Metz: Two-Amud Tractates
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chapter 12 Metz: Two-Amud Tractates An unusual, attractive small-format Talmud was begun in Metz. Compelled to forsake the city, Jews returned but not completed in Metz. Considerably larger than the briefly, but were required to pay a levy of 34 deniers when popular, small-format individual tractates printed in entering Metz. Although there was a temporary Jewish the eighteenth century, it was also much smaller than presence in Metz in the following centuries, organized traditional, full-size editions published in that century, as Jewish life ceased for several hundred years.2 During well as in prior and subsequent centuries. In addition, the that period, the Jewish community, when reestablished, Metz tractates were printed with novellae normally found existed under great stress. only in large Talmud editions. As I explain in this chap- William Chester Jordan informs that Jews and lepers ter, the printer of the Metz Talmud fell victim to the same were apparently burned alive in 1269. Among those to be difficulties that faced printers of other editions of the burned was an individual, the subject of “judicial murder” Talmud as noted in previous chapters. The Metz edition in 1276, who was kept alive for ten years. He is memorial- faced the opposition of publishers who had restrictive ized in a poem as a kadosh (martyr). Jordan asks why a Jew approbations for their Talmud editions, this despite the or, for that matter, any prisoner held for a decade awaiting fact that the Metz Talmud also had approbations from execution in the Middle Ages? He suggests that the Jew- prominent rabbis. ish community or perhaps individuals made a great effort In the seventeenth century, Metz, a major urban cen- to influence the authorities to delay the execution. He ter located in northeast France, developed into a “true bases this supposition on the poet’s description of “a rabbi mother-city in Israel.” The Jewish community resided supremely just.” He concludes that “the poet did not see in the city’s ghetto, as well as in rural and semi-rural the sacrifice of his hero as the end of the story, for each kehillot.1 This was not the earliest Jewish settlement stanza of the poem closes with the invocation of Job 17:18 in Metz, however, for there are references to Jewish “‘Cover not my blood, O earth.’ Blood uncovered pleads for residence in Metz as early as 221, and it is claimed that vengeance.”3 Simon, Bishop of Metz in 350, was of Jewish origin. How- In 1322 a number of Jews were accused of poison- ever, this early settlement is quite uncertain. Jews were ing wells and then were burned alive. In 1365 Jews were apparently in Metz during the reign of the Merovingians expelled from the city after being held responsible for the and Carlovingians, engaged in several occupations, and destruction of twenty-two houses by lightning. In a blood experienced good relations with their Christian neigh- libel in 1669, Raphael Levy, a livestock merchant, was bors. In 888 a Church Council in Metz—with Balbodus, accused of abducting a Christian child on the eve of Rosh Archbishop of Trèves presiding—forbade Christians Ha’Shanah. Levy was tried, tortured, condemned to death, to partake of meals in the company of Jews or to marry and burned at the stake in the following year, this despite Jews. Apparently these edicts did not deter good relations the fact that partial remains of the child, devoured by between Jews, who resided in the Vicus Judaeorum, and wolves, had already been found. The Royal Council subse- their non-Jewish neighbors, residing under the protec- quently found that there had been a judicial error.4 tion of the dukes of Lorraine. Moreover, medieval Jewish By the eighteenth century Jewish life had revived, and sages of prominence in Lorraine are associated with Metz. the majority of Jews in France lived in the northeast part Among them were R. Simon ha-Gadol, R. Machir Leontin, of that country—in Metz, Alsace, and Lorraine. The three R. Eliezer (Sefer Yere’im), and most notably, Rabbenu Ger- families admitted to Metz in 1565 had increased to about shom Me’or ha-Gadol. However, Metz Jewry did not escape the persecutions 2 Gilbert Cahen and David Weinberg, “Metz,” EJ, vol. 14, 135–36; Gale and various indignities of Jewish life in the Middle Ages, Virtual Reference Library; “Metz,” JE, http://www.jewishencyclope and the community came to a tragic end in 1096 with the dia.com/articles/10743-metz. beginning of the Crusades when twenty-two Jews perished 3 William Chester Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews: From Philip Augustus to the Last Capetians (Philadelphia, 1989), 219. 4 Concerning this blood libel, see Pierre Birnbaum, A Tale of Ritual 1 Lionel Kochan, The Making of Western Jewry, 1600–1819 (New York, Murder in the Age of Louis XIV: The Trial of Raphael Levy, 1669, trans. 