נשמת הבית,Ancient Jewish Poetry & the Amazing World
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נשמת – New Book Announcement הבית New Book Announcement נשמת הבית, שאלות שנשאלו ליועצות ההלכה של מדרשת נשמת בנושאי היריון, לידה, הנקה ואמצעי מניעה בליווי הדרכה מעשית והסברים ונספחים רפואיים, 367 עמודים Nishmat Habayit is a collection of 63 she’elot uteshuvot on Pregnancy, Birth, Nursing, and Contraceptives. Each question has a short answer, as a yoetzet halacha would addresses the woman with the question, followed by a more extensive halachic discussion. The questions were selected from among tens of thousands in Nishmat’s Taharat Hamishpacha database. The responses were authored by a team of yoatzot halacha, under the supervision of Rabbi Yehuda Henkin and Rabbi Yaakov Varhaftig; and edited by Rabbi Yehuda and Chana Henkin. The book includes medical appendices, helpful even to poskim. The responses display sensitivity to women, coupled with complete faithfulness to halacha. The book carrieshaskamot of recognized poskim in Israel. The book was published by Maggid Press and is available here. Sample chapters are available upon request [[email protected] ] Here is the title page, table of contents, and haskamot. Ancient Jewish Poetry & the Amazing World of Piyut: Interview with Professor Shulamit Elizur ANCIENT JEWISH POETRY & THE AMAZING WORLD OF PIYUT: Professor Shulamit Elizur explores the Cairo Genizah and other obscure places for hidden gems BY BATSHEVA SASSOON Just as the mountains surround Jerusalem, so G-d surrounds his people, from now to all eternity —Tehillim 125:2 This piece originally appeared in14 TISHREI 5778 // OCTOBER 4, 2017 // AMI MAGAZINE #337 Thanks to Ami for permission to publish this here.This version is updated with a few corrections and additions Inside the Old City of Jerusalem one cannot see the mountains that surround it, only its many confining walls. Yet even for someone who has a phobia of confined places, as I do, this part of the Holy City is liberating. Many years ago, the great Jewish poet Rabbi Yehudah Halevi wrote longingly about Jerusalem, “I wish I could fly to you on the wings of an eagle, and mingle my tears with your dust.” Today, one can readily fly to Jerusalem, but to have a chance to explore its poetic and emotional underpinnings is a rare treat. Professor Shulamit Elizur, whom I am visiting this morning in her book lined apartment, is not only one of the foremost experts in the world on piyut but she is also a talmidah chachamah and scholar, whose fear of sin precedes her wisdom. “I was around 16 years old when I realized that if you want to learn something, it isn’t wise to try to absorb too much at one time,” she shares with me without a hint of pretension. “I decided to study the Mishneh Torah of the Rambam, so I learned one perek a day until I got to the end. I did the same thing with Nach, learning two perakim a day, and I’ve gone through the entire Shishah Sidrei Mishnah numerous times. The same applies to piyutim: If you divide them up and study them over time, you will eventually succeed in understanding all of them.” She then asks me not to mention some of her other scholarly undertakings so that she doesn’t come across as if she were bragging. And she’s not; she is simply a brilliant scholar who loves to learn every spare minute, and the world has been tremendously enriched by that. As the head of the Fleischer Institute for the Study of Hebrew Poetry, a member of the Academy of the Hebrew Language and a member of the editorial board of the Mekitze Nirdamim publishing house, she has her hands full. But she still finds time to write books and study, as well as to talk to me this morning about her ongoing research. Indeed, her energy is laudable as she keeps on getting up to fetch one book after the other to prove a point. GENIZAH Anyone who is familiar with contemporary Israeli culture knows that there has been a revival of the singing of piyut. Jewish liturgical poems that were composed to be recited during tefillah are now being performed by Israel’s top singers in clubs and at concerts. But Shulamit Elizur insists that what she does has nothing to do with this trend. “The modern performers are mainly interested in the piyutim that have tunes, and those that are printed in our siddurim. But I’m involved in doing research into the piyutim that were lost and haven’t been said in many years. My field is kitvei yad, primarily those that were found in the Cairo Genizah.” I ask her