Hebrew Voices #163 – Treasures of the Hebrew Library in Cincinnati: Part 1

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David: Of course, we had the famous Tel Dan Inscription, and the college did do the… Avraham Biran was the...

Nehemia: Wait, you guys found that?

David: Yes.

Nehemia: The Tel Dan Inscription?

David: Yeah.

Nehemia: That is pretty cool!

David: We are the ones who excavated Tel Dan.

Nehemia: I didn’t realize that. So that’s on display today at the Israel Museum.

David: Yes.

Nehemia: And it’s important because it mentions “the House of David” from a very early period.

David: Yes.

Nehemia: At a time when some scholars had said that David was a myth, that he didn’t really exist. So, it’s very interesting.

David: Right.

Nehemia: Tell us who you are.

David: Who I am…

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: So, I’m David Gilner, and I’m librarian at the Klau Library here in Cincinnati. And I’m director of the Four Campus Library System of Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion libraries in New York, Los Angeles, Jerusalem, and the main scholarly library here in Cincinnati.

Nehemia: And the Hebrew Union College, correct me if I’m wrong, is the main seminary of the Reform movement, of Reform Judaism.

David: I think it likes to think of itself that way.

Nehemia: Is there a competitor? Is there another…?

David: There are always little competitors.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: But certainly, over the course of what’s now 141 years, the Hebrew Union College has produced Reform rabbis for North America and some rabbis for South America.

Nehemia: Wow.

David: And rabbis for Israel, though in more recent times the Reform rabbis who are working in Israel are Israelis who have been trained at an Israeli Rabbinic program of Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem.

Nehemia: Okay. So, you’re head of the four libraries. There’s one in Cincinnati, Jerusalem…

David: New York and Los Angeles.

Nehemia: New York and Los Angeles. And all four of those are part of the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion.

David: Right.

Nehemia: And you’re head of all those libraries. How long have you had this job?

David: Well, I’ve been director of the four libraries for 21 years.

Nehemia: Wow! You said since 1995?

David: Right. And I’ve worked at the library since 1978.

Nehemia: Wow.

David: I came to the college in 1972 as a PhD candidate in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies. I finished my exams and some research towards my dissertation but couldn’t get a job teaching. So, I went to the University of Illinois Library School, and then came back here to finish my dissertation and a job opened in the library, and here I am!

Nehemia: Wow. So, you’ve been head of this library since 199…

David: 1992, I think.

Nehemia: And head of all four libraries since 1995.

David: Right.

Nehemia: Okay. And you’ve agreed to meet with us here today and show us some of these manuscripts.

David: Manuscripts and printed books.

Nehemia: Okay. So, you started telling me before…

David: Yeah. People always ask, “What’s the oldest book in the library?” You’ve got a list of questions, that’s on everybody's list of questions.

Nehemia: Of course, I’m sure that’s on my list.

David: And when they ask me that, frequently I’ll go in the back and get a cigar box in which is a 4,000- year-old cuneiform tablet.

Nehemia: Okay!

David: Written in Sumerian.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: Because we have a rather large collection of and a department of Ancient Near Eastern Studies, where students come to study Sumerian, Babylonian and other languages of the ancient world.

Nehemia: How did the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati… can you tell me how they got cuneiform documents that were written in what’s today Iraq, in Ancient Babylon? In other words, you didn’t go and excavate a mound in Ohio. How did they get these documents? If you can answer. I know there’s some things you’re not allowed to answer.

David: No, this one is easy to answer. What happened is this; in 1950 the president of Hebrew Union College, Nelson Glueck, who was a preeminent archeologist in the Near East… he was a surface archeologist and walked up and down the Plains of Moab looking for things, as well as the other side of the Jordan River.

Nehemia: Wait, for those that don’t know… in other words, he walked up and down what would today be called the Kingdom of Jordan…

David: Right.

Nehemia: … and the other side of the river was what is today Israel, including the West Bank.

David: Right.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: And when he became president of Hebrew Union College, he decided that Hebrew Union College should create a PhD program that would teach not only Ancient Near Eastern material, but the whole realm of Jewish experience, literature, history, not just to Jews but to non-Jews.

Nehemia: Really?

David: Because if you were a priest or a minister and you wanted to study something about the Talmud, or the Midrash, or codes, or anything in the traditional realm of Jewish study, there was no place for you to go.

Nehemia: By “codes,” you mean legal Halakhic codes?

David: The Halakhic legal codes. And so, he started a PhD program that was geared to non-Jews as well as Jews.

Nehemia: Really? So, are there non-Jews today who study at the Hebrew Union College?

David: I would say probably more than half of the PhD students are not Jewish.

Nehemia: Really? I’m surprised to hear that. I wonder how many non-Christians are studying at Dallas Theological Seminary, which in a sense is the equivalent, I think. It’s like one of the premier seminaries in the Christian World. That’s very interesting, wow. Okay.

David: Well, I have a brother-in-law who teaches Hebrew scriptures at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist, so…

Nehemia: There you go!

David: So, it all depends!

Nehemia: He teaches but would he study there? I don’t know, maybe.

David: Well, he’s Christian, so it’s not a problem.

Nehemia: Oh, he is? So, there you go.

David: So, I have a lot of people who I went to school with who are ministers or who are Catholic academics. I have a friend who… I never know where he is until he sends me an email, “I’m in Japan this year, would you please send me...”

Nehemia: Wow. And what does he do, traveling around the world?

David: He teaches.

Nehemia: He teaches, okay. Wow. So, he’s a Christian who teaches?

David: He’s a Catholic priest.

