10—THE BULLETIN—Thursday, January 13, 1977
CJC Sims FESMH
MONTREAL — For the past number of years, the Canadian Jewish Congress has been supplying matzo meal, wine, oil and other Passover products to the Jews in Cuba. The program is being continued this year and shipping arrangements are being made well in advance in an effort to make sure that the supplies reach their destination in time for the Passover holiday, the CJC announced.
NABATEAN COINS on view at the Israel Museum hi Jemsalem depict the history of the ancient Idngdom hi the Negev, which lasted until conqnered by Rome some 30 years after the destruction of
Jemsalem. Most of the coins, showing kings and queens on one side,
cany inscriptions in Aramaic. ' , „
' (Jemsalem Post
(Continued from Page 1)
giving ranked him among the top UJA leadership in Vancouver.
A former chairman of UJA, Professor Sam Lipson, said of Mr. Miller during the 1960 campaign: "In Morris Miller we have an ardent and effective canvasser who makes the most out of every card. To me he exemplifies the ideal campaign worker who spares neither time nor effort to secure maximum results."
Mr. Miller was a member of the local UJA cabinet for many years, holding the position of a divisional head.
He served as chairman of the State of Israel Bond campaign in 1961 and personally sold more Bonds than had been raised in the entire 1960 campaign. He also chaired the Bond drive in 1962 and 1968.
In 1973 Mr. Miller was appointed Foundation chairman of the Jewish National Fund. It is due to his efforts, consistent interest and generous support that JNF has achieved such notable success in both Canada and Vancouver, spokesmen stated.
He is one of the 100 founders of Hot, a Guardian of the Arava, a Forester medalist of Canada Park, the founder of a kindergarten in Ashdod and the purchaser of thousands of trees over the years.
Mr. Miller's other communal activities include r» Governorship in Vancouver Talmud Torah; Governorship of Boys Town, Jemsalem; scholarships to Hebrew University, Bar Ilan Uni-
versity and the Techhion; a life associate of Hadassah.
In 1957 the UJA awarded Mr. Miller a silver plate in recognition of his service.. JNF of Canada honored him in 1976, naming him a recipient of the Bernard Bloomfield medal, an award which only four other Canadians have received.
As the Negev Dinner honoree, a project will be established in Mr. Miller's name through the .JNF.
Reservations for the Dinner may be made through the JNF office, telephone 266-6012.
HESS
. (Continued from Page 1)
Zionists, Habonim), United Israel Appeal, Keren Kayemeth (Jewish National Fund), Women's International Zionist Organization, Maccabi and Allied Services. The latter includes services with regards to aliyah, education and information, as well as all youth activities, camps and seminars.
The SAZF, serving a population of 120,000 Jews as well as 26,000 Israelis, has provincial offices in Capetown, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Pretoria and Bloemfontein. The Federation also has an office in Tel Aviv staffed by between 30 to 40 people amd Mr. Hess visited Israel at least twice a year to evaluate its operation.
Mr. Hess is married to the former Annette Emdin and the couple have four children, Yvonne 10, Martin 7, Alan 3 and Karen 1.
(Continued from Page 3) an office in Washington. But the next time, the PLO will make certain that the man they select will be untainted, beyond expulsion.
From the PLO's standpoint, a Washington office at this time would certainly be beneficial in its campaiigi to win American support for the establishment of a Palestinian state. State Department officials would be barred from meeting with the PLO representatives here, but congressmen, senators, their aides, journalists and other influential Americans would not.
If the PLO spokesman sent to Washington was effective, could speak in seemingly ' moderate tones and presented the image of an aspiring statesman rather than a terrorist, inroads could probably be made in explaining the PLO cause to the United States. (Some observers here feel that Jiryis could have been effective in Washington.)
American analysts believe that the PLO, weakened badly in Lebanon, its ranks in disarray, has determined that it should now embark on a "peace offensive," designed to win support for its participation at the Geneva conference and the subsequent creation of a new Palestinian state. The meetings in Europe between PLO representatives and leading Israeli "doves" as well as the meeting in Washington between PLO spokesmen and American Jews are seen here as <all part of this organized campaign.
