8. A Gallery of Heretics
The manuscript that puzzled Schechter is T-S 10 K 17. It consists of six leaves of paper, 20.7 cm × 15.2 cm. Schechter writes about the find in “Geniza Specimens: The Oldest Collection of Bible Difficulties, by a Jew,” JQR 13/3, 1901. All of Schechter’s descriptions of that text come from the JQR article.
The small book Davidson published after his trip to Cambridge is Saadia’s Polemic against Hiwi al-Balkhi (New York, 1915). Information about Hiwi al-Balkhi comes from that volume as well as from Robert Brody, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture (New Haven, 1998); “Hiwi al-Balkhi,” EJ 8; Judah Rosenthal, Hiwi al-Balkhi: A Comparative Study (Philadelphia, 1949); Henry Malter, Saadia Gaon: His Life and Works (Philadelphia, 1921/1942); E. Fleischer, “A Fragment from Hivi al-Balkhi’s Criticism of the Bible” [Heb], Tarbiz 51, 1982; Avraham Naftali Zvi Roth’s response to Fleischer in Tarbiz 52, 1983; and Haggai Ben-Shammai, Abu Yusef Yaakub al-Kirkisani’s System of Religious Thought [Heb] (dissertation, The Hebrew University, 1968).
The “quasi-Jewish sect” that sought to change the Sabbath to Wednesday was—according to one source—the Ananites (followers of Anan). See Moshe Gil, “The Origins of the Karaites,” in Karaite Judaism, Polliack, ed. For more about Saadia Gaon, see R. Brody, The Geonim and Rav Sa’adya Gaon [Heb] (Jerusalem, 2006), and H. Malter, Saadia. The scrap of Saadia’s reply that Davidson had fished out of the Cambridge pile is T-S 8 J 30. Brody sums up Saadia’s contribution well, noting that his influence on the development of the Jewish medieval tradition is “more comprehensive and profound” than that of any other individual. The quote that begins “transforming almost beyond recognition” is Brody’s, from The Geonim.
Davidson’s misidentification is explained by Fleischer, “Hivi’s Commentary” [Heb]. Davidson also states that Hiwi’s questions were most likely composed in Arabic, but later scholars believed, for a variety of reasons, that they had to have been composed in Hebrew. See Jefim Schirmann, New Hebrew Poems from the Geniza [Heb] (Jerusalem, 1965).
Saadia’s acrostics deployed the letters of the alphabet in a complicated arrangement. See Davidson, Saadia’s Polemic. On Saadia as a payyetan, see Menahem Zulay, The Liturgical Poetry of Saadia Gaon and His School [Heb] (Jerusalem, 1964), and Siddur Rav Saadia Gaon [Heb], I. Davidson, S. Assaf, and B. I. Joel, eds. (Jerusalem, 1941/1985).
God’s placing the other nations in the care of the angels is, as Hiwi sees it, alluded to in Deuteronomy 4:19, which, as a popular medieval reading had it, sets up this contrast between the Jews and non-Jews. See The Legends of the Jews 5, Louis Ginzberg, ed. (Philadelphia, 1925/1953).
Hiwi’s theological position is outlined by Davidson, and by Fleischer, who uses the image of the “ax.” “A whole millennium ahead of his time” is how Stefan Reif summarizes Hiwi’s thought in A Jewish Archive. The report of an “expurgated version” of the Bible is treated by Davidson, Brody, and Fleischer. The image of the scholars working like ants is Fleischer’s, and he is the Jerusalem scholar who, in 1982, discovered a fragment of Hiwi’s text (T-S NS 140.45) at the Geniza Research Institute for Hebrew Poetry.
The phrase “dragging and haggling … Heretic’s Gallery” appears in Ben-Horin, “SS to Judge MS,” Nov. 5, 1901. The italics are ours. See also S. Reif, “The Damascus Document from the Cairo Geniza: Its Discovery, Early Study and Historical Significance,” in The Damascus Document: A Centennial of Discovery, Joseph M. Baumgarten, Esther G. Chazon, and Avital Pinnick, eds. (Leiden, 2000).
