YIDDISH MANUSCRIPTS IN THE BRITISH LIBRARY

More documents

Recommendations

Info

British Museum {now British Library), under the headings ' Belles-lettres: Drama: Judaeo- German' and 'Belles-Lettres: Novels: Judaeo- German', and also the indexes to Van Straalen's unpublished Gatalogue of Hebrew Printers {ca. 1500 ~ ca. igoo) as represented in the holdings of the British Museum [now British Library), index 5: 'Printers of languages other than Hebrew: Jewish languages: Yiddish', listing some forty printers. 5 On the history of the Yiddish language, see Max Weinreich, Geshikhte fun der yidisher shprakh [History of the Yiddish Language], 4 vols. {New York, 1973), and the partial English version which excludes the notes, History of the Yiddish Language, trans. S. Noble and J. A. Fishman (Chicago and London, 1980). Much Yiddish linguistic literature has been recorded in B. Borochov, 'Di Bibliotek funem yidishn filolog: fir hundert yor yidishe shprakh forshung', reprinted in his Shprakh-forshung un literaturgeshikhte, ed. N. Meisel [Mayzel] {Tel Aviv, 1966), pp. 76-136 (a second, unpublished, part of the 'Bibliotek' is said to be preserved in manuscript at the YIVO Institute in New York); K. Habersaat, 'Materialien zur Geschichte der jiddischen Grammatik', Orbis, xi {1962), pp. 352-68; idem, 'Zur Geschichte der jiddischen Grammatik: eine Bibliographische Studie', Zeitschrift fur Deutsche Philologie, lxxxiv {1965), pp. 419-35, and lxxxvi (1966), p. 156; S. Birnbaum, Yiddish: A Survey and a Grammar (Toronto, 1979)1 PP- 309-88 ('Bibliography'); J. G. Bratkowski, Yiddish Linguistics: a Multilingual Bibliography (New York and London, 1988); and D. M. Bunis and A. Sunshine, Yiddish Linguistics: A Glasstfied Bilingual Inde.x of Yiddish Serials and Gollections, igij-ig^S {New York and London, 1994). For surveys of Yiddish linguistic research, see H. P. Althaus, 'Yiddish', in Gurrent Trends in Linguistics, vol. ix (The Hague, 1972), pp. 1345-82, and Dovid Katz, 'On Yiddish, in Yiddish, and for Yiddish: 500 years of Yiddish Scholarship', in M. H. Gelber (ed.). Identity and Ethos: A Festschrift for Sol Liptzin on the Occasion of His 8s th Birthday (New York, 1986), pp. 23-36. The generally accepted view that Yiddish is a variety of High German with significant Slavic and Hebrew-Aramaic components has recently been challenged by Paul Wexler's theory that Yiddish is a Slavic language. 'Judaeo-Sorbian', which has been relexified from High German. See his 'Yiddish-the Fifteenth Slavic Language: A Study of Partial Language Shift from Judeo-Sorbian to German', International Journal of the Sociology of Language, xci {1991), pp. 9-150, and Ms more recent - and more controversial - The Ashkenazic Jews: A Slavo-Turkic People in search of a Jewish Identity {Columbus, Ohio, 1993). 6 The Got fun avrom ('God of Abraham') prayer recited at home by women at the close of the Sabbath is one striking exception, as is indeed the entire tkhines genre, a personal rather than a communal prayer form. The Yiddish sidur {* prayer book'), such as that translated by Joseph ben Yakar (Ichenhausen, 1544), and mahzor {*holiday prayer book'), such as the British Library's Add. MS. 27071, seem to have been primarily for home use. On women's liturgies in Yiddish, see Solomon Freehof, 'Devotional Literature in the Vernacular', GGAR Yearbook, xxxiii (1923), pp. 375-424; Dinse, op. cit., pp. 84-91 and 190-3; Devra Kay, 'An Alternative Prayer Canon for women: the Yiddish Seyder Tkhines', in Julius Carlebach (ed.), Zur Geschichte der jiidischen Frau in Deutschland (Berlin, 1993), pp. 49-96 (with bibliography of editions); and Jennifer Breger, 'Women's Devotional Literature: An Essay in Jewish Bibliography'^ Jewish Book Annual, Hi (New York, 1994-1995), pp. 73-98. On prayer in Yiddish, see David E. Fishman, 'Mikoyekh davenen af yidish: a bintl metodologishe bamerkungen un naye mekoyrim' [' Concerning Prayer in Yiddish: Methodblogical Comments and New Sources'], Yivo Bleter, N.S., i {New York, 1991), pp. 69-92 (in Yiddish); and J. Baumgarten, Introduction a la litterature yiddish ancienne {Paris, 1993), pp. 319-62 {'Prier en langue vulgaire'). 7 See in this respect Lewis Glinert's 'Hebrew- Yiddish Diglossia: Type and Stereotype Implications of the Language of Ganzfried's Kitzur\ International Journal of the Sociology of Language, lxvii {1987), pp. 39-55- On the knowledge of Hebrew in Eastern Europe, cf. S. Stampfer, 'What did it mean to know Hebrew in Eastern Europe.^', in L. Glinert {ed.}, Hebrew in Ashkenaz {Oxford, 1993). 8 An exemplary conversation in Ashkenazic Hebrew between two Yiddish-speaking {!) merchants ('Drittes Gesprach, Zwischen zweyen Handels-Juden') is reproduced in Bibliophilus'
