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| Manuscript fragment of Toledot Yeshu |
This article—drawing extensively on the research of Professor Maoz Kahana[1]—examines R. Moshe Schreiber (known as Chatam Sofer, 1762-1839) and his ambivalent stance toward the well-established print culture of Jewish books, which had flourished since its beginnings three centuries earlier in 1475. In place of embracing print as the dominant medium, he issued a striking call for a return to manuscripts. Chatam Sofer is a major rabbinic figure who “carries the aura of a founding figure in the sociological fabric of modern Judaism” (Kahana 2025:300).
By privileging manuscripts, Chatam Sofer reinforced rabbinic control over textual transmission, resisting the democratisation of knowledge that print enabled. As opposed to mechanical printing, manuscripts circulated in smaller, more controlled circles, limiting exposure to the unorthodox ideas that sometimes sprouted from the Enlightenment movement (Haskalah), which—significantly—used print aggressively to promote its agenda.
Common (mis)conception
The return to manuscripts is often perhaps misinterpreted as the Chatam Sofer’s deep concern for the accuracy of Talmudic texts. He opposed the popular methodology of pilpul (casuistry or extreme Talmudic argumentation), urging his students instead to arrive at practical Halachic conclusions rather than engage in vague and abstract study for its own sake (lishmah). He argued that the corruption of Talmudic texts had given rise to the practice of pilpul in the first place. He devoted himself—it is claimed—to clarifying and preserving the correct textual tradition, employing what we might call ‘historical-critical’ methods to ensure fidelity to authentic manuscript sources. For example, even the Wikipedia entry on Chatam Sofer maintains:
“In his study he also made use of adapting the scientific methods of examining parallel sources in a historical, philological and experimental manner” (Online source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Sofer).
A counter-argument
However, Kahana argues that Chatam Sofer’s motivations may not have been purely altruistic, scientific, historical, or solely concerned with establishing technical textual fidelity. Rather, his efforts were shaped by the more immediate and practical need to respond to the Enlightenment and the “crisis of rabbinic authority and transmission” that came in its wake (Kahana 2025:299). In this reading, Chatam Sofer was less concerned with textual nuance and accuracy than with idealising the past and reasserting rabbinic authority and control in a time of upheaval:
“His nostalgic portrayal of the manuscript age—historically inaccurate yet rhetorically effective—served to imagine an idealized world of learning governed by rabbinic judgment, restraint, and ordered transmission” (Kahana 2025:299).
This means that his idealisation of manuscript culture
really had nothing to do with love of manuscripts nor aversion to books.
Instead, it was a strategic move to retain, assert and foster rabbinic authority
over a new modern world that was resisting it.
Chatam Sofer’s letter to his student
In a letter to a student who sought permission to print his teacher’s manuscript, the Chatam Sofer identified two historical forces that had severely challenged rabbinic authority: the advent of print and the era of the Enlightenment. Both, he claimed, had produced a paradigmatic rupture in Jewish life, destabilising the traditional structures through which knowledge and rabbinic authority had previously been transmitted. Chatam Sofer, therefore, portrayed a romantic and nostalgic longing for the vanished era of manuscripts. He particularly views the invention of print around 1450 and the Enlightenment as developments that threatened to loosen rabbinic control over textual transmission.[2]
Thus, three centuries after the advent of print, Chatam Sofer problematised the technology as a threat to rabbinic authority and explicitly conflated its destabilising effects with those of the Enlightenment, both of which he regarded as paradigmatic ruptures in Jewish life.
Reconstructing history and the creation of a crisis in
rabbinic authority
Kahana poignantly notes that:
“Hatam Sofer’s description is neither historical nor factual. He writes, for example, that ‘since the advent of print, [manuscript] copying has ceased entirely’: the transition from a world of manuscripts to a world of print is depicted as abrupt and total. The reality, however—fully familiar to the Hatam Sofer—was far more complex” (Kahana 2025:302).
An ongoing and thriving manuscript tradition
Around the sixteenth century—between the invention of print and the Enlightenment—two huge, influential and significant bodies of literature emerged that changed the face of Judaism forever. The first was Halachic, and the second was Kabbalistic.
R. Yosef Karo (1488-1575) published his Shulcah Aruch, and R. Chaim Vital (1543-1620) presented his Shemonah Shearim (the earlier, more structured attempt by Vital to preserve the Lurianic teachings, which later became the Eitz Chaim). Shemonah Shearim was the portal through which the Lurianic Kabbalah of R. Yitzchak Luria (1534-1572, known as the Ari Zal) was accessed.