Schechter’s “heretic’s gallery” appeared as Documents of Jewish Sectaries (Cambridge, 1910/New York, 1970). For more on the book and its relation to other Jewish heresies, see Kahle, The Cairo Geniza, introduction to the 1959 edition; Brody, The Geonim; and S. A. Poznanski, The Karaite Literary Opponents of Saadiah Gaon (London, 1908).
On the “vital” center and Jewish sectarian movements, see Starr, Catholic Israel; Great Schisms in Jewish History, R. Jospe and S. Wagner, eds. (Denver/New York, 1981); Daniel Lasker, “Rabbanism and Karaism: The Contest for Supremacy,” in the same volume; and Schechter, Documents of Jewish Sectaries, Joseph A. Fitzmyer’s Prolegomenon.
Schechter’s views of Reform Judaism and the relation between Karaism and Reform are discussed in Bentwich, Solomon Schechter; Haggai Ben-Shammai, “The Scholarly Study of Karaism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” in Karaite Judaism, Polliack, ed.; “Abraham Geiger,” Jewish Encyclopedia; and M. Ydit, “Karaite and Reform Liturgy,” CCAR Journal 18/2, 1971.
The Geniza manuscripts of “Fragments of a Zadokite Work” are T-S 10 K 6 and T-S 16.311. Reif notes that Margoliouth had already suggested in 1910 that the Damascus Document was more important than the discovery of Ben Sira. See Reif’s “The Damascus Document from the Cairo Genizah” and Schechter, Jewish Sectaries, Fitzmyer’s Prolegomenon.
On the central figure in the Qumran literature, see J. Baumgarten, “Damascus Document,” in The Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and F. F. Bruce, The Teacher of Righteousness in the Qumran Texts (London, 1957). The term “Teacher of Righteousness” is discussed by Schechter. See also T. Gaster, who, in The Dead Sea Scriptures, calls him “The Right Teacher … not the Teacher of Righteousness.” On the nature of the sect’s distinction, see Philip Davies, “The Judaism(s) of the Damascus Document,” in The Damascus Document: A Centennial of Discovery. The phrase “Make a fence around the Torah” is from The Sayings of the Fathers, I:1, T. Herford, trans. (New York, 1962). Other views of the Damascus Document also emerged, including that of Louis Ginzberg, who felt it was composed by a Pharisaic community, though one much more extreme in its views than mainstream Pharisees. For more on this, see Reif, “Damascus Document,” and Fitzmyer, Prolegomenon.
Schechter’s quotations about the Damascus Document and the Zadokite sect are all from Jewish Sectaries. Schechter dated one of his two manuscripts of this text to the ninth or tenth century and the other to the twelfth or thirteenth century. The text itself dates from the beginning of the first century B.C.E. See Reif, “Damascus Document.”
On Anan’s reform and his commandments, see Moshe Gil, History of Palestine, 634–1099 (New York, 1992); Gil, “The Origins of the Karaites”; D. Lasker, “Rabbanism and Karaism”; Leon Nemoy, Karaite Anthology: Excerpts from the Early Literature (New Haven, 1952); and Abraham Harkavy, “Anan ben David,” Jewish Encyclopedia. Recent scholarship has weighed in convincingly against calling the newly “united” movement a “sect.” See Ben-Shammai, “The Scholarly Study of Karaism,” and Rustow, Heresy, chapter 2.
For more on normative Judaism’s resistance to Anan and the Karaites, see Leon Nemoy, “Al-Kirkisani’s Account of the Jewish Sects,” Hebrew Union College Annual [HUCA] 7, 1930; Gil, “Origins of Karaism”; Rustow, “Karaites Real and Imagined: Three Cases of Jewish Heresy,” Past & Present, no. 197, Nov. 2007; and Brody, The Geonim. The Geniza’s contribution to the study of Karaism is made clear in Gil, “Origins of the Karaites” (and in Meira Polliack’s volume generally), and especially the recent groundbreaking work by Marina Rustow, Heresy.
