The Mariampol in Galicia, not Lithuania.) I would have thought that this merited some mention by the person publishing this letter. After all, R. Schorr would be the only seven-year-old communal rav in history, and this letter would be the only evidence that he ever served as rav in this town. Unfortunately, the man who published this document and the editor of the journal are entirely oblivious to what, on the face of things, must be one of the most fascinating letters in all of Jewish history. Yet all that I have written assumes that the letter was actually written by R. Schorr. Once again, we must thank R. Yaakov Hayyim Sofer for setting the record straight. In his recently published Shuvi ha-Shulamit (Jerusalem, 2009), vol. 7, p. 101, he calls attention to the error and points out, citing Wunder, Meorei Galicia, that the rav of Mariampol, Galicia was another man entirely, who was also named Jacob Schorr. This is what I wrote in the prior post. Let me now add some additional information about R. Shafit, the fifteen-year-old communal rav. The first thing I want to point out relates to the city in which R. Shafit became rav at age fifteen. If you This .מיצד look at the title page you can see that its name is is actually an alternate way of spelling the city which is Anyone who knows their Lithuanian .מייצ’ט better known as rabbinic history will recognize this city as Meitchet (Molchad in English), made famous by the great R. Solomon Polachek, known as the Meitcheter Iluy. (R. Polachek was not actually born in Meitchet, but in a small town nearby.) There is so much to say about R. Polachek, but it will have to wait for a future post. Returning to R. Shafit, although he is hardly a household name, in his day he was actually quite a well-known rabbi. He contributed to R. Israel Salanter’s journal Tevunah,[2] and those who study the Jerusalem Talmud know that his commentary is a very important work.[3] R. Adin Steinsaltz, who is from R. Shafit’s family, even took time away from his own work on the Talmud to publish from manuscript a commentary of R. Shafit on the Jerusalem Talmud. Here is the volume that appeared in 1979. In the preface, R. Steinsaltz writes: כל החכמים הלומדים בירושלמי בכל השיטות, למן חכמי בית המדרש נוסח ליטא העתיקה עד לאנשי המדע המובהקים, כולם כאחד הודו שפירוש “הניר” הוא מחשובי הפירושים שנכתבו אי פעם על התלמוד הירושלמי I do not need go into more detail on R. Shafit since in 2014 Hillel Rotenberg published an entire book on him.[4] And while it is true that, as mentioned already, R. Shafit is not a household name, there are today people who celebrate his hillula. See here. In case you are wondering what a Lithuanian rabbi is doing with ahillula , R. Shafit was actually a Slonimer Hasid. In response to my earlier comments about the young R. Shafit, Seforim Blog contributor R. Ovadiah Hoffman sent me another example of a young rabbi: Avigdor Aptowitzer. Aptowitzer, who was one of the twentieth-century’s leading academic scholars of rabbinic literature, is best known as the editor of R. Eliezer ben Joel Halevi’s halakhic work Ra’avyah, concerning which he published another important volume as an introduction to the Ra’avyah, and a book called Hosafot ve-Tikunim le-Sefer Ra’avyah (Jerusalem, 1936). According to Abraham Meir Habermann, when Aptowitzer was around seven years old his father, the rabbi of Tarnopol, became ill. Young Avigdor took the place of his father as rabbi. During the week he taught students and on Shabbat people carried him to the synagogue so that he could deliver the derashah.[5] As far as I know, this makes Aptowitzer the youngest person ever to serve as a communal rabbi, even though he was never officially appointed to the position. It is also reported that R. Shimon Sofer, the son of R. Abraham Samuel Sofer (the Ketav Sofer), was so learned as a from R. Judah Aszod when חבר child that he received the title he was only nine years old.[6] In speaking about young rabbis, it is also important to mention a passage in R. David Abudarham’s[7] commentary on the Abudarham .אמר רבי אלעזר הרי אני כבן שבעים שנה .Haggadah, s.v cites the Jerusalem Talmud, Berakhot 4:1, that R. Elazar ben Azariah was appointed nasi of the Sanhedrin at age 13. Our version of the Jerusalem Talmud has “age 16”, but the version cited by Abudarham appears in other early sources.[8] Regarding age 16, R. Solomon Ibn Gabirol wrote his azharot for Shavuot when he was that old. At the beginning of the azharot he wrote (with great self-confidence, I might add):[9] והנני בשש עשרה שנותי ובי שכל כמו בן השמונים Avodah Zarah 56b tells about a child who learned Tractate Avodah Zarah when he was six years old. The Talmud describes how he was asked halakhic questions on the tractate, and his replies apparently signify that he was deciding halakhic matters at the age of six. He was asked, ‘May [an Israelite] tread grapes together with a heathen in a press?’ He replied, ‘It is lawful to tread grapes together with a heathen in a press.’ [To the objection] ‘But he renders it yein nesekh [10] by [the touch of] his hands!’ [he answered], ‘We tie his hands up.’ [To the further objection] ‘But he renders it yein nesekh by [the touch of] his feet!’ [he answered], ‘Wine touched by the feet is not called nesekh.’ Although not an example of a child rabbi, I think it is worthwhile to mention R.