Officially, the U.S. has taken the position that it will not deal with the PLO until the organ-
ization first recognizes Israel's right to exist and accepts Security (Council resolutions 242 and 338 as the basis for an overall Middle East peace settlement. This U.S. stand was again conveyed to Israel recently and it is not likely to change, despite the fact that numerous, low and mid-level U.S. officials would like to see Washington begin dealing with the PLO.
It has been Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's firm conviction during the past several years that the PLO must first give in to the American demands.before the U.S. gives in to the PLO.
Privately, some PLO spokesmen hint that they would settle for the West Bank/Gaza state, and CO-exist next to a Jewish state. During the recent meeting with five Washington Jews, Jiryis reportedly made such an assertion.
The State Department spokesman said the United States does riot maintain "substantive" contracts with the PLO. Many observers here believe that low level and "unofficial" contacts between Anierican diplomats and others stationed in the Arab world and PLO officials regularly take place. But these are not considered "si-ibstantive" by Washington.
Barring a dramatic change by the PLO in its public stand, the U.S. under a Carter Administration will probably retain the present U.S. refusal to recognize the PLO. President-elect Jimmy Carter is on record as opposing negotiations with the organization because it is determined to destroy Israel. (Jerusalem Post)
(Continued from Page 8)
THE FIRST STEP in approaching a tractate is to search out and list every work ever written on that tractate and every reference to the tractate in other known works. This in itself is a massive undertaking, and it has spawned a subsidiary project, a "Talmudical Index," on which a team of the Institute's scholars is working full time. So far, over one million entries have been charted, and Buxbaum says the end is not nearly in sight.
Having ascertained the list of required works, the Institute buys or photocopies those available in print, and circularizes libraries around the world for any believed to exist in manuscript. Often a work is only known by references to it in later works. The original is believed lost - but a diligent search through the Bodleian, the Jewish Theological Seminary or the Hebrew university libraries reveals the original work . in manuscript.
In this way, for example, the "Milhemet Mitzvah", a hitherto little-known commentary by 18th century Sephardi Rabbi Eliezerdi Avilla, has been discovered at a Columbia university library. Almost every page of the "Otzar" volumes on Bava Metzia now contains references to the "Milhemet Mitzvah" and future students of the tractate will find it an indispensable aid.
ONCE THE LIST of sources is compiled, the tractate is divided out among the group of researchers - young rabbinical graduates from the leading yesh-ivot. A meticulous process of collecting, collating, editing and rewriting then follows.
What emerges is a comprehensive Commentary, written in modern Hebrew, on each thought and idea in the original Talmud text and on the Rashi arid Tosaphot notes to the Talmud. The Commentary records every known view or opinion on each subject, every question ever asked, every answer offered, every comment and insight ever committed to paper.
Where a rishon (early commentator) is cited, every effort is made to retain the original text, for fear that editing and paraphrasing might warp the intended meaning. The Spanish 'rishonim' in particular wrote in a clear and readily comprehensible Hebrew. Where there is lack of clarity or prolix style, the source is edited and rewritten by the Institute researcher. The 'aharo-nim' (latterday commentators) are generally rewritten and abridged.
THE COBIMENTARY avoids all duplication by consigning all double references and supporting authorities to the c<H[>ious footnotes. Thus, if two or more authors are found to have had. tiie same idea, the idea is cited in the commentary while the references to the various authors and their works are listed in the footnotes.
For Buxbaum - and indeed for , the intelligent reader too - the beauty of the "Otzar" enterprise is in its constant revelation of the
marvellous consistency of Oral Law study which transcended the centuries and the continents. Rabbis from North Africa ^to Germany, from Greece to Podolia, who had never heard of each other, are discovered to have thought along precisely the same lines, asked the same questions and offered the same answers. On the famous passage of "tokfo cohen" in Bava Metzia, the Institute found 40 authors suggesting the same solution to an obvious connundrum, each probably unaware of the other's efforts.
