Welcome to Judaism Demystified, a podcast for the perplexed.
Join us as we explore some of the most fascinating Jewish and
Torah related topics with our esteemed guests.
By tackling some of the biggest questions you likely won't find
addressed elsewhere, we aim to shed light on important issues
and inspire a return to the fundamentals.
Enjoy the show. Thank you, Rabbi Yossi Levine,
if I'm pronouncing that correctly.
Very happy to have you on the podcast.
Welcome to the Judean Demystified podcast.
Before you begin, I'd usually like to ask our guests what you
know a little bit about yourself.
Tell us a little about your background and also what drew
you to writing the book on Khansvi.
Sure. Thank you so much for for having
me. It's a pleasure and an honor to
be with you. So I grew up in Los Angeles.
I've been living in the New York area for the better part of the
last 30 years. I did my undergrad at Columbia
Smech at Michiba University and my PhD at the Barnard Rebel
Graduate School. By day, I'm a rabbi.
I work at shul here on the Upper West Side called the Jewish
Center. I've been here for about the
past 20 years or so, and on the side I like to dabble in
academia. So my area is early modern
European Jewish history, and I took an interest that early on
in my scholarly studies in Hahansvi, Ashkenazi.
So maybe I'll just do a quick bio of Hahansvi to kind of
Orient the listeners and let everyone know sort of when and
and where we are. Hakansi Ashkenazi was born in
Moravia, we think in around 1658, and he's coming of age in
a very kind of fraught time. So you'll know that this is
right in the aftermath of the Khamelnitsky massacres 16481649
and Chapditesvi shows up on the scene and announces that he's
Mashiach in 1665. He apostatizes in 1666 and dies
in 1676. So that story is looming large
in the early years of Khansi. You think about what it means to
be a kid right when this story is is unfolding.
So Khansi is a little bit of a, of a mystery.
He comes from Ashkenazic stock. He has deep roots in, in
Ashkenaz. And probably because so many of
the centers of Ashkenazic learning were decimated of the
course of the 30 years war and the Khamonitsky massacres and so
many Ashkenazic Jews were refugees were dislocated.
So his parents actually sent him to train and to learn in
Yeshibos in the Ottoman Empire in in Salonika in
Constantinople. And he becomes quite experts in
in Spartic culture in Spartacala Khan.
We're happy to return to that issue later on if it's of if
it's of interest. He marries.
He's living in present day Budapest in the 1680s and in
1686 there's a a tragedy for his family and the life altering
event for the Jews of Budapest. Budapest had been in control of
the the Ottomans for for many years and now the Habsburg
Empire attacks, there's a siege, the siege of Budapest and the
Jewish community is is in shambles as a as a result.
And it's really the last time for some period that there's a
normative Jewish community in in Budapest.
Jews are taken captive, including Khansvi's parents.
Tragically, his wife and young daughter are killed in that
siege and Hachamsvi has to flee. He miraculously survives and
makes it out as a refugee. He spends a little time in
Sarajevo ministering to a Sephardic community, and then
spends really the next 20 or so years in the triple community of
Altina, Hamburg, Vonnsbeck. He marries the daughter-in-law
of the chief rabbi and the daughter of the chief rabbi.
Rather becomes the son-in-law of the chief rabbi and builds a
family. And he's learning in a private
Cole. It's called the cloys.
It takes on a little bit more of an official position after his
father-in-law passes away. It's a quiet time in his life,
1690 to about 171710. He's learning, studying,
teaching, writing and he becomes known as an important to
halachic figure and a lot of the material that we have from
Khansvi's career and has rabbinic career date from this
time period. He's writing Truvos, he's
writing response to communities all over, all over Europe. 1710
he's called to Amsterdam and he becomes the Ashkenazic chief
rabbi of of Amsterdam. There's a very prominent Spartic
community in Amsterdam at the time and growing Ashkenazic
community. He's only in that position for a
short amount of time, 3-4 years. In 1714 we could talk about why
he's basically forced to leave Amsterdam and he never holds
much of A rabbinic position after that.
He's in Poland for a few years and the very end of his life in
1718 for just a few months, he becomes the chief rabbi of
Lehmberg, the the community of Levov.
And he dies in in 1718. So to answer your question and
what drew me to, to Fukhansvi, I'd say a couple things.
One is he's kind of a mystery of a guy, right?
Who's this Ashkenazi guy? He has a Sephardic, Sephardic
name. Why can't he hold down a
position in the community for for very long?
His Truvos, If you read his his Truvos, he speaks with such
independence and such confidence.
And you know, it's a very, very kind of rare combination to have
someone who's both. You've got top tier Posek and
top tier Tammich Hacham that everybody knows in the base
Madrich and is known among scholars as being a very
important person for the kind of political controversies in which
in which he was involved. So, you know, who's this man?
Can we, can we unpack the story here?
Can we solve the solve the mystery?
And I'll just say that, you know, controversy makes for good
copy when people lead quiet lives.
So there's not often that much to explore and to write about.
