NYPL, Dorot Jewish Division Sefer Beriah by Nathan the Prophet of Gaza (MS, Ottoman empire, c. 1700).

NYPL, Dorot Jewish Division Sefer Nitsahon by Yom Tov Lipmann Muelhausen (MS, Central Europe, 17th century).

Hebrew manuscripts can teach us a great deal about the reading and study habits of each generation in the various Jewish communities and about the authority and popularity of certain works. Of course, they are equally important because they often preserve significant unpublished religious, literary, historical, philosophical, and scientific texts. Furthermore, manuscripts may serve as objects of study in themselves, as artifacts and physical remnants of the culture in which they were created. As such, manuscripts teach us about Hebrew scribal traditions, book manufacturing, and aesthetic tastes, as well as offering genealogical and biographical facts concerning the scribes and owners by whom and for whom they were written.

NYPL, Dorot Jewish Division Padua Ashkenazi Mahzor festival prayer book (MS, Germany, 14th century).

NYPL, Manuscripts and Archives Division Samaritan Hebrew Bible (MS, Nablus, 1232).

NYPL, Dorot Jewish Division Tikun Midot ha-Nefesh by Solomon ibn Gabirol (MS, Bologna, 1546-7).

	Thinking Point
	Hebrew manuscripts reveal a great deal about the attitudes of Jewish communities towards religion, literature and education in the Middle Ages. Name three other aspects of medieval Jewish culture that Hebrew manuscripts can help us to understand.

Our principal and primary access to the study of Hebrew manuscripts is provided by the numerous catalogs of public and private collections of Hebrew manuscripts to be found in Europe, Israel, and America. These catalogs are listed in Benjamin Richler's invaluable Guide to Hebrew Manuscript Collections (1994). Important older bibliographic resources include Shlomo Shunami's Bibliography of Jewish Bibliographies (1965 and supplement in 1975) and Aron Freimann's Union Catalog of Hebrew Manuscripts and Their Location (volume 1, 1973). Needless to say, the quality of the various catalogs is uneven; some are extremely careful, detailed, and scholarly, while others display opposite characteristics.

The pioneering project of the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts (jnul.huji.ac.il/imhm/imhm.htm) at the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem was initiated in 1950 by David Ben-Gurion and has as its goal "to systematically collect microfilms of Hebrew manuscripts scattered in libraries and collections throughout the world, catalogue the manuscripts and make them available to readers who come to the Institute." This goal has been substantially achieved, and at present film of around 70,000 Hebrew manuscripts and countless fragments are at the service of Jewish scholarship.

Despite this progress, there is still no comprehensive textbook that provides solid, up-to-date information on Hebrew manuscripts and the various aspects of their study. There remains, however, Moritz Steinschneider's Vorlesungen über die Kunde hebräischer Handschriften (1897; with supplementary notes by A.M. Habermann and in a Hebrew translation, 1965), and in English there is Benjamin Richler's fine introduction, Hebrew Manuscripts: A Treasured Legacy (1990).

For one albeit extremely significant area of Hebrew manuscript study, we have now at our disposal the fundamental work by Malachi Beit-Arié, one of the authors of this seminar, Hebrew Codicology (1976; second edition, 1981). Thanks to Beit-Arié's book we are able to supply some statistical information on the early centuries of medieval Hebrew manuscripts.

The oldest known dated Hebrew manuscript was written in Tiberias, in 895 CE, and it contains a portion of the Bible. Although there are undated fragments that may be older, their existence does not alter the basic situation, which is that there is a huge gap of centuries separating the Dead Sea Scrolls from the appearance of the earliest medieval Hebrew manuscripts. The rabbinic inclination against writing down rabbinic and liturgical texts may partially explain this phenomenon, but it does not explain the lack of surviving copies of the Bible from that period.

Even after the ninth century, Hebrew manuscripts remain very scarce. In Beit-Arié's words: "Of some 2,700 extant dated Hebrew manuscripts until 1540, 6 dated codices from the tenth century, 8 from the eleventh century and 22 from the twelfth century are known to us" (Hebrew Codicology, p. 11). These figures are in sharp contrast with the large number of Latin and Greek manuscripts that are extant from the fifth century onward.