Nehemia: Oh, wow. Who travels around teaching.

David: His name is Reinhard.

Nehemia: And he studied here at Hebrew Union College?

David: Yes, he got his PhD.

Nehemia: That’s pretty cool. Alright, I was not aware of that.

David: Yes, I know, it’s one of those little secrets.

Nehemia: That’s one of the secrets of the Hebrew Union College. Okay!

David: But now that we have, if you would, second and third generation students… We have a student here in the graduate program who at this year's graduation witnessed his father receive the Graduate Alumni Medal.

Nehemia: Wow! Okay.

David: So, what happens is that people got their degrees here, went off to say, Asbury, or to this seminary or that seminary, and then over time looked for students who they felt could profit from the type of rigorous language-based teaching that we have here. We’re far more interested in the text than we are in theories of interpreting the text.

Nehemia: I love it!

David: So, people from conservative Christian backgrounds don’t feel that they’re going to be in any way challenged on what we might call “matters of faith”. What’s important is, they can read and understand what the Bible says in Hebrew, and in Greek, and in Aramaic.

Nehemia: And that’s actually a really interesting point you’re making. And look, I never went to a Christian seminary. I went to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, so I don’t know. But my experience in dealing with people who come out of Christian seminaries is they spend a lot of time and energy on what they call “systematic theology”, working out whatever theology is all about, and the text is almost secondary. The text serves that purpose sometimes, but it’s not the focus. Whereas Jews tend to be very text focused. I studied Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and we never even talked about theology. We talked about the text, which I think is a very different sort of focus from the Jewish perspective.

David: Though I have a master’s degree in Old Testament from Emory University, and though I took some courses which were sort of joint graduate and theology school, the graduate courses were about text, text criticism, text interpretation.

Nehemia: Right, exactly. Right.

David: And theology was not an issue of graduate study. It was of professional study but not of graduate study.

Nehemia: I see.

David: So, when I came here in 1972… let's see, I registered and took a course in Introduction to Akkadian, and then I also registered for a course in Hittite.

Nehemia: You read Hittite?

David: Well…

Nehemia: You’re a little rusty…

David: Fortunately, it’s written in Old Middle Babylonian, so it’s just like reading the Law of Hammurabi.

Nehemia: Okay, alright!

David: But of course, it’s an Indo-European language.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: It’s totally different. And I took a course in Israelite Institutions, social institutions.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: Marriage, slavery, land ownership, all of that, which is sort of where I ended up. I wrote my master’s thesis on the status of women in the Five Books of Moses, and I expanded that to look at the status of women in Biblical Israel: that’s my dissertation.

Nehemia: Wow.

David: And I also took a history seminar that went for four semesters on the Intertestamental period, but even that focused on text. We looked closely at Ben Sirach…

Nehemia: Right. And you can derive theology from the text, and we did a little bit of that at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the idea of monotheism and of Deutero-Isaiah or something like that. But that’s really secondary to the text itself, which is the focus certainly in my studies, and very interesting. So, tell us about these books.

David: So, we won’t bring out the cuneiform tablet.

Nehemia: Okay, we’ll skip that.

David: The next thing that comes in line, I think many of your listeners will have seen pictures of what we call ostrica; fragments of pottery that have writing on them.

Nehemia: And you have those here at Hebrew Union College?

David: And we have a couple of ostrica, though they’re actually in Israel because that’s where we have the archeology school.

Nehemia: Okay. And are those Hebrew ostrica?

David: Yes. They’re Hebrew ostrica in Paleo Hebrew.

Nehemia: Where are those from?

David: Those come from places like Lakhish. The most famous set of ostrica talks about the appeal by the forces in Lakhish.

Nehemia: Was that excavated by the Hebrew Union College?

David: No, but there are other places that people excavate. Arad for example.

Nehemia: Oh, okay.

David: I think there was some ostrica…

Nehemia: Wait, so there’s the Lakhish ostrica, and then there’s individual ones from various places.

David: And just odd ones that can be variously acquired in the Old City.

Nehemia: I see.

David: Whether they’re legitimate or not is up to others to decide.

Nehemia: And by legitimate, you don’t mean that they’re not real, you mean that maybe they weren’t in a formal archeological excavation. Meaning they’re authentic…

David: They may be authentic, and they may not be authentic.

Nehemia: Oh, so they might not be, okay.

David: It’s always hard to know.

Nehemia: I see.

David: If all of the oil lamps that are sold as authentic were lined up, there would have been no night in ancient Israel!

Nehemia: In other words, there’s a lot of fake antiquity sold in the Old City of Jerusalem, is what you're saying. Okay, interesting.

David: I wouldn’t call them fake.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: I would call them very good replicas.

Nehemia: It’s like the joke, in medieval Christianity the most prized relic was a piece of the true cross.

David: Yes.

Nehemia: The one on which Jesus himself was crucified. And they say if you added up all the pieces of the true cross, there was a forest.

David: Yes.

Nehemia: Because basically you can take any piece of wood and sell it.

David: Of course, we had the famous Tel Dan Inscription, and the college did do the… Avraham Biran was the...

Nehemia: Wait, you guys found that?

David: Yes.

Nehemia: The Tel Dan Inscription?

David: Yeah.

Nehemia: That is pretty cool!

David: We are the ones who excavated Tel Dan.

Nehemia: I didn’t realize that. So that’s on display today at the Israel Museum.

David: Yes.

Nehemia: And it’s important because it mentions “the House of David” from a very early period.

David: Yes.

Nehemia: At a time when some scholars had said that David was a myth, that he didn’t really exist, so it’s very interesting.