But when people are always in the middle of a Mahlochis, so
that that can be very alluring and sometimes very illuminating.
Yep. The it's it's not every day you
have someone called Sri Ashkenazi.
The it's a he he was also in in your book, you you write a lot
about all the different political things and that he had
to deal with in his true vote. It's like so wide-ranging.
And we hope that with this podcast, people will get the
book and read more about it before we get into the in depth
into the Hachamsvi. Your book is not only about
Khanswi. Your book also offers a
comprehensive study of the early modern rabbinic period, going
beyond a simple biography. By analyzing the tishuvot of
that era, you provide valuable insights into Jewish life and
its rabbinic context. Can you elaborate on the
significance of Tishuvot in shaping our historical Jewish
consciousness beyond their Hellenic importance?
Yeah. So historians, particularly in
the in the 20th century, maybe most notably Yaakov Katz, were
of the mind that Truvos really provide a very important window
onto their historic contexts. And not every Truva is a window
onto historic context, but sometimes you can really find
find your way in to intellectual history and cultural history and
political history through through Chubos.
And I'm very taken by this, by this line of by this line of
thought. And it was sort of my working
assumption as I worked on this this project.
It was sort of my working assumption that when you're
looking at a chuva, you're really only looking at one small
aspect of a larger story, even in the simplest case of a chuva.
So what are you seeing? Did you see the the question?
Sometimes it's recorded, sometimes it's recorded in an
edited way, sometimes it's not recorded at all.
You see the answer and then, well, what happens after that?
How was the answer received? Did anyone implement the answer?
Did it start a controversy? Was it the beginning of a
further exchange? And the deeper and deeper I dug,
the more often I found that very, very often, one Chuva was
actually just one node in a much, much larger conversation.
And part of my, part of my hope, part of my fantasy is that I
could sort of make this revelation known to just the
average folks in the base mattress who are learning Shyles
and Truvos without a lot of sensitivity to this, to this
reality, right? This notion that, you know, you
have one page in front of you, you have this amazing Truva, but
there's a whole story and you're just getting 1 chapter of it.
And what if we could try to fill in the blanks and know what the
questioner looked like, what they were thinking, what their
lives were like, what their context was about, what the
relationship to the rabbi was that they were writing to?
How did they choose to write to this rabbi?
What did the rabbi do when he got the question?
Did he consult? Did he start asking other
people? There's one case I found that I
referenced just quickly in the book where a community said they
said explicitly they asked this question, they sent it into the
rabbi and they said we're taking a survey.
Please let us know what you think of this issue.
So half the time, most of the time you don't get a formulation
like that. But the telling you this is just
one, you're just you're you're, you're only one part of a of a
much larger, much larger store. So my contention is that Shuvo's
in their fullest sense can be a window onto much, much larger,
much larger stories. I'll just give you one example,
'cause I was just looking at this recently.
There's a case from, it's like 17th, 18th century, I think in
Worms. And there's a question of how do
you dive in my rib on, on Mozi shops.
So what's the question? The question is who lights the
candle and when? So it's a catch 22.
So if Shabbos is not over yet so and you haven't admired when you
haven't said Abdullah, then you really shouldn't be lighting a
candle. It's Shabbos isn't over yet, but
you have to just go back and remember that if there were no
candles burning from before Shabbos, then it's dark outside
and there's no light to Dovan Meyer So and maybe have a kid do
it or the shamas, says Barham Abdul and coach the whole first
then runs ahead and lights it. And then everybody else could
stand by the like, who's thinking about right?
So you see the question, but there's a whole world here that
we don't think about. How do you Dovan Meyer von Mozi
Shabbos when you haven't set Abdullah and the shul is pitch
black 'cause there's no candles that are that are lit.
So just the most banal example of, you know, how the the
halachic literature actually actually opens up these much
larger issues. Fascinating.
Yeah, really amazing. We, we, we take it for granted
when when we're looking at history and just not
understanding the complexities of, of the issues that the
rabbi's at the time we're dealing with.
So it really gives us a really nice insight into what was going
on. SO1 fascinating aspect of your
book is its portrayal of Jewish communities during that period
and the relationship with rabbinic positions.
What are some intriguing dynamics you observed regarding
the political and cultural forces within these communities
and how did they impact the Hamsi's relationship with the
his congregation? So it's a great question and one
of one of kinds of the key components that distinguishes
the early modern period from the medieval period is what scholars
refer to as the professionalization of the of
the Ravenna. So I should say just sort of in
passing that, you know, one of the things that draws me to the
early modern period is actually started out with a stronger
interest in medieval Jewish history.
But you're so limited in medieval Jewish history because
there's just so, so many limitations on the, the sources
that we have available. So that's a, that's a embedded
challenge for anyone interested in medieval Jewish history.
Take for example, a Rashi. So we don't know too much about
Rashi's wrapping in, but I can tell you that Rashi was not
answerable to a board. And if somebody asks Rashi a
question, he felt completely free to give the answer that he
thought was the right answer. And like, he's the final
authority, He's Russian. You get to the early modern
period and the rabbis are now salaried employees of the
community, and it's not so different from the 21st century.