Some change in this respect may be expected once the approximately 200,000 fragments of the Cairo Geniza are thoroughly researched. The Cairo Geniza, a treasure trove of manuscript leaves written in Hebrew characters, was discovered in an old synagogue in Fostat, near Cairo, toward the end of the nineteenth century. The Geniza owes its existence to the traditionally respectful attitude of Jews toward the written Hebrew word, even after the book or document that carries the Hebrew script has become worn out or otherwise outlived its usefulness. The contents of the Geniza represent the literary as well as economic and social creativity and activity of the Jewish community in the Mediterranean era, covering a period of many centuries. The Geniza fragments are now scattered in the libraries of the world, the largest collection of them being held by Cambridge University Library in England. Despite the great advances in Geniza research, there is still hope that further systematic study will shed light on Hebrew manuscript scholarship, especially in the earlier medieval period.

If we now turn our attention to the broad subject areas within collections of Hebrew manuscripts, we arrive at widely varying situations.

The Hebrew Bible and its commentaries

	Ready Reference
	Masora Hebrew language Arabic languages Aramaic The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia.

First, let us look at manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible. There are extant hundreds, if not thousands, of medieval and later Hebrew Bible manuscripts. Given the care taken with the transmission of a sacred text, one expects and finds few significant textual variants among them. On the other hand, these manuscripts have great scholarly importance for the study of Hebrew orthography, pronunciation, systems of vocalization of Hebrew, cantillation, and the entire range of the so-called masoretic literature that deals with scribal instructions and the rules for the transmission of the text. Some Bible codices, especially the older ones, were considered in their time as models by scribes who used them for copying other Bibles with as much care and exactitude as possible. That some of the manuscripts are richly illuminated adds to their significance. The reproduction in facsimile editions of some of the finest codices, for example, the Aleppo, Damascus and Kennicott bibles, allows even the nonspecialist to enjoy the beauty and antiquity of these monuments of the Jewish heritage.

Arabic and Aramaic as well as other versions of the Hebrew Bible are found in large numbers among Hebrew manuscripts. These reflect local traditions and serve as research materials for linguists and historians of Bible exegesis.

Works of Bible commentators of all ages are richly represented in this group. They may be divided into two categories: copies of classic commentaries that are also found in many printed editions, such as the works of Rashi, Abraham Ibn Ezra and Namanides, and texts that are preserved only in manuscripts. In both categories one may discover important elements for the critical understanding of the long history of Jewish Bible interpretation.

	Ready Reference
	Rashi Ibn Ezra, Abraham ben Meir The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia.

Let us look at two works as examples: the Pentateuch (first five books of the Bible) commentary of Rashi and that of his grandson, Samuel ben Meir (the Rashbam). Rashi's commentary has been the staple of elementary education for Jewish children throughout the centuries and it has also been an extremely popular text for lay adults. As a result, throughout the Jewish diaspora, in the east and in the west, in Spain and in Germany, in Yemen and in Italy, numerous manuscripts of this beloved work were written, containing local variants. Although attempts have been made to collate large numbers of manuscripts and printed editions in order to present the scholar with the various traditions of the Rashi text, the classification of all available manuscripts according to families of tradition is still a desideratum. Accordingly, here it is not so much individual manuscripts, but rather the totality of all the sources, that are valuable for their contribution to an understanding of the history of the transmission of this standard text.

On the other hand, if someone were to discover in our day a hitherto unknown manuscript of the Pentateuch commentary by Samuel ben Meir, high expectations would arise, for the commentary by Rashi's grandson is available in only a very few manuscripts, some poorly preserved. Thus, any new material would be eagerly explored for a better understanding of and insights into the mind of the commentator who, in contrast to most medieval Jewish Bible exegetes, radically adhered to the so-called simple meaning of the Bible. It is interesting to note that the first edition of this work was not published until 1705, when the greatest Jewish bibliophile of all time, Rabbi David Oppenheim, printed it on the basis of a defective manuscript that he had discovered in the geniza of the synagogue of Worms. The fates of these two works could serve as models for the evaluation of the intellectual and perhaps even religious preferences and tastes of generations of Jewish students and readers.