In a random glance at the Makkot, volume one, I found Rabbi Yitzhak Behor David, an 18th century Salonika sage, and Rabbi Yehoshua Heschel Lvov, a late 18th century German rabbi (and ^ great-grandfather of Karl Marx) asking the same question. (Buxbaum found Lvov's unpublished manuscript "Pnei Levana" a1 the Hebrew university library and published sections of it in the quarterly magazine "Morlah," another publication of the Institute which he edits). Answering the question along similar lines were. Rabbi Yehezekel Landau of Prague (18th century). Rabbi Bamch Frankel-Te'umim of Leipnik (Galicia, died in 1820), Rabbi Jacob Ettlinger of Altona (19th century), and the late Rabbit Moshe Ya'acov Harlap of Jerusalem (died in 1952).
BUXBAUM RECALLS how, when he wa s first planning the "Otzar", a friend had remarked that he would be lucky if he could have "Sinzheim*" "Who's Sinzheim?" he had asked unashamedly. He had -been quite unfamiliar with the monumental work, most of it never published, of one ot the most fascinating of the aharonim, Rabbi Joseph David Sinzheim. president of Napoleon's short-lived "Sanhed-rm" and Chief Rabbi of Paris.
Sinzheim was a man of culture, a man of affairs and a prodigious scholar who set out to achieve single-handed what the Jerusalem Institute's 50 scholars will likely take decades to achieve - an encyclopaedia of Talmudic literature. He called it "Yad David," and published one volume of it in Offenbach in 1798. Other works of novellae and responsa were also only published in part, and
the unpublished manuscripts wer< forgotten until the industrioui Buxbaum decided that, as anothei of its subsidiary projects, thi Jerusalem Institute would reston Sinzheim to his rightful place o honor in Talmudic literature.
The French Jewish leadershi] has been fired by the idea of re yiving the greatness of the Paris ian statesman-rabbi. TheConsis toire and the various Orthodox commuriities in the provincia towns have undertaken to financi the entire Sinzheim project. Las year, the first volume appeared financed by the Strassbourg community. Called "Minhat Ani" it is a collection of learned esisays The delightful engaging Sinzhein explains in the foreword that hi wrote it while in Paris erigagei in public business and lackinj the books and the time needed foi thorough study. It reveals, nevertheless, a breathtaking width o knowledge and an incisive mind
THE "OTZAR" is one of severa encyclopae«Jia projects in Talmudic scholarship now goini ahead in Jerusalem. Another i: the Herzog Institute's "Talmudi< Encyclopaedia," Buxbaum's brother-in-law Meriahem Elori, professor of Jewish law at thd Hebrew university, heads a tean which is collating and systematizing all the responsa literature.
Will the "encyclcHpaedia-era' be a less exciting, less adventurous one for Talmud students' I asked the "Otzar's" editor-in-chief. Rabbi Goldschmidt. Wil the sense of original exploratio! through the ocean of the Talmuc be lost? Has everything there ii to think and write been though and written - and made availabh to the student by such project! as the "Otzar"?
Goldschmidt dismisses this notion. The ready accessibility o: all the extant literature "broadens the student's liorizon," he says without constrictinig the opportunity for independent thinking
He adriiits, though, that the scholarly audience will inevitably become more informed more discerning, more wary oi plagiarism, less prepared tc accept "original thinking" at fac< value. The "Otzar", he says, will separate the sheep from the goats among the writers and yesliiv£ lecturers, encouraging authentic scholarship, research an( originality. (Jerusalem Post]
(Continued from Page 8)
sources, the funds from New York allowed the synagogue builders to begin construction. Siervices downstairs never stop-ed, and other services were held occasionally in the skeleton above, even before the staircases had been laid or electricity was hooked up. Habbi Yehezekel Reich, the venerable spiritual leader of the neighborhood, leads both congregations.
The memories of a number of young soldiers who died in Israel's wars since 1948 are remembered in a display of gold and lights on one wall; among the names is that of Danny Mass, son of the congregation's honorary president Reuben Mass, the pub-
lisher (Daniel fell while leading "the 35"; in the War of Independence.)
Prof. Hillel Blondheim, the chairman of the synagogue committee, told reporters that there is a shortage of synagogue seats even in well-to-do neighborhoods like Talbieh; i^ is much worse in new, puttying immigrant quarters like Ramot, Gilo, Sanhedria Mur-hevet and San Simon.
The. only sad part of the story, besides the closing of the Arverne synagogue, is that none of the congregants who left the New York neighborhood for greener pastures have come on aliyah and become members of "Hatzvi Yisrael."
(Jerusalem Post)