David: Right.

Nehemia: But that’s a whole separate discussion. Tell us about the books that you have here!

David: So, what we’re going to look at, we also have some fragments from the Genizah Collection in Cairo.

Nehemia: Yeah. Are we going to get to see those?

David: Well, we can.

Nehemia: Okay. We must!

David: They just tend to be somewhat unimpressive old single pieces and leaves of writing.

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: So, we’ll look at ones that are as old, but a little bit more colorful and comprehensible. Because you can look at a piece of writing, you can read the Hebrew, and you can scratch your head and say, “I can read it, but what does it mean?”

Nehemia: Now I’ve got to bring up another movie reference. There’s this great movie called The Frisco Kid.

David: Right!

Nehemia: About this rabbi who travels across America, and he’s captured by Indians, and they take his Torah scroll. And the Indian leader says before his entire tribe, he holds up the Torah, he says, “I read this whole book!” And he whispers to the rabbi, “I didn’t understand a single word!” So sometimes the Genizah fragments are like that, okay.

David: Yeah. But what we have here is not a complete, but an important piece of an 11th century Masoretic codex. So, it’s a codex because it’s not a scroll.

Nehemia: Right.

David: It’s a book with separately bound leaves.

Nehemia: So, my listeners have heard of the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex. You’re saying this is from the 11th century. So, this is the age of the Leningrad Codex, basically.

David: Yes.

Nehemia: The Leningrad Codex is from 1005…

David: And this is about 50 years later.

Nehemia: Okay, wow. Do we know where it was written?

David: We suppose it to be written in what we would call today Iraq.

Nehemia: Really?

David: And the reason for this supposition is not in some analysis of the handwriting, which could be from many places, but from the art. So, what I have here, this is within certainly 50 years of the earliest illuminated Hebrew Bible.

Nehemia: Can we move this out of the way so I can see?

David: Yeah.

Nehemia: Wow!

David: And here, this is the Song of the Sea.

Nehemia: So, this is from Iraq, from the 10th century…

David: 11th century.

Nehemia: 11th century, sorry. A Masoretic manuscript…

David: And by Masoretic, I mean… here we go, here’s the Song of the Sea in Exodus 15. And Moses Maimonides used how the text was versified and spaced out in his codicology of Hebrew Manuscripts. And what we see here is something that looks like a traditional versification and inserted are various flower shapes…

Nehemia: Oh, wow!

David: … and bars with paisleys. And the scholars who know about these things, which is not me, say that this is an admixture of Byzantine and Persian art. So, I assume the person who looked at the manuscript put his finger on Persia and put his finger on Constantinople, and where they came together was Iraq!

Nehemia: Okay.

David: So, I would assume there must be other exemplars on which to base a less humorous story.

Nehemia: Or probably he sees this motif in Persia, and that one in Constantinople… I mean, who knows.

David: And he may have seen examples in Turkey, Northern Syria, Iraq… like this.

Nehemia: This is very interesting. So, 50 years earlier we have the Leningrad Manuscript, and 75 years or so before that we have the Aleppo Codex, and they have drawings in them, but not actually interspersed in the Biblical text.

David: They’re at the back.

Nehemia: At the back.

David: The Masorah, the “text tradition,” are on carpet pages that are illuminated. But again, there is no representational art. No animals, no people. They are not represented.

Nehemia: Does this have animals and people?

David: No. But it does have illustrative material interspersed within the text.

Nehemia: So, we have flowers, and geometric designs, and… like a rosetta pattern we have here.

David: Right.

Nehemia: This is very interesting because it’s interspersed in the text, and we don’t have that in the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex in the text of the Bible itself.

David: No. This is a later period.

Nehemia: This is very interesting. Can I just look at this for a minute a little closer?

David: Yeah.

Nehemia: Wow! First of all, it’s very beautiful.

David: And of course, this is a Masoretic codex.

Nehemia: Right.

David: So, it has the Masorah Katana, the Masorah Parva with the footnotes.

Nehemia: Right.

David: The little zero here tells you to look to the column for the text tradition note that might tell us something about spelling or how frequently the word is used in the text. Or cautioning you that even though it looks misspelled, that’s the way it’s supposed to be spelled here. All the different things that the Masoretes used to control the transmission of the text. And around the margins, and top and bottom, is the Masorah Gadolah, the more complete description of aspects of the text.

Nehemia: This is very interesting to me. And just for my listeners here who can’t see this… and I’m taking a photo here guys… basically what we have here in this Masoretic manuscript is four sets of symbols on the page: we have consonants, vowels, accents and Masoretic notes. And in addition to that there’s a fifth characteristic here which is these artistic designs, which is something you don’t have in the Aleppo and the Leningrad Codex, at least not in the main body of the text.

David: No.

Nehemia: That’s pretty cool.

David: And because this was intended to be used, if you would, as a Chumash...

Nehemia: In other words, this was used for study, not for public reading of the Torah.

David: It was for study. The Haftarah, the Prophetic portion that goes with the Shirat Ha’Yam is Shirat Devorah.

Nehemia: Okay. So, we have here Exodus 15, which is “The Song of Moses”, and the traditional Prophets portion for that…

David: Is Judges 5.

Nehemia: … is Judges 5, “The Song of Deborah”.

David: And it too is written out in this poetic…

Nehemia: So, is this a continuation of the same page?

David: No, the Torah portion comes to an end…

Nehemia: Oh! So that’s very interesting. So, you have here the Torah portion, and immediately after the Torah portion it says, “Haftarah be’Shoftim” “the Haftarah portion of Shoftim”, or “in Shoftim”. Very interesting.

