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Bidding Information
Lot #    9872
Auction End Date    3/22/2005 2:32:00 PM (mm/dd/yyyy)
          
Title Information
Title (English)    Seder ha-Tena'im va-ha-Kettubah
Title (Hebrew)    סדר התנאים והכתובה
Author    [Liturgy] R. Israel ben Moses Najara of Damascus
City    [Jerusalem]
Publication Date    [1959]
          
Collection Information
Independent Item    This listing is an independent item not part of any collection
          
Description Information
Physical
Description		    [4] ff., 237:172 mm., light age staining, not bound as published.
          
Detailed
Description		    The concept of marriage between G-d and his people, Israel, dates from the Prophet Hosea and the allegorical interpretation of Songs of Songs. However, it was the mystics who first used the metaphor of the ketubah, or marriage contract, to give expression to the idea of G-d's love for Israel. The first ketubah of this kind was written by Yitzhak ben Reuben in the eleventh century in the introduction to his Azharoth (liturgical poem for Shavu'ot) and concretized the idea of a contract between G-d and Israel, solemnized at Mt. Sinai, in which G-d promised to care for Israel and Israel promised to follow G-d's laws. R. Israel Najara was the first to write such a ketubah following exactly the form of the Jewish marriage contract. His poem writes of G-d as the groom and Israel as the bride. The Torah is the dowry given to Israel; the bride's dowry is "the promise to make pilgrimages to the Sanctuary, and to' bring 'a knowing heart, ears to listen, and eyes to see'" (Davidson, Parody, p.36). The witness are Heaven and Earth and the date is the day the Torah was given on Sinai, the sixth day of Sivan, 2448 from the creation of the world. R. Najara's poem was written in all earnestness, without a trace of humor. In later years, his work was parodied by Enlightenment humorists in Eastern Europe. One such parody was published in Lemberg in 1878.

The reading of a Ketubah on Shavuot is a custom only of Sephardic Jews. The Ashkenazim read Akdamut. There are at least four different Hebrew versions of the Ketubbah for Shavu'ot. The first and most widely accepted one was written by R. Israel ben Moses Najara of Damascus; one was written by Joseph Almosnino, a late seventeenth-century rabbi of Belgrade; one was written by the Sephardic scholar R. Saadiah ben Joseph and one was written by R. David Pardo. The only Ladino version was written by R. Judah bar Leon Kalai and is an original creation, not a translation of any of the known Hebrew version.

          
Paragraph 2    ... אקדמות עם פירוש מטה לוי...

על-פי ברוקלין [תש"ט, בערך], בהשמטת התרגום.

          
Reference
Description		    Davidson, Parody p.55; EJ; CD-EPI 0151689
        
Associated Images
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Listing Classification
Period
20th Century:    Checked
  
Location
Israel:    Checked
  
Subject
  
Kabbalah:    Checked
Liturgy:    Checked
  
Characteristic
Language:    Hebrew
  
Manuscript Type
  
Kind of Judaica