A “shortened” version of the Haggada can be found, among other places, in The Complete Haggada [Heb], M. Kasher, ed. (Jerusalem, 1961). See also S. Reif, “Variations in the Haggadah Text,” in Genizah Fragments 55, April 2008. Reif notes differences in the wording of the kiddush (the blessing over the wine) in T-S H 2.124, as well as the alternative formulation of the traditional Four Questions (in T-S H 2.152).
Our account of the contents of this “alternative Haggada” is based in large part on David Stern, Chosen: Philadelphia’s Great Hebraica, with E. Cohen, J. Guston, and E. Schrijver (Philadelphia, 2007), and D. Stern, Breaking New Ground: Scholars and Scholarship at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, 1993–2004 (Philadelphia, 2004). See also Ezra Fleischer, “Fragments of Palestinian Prayerbooks from the Geniza” [Heb], Kovetz al yad new series, 13, 1996; and D. Goldschmidt, The Passover Haggada [Heb] (Jerusalem, 1960). For other Haggadot that differ from
standard versions, see also Jay Rovner, “An Early Passover Haggadah according to the Palestinian Rite,” JQR 40/3–4, 2000, and “A New Version of the Eretz Israel Haggadah,” JQR 42/3–4, 2002. In Rovner’s (Palestinian) version (JTS MS 9560), which may in fact be older than the Dropsie text, the appetizers are extensive and the father—rather than the youngest child—recites the Four Questions, which in this case are only two. The distinguished scholar who describes the hors d’oeuvres is David Stern.
The social and historical context of Karaism’s emergence is discussed in Abraham Halkin, “Revolt and Revival in Judeo-Islamic Culture,” in Great Ages and Ideas of the Jewish People, L. Schwartz, ed. (New York, 1956), and, in thorough detail, in Fred Astren, Karaite Judaism and Historical Understanding (Columbia, S.C., 2004).
The discussion of Kumisi, al-Kirkisani, and the evolution of Karaite doctrine is based on Nemoy, Karaite Anthology; Nemoy, “Al-Qirqisani’s Account of the Jewish Sects”; Gil, History of Palestine; “Sadducees,” EJ 14; and L. Schiffman, “Jewish Sectarianism,” in Great Jewish Schisms, Jospe and Wagner, eds. Al-Kirkisani lists seventeen different sects. Cf. Palestinian Talmud, Sanhedrin 29c.
The mention of “fourteen ‘religions’ ” is from Goitein, MS 5: x, C, 4. See also Nemoy, “Elijah Ben Abraham and His Tract against the Rabbanites,” HUCA 51, 1980. Marina Rustow’s Heresy and the Politics of Community has an excellent account of the diversity of Karaite opinion and the movement’s conviction that it alone represented the true Judaism.
On the Karaites and the Masoretes, see Rustow, Heresy, especially chapter 2; Goitein, MS 5: x, C, 4; and G. Khan, “The Contribution of the Karaites to the Study of the Hebrew Language,” in Karaite Judaism, Polliack, ed. See also Rina Drory, Models and Contacts: Arabic Literature and Its Impact on Medieval Jewish Culture (Leiden, 2000), chapters 5 and 6. As Rustow notes, the Karaites may have been influenced by the general trend in the Islamic world, which by the tenth century was experiencing “an explosion of literary production” in fields ranging from the sciences to the arts and humanities and into the world of theology and religious philosophy. She attributes this explosion to both “the exponential growth of speakers of Arabic, and in part … the introduction of paper manufacture to the Near East.” On the intensified study of grammar and the details of linguistic analysis, see G. Khan’s article, above, and Stefan Reif, “A Centennial Assessment of Genizah Studies,” in The Cambridge Genizah Collections: Their Contents and Significance, Stefan C. Reif, ed. (Cambridge, 2002).
The notion of Karaism as “a leavening agent” or productive irritant is from J. Mann, Texts and Studies 2. See also Elinoar Bareket, “Karaite Communities in the Middle East”; Drory, Models and Contacts, chapter 6; and Gil, “Origins of the Karaites.”
