By the Bray of Fundie
I went to the exhibit today. Impressive doesn't do it justice. I felt like a kid in a look-but-don't-touch candy store where, if allowed to, I could gorge and get a sugar high for months if not years.
There are several questions I want to email to the tour guide/curator, Mr. David Wachtel , and bl"n when I get the chance I'll post about his responses. In the meantime one impression I walked away with should give succor to DovBear in his efforts to educate me.
Close followers of this blog know that I often lock horns with the Ba'al HaBlog over celebrating or condemning the culture and legacy of Eastern European Jewry. Basically I have a very Eastern-European-centric view of Judaism while Dovie entertains a Western-European/American-Centric view. Something I saw in the exhibit today gave me pause and began to validate the ursine's position.
The Library was arranged according to country and city of origin. There were four plus "tables" (in the reading room) of Italian works while only one of Eastern European origin. Now as history-challenged (oblivious) as I am, I realize that global economies are of fairly recent origin and that, historically, most goods and services had to be grown/produced/manufactured fairly close to the location of the consumer. For most of human history no local demand meant no local production.
By this calculus ,to have been home to SO MANY printing presses and printers , Italy must have been a mecca of Jewish Scholarship. Sure I'd heard of the publishing houses of Venice (Vinetzia) and Livorno and knew that the Rama m'Fano and the Ramkha"l were both Italians. But IIRC over 30 Italian cities were represented. It's enough to have made one think that Vilna, Kovna, Brisk, Volozhin, Warsaw, Cracow, Lemberg, Zhitomir, Pressburg, Lisa, Sanz and Sokhatzov et al were all in Italy rather than in Eastern Europe. To my surprise I was "forced" to conclude that Italy hosted many more more TKs, Qabbalists and Yeshivas than I'd previously been aware of. Score one for the Western Europeans.
My only plausible deniability is this: perhaps the outsize representation of the Italian Judaica publishing houses is based on fewer Eastern European Jewish Books surviving the Holocaust just as fewer Eastern European Jewish people did. This is among the questions I'd like to put to the tour guide/curator.
Why is this only a partial "mea-culpa"? Because the aforementioned Mr. Wachtel repeated the story of Henry the VIII seeking the advice of "Jewish Doctors" AKA Rabbis, almost verbatim. This, despite being accutely aware that Henry the VIII reigned long after the official expuslsion of the Jews of England. Unlike knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing me, he is a classically trained and University credentialed bibliophile and historian with connections to the JTS. His only alteration in the urban legend's re-telling is that the eighth Hank wanted to see what tractate Gittin could offer him not tractate Yevamos.
Final point: One need not be Kharedi in order to be obnoxious, only Jewish. It was a very mixed crowd of over 300 in the room during the tour running the gamut from secular to Khasidic. Despite repeated requests from Mr. Wachtel to turn off cel-phones as it interfered with his microphone, there were microphone interruptions and interference from start to finish of his 45 minute presentation. (For the curious out there, no, I was not the guilty party). And while I suppose that the visceral love of "the People of the Book"' for their books was a Qiddush HaShem, the simple lack of Mentchlikhkeit was the opposite and another sad example of elevating the soulless and inanimate above the soul-infused and human so characteristic of contemporary Judaism.
You'll make a voluntary payment to your food server, but not to your blogger? Toss a tip in the hat, please, and buy Dov's book. (thanks!)
I went to the exhibit today. Impressive doesn't do it justice. I felt like a kid in a look-but-don't-touch candy store where, if allowed to, I could gorge and get a sugar high for months if not years.
There are several questions I want to email to the tour guide/curator, Mr. David Wachtel , and bl"n when I get the chance I'll post about his responses. In the meantime one impression I walked away with should give succor to DovBear in his efforts to educate me.
Close followers of this blog know that I often lock horns with the Ba'al HaBlog over celebrating or condemning the culture and legacy of Eastern European Jewry. Basically I have a very Eastern-European-centric view of Judaism while Dovie entertains a Western-European/American-Centric view. Something I saw in the exhibit today gave me pause and began to validate the ursine's position.
The Library was arranged according to country and city of origin. There were four plus "tables" (in the reading room) of Italian works while only one of Eastern European origin. Now as history-challenged (oblivious) as I am, I realize that global economies are of fairly recent origin and that, historically, most goods and services had to be grown/produced/manufactured fairly close to the location of the consumer. For most of human history no local demand meant no local production.
By this calculus ,to have been home to SO MANY printing presses and printers , Italy must have been a mecca of Jewish Scholarship. Sure I'd heard of the publishing houses of Venice (Vinetzia) and Livorno and knew that the Rama m'Fano and the Ramkha"l were both Italians. But IIRC over 30 Italian cities were represented. It's enough to have made one think that Vilna, Kovna, Brisk, Volozhin, Warsaw, Cracow, Lemberg, Zhitomir, Pressburg, Lisa, Sanz and Sokhatzov et al were all in Italy rather than in Eastern Europe. To my surprise I was "forced" to conclude that Italy hosted many more more TKs, Qabbalists and Yeshivas than I'd previously been aware of. Score one for the Western Europeans.
My only plausible deniability is this: perhaps the outsize representation of the Italian Judaica publishing houses is based on fewer Eastern European Jewish Books surviving the Holocaust just as fewer Eastern European Jewish people did. This is among the questions I'd like to put to the tour guide/curator.
Why is this only a partial "mea-culpa"? Because the aforementioned Mr. Wachtel repeated the story of Henry the VIII seeking the advice of "Jewish Doctors" AKA Rabbis, almost verbatim. This, despite being accutely aware that Henry the VIII reigned long after the official expuslsion of the Jews of England. Unlike knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing me, he is a classically trained and University credentialed bibliophile and historian with connections to the JTS. His only alteration in the urban legend's re-telling is that the eighth Hank wanted to see what tractate Gittin could offer him not tractate Yevamos.
Final point: One need not be Kharedi in order to be obnoxious, only Jewish. It was a very mixed crowd of over 300 in the room during the tour running the gamut from secular to Khasidic. Despite repeated requests from Mr. Wachtel to turn off cel-phones as it interfered with his microphone, there were microphone interruptions and interference from start to finish of his 45 minute presentation. (For the curious out there, no, I was not the guilty party). And while I suppose that the visceral love of "the People of the Book"' for their books was a Qiddush HaShem, the simple lack of Mentchlikhkeit was the opposite and another sad example of elevating the soulless and inanimate above the soul-infused and human so characteristic of contemporary Judaism.
You'll make a voluntary payment to your food server, but not to your blogger? Toss a tip in the hat, please, and buy Dov's book. (thanks!)
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