chapter 20 Massekhtot Ketanot (Minor Tractates)

In addition to complete or partial editions, sev- tractates because they were not incorporated into the eral tractates, otherwise not the subject of this work, are main corpus of Talmudic literature. Furthermore, some of of interest to us. These treatises are the fourteen (fifteen, these treatises are disparate; some, such as Avot de-Rabbi depending upon the enumeration) non-canonical trac- Nathan, being aggadic, while others, such as Sefer , tates of the Talmud, today appended to Seder and are halakhic. R. Adin Steinsaltz describes the minor trac- known as minor tractates.1 Three editions of minor trac- tates as tates, (1732), Avot de-Rabbi Nathan (1788), and Massekhet Kallah (1789), that might properly have been The sixty tractates of the and their eluci- included in this chapter, were described in Chapter 15, dation in the Talmud constitutes a single unit, but “Dyhernfurth: Early Tractates.” They were included in that additions were added over the centuries, which are chapter because those minor tractates were published by known by the general and imprecise term masakh- Dyhernfurth presses, one of which published two Talmud tot ketanot (small tractates). These are not of a kind. editions, and therefore I addressed them together with Some are ancient and apparently formed part of the discussion of that city’s presses. Similarly, the minor ancient compilations of external mishnayot; most tractates with or in Latin might have been included in the are summaries edited in a later period, mostly the following chapter on Christian-Hebraists and their trans- gaonic period, although some of their sources are lations of the Talmud (Mishnah), but I decided, perhaps extremely ancient. These “small tractates” include a arbitrarily, to group all of these treatises together.2 number that deal with ethics and conduct, and some Both Michael Higger and M. B. Lerner observe that scholars believe there may have been a seventh the treatises are post-Mishnaic. Higger refers to seven order of the Mishnah (even before the editing of the of the minor tractates, noting that they are the first such mishnayot by R. Judah Ha-Nasi), possibly known as compendium of specific Jewish practices. Lerner notes Seder Hokhmah (Wisdom).4 that from the Amoraic period, numerous tractates “cir- culated independently of the recognized literary units.”3 The following descriptions of the editions of the minor Higger notes that most of these tractates are of Palestinian tractates are not necessarily comprehensive; other stand- origin, later modified in Babylonia. He suggests that the alone printings of these treatises may have existed. I first to mention a collection of seven minor treatises discuss these entries according to their order in the was Ramban (Nachmanides). Lerner informs that these Talmud and, then, within each tractate, chronologically, tractates, originally independent compilations, some no with the exception of compilations of several minor trac- smaller than a “Tannaic tractate,” are referred to as minor tates with which I conclude the chapter.

1 The other minor tractates, in addition to Soferim, are Avot de-Rabbi Nathan, Semahot (Evel Rabbati), Kallah Rabbati, Kallah, Derekh 1 Avot de-Rabbi Nathan Eretz Rabbah, Derekh Eretz Zuta, Gerim, Kutim, Avadim, , , , and . 2 Debra Reed Blank in her bibliography of Soferim, noted earlier in The first of the minor tractates is Avot de-Rabbi Nathan. Chapter 15, provides a comprehensive bibliography of the various A work dealing with ethics, it may be considered a supple- editions of that as well as noting commentaries on ment to, or a further development of, Avot. Lerner notes Soferim. that although it is undeniably related to Avot, it contains 3 In the following work, Michael Higger, Seven Minor Treatises: Sefer Torah; Mezuzah; Tefillin; Zizit; Abadim; Kutim; Gerim. And Treatise much aggadic material not related to the Mishnah and Soferim II. Edited from Manuscripts with an Introduction, Notes, is more suggestive of an aggadic . Moreover, the Variants, and Translation [Hebrew with English introduction] (New identity of R. Nathan is unclear. He suggests that Avot York, 1930), 5, is referring only to the subject tractates, in contrast to de-Rabbi Nathan is so entitled because it was based on a M. B. Lerner, “The External Tractates,” The Literature of the Sages: First Part: , , Mishna, , Talmud, External Tractates, ed. Shmuel Safrai and Peter J. Tomson (Philadelphia, 1987), 367, who is concerned with the entire body of these works. 4 Steinsaltz, The Essential Talmud, 93–94.