Really not. Rabbis have to look over their
rabbis have to look over their shoulder and wonder, how is my
answer? How is my statement?
How is my sermon going to be received?
And if it's not received well, I might be out of a job.
And if I'm out of a job, I might be out of a house 'cause I'm
living in a house that's owned by the community.
And then what's my family gonna eat and where are we gonna go?
And so you start to see the the tensions between lay boards, lay
leaders on the one hand and rabbis on on the other.
So we don't have a book on this because it would be a very dry,
very dry book, but we have dozens and dozens of rabbinic
contracts from the early modern period.
I think they're fascinating because they tell us what the
priorities are for the parties involved.
And the community says it's very important for us that the rabbi
preach this number of times a year.
And the rabbi says, very important for me that the local
base medrish be filled with swarim and Talmadin, right?
So we get a sense of what what's important to, to the community
and what's important to the, to the rabbis.
So a number of scholars have pointed this out.
Again, coming back to Yaakov Katz, he says, you know, by and
large, the the boards and the rabbis work nicely together and
they figured out their respective areas of authority.
They respected those areas of authority and and it worked out
as a as a partnership. Where it gets interesting and
where we hear about it is when it stops working out OK, and the
lay leaders say, oh, no, you don't have authority to do that.
That's our turf where the rabbi says, stop right there.
You can't do that. I'm drawing the line right here.
I'm the final authority. And then there's and then
there's tension, then there's controversy and sometimes then
there are fireworks. And if you're and you're
relatively uncompromising and you're relatively confident
about your positions and you really believe what you believe,
and you're of a mind that says take it or leave it, let the
chips fall where they may. So that can make for difficult
relationships between the rabbi and and the community.
This was such a fascinating part of your book.
I really, really enjoyed it. It is, like you said, it's
almost like you feel that everything that we're going
through then is like mirrored today.
And it's so many ways. And it was very powerful how you
made the point that was he he he was uncompromised.
He he he compromised, but meaning to certain things like
he was he was his way or the highway.
And, you know, he had difficult relationships because of that
with the Shules. It's it's a fascinating chapter
in the book. And I highly suggest, you know,
that that that people should should, should look into.
It's it's incredible. Yeah, all.
Right. You want to take the next
question. OK, so a pivotal chapter in your
book explores Khanswi's connection with the Swaradim and
his defense of certain Sefaradi attitudes towards Jewish law and
Minagim. Can you provide more insight
into this aspect of his life and work?
Sure. So maybe let me just back up and
provide just a drop of, you know, historic context and
again, thinking about some of the differences between the
medieval world, Again, these aren't, you know, hard and fast
rules, but the medieval world on the one hand and the early
modern world on the other. So, you know, if you're an
Ashkenazic Jew living in France in the 13th century, how much
interaction do you have with Spartak Jews in in your
lifetime? So maybe France is a bad
example. You go over the Pyrenees and you
can get to you can get to Spain. But the further away that you
get between these communities, you know, the distances are, are
important and it's hard to traverse them.
And Ashkenaz is Ashkenaz and Sarad is is is Farad.
One of the the kind of defining qualities of the early modern
period is this sense of mobility.
Everyone and everything is, is on the move.
So where do you even begin the early modern period?
Most scholars would tell you, you know, 1492149715 hundred.
We're talking about a time in the aftermath of the
dislocation, the expulsion of the world's most populous Jewish
community. So all of Sfarad is on the move.
And then you start talking about what's going on in the 16th and
17th centuries and the Ashkenazi communities are being expelled
and dislocated and there's a massacre and there's a Bagram
and they have to run and, and they're everywhere.
So what starts to happen? Certainly with much more
frequency than ever happened in the early in the medieval period
is that you start to have locations where you have
Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities living side by side.
So in Venice and in Hamburg and in London and in Amster, right
on down this list, you have Ashkenazic communities and
Sephardic communities. And they're they're right there.
They're living in the same, they're living in the same city.
So there's a kind of open question, OK, now we got it.
There's a sort of communization. What was the interaction like?
Did they talk to each other? Did they marry each other?
Did they patronize the same butcher shops?
Like what was the what was the relationship?
What was it like? And this is a complex, this is a
complex question and the different answers for different
moments and for different for different communities.
But as a general matter, the Sephardic community tended to
put up walls like don't, don't try to you Ashkenazim, don't try
to come into our, our community often they like, we're here
first. You take the case of Amsterdam,
which is important, important example.
So the Spartan got there first. They're all, all kinds of family
connections and business connections based on the, you
know, Iberian expulsions. They're very successful in, in
commerce. They make it, they make it big,
they establish themselves and then the Ashkenazim come in as
refugees, penniless. And they're like in totally
different, totally different worlds.
So in some communities, the Sparta community would say, we,
there's a band, you're not allowed.
