Maseches Avodah Zara Throughout the Generations

[Music] Welcome back, Rabbi Dr. Alazar Brut. We thank you for joining us especially again during the war from Is and we're back to record our originals is about to begin and we've been discussing each how it's been learned throughout the generations from the couple of special that are on this or you specifically this looking for this episode without further ado. Okay. So, see what's there and maybe this time you'll get 25 cents. Last time was $25. Every 25 cent donation. But we're serious. We're serious. Um it's a lot of work. Many, many hours. So, anything that you could do to help support this endeavor, um please be in touch with either Rabbi Brat, Rabbi Dr. brought myself and without further ado. Okay. So, when you open it up, you see it's five. But then in towards the beginning of the dollar, we learned that ofu had a desim. So, where did all these proim go? So, this is a question a lot has been discussed and written about it. Um, what does it mean? Did he have other makas? And many many questions. Maybe one day we'll have an episode devoted to it. But just to mention, look in the Hebrew from Hilman, father-in-law of Herzog on the inv. It's available on Hebrew books in the garra of he has a nice chat about it and the rav few places he also talks about this particular garra what's going on where okay now in general we always begin very very briefly to talk about this. So at first people think it it's it's about it talks to you and tells you all the ways that they and all that most of is not doesn't go into that that already was dealt with a little bit in certain you have to have some of a little bit about but not so much but just to have some background in this so is a a work from sh Liberman Greek and Jewish Palestine Helenism and Jewish Palestine there's a little bit that over there one could help you could get a little bit of understanding about the scufa and there was a doctorate written by professor bluchin in English where he also talks about par the first paragraph of desar and some of the terms and some of the discussions which is very helpful okay in general the academic world has spent a lot of time on just to throw out there two names one is professor Steinfeld wrote a book which is about theic aspects of the sugius in in um that come up throughout Zara and then professor Salvichek which we'll get to mentioning a little bit more about but he has written many articles and books fully devoted to this ma that are all very very useful and we'll highlight some aspects about this soon so usually when I begin we we highlight we begin with the gar of the gar so but over here it happens to be the Mishna already was heavily worked on professor David Rosenal put out a his doctor was devoted to Mishnara later on um the Safari family is so they have two volumes on but it was never published it's only available on the internet okay now in general in Mishnay everyone knows one of the most famous perian Mishnay is the Rambam Ram's perish which is worthy of its own episode what his goal was what he was doing and all the different things so eventually was re-ransated from Arabic with based on um notes of the Rambam and all this type of material by Raf Kapak more recently it was there was a fancier edition of it by other people whatever the pros cons of all these different editions is not for now but kapak did not have the the the tikun of the raam that the raam made on on this for whatever reasons so back in 2002 he published on um the it calls it Mishna which is the harus um he redid did re-ransate from Arabic the raishna but he also used some additions and corrections that the ra wrote in his own handwriting that we now have today okay moving on to the gar so this and we're going to discuss in a moment the importance of why this is different than a lot of other makas of the so number one is we have the which we've quoted many times in the past the kashivas in this it's extremely and I'll mention why momentarily now the of The dukim was was based on one of the main things that he began his project was a manuscript of the whole Talmud that survived that was finished in 1342. So it's relatively early and that's what he used. Eventually he discovered more pieces but he didn't have a whole Talmud a whole volume on the ma um earlier than 1342 on the whole shaft so to speak on than 1342. Now that an earlier manuscript survived from and the whole story behind how um it ended up in J in JTS and we were in the 1960s Shra Iverson, Professor Shrason in 1957, sorry, 1957 put out an edition of this, a faximilia edition and besides putting out a faximile edition, he wrote dozens and dozens and the kashivas of the gay that we see in this 1290 manuscript of the mak. Now why is it so important to have the manuscripts of these of this m in particular? So the answer is because of what's known as the sensor. This um there's a there's a discussion when this began exactly. It's a fascinating discussion. We're not going to go into it. A lot has been written about it. But just to mention one example and from that we'll be able to understand everything. Rashi which we're very familiar with wrote on and one of the goals that Rashi set out to do was to battle Christianity. Now when you learn your perish especially in Nak you don't really see it so much turns out it exists in manuscript re in recent years professor Gman who was recently aid who spent many decades working on rashi put out a book rashi how did he deal with this how does he discuss this based on rashi from the manuscripts tons of rashis that were censored now who was censoring it this is the question now at different points in time there were there were sensors that were gayish. Sometimes they were mishumad that worked for them. Throughout the centuries, certain places were more active than others. And shortly after one, a few years after the Talma being published already, it