YISROEL
GELBART
He was born in Slavita,
Volhynia. He received a religious
education, studying in religious primary school and synagogue study hall. In 1869 he was living in Berdichev, later in
Ivnitsa, Galicia. He authored a number
of religious texts, among them: Sfat
hayam (The seashore), an explanation in Hebrew and Judeo-German of
difficult words in the Talmud (Warsaw, 1869), 72 pp. (second edition, Zhitomir,
1971; third edition, Lemberg, 1974, 86 pp.); Mayse abos (Story of the fathers), a Yiddish explanation of Pirke avot (Ethics of the fathers), with
stories and text according to Midrash
shmuel (Shmuel’s commentary) [by Shmuel di Uzeda, sixteenth century, of
Sefat, Israel] and other sources (Vilna, 1874), with a second printing (Vilna,
1880), 126 pp., and a third printing (Vilna, 1882). He was also the author of a number of Tkhines (Prayer books in Yiddish
primarily for women), which Jewish women throughout the world have made use
of. These include: Tkhine brokhes kodesh (Blessings of sanctity), according to the
style of prayer (Lublin, 1876), 31 pp.; Tkhine
kries hatoyre (Public reading from the Torah), following the order of the
weekly portions, with a supplement Tkhine
koysl maarovi (Western Wall) which was written with great feeling
(Jerusalem, 1885), 52 pp.
The full title page of his Mayse avos in both Hebrew-Aramaic and
Yiddish reads as follows:
Story of the Fathers
includes
Ethics of the Fathers with commentary compiled from the text
Midrash shmuel by the brilliant rabbi
and sage of the land of Israel, our teacher Shmuel di Uzeda, of blessed
memory. Composed in the Ashkenazi
Yiddish language (Judeo-German) with numerous stories to sweeten matters by our
rabbi and teacher Yisroel Gelbart.
In this religious
text is included numerous commentaries on the chapters [of Ethics of the Fathers] and many lovely stories, and we have
translated it into Judeo-German, so that everyone might understand and thus we
shall be worthy of going to Jerusalem speedily and in our days, amen.
At
the beginning of the introduction, the author notes:
The Rambam, may his memory be for a blessing, writes: We call
this tractate Avot (Fathers), because
the sages from whom we learn good habits, manners, and decorum call it Avot.
We call them our fathers, and they call us their children. They are compared to a good father who raises
his children on the right path which accordingly makes him happy. And, those who learn from them are happy with
the fine children who set out respectably and learn from their father. And, thus we find that the prophet Elisha
called his teacher, the prophet Elijah, “my father, my father”: For this
reason, then, our ancestors thus dubbed this tractate Avot because in the tractate is included all of the words of proper
manners and habits. And, all the words
of proper manners and habits that other sages have noted are included in their
discourses, which they have dubbed Avot. That is to say, they were the fathers of all
the words concerning proper manners and habits that one finds in all other
religious texts. And, just as from one
father may many children be born, so from one of their words can be derived
many such proper manners and habits.
The
beginning of the explanations of the chapters [of Avot] reads as follows:
Story of the Fathers
Moses received the Torah
at Sinai. Our teach Moses received
the Torah from God which He showed him on Mount Sinai. It was difficult for our blessed rabbi
[Yehuda ha-Nasi, redactor of the Mishna] who transcribed the Mishnayot to
establish the proper order of the passage of the Torah in this [Mishnaic] tractate
Avot.
His justification was that the tractate was not composed on the basis of
a single commandment from among the commandments in the Torah, just as other
tractates were composed to teach Israel the laws of the 613 commandments, but
this tractate was solely for proper manners and laws, and we find that the wise
men of the Gentile nations have also written texts that have devised from their
heads laws on how one man should conduct himself with his friend, and thus the Tanna
[R. Yehuda ha-Nasi] begins the tractate with Moses receiving the Torah on Mount
Sinai to demonstrate laws, proper speech, and manners they are described in the
tractate that the Tannaim [rabbis of the Mishna] did not concoct on their own,
but these were given on Mount Sinai.
Hence, the ancient rabbi began with Moses receiving the Torah at
Sinai. Another justification raised by
the Tanna is the order of the reception of the Torah given in the tractate,
such that the Torah can have no existence among men, save when they anticipate
fear of a sin such as that mentioned by the Tanna in the tractate (Anyone whose fear of sin precedes his wisdom,
his wisdom shall endure [3.11]). One
who before studying Torah fears commission of a transgression and thus does not
sin, when he subsequently does study Torah finds the Torah has meaningfulness
for him. However, when a man sins and
thereafter studies Torah, the Torah had no meaningful existence for him, and
therefore the Torah possessed such meaning for our teacher Moses and for Joshua
and for all the saintly men such that they anticipated fear of sin—thus, they
received the Torah. Hence, the Tanna
wrote down the order of the passage of the Torah to demonstrate thereby those
for whom it had a meaningful existence, and they fulfilled all the words of proper
manner and behavior that were written in the tractate.
Source:
Kh. D. Fridberg, Bet eked sefarim
(The library) (Tel Aviv, 1954), p. 1041.
Khayim Leyb Fuks
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