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The Old Jewish Cemetery of Vilna Revisited*

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The Old Jewish Cemetery of Vilna Revisited* of the הסכמות A Note on the חפץ חיים חפץ חיים of the הסכמותA Note on the By Shnayer Leiman All the comments to the previous posting (“A Note on R. and its Prenumeranten”) are משכן בצלאל Bezalel Alexandrov’s deeply appreciated. It’s what makes the Seforim Blog required reading for anyone interested in serious scholarship. I cannot possibly address all the comments. The references in the notes to the essay address some of the issues raised. To Yisrael Dubitsky’s important comments, one should add that privately are available, at משכן בצלאל owned copies of the two parts of the very least, in New York and Silver Spring, Maryland. משכן בצלאל Having said that, the fuller editions of remain rare books. Hopefully, online ילקוט בצלאל and resources such as Hebrew Books and Otzar Ha-Hokhmah will scan the fuller texts and make them available to all. Lest be משכן בצלאל Yisrael’s comment about YU’s copy of misunderstood by an uninformed reader (“Mishkan Betsalel is available at 4 libraries that reported to OCLC [YU is not one of them]”), rest assured that the Mendel Gottesman Library at The Gottesman Library .משכן בצלאל YU owns a full edition of lists some 200,000 volumes of Judaica on its on-line catalogue, and these are reported to OCLC. Those 200,000 volumes form the basic books necessary for a Jewish Studies research library. But like many Jewish Studies research libraries, YU has many other collections of Judaica, catalogued and uncatalogued. One of those catalogued משכן collections (not on-line) lists the full edition of which, courtesy of the YU librarians, I was able to , בצלאל consult when preparing the essay. since the , הסכמות While the focus of the essay was not on חפץ of the הסכמות bulk of the comments focused on the I shall attempt to address that issue, and only , חיים briefly. חפץ Whether one chooses to recognize the letter of the .1 or not, the letter remains one of the three הסכמה as a חיים to the attention of the משכן בצלאל reasons for bringing is a treasure. This חפץ חיים public. Any letter of the and in the) משכן בצלאל particular one is published only in .(משכן בצלאל secondary sources based upon contains three משכן בצלאל It should be noted that .2 חפץ letters of approbation. Aside from the letter of the it includes a letter of approbation from R. Avraham ,חיים Yoffen (1887-1970), Rosh Yeshiva of Nevarodok in Nevarodok, and then of Nevarodok in Bialystok. The letter is dated 13 Tishre 5680 [October 7, 1919] and was written in Minsk. A third letter of approbation, from R. Yitzchak Isaac Eliezer Hirshowitz (1871-1941), then a Resh Mesivta in the Slabodka section of Kovno, is dated 5 Tishre 5680 [September 29, 1919] and was also written in Minsk. (Rabbi Hirshowitz is famous, in part, for publishing an early translation into Hebrew of the מיטב ,teachings of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. His book Vilna, 1913] was intended for Lithuanian Jewry and] הגיון (.from R. Chaim Ozer Grodzenski הסכמה carried an enthusiastic The letters of approbation by Rabbis Yoffen and Hirshowitz not only praise R. Bezalel Alexandrov’s learning and piety, they also indicate that both rabbis examined and approved the manuscript of R. Bezalel Alexandrov’s book. All three letters of approbation are printed together immediately following the title page. All three letters are introduced (separately) with To consider the …מכתב תעודה מהרב הגאון :the exact same title and the first a private letter that, הסכמות last two letters has absolutely nothing to do with the book, seems almost ludicrous. A form-critical analysis leads to the ineluctable .הסכמות conclusion that all three letters of approbation are Moreover, it seems highly unlikely that R. Bezalel Alexandrov, חפץ a musar enthusiast, would have placed a letter (by the that had absolutely nothing to do with the book, in (חיים section and thereby mislead potential buyers and הסכמות its readers of the book. Worse yet, he published the “misleading” חפץ and after the ,חפץ חיים letter during the lifetime of the was kind enough to be among the first subscribers to the חיים it ,חפץ חיים by the הסכמה book! In terms of the nature of the is paralleled by many others that he wrote in response to He was impeccably honest, and .הסכמה specific requests for a did not want to praise a book he did not read, and was not likely to read. Instead, he showered priestly blessings on the .מעומקא דלבא ,author משכן If one examines the first page of prenumeranten in .3 חפץ posted with the essay), one will notice that the) בצלאל אלה שמות :s name appears under the general rubric’חיים This seems awkward, since .