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The Rhineland Pietists' Sacralization of Oral Torah

2005; University of Pennsylvania Press; Volume: 96; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/jqr.2005.0093

1553-0604

Talya Fishman,

Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies

The Rhineland Pietists' Sacralization of Oral Torah Talya Fishman (bio) Scholars of medieval Hebrew codicology have noted that Sefer Hasidim (hereafter SH) devotes extraordinary attention to the book as material object.1 SH Parma (SHP) includes a subheading entitled 'inyan sefarim, i.e., "the subject of books,"2 but there are hundreds of passages outside that section that refer to the stages of book production, to scribes, copyists, and manufacturers, and to the implements used in pricking, ruling, inking, erasing, binding, covering, and fastening books. SH's narratives discuss the book as commodity, describing which bound manuscripts are best suited to the rental market and the conditions under which a purloined book may be ransomed for more than its fair price (SHP 868; 603; 1748). They also illuminate the densely intertwined economies and societies of medieval Christians and Jews: Christians pledged Latin books when they borrowed from Jewish moneylenders, and Jews left Hebrew books as collateral when they procured loans from Christians.3 [End Page 9] Jews learned the craft of binding in monastic ateliers, and they bound Latin books as part of their apprenticeship. Pietists feared that Christian binders of Jewish sacred texts might trim parchment margins and use them for writing their own "improper books" (sefarim pesulim), but they did not shrink from utilizing the services of these expert artisans (SHP 513; 668; 681–82). Finally, SH, like earlier Jewish works, regulates the treatment both of books, or more precisely, of sefarim (a term whose referent will soon be clarified), and of the items connected with their production and use. The Mishnah and Tosefta, the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, the later minor tractates, Massekhet Sefer Torah and Massekhet Soferim, and Maimonides' twelfth-century Mishneh Torah contain various prescriptions regarding the creation of ritually valid Torah scrolls, and they discuss the treatment to be accorded inscribed texts in such arenas as the synagogue, the study hall, and the home.4 The majority of these regulations pertain to the Torah scroll and its accessories: for example, both a sefer and its case must be saved from a conflagration, and just as worn-out Torah scrolls must be handled in a particular manner, so must their wrappings, cases, and other accoutrements. The choreography of behaviors related to these objects helps to make the zone of the sacred visible within the social arena. Use of the terms kevod Sefer Torah ("reverence for the Torah scroll") and kevod ha-sefer ("reverence for the book")—and its opposite, "bizayyon ha-sefer"5 —suggests that the rabbis linked these sanctity-guarding regulations to a legal principle. Fewer rabbinic regulations pertain to the treatment of other inscribed texts; these, on the whole, seem to apply only to compilations of Scripture that were not in scroll format and to their accoutrements.6 While rabbinic writings of the classical period are certainly familiar with inscriptions of [End Page 10] Oral Torah, written texts of halakhot and aggadot were not deemed to possess intrinsic authority and were certainly not perceived as loci of sanctity. On the contrary, such writings were regarded as ephemera—private jottings for personal use, presumably having the status of megilot setarim, literally, "scrolls to be kept in secret."7 Such inscriptions were regarded merely as mnemonic aids; by jogging the memory, they facilitated that which was sacred: not the inscription of Oral Torah but its practice—that is, the dialogic encounter with a tradent, a living repository of tradition.8 In other words, ancient rabbis regarded both Written Torah and Oral Torah as sacred, but marked and guarded their respective "zones of sanctity" by diametrically opposed rules that were keyed to their distinct modes of transmission (bGit 60b; bTem 14b): written matters may not be said from memory, and oral matters may not be said in writing. Thus, prior to the compilation of SH, rabbinic regulations pertaining to the treatment of sefarim seem to have applied only to scriptural writings—whether these were codices of the Tanakh or of its constituent parts. Against this backdrop, SH's formidable anthology of regulations regarding sefarim stands out in a number of ways: its behavioral standards are more stringent, and the array of life situations that it regulates...