Since one of the guests we will be having for our Seder this year is a native French speaker who knows no Hebrew, he will get to use a Haggadah in our possession that is a facsimile of an original published nearly 200 years ago. Its title page is printed in both Hebrew and French, the latter saying, “HAGGADA DE LA PÂQUE orneé de Figure, Par Jc Soreph fils Ainé, Bordeaux l’An 5573, qui correspond a l’An 1813” — that is, “A Passover Haggadah illustrated by Jc [Isaac] Soreph the Elder, Bordeaux the [Hebrew] Year 5573, which corresponds to the Year 1813.” Napoleon was not to meet his Waterloo until two years later.
I have no idea who Isaac Soreph the Elder was, but his illustrations are charming. So are the food stains that appear, as in most facsimile Haggadot, on many of the pages, telling the story of a book that was read around a family table, year after year, with no thought of its value to future ages. One can see the wine drops that spilled from the Kiddush cup, and others that were spattered by a finger during the recital of the 10 Plagues. And although its Hebrew text is no different from that of other Haggadot, the Bordeaux Haggadah has a few idiosyncratic features, such as its French translation accompanied by explanatory notes at the bottom of the page, and its ritual instructions in French and — Bordeaux Jewry having been heavily Sephardic — Ladino. (Thus, for instance, the opening Kiddush is followed by the French stage direction on boit chacun son verre, “everyone drinks his glass,” accompanied, in Hebrew letters, by the Ladino y bibieron cada uno su vaso.)
There are other curiosities. One is the regular use in the French translation of the word schimour to mean matzo. This is clearly related to Hebrew matsah shmurah (known in Yiddish as shmureh matseh), from shamur, “guarded” or “watched” — that is, matzo made from wheat that has been carefully supervised. Yet I have never come across schimour or shimur in this sense in any Jewish language or dialect, and it must have been peculiar to the long-extinct vernacular of southern French Jewry that was known to its speakers as Chuadit or “Jewish.”
Another interesting detail in the French of this Haggadah is its use of the Latin characters ngh for the Hebrew letter ayin: The part of the Seder known in Hebrew as orekh, for example, the eating of the Passover meal, is spelled ngorech. Although this looks strange today, it was a common practice in the transcription of Hebrew words among Italian and Spanish-Portuguese Jews of the period, and it indicates that the guttural Semitic consonant ayin, which is pronounced with a pharyngeal contraction in Arabic and Middle Eastern Hebrew, was still being given this value, or an approximation of it, in southern Europe long after it was lost to Ashkenazic Jews. The Italian Jew Guglielmo Franchi, for instance, published a Hebrew grammar in Latin in 1599 that referred to the ayin as nghain and called for pronouncing it by “twisting the deepest part of one’s throat almost to the point of strangling oneself with the help of one’s nose.” Anyone who has studied Arabic, or tried learning to pronounce the Hebrew ayin in its original, Semitic manner, will recognize his initial efforts in this description.
Although on the whole, the French translator of the Bordeaux Haggadah did a good job, he was guilty of at least one howler. This occurs in the passage about the five Mishanic rabbis, Eliezer, Yehoshua, Elazar ben Azariah, Akiva and Tarfon, who stayed up, we are told, until sunrise one Seder night while “sitting around [mesubin] in Bnei Brak,” discussing the Exodus from Egypt. Bnei Brak, which means, literally, “Sons of Brak,” was a Palestinian town mentioned in the Mishnah and is today the name of a large, mostly ultra-Orthodox township in metropolitan Tel Aviv. Yet the French relates that the five rabbis “ètait assemblès en rond dans le collége des enfans de Beraq” — that is, “were gathered in a circle in the academy of the children of Brak,” turning the event into one in which the sons of a man named Beraq ran a yeshiva where the rabbis had their Seder! As many of the French notes to the Hebrew text testify, such as one explaining to the unlettered that the schimours or matzot were les petis gâteaux azimes que l’on fait avec beaucoup d’exactitude, “little unleavened cakes prepared with great care,” Bordeaux was not a center of Jewish learning.