David: Right. To Parashah Shoftim, which starts off with the discussion of the destruction of the Canaanites, and then goes into “The Song of Deborah and Barak”.

Nehemia: The Song of Deborah. Wow, that’s very cool! So, this was not intended to be a full Tanakh…

David: No. We don’t have the complete text of the whole Torah, but it was intended to be a Chumash with Haftarah. Whether, because we don’t have the end, it also included the Chamesh Megillot as printed texts came to do, I can’t speak to that. Do not touch the text, only the margins.

Nehemia: Sorry, sorry! Only the margins, okay. I got yelled at for touching the text. Alright, and we’re not wearing white gloves. Tell us why we’re not wearing white gloves.

David: There are two schools. Some wear white gloves and some feel you should go wash your hands, because if you wear the white gloves you may end up bending and even tearing the corners when you go to turn the page.

Nehemia: Wow. So, what is the name of this manuscript? If I were to tell people, “I saw…” Is a known manuscript, the Hebrew Union College…

David: Yes. Manuscript 1.

Nehemia: This is Manuscript 1!

David: This is Manuscript 1!

Nehemia: This is HUC Manuscript 1!

David: Right.

Nehemia: Of the Masoretic text, or…

David: Keep your pen far away!

Nehemia: Oh, oh, oh, I was going to write here.

David: It’s like the czar, the blessing of the czar. Keep it far away!

Nehemia: Okay, wow. This is absolutely beautiful.

David: Now, we can look at other parts.

Nehemia: Actually, can you open it up? I want to get a picture of you.

David: Do you want me to get the big book part?

Nehemia: What’s the big book?

David: That’s more of it.

Nehemia: Oh!

David: This is just some pretty pages!

Nehemia: Oh, okay. I didn’t realize that, okay. I thought that’s all you had!

David: No! We’ve got…

Nehemia: Okay, so we were just looking at some unbound pages.

David: Right, that we acquired after we acquired the big bound codex.

Nehemia: And where did you acquire this, if I may ask?

David: See? It’s been partially and badly restored and was thought to be preserved. We acquired it from a private seller in the 1920s.

Nehemia: Wow. What is this material here?

David: It’s a type of preservation material. There have been several different types of gauze and Chinese paper. Someday the donor will come that helps us restore this by taking it apart and putting it back together.

Nehemia: This reminds me of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1950’s. They took scotch tape and taped it in place.

David: Oh, I have a first edition Baumberg Talmud fascicle of five minor tractates where the worm holes and gouges were repaired with scotch tape. It took me three years of Friday afternoons to gently remove the scotch tape.

Nehemia: Wow.

David: And then, eight weeks over the summer for a grandson of one of our professors, to use Q-tips and Goo Gone to get the last…

Nehemia: What’s Goo Gone? “Goo gone”, okay, it gets rid of goo.

David: Right. To get the last of the sticky off the pages so that at least it could be used in class to show people what early printed Talmud looked like.

Nehemia: Wow. So, people meant well but they cause damage. Okay.

David: Yes. So, they used what was available at the time for their preservation of the original. We would call that conservation today. And the preservation would be saving the intellectual content, and if you look very closely, you may find that some of the Haftarot, some of the prophetic readings at the end, are slightly different than the ones we would expect to find today. But even though these readings were put down by rabbis early on, there were different traditions for what to read.

Nehemia: Well, today there are different traditions.

David: Yes.

Nehemia: Meaning, if you go to an Ashkenazic synagogue or a Sephardic synagogue, they will have different traditions. Not for all of them, but for some of them. So here there’s a set of traditions that isn’t Ashkenazic or Sephardic, is what you’re saying?

David: Well, what I’m saying is…

Nehemia: Like, that’s a unique tradition?

David: No. It’s a tradition of the locale and of the time, and we can find different traditions. Until very modern times, people had traditional readings inside the Torah that were not in harmony with what you would find necessarily in an authoritative printed text. But “In Lower Slovovia we know how to read this word. It’s an ancient tradition that comes directly from Moses!”

Nehemia: Slow down! Are you talking about the way a certain word would be read?

David: Yes.

Nehemia: Or are you talking about which sections to read?

David: Which way a word would be read.

Nehemia: Really? Do you have examples of that from the top of your head?

David: I would need to consult a list of them.

Nehemia: Yeah, alright.

David: But we have the lists. The most famous such list is the list put together of Kennicott and de Rasi, where they collated manuscripts in the 18th century. And many of the differences that Kennicott and de Rasi noted in manuscripts… they were already post-Baumburg. They were after the printed Biblia Hebraica, and what they often times reflect is a local custom.

Nehemia: Okay. So, they don’t necessarily go back to an ancient reading tradition.

David: Right.

Nehemia: In fact, not necessarily; they definitely don't.

David: Unless they’re the ancient reading tradition of 37 years ago, yeah.

Nehemia: Okay, got you.

David: Always a problem with the text.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: And it’s the same sort of thing that we can see with micrography. Like, here’s a little parashah marker. So, this is Genesis, and if we come to the end of Genesis, we will find a very traditional Masoretic marking for the end of the book. This is Moses speaking with Pharaoh. So let me see if I can find one at the end of Genesis. I know there’s one at the end of Exodus. No, there’s one at the end of Exodus, where there’s a bar that gives us this sikum pesukim.

Nehemia: The “sum of the verses”.

David: “The sum of the verses”. And those will often include what the middle verse is, what the middle letter is, that sort of information.

Nehemia: How much of the Torah do you have here in this?

David: I would think less than half.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: But precious if it was one leaf.

