What Did Jewish Women Wear in 12th Century Germany?

The answer -- more or less -- to that question.

This post is about clothes.

More Victorian Jewish Miscellany: hats, secession, and Schone Aussicht

1. In high school, I searched earnestly online for the paintings of Moritz Oppenheim, and found only tiny, blurry reproductions.

Today I searched again and lo! Quite a number of them are on Wikipedia, in extremely high resolution – yay!

You know in vol. VIII, where a man in the train pokes fun at a young woman for having her hair covered? – I always wondered, How could he tell? – because in the pictures of Rav Hirsch's family all the women look (to my untrained eye) perfectly à la mode in their headdresses, such that a stranger would have a hard time telling whether a woman was covering her hair or not – well! here is the answer. You can see in the Oppenheim paintings that those beautiful frothy bonnets are worn over a sort of under-cap, which was not the case in the non-Jewish population.

this young lady is also standing under a tallis, at her chassuna.

  

2. Q. What did the rabbanim of the time have to say about the US Civil War?

A. IIRC somewhere in Rav Hirsch, after slavery ended in the South, he mentions its end with some relief.

Today I re-found a website that I misplaced years ago, which has --among a great many other curios -- lectures on the subject from American rabbis. Here, for one thing, is R' Illowy's lecture on States' Rights, which apparently pleased the secessionists of New Orleans so much when it was published that they invited him down to become rabbi of that city.

 

3. Schopenhauer lived in the same building as Rav Hirsch and at the same time, but apparently there is no evidence that the two ever met. I always thought that fascinating, wow, like a particle accelerator gone awry.

Anyway, because Schopenhauer also lived in that (now vanished) house on Schone Aussicht, it is a famous house and there are loads of pictures and a virtual tour of it online – here.

“It is but a single step from the profound to the ridiculous.”

I found this line in Rav Hirsch a few months ago and was immensely pleased with it, finding it a clear expression of one of my biggest concerns in extra-curricular education; and I went round quoting it to anything that would stand still long enough.

And I would have kept citing it in the name of Rav Hirsch to every teacher, student, and doorpost, had it not shown up a couple of weeks ago in “an old School-boy's” memoirs of Dr. Arnold's influence at Rugby.

?!

I could not get over the coincidence, and made a mental note to look up what common source Rav Hirsch and the “old School-boy” could possibly have been reading, and promptly forgot all about it...

...Until it showed up again last night in Edith Hamilton.

??!

A guest kindly looked the quotation up for me and reported that the phrase first appeared in a late 18^th century French philosophical work, and was subsequently publicized further by Thomas Paine and Napoleon, among others.

I'm going to guess that it was making the rounds of high society drawing-rooms by the mid-19^th century. But it is tempting to sit here and speculate about what could have been on Rav Hirsch's reading list.

(...or not, unless the phrase itself is to serve as the single step it speaks of.)

I still like it.

Art Installation

original

translation into Chinuk Wawa:

Mitlite nika tumtum siah kimta sun-get-up, pe mitlite nika siah-siah kopa klip-sun.

Howkwutl nika mukmuk, pe howkwutl mukmuk chaco tsee?

Howkwutl nika mamook huihui nawitka, pe

Tsiyon kow Pil lope, pe nika kow Arav lope?

Klah mahsh konaway kloshe Sfarad, kahkwa

Hyas ticky nanitch polallie kokshut Hyas-Tyee-wawa-Home.

Chinuk Wawa, or 'the Chinook jargon,' evolved in the course of the 19th century as a means of communication between the native peoples of the Pacific Northwest and the "Bostons" who began to move to the area.

It is a characteristic, more or less dying, language of the end of the West of this novel continent.

Experiments in Teaching Medieval Jewish History, part IV: early medieval Ashkenaz (up to c. 1230)

For this unit, I relied heavily on sources I found in R' Binyamin Sendler's The Chosen Path. Below I include only sources I found without the help of his excellent textbook (some of which he also includes). I didn't give all of these to my class.
As usual, I haven't inspected the sites I link to here; they are provided merely as a convenience. 

-A description of the education of a knight. I was tempted to use passages from The Once and Future King, but those are extremely funny and I wanted something more solemn.

-If they didn't all know how to play chess I would have taught them.

-We don't know the identity of the “King Charles” who invited the Jews to Ashkenaz to start a yeshiva. Still, I gave them the paragraphs from Einhard's Life of Charlemagne about Charlemagne's appearance and how he was “tolerant of foreigners” (paragraphs 21-23).