The Shulchan Aruch—which was printed and reprinted continuously—became the basis of contemporary Halacha. And Lurianic Kabbalah—which remained an exclusively manuscript tradition until the Shemona Shearim was first printed at the end of the eighteenth century—became the foundation of modern Kabbalah and Chassidic thought.
For our purposes, Chatam Sofer was certainly aware of this vast corpus of Lurianic literature that remained in manuscript form, given that these texts continued to be hand-copied for generations even after Shemona Shearim was eventually published.
It was not only the Shemona Shearim that remained a strong and vibrant manuscript tradition, but many other rabbinic works similarly remained in manuscript form during the lifetime of Chatam Sofer, and he certainly would have been aware of these. He had an extensive library that included all sorts of manuscripts as well, including Toledot Yeshu (The History of Jesus). This work circulated only in manuscript form and was not printed by Jews. They wanted to maintain tight control over the polemical work, which was hostile to Christianity, and hide it from the censors and possible backlash. Chatam Sofer also had the Latin-Hebrew edition that was published by the Christians, and he even wrote a commentary on it, which too remained in manuscript form (Kahana 2025:302-3). He was certainly aware of the fact that even in the age of print, manuscripts continued to be produced, sometimes as clearer copies of older manuscripts and often cloaked in the garb of mystical and secret texts that could not appear in print (Kahana 2025:311).
Accordingly, the Chatam Sofer’s praise of manuscripts and his problematisation of print were not a reflection of genuine preference nor accurate historical facts, but a rhetorical strategy designed to safeguard rabbinic authority. In this sense, his stance may be understood as a deliberately constructed discourse, one that imagined symbolic continuity with the past to reinforce rabbinic control in the present.
Romancing the manuscript
Despite clear evidence of a continuous and vibrant manuscript tradition that survived well into the age of print, Chatam Sofer nevertheless insisted that with the advent of print, manuscripts had abruptly disappeared. He repeatedly returned to this theme of a crisis in tradition brought about by the printing press and the supposed sudden loss of manuscripts. Manuscripts may have diminished, but they certainly did not vanish entirely. He writes about an exaggerated and nostalgic golden era before the age of print:
“Formerly in Israel, the great sages would write their teachings in a book [i.e., manuscript -GM], and if they were accepted by the sages of the generation, most of them or all of them, the sages would then command that they be copied, and they would be copied in every city and family. But if a work were not accepted, then no one dared copy it, for a person does not throw away his money for nothing. And likewise, no one would presume to compose a work unless he knew himself to be a great man whose writings many would rush to copy. And so, most of the [manuscript] books found in the world were good and sound “(Chatam Sofer, Responsa, vol. 6:61).
Kahana sharply rejects the historicity of this romantic claim by Chatam Sofer and counters:
“The fantasy depicted here is one of absolute centralized control. According to this account, manuscript culture operated under clear and continuous directives issued by a rabbinic consensus—an imagined, centralized body conferring legitimacy on an author’s work. Only after that ‘decision’ was rendered would professional scribes undertake the copying, confident that an obedient and devout Jewish reading public would not purchase a text lacking such rabbinic certification” (Kahana 2025:303).
In reality, the Jewish manuscript culture was far more complex than the simple, authoritarian and obedient model that Chatam Sofer constructs in his retrospective account. Historically, works like Machbarot Immanuel, which were indeed banned by the rabbinate, were widely copied and circulated with “many dozens of surviving copies” (Kahana 2025:304). Fourteenth-century Manoello Giudeo, known as Immanuel of Rome, shocked his readers by ridiculing rabbis with his biting humour and writing secular and erotic poetry that was most unsettling to traditional readers. In practice, the rabbis exercised little control or authority over the copying and dissemination of works such as these.
Promoting manuscripts even in the age of print
As we have seen, Chatam Sofer persistently upheld the constructed image of rabbinic authority as rooted in the authorised manuscript tradition of the pre‑print era. He writes that “many righteous men and great sages” refuse to publish their writings even though they now live in the age of print. Instead, they prefer to produce manuscripts, and they proclaim:
“[W]hoever wishes to copy them may come and copy them. Thus did our ancestors act before the era of print.”