Nehemia: For sure.

David: So, it was really good that we acquired these about 30 years ago.

Nehemia: And those are… in some respects are in better condition than this.

David: Yes. They had been separated, we think, from the person who sold us this, to sell us for the same price later.

Nehemia: Oh! That’s funny!

David: Like the Sibylline Oracles.

Nehemia: Got it. I didn’t know about the Sibylline Oracles in that respect. What’s that story?

David: The Sibyl brought prophecies of the future of Rome to King Tarquin, one of the last kings of Rome before they became a republic.

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: And demanded a huge price. And Tarquin said, “You’re ridiculous! That’s much too much money.” She took half of them and burned them. And “No, no, no, don’t do that! Okay, how much do you want for the other half?” “The same amount as I wanted for all of them.” “No, you’re crazy, I’ll never!” So, she took half of them and burned them.

Nehemia: Oh wow.

David: Finally, he says, “Okay! I’ll pay you. Give me what survives.”

Nehemia: I’d never heard that. That’s a great story. Wait, let’s go to the beginning of Devarim, here’s Va’etchanan.

David: Let’s see if we actually have the beginning of Devarim here. No, you won’t be surprised when I tell you…

Nehemia: This is already Ba’midbar.

David: … that I don’t page through this too often.

Nehemia: Okay, I can imagine, yeah. So, can we see the Ten Commandments? We just passed it, I think.

David: Okay. We don’t have to have them.

Nehemia: That’s true.

David: No. Because the Ten Commandments are written out in a broken fashion. Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if whoever had this manuscript looted the Ten Commandments out of it.

Nehemia: And those pages might not be in order, is what we’re also seeing.

David: Here’s an interesting thing, whether it’s ketiv or a qere, the tachpanes...

Nehemia: It’s tachpanches probably.

David: And in the margin it’s written the tachpanchik.

Nehemia: Tachpanches.

David: It looks like a Kuf to me.

Nehemia: Okay, so hold on a second.

David: I guess we have much of the Book of Isaiah and Jeremiah here.

Nehemia: Right. Here, this is the Shema, I think. “Ve’hiyah im-shamoa tish’meu el-mitzvoti asher anochi metzavcha etchem hayom.” So, where’s Shema Yisrael? Or is that the second section of the Shema?

David: It’s the second section.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: So, it’s later on.

Nehemia: So, this may not be in order. Here, “Aseret ha’devarim asher diber…”

David: Yes, you’re right!

Nehemia: There it is!

David: There it is. And you’ll notice they broke the line here, because someone must have seen that something was left out. But so many verses begin the same way.

Nehemia: Ooh, this is beautiful.

David: Yeah, this is the Ha'azinu, again another one of the versified portions.

Nehemia: So, it’s specifically these poems where he adds the decorations. It’s not everywhere.

David: Right, no.

Nehemia: Oh, okay! And maybe because you have these extra…

David: Open spaces.

Nehemia: Open spaces, he wants to fill in the void with something beautiful. Wow. Is that gold? Has that been checked?

David: Oh, yes!

Nehemia: It’s actual gold…

David: You can hand-hammer gold so thin …

Nehemia: Oh, so it’s not necessarily valuable.

David: …that 10,000 sheets would be an inch thick.

Nehemia: Oh, okay. So, it’s not the inherent value of the material.

David: No, no.

Nehemia: It’s the decoration. Wow.

David: Here they intentionally included Haftarot for the holidays because here’s the Mincha for Yom Kippur.

Nehemia: Oh, okay!

David: Minchat Ha’Kippur from the Book of Jonah.

Nehemia: And has this been checked to see if these are Iraqi customs, the sections that they read? Why do they say this was made in Iraq? Oh! Because of the art.

David: Because of the art. And because the shapes of the letters match up with other texts that they know from that period, in that place. Here’s an interesting…

Nehemia: Yeah, that’s a qere kativ.

David: But it’s an interesting qere kativ.

Nehemia: It’s a completely different word, yeah.

David: Because what happens is this; the verb is tishachawena, the noun is shegal, and the verb is shagal.

Nehemia: Right.

David: We find shegal appearing in some of the later works as ha’melech ve’ha’shegal, “the king and his consort”. But the only two places where it appears as a verb is here in Deuteronomy and in a book not written too much at a different time, the Book of the Prophet, Habakkuk. It also uses the verb shagal. In both cases it’s corrected, and this is not a qere kativ, this is one of the…

Nehemia: It’s a euphemism.

David: Yeah, but this is of the…

Nehemia: Tikunei soferim?

David: Tikunei soferim.

Nehemia: “Scribal emendations.”

David: Right. Where they’ve amended shagal to shachav. I guess shagal became too much of a slang phrase, and so it was impolite, and they made it as shachav. And it’s interesting because in this place in the Samaritan Pentateuch, it also reads shachav.

Nehemia: Really?

David: Yes.

Nehemia: That’s interesting!

David: So, what we have is a sort of uniform change among speakers of Hebrew in that place and time saying, “Ah, this is not a nice word! How can we read it in synagogue?”

Nehemia: So, this is the word in the Hebrew of the Torah. It means the sex act.

David: To have sexual relations.

Nehemia: Right. And they replaced it, instead of “to have sex with”, to, “to lay with.”

David: Right.

Nehemia: But it’s in the margin that it says, “to lay with”, in the body of the text it still says, “to have sex with”. And you’re saying in the Samaritan text, there’s nothing in the margin. It just says, “to lay with”.

David: Right.

Nehemia: That’s interesting.

David: Yes.

