Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Moshe Shulman <mshulman AT ix.netcom.com>]

At 10:11 AM 5/16/99 -0700, you wrote:
>Let me posit a question....if the library of a modern day chasidic shul
were found in
>2,000 years, what conclusions would you draw based on the fact that:
>-Most works were in Hebrew, although it varies from 'Classical' (Biblical)
through
>Mishnaic, Medieval, and Rabbinic, but little modern Hebrew is to be found;
>-Many works included Aramaic along side the Hebrew or Yiddish (like the
Mikraot
>Gedalot for both Torah and NaKh; the Talmud, and Midrashim);
>-Several works were entirely or largley in Yiddish (some editions of the
Mikraot
>Gedalot, the Mishnah Berurah, and other classics of Eastern European Jewry);
>-and no works were in English.
>That about sums up the Skulyner shul in Williamsburg (on Keap Street).  No
one speaks
>Hebrew or Aramaic as a daily language, although some do have the ability
speak modern
>Hebrew (the langauge isn't used much outside of Israel in the chasidic
with which I'm
>familiar); most speak Yiddish as their first language.  English is
commonly spoken for
>business purposes (yet the only evidence might be on the reverse of the
title page:
>"Printed by Gross Brothers Inc.").
>My point, in case you missed it, is that it is probably difficult to
determine the
>exact nature of the language based on a library which includes texts
hundreds (in the
>case of Qumran) or thousands (in the case of Williamsburg) of years old.
We can
>determine the languages in which they studied, all else is probably pure
speculation.

This is point is quite important. In Williamsberg the main language is
Yiddish, and some Hungarian. No one looking at a library would know that.
Likewise the composition of the library does not tell the importance of the
works. For example there are probably many less full texts of the talmud
then of the Tenach. And similarly the Shulchan Aruch. Yet the talmud and
Shulchan Aruch would be more important and more used then the Tenach, for
some practical reasons. I think this is a major problem of methodology.
Without a knowledge of the sociological situation one cannot just examine a
text and decide what the people were believing.


Moshe Shulman mshulman AT ix.netcom.com    718-436-7705
http://www.chassidus.net                Chassidus Website