No member of our community is allowed to and then fill in the
blank not allowed to marry an Ashkenazic Jew, not allowed to,
you know, patronize their their community shops, not allowed to
adjudicate a case in front of a of a court.
That's not as far to all kinds of examples of, of rules that
that separate Ashkenaz from from Swarat.
So I would say as a general matter, the cultural borders are
quite are quite entrenched. They're not rock solid and
sometimes there is some integration, but very important
cultural boundaries at the same time.
I think there's a strong case to be made that the intellectual
boundaries are much less porous. OK.
What I mean by that at the very least is you have printed
printed books in the early modern period.
They're they're all over. Paper is much less expensive.
Books become much more affordable and you can have
Ashkenazim studying Spartic texts and you can have Spartim
studying Ashkenazic texts and there's intellectual exchange.
And then inevitably what happens is well, I'm an Ashkenazi living
in AI could write a letter to a Spartak rabbi and you know
another community. And then this starts to be an
exchange of an exchange of, of ideas.
So zooming back to zooming back into Hahansvi.
So Hahansvi was, was quite, was quite exceptional because it
tended to be that Ashkenazim sent their kids to Ashkenazi
yeshivas and Sparta kids sent their kids to Sparta families
sent their kids to Sparta yeshivas.
And their training was, was quite different.
Their experience was quite different.
Their cultural milieus were quite different.
But Hachansvi had this extraordinary background where
he really lived and was integrated into Sparta culture
for the first couple decades of of his life.
And so much so that he adopted the name Hachamsvi, which is
quite unusual, is not really another parallel.
There's no other Spartic, there's no other Ashkenazic
Posaic, you know, in the early modern period until Hacham
Bernays in the 19th century, you know, who goes by this title
Hacham? And it becomes a real point of
differentiation for, for Hahansvi.
His son Jakob Emdin even writes that when he came to Amsterdam,
this Fardim like adopted him and they, they treated him like one
of their own and they asked him their, they asked him their
questions. So Hahansvi actually was a, a
kind of unique figure in that he was able to bridge these two,
these two worlds. Now, were there like practical
consequences? So there's a short list of
practical consequences in his own, you know, Nusak Hatsvila,
there were aspects of the Sephardic Nusak that he that he
integrated. The sort of most famous almost
example is is kidneyos, right? So Ashkenazim don't need
kidneyos on, on, on Pesach and Khansvi didn't say because of my
exposure to the Sephardic world. But it is conspicuous that the
most vociferous advocate for the abolition of kidneyos in the
Ashkenazic world was Khansvi. He says didn't work like he
says, if if I had my way, I would have abolished the whole
the whole thing. But for whatever reason, like
his attempts to to abolish kidneyos were not were not
successful. But you get the impression like,
would someone who hadn't spent all those years in in Svartik,
you know, communities have come to the same conclusion?
I'm not sure. I think if I remember correctly
in your book, the main point of contention, or maybe not
contention, but the main point was that Ashkenazim seemed to
hold minhagim to almost a halachic level if I'm
remembering correctly what you were saying in the book.
So they hold minhagim to be basically at the level of
halacha, whereas the swahadim did not.
And Hakamtvi, when it came to minhagim, he kind of aligned
himself more with swahadim in that if the minhag is not rooted
in a, in a, in an actual halachic halachically viable
source, you know, he, he wasn't going to, he wasn't going to go
with it. Couldn't have said it better
myself. Yeah, I, I think it, there's
really, there's really a lot to to explore with respect to the
orientations of a Taminhag between and among the Spartan
men and Ashkenazin. And what I try to do in the book
is make some kind of contemporary comparisons.
Here's an Ashkenazik list, a classic Ashkenazik Posik.
You know the Habosiah here and you know he's 100 examples in
the habosiah here where there's a min hug and he says, I'm not
really sure, but we should do it anyway 'cause it's a min hug.
And Hamtzi says it's a min hug and it's actually not a good min
hug. So we should probably do a min
hug. And there are a number of times
where he, unlike Kitnios where he sort of isn't able to carry
it out to its conclusion. The number of of cases where
Hamtzi actually says like, no, that's not a that minhag's not
really well established, It's not well attested.
It wasn't rabbinically mandated. We should, you know, do away
with the minhag. OK.
All right. So you actually you just
mentioned of Yaakov Emdin as his son who's probably more well
known especially about his positions on Kabbalah.
But I'm interested in knowing how Hamsvi related to Kabbalah
and in what way does his attitude towards Kabbalah
manifest in his tissue vote? Yeah.
So that is that's a really big and important question.
And I'll back up to to say and obviously part of a much larger
conversation. I'm sure you've dealt with it on
other episodes of your of your podcast.
But you know, what's the authority of of the Zohar?
How do we understand the authorship of the of the Zohar?
Sir Jakob Emdin, you know, for instance, has a whole book on
the antiquity of the Zohar and how he makes a very strong case
that Shimon Bar Yokai was not, in fact, the author of the of
the Zohar. That doesn't mean the Zohar is
not important. It just means that it's written
at a date much later than, you know, some, some authorities
claim. So we have no evidence.