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004376731_022 288 chapter 20 recension of Avot edited by R. Nathan the Babylonian.5 posterius in Esteram: nunc primum urbe donatum, & in There are two different versions of Avot de-Rabbi Nathan, linguam Latinam translatum (1655).8 one of forty-one chapters, the other of forty-nine chapters. Tractatus de Patribus Rabbi Nathan Auctore was printed It is the former that is included among the minor tractates; in quarto format (40: [6], 142, [1] pp.). The text, which is the latter was extant in manuscript until it was published accompanied by notis marginalibus (marginal notes) in by Solomon Schechter in 1887. minimal Hebrew, follows an introduction. The volume In 1654 a London edition of Avot de-Rabbi Nathan concludes with a page of Lectori. with Latin, translated by Francis Taylor (1590–1656), The next independent, that is, stand-alone edition of was published by E. Cotes at the expense (impensa) of Avot de-Rabbi Nathan was printed in 1723 in Zolkiew at G. & H. Eversden under the title Tractatus de Patribus the press of Aaron ben Hayyim David Segal as a folio (20: Rabbi Nathan Auctore, in Linguam Latinam Translatus. [2] 28 ff.). The detailed commentary of R. Eliezer Lipman Steinschneider describes it as “Latine pere F. Taylerum ben Menahem Maneli of Zamosc accompanies the text. q. v. (1654). [W2p. 856.]” and again under the heading Zolkiew (Zhovkve, called Nesterov as of 1951) in Galicia, Ukraine, had a Jewish presence from the late sixteenth מסכת אבות דרבי“ Taylerus, seu Taylor, Tailerus (Franc) as R. Natan tract. De patribus Lat, cum Notis Margin. century; the oldest tombstone in the Jewish cemetery נתן [W2p. 856.]. 8. Lnd. 1654.”6 dates to 1610. As early as 1628, Jews owned twenty-one Francis Taylor (1590–1656), a Puritan theologian, was houses, a number that had increased to eighty by 1680, a sometime Rector of Chapham in the county of Surrey, out of a total of 210 houses in the town. In 1690, King Jan near London. Later he was the pastor of Yalding in Kent. Sobieski (1674–96) granted local Jews the right to establish He is described as being “most peculiarly distinguished a Hebrew printing press.9 for all kinds of Hebrew learning, and the knowledge of The first Hebrew press in Zolkiew was founded in Jewish antiquities. He published several very learned 1691 by Uri ben Aaron Phoebus ha-Levi (Witzenhausen, and valuable works, and among these a translation of the Witmund, 1625–1715). Prior to that, Uri Phoebus, who had Jerusalem on the Pentateuch out of the Chaldeo previously worked for Immanuel Benveniste, established into Latin, which he dedicated to the learned Mr. Gataker his own print-shop in Amsterdam in 1658. During the of Rotherhithe.”7 Hollis, the Harvard Library Catalogue, period he was active in Amsterdam, he printed about one includes more than twenty titles for Taylor, a prolific hundred titles. In 1689, when already sixty-six, Uri Phoebus author; several are translations of Hebrew works. Among ceased printing in Amsterdam and relocated to Poland. He them are Targum Yeruśalem Targum Hierosolymitanum, did so because of the competition from the large number in quinque libroslegis è lingua Chaldaica in Latinam of Hebrew printers in Amsterdam; Uri Phoebus believed (1649); Ekhah, sive, Jeremiæ vatis lamentationes [micro- that he would be more successful in Poland, located closer form]: denuò è fontibus hebraicus translatæ (1651); Pirke to its large Jewish population, a major market for the avot = Capitula patrum: Hebraicaè & Latinè edita: verbi Hebrew printing-houses of Amsterdam. His descendants divini in Aede Christi apud Ca (1651); and Targum prius et continued to operate Hebrew printing-presses in Poland into the twentieth century. In 1690 King John Sobieski granted Phoebus the right to establish a Hebrew printing-house in Zolkiew. Phoebus had a previous connection with the Polish monarch 5 Lerner, “External Tractates,” 369–70. 6 Steinschneider, CL col. 2034, no. 6623:4; cols.2670–71 no. 7294:4. more than a decade earlier when he had printed Yiddish There are several translations into English of Avot de-Rabbi Bibles for the Jews of Poland.10 Phoebus’s press was the Nathan, among them that of M. L. Rodkinson in his translation only Hebrew printing-house that produced a significant of the Babylonian Talmud, vol. 9 (New York, 1900); Judah Goldin, number of Hebrew works in Poland in the last decade The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan (New Haven, 1955, reprint of the seventeenth and throughout the first half of the 1990); Eli Cashdan, Aboth d’Rabbi Nathan, Translated into English with Introduction and Notes in The Minor Tractates of the Talmud (London, 1965); Anthony J. Saldarini, Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan: Abot De Rabbi Nathan (Leiden, 1975); and Jacob Neusner, 8 Hollis catalogue, http://lms01.harvard.edu/F/J36T84KJJFVKL6 The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan: An Analytical Translation PVTC4F6EQE6XXVA8RHMF7A22SM7951ES4F4B-19077? and Explanation (Atlanta, 1986). There are also translations into func=find-acc&acc_sequence=006055899. other languages. 9 Stefan Gasiorowski, “Zhovkva,” trans. Chaim Chernikov, Yivo 7 http://www.apuritansmind.com/puritan-favorites/francis-taylor Encyclopedia. -1589-1656/. 10 Friedberg, Hebrew Typography in Poland, 62.