was many of the additions of the were censored and over the years many more censorships were added by different sensors. And this is the whole story. A lot has been written about this. A lot of censorship happened in this. So therefore, the says if we could get from before the from the manuscripts he had or this manuscript I mentioned from it's going to play out very very in understanding one of the people that I'm going to get to discuss towards the end is from and this spent a lot of time working on onar put out three four editions of his massive on so he writes about it's one of the issues in this and he says when he began his working on it was a rare work in Israel even to fine but you you didn't find it so easily you know today it's easy you just click on the you click on the internet you have it in through Hebrew books you could buy a copy sometimes so it changed but the point is there's a major kash of these particularly for this one other major breakthrough which um is relating to this is a bunch of years back published um in 2003 three published a a work it seems from the B they don't give you great details of exactly where it's coming from and everything but basically it's from the Bish Marshall which was Isaac also again the Marshall koda I think I've mentioned in the past was Isaac of the garraoda that's what the back is one of the things was about the gear the marshal it's a long story but point is they discovered a manuscript from someone from the base medal which also plays a role and they published this as a whole mass a volume republishing of again the significance is for this you have to pay very careful attention of many people today use art scroll and they use mifa these garumaras were aware of these tools that I'm referring to so they use them and incorporated them a lot in their side and the harus and the bum so you're covered in a in a way with that but it's good to know and the story behind it is for a different time now so we have so a few years back rebel zi published a work called now the point is that we've mentioned many times already that on the but he didn't bloine did not get up to it so this fellow he went ahead he collected from all different places literature or what he however he put it together more recently rabbi professor yil broy and his team they put out a volume on so already getting a significant amount of information collected from on this. So it seems according to this sounds like in times of they definitely were handling at least certain certain of moving on to the so right away we always talk about Rashi. Rashi is written by Rashi as far as we know and it seems based on the of professor Salvich it was he he reworked his perhaps four times which is not always he we know that many times he reworked it but not necessarily to this extent um and we'll discuss that maybe briefly now rashbam so it seems there was a rash bam trickled through some of it survived um but not much and work has been done um including a paper collect trying to collect at least on the first par the pieces of rashbam and some other people also worked on it now typhus so we have tis on the side so already points out that this typhus is um who's the author of the tis I think inal talks about it who's the author of this tisus because each maka we know is always a different story who's the b of that maka who's the tyus that they used so rules has some nice information about that and he shows that in some of the early editions there was a Tyus that we do not have now. Interestingly enough there's a lot happening in the world of Tyus on this and points out that he had a manuscript of Kan on part of this that he was from his friend from his master's collection. Yeah, this is in the 1870s. Fast forward to 1901 which the rabbi was also involved and they start publishing different one of the first they publish on the first half of the so and talks a little bit about this who is this early etc. But the point is so already we're getting something very important from um new from this on this from the world ofis. Now we already pointed out in this in this in the in season two of that this was to the um which they were also in in collecting putting for manuscript. Okay. From then on um more recent years we've more piece of disan was discovered a fancier edition was published tyisus rush was published in more recent years and a fellow arangab discovered some more pieces of tyus rush a fellow bra published a tyis rahud bina okay but gets a lot happening in the world of tyus tyus rid so in 1862 tisar comes out a few different editions it has a beautiful come from the shalom um and there was a whole doctor just written on the tyis on itar a bunch years back. Okay. What about the rishim other? So we always talk about the ramblan mush ramban's first published in 1780 but it's definitely not complete. Fast forward to about this in the 1970s famous from the ramban of cook that many people love to use. So he worked with a of hersler and he did a zara based on two manuscripts and they had dozens of new pieces that were not published until then. Um so the Ramban gets a whole new um how do you say bunch of new pieces discovered. Okay. The Rajba. So here we have interesting story. In 1925 a small work of the Raja comes out. It's very rare. Rav Zach um publishes invax who was an of sorry he's an Frank and he he gives great to Liberman in his um also so he publishes for me of Cook in the 1960s the Rajba onar okay it's already proven that certain parts seem to not be from the Rajba it possibly turns out to be from the Tyus rush okay now in this hakdama He tells you that he wasn't the first person to publish a manuscript the razor. What happened was in 1925 they had the Rajba we say in Europe in Eastern Europe and it had great huskas someone published a few block of the Rajba and it's it has a marinel um rebel greenwald gets a bunch of Hungarian and then it stops. Now this that