Stam Stories #6: The Maharam Rothenburg and 13th Torah

The Maharam (Meir ben Baruch) was one of the last great Tosafists and was the Gadol of his generation. He lived a quite tragic life, witnessing many pogroms, the burning of the Talmud in Paris in 1244 and ultimately dying as a prisoner of the King.

In 1286, King Rudolf I declared the Jews servi camerae ("serfs of the treasury"), which had the effect of negating their political freedoms. Along with many others, the Maharam left Germany with family and followers, but was captured in Lombardy and imprisoned in a fortress near Ensisheim in Alsace. 

The King asked for a very large ransom but after a few years his disciple the Rosh managed to collect just enough to secure his release. The Yam Shel Shlomo, who lived sometime after him, mentions that the Maharam refused to be released invoking the Talmudical law of אין פודים את השבויים יותר על כדי דמיה, as the ransom the King requested was way beyond reason. There's no evidence for that and many researchers say he did consent with the ransom but died while negotiations were in course. 

Be it as it may, the subsequent refusal of the King to release his body added more pain to this very tragic story, which only came to close 14 years later when a ransom was paid for his body by Alexander ben Salomon Wimpfen, who was subsequently laid to rest beside the Maharam.

Many legends are said about the Maharam, among them the claim that even after 14 years without a burial, when he was finally taken out of his cell his body was in perfect state, not decomposed. But this following story caught my attention:

When the Maharam was imprisoned in 1286 he was given access to parchment and quills but not to any Sefarim. Although he knew almost everything by heart, his inability to read from the Torah on Monday, Thursday, and Shabbos frustrated him.   

According to legend, the angel Gavriel visited the Maharam and presented him with the Thirteenth Torah, on loan from heaven. Generations of Tzadikim would descend from heaven and join him in his cell every Monday, Thursday and Shabbos to hear him read from their Sefer Torah.  

Eventually, the Maharam copied the Heavenly Torah onto his own scroll and sealed the copy in a waterproof case which he threw out of his window and into the river Rhine. The Torah floated to the city of Worms where some Jewish fishermen discovered it and placed it prominently in their shul. The Jewish community of Worms suffered terribly during the Chmielniki massacres but the Sefer Torah survived. They read from it every Simchas Torah and Shavuos. Today the Maharam’s Torah is in the Aron Kodesh of the famous Alt-neu shul in Prague.(click here for original article)

Yes it sounds very exagerated and the author of this piece doesn't bring a source but perhaps somebody expounded on what the Maharam wrote in one of his Teshuvot:  

.... I have no books and all what I've written is according what has been shown to me from the heavens...

There's a long way between that and the story but if you consider that Rabbi Yosef Karo, for instance, was widely believed to learn every night with an angelic Maggid (see here), perhaps being the leader of a generation, like the Maharam and Rabbi Karo, grants you these special divine visits. However, I visited the Alt-neu synagogue in Prague and I never heard about this miraculous scroll; I even emailed the community to ask about it - it got me curious!

Re-post: The reliability of messy writing

This article appeared in Jpost.com a few days ago, and it is connected to my post on Writing the last words of a Sefer Torah.

   By LEVI COOPER

Jewish law proscribes the use of a scroll written by a gentile or by a nonbeliever.

Photo by: Reuters

The tale is told that a Torah scroll was once found abandoned in a field and a question arose as to whether this scroll was kosher; perhaps it was discarded because it was not written by a reliable scribe. Indeed, Jewish law proscribes the use of a scroll written by a gentile or by a nonbeliever (Shulhan Aruch YD 241). How should this scroll be treated? The question was brought to the great talmudic scholar and respected leader of European Jewry, Rabbi Akiva Eiger (1761- 1837). Rabbi Eiger noted that it was common Jewish practice for many people to participate in the writing of a Torah scroll. To be sure, there is often a principal donor who employs a qualified scribe, but everyone is invited to purchase a letter and to take part in the writing of the final lines of the scroll. The scribe generally outlines the letters of the final lines, but leaves them to be filled in or completed by others; thus allowing everyone to participate in the fulfillment of the commandment to write a Torah scroll without incurring the appreciable expense of writing an entire scroll. The result of this custom is that the final lines of the scroll may not be in the same professional script as the rest of the scroll.

With this in mind, Rabbi Akiva Eiger ruled that the reliability of the scroll could be determined by the final lines of the Torah.

If they were noticeably less professional than the other letters in the scroll, and perhaps even a mixture of scripts – we can surmise that these final lines were written in accordance with the accepted custom. Furthermore, we can assume that the scribe was a reliable person, for he sought to comply with this communal norm; ergo the scroll can be assumed to be valid. If, however, the final lines showed no signs of a different scribe and the final column of the scroll was presented in a uniform – perhaps even aesthetically beautiful – script, we have no choice but to question the scroll's reliability. In such a case, the scroll should not be pressed into communal service.

Fast-forwarding to the 20th century: Rabbi Yitzhak Weiss (1870-died in the Holocaust 1942) was a Hungarian rabbi who recorded many anecdotes from chance meetings and interactions with a wide variety of rabbis and hassidic masters. Citing the exact date of the meeting, 20 Adar II, 5687 (March 24, 1927), Rabbi Weiss recorded the reaction of the previous leader of the Boyan Hassidim, Rabbi Mordechai Shlomo Friedman (1891- 1971), to Rabbi Eiger’s famed decision.

The Boyaner Rebbe explained that Eiger’s ruling could be found in the very words that express the commandment to write a Torah scroll. The verse says: “And now write for yourselves this song and teach it to the children of Israel, put it in their mouths so that this song will be for Me as a witness regarding the children of Israel” (Deuteronomy 31:19). The Boyaner Rebbe explained that the directive to “write for yourselves” indicates that each person should actively take part in the writing of the Torah scroll. Jewish law further requires that whoever is writing a Torah scroll should enunciate the words about to be written.

This is indicated in the continuation of the verse: “put it in their mouths.” The conclusion of the verse teaches us about Rabbi Eiger’s ruling: “so that it will be for Me as a witness regarding the children of Israel.” The fact that people are invited to take part in the writing of a Torah scroll means that different scripts can serve as a “witness” that testifies to the scroll's veracity.

The writer is on the faculty of Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies and is a rabbi in Tzur Hadassah.