2004), 50. Arthur Goldhammer (Stanford, CA, 2012). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004376731_014 Metz: Two-Amud Tractates 183 two thousand people by 1789, in a population of thirty previously printed about thirty books in Nuremburg, thousand. In addition, about fifteen hundred Jews lived moved to Metz in 1498 where he printed ten to twelve in the surrounding villages. It appears that by 1740, Metz incunabula in the next two years. His first Metz imprint, Jewry were integrated into, or sufficiently influenced by, attributed to Rabbi Samuel, is Epistola contra Iudeos (40: their environment. Jonathan I. Israel reports that their 22 ff.), dated 19 March, 1498, a popular and much printed religious observance had declined, and they gave less def- anti-Jewish polemic.8 Epistola contra Iudeos was originally erence to rabbinic authority. Jews shaved off their beards, written in Arabic by the apostate Samuel Abu Nasr ibn dressed fashionably, and often caused a scandal by their Abbas, son of Judah ibn Abbas of Fez (Samuel Maroccanus drinking, gaming, and attentiveness to women.5 Until the of Morocco) in the eleventh century. It was translated into French Revolution Metz’s Jewish population was part of Latin in the fourteenth century by the Spanish Dominican the German-speaking cultural area. A newspaper there Alfonsus Bonihominis, suspected by some to have been was published in western Yiddish until 1789–1790 even Paul of Burgos.9 though longtime Jewish residents of Metz were fluent in In contrast to those early imprints, Hebrew printing did French.6 not begin until more than 250 years later. The first Hebrew All this notwithstanding, Metz, together with Frankfurt imprints in Metz are associated with Joseph Antoine and on the Main, was one of the two most important centers Moses May (Mai). The title pages describe Antoine, a for Talmud study in the west, and the Jewish community printer in Metz, as the royal printer Chez Joseph Antoine, of Metz continued to have prominent rabbis associated Impremeur ordinaire du Roi, [&] de l’Académie royale des with the city. Eminent rabbis who served in Metz in an Sciences & des Arts, &c.; that is, he had authorization to official capacity and the dates of their service include: R. print, which May had not obtained. May, son of R. David Jonah Teomin-Fraenkel (1660–1669), R. Gabriel Eskeles Tebele and a member of a family resident in Metz from the (1694–1703), R. Jacob Joshua Falk (Penei Yehoshu’a, 1734– beginning of the eighteenth century, was also one of 1741), R. Jonathan Eybeschuetz (1742–1750), and R. Aryeh the community’s parnassim.10 Although not acknowl- Leib ben Asher Gunzberg (Sha’agat Aryeh, 1765–1785). edged on the title pages of these first imprints, he is Despite the presence of Jewish bankers and army pur- mentioned in the approbations. veyors, the majority of Jews were impoverished, burdened May acquired the typographical equipment of the by onerous taxes and responsibilities to the poor. Most Roedelheim printer Carl Reich, which had been unused Jews were engaged in peddling, selling on credit, and for several years in Frankfurt on the Main. He did so with usury. They traded in precious metals—dealing in second- the assistance of Moses ben Jacob ha-Levi Marshan who hand gold and silver objects and also surreptitiously became his head compositor.11 The press was established manufacturing gold objects—and engaged in smuggling, in 1763; the first books were published the following year, ,פון רובינסאתן קריזאת … בשריינונג דאש לעבנג among other things, coins (billonage). Given France’s con- among them stant conflicts and state of war, it was noted by several the first Yiddish translation of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson officials of the royal government that it would have been Crusoe, and Asephat Zekanim called Shittah Mekubetzet on impossible to maintain the military on the eastern border tractate Betzah (40: [3], 50 ff.) of R. Bezalel ben Abraham without the (Jewish) provisioners to the army. Indeed, Ashkenazi (ca. 1520–ca. 1592). Aron Freimann records in 1632 Louis XIII, when visiting Metz, praised its Jewish these titles as the first imprints of the Metz press. Printed community for its contribution to the upkeep of the bor- in all likelihood with Asephat Zekanim were Avodat ha- der garrisons.7 Kodesh of R. Solomon ben Aderet (Rashba, 1235–1310) Printing in Metz began in the incunabular period when and Porat Yosef (40: 16, 12 ff.) of R. Joseph ben Benjamin Johann Colini, a Carmelite friar, and Gerardus de Noua Samiga although it is also possible that the later works Ciutate printed the first volume of Thomas à Kempis’s were printed independently.12 De Imitatione … (1482, 40: 22 ff.).