came out in 1925 is beyond rare today. I was not able to locate a copy whether in Hebrew in uh in the Hebrew University J in the Hebrew University library Hebrew books doesn't have it doesn't have it but this Zach had it and he's working from it because he describes two three pages about it. Fast forward um more recent years of cook red what they did in 1960s. They reprint it. So he says he went all over looking for it and he found in Rafal Reichman who's who just recently nif a massive farm collection he found this 1925 edition he let him use it okay anyway the point is um that the Rajb was first discovered 1925 from manuscript theim of that time the Hungarian were not upset they basically they felt that it was enough proof based on what they saw that it is the Rajba so at least part of it was the rajma deals with the what the rest of the work is and what he how he does how he completes the rest of the work but at least We have a nice amount of raja on the okay ritzvah. So the ritvah is an interesting story. Ritz was published at one point in time early on 1700s and it seems to be very rare. Fast forward a bunch of years later there's afold a tremendous tremendous one of these obscure that not so many people heard of. And in a recent volume um of seen which is focusing on Ashkanaz. So they have gin Frankfurt Hanishk the forgotten Frankfurt. So this fold he wrote a ton very few materials of his was published but one of the people that he had a close relationship was with through the between him and the on is published. This is documented in this article in volume 12 of the page with but the point is it was a rare work um it was published beforehand and through through them and gave it an encouraging asama it was published okay do we have any other so fast forward to um more recent years the rivid is published in the 1960s from cipher in general we've spoken about kashivas of the rivid and a few others in babukama professor salvich and his volume of collected writings Um I think it's volume three has a lot of material relating to the riv doesn't need anyone's but it's incredible to see so we have this so interestingly enough there was a zarakowski so he publishes in the 1960s you guys are beautiful Frank from others and he publishes on on this so bottom line is at this point in time we can already see that there's a nice amount of Risha. Um just to mention two others, two other MCU of Risha. Number one is Real Mandre. So this also was also published in the 60s. A good friend of mine, Rabbi Dubik published some missing pages and he also published an annotated version of Peric B of this of the real Mandre. Okay. Now the last person to mention is so we've mentioned him in the past that he and he's famous as he goes ahead and publishes two two nice size volumes with tons of material um the some that mentioned Tyis Rashmish he republishes the Rashbam that I mentioned was published and he so in the 1970s he publishes two 1969 1970 um he publishes two volumes of material relating to this mak. So bottom line is as as far as you can see there's a nice amount of on the maka just to throw out about Rabbi Misha. So um if you email me there's a recent book that was published about him manuscripts pion p manuscripts pioneer the story of Misha Yuda le yuda blau now I the author who put it out a a um I think it's David Zakowski he gave me permission to send it out if someone wants I'm more than happy to share so the bottom line that I would like to conclude about is did they learn the ma so it seems that professor tashma and professor salvich have come to the conclusion that at least before Rashi there was a period of time that they didn't learn this but from Rashian onward it's clear they learned it you could see they learned it we have all this information just to throw out one other which is two massive volumes of over 2,000 pages of from everywhere that's a crazy amount of information on this and so therefore I one could see a lot um and learn from this just in the world of okay what about was a part of the seder in the learning of yeshiva. So I always like to quote Mar was to give only published on that. So here we do have from what about others. So interestingly enough of where he told his grandchildren that you have to be in fivear. So actually that's three four five six that's six. Okay maybe I wrote it wrong. Anyway, the point is you got to know is one of the okay in I always like to quote. So we have the now there's one fascinating um and this is found in the autobiographical account from Katan. So Katan is in six he's born 1691 dies in 1765. He left behind an incredible autobiography called it's the subject of an episode that I just released. on my musings of a book collector but it's sadly it's behind the pay wall. Now in that he talks about that as a young person he was a a person that was not learning and his father was very upset. It seems at one point his father said you know we're we have nine or eight generations of raon and it's basically looks like it's going to stop by you. So it seems he gets inspired eventually tells his father no I do want to learn by you and his father says but you realize what that means I'm going to be I punish my if they don't listen now this relates to what we recorded earlier at the end of last week about hitting children hitting so's father was yes to do that at the end it seems that he was very and is very becomes a tremendous tremendous etc. and already and he writes that he knew five makas and one of those makas as a young kid after this period of time with his father and one of them was so it was also learned okay now fast forward we have the so it seems to be in 1632 and 1634 is published okay so now here we have to spell out a little bit about this I already mentioned a few times that I would love to give a episode devoted to just about of the and all the But so far we have not gotten to it but which again in the beginning