if after all these years it’s still possible to find new things. “We have an organization that takes all the fragments and deciphers them. For example, I found a fragment of a page and then much later I found another piece of the same page. It turns out that the page is part of a sefer written by Rabbeinu Saadyah Gaon against the Kara’im. We don’t have the entire book, but the two pieces I was able to put together are from a previously unknown part of that sefer, which was very exciting for me.” “So it’s all about putting pieces together,” I state. “Yes, although we do sometimes find complete pages as well. For example, I discovered a piyut for Tefillat Geshem on Shemini Atzeret that isn’t found in our siddurim and predates the great paytan Rabbi Elazar Hakalir, who lived in Eretz Yisrael close to the Muslim conquest. It is very unique and I published it in one of my articles. “When we go through the Genizah, we examine each piece individually to try to understand what it is. We have a catalogue with over 160,000 entries. That doesn’t mean that there are that many piyutim, because if we find the same piyut five times it gets five separate entries. But there are tens of thousands of them, most of which are unknown, and we are constantly finding more. The next step is to upload them onto a website to make them accessible to the public, but right now we don’t have the funds to complete the project. “We still have a few years of research left, because even though we’ve gone through every fragment found in the Genizah that was known to be a piyut, there are still many more that weren’t known to be parts of piyutim. In Cambridge, the Genizah was organized according to category: There are contracts, letters, parts of Tanach, Talmud and piyutim. My teacher, Ezra Fleischer, began the work of examining all the other categories for fragments that were previously unrecognized as piyutim, and the work is not yet finished. For example, when a contract was no longer needed, the other side of it could then be used to write piyutim, but it was still categorized as a contract. So we still need to find all of those fragments of lost piyutim and piece them together.” “How many fragments are in the Genizah?” “Tens of thousands, and sometimes there can be as many as 50 piyutim on a single one. This is a very large undertaking. Ezra Fleischer worked on it for 40 years, and before he passed away he asked me to continue his work.” “So you’re his successor.” “For this project, but I don’t claim to come close to his stature. He was unbelievably knowledgeable in piyut, nusach hatefillah, secular poetry and languages; he spoke more than ten.” “Was he born in Eretz Yisrael?” “No. That’s another story, which is really deserving of its own article. He was born and raised in Romania. His father was Yehuda Leib Fleischer, who did research on Rav Avraham ibn Ezra, which is why he named his son Avraham Ezra. “As a bachur, Ezra was an activist for immigration to Eretz Yisrael, so he was arrested and put in jail under extremely dangerous conditions. He was kept in solitary confinement for a number of years, so during that time he composed a number of Hebrew songs and poems in his head. When he was finally freed, he wrote three books of songs and poems from memory. “He also wrote a book against the Communists, which he was able to put into the hands of the Israeli ambassador, who sent it to Israel and had it printed under a pen name. It received such wide acclaim that he received the Israel Prize for it anonymously while he was still in Romania. But he couldn’t reveal to anyone that he was the author, because he knew that the Romanians would kill him if word got out. “A year later he was allowed to go to Israel, where he became friends with my parents. I was five years old when I first met him. He told me that he had studied law in Romania because that was the only exam that wasn’t held on Shabbat. He actually hated law, but he had to study something in university so he chose that. Still, even after he graduated he couldn’t get a job in a prestigious law office, which would have necessitated working on Saturdays, so he became the official secretary of the kehillah under Rav Rosen. He really had unbelievable mesirat nefesh to keep Shabbat.” ACADEMIA “How did you become interested in the study of piyut?” “When I went to university I wanted to study the Hebrew language. But because I was required to add another subject I decided to add Hebrew literature, which my mother taught.