Physical Description

Detail Description

Rare and important text of fragments from the oldest dated manuscript of the Babylonian Talmud tractate Keritot (1123) and a fragment of the Jerusalem Talmud tractate Berakhot prepared by two of the greatest Jewish scholars of the time, Solomon Schechter and the Rev. S. Singer. There are Hebrew and English title pages at each end of the book. The Hebrew title page is followed by a facsimile of a manuscript page; the English title page is followed by an introduction in that language. In the intriduction it is stated that the Hebrew pages are an exact copy from two fragments in the possession of the Bodleian Library. The first fragment is in the original parchment manuscriot written in large square letters and contains part of tractate Keritot, dealing mainly with the classification of and atonement for transgressions for which the punishment is Kareth or being cut off from the congregation.

Solomon Schechter (1847–1915) was a rabbinic scholar and president of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America . Schechter was born in Focsani, Romania. His father, a Chabad Ḥasid, was a ritual slaughterer (Ger. Schaechter). In his teens he studied with the rabbinic author R. Joseph Saul Nathanson in Lemberg. From about 1875 to 1879 he attended the Vienna bet ha-midrash. He acquired a lifelong devotion to scientific study of the tradition and developed the central notion of the community of Israel as decisive for Jewish living and thinking. He was to call it "Catholic Israel." From 1879 he studied at the Berlin Hochschule fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums and at the University of Berlin. When, in 1882, a fellow student at the Hochschule, Claude Goldsmid Montefiore, invited him to be his tutor in rabbinics in London, Schechter accepted. In England he rose to prominence as a rabbinic scholar and spokesman for Jewish traditionalism. In 1890 he was appointed lecturer in talmudics and in 1892 reader in rabbinics at Cambridge University. In 1899 he also became professor of Hebrew at University College, London. Schechter's first substantial work was his edition of Avot de-Rabbi Nathan (1887). His fame rests on the scholarly recovery of the Cairo Genizah . It created a sensation in the world of scholarship, and in its wake Jewish history and the history of Mediterranean society have been rewritten. Over one hundred thousand manuscripts and manuscript fragments were brought to England and presented to Cambridge University by Schechter and Charles Taylor, the master of St. John's College who had made Schechter's trip possible. Together they published the newly discovered fragments of the Hebrew original of Ben Sira (The Wisdom of Ben Sira, 1899). Late in 1901 Schechter accepted an invitation by a number of leading American Jews, notably his friend, Judge Mayer Sulzberger of Philadelphia, to assume the post of president of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He served in this capacity from 1902 until his death.

 

Hebrew Description

קונטרסים מתלמוד בבלי כריתות ותלמוד ירושלמי ברכותמכתבי יד היותר עתיקים בעולם, אשר נמצאו בגניזה בארץ מצרים והנם כעת בבית אוצר הספרים באקספרד. הוצאו לאור ע"י ... שניאור זלמן שעכטער, מורה בבית מדרש החכמה בעיר קאנטאבריגיא, והצעיר שמעון סינגער, דרשן בק"ק כנסת ישראל בלונדון...

בשער האנגלי: 1896.

מסכת כריתות מתלמוד בבלי מכתב-יד משנת ד אלפים תתפ"ג, וקטעים מפרקים ב-ג של מסכת ברכות התלמוד ירושלמי, על פי כתבי-יד מן ה"גניזה" של קהיר.

6 עמ', משמאל לימין: מבוא באנגלית.

 

Reference

EJ; Bibliography of the Hebrew Book 1470-1960 #000308267