‘Lost’ Chassidic Treasures May Have Turned Up

MANCHESTER, England [JTA] — A group of Jewish experts may have discovered “lost” chassidic documents in Manchester’s John Rylands library.

They could include records of chassidic courts that were lost during upheavals caused by wars that ravaged eastern Europe from the time of Napoleon to World War One.

The manuscripts were among 18 unattributed chassidic documents shown to the visiting experts by the keeper of manuscripts and archives, John Hodgson.

The visitors established that most of the early and mid-19th century material comprised hundreds of pages of Shabbat lectures and legal opinions of early Lubavitcher Rebbes.

Afterwards, Mr Hodgson said: “The staff learned a great deal about the manuscripts from our visitors.

”It was inspiring and exciting to realise their significance.

“We hope that we can arrange for the manuscripts to be properly catalogued and digitised, and that they receive the scholarly attention they deserve.”

Making the private study visit were Talmud lecturer Rabbi Simcha Bamberger, Manchester Beth Din registrar Rabbi Yehuda Brodie, bibliophile and amateur scholar Elozor Reich and Manchester University historian of orthodoxy Dr Yaakov Wise.

Dr Wise has offered to help the recently-extended city-centre library establish whether any of the documents are, in fact, unique lost records of early chassidic discourses.

He is planning another visit accompanied by the Holy Law Synagogue’s Rabbi Yossi Chazan – an expert on Lubavitch literature.

The hundreds of pages of notes poured over by the experts include those of early Lubavitcher Rebbes Schneor Zalman of Liadi (the Baal HaTayna, 1745-1812), the Mittler Rebbe (Dov Ber of Lubavitch, 1773-1838) and the Tzemach Tzedek (Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch, 1779-1866).

Other material includes a notebook of a Rabbi Nochum of Rudnik, probably connected to the Sanz chassidic dynasty.

The notebooks are from the Dr Moses Gaster collection.

In 1954, the John Rylands library purchased a large collection of manuscripts in Hebrew, Samaritan and other scripts assembled by Rabbi Dr Moses Gaster (1856-1939).

Romania-born Rabbi Gaster was forced to leave his native country in 1885 as a result of antisemitic persecution and took refuge in England.

He became Hakham (Chief Rabbi) of the Sephardi communities of England in 1886, and held the office until his retirement in 1919.

A distinguished academic scholar with a long list of publications to his name, his interests ranged from the Hebrew siddur, the minutiae of Hebrew text study and apocryphal Hebrew literature to Jewish amulets and Romanian folklore.

The Rylands’ Gaster collection comprises more than 10,000 fragments in Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic from the genizah of the Synagogue of Ben Ezra in Old Cairo.

There are 350 Hebrew codices and scrolls, including prayer books from many Jewish communities, apocryphal writings, commentaries, treatises, letters, marriage contracts, piyyutim, 13 Sifrei Torah and almost 1,500 uncatalogued Arabic fragments on paper from the Ben Ezra Synagogue.

The library was founded in 1888 by Mrs Enriqueta Rylands in memory of her husband John.

In 1889, architect Basil Champneys designed the striking gothic building on Deansgate which was voted Manchester’s most “iconic” building in 2007. The library took nine years to build.

Mrs Rylands insisted on the finest materials and the building was lavishly decorated.

Traditional craftsmanship was combined with pioneering technology, such as electric lighting – the first public building in Manchester to be fully lit by electricity.

Information on the Moses Gaster collection can be found on www.manchester.ac.uk/library or 0161 275 3764.