I just say that by way of of comparison, we have no evidence
that Rahan Svi was of that mind, right?
I have every reason to believe that Rahan Svi, like many of his
contemporaries, believed that Ruchiman Barrichai was the
author of the of the czar. That being said, he had a very
important argument against the popularization of the of the
Zohar. And a lot of this we have to
speculate, but probably comes back to Sabatianism and again,
part of a larger part of a larger topic.
But there was a strong sense. And again, remember, it's
decades old. The story of Sabadianism is, you
know, 1666 by the time we're talking about Khansvi and you
know, his adulthood in 17117 ten.
So the the story is from a while ago, and yet the story is still
live. It's still an important story
because there's a whole group and we don't know how widespread
it is, but there's a whole group of crypto Sabadians who have
gone underground but still very much believe that Shoptites Phi
is the Messiah. And I say this by way of
background, because so much of what fueled the fire of the
Sabadian movement was this attachment to Kabbalah.
And there was this sense among Hamsi and some of his
contemporaries that it was time to sort of put the lid back on
on Kabbalah. In some sense, it was
impossible. The the the genie was out of the
bottle. And in an age of print, like you
can't control the you can't control the press.
That being said, you could control what you could control.
So, and again, I tried to to do this by way of comparison, there
are contemporaries of Hamsvi who are just not really concerned
about this issue and they quote Kabbalah right and left in
discussions. And here's what the Schnar says
and here's what the Zohar says. And here's my conclusion.
And Hamsvi, even though he was quite knowledgeable by, we have
lots of evidence that he was quite knowledgeable, but
Kabbalah and as a personal matter, if you asked him, you
know, he would say that Kabbalah is, is very important and
factored into a lot of his life and a lot of his thinking.
That being said, when it came to his published works, he really
tried to limit the extent to which Kabbalah made it to the
made it to the four and one Shuva in particular.
He's quite he's quite explicit about the sense that he's like
you guys, there was a question that came up just to, you know,
put it in a more specific context.
Somebody wrote to him and said, you know, there's this debate.
What do you do when you get to shul, when you get to shul late?
Should you should you start from the beginning like the Zohar
says, or should you, you know, do like catch up and try to get
to Shmona Esrey by the time everyone is Dominic Shmona
Esrey. So he gets a little bit seaboard
and he sort of starts up by things like that's not what the
Zohar meant in the 1st place. And you know, like you, you guys
are, you know, asking me this question like stop spending your
time trying to learn the Zohar. Like we should be sticking to
the traditional, traditional sources.
That's how we should Orient. That's how we should Orient
ourselves. And that's how we should paskin,
paskin halacha. So I argue that this stance, the
sense that like we're trying to tamp it down, we're trying to
put it back in its back in its place.
We're worried about it being misread.
We're worrying about it being misused.
That that orientation kind of anticipates the stance of later
18th century rabbis who came along and said, you know,
something very similar, which is let's try to keep Kabbalah
within the province of the initiated and keep it out of the
hands of the masses. I know that was a lot.
I know that's one second. Sorry.
Do you hear me? I think I lost the connection
for a second. Yeah.
So, yeah. So I mean, I, I think what's
interesting is that one generation removed from that or
you know, his son's generation, you have, you have a situation
where you, you mentioned that there were these crypto
Sabatians or people accused of it, like Raviolitan Ebishitz,
the whole controversy with, with Raviolva Emden.
I wonder what happened between from his father's generation to
his generation where he felt the need to be more kind of
explosive in his response, I guess towards Kabbalah, even
though they were like kind of 1, you know, it was one generation
further from the Sabotea and controversy.
I'm just wondering if there's like any any answer to that?
So I'm not sure there is there is an answer to that.
I think part of the answer is the comes back to something we
were talking about a little earlier, which is just what is
the authority of the rabbis? So you can scream till you're
blue in the face that we should be doing XY or Z.
Is anybody listening? So are there, you know, if Hamsi
had his way, I don't think we would find, you know,
Kabbalistic books being printed in the in the 17 teens in the
1720s. And but they are being printed
right 'cause he's one person in one community with one audience.
And you know, this, this printing presses and other
authorities and people with other interests who maybe never
heard of Hafansvi or even if they have heard of him, don't
feel obliged to, you know, be beholden to his opinion.
Yeah, like you mentioned the genies out of the bottle or the
cat's out of the bag, it's impossible to put it back in.
So at at a certain point just got to accept reality like this
is what we have to deal with. So it's very, very interesting
what what takes place here. So and Bensi, you had one last
question before the. Last question, there was
something I remembered as you were talking about this from the
book regarding how Mishna, if yeah, you, you, you, you spoke
in the book about Mishna and how the printing press kind of
brought the consciousness of Mishna back to that time period.
Is it OK if off the cuff I can ask you to to elaborate on that
a little bit? Yeah, yeah.
