524) Editing Jewish texts: Between reverence and revision

 

Shem haGedolim by R. Chaim David Azulai, known as the Chida (1724-1806).

Introduction

This article—based extensively on the research by Dr Oded Cohen[1]—examines the challenges facing editors of religious Jewish texts. It deals with two very different editors and separated by six hundred years, yet who faced similar tasks and scrutiny. 

The first editor is the Maskil of the Enlightenment movement, Isaac Benjacob (1801-1863), who edited the Shem haGedolim of the R. Chaim David Azulai, known as the Chida (1724-1806). 

The second is Maimonides, who—though not an editor of the Babylonian Talmud in the conventional sense—systematically distilled its legal rulings into his Mishneh Torah, the ground-breaking code that stripped away dialectical debate in favour of a clear, authoritative Halachic structure. 

472) Expanding on Rabbinic Distinctions Between the Titles and Texts of the Psalms

 

Psalms in the Aleppo Codex showing spacing after the paratexts

                         Abstract

This article examines how the subtle ‘textual framing’ embedded within the titles and headings of texts, and can affect texts even before they are read. Using the Psalms as a point of departure, 116 of the 150 psalms, begin with introductory titles or superscriptions also known as paratexts. An example of a paratext would be “Lamenatzeach – For the Choirmaster; or “Livenei Korach – For the sons of Korach. Depending on the editions, these paratexts are often distinguished from the base or main text of the Psalms by some form of spacing to indicate that they were not part of the original text. The purpose of these paratexts was to frame the Psalms for the reader. We first show how the Talmudic rabbis dealt with these paratexts by either heeding, ignoring, altering or challenging them. Then we attempt to extend and analogise this rabbinic approach and apply it to the ubiquitous ‘paratexts’ or ‘framing devices’ inherent, not only in the Psalms but within the presentation of all forms of theology in general. In other words, we look at the important but often unnoticed ways religion is framed and presented to the people. We also note a contemporary example of paratextual framing in a recently published popular edition of the Hebrew Psalms, which subtly interpolates a Jewish messianic reading into its English “explanatory translation.” Essentially, this study explores the paratext as an idiom for the general framing devices of religious ideology and suggests similar multifaceted responses as those adopted by the rabbis in their relationship to Psalm framing.