When the days are long and people are idle: two sixteenth-century Yiddish translations of Pirkei Avot

ABSTRACT

Pirkei Avot

(Chapters of the Fathers), a tractate of the Mishna containing ethical and moral teachings, is one of the most popular and commonly read works in the Jewish library. Little has been written about the Yiddish translations of Pirkei Avot from the Early Modern period. A comparison of the Yiddish translation in an Italian manuscript penned by the scribe Anshel Levi (completed in 1578/9) and that printed in Cracow around 1590 suggests the existence of an earlier Yiddish tradition that circulated in manuscript or oral form and was adapted by writers/printers in different locations according to their needs.

KEYWORDS:

• Pirkei Avot
• Yiddish literature
• translation
• Old Yiddish
• folk tales
• oral traditions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Shimon Sharvit, “Minhag hakeriya shel Avot beshabat vetoldot haberaytot shenispaḥu la beʽikvotav,” Bar Ilan 13 (5736): 169.

2. Steven J. Weiss, Pirke Avot: A Thesaurus. An Annotated Bibliography of Printed Hebrew Commentaries, 1485–2015 (Los Angeles and Jerusalem: Keter, 2016), v.

3. Scholars trace this custom to the Gaonic period. Some contextualize it within the struggle against the Karaites, while others suggest alternative reasons for it. For a full discussion see Shimon Sharvit, Masekhet Avot ledoroteya: Mahadura mada’it, mevo’ot venispaḥim (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 2004); idem, “Minhag hakeriya shel Avot,” 171–17; idem, Leshona vesignona shel masekhet Avot ledoroteya (Beer Sheva: Ben Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2006); and Daniel Aaron Gloverman, “Moshe kibel tora: Amirat Pirkei Avot uvirkhi nafshi beshabatot besha’at haminḥa bekehilot Ashkenaz,” Kovetz beit Aharon ve’Israel 24/6 (2009): 117–34.

4. Nahem Ilan, “Hakanonizatziya hakefula shel masekhet Avot: Tekst, parshanut ufulmus,” Netuʿim 17 (2011): 57.

5. Ora Schwarzwald has published extensively on the translations of Pirkei Avot into Ladino. See, for example, Ora Schwarzwald, Targumei haladino leFirkei Avot (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1989); eadem, “Sekira shel Pirkei Avot betirgumam leLadino,” Alei sefer 12 (1986): 95–110; and idem, “The Venice 1601 Ladino Translation of ‘Pirke Aboth’,” Folia Linguistica Historica 11/1–2 (1992): 131–45.

6. Both men and women. Indeed, scholars have dispelled the myth of Yiddish as a language of women. The title pages of many Yiddish texts from the Early Modern period explicitly state that they were intended for women and uneducated men: for example, Brantshpigl (1596), Tsene-urene (1616), Lev-tov (1620). For further discussion see Chava Weissler, “‘For Women and for Men Who Are like Women’: The Construction of Gender in Yiddish Devotional Literature,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 5, no. 2 (1989): 7–24.

Likewise, Shlomo Berger, in his article “Yiddish on the Borderline of Modernity – Language and Literature in Early Modern Ashkenazi Culture,” Simon Dubnow Institute Year Book VI: Special Issue: Early Modern Culture and Haskalah (2007): 114, demonstrated that the stereotyped divide between Yiddish as an indicator of low culture and Hebrew as representative of high culture is far from clear cut. See also idem, “The Early Modern Yiddish Book and the Fostering of an Ashkenazi Identity,” Report of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (2007–2008): 29–40.

7. Likewise, Hebrew editions of the work with commentary were published, influenced by the surroundings in which their authors lived. Weiss’s thesaurus of commentaries on Pirkei Avot lists around twenty-eight (depending on the exact date of publication) editions of Pirkei Avot with commentary that were published throughout the Jewish diaspora before the Cracow Yiddish edition discussed herein (c. 1590). As Weiss notes, ‘Interpreting Avot tends to elicit comments reflecting the diverse attitudes and approaches of various authors in various countries and ages toward central themes and ideas in Jewish history…” See Weiss, Pirke Avot, v.

8. Chone Shmeruk, Yiddish Literature in Poland: Historical Studies and Perspectives (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1981) [Hebrew], dates it to after 1587. See p. 101.

9. And, as Israel Zinberg highlights (A History of Jewish Literature, Vol. 7: Old Yiddish Literature from Its Origins to the Haskalah Period, translated and edited by Bernard Martin [New York: KTAV, 1975], p. 97), Yakar ‘himself notes that he used for his edition older translations.’ It is impossible to know whether this applied to the entire prayer book or only parts of it.

10. Yaacov J. Maitlis, An Old Yiddish Midrash to the ‘Chapters of the Fathers’ (Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1979), xii [Hebrew and Yiddish].