So this is a big, this is a big topic which actually has not
been explore deeply. And you know, part of my hope
was that, you know, my dream is that I would spark more interest
in this topic and people could explore it, explore it further.
But there is a sense and scholars have written about this
a little. There's a book called The
Mishnaic Moment, which is actually more interested in the
Christian interest in, in the Mishnah.
But it's a good title. And there is a sense that in the
early modern period, Mishnah is undergoing a renaissance.
Now, Mishna was always being learned, right?
I don't mean to say in before the early modern period, but you
know, Jews weren't. So they were learning the
Mishnah. It's just that by and large they
were learning the Mishnah within the context of the Gemara, in
the context of the, the Talmudic, the Talmudic tradition
in the early modern period, we get an explosion of interest in
Mishnah qua Mishnah. So Mishnah commentaries are
booming. The printing of the Mishnah is
booming. The there's an explosion of
Mishnayos study groups. So Kabbalists are very
interested in, in the study of, in the study of Mishnah.
There's Hevras like, you know, we don't have too many Hevras
anymore, but we had like the Heva Kadisha is like our last
Hevra. But in the early modern period
there's a million Hevras. There was a Hevra, you know,
Bikrholem and a Hevra Shas. And so you start to see these
Hevros mishnayos everywhere. And you know, this concept we
have of learning mishnayos like Ilui Nishmas, you know, for
Schlossem or for Ayurtse. So that's everywhere in the
early modern in the early modern period.
So I argued and I just did like a case study for one person for
one, for one post sake. I argued that and it's quite
surprising if you're not sensitive to this issue.
But if you go back to his Truvos, he mentions the Mishnah
in like almost half of his Truvos, right?
Which is and and and I tried to argue.
It's like there were times where just quote the and the Shah like
that. That's what we would expect.
18th century Posaic to be working with like, OK, it's the
tour and it's the and the and the he's like the Mishna's.
It's not the base. We're not like going through
from the beginning. This is a it's a chuva in the
it's like the last place you would expect.
It's like, no, no, he's like the Mishna says really we're
prosecuting for them. Like there's 1500 years of
intervening, you know, discourse here.
Like not he's not ignoring the intervening 1500 years, but like
he goes back to the Mishnah. He goes back to the Mishnah
very, very often, right. And so my argument, and you
could take it or leave it. Again, this is very limited and
I wish people would think about this in, you know, the larger
context among other postscript of the period.
But my argument is that Khansvi was kind of making a case that
the Mishnah really should be the source of our authorities.
Like he just go back to the basics, go back.
To the Mishnah. That's why it popped up in.
My the, the Kabbalah and you know, we were talking about this
a little before we went on live. It was like, people are so
interested in, you know, I'm historian so I'm not going to
talk about 202026, but Neil Jacidos and it's like it's a
post. Oh, OK, this is beautiful and
there's so much there. And let's learn a Mishnah.
He's peeling the onion back. He want, he wants, he wants
everyone to get back to the fundamentals.
Basically. That's like a subtle message.
Back to the fundamentals and it fits.
I'm not saying it's causative, but you know, this is the the
Renaissance like this is the the moment was like, let's go back
to the most important texts of our Massar.
So important, so important, and we should take that advice today
as well. So important.
Don't get me started, but you know, if I could, if I had my
druthers, like let's learn a puzzle.
Let's learn a rashi. Like that's the fundamentals.
And then there's plenty of time to, you know, learn.
Learn other things. To it's a it's an amazing, it's
an amazing insight into into into the Khanswi and we should
all learn from it and end the story with Khanswi, the Hyon
affair. Am I pronouncing that right, by
the way? Yeah, there's some debate about
how to pronounce it, but that's perfect.
OK, so if you can lead us through the Hyon Affair and, and
the fallout and, and everything to do with it.
Because we could do a whole episode on the.
Fair. So I'm, I'm going to do an
abridged, an abridged version and, and you tell me if there's
pieces here that you want to unpack further.
We're, we're happy to. OK.
So just to set the stage, Khansvi's Ashkenazic chief rabbi
of, of Amsterdam. The year is 1713.
There's two communities, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, the
Sephardic community, which is much older in Amsterdam, much
more venerable, much more successful.
The chief Rabbi, the Sephardic chief rabbi is a man called
Shlomo I alone. Shlomai alone is actually
aquarist. He actually has a shy list that
he asks that are published in, in Khansvi.
Amsterdam was the print capital of the of the universe, so
people were looking for vinic approbation.
Sometimes they'd come to Amsterdam, they'd get a Haskama
from Khansvi and from Ashkenazi chief rabbi and from Shlomoa,
the Sephardic chief rabbi. So sometimes you have both of
them side by side. 1713, two communities, Prahamsvi's
Ashkenazi community and Shlomo Ayalon's Svartik Svartik
community. And in to town walks a man
called Nachamya Arhyun. We don't know too much about
Nachamya Arhyun because most of what we know comes from him and
he's not the most credible, the most credible guy.