Chatam Sofer goes on to say that he never wished to teach through the printed medium. Instead:
“I stand ready to teach all who are prepared to listen, and I write in ink, directly onto the book [i.e., manuscript -GM] itself” (Chatam Sofer, Responsa, Yoreh De‘ah, editor’s introduction, 3).
The broader genre
It was not only Chatam Sofer who romanticised manuscripts. He was part of a broader contemporary genre in which figures such as R. Yehonatan Eibeschuetz also praised manuscripts which he said were “hidden in the chambers of individuals.” This is significant in that he was accused of being a secret Sabbatian [see: Kotzk Blog: 298) UNIMAGINABLE WRITINGS OF R. YONATAN EIBESCHUETZ :]. R. Eibeschuetz even valorised unwritten books that remained solely within the minds of their authors. Within Chassidism, too, the notion of “hidden” and “secret” texts placed literature in a liminal space between exposure and concealment. R. Nachman of Breslov is said to have composed works only to burn them, while others, such as the Kotzker Rebbe, refrained from writing altogether.
The ‘teacher’ is more authoritative than the ‘author’
Contrary to the way we understand the hierarchical relationship between the ‘teacher’ and the more elevated ‘author,’ Chatam Sofer maintained that the reverse was true and the ‘teacher’ who did not commit to print was more esteemed and had more authority than the ‘author.’
“The Hatam Sofer thus entwines the figure of the ‘author’ with the rhetoric of polemic and disputation—forms of engagement that, in his view, do not pursue truth” (Kahana 2025:307).
Yet underlying all this seemingly altruistic praise of oral and manuscript culture lies a fundamental thread of the necessity for control and consolidation of rabbinic authority. Kahana rejects the validity of such “nostalgic” and “mythic” depictions of a flawless and authoritative manuscript culture, viewing them not as historical realities but as rhetorical constructions designed to reinforce rabbinic power (Kahana 2025:311).
“What emerges, therefore, is less a theory about technology than an epistemology of crisis—a normative model of how knowledge should circulate, who may authorize it” (Kahana 2025:311).
“Epistemology of crisis” in this context refers to the contested processes by which knowledge is defined, controlled, and legitimised, during moments of disruption. The advent of print created a new dynamic in which authority could simply shift to authors who reached the printing house first, thereby attaining the exalted status of rabbinic authority through publication rather than through traditional channels of manuscript transmission [see: Kotzk Blog: 540) Theo-politics of early rabbinic printing and the race for first publication]. This raised the critical question of whether authority should reside in the randomness and mechanics of print culture or remain vested exclusively in the manuscript tradition of the rabbinate.
Conclusion
For Chatam Sofer, the printing press was not simply a new medium but a destabilising force that threatened rabbinic control over textual transmission. By insisting on the symbolic authority of manuscripts, he constructed a model in which rabbinic figures alone could authorise the flow of knowledge, thereby resisting the democratising tendencies of print. By constructing the impression of a rupture in rabbinic authority and textual transmission—first with the advent of the printing press and later with the upheavals of the Enlightenment—Chatam Sofer was able to champion the ancient manuscript tradition as the locus of authority, setting it in deliberate opposition to the print medium, where control over knowledge was no longer exclusively in rabbinic hands.
A contemporary parallel might be the deliberate insistence on an antiquated brick phone over a modern smartphone. Such insistence on the older medium functions as a rhetorical device that embodies control, authority, and insulation from external influence.
Chatam Sofer’s ahistorical—if not fictional—romanticisation
of the manuscript and claims of its supposed sudden demise functioned as a
rhetorical construct designed to alarm the community and ensure that rabbis,
rather than wealthy patrons or printers, retained firm control in matters of
knowledge. The call for a return to manuscripts was therefore not merely a
principled, scholarly, idealistic or altruistic concern for Talmudic
textual accuracy, but a strategic, deliberate and calculated assertion of
rabbinic dominance and control over the authorisation and transmission of
knowledge in all its forms.
[1]
Kahana, M., 2025, Rabbinic Agency in the Age of Print: Manuscript, Print, and
the Epistemology of Crisis, Jewish History, vol. 39, 299-312.
[2]
Chatam Sofer, however does, on one occasion state “We must give thanks to
God for the invention of printing in the world; its benefit is great”
(Chatam Sofer, Responsa, vol 6:61). According to Kahana, this is the “single
positive line in which he praises print” (Kahana 2025:304). Perhaps this
reflects his complex and ambivalent view that allows printed texts only to be
of value when they serve rabbinic ends.
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