11. The printer Yitsḥak ben Aaron of Prostitz arrived in Cracow from Italy (where he learned his trade) in 1569. Over the next six decades, his printing house, later managed by his descendants, printed more than 200 books. For a full history of Jewish printing in Cracow, including biographies of the printers, their assistants, and a bibliography of the printed books, see Ch. B. Friedberg, History of Hebrew Typography in Poland from the Beginning of the Year 1534 and its Development up to Our Days (Tel Aviv, 1950) [Hebrew].

12. See, for example, Shlomo Berger, “A Note on the Opening Sentence of Pirqei Avot in Two Eighteenth-Century Yiddish Editions of the Tract,” Zutot 13/11 (2016): 4–9. Most recently a Yiddish edition with Bartenura’s commentary was published in Bnei Brak in 2011. A special Yiddish version for children was published in New York in the same year.

13. See Chava Turniansky, “Al nashim vesefarim be’et haḥadash hamukdemet,” Lecture given at The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, available at: https://academy.ac.il/SystemFiles/21388.pdf; see also Maitlis, An Old Yiddish Midrash, ixx.

14. For a description of the manuscript see Chava Turniansky and Erkia Timm, Yiddish in Italia (Milano: Associazione Italiana Amici dell’Università di Gerusalemme, 2003), 100–1.

15. Ibid., 96–7.

16. Indeed, Anshel Levi describes himself as ‘the servant of all pious women.’ See Maitlis, An Old Yiddish Midrash, ixx.

Regarding the public reading of texts, Oren Roman notes that ‘the social practice of a lector reading a text aloud to a group of listeners…was for many people their main or only encounter with the written word.’ See: Oren Roman, “Yiddish Texts in Jewish Religion: A Historical Review,” in Rabbinical Literature in Yiddish and Judezmo, eds. David M. Bunis et al. (forthcoming). I am indebted to him for his good advice and for sharing this unpublished paper with me. See also Jean Baumgarten, “Listening, Reading and Understanding: How Jewish Women Read the Yiddish Ethical Literature (Seventeenth to Eighteenth Century),” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 16 no. 2 (2017): 255–70; for a general survey see Irish Parush, Reading Jewish Women: Marginality and Modernization in Nineteenth-Century Eastern European Jewish Society (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2004).

17. Simon Hopkins, “A Fragment of Pirqe Avot in Old Yiddish,” World Congress of Jewish Studies 8,C (1981): 153–7; idem, “Keta geniza shel Pirkei Avot beYidish atika,” Tarbitz 52 no. 3 (1983): 459–67.

18. Jean Baumgarten, Introduction to Old Yiddish Literature, ed. and trans. Jerold C. Frakes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 304.

19. Maitlis, An Old Yiddish Midrash, xxi.

20. Turniansky and Timm, Yiddish in Italia, 100.

21. The original Yiddish orthography has been preserved herein. It should be noted that the orthography in the 1590 and 1616 editions are different. Words in bold appear printed in square Hebrew letters in the original text, as opposed to the remainder of the work, which uses the typeface commonly employed in Yiddish works until the mid to late nineteenth century. For a discussion of Yiddish typefaces see Max Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language, vol. 1, ed. Paul Glasser and trans. Shlomo Noble (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), A264n7.11.2. Quotations from Anshel Levi’s manuscript are based on Maitlis’ critical edition. Characteristically of premodern Yiddish works, the orthography is not consistent. Indeed, sometimes the same word appears with different spellings on one page. All translations, unless otherwise stated, are my own.

22. This is clearly a marketing device, encouraging prospective readers to buy the book because it offers them something new. However, this also reflects a certain degree of truth. It could be argued that the versions of the text found in Anshel Levi’s manuscript and the Cracow edition, with their many digressions and exempla, are a result of a process of de-canonization: outside the context of the prayer book, it was possible to exercise greater freedom in adding to the text, changing it, and interweaving stories. Such a theory is supported by the fact that the manuscript Can. Or. 12 includes extensive sections from the prayer book, while both the Cracow edition and Anshel Levi’s manuscript provide the reader with versions of Pirkei Avot isolated from the remainder of the prayer rite (although, of course, it is impossible to rule out their use in some kind of ritual setting).

23. On the language of Anshel Levi’s translation see Maitlis, An Old Yiddish Midrash, xv ff. Old Yiddish translations of the bible as a rule translated every word of the source text, even when the Hebrew word itself was understood by Yiddish-speakers and was part of the established loshn-koydesh (Hebrew-Aramaic) component of the Yiddish language, replacing it with a German word. The only exceptions were German words with Christian connotations. Other works translated from Hebrew into Yiddish applied this rule. For further discussion see Chone Shmeruk, Yiddish Literature: Aspects of its History (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1978), 125–7 [Hebrew]. Neither of the works examined herein avoids loshn-koydesh words, as is evident in the quotations. However, the manuscript contains far more Hebrew-Aramaic words than the printed edition.