He has two books that he's interested in promoting that he
had published the year before in in Berlin.
The first book is a book called Deavere Nechemia.
And Deavere Nechemia is a book on the parsha.
And if you open it up and you read it, it's on
hebrewbooks.org. You can Google it.
It'll come right up on Hebrew books.
There's a couple of pieces there which are a little odd or a
little bizarre or a little unconventional, but it's a
perfectly kosher book on the, on the parsha from a guy who's
interested in Kabbalah and Kabbalistic readings of the, of
the time book #1 Debray Debray. And he comes with book #2 called
OS Leilochim, OK. And OS Leilochim is book of
theology and a book of book of of Kabbalah.
And both of the books are very well approbated.
And we could spend a long time talking about approbations in
this period just to give a quick thumbnail.
So copyrights are just sort of coming into their own.
If you publish a book in 1712 and you have to be worried that
somebody's gonna steal your intellectual property, what's to
stop you from taking my book, republishing it and undercutting
me selling it for for a discount?
I worked so hard to put it together and what am I gonna do?
Suit. Like I have no recourse.
The best I could do is get Haskama from a rabbi that says I
hereby declare anybody who republishes book without
permission from the author within the next three years 5 or
whatever the case is, as a theorem, they're gonna be
banned. We disallow in the strongest
possible could Listen or not listen.
That's like the best you could. OK, so Hascommos functioned as
copyrights and they functioned as endorsements.
The same way you go to the store.
I guess we don't really do that anymore in the 21st century.
But in the old days, you go to the bookstore and you look at
the back of the book and you know, maybe I don't know the
author, but I know the famous person who endorsed the book.
So maybe I'll buy the book because this person says it's
the best thing since since Lysberg.
So when Eremia Reyun did is he he got some of the greatest
rabbis of the generation to write approbations to his book
Zebra and Eremia. And if you actually go back and
read the approbations to Zebra and Eremia, it's a fun exercise.
You'll see that the approbators say the following One of the
first approbations is from David Oppenheim.
David Oppenheim would have been by far and away the most famous
rabbi of the generation. He was the chief rabbi of
Prague. He he was political.
You mentioned him a few times in the book.
Very important, very important person to be interested.
There's a wonderful book called Prince the Press by Joshua
Zaplitsky, Yale University Press David Oppenheim gives us Gama to
the to the book and he has this great line.
He says, you know, I only read one page of the book, and I
really shouldn't give huskamma to a book that I only read one
page of. But people speak so highly about
the author, I want to help him out.
I'm giving huskamma to the book. And then the next huskamba is
written by another prominent rabbi who says, you know, I was
really too busy to read any of the book.
But if David Oppenheim says this is a good book, I'm with him,
you know, OK. And you read the next Haskama
and he says this is not my area. I don't really know anything
about this topic. But you know, the two previous
rabbis, I'm with them. So you can imagine where this
is, where this is going. Nobody actually read the book.
They all give Haskama's to the book, then takes the Haskammas
that he received for book #1 and cuts and pastes them into book
#2 without the consent of the of the approbators.
It just so happens, to make a Long story short, that Nachemia
Rayun is a Crypto Sabadian, and his book OS Le Lokem is the very
first time that a Crypto Sabadian had ever authored and
published, clearly nakedly, A Sabadian, A Sabadian book.
Is this book available Like is this?
Can you find the book somewhere? Hebrewhebrewbooks.org.
It's available 2 clicks. Osley Leukem.
Fascinating.
I don't know if they've corrected this, but last time I
checked the the Huskomos don't appear right the in the copy
that they have on hebrewbooks.org.
OK, because. Is he explicitly Sabatian in it
or is he? Yes, yes, explicitly.
OK, we'll come back to that. We'll come back to that in a
second. So until 17 as well.
Theology. Book.
Yeah, yeah. So, so Sabatians had published
books, but like, they did it in a very, you know, kinds of
clever way. And there'd just be a coded
reference here or there. This is like overflowing.
Overflowing with what any normal reader would consider to be kind
of kind of Harris. So he shows up with his books.
There's a man called Moshe Haggis who's a good friend of
Hakansvi. He's actually a rabbi who had
spent time in Italy. He was from, he was from Israel.
He doesn't have a position in the community.
He's a traveler. He's a shadar.
He's raising money for the Jews of Palestine.
He publishes a lot of books on his own.
He's also a massive Tam. He gets a hold of the book and
he says there's something a little fishy about this.
He gives the book to Khansvi and Khansvi picks up Ozil Kim.
He's like, this is a problem. There's Sabadian heresy on every
page of this of this book. And.
You know, he, again, to make a Long story short, he knocks on
the door of the Sparta community and says you have to kick this
guy out of the community and you have to put out a harem against,
against the book. And the Sephardim, you know,
basically say, thank you so much for bringing this to our
attention, but you are the Ashkenazi rabbi and we are the
Sephardic community. And what authority do you think
you possibly have to issue any harem for our community?
