{"id":58102,"date":"2017-07-13T04:40:17","date_gmt":"2017-07-13T09:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/?p=58102"},"modified":"2017-07-16T06:18:39","modified_gmt":"2017-07-16T11:18:39","slug":"sharing-cultural-treasures-medieval-judaism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/arts-media\/sharing-cultural-treasures-medieval-judaism\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharing Cultural Treasures of Medieval Judaism"},"content":{"rendered":"
Yeshiva University Museum\u2019s exhibition\u00a0500 Years of Treasures from Oxford\u00a0<\/i>includes an extraordinary array of manuscripts and printed books seen in America for the first time.\u00a0 These selections from the Corpus Christi College\u2019s Special Collections, normally kept in a vault and rarely accessible except to researchers, chronicle Corpus Christi College\u2019s pioneering role in the study of scripture, humanities and sciences over the course of five centuries.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"The manuscripts and books date back as far as one thousand years.\u00a0 The Hebrew works contained within these \u201ctreasures\u201d have been called the most important collection of Anglo-Jewish manuscripts in the world.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
The collection of Hebrew manuscripts includes several volumes of books from the Tanach written in both Latin and Hebrew, designed for use by Christian scholars who wanted to study the Bible in its original language.\u00a0 These collaborations between Jewish and Christian scribes were created during the beginning of the 13th<\/sup>\u00a0century, before the expulsion of Jews from England.\u00a0 Three centuries later, with the opening of Corpus Christi College in 1517, these volumes became the core library for students studying the three important Biblical languages:\u00a0 Latin, Greek, and the \u201cthird language\u201d, Hebrew.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
The collection also includes remarkable Hebrew manuscripts originally in use by Jewish communities in Europe, such as a nearly complete Rashi commentary on the Tanach.\u00a0 Rashi\u00a0 and Rambam are the best known Jewish scholars of the Middle Ages, if not of history.\u00a0 Due to the wondrous discovery of the Cairo Geniza, we are blessed to know of \u2013 and some of us to have seen \u2013 manuscripts written by Rambam\u2019s own hand.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Not so with Rashi, as there are no known extant manuscripts that were personally written by him.\u00a0 We have to rely on copies, both handwritten and later printed, created by a chain of Jewish scribes, scholars, and\u00a0 printers over the past 900 years since Rashi\u2019s death in 1106.\u00a0 Due to the frequency and methods with which Rashi\u2019s work was copied, there developed many different versions of his commentaries, containing many possible \u201cerrors\u201d of transmission.\u00a0 If one were to look for the most authentic version of his work, one must search back as close to Rashi\u2019s lifetime as possible.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"Manuscript 165 in the Corpus Christi collection is such a work.\u00a0 It is a nearly complete copy of Rashi\u2019s commentary on the Tanach, likely produced in the country where Rashi himself lived (France), during the late 12th<\/sup>\u00a0century.\u00a0 This would make this book the oldest extant Rashi manuscript, and hence, likely one of the most accurate.\u00a0 Furthermore, for those who associate Rashi the scholar with \u201cRashi script\u201d, the font chosen by 16th<\/sup>\u00a0century Hebrew printers to distinguish Rashi\u2019s words from the Torah or Talmud text on the page, the Corpus Christi manuscript provides additional insight.\u00a0 If it was indeed written shortly after Rashi\u2019s death, in the same part of the world where Rashi lived and taught so many students, perhaps one can imagine that Rashi\u2019s own handwriting bore some resemblance to that which is visible in MS 165.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Another fascinating Hebrew manuscript in the exhibition is a 12th<\/sup>\u00a0century siddur (whose fully digitized contents can be viewed in the gallery) that belonged to a Jew in England.\u00a0 With prayers written in Ashkenazic script according to French custom, the siddur also contains the text of the Passover haggadah.\u00a0 Scholars studying this text have noted the differences in some of the prayers from versions recited today, notably the extended \u201cShfoch Chamatecha\u201d.\u00a0 The hidden prize in this siddur, however, is the list of personal notes of the owner, contained within the fly leaves.\u00a0 The notes are written in Judeo-Arabic, and provide the details of money lent to various important Christians, some of whose names are known to scholars.\u00a0 This is the only extant evidence of Judeo-Arabic written in England during this time.\u00a0 It reveals the poignant story of nomadic Jewish life that finds this Sephardic businessman migrating up through the Iberian Peninsula, acquiring a siddur in France, and finding work in England.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
In addition to the important collection of Hebrew manuscripts,\u00a0500 Years of Treasures from Oxford<\/i>\u00a0also presents\u00a0dazzling illuminated texts, the early origins of English, French, and Italian Renaissance works, as well as\u00a0early printed scientific books exploring the natural and medical worlds \u2013 including contemporary sketches of Galileo\u2019s observations of the moon\u2019s surface and a private letter written by Isaac Newton.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yeshiva University Museum\u2019s exhibition\u00a0500 Years of Treasures from Oxford\u00a0includes an extraordinary array of manuscripts and printed books seen in America for the first time.\u00a0 These selections from the Corpus Christi College\u2019s Special Collections, normally kept in a vault and rarely accessible except to researchers, chronicle Corpus Christi College\u2019s pioneering role in the study of scripture,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133457,"featured_media":58111,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-media","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nSharing Cultural Treasures of Medieval Judaism - OU Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Yeshiva University Museum\u2019s exhibition 500 Years of Treasures from Oxford includes an array of manuscripts & books seen in America for the first time.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/arts-media\/sharing-cultural-treasures-medieval-judaism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sharing Cultural Treasures of Medieval Judaism - 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