-The story of how Waterbury, CT wound up with a yeshiva parallels this episode nicely.

-The rather bizarre story of Charlemagne and the mouse.

-Piyut by R' Moshe ben Kalonymus.

-A list of "Occupations of the Jews" from Israel Abrahams (who, alas, grows less reliable each time I check his sources)

-The charter inviting Jews to the new city of Speyer

-The takanos of Rabbeinu Gershom

-Rn. Bussel's explanation of how to learn Rashi

-Akdamus

-Letter from Mainz to the Jews of France warning them of the impending first Crusade

-The first paragraph of the prologue to The Canterbury Tales tells you a little something about the mindset of the Crusaders

-Av haRachamim

-Kinna – kumi l'chi. This is an unusual kinna in that it is not about the devastation wreaked by the Crusaders but about the fact that they were going to Eretz Yisrael and we were not.

-Rashi's kinna about the People's Crusade

-Rachel and Her Children (very graphic) – also from the People's Crusade

-Many of the kinnos we say on Tisha b'Av are about the Crusades -- e.g. no. 25, also from the People's Crusade.

-Rashi's teshuva about the forced converts

-Christian account of William of Norwich

-The Forced Conversion of the Jews of Regensburg - 1137

-Kinna by R' Ephraim of Regensburg (Elokai b'cha achavek).

-Kinna for Blois by Baruch of Magenza.

-Sefer haYashar by Rabbeinu Tam. I didn't go through the whole sefer to get a sense of it and pick the most suitable piece; I just grabbed something, and that something was the fifth midda in the sixth shaar: what is atzlus, what causes it, what to do about it. This went over well.

-Tosafos Bava Metzia 70b – about why nowadays (i.e. in the times of Tosafos) so many of us are engaged in money-lending.

-There is also a Tosafos somewhere about marrying off one's daughters young due to the upheaval of the times.

-Tosafos on Sukka 45a: jousting as chasuna shtick. background information

-Jousting shu"t; I haven't read it closely recently but will note here anyway that standard practice was that if you lost a tournament you forfeited your armor and horse to the victor.

- Sefer Hasidim – paras. 94 (about knights), 135 (about the power of a wife's influence), 136 (about how books got copied), 149 (in which he invokes the queen coming to visit as a mashal for Shabbos - it means more when you realize that the queen was very real), 200 (about women cross-dressing for protection while traveling), 220 (about pretending to be non-Jews for protection while traveling), 702-703 (more about how women may protect themselves, e.g. dressing as nuns). One of these days I should get around to posting translations of these paragraphs. Let me know if you want any of them sooner.

-The Rokeach's hesped for his wife Dulce and his daughters Bellet and Chana. I haven't found the original text. If you can find it for me I'll be extremely grateful.

-Epitaph for Urania of Worms

- Ki hineh kachomer, in the Yom Kippur machzor, was composed, I think, in 13th-c. France. (In Portland we use the niggun of Acheinu for it.)

- Rav Hirsch's essays on Iyar are largely about the time of the Crusades. I gave the girls the third, to put the massacres of this unit in perspective.

There are lots of horrific texts about the devastation the Crusaders wreaked on the kehillos of Ashkenaz, which I didn't give my class because I don't want to wear out such texts before the girls are old enough to understand tragedy when they see it.

And there are many disgusting little tracts containing the accusations of the libels at Norwich, Blois, etc., which I didn't share either because the idea of giving the girls tabloids to read, even medieval tabloids, is just too disturbing.

The libels got to be such a trope that images of them were popular engravings on walking sticks, like a medieval Hello Kitty.

(Hello Kitty was the analogy I told the class; but I have since noticed that even in our own times, it is considered laudable by people on our block to demonstrate their neighborly holiday spirit come Halloween by hanging skeletons in nooses in the trees in their yard.)

What did R' Zacuto Change about the Astrolabe?

I haven't gotten to the library yet. Meanwhile, I can't figure this out.

Everyone knows he did something brilliant to the astrolabe but if you look it up online every website says it was something else.

He was the first to make an iron astrolabe. No, he was the first to make a copper astrolabe. No, he was the first to make a mariner's astrolabe. No, he was the first to make a spherical astrolabe.

Astrolabes are beautiful things and I would love to be able to walk into class with one and say, “This is a Zacuto astrolabe, and here is how you use it.” But what was it?

Taking the average, it appears that he was the first to make the mariner's astrolabe out of metal instead of wood, thus preventing it from warping.

I hope to post some final answer to the question, as well as a useful application of the mariner's astrolabe for the use of high school students. Check back.