Information on the particulars of Karaite ritual observance comes from the following sources: Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, Karaite Marriage Documents from the Cairo Geniza (Leiden, 1998); Rustow, Heresy, chapters 1 and 2; Mann, Texts and Studies 2; and Poznanski, The Karaite Literary Opponents. The coexistence of the two communities is discussed in Goitein, MS 5: x, C, 4; Elinoar Bareket, “Karaite Communities”; Gil, “Origins of Karaism”; and, above all, Rustow, Heresy, introduction and chapters 9 and 10. The scholar who suggests that the Karaite material remained in circulation long after the movement itself died out is Stefan Reif in “The Damascus Document from the Cairo Genizah.”
The relation between the ninth-century discovery of the Qumran scrolls and the Geniza documents in question is described by Kahle in his introduction to the 1959 edition of The Cairo Geniza. The Damascus Document, says Kahle, must have been among the manuscripts taken from the cave at the time; it eventually made its way to Jerusalem, where—by the end of the ninth century—it would have interested the nascent Karaite community. See also J. Baumgarten, “Damascus Document,” Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls; S. Reif, “The Damascus Document,” citing L. Schiffman’s Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The fluidity of communal affiliation in Jewish Fustat is discussed by Rustow in Heresy, especially in the introduction and chapter 1; Goitein, MS 2: v, B, 1; Reif, “The Damascus Document,” and Reif, “The Cairo Geniza,” in Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The correspondence between the scribe from Ramla and the judge from Fustat (“Because of you and your son-in-law”) is T-S 10 J 29.13. It is analyzed by Rustow in Heresy. The judge was none other than Ephraim ben Shemaria, who would go on to head Egypt’s Palestinian community for some fifty-five years. See also Bareket, Fustat on the Nile, and Goitein, MS 2: v, D, 2.
The translation of Yahya and Rayyisa’s ketuba is adapted from the one that appears in Olszowy-Schlanger, Karaite Marriage Documents, as document 56 (Bodl. MS Heb a. 3.42). For the original text, see also Mann, Texts and Studies 2, and, on the text in general, see Rustow, Heresy, chapter 9.
The translation of Toviyya’s letter is (with a few variations) by Rustow, Heresy, chapter 9, which also includes an extensive discussion of Rabbanite-Karaite marriages. That Toviyya’s letter ended up in the Geniza suggests that the wife and/or daughter at some point returned to Judaism, perhaps to take advantage of the charitable organizations that were so active within the Jewish community of Fustat. See also Gil, History of Palestine; Benjamin Outhwaite, “Karaite Epistolary Hebrew: The Letters of Toviyyah ben Moshe,” in Exegesis and Grammar in Medieval Karaite Texts, Geoffrey Khan, ed. (Oxford, 2001); Goitein, MS 5: x, A, 2. Unlike scholars who believe that the mother may have returned to Judaism with her daughter, Gil thinks that she did not convert to Judaism until after the daughter died. Rustow, whose reading we’ve followed, understands the situation differently.
9. Pieces of the Spanish Puzzle
The descriptions of the Geniza at the start of this chapter are by Agnes Lewis and Laura d’Hulst, respectively. Both appear in Rebecca Jefferson’s “The Cairo Genizah Unearthed,” which quotes correspondence from Laura d’Hulst (Dec. 11, 1915, BLR, d. 1084) and Agnes Lewis’s In the Shadow.
On how the Geniza has changed the way we understand the evolution of this poetry, see Fleischer, “Perspectives on Our Early Poetry after One Hundred Years of Studying the Cairo Geniza” [Heb], Madda’ei haYahadut 38, 1998; E. Fleischer, “The Culture of the Jews of Spain and Their Poetry according to the Geniza” [Heb], Pe’amim 41, 1989–90; E. Fleischer, “Early Hebrew Poetry in the Cairo Geniza” [Heb], Deot 25, 2006; and H. Schirmann, “Secular Hebrew Poetry in the Geniza Manuscripts” [Heb], Te’uda 1, 1980.
For more information on the major poets of the period, see Peter Cole, The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950–1492 (Princeton, 2007); H. Schirmann, The History of Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain [Heb]; and H. Schirmann, Hebrew Poetry from Spain and Provence [Heb] (Jerusalem, 1954).