But who am I to laugh? Just last week, in the course of acknowledging an error in a previous column, I cited the story of my ancient namesake, Philologus, and the Roman orator Cicero — who, I wrote, was put to death by the triumvirate of Julius Caesar, Marcus Antonius and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. Wrong again! The Caesar in question was, of course, Octavian and not Julius. You can’t deny that it takes a measure of talent to make a mistake while confessing a mistake.
A bonne Pâque to you all!
Questions for Philologos can be sent to philologos@forward.com.
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Philologus suggests above that Bnei Brak of the Hagadah is the name of a large, mostly ultra-Orthodox township in metropolitan Tel Aviv. Yes, the town in the outskirts of Ramat Gan uses the very same name. But old Bnei Brak is near the Hiriyah (the big mountain of garbage south of Tel Aviv), and the intersection nearby is called, appropriately, Tzomet Mesubim (see above) because of the Seder story connection.
Bnei-Braq, mentioned in the Haggada, was a town in Judaea. Calling it a "Palestinian town mentioned in the Mishnah" is misleading and incorrect. The name of the country was still Judaea at the time of the Bar-Kokhva War (the name was changed by the Romans to Palestine only after the war). While it is not even understandable why the academic world always refers to our country as "Palestine" when its name in antiquity was "Canaan" or "Israel" or "Judaea", it is really much more puzzling as to why a Jewish intellectual accepts such an incorrect name. If the Mishnah is a point of reference for Philologos, it should be pointed out that the Mishna calls the country "the Land of Israel". Calling the country "Palestine" for an historic era in which the name was still "Judaea" means that the point of reference of this article is outside the Jewish world. Why? All in all, this is a Jewish newspaper. We still view our history with our own eyes.
In an article about a holiday that celebrates liberation from oppression, I was quite surprised that the headline "With Frog in the Throat" uses the derogatory term Frog often ascribed negatively to people of French extraction. Perhaps I missed something, but a better headline was in order here. Fortunately, I did not notice anywhere in the body of the article where this offense was compounded. On the other hand, except possiblly to be inferred from the discussion of the Ayin, the use of "frog" in the headline is not clarified either. I believe an apology to our French readers is in order.
I enjoyed reading your last article on the Bordeaux Haggadah and since I was the owner of the original manuscript (now in the Israel Museum) I thought I would give you some further information
I had the facsimile made in 1986. There is a forward by me in Hebrew and English that gives some family history of the Zorefs, who made the Haggadah. The French translation comes from Mardochee Venture, an 18th century Avignon scholar in volume 5 of his Siddur published in Paris in 1807, Prieres journalieres a l'usage des juifs portugais ou espagnols.... As you pointed out, there are instructions in French, Hebrew and Ladino as would be needed in the Jewish community of Bordeaux.
I cannot speak to the peculiarities of some of the translations but Venture is a well known scholar versed in the language of the Provencal Jews, who translated many volumes of liturgies into French. The Jewish community of Bordeaux may not have produced many learned works, but their scholars from the Papal cities of Avignon, Carpentras, Lisle sur Sorge, and Cavillon were not unlearned men.
* Z. Shaykovski. _Dos loshn fun di yidn in di arbe kehiles fun komta-venesin_. mit a hakdome fun maks vaynraykh. nyu-york: aroysgegebn fun mekhaber mit der mithelf fun yidishn visnshaftlekhn institut-yivo, 1948. [English title page: Z[osa] Szajkowski. The Language of the Jews in the Four Communities of Comtat Venaissin. With a Preface by Max Weinreich. New York: Published by the Author with the aid of the Yiddish Scientific Institute - YIVO, 1948.
Your column is the first thing I read when I get my copy of the Forward. Thank you for all the pleasure you have given me over these many years. (By the way, I am a good friend of your cousin Dr.Arnold Richards.