Nehemia: So look, I think most scholars… every scholar would agree that the Jewish version is primary. The Samaritans might not agree. But I think it’s clear why they changed that, and it’s very interesting. That also says something about when the Samaritan text probably was written. Or that that marginal note is really old, is what it really means.

David: The marginal note is very old.

Nehemia: That’s interesting.

David: The tikunei soferim are thought to be very old.

Nehemia: Wow, very interesting. This is amazing. So, this is one of 50 or 60 Masoretic manuscripts in the world.

David: Yeah, I think there are about 50 like this.

Nehemia: Wow. That’s not that many. Meaning, our Hebrew Bible today, the authoritative source for it are these Masoretic manuscripts, of which there are maybe 50 in the world, and you have one here at the Hebrew Union College?

David: Right.

Nehemia: Wow. And this is it.

David: Right. And it’s just not my field of scholarly study, so I’m very happy to defer to others for how they can use it.

Nehemia: Now, has this been photographed and published?

David: It’s been digitized; it hasn’t been published.

Nehemia: Oh, okay.

David: But we’re hoping that someone wants to write an introduction and will publish it.

Nehemia: So, you said it’s been digitized. So, is it on your website?

David: No.

Nehemia: Oh.

David: It’s kept in the digital genizah.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: Waiting to go up.

Nehemia: Which means what? Your computer database here…

David: It’s on a ten-terabyte drive.

Nehemia: Oh, okay.

David: With other such things.

Nehemia: I hope it’s not just on one drive. I hope there’s a backup!

David: Everything is multiple independent arrays of data.

Nehemia: Excellent, wow. Very cool. Wow, that’s amazing. So that’s a Masoretic manuscript.

David: I will show you this because I earlier showed you this, the Rothschild Miscellany, which is in a box binding, and I said only six Hebrew books have survived from antiquity in their box binding.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: And this is one of the six.

Nehemia: This is one of the six.

David: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay. And this isn’t a replica here. This is actually the original!

David: Yes, this is the original.

Nehemia: This is an original. This is one of six in the world, a Hebrew book that’s in a box binding. Wow!

David: Yeah. And this has the highfalutin descriptor of Manuscript 2.

Nehemia: This is Manuscript 2 of the Hebrew Union College!

David: But we all refer to it as the Ibn Musa Bible.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: After the scribe.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: And here it is in its box. And if you open it up, it opens up to something we call a carpet page.

Nehemia: Okay. So, this is the decoration on the front.

David: Right.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: And more decoration, just like we might see at the back of the Leningrad.

Nehemia: Oh, this is beautiful. So, this isn’t paper material, is this? Some sort of leather…

David: This is parchment.

Nehemia: Okay. And does this part come down, or no?

David: Well, this is the clasp.

Nehemia: No, but this piece doesn’t come down?

David: No.

Nehemia: How do you get to the bottom of the book?

David: I’ll show you. Good question.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: We bring in diggers, volunteers from America, and they spend the summer getting to the bottom!

Nehemia: So, when is this codex from?

David: This dates to 1500.

Nehemia: Okay, it’s relatively late. Meaning, it’s actually already after printing began.

David: Yes.

Nehemia: Wait a minute, this is handwritten, or is this a…

David: Oh yes, this is handwritten.

Nehemia: This is a handwritten manuscript after printing began.

David: Yes. I’ll show you other ones.

Nehemia: Okay. Very interesting.

David: And it’s a really beautiful piece. And of course, the pages more towards the center are in even better condition. And you’ll notice they just fold out of the box.

Nehemia: Oh, okay.

David: Because somebody knew what they were doing.

Nehemia: Yeah. Although, to be honest, it’s hard to read in that crevice there.

David: Yes, absolutely.

Nehemia: How did they copy in the… oh, they copied this before they bound it. They must have.

David: Yes, of course. Absolutely.

Nehemia: Because you can’t reach your pen in there. They had to have… okay.

David: Right. And so, we go through here, and at the end there are the Haftarot. We’re looking through that.

Nehemia: So, this is at the end of everything.

David: At the end of everything, just like in your modern go-to-synagogue Bible.

Nehemia: Right.

David: There’s all the readings and all the Haftarot at the end.

Nehemia: And then you flip to the end, as opposed to what we saw before, where it was after each Torah portion.

David: Right.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: So, here’s Yom Rishon shel Sukkot, and here, the Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And now we have the Chamesh Megillot.

Nehemia: Okay, the Five Scrolls.

David: So here begins Kohelet.

Nehemia: Ecclesiastes.

David: Because you need to read those in the Synagogue on Purim, and Passover, and Shavuot, and Tisha Be’Av, and Sukkot, so they belong in here too.

Nehemia: Got it.

David: And then we get to the end, and suddenly we find…

Nehemia: Oh, this is the colophon!

David: And this is the colophon. It’s saying, “I am Samuel the Little.”

Nehemia: That was probably a common name, Samuel the Little.

David: I guess so.

Nehemia: Do you think he was really big, like Little John?

David: I think so, absolutely. And his shammas was Robin Hood. What can we say? And he’s the son of Rav Shmuel Ha’zaken. He’s Ha’katan, his father of course is Ha’zaken. And then something must have happened… this is either a secondary Haftarah for Pinchas or there were some added leaves, and somebody added this here.

Nehemia: So, it’s not part of the original, you’re saying?

David: It’s hard to know.

Nehemia: Okay. Although… wait a minute, this last page is part of the box!

David: And we get to the end, and just like the first page was part of the box…

Nehemia: Oh, wow!

David: … there’s a final carpet page.

Nehemia: I’m going to take a picture of that, please.