The Talmud and its commentaries
When we turn to manuscripts of the Talmud we find that they are of utmost scarcity. The medieval Church regarded the Talmud as the source and symbol of what it considered to be the perfidy of the Jews. As a result, the Talmud became a constant target and victim of persecution, defamation, censorship, confiscation, and bookburning. The relationship between the number of surviving copies of the Talmud and that of the Bible can best be illustrated by pointing out that in the catalog of the outstanding collection of Hebrew manuscripts at the British Library are listed 161 manuscripts of the Bible and its translations, while the collection includes only 5 fragmentary Talmud manuscripts. At the Bibliothèque Nationale de France the ratio is 132 to 0.

	Ready Reference
	Midrash Talmud Halakah The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia.

The situation is not as bleak in the field of commentaries to the Talmud, Midrashim, halakhic codes and responsa. These works, although related to and dependent on the Talmud, survived in large numbers of manuscripts, and their study yields valuable insights in many areas of Jewish studies. Some highly important texts have been discovered and published only relatively recently, for example, the now popular commentary to the Talmud by Menahem Meiri (Provence, thirteenth century) which was edited for the first time on the basis of manuscripts at the Palatine Library in Parma. The large number of extant manuscripts of the halakhic codes Sefer Mitsvot Gadol (SeMaG) by Moses of Coucy (France, thirteenth century) and of the Sefer Mitsvot Katan (SeMaK) by Isaac of Corbeil (late thirteenth century) indicate that these works were much more popular in the Middle Ages than in later times, when the Shulan ‘Arukh, the authoritative code by Joseph Caro (sixteenth century), began to be published in an almost unending stream of printed editions. Because the first edition of the Shulan ‘Arukh was printed in 1564-65, in the lifetime of its author, any manuscript of the work, except for a most unlikely autograph, would be almost redundant and of little significance. Unpublished responsa manuscripts, in contrast, are frequently of great usefulness for not only the halakhic but also the historical materials they contain.

The intensive institutional and individual efforts that are being diligently devoted to the publication of rabbinic texts from manuscripts contribute significantly to our understanding of personalities and trends in the history of rabbinic literature.

Liturgy
Liturgical manuscripts are perhaps the most colorful representatives of Hebrew manuscripts. In the words of Hebrew literature scholar Shalom Spiegel,

the standard prayers, the oldest nucleus of the liturgy, always and everywhere became the center of Jewish worship, a bond of union despite geographic dispersal ... [while] new compositions, called piyyut, or poetry, constitute ... an ever changing and restless element in the Jewish liturgy. (The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion, ed. L. Finkelstein, 3rd ed., 1960, p. 866)

Liturgical instructions, frequently in the vernacular--Judeo-French, Judeo-Greek, Judeo-Persian, and, of course, Judeo-Arabic, Yiddish, and Ladino--offer rich research opportunities for linguists and for historians of liturgy. In this group we are also blessed with many beautifully illuminated and decorated codices, as lavish Haggadah and prayerbook manuscripts demonstrate. Prayerbooks of smaller communities often remained in manuscript and accordingly are our only source for their particular liturgy. This was the case with the rite of the small communities of Asti, Fossano, and Moncalvo of Northern Italy (usually referred to by the acronym APAM) of which there are many fine manuscripts but no printed editions.

Philosophy and theology

	Ready Reference
	Averroës Maimonides The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia.

While liturgical manuscripts display great variety, mainly dictated by the geographic dispersal of the Jews, manuscripts in Jewish thought, philosophy, ethics, mysticism, and homiletics reflect the vast differences of interest conditioned by the changing intellectual preoccupation among the Jews during their long history. In the Middle Ages, up to approximately the fifteenth century, the works of Aristotle, accompanied by the commentaries of Averroës, in Hebrew translation, dominated the field. Large collections of these works are preserved on the shelves of the great libraries of the world, and they are studied for what they contribute to the general, not only Jewish, history of medieval philosophy. The classic works of Jewish philosophers and ethicists, Bahya, Maimonides, Albo, and others, are available in many manuscripts. Interestingly, some codices containing Maimonides' Guide to the Perplexed are richly illuminated, for example, the Copenhagen Codex.

NYPL, Dorot Jewish Division Sefer Emunot, the Book of Beliefs, by Shem Tov ibn Shem Tov (MS, Italy, 15th-16th century).

NYPL, Dorot Jewish Division Sefer ha-Tapuah attributed to Aristotle (MS, Bologna, 1546-7).