of the episode we spoke about that it was censored. So this was so the many pieces were taken out. So recently Nahi Weinstein of Chatter about a year ago released a new annotated version of the task. So first he went through the the cafer with Harris on the whole cafer where the cafer number two he tracked down the first edition to put in the sensor pieces. But once he was doing that he already did you a favor and the other makas were the pieces at least to put in the pieces on the other makas that were taken out. He put that in the back of the he also put an extensive his the toddlers of his that he got through all different. So basically if one wants to know a lot about the and have a great shot oriented safer that focuses both on and of this it's worth reaching out to Wininstein at farm chatter where he is I believe selling the safer um it's free shipping I think also if you buy through some some of the places but anyway the point is a very valuable and was recently done by him next from Alghazi Gazi 1610 to 1683. He's author of numerous of all types of genres and dr everything like that kiter in 1664 he publishes it's interesting on the it says okay professor speed in ali many years ago wrote a short article about it and recently started republishing his his drushes various drush of his so in one of them they had Spiegel write up if you want they asked him do you want to write about um Algh Gazi said yeah so he redid what he did beforehand he published come out 100 pages which I am able to send out if someone asks the PDF about Gazi okay another is from Maz bin 1796 so this is from the get he we discussed him in the episode of get me cleave and um 1796 to get me cleave is this maz so we have this of his okay so here I just would like to mention briefly Two sad stories. Number one, a while ago looking through this from Yehud called Minagnazm 3, I come across that there was a Yidfali Herz fl he's born in 1753 and dies in 1811. It seems at least in the 1970s still there were nine kisad of this tremendous Frankfurt yid from Frankfurt. Talmudler someone who knew and amongst the different farm that he had he wrote on [Music] these farm have not been published I'm not sure if they exist from 1970s it could be they ended up in some private collector I have not been able to trace exactly where it is at the moment but there's a whole beautiful write up in this volume in minimum volume three about this about about this person from all the manuscripts that This person ber was able to locate to go through was housed in for for many years and it's incredible what you learn and you see and the point is let's say it's also clear that he also learned to eat since he gave he learned it with and he pulls together a fascinating life about this unknown person and sadly we lost his onus amongst others of his that we lost and this is the story sadly with many other people that we lose their material sometimes it's was lost in World War II sometimes all different stories, fires, the sad stories throughout Israel. Just to mention one more sad story for me on which is few years ago I'm looking on one of the websites and I see that the offering for auction that means it's like this. They have a garra with a that has in it dozens of hars of himself stuff he heard from his father and all types of things goes on auction so okay you know it's a few thousand I already gave up by the time it was sold it went for an astronomical sum of money sadly I will not be able to use it until unless it comes out by some miracle my work on a sadly it survived all these years lost so this is a story that happens many times it hurts me greatly whenever I see these auctions and and and I see they all of a sudden discover some amazing thing and then it gets we don't hear about whatever happens within the end. So these are two sad stories relating to just moving on very briefly um to get to the end is wrote a so recently it was republished recently just published it a few weeks ago and it's a it's already available in America again okay just in recent years that came out of one is the famous on there's a shap of there's a from there's of was published a few pages of his from volume 12 and from was also published in recent years okay just to um two more sections and then we'll reach to the What about after the war? So there's a magus interestingly enough not so well known is that besides for publishing his he was planning the next was sadly we were not he was not able to he did not have enough to finish it. So he does not finish it but seven a blot are could be found in his um so there you and then he has small aris and the rest of but the first seven blood he has some very nice um nice another mass of is called basem from hers zarowski he dies in 1984 he was one of these yuden a tremendous he escaped with the withisha into Japan he was in Shanghai etc sadly did not have any children but he publishes a bunch of one was he also published on and massive massive work on which is also very very useful. Okay. Now just to mention um two more recent works on the maka. So one is from Ben. Okay. So his name is Rabak Verer. So Verer wrote this called Yakov was very many of the people that work give him major thanks. He goes through the gar you see track down everything whatever he could and he has topics also on the and just recently he put out another yet another edition of this work the last time it was out was like 10 15 years ago with new he also deals with the suga there is a a pretty recent version of his on he gave the Hebrew books so you don't even have to buy it but if you want to have the most updated version it's available it should be reaching America right now to massive volumes on another set of works that also this project is a massive project from Ritnik called a deur. So they have a bunch of volumes. They have a few volumes which is a collection of tons of on the then they have a few volumes where