Rabbi Menachem di Lonzano and the Masora

 

In our quest to understand how our Torah’s text became standardized, all roads lead to Rabbi Menachem di Lonzano and this post will focus on his work. 

While we have explored the establishment and popularization of the Tiberian Masoretic text in the 9 and 10th centuries in this older post, its adoption by Jewish communities around the world was rather slow and gradual. 

There were competing Masoras like the Babylonian Masora and other local traditions that were still present in Torah scrolls in many synagogues. The communities were often isolated from each other and had little access to or knowledge of the Tiberian Masora.

Rabbi Menachem Lonzano (1550-1623) was the leading Masora expert in the 16th century and was able to gain access to important codices and manuscripts, in an attempt to harmonize and standarize the Masora used by Jews in Europe and Arabic lands.

An orphan from an early age, Rabbi Lonzano had a very difficult life steeped in infirmity and poverty. He often writes that he grew up miserable and that after marriage he couldn’t provide for his wife and kids in Jerusalem. 

Rabbi Lonzano was forced to wonder from city to city collecting money for his family.  But his dire conditions didn’t stop his phenomenal scholarship and research capabilities, and as a true bibliophile he would use any spare income to buy important manuscripts in his travels. Additionally, his journeys afforded him the opportunity to learn new languages which would come handy when learning Torah and obscure words. 

Rabbi Lonzano’s works cover the spectrum of Jewish tradition - Talmud,  Midrash, Masora, music and even Kabbala, which was in its early days then. He was a contemporary of Ari’s disciples Chaim Vital and Israel Najara, and Rabbi Lonzano had no qualms to disagree with them in Kabbalah matters and occasionally,  even with the Ari himself - something almost no one dared to do given the Ari’s stature as the Kabbalist par excellence. 

When asked how he could disagree with the Ari, Rabbi Lonzano reasoned that if the Ari was mistaken it must have been “in his early days, before the Holy Spirit was accessible to him”. 

He often repeated the motto that is commonly attributed to Maimonides, that one should accept the truth from wherever it comes from, preaching intellectual honesty. 

His vast knowledge of lesser known manuscripts, Midrashim and responsa, coupled with his mastery of Greek and Arabic, afforded Lonzano a unique perspective and he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind against anyone. 

His combative personality got him into a public spat with the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem and son of the famous Moshe Cordovero (Ramak) from Safed. Rabbi Gedalia Cordovero was initially very friendly with Rabbi Lonzano, who initially helped him get the rabbinical post in Jerusalem, but it wasn’t long before Rabbi Lonzano declared that Cordovero had tricked him (details elude me) and he even composed poem wishing for Cordovero’s fall and demise. While they reportedly came to terms, the poem survives and is a testament of Rabbi Lonzano’s unrelenting personality. 

His unwillingness to submit or give up seemed to suit him well towards fulfilling his lifelong dream - to publish the optimal Torah text according to the most reliable sources. Rabbi Lonzano secured a letter of recommendation from eminent Rabbis in Europe to gain access to the codices of the Syrian, Lebanese and Egyptian communities, and he would not take a no for an answer. 

He even visited the famed Geniza of Cairo, searching for an ancient scroll attributed to the prophet Ezra stored in an attic there. As is well known, that community believed that anyone entering the attic would be cursed by dying within a year. Rabbi Lonzano didn’t care for it and retrieved the scroll, which turned out to be what he called “a fake” - and he didn’t die from the curse. 

His research was primarily based on the opinions of Rabbi Meir Abulafia (Rama), Menhachem Meiri's Kiryat Sefer, Rabbi Kimchi's grammatical work, along with many other older manuscripts he had in his possesion.

After extensive travels, Rabbi Lonzano gathered just enough money to publish his Torah codice, called Or Torah, but he had to make a hard choice, as his family back in Jerusalem had no means to subsist and he had to choose between publishing the book or send the money back home. 

He decided to go ahead and publish, perhaps betting that if successful he would sell enough copies to sustain his family for the years to come but also because he knew the importance of his breakthrough work. 

While in Italy to publish his book, he stayed in the home of Rabbi Yedidya Norzi (1560–1626), who reviewed Rabbi Lonzano’s  manuscript and was greatly impressed by the project. A gifted grammarian and researcher himself, Norzi decided to conduct his own expanded study, in the footsteps of Lonzano, expanding it to the whole Tanach (Lonzano’s work only covers the Pentateuch). This book was initially called Geder Poretz but it was only published years later in 1742 with a new name - Minchat Shai. 

New edition of the Minchat Shai

Rabbi Lonzano published his Or Torah at the end of his life and it quickly became the standard guide for all scribes and communities, Ashkenazi and Sephardi alike, as the most well researched reference in the topic of Masora. 

One of the major decisions he dealt with relate to Shirat Hayam’s layout, explored in a previous post in depth, and Rabbi Lonzano decided in favor of the Rama in detriment to the older (and more accurate) minhag that was still in use in many communities. 

Rabbi Lonzano was convinced that this was the original opinion of the Rambam and blamed any manuscript discrepancies to scribal typos (see below) - even though modern scholarship has proven that the Rambam had in fact a different layout. However his ruling took root and it’s the prevailing custom of Ashkenazim and Sephardim until today. 

Rabbi Lonzano clearly enjoyed unprecedented influence in the field of Mesora, and Rabbi Norzi’s expanded work further cemented Rabbi Lonzano’s opinions and research. 

Today, the Minchat Shai is the standard guide that is used for all Torah and Prophet’s scrolls. It is a very similar work to the Or Torah and even though it was published some 150 year later, its user friendly format and the fact that it covers all Tanach have made the Minchat Shai more popular than Rabbi Lonzano’s Or Torah.

Rabbi Lonzano, who overcame serious physical and financial troubles, cast his name as the Mesora’s most influential scholar of the past centuries. There aren’t many resources online about his story, and I hope I helped fill the void with this post, which was based on Prof Jordan Penkower’s book on this topic.