Purim Vinz - 20 Adar -- and its Megilla

20 Adar is the anniversary of the downfall in 1616 of a man who called himself "the new Haman of the Jews," of the foiling of his plans to murder the Frankfurt Jewish community, and of the return of the Jews of Frankfurt under imperial protection and with imperial fanfare.

The community established the date as a sort of mini-Purim, "Purim Vinz," with its own customs, including the reading of a special "megilla" describing the events.

The Frankfurt community continued to flourish for a few hundred years, years that gave us the Maharam Schiff, R' Nosson Adler and his talmid the Chasam Sofer -who mentions the custom of Purim Vinz - and Rav Hirsch's kehilla, which is one of the models for American Torah as we know it.

The Koach Yehuda writes, 'Some rememberance of the Ventz miracle must remain with us. It is a constant reminder to us that we must thank and praise the Almighty who protects us from all our enemies.'


So although the Frankfurt community has been mostly destroyed (so much for imperial protection) I like to tell people about Purim Vinz; and this year I went in search of a copy of its Megilla.

First I called KAJ, the Frankfurt community in America. They told me that Rav Breuer reinstated Tachanun on 20 Adar when the Nazis took over Frankfurt. People remember that it is the "Frankfurt Purim" but that's about it.


But then I found this.
Can we have a round of applause for Professor Ulmer for putting this in the public domain? She went to the trouble to put it together and her book is still in print. SO nice of her.


Megillas Vinz in four languages from Prof. Ulmer. You made my day.


And here it is only in German, but with sheet music and a portrait of the villain, from Goethe Universitat.

Scattered Thoughts on the Footage from the Knessiah Gedolah

I.

Last night I lamented in writing that (at least in my limited experience – I could be totally wrong about this) while it is possible to seek out stories about the talmidim of, say, the mussar yeshivos, it is a little harder to find stories about the talmidim of the Aruch laNer, to give a real tzura of what a gadol from Frankfurt was like.

This was the last thing I wrote before I went to sleep.

Then I woke up and pretty much the first thing I saw in the morning was this (thank you Prof. Weingrad):

http://rygb.blogspot.ca/2015/02/the-fuller-first-knessia-gedola-video.html

(I'm linking to Rabbi Bechhofer's because he posted the list of who's who)

Hazorim bdima brina yiktzoru, it is the footage from the first Knessia Gedola (I guess – it says Vienna, not Katowice); it is footage of Moreinu Rosenheim, and one R' Ehrmann (but he can't be the one I'm thinking of, right?), and some others whose names are not as familiar to me; and – R' Chaim Ozer, and – R' Elchanan - Wasserman, and – the Chofetz Chaim.

For this video the Internet was created.

(Let me just translate that a minute:

I had been lamenting that I don't know how to get a clear idea of what the great Torah scholars of Germany were like; but this film has a few of them in it, along with some from eastern Europe who have been a household name for the past 70 years but whom nobody has ever seen on film.)

II.

Nevertheless, thank G-d there was no movie camera at Sinai, or in the sukkah of Pachad Yitzchak, or at any other event in between.

I say this because in watching a film it is hard not to confuse the event itself with the film of it.

Still, it is hard not to be disappointed when a man in the film puts his hand over the camera.

III.

The Torah world gets its learning from texts and conversation. This is the only time I have seen it converge around a film.

IV.

I hope that teachers and parents will continue to allow their children many years of Chofetz Chaim stories before they show this film. I want my daughter to know the Chofetz Chaim as the Chofetz Chaim of the sefarim he authored and of the stories before she ever sees the Chofetz Chaim as a figure on a screen.

Lehavdil elef alfei havdalos, my mother did not let me see Fantasia until I was twelve. Once you have seen Fantasia, whenever you hear one of the pieces in it you have to try hard to think of the music as music, rather than as an accompaniment to the film you are not watching.

V.

It is an immense gift to the generation that this film has come to its attention.

To be able to see how a person carries himself – is a most extraordinary thing.

VI.

I imagine the good folks at the University of South Carolina trying to fathom what just happened.

How would I explain what it means to us to see the Chofetz Chaim on film – or what the Chofetz Chaim means to us?

I cast about for analogies – analogies fail me.

VII.

If the Chofetz Chaim is on Youtube, then anything is possible.

Excuse me a moment while I go fill up my oil lamp with vinegar.

I feel like this changes the nature of the Internet entirely.

Florence Nightingale

What follows is based on a single biographer's account, not serious research.