I found the article about the Bordeaux Haggadah very interesting but I am going to question whether your "howler" translation is indeed a howler. This is the season of Pirkei Avot and so in the spirit of "dan lekaf zchut" maybe we can offer an alternative explanation. I will be first to agree that this is speculative but then so much of your column is intelligent, informed speculation that I may be in good company.
Clearly the pshat (direct meaning) of the text "shhayu mesubin bivnei beraq" indicates that the Tannaim were reclining in a place called Bnei Beraq. Bnei Beraq is mentioned in the book of Joshua (Chap 19:45) as a town in the territory of Dan long before its reference as a Palestinian town mentioned in the Mishnah. I checked a number of classical commentaries on the Haggadah and, with one noted exception, those that comment on this phrase all confirm that it references the town of Bnei Beraq. The one exception that I found cited in the Haggadah Shelaima of Rabbi Menachem Kasher is a detailed commentary called Zevach Pesach which was authored by Don Isaac Abarbanel, the very prominent statesman of 15th century Spain, famous philosopher and revered commentator on the Tanach. Since it is a time-honored tradition not only to read the Haggadah but also to delve into its variant explanations it is appropriate to consider Abarbanel's approach even if it appears iconoclastic.
Abarbanel does not even mention Bnei Beraq as being the name of a town and then reject that explanation. Instead he offers two other explanations. The first recognizes that the word "ben" meaning son is often used in the Talmud interchangeably to mean disciple or student and therefore the meaning could be that these Rabbis were learning with their students in a place called Beraq, each Rabbi in a different house. Abarbanel admits that this explanation is somewhat illogical both on grammatical grounds and also for textual reasons since if the Rabbis were learning together with their students, where would their students be coming from when they reminded their teachers that it was time for the morning Shema? For this reason he falls back and accepts a second explanation, that states that Bnei Beraq is indicative of fine silverware and table linens. The basis for this explanation is that the word "ben" is related to "binyan", something built or manufactured such as tableware and "beraq" means shining which indicates silver. Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah was extremely wealthy and if the Seder took place at his residence there would have been luxurious table dressings. Clearly this is not what we would view as "pshat" but for whatever reason Abarbanel, the eminent Bible commentator, did not even entertain the possibility that Bnei Beraq was that location mentioned in the book of Joshua. One reason for this reluctance might be that the wealthiest and most prominent of the five rabbis was Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah whose seat was in Lod not Bnei Beraq and so Abarbanel might have thought it inappropriate for this meeting to take place in Bnei Beraq which was Rabbi Akiva's seat.
Abarbanel, like his father, was an extremely prominent figure in Portugal, Spain and then in Italy. He succeeded in combining statesmanship, politics, secular philosophy and Jewish scholarship in the best traditions of the golden years of Spanish Jewry. He was so central to the Spanish court that Isabella and Ferdinand pleaded with him to remain in Spain in 1492. He refused and insisted on being expelled together with all other Jews. He completed his commentary on the Haggadah in Naples in 1496. Many of the Jews of Bordeaux were descendants of expelled Spanish Jews as evidenced by this Haggadah's Ladino comments. The translation was made in 1807 (per Alfred Moldovan) 300 years after Abarbanel's Haggadah commentary. Given Abarbanel's illustrious status there could have been a mesorah (tradition) handed down across the generations that treated his views as sacrosanct. There could also have been earlier Sephardic editions of the Haggadah that perpetuated his views. All this could possibly have contributed to the translator, Mardochee Venture, adopting at least one of Abarbanel's explanations in favor of the more conventional pshat.
On a separate note the comment that the matzos were made avec beaucoup d’exactitude could also be viewed positively and not as a sign of ignorance. If the "exactitude" refers to the necessity of completing the matzo baking precisely within 18 minutes then perhaps that indicates scholarship and knowledge of Halacha.
Your columns are always a pleasure to read in particular because you often open up avenues of thought that require a measure of knowledge mixed in with a healthy dose of curiosity and intellectual speculation