Judischer Sprach-Meister, oder Hebrdisch-Teutsches Worter-Buch (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1742), pp. 92 ff. 9 The entry, 'Manuscripts, Hebrew', by D. S. Loewinger and E. Kupfer, in the Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1972), vol. xi, cols. 899-900, defines 'Hebrew manuscripts' as a 'term which includes religious and secular books, as well as letters and documents written on papyrus, parchment, hides and paper in Hebrew characters, sometimes using them for the writing of languages other than Hebrew, e.g. Aramaic, Yiddish, Ladino, etc' 10 Great twentieth-century Yiddish scholars like Max Erik, Nahum Shtif, Noah Prylucki, Max Weinreich and others were of course interested in and studied Yiddish manuscripts. Cataloguers of major sales catalogues {e.g., Chimen Abramsky), who often remain anonymous, did give expert attention to Yiddish manuscripts, but other than Karl Habersaat, the most important bibliographer of Yiddish manuscripts after Steinschneider, no twentieth-century scholar has made bibliographical study of Yiddish manuscripts his major concern. The philologist Ber Borochov's pioneering bibliographical essay on research on Yiddish was not focused on Yiddish manuscripts, and Chone Shmeruk's survey of Yiddish literature in the Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1972), vol. xvi, cols. 798-833, deals principally with printed works. 11 This has been widely documented. The first modern historian of Yiddish literature, Leo Wiener {himself a trained Slavist), wrote in his The History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Gentury (London, 1899; reprinted New York, 1972), p. 13: 'Even Steinschneider has no love for it; although he has written so much and so well on its literature, he knows nothing of its nineteenth-century development, and nearly all his quotations of Judeo-German words that in any way differ from the German form are preposterously wrong.' Steinschneider's last views are expressed in his Allgememe Einleitung in die judische Literatur des Mittelalters: Vorlesungen... (Amsterdam, 1966; reprinted from Jewish Quarterly Review, xvi [1904], pp. 759-64). 12 Steinschneider's detailed list of Yiddish manuscripts is found in his 'Juedische [lege Juedisch- Deutsche] Litteratur und Juedisch-Deutsch', Serapeum (1864), pp. 33-104, and (1866), pp. 129-40, 145-59 CJuedisch-deutsche Handschriften', nos. 386-451); see also the 'Nachtrage' in (1869), pp. 129-59. This list of manuscripts was unfortunately not included in the reprint of the earlier part {on printed books) ot Juedisch-Deutsche Literatur, which was issued by the Hebrew University {Jerusalem, 1961). It may be noted here that Steinschneider's own hand-annotated copy oi Juedisch-Deutsche Literatur, with extensive additional material not included anywhere else, is held in the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, and is available on microfilm from UMI Microfilms; see A Reel Guide to the Steinschneider Gollection, Reels 1-20, from the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America {Ann Arbor: University Microfilms), reel 13, no. 107 (173 exp.). A copy of this is held in the British Library. 13 B. Weinryb, 'Handschriften. II. Jiddisch', Encyclopaedia Judaica (Berlin, 1931), vol. vii, cols. 944—7 (with bibliography). 14 See Karl (Carlo) Habersaat, 'Beitrage zur Bibliographie der jiidisch-deutschen Handschriften, nebst Nachtrag zu Shunami, Bibliography', Le Muse'on: revue d'e'tudes orientals, liv (Louvain, 1941), pp. 187-95; idem, 'Prolegomena zum Repertorium der Jiddischen Handschriften', Zeitschrift fur deutsche Philologie, lxxxi {1962), pp. 338-48; idem, 'Repertorium der Jiddischen Handschriften', Rivista degli studi orientali, xxix {1954), pp. 53-70; xxx (1955)1 PP- 235-49; and xxxi {1956), pp. 41-9; and idem, 'Beitrag zur Chronologie der datierten jiddischen Handschriften {1307-1619)', Mittetlungen aus dem Arbeitskreis fur Jiddistlk^ ii, no. r8 (1963), pp. 117-18. (A bound volume of photocopies of most of Habersaat's numerous publications, entitled Studies in Yiddish, Hebrew, Judaeo-Spanish and Biblical Bibliography [1933- ig66], is held in the Hebrew Section of the British Library.) M. Lutzki's unpublished Reshime fun yidishe gidrukte sfortm, cited above, apparently included an appendix {'Hesofe i') comprising a union list of Yiddish manuscripts {'algemeyne reshime fun idishe manuskripten'), but this is missing in the reproduction held at the British Library (is it to be found with the original manuscript deposited in the YIVO Institute in New York.''); a second appendix {'Hesofe 2') lists Yiddish manuscripts in Germany and Austria, of which microfilms are held at the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew 99
Page 1 and 2: YIDDISH MANUSCRIPTS IN THE BRITISH
Page 3 and 4: BIBLE AND HOMILETICS The earliest r
Page 5 and 6: no. 1049]), to which attention will
Page 7 and 8: ;^. /. Decorated title-page of the
Page 9 and 10: GRAMMAR AND LEXICOGRAPHY The Gaster
Page 11 and 12: PLATE III Opening of the penitentia
Page 13 and 14: certain importance in the Gaster Co
Page 15 and 16: Horowitz's Shol hameylekh: a biblis
Page 17 and 18: Or. 9999 Gaster ^ Or. ioooo Gaster
Page 19: (ed.), The Field of Yiddish: Studie
Page 23 and 24: succession of Museum and Library cu
Page 25 and 26: thesis. The Hebrew University, Jeru
Page 27 and 28: appears to have been widely perceiv
Page 29 and 30: written either in Hebrew, which peo

YIDDISH MANUSCRIPTS IN THE BRITISH LIBRARY

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?