The history of the scholarship around Dunash’s work comes from Leopold Dukes, Nahal kedumim (Hanover, 1873), cited in N. Allony, Dunash ben Labrat, Poems [Heb] (Jerusalem, 1947). Schirmann’s article mentioning the heading is “Poets Contemporary with Moshe Ibn Ezra and Yehuda HaLevi” [Heb], Yediot hamakhon 2, 1936. The manuscript is T-S 8 K 15.8. For more about Dunash (and for translations of the poems discussed here), see Cole, The Dream of the Poem; R. Scheindlin, Wine, Women, & Death: Medieval Hebrew Poems on the Good Life (Philadelphia, 1986); and R. Brann, The Compunctious Poet: Cultural Ambiguity and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain (Baltimore, 1991), especially chapter 2.
Biographical information about Schirmann is drawn, for the most part, from a radio transcript that includes excerpts from interviews with Schirmann himself as well as commentary by Ezra Fleischer and program host Shmuel Haupert—Milim shmenasot legaat, Y. Levtov, ed. (Tel Aviv, 1991). We have also drawn from 2009 interviews with former students and younger colleagues or acquaintances of Schirmann, including Yosef Yahalom, Malachi Beit-Arié, Dvora Bregman, Ada Yardeni, and Ayala Gordon. The poem “Won’t you ask, Zion” appears in Cole, The Dream of the Poem.
On Mendelsohn, see Lili Eylon, “Erich Mendelsohn—Oriental from East Prus
sia,” Architecture Week, Jan. 24, 2001; Paul Goldberger, New York Times, Oct. 30, 1988; A. Cobbers, Mendelsohn (Los Angeles, 2007). Mendelsohn’s description of Palestine comes from his 1940 essay, “Palestine and the World of Tomorrow,” reprinted in Erich Mendelsohn in Palestine, a catalog of a 1994 exhibit at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. While Mendelsohn was utterly independent and in some respects opposed to the rigidity of the Bauhaus and the International Style, he absorbed elements of each approach into his far more dynamic and flexible design, which comprised a unique synthesis of expression and restraint, function, and what he called “a sensual component.”
Schirmann’s relationship with Bialik is described by Dan Almagor, “A Young Scholar Is in the Country” [Heb], Yediot aharonot, Jan. 25, 1980. The Italian anthology is Schirmann, Hebrew Poetry from Italy: A Selection [Heb] (Berlin, 1934).
Schirmann also writes of the heading to the Dunash poem in The History of Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain [Heb]; see also Raymond Scheindlin, Wine, Women, & Death. The ambiguous situation of the poem is discussed in Scheindlin and in Cole, The Dream of the Poem.
The poet who introduced this Arabized use of the gazelle figure is Yitzhak ibn Mar Shaul. See Schirmann, History of Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain [Heb]; Schirmann, New Poems [Heb]; E. Fleischer, “New Findings in the Work of R. Yitzhak Bar Levi (bin Mar Shaul),” in Hebrew Language Studies Presented to Zeev Ben-Haim [Heb], M. Bar Asher, A. Dotan, et al., eds. (Jerusalem, 1983). The poet who first wrote about fleas is Yosef ibn Sahl. See Cole, The Dream of the Poem, and Schirmann, New Poems [Heb]; Schirmann, The History of Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain [Heb]. The poem about the old man caught with the boy is attributed to Yitzhak ibn Ezra. See Cole, The Dream of the Poem; Schirmann, New Poems [Heb]; and Yitzhak ibn Ezra, Poems [Heb], M. Schmelzer, ed. (New York, 1979). Schirmann’s landmark anthology is Schirmann, Hebrew Poetry from Spain and Provence [Heb], four volumes. The 1965 collection of Geniza poems is Schirmann, New Poems from the Geniza [Heb]. His two-volume history is Schirmann, The History of Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain [Heb] and The History of Hebrew Poetry in Christian Spain and Provence [Heb], E. Fleischer, ed. (Jerusalem, 1997). For information on the circumstances of the two-volume manuscript’s discovery, see Fleischer’s preface to the book.
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