"Sefer Hasidim" and the Ashkenazic Book in Medieval Europe. Ivan G. Marcus

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      Rewriting Jewish Pietist Traditions

      Once published, S[efer] H[asidim]—without distinction between what Soloveitchik termed S[efer] H[asidim] I and the rest of the book—stood as an independent work of medieval rabbinic scholarship that carried the halo of German Jewish piety with it into the sixteenth century and beyond.

      —Edward Fram

      Sefer Hasidim was always a work in progress, an open text of a special kind, rather than a single fixed book. Over time, some fourteen different editions came into being, some topical, others made up of unrelated paragraph units; some of over a thousand paragraphs, others but a few passages strung together.

      Besides Sefer Hasidim, Judah also produced different but related texts such as his Zava’ah (Commands) and Sefer ha-Kavod (Book on the Divine Glory). R. Eleazar of Worms, for his part, wrote many private penitentials and different but overlapping halakhic works, large compositions about theological matters, different commentaries on the prayer book, and dozens of piyyutim (see below and the bibliography). Because each author’s own compositions overlap, other writers can cite passages that appear in more than one work by referring to different titles. A comparison of the texts attributed to each author indicates not a set of unique, original, and distinct compositions but a fluid range of overlapping and multiple expressions of different though related texts all composed of small text units. After considering how Judah and Eleazar each wrote overlapping or fluid texts, I look at how one French Jewish author rewrote Sefer Hasidim.

      Overlapping or Fluid Texts

      Textual overlap or fluidity has long been noted about ancient rabbinic works and about heikhalot texts that unknown editors produced. Short sections of related texts circulated, and editors combined them in different works.¹ In many Ashkenazic books, an additional kind of fluidity exists: one rabbinic author might write more than one related text in short paragraph units on the same subject. This pattern of composition is different from an author revising a single work. Saadia Gaon recycled some of his earlier writings in later ones, and Maimonides revised parts of his Commentary on the Mishneh, as we know from drafts of early versions found in the Cairo Geniza. That is different from the fluidity we find in R. Judah he-hasid’s Sefer Hasidim and his other pietistic writings or in some of R. Eleazar of Worms’s compositions.²

      When an author writes multiple parallel versions of a single composition or names them differently or gives the same title to a single work and to a collection of related works, we need to rethink what we mean by a text. We would normally be inclined to try to sort out what appears to us as bibliographical confusion by assigning a unique title and author to each work, but we should not project our ideas of bibliography, derived from familiar single-authored unique compositions, back into medieval Ashkenaz where ideas about an author and a text were often more fluid.

      Among examples of textual fluidity in R. Judah he-hasid’s writings is Sefer ha-Kavod, a composition he may have written more than once and that overlaps in some ways with Sefer Hasidim.³ Jacob Freimann showed that manuscripts of Sefer ‘Arugat ha-Bosem, written by R. Judah he-hasid’s student R. Abraham b. ‘Azriel, contain quotations from a Sefer ha-Kavod attributed to R. Judah he-hasid.⁴ Two Oxford manuscripts that contain a work called Sefer ha-Kavod and a truncated second discussion also about the Divine Glory (kavod) do not contain the passages quoted from “that work” in Sefer ‘Arugat ha-Bosem. The two Oxford manuscripts do, however, contain passages attributed to R. Judah he-hasid’s Sefer ha-Kavod that are found in R. Moses Taqu’s Ketav Tamim, a work that polemicized with Judah’s writings.⁵

      Joseph Dan presents as a dilemma having to decide either that one of the two medieval authors is wrong in attributing his quotations to Judah’s Sefer ha-Kavod or that Judah wrote two versions of Sefer ha-Kavod. He considers which possibility is “more reasonable” (sevirah yoter). Although he thinks choosing between the two possibilities is “somewhat arbitrary” (yesh bah middah shel sheriratiyut), he decides in favor of Moses Taqu’s reliability, with the result that the Oxford manuscripts containing the quotations R. Moses Taqu attributes to Sefer ha-Kavod is in fact Sefer ha-Kavod. However, in light of Ashkenazic book culture’s fluidity, Dan’s second hypothesis, that Judah wrote more than one Sefer ha-Kavod, is very probable.⁶ R. Abraham b. ‘Azriel had one version of Sefer ha-Kavod, possibly lost, and R. Moses Taqu had a different one, that which was found in the Oxford manuscripts.⁷ There was no author’s single original text of Sefer ha-Kavod any more than there was one of Sefer Hasidim.⁸

      The multiple character of Hebrew book composition in medieval Europe also explains some apparent anomalies in the sources such as a reference to “Sefer Hasidim” in a paragraph in Sefer Hasidim.⁹ The author did not think of a title as belonging uniquely to only one edition of related passages that he strung together more than once.¹⁰

      Aside from Sefer Hasidim and Sefer ha-Kavod each consisting of more than one edition, the two works themselves seem to overlap. We see this from quotations of Sefer ha-Kavod found in Sefer Hasidim. Sometimes the author of Sefer Hasidim refers the reader to Sefer ha-Kavod for a longer treatment of something he mentions briefly in Sefer Hasidim. This would mean that a version of Sefer ha-Kavod already existed before that part of Sefer Hasidim was written. But in other passages in Sefer Hasidim, Judah indicates that more will be written in Sefer ha-Kavod. Here it seems that at least parts of Sefer Hasidim are earlier than a version of Sefer ha-Kavod.¹¹

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