24. Bartenura’s commentary was first printed in Venice in 1548. For a discussion of the use of Bartenura’s commentary in Anshel Levi’s manuscript, see Maitlis, An Old Yiddish Midrash, xx ff, and the footnotes throughout the text. Bartenura’s commentary was known in Cracow by the time that the Cracow edition was printed, as is evidenced by the Hebrew work known as Minḥa ḥadasha, a commentary on Pirkei Avot, which was printed in Cracow by Yitsḥak ben Aaron of Prostitz in 1576. This work, penned by Rabbi Yehiel Mikhl of Ropczyce, draws on ten commentaries, including Bartenura. See Weiss, Pirke Avot, 3. Thus, if the printer utilized Anshel Levi’s manuscript as his basis, there is no apparent reason for him to have removed Bartenura’s commentary. Rather, it seems that the addition of insights from Bartenura to the existing Yiddish translation tradition was an innovation by Anshel Levi.

25. See note 11 above.

26. The original is unpaginated.

27. The same reasoning appears also in Minḥa ḥadasha, printed in Cracow in 1576. Sephardic sources prescribe the reading of Pirkei Avot in the summer months due to the warm climate and its ill effects. See Sharvit, “Minhag hakeriya shel Avot.” He likewise suggests that the period of the harvest and material abundance may have been a suitable time to encourage people to meditate on the mitzvot and their moral behaviour.

28. This tale appears in a number of other Hebrew and Yiddish works, among them the Mayse bukh (Basel, 1602; tale 214 in the English edition published by Moses Gaster, Ma’aseh Book: Book of Jewish Tales and Legends [Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1934]). For a full discussion of sources and comparative folklore traditions see Maitlis, An Old Yiddish Midrash, 3, note for line 15.

29. See Moses Gaster, The Exempla of the Rabbis (New York: KTAV, 1968), xix.

30. Noga Rubin, “Stories in Ethical Books: What, How, Why?” https://www.academia.edu/464300/Sefer_Lev_Tov_Prague_1620_The_First_Edition_of_the_Book

31. Max Erik, Di geshikhte fun der yidisher literatur: Fun di elteste tsaytn biz der hoskole-tekufe (Warsaw: Kultur-lige, 1928), 258.

32. Rubin, “Stories in Ethical Books: What, How, Why?”

33. For more information on the sources of the tales, see Maitlis, An Old Yiddish Midrash. Maitlis lists the stories on pp. xxxvii–ixl and discusses their details in footnotes to the text. Sources are only discussed herein as necessary.

34. Maitlis does not note a source for this story. It is BT Mo'ed Katan 23a.

35. Maitlis does not list this as one of the ‘stories’ in Anshel Levi’s manuscript, although it is not clear why he chose to omit it. Perhaps he regarded it as too brief and undeveloped in comparison to other stories in the manuscript. At any rate, I include it here as a story that offers biographical information concerning a sage.

36. It may be possible to posit reasons for this, although they are merely conjecture. Anshel Levi may have added such tales into his manuscript to enrich it. Alternatively, the printer in Cracow may have removed them.

37. All translations of Pirkei Avot are from Irving Greenberg, Sage Advice: Pirkei Avot with Translation and Commentary by Irving (Yitz) Greenberg (Jerusalem: Maggid, 2016).

38. See Maitlis, An Old Yiddish Midrash, 53 for a discussion of the sources of this story.

39. Ibid., 32, note to line 19.

40. Ibid., 91, note to line 13.

41. Ibid., 18, note to line 12.

42. According to the manuscript published by Solomon Buber (Vienna, 1894).

43. Translation: Tanakh (Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Society, 1917).

44. This appears to be a mistake in the translation, because the Mishna explicitly refers to receiving no reward in this life.

45. An innovation reflecting contemporary conventions and aspirations rather than the meaning of the Mishna. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for bringing this to my attention.

46. Maitlis, An Old Yiddish Midrash, 50, note to line 17.

47. Hopkins, “A Fragment of ‘Pirqe Avot’ in Old Yiddish,” 154.

48. See Maitlis, An Old Yiddish Midrash, 57, note to line 10.

49. For further discussion of the sources of this concept see Maitlis, An Old Yiddish Midrash, 29, note to line 9.

50. On saying prayers in Yiddish see, for example, Shlomo Berger, Producing Redemption in Amsterdam: Early Modern Yiddish Books in Paratextual Perspective (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013), 41 ff.

51. See note 20 above.

52. For example, the versions discussed by Berger in his article “A Note on the Opening Sentence of Pirqei Avot in Two Eighteenth-Century Yiddish Editions of the Tract.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rebecca Wolpe

Rebecca Wolpe has an MA and PhD in Yiddish literature from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Today she is a research fellow in the group ‘From Kraków to Lemberg,’ based at Tel Aviv University, which is supported by Jewish Galicia and Bukovina (JGB), a non-profit organization dedicated to the documentation, preservation, and educational dissemination of the history and rich cultural heritage of the Jewish communities of Galicia and Bukovina.