where him and the the team of people the mameish go through the writing I'll be focusing on collecting from the that they collect went through and going through the so these are two major tools on the okay now just to be messiah is like this one of the major suggests in this ma is issues that relate to so that's just to return is over here one so it was a problem throughout the generations and that's what we see how the deal with it and there were that I guess they use the words mel and how are they malle and there were criticized by different different people and there were major discussions about it one such thing is a famous truis of the rama which interestingly enough some people even went so far as to say it's not it's not it's not from the rama it was taken out of certain additions but Today we know that it is the Rama. The Mav actually does quote this chama for something else. But the Rama has a whole massive chuva which requires a with understanding what's going on and how he deals with the what he was answering what he says how how to understand the certain suggest relating to learn after you learn the suggest through there was a little later on published from called 1616 also again we see they were in in certain places about so this was very rare And in early years of 2000 something um my good friend Shalom Jacobs Zatal published it with Harris he got in the footnotes deals with this famous truisma a few times but he he republished this important work which is not only relating to a lot of other important issues and then there's a famous work from quoted often in the from there so this important work a section of the work deals with the yay. More recent years, professor Spiegel published also relating to the sugu which again dealing with this these aspects and more than happy to share with someone. This is a savad from 1674 and one other marakum relating to is again sham jacobs that's published a work from manuscript of it's called bayin it was published in um 2011 published from manuscript from hers gzenski a massive work on all of a very beautiful work he he sham jacobs published it beautifully done um I believe there's still copies one could buy over 300 00 pages. So that's another um work on the ma. Now the works of salv professor Salvich are also very worthwhile because it will give you he deals with the way wine was made which it plays out a lot in understanding the understanding the suggest and what the rishim that that where the or how they dealt with the why was so important. Why was so important why was so important in the middle ages? It turns out that's what they drank. water was no one really drank water. Um the the amount of wine that people drank in those days is is mindboggling. So you could read about this and you could learn about the rishim to see their methods through the various writings of professor Salvich. He has one book called Yainam another book called and more recently for those that just are rather just in English. He has a book called Jews and and the wine trade in medieval Europe principles and pressures and you get a appreciation of understanding certain backgrounds of beautiful the specifically playing out through the it helps with a lot of different aspects. Okay. Okay. And just to mess one last nakuda that also played out in this ma was a bunch of years ago or a little over 20 years ago was called the tuml relating to the so this also plays out with certain aspects in the and I remember at the time that it caught a lot of offg guard because the even though there are many parts of that they do learn because especially in America and all these things are very very aspects is not so relevant to learn these were at that time they were hold people I even heard some recordings when they were handling the shas he was holding mish like all other areas in everything about but not so many of the people were but it sparked a revival into the suga of at the time of the hind the Hindu aspect of it bunch ofum came out about it but it's it's interesting is it's still ongoing lots ofum are about this contraim pros against whatever well above my pay grade but it also starts and comes from the messiah one maramak which I'll also be happy to share my dear friend rebellion green wrote a massive piece about the suga from the desire and onwards relating to the he published it because what's less known is the tumml originally started much earlier there was an earlier break of the tumml in the 1970s at that time he wrote a kress about it supposedly reblash was very impressed about it and his published it in his in his work on volume on which I could send a PDF also. Anyway, these are just some of the works on this. There's incredible there's a lot happening. There's als but we could see that they there was even though maybe it wasn't part of the yeshiva cycle, it was definitely learned by the great throughout the throughout the generations and there's a lot relevant out of you. Thank you. There really is so much to learn in this maka and I'm glad that you brought up the shel. Maybe somebody wants to sponsor an episode and you'll do more of a deep dive into that. That's a that's what they call well above my pay grade. You got to get someone that's that's more gutsy to talk about. There's for me there's m it's much easier to talk about other topics. Okay. So let's find other topics for you to talk about. And as you always say, you coined the terminology junkies, right? There must be there are junkies. Oh, there are. Some of them actually are very scared. I can tell you this much that there's some of them are very scared to release their names in these kiburum. Um, but a lot of behind the scenes tumbling about this suga. Wow. But um I never wanted to get involved with it, so I can't talk about. Okay. So, we're going to have to find the right person to bring on to enlighten those that are learning these. Yeah, thank you very much. Stay safe. Yes.