David: And this is quite a beautiful piece.

Nehemia: That is a beautiful book!

David: Yes, it is.

Nehemia: Wow. Now, is this style of box books more common for Christian books? Or for Arabic books?

David: It was more common for books, but they were expensive bindings.

Nehemia: Okay. Like you say, only six survived in the world for Hebrew books.

David: There must have been more.

Nehemia: Oh, there were more. Are they common for Latin books, or Greek books?

David: Well, they are certainly more common in the West.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: Okay? They’re common in the West. Now, you’ll notice this binding here.

Nehemia: Oh, wow! Yeah. I mean this is a modern thing with the…

David: It's a perforated tack paperboard that’s acid free, and the closures are made with Velcro.

Nehemia: Velcro, yeah.

David: And many years ago, we had a visit from an important academic individual in an important Saudi Arabian University.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: Brought over by the State Department.

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: And he looked at our library, and he noticed that we had some students working, boxing manuscripts with this make-do system. It’s not very expensive to make these things.

Nehemia: So, this is like a jury-rigged sort of...

David: And it protects them. And he watched us make them and asked about this, and he said, “This is wonderful. I have all sorts of old books, and we could do this!”

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: And I said, “Of course you could.” The next year, the State Department brought librarians from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, and strangely enough, from the Ukraine, to watch us do this.

Nehemia: So, this is something that you developed yourself…

David: Well, I think we probably read it in a “how you do it good” librarian journal, like The Unabashed Librarian, and said, “Gee, we can afford to do this. This will protect our manuscripts.”

Nehemia: Okay.

David: And we passed it on, and when these Muslim librarians came, we were very sure to put out suitable halal treats.

Nehemia: Okay!

David: And they brought it back, and hopefully it’s being used to preserve material in Pakistan, and Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. I don’t know what’s being preserved in Ukraine.

Nehemia: Wow.

David: But I was just happy to share what we can share. We’re not highly sophisticated, but because of that, it reminds me of… I’m of course self-flattering here, a quote from Mark Twain, “The great writers' works are like wine. My works are like water. Everybody drinks water.”

Nehemia: Okay!

David: So, there are great library preservation laboratories, and we send things out that need such attention, but just to add an added layer of protection to something like this.

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: This will do for now. It’s the money that we have. And then, frequently Torah scrolls would reach the end of their usable life.

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: At which point, one would put them away or bury them. And some congregations have chosen to put them away to give them to the College Institute, where they can be consulted for scholarly purposes. So, we can look at different styles of scrolls and how they were written, and sometimes there were unusual letters that are written in the scroll that show different scribal traditions. Most of these were “normatized” in the late 16th and into the 17th century.

Nehemia: Tell us what you mean by “normatized”.

David: The unusual letters, except in some special communities, were all made to look the same.

Nehemia: What do you mean by unusual letters? Give us an example of that.

David: For example…

Nehemia: Do you mean like the large Bet, and the small Vav?

David: No, those are an ancient tradition followed in the West. That tradition is not always followed in the East.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: But, for example, in Leviticus 20 you will find a Pey, a letter Pey, which looks like a Kaf, if you would, something with three sides to it and an open face.

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: And a little line from the top part coming down into the letter, that this descender will have a curlicue. It will go round and round.

Nehemia: So, it’s a Pey with a little spirally?

David: Yes. And I can show you…

Nehemia: And that’s just in one place? In one specific place?

David: That’s the place that you frequently see them, and it’s a curlicue Pey.

Nehemia: A curlicue Pey, okay.

David: And there are other such letters in Torah scrolls. Rabbi Kasher, in Volume 29 of his Torah Sheleima commentary, has a whole book devoted to these. More importantly, footnotes to other books which tell you where they can be found.

Nehemia: Oh, wow.

David: And what they mean.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: So, every so often someone will send a question to the library, “Look what we found in a Torah scroll!” And I’ll be able to look those up in Rabbi Kasher’s book, go to the source he took it from, photocopy or scan a few pages, and send them and say, “Here’s the explanation by a scholar.”

So, I’m just going to pick one book here because I’ve got some other older ones to show, but this is the type of Volume that was likely in a synagogue.

Nehemia: Okay. So, this is a Hebrew manuscript of… what do we have here?

David: 12th to 13th century.

Nehemia: Oh, wow!

David: And it’s on parchment…

Nehemia: Okay.

David: And it’s an incomplete text. It contains the weekly readings according to the Eastern triennial division.

Nehemia: Okay, oh wow.

David: Reading through the Torah in one-third parts over a three-year period.

Nehemia: So, this is the three-year cycle instead of what we commonly do today, the one-year cycle.

David: Right.

Nehemia: Okay. Can I make a really interesting comment here?

David: Yes.

Nehemia: So, the paper that’s been added at the beginning is in worse shape than the original parchment. This is not part of the original, right?

David: Right.

Nehemia: This is part of the binding. So, the paper of the binding is more depleted in some way than the original vellum… is that vellum? The original parchment or leather…

David: Right, it’s parchment.

Nehemia: … of the manuscript. That’s pretty cool. Wow.

David: Yes, it is. And this was clearly… you’ll notice, it’s set up the way you’d see in a Chumash, in a printed Chumash.

Nehemia: Right. So, tell the listeners what you mean by that; how it’s different. In other words, this isn’t a Torah scroll. Is that the part you’re getting at?

David: Right, it’s not a Torah scroll, because what it has is the Hebrew text followed by the Aramaic Targum, not in a separate column but written following. So, Az yashir Moshe is the beginning of The Song of the Sea.