Toward the fourteenth century, manuscripts containing mystical works began to appear. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries produced more and more manuscripts in this field. The majority of these texts of the Kabbalah remained in manuscript form until recent centuries. There was reluctance among the leaders of the Jewish community to allow wide circulation for esoteric, mystical writings and, accordingly, many kabbalistic works were copied only privately. The popular Ets ayyim by the famous sixteenth-century kabbalist ayyim Vital was not printed until the end of the eighteenth century, when many handwritten copies of it were produced in Europe and in North Africa.

It should be pointed out that there were other reasons as well for the continued use of handwritten books at a time when printing was widespread. In distant places, Yemen for example, the art of printing was never practiced and the rich and ancient literature of Yemenite Jews was transmitted in manuscript form from generation to generation. This explains why, among Yemenite manuscripts, there are many of late vintage, some even from the twentieth century. When such manuscripts contain standard texts their significance for scholarship or even as collectors' items is minimal. On the other hand, they often preserve older traditions. Only individual examination will determine a given manuscript's importance, if any.

	Ready Reference
	Kabbalah The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia.

Alongside well-known works of Jewish philosophy and ethics, one finds many manuscript collections of homiletical materials. These must be judged individually and considered frequently as no more than private notebooks. Works on medicine and the sciences, especially astronomy, a subject which was important beyond its intrinsic merit for calendar calculation, are common among the older libraries of Hebrew manuscripts. These include the works of Greek, Latin, and Arabic physicians, mathematicians, and scientists in Hebrew translation. As in philosophy, Jews played a prominent role in the Middle Ages as translators of the classical and Arabic scientific heritage; thanks to their activity, works by Galen, Hippocrates, Euclid, Ptolemy, Avicenna, and others are preserved in Hebrew versions. Toward the beginning of modern times these works became all but obsolete and were rarely copied or reprinted; historians of the sciences must therefore rely mainly on medieval manuscripts.

Manuscripts also contain diverse materials of a belletristic nature. Poems, both secular and religious, stories, folktales, dramatic works, parodies etc., in Hebrew, or in the vernacular but in Hebrew characters, constitute a large segment of Hebrew manuscript collections, especially those assembled more recently. Many of these works were intended for private or local use, and the works of even famous poets were rarely collected in complete manuscripts and survive in fragmentary sources, often only among the leaves of the Cairo Geniza.

	Discussion
	Many texts of Kabbalah remained in manuscript form until recent centuries. What effects do you think the continued use of the handwritten copies has had on the development of Kabbalah? How might the earlier introduction of printed books have impacted both writings themselves and their reception by the Jewish community?

There are, of course, other groups of manuscripts of great importance. The manuscripts of the Karaites, a Jewish schismatic sect; some older ones in a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic characters; Hebrew dictionaries and grammars; polemical works that were composed for the frequent disputations between Jews and Christians or Muslims, all provide materials for the interested scholar. Manuscripts of the record books of the various Jewish communities and societies, containing minutes, by-laws, and personal and financial records, were by nature intended for local use and were preserved in community, society or family archives. With the destruction of old Jewish communities, the surviving, scattered examples of this type of document assumed a highly important place in libraries of Hebrew manuscripts. These handwritten records became the primary source for the study of the political, economic and social history of the Jews throughout the ages. Furthermore, they serve as a mine of genealogical and biographical information. Since some of these sources require expertise in many disciplines as well as familiarity with languages and many types of script, relatively few have been published in full scholarly editions. Thus, a great deal of painstaking, systematic work still awaits the attention of the competent historian.

Since the Holocaust, the appreciation of Hebrew manuscripts as testimony to the spiritual and historical greatness of destroyed Jewish life has assumed new dimensions. The overwhelming loss of Jewish treasures during the Third Reich has made the survivor generation much more conscious of the need for the preservation and exploration of what remains. The dramatic upsurge in Jewish studies in Israel and in the United States has led many scholars to the study and publication of Hebrew manuscripts. Through the ready availability of modern technology, photoduplication, microfilming and digitization, scholars have built upon the advances that had already been achieved. Progress will undoubtedly continue, and still-hidden treasures preserved among the leaves of Hebrew manuscripts will come to light: to enrich, to instruct and to add to our understanding of the Jewish heritage.