Today's discovery in the Wait, What? Dept.; also, Jewish utopian communities, farming and otherwise

"Jew Valley is a basin in Lake County, Oregon, in the United States.

Jew Valley was named for a colony of Jewish farmers who settled there in the early 20th century."
(Thanks Wikipedia)


Wait, what? I grew up in Oregon and I never heard of this.
Apparently the colony, founded by 25 families 'including a shochet,' experienced success for a few years before disbanding.


II.
Speaking of utopian Jewish farming communities... there's a new one in the offing:

The "Frum Farm"

I spoke with the family behind it & it seems to be quite a serious endeavor.

III.
Of course, to me one paradigmatic utopian Jewish community that I never got to see (born just slightly too young; nuts!) is Rav Bulman zt"l's kehilla in Migdal haEmek.
Here's one article that mentions it briefly: by Mrs. T. Katz.

IV.
And before that there was Frankfurt.
This is a wonderful, sparkling article about Frankfurt: Hermann Schwab's memoirs

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.

Kate Henderson and "A Meeting of the School Trustees"

I have always been fond of this painting of an 1880's schoolmarm, making her case to the Board of Trustees.

A Meeting of the Board of Trustees, by Robert Harris

It looks like she wants something that they are disinclined to grant her.

The subject of the image (though not the actual artist's model) is a teacher from PEI named Kate Henderson.
That's about all the information readily available about this painting.


So it was a very pleasant surprise to me to find that someone has taken this painting I like so much and dramatized it:
One-minute film


But what is the real story behind the painting? -- I couldn't find it.
...until...
this week, Loops asked me to bring her some children's library books on "how to teach," and in one of them I espied suddenly the name "Kate Henderson".
Aha!
You!

Here's the story.
One of Kate Henderson's responsibilities in Pine Creek School, PEI was to teach Bible. She found that the children were merely reading aloud, not grasping the content; so she set them to acting out the stories.
This went over very well with the children, and when they came home they told their parents all about how they got to play Pretend in school with Bible stories.
The parents opined that this was sacrilegious; and issued a call: Fire the teacher!
The members of the Board -- the shopkeeper, the miller, the doctor, and the minister -- met and summoned Miss Henderson to defend herself. In the end, they suspended her for a week.
The minister had his doubts about the issue of sacrilege involved, noted that the children had seemed unusually interested in his sermon that week, and that Sunday he got up, asked some children to act out a Bible story, and preached on the subject of new ways of understanding the text.
Miss Henderson was reinstated and everyone lived happily ever after, the end.

A Pre-Raphaelite Painting of Unknown Jews

This image is cropped from a painting by the pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt. According to the (unreliable) book I found it in, Hunt began painting it in 1854 on a visit to the Land of Israel, but made slow progress because he wanted Jewish models for his Pharisees and “the local rabbi” ruled that sitting for such a painting was not permitted, so no one was willing to model. (Can we think about that for a moment – a pre-Raphaelite painter wants models and no one is willing to participate.)

“The local rabbi” eventually reversed his ruling; the book is fuzzy on the details but implies that the reversal was due to Hunt's claiming the final picture would not be religious. (If this is accurate, then Hunt lied egregiously.)

I am curious who “the local rabbi” was, and what the psak really was, and whether any of these anonymous 19^th century Jews of Eretz Yisrael are identifiable.

Hunt, I am sure, took a fair degree of artistic license; and when he exhibited the completed painting in 1860 it was with a bitterly anti-Semitic commentary. But I am intrigued that – to whatever degree – his painting has preserved these Jews' faces for us.

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.

This Thought Has Been Brought to You by a Zucchini Peeler

Two thoughts fell into my mind just before Purim and then I saw a connection between them.

1. Hester panim is an illusion.

2. I was reading about the Norman oath of vassalage and wondered
whether there is any parallel in Judaism. We do not exactly place
our hands in G-d's and swear to be His from this day forward of life
and limb and unto Him to be true and faithful... do we?

The later thought that connected them is:

'Hester panim is an illusion': this is the message of Purim.

And our oath of vassalage is - Pesach.

“Bring me that horizon!”; or, random thought of a Thursday

I really think that the odd little essay toward the end of Vol. VIII may be my favorite of Rav Hirsch's essays. One seldom gets to see much of the rav himself in his writings; this essay is an exception: there he is, leaning on a ship railing, looking at the stars.

Anyway, at one point in this essay (which meanders like Iyar itself) he observes that Torah may be sailed through any weather, under friendly colors (that is, it applies in every era, to all that is good and noble in contemporary culture, and should be presented as such).

In his time, contemporary culture meant romanticism and science.

In our time, contemporary culture means the sort of fragmented idealism that gives us such interesting things as organic vegan GMO-free “strawberry cupcake popcorn,” of which we just received three bags for Purim.

Strawberry cupcake popcorn?

Actually, I rather liked it; and I like the fragmented idealism behind it; and yes, I called the day the list came out to put my name down for a swath of the PDX airport carpet.

But I like history so much that there are days when the “friendly colors” I would be inclined to hoist while sailing through contemporary culture would be the stateless and idiosyncratic colors of a pirate.

...however, stateless and idiosyncratic pirates are a flourishing part of contemporary culture. So it's all good.

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.

First Historical Sew Fortnightly challenge: a Paean to Flat-Felled Seams; or, What It's Like to Sew Fettuccine, and a Possible Pshat in a Little Poem by Sarah Schenirer

This year the HSF is the Historical Sew Monthly, which is a speed I can actually keep up with.

The motivation fits in nicely with my own sewing plans. So I'm in, way at the beginners' end of the HSFers.

The rest of this post is about clothes.