Nehemia: So, this is Exodus 15.

David: So, “Az yashir Moshe becheyn shabach Moshe u’bnei Israel,” and here now it follows in Aramiac. And so, this is the type of work that could’ve been used to study because its tradition, at the very least, to study the weekly portion in Hebrew and in Aramaic.

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: But also, since at this time it’s possible in the East that following upon each verse of the Torah, a meturgeman, “a translator,” would declaim the Aramaic Targum.

Nehemia: I think the Yemenite Jews may still do that. Or they did until recently.

David: Until recently.

Nehemia: In other words, they would read verses from the Torah, and follow it with the Aramaic translation. And this must go back to a time when people spoke Aramaic. Presumably by the time this was written in the 12th, 13th century, they didn’t speak Aramaic, right?

David: Yes.

Nehemia: Okay, so the average Jew may have known the Hebrew better than he understood the translation! If he understood that.

David: Well, I can speak for my grandfather, who was a pious Jew, a Kosher butcher, and he would sit, and he would read the weekly portion, and he would read it in Hebrew.

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: And he would read it in Aramaic, but he, I think, best understood it from the Targum Yehoash, the translation into Yiddish.

Nehemia: Oh!

David: Now, he’d been doing this his whole life.

Nehemia: This is cool! He read it in Hebrew, Aramaic, and then Yiddish?

David: Right.

Nehemia: And Yiddish was his native language.

David: Yes.

Nehemia: Okay, wow, that’s…

David: Though he spoke some Russian, and Polish, and English.

Nehemia: Where was he born?

David: He was born in Ostorov, in Lomza Gubernia.

Nehemia: What country is that today?

David: About 75 miles east and about 25 or so miles north of Warsaw.

Nehemia: Oh, okay.

David: So, I guess it’s in Poland today.

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: Of course, it was part of the Russian Empire when he was born in the 1880s.

Nehemia: Okay, wow. It's interesting that he spoke some Russian and Polish.

David: He did business with the Russian army.

Nehemia: Interesting.

David: If the meat was not Halakhically kosher, but nevertheless fit, he would sell it to the army.

Nehemia: So, was he what would be considered today Orthodox?

David: Oh, yes.

Nehemia: Okay, that’s interesting. You mentioned your grandfather was a shochet, a Kosher butcher, was he a shochet or a butcher?

David: He was a shochet as well as a butcher.

Nehemia: So, he was a ritual slaughterer. This is a controversial topic; I probably shouldn’t ask. But I’ve heard this famous story related to this place where we are right now, or this institution, which is known, and at least the Conservative Jews call it the Trefa Banquet.

David: Yes.

Nehemia: Is that something you can talk about?

David: Sure, why not?

Nehemia: I find that a fascinating story, especially when your grandfather was a shochet.

David: And on my mother’s side, my great-great-grandfather was a sofer.

Nehemia: Oh wow, a scribe!

David: Yes.

Nehemia: Wow! A ritual scribe.

David: Yes.

Nehemia: Back then it just was for ritual purposes.

David: For ritual purposes.

Nehemia: In other words, there was a time when everything that was written was written by a scribe. But then printing came along and scribes were only used for writing special documents, maybe like a marriage contract or something.

David: Just so, or a divorce, which had to be written out correctly.

Nehemia: Okay, alright, excellent. So, we just did this amazing series with this amazing information, and the manuscripts you’ve shown me, and you mentioned after… it always happens after I turn off the recorder, you said people can come here. So, is this open to the public, this facility?

David: This facility is open to the public, and if you are a resident of the tri-state area, you can borrow any of the 300,000 odd books in the public stacks.

Nehemia: What is the tri-state area, for those who don’t live around here?

David: Northern Kentucky, Eastern Indiana, Southern Ohio. But you’re always welcome from wherever, Timbuktu, to come and look at the material in the library.

Nehemia: Now, they can’t come and take out Cairo Genizah fragments but…

David: No, that’s why I said the 325,000 in the open stacks. The Cairo Genizah fragments they can come and look at, though because they are all available online on the Friedberg Genizah Project, they can look at them at home.

Nehemia: Right, right. So, they could see those online. And we’re sitting in this room which has a number of rare books. Can they make an appointment to come and see these rare books?

David: Absolutely.

Nehemia: Okay. And how would they contact you? Through the Hebrew Union College website…

David: They can contact the library. On the website there’s a contact form.

Nehemia: And if there are people, for example, in Los Angeles, or New York, or even Jerusalem, who want to have some interaction with the Hebrew Union College libraries, are those open to the public?

David: They can go and ask to use the library.

Nehemia: And it’s open to the public to use as well…

David: The security in Los Angeles and New York, and also sometimes in Jerusalem, is a little tougher than it is here.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: They may be asked to produce identification. We’re a little bit… because we're here in God's own Eden, in Southern Ohio, we tend to have a smaller, and, I guess some people think, a less threatening group of visitors.

Nehemia: Okay. What kind of visitors come in L.A. that were threatening?

David: I don’t know!

Nehemia: Okay, you’re not there.

David: But I know that three weeks ago, the Imam of the local mosque came, and we gave him a tour. He had a wonderful time.

Nehemia: Okay, wonderful.

David: There’s a mosque right down the street.

Nehemia: Yeah, alright. You mean he came here?

David: Yeah, had a great time. We talked and I showed him all sorts of Arabic materials, a beautiful 13th century Koran.

Nehemia: Oh, wow! You have a 13th Koran here among the other things? Wow, that’s amazing, that’s really cool.

David: Yeah.

Nehemia: Alright, thank you very much!

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