Florence Nightingale was a fascinating lady: intensely depressed; she heard voices; she hallucinated; she determined that she had a calling in life but it took her a number of years to decide that that was nursing (which at the time was unheard of for an aristocratic lady, and for good reasons) and every time she determined to leave home to attend the nursing school in Germany, members of her family said, “Oh, how can you leave us! Bring me my smelling salts – I shall faint!” and she relented and stayed.

Meanwhile, she wrote to hospitals around Europe requesting information on medical care, and stored the papers in her room in her parents' house, taking particular delight in the statistics.

The man she wanted to marry proposed to her; but she turned him down in the idea that he would interfere with her nursing work. This at a time when she had neither received training in nursing nor done any.

She was miserable and kept hallucinating because she felt that she ought to be nursing but could not bring herself to do it.

Finally, when she was thirty, she took the initiative to leave home and go to nursing school.

When she came home from the school, she took charge of a London hospital; then the government heard about her expertise and sent her to the Crimea organize the military hospitals there.

When the Crimean War ended she came back to England and spent the rest of her life organizing British, Canadian, and American hospitals. She is evidently responsible for modern medical care as we know it.

Cecil Woodham-Smith says (in a different biography) that the Crimean War produced two geniuses: the engineer who designed the Russian defenses at Sebastopol, and Florence Nightingale.

I thought that was a very impressive story.

I think it's fascinating that she carried her life in a box for thirty years before finally taking the lid off, and then turned out to be a genius.

The moral I take out of the story of Florence Nightingale is: if you know what you should be doing, do it; don't wait thirty years...!

Falling on One's Face in the Haymow: Some Thoughts on Russian Novels

Part One: The Unhappy Family

The characters in certain Russian novels, as a genre, have a curious habit of experiencing great revelations, falling on their faces in moments of ecstatic clarity, shouting their innermost thoughts with many exclamation points and many ellipses, and setting off into the future with bold ideals aflame within them. They are forever going into raptures or suicidal rage over the time of day, the sticky leaf buds, the fact that no one answered the door, or just how Russian Russia is. You know that someone is a bad guy in a Russian novel when he has the presence of mind to speak at something less than full throttle and in French.

(What I find especially curious about all this expressiveness on the printed page is that most of the Russians I know in real life are extremely reserved.)

I was trying to figure out whether the emotional intensity comes about because the protagonists of these novels are all in their teens or early twenties (there is always the wise old man with a Russian face who serves as a sort of foil to their youthful exuberance and confusion), or if this is how a person should live, even as an adult: in a constant state of amazement.

There are little revelations in my life, even daily when I remember to notice them, but I am not shocked that there are revelations. I occasionally discover something new and exciting to become but it does not make me fall on my face in the haymow; it feels more like checking the mail and learning that there is a sale on the pots I need from IKEA: like, oh, yes, correct, goody, what hashgacha, let me put that on my calendar, it will be fun to get round to that.

I began to wonder whether the emotional intensity of Russian novels should be attributed to the fact that so many of them were written by aristocrats: perhaps, I said, this is what people experience every day when they have no housework to do (since no matter what turmoil you experience in life, dishes remain dishes)...

...but no. The answer to this riddle (thank you Rabbi Estuary) is that one doesn't experience constant, dramatic, sweeping redefinitions of self and the world unless one is a bit lost about how to define oneself to begin with.

(In other words, you don't make a good Russian novel unless you are an “unhappy family”...)

…

Part Two: So What Is Life Like in the Happy Family?

In the Megilla of Esther, Achashverosh wished to rescind the taxes from the province to which his new queen belonged; and, when she would not tell him which it was, he rescinded the taxes from all 127 provinces. This morning I saw (in Rav Brevda – so the Gra, probably) a strange verse in Ch. 10, at the very end of the Megilla. There has been life and death and political intrigue and hangings and rioting in the streets – and what is on Achashverosh's mind? Reinstating those taxes. Achashverosh hu Achashverosh, he remains the same villain at the end that he was at the beginning; he is completely unaffected by Purim.

Which is not the case with the Jews, who are still putting a fedora on the lab skeleton and turning the furniture in the classroom on its nose to celebrate Adar, not even Purim yet, a thousand-odd years later.

So yes- a person is supposed to be sensitive to the lessons set out in this world. “When life gets boring, make yourself interesting,” said Rabbi Iridescent to me, once. Or as my friend Zokaif said once, sometimes we need to furnish our own background music.

The little revelations do not make for great Russian fiction, but they are not so little for that. Sometimes the sticky little leaves are in the housework.

G-d is in the Megilla although His Name is not.