הפרענומעראנטין דק”ק ווילנא, שליט”א .lived in Radin, some 85.6 kilometers from Vilna חפץ חיים the The names of no other residents of Radin appear on the four- page list of subscribers. Indeed, the likelihood that anyone would attempt to gather subscriptions from the residents of Radin was probably as high as the likelihood of a Jewish book נועם dealer seeking a copy of the first edition of the one of the rarest of Jewish printed books) in the) אלימלך Serengeti in Tanzania. (Berel Kagan has no entry for Radin.) frequented Vilna חפץ חיים It is well known, however, that the in the 1920’s in particular, and often stayed with relatives in Shnipishok (a Vilna suburb), and would meet with R. Chaim .כלל ישראל Ozer Grodzenski in order to address the needs of Similarly, R. Bezalel Alexandrov was not a resident of Vilna. He was there in 1923 for one purpose only (staying at the home of one of the Vilna subscribers, Shmuel Melamed, at 39 Breite חפץ Gass), in order to publish his book. And the letter of the was written in 1923! It seems likely that the two met in חיים and received ,הסכמה Vilna in 1923 and R. Bezalel asked for a .משכן בצלאל the letter he printed at the start of מאיר עיני It should be noted that the author of .4 cited in note 7 of the essay), in a chapter entitled) ישראל includes ”,הסכמות מרן החפץ חיים זצ”ל לספרי מחברי תקופתו“ given to R. Bezalel חפץ חיים by the הסכמה the lists 3 מפעל הביבליוגרפיה ,Also .משכן בצלאל Alexandrov’s It did not imagine that one of the .משכן בצלאל for ”הסכמות“ letters was a personal letter unrelated to the book being published. 5. Ultimately the issue is one of definition. What is the Or to phrase it another way: what ? הסכמה definition of a in order for it to be הסכמה elements must be present in a .Here are some possibilities ?הסכמה recognized as a legitimate (I will not bring proofs or disproofs for any of these definitions; in fact, these – and many more – have been suggested as possibilities by leading rabbis throughout the generations.) is a legal document by an authorized הסכמה A .1 rabbi that provides copyright protection for the without such a provision is הסכמה A .ספר author of a .הסכמה not a must be written by an authorized rabbi and הסכמה A .2 he must attest to the integrity of the author and to being published . If ספר the integrity of the lacks the one or the other, it is not הסכמה the .הסכמה a must be written by an authorized הסכמה The .3 rabbi and he needs only to attest to the integrity of the author. Nothing else is significant. is a promotional document, signed by an הסכמה A .4 authorized rabbi, and necessary for sales. The content of letter is of little consequence. Whichever definition one chooses, a host of questions will remain to be answered. Who is an authorized rabbi? What if the for הסכמה author of the book, an authorized rabbi, writes the for a son? What shall we הסכמה himself? Can a father write a that do not fit any of the definitions הסכמות do with the many ,הסכמות forged ,הסכמות listed above? Thus, there are censored written under duress, and הסכמות, הסכמות reluctant .just to list a few of the many categories ,הסכמות retracted Even aside from these questions, many great rabbis (in all and published their books ,הסכמות periods) refused to seek without them. Some stated unequivocally (about their . מעשיך יקרבוך ומעשיך ירחקוך :(books In sum, given the uncertain (and changing) definitions of through the ages, I cannot speak with הסכמה the term confidence that I know precisely, in every case, what is and And I certainly have no monopoly on .הסכמה what isn’t a wisdom. Nonetheless, for the reasons listed above, I am for חפץ חיים persuaded that R. Bezalel Alexandrov asked the in 1923, and printed the one he received. Readers will הסכמה a חפץ have to decide for themselves the precise status of the But .משכן בצלאל s letter printed at the beginning of’חיים whatever they decide, they need to bear in mind the variety of through the ages, they need to examine הסכמה definitions of all the evidence, and they need to realize that their conclusion will be only one opinion among many others, and not necessarily the correct one. A Picture and its One Thousand Words: The Old Jewish Cemetery of Vilna Revisited* A Picture and its One Thousand Words: The Old Jewish Cemetery of Vilna Revisited* by Shnayer Z. Leiman A. The Photograph. Recently, I had occasion to publish the above photograph – a treasure that offers a glimpse of what the old Jewish cemetery of Vilna looked like in the inter-war period.[1] Indeed, it captures the oldest portion of the rabbinic section of the old Jewish cemetery.
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