So Haremtvi stands by his harem. He says, you got to kick the guy
out of the community. You have to burn the book.
The Spartans say we're going to take it under advisement.
Nobody should say anything about the book.
We're going to have a Commission of inquiry.
Shlomoi alone, Chief rabbi of the Sparta community is going to
head A7 person Commission. He appoints 6 Co commissioners
to investigate the book. The Hamsi, thank you for
investigating the book. I'm issuing another harem
against anyone who reads the book.
And you can't keep the guy and you can't, can't keep the book.
The Spartim go through this process of investigating the
book and they come to their conclusion and announce the
community. We have investigated the book.
The book is a kosher book. There's no heresy in the in the
book, no. Way.
As it turns out, Shlomo I alone was himself a crypto Sabadian,
so it was unsurprising that he and his Commission would declare
that the book was totally was totally kosher.
Hamsvi and Moshe Haghiz try to sound the alarm bell, The
authorities of Amsterdam get involved and at the end of the
day the the Sephardium basically place a theorem against Hahansvi
and Moshe Haggis and they are forced to leave Amsterdam under
a very unfortunate circumstances.
And as I mentioned, Hahansvi in that city spends the next 3-4
years wandering and you know, never has a position like that
again. The, the position Amsterdam was
like one of the most prominent positions in, in Europe.
And he lost it like that because he was unwilling to, you know,
kowtow to lay authorities that he thought were dead wrong about
about this particular issue. It's, it's kind of unfortunate
how how this, how this Sabatin story kind of was brushed under
the rug because you we take for granted or we, we just, we just
don't, people just don't know like how widespread this was
among leaders. You know, it's crazy and, and
it's an important lesson because a lot of people have the kind
of, let's say the Dastur approach.
Oh, it's impossible for our leaders to ever make mistakes.
This is like very recent and it's, it's extremely like
impactful on for generations. So I, I think that, you know,
it's something that actually, I think the Sabbath team
controversy is such an important topic that it just, it should be
spoken about. And it kept coming back.
I mean, there was another iteration in 1725.
And then you have, you know, of course, the M den Ibushitz
controversy. And then you have the next
generation of the Francis. Like it was not going away.
It was not, it was not going away.
I'll just add 11 footnote, which is, you know, one of the big,
one of the big takeaways from the HyunA Fair is the sense
that, you know, rabbis didn't have to, didn't have to go it
alone. There's a piece of the story
just for the sake of time that I, that I omitted.
You know, Khansvi could not believe, could not believe that
any of these, you know, rabbis actually wrote approbations for
this book. So he took out his quill and he
wrote to them and he said, I have a copy of OS Le Lokem
written by have you seen this book?
Did you write a Haskama to this book?
Do you think this book is actually not heretical?
And they all wrote back in Haskama.
Never heard of it, never wrote it.
If I wrote, it was a mistake. You know, there's like a yeshiva
in Venice that I was like Haskama.
Our community doesn't write Haskama.
So he actually, he actually created a coalition of like
minded rabbis and he collected all of these letters and all of
these signatories to be able to say I am not alone in believing
that right. These are my compatriots, these
are my colleagues. They've all signed on with me in
this effort to discredit this, this Sabadian.
And that became an important modus operandi for rabbis in the
early modern period. Again, it, it didn't start in
the Chyon affair, but it took on new energy in the Chyon affair.
This sense like, I don't have to go it alone.
We could form a coalition and together like a unified rabbit,
it could actually make a very strong case.
And that became very important for controversies that would
follow throughout the, you know, rest of the 18th, 19th century.
What a crazy story. Really shocking that's it's.
Really insane. Now that can happen.
Wow. Available on Amazon.com.
Well, Rabbi, this is amazing. Thank you so much for coming on.
And before we go, do you have anything you besides this book,
do you have anything else you'd like to plug or where where
people can find you also? Well, I work at shul on the
Upper West Side called the Jewish Center.
Everyone's invited to join us anytime.
We always have wonderful activities, programs and and
classes both on Shabbos and and throughout the week.
And my next project I'm working on actually a group of five
European rabbis who emigrated to the United States at the end of
the 19th century. So I'm in a little bit of a
different, different time period away, but I'm at the beginning
stages of that, that project. So we have a little time before
there's another book supply. And when that time comes, we'd
love to have you on again to. This sure.
If I live that long, it would be my honor.
Thank you so much for, for coming on the Hakam Svi.
We, we need more Hakam Svi's in, in, in in today's world as well.
We need more Hakam Svi's. He's, he's, he was a very unique
character. And we appreciate so much your
efforts to, to, to spread the, the life and, and, and the
authenticity of the Hakam Svi. And best of luck on all future
endeavors. Someone asked me in a class I
was teaching at Hakam Svi, who would you say?
Rabi Levine, who's like the 21st century but analog to Khansvi
and I said there is no analog to.
That's the problem, That's the problem, it's the problem.
And Bezrat, we should, we should, we should be to to be
able to merit leaders like him soon.
Amen. Amen.
Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.
Take care.