Download PDF | Mark R. Cohen_ Theodore K. Rabb_ Howard E. Adelman_ Natalie Zemon Davis_ Benjamin C. I. Ravid - The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi_ Leon Modena's Life of Judah, 1989.
339 Pages
Preface
IN THE SPRING of 1980 Natalie Zemon Davis, Theodore K. Rabb, and I collaborated to design and teach an undergraduate seminar at Princeton on the Jews in early modern Europe from the comparative perspective of early modern European and Jewish history. Our syllabus included readings in Jewish primary sources in English translation, touching on several important problems in the economic and social history of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Wishing to devote a session to the genre of autobiography and self-presentation, we decided at my suggestion to assign an autobiography that had intrigued me ever since I had read it for the first time while preparing my study of the book on Jewish rites, Historia de' riti hebraici, by that fascinating figure of the seventeenth-century Venetian ghetto, Leon Modena (1571—1648).'
The work we chose was the latter's well-known Hebrew autobiography, Hayyei yehudah (The Life of Judah), published by Abraham Kahana in 1911. For the seminar we relied on a tentative English translation of the Kahana text prepared under my supervision by a Princeton senior, Brenda Bodenheimer. Subsequently, Davis, Rabb, and I decided that because only excerpts of this autobiography, so important for both Jewish and general history, had been published in English,2 it ought to be made available in its entirety to the English reading public.
Accordingly, I undertook to prepare a translation based directly on the original manuscript, which Kahana had not been able to locate.' Davis and Rabb undertook to contribute introductory material that would give the comparative perspective. And I invited two specialists on Jewish Venice, Benjamin Ravid of Brandeis University and Howard Adelman—then engaged with a dissertation at Brandeis on Leon Modena and now on the faculty of Smith College—to pool their scholarly resources and compile historical notes for the edition. The manuscript of Hayyei yehudah first came to the attention of Jewish scholars in the nineteenth century. Several of them quoted or paraphrased parts of it in their writings.4 One was Moses Soave, who copied it in its entirety in 1857 and then published an Italian summary of its contents in twenty installments in // Coniere israelitico (1863—1865). Kahana, unable to locate the original manuscript, used the handwritten Hebrew transcription by Soave for his edition of Hayyei yehudah.
The whereabouts of the manuscript were unknown until the 1960s, when Nehemya Allony and Ephraim Kupfer rediscovered it among a cache of uncataloged Hebrew manuscripts in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan.5 (Folio numbers are given in the translation in brackets, marked "MS," and all mentions of specific passages in the autobiography are cross-referenced by these folio numbers.) Allony and Kupfer judged Kahana's printed text to be generally faithful to the original, though "with mistakes in a few places." My own study of the manuscript, however, initially from microfilm and later at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana itself, revealed many mistakes and also omissions in the Kahana text. Equally important, examination of the manuscript disclosed interesting features that tell much about Modena's manner of writing and sense of self. Finally, access to the manuscript has made it possible to verify for the first time the assumption held by nearly all previous observers that it is, indeed, the author's autograph. A full discussion of these matters has been reserved for excursus 2, "Who Wrote the Ambrosiana Manuscript of Hayyei yehudah?" The new Hebrew edition of the autobiography published by Daniel Carpi in 19856 (page numbers are given in the translation in brackets and marked "C"), with its accurate transcription of the Ambrosiana manuscript, obviated the need for the full critical apparatus originally planned for this volume. Most of the references in the textual notes to manuscript readings and other palcographical aspects relate to characteristic features of the manuscript or to the meaning of specific words or passages.
The Translation The translation of Modena's autobiography strives to be as literal as possible, conveying straightforwardly the facts and episodes recounted by the author in the Hebrew original. Of necesssity, missing from the English rendition is a sense of the literary flavor of the author's prose. Modena took pride in his ability as a writer of letters and an author of published works, and he paid careful attention to style. This fact can be ascertained, for instance, from the handwritten drafts of some of his letters and responsa that still survive, from his professional activity as a writing teacher, and from notes on stylistic rules that he made in preparation for an epistolographic manual he planned to write.7
Even though Modena never intended Hayyei yehudah to be published, it seems clear from the text that he tried hard to make what was essentially a prosaic narrative interesting from a literary point of view. As elsewhere in his works, Modena's writing of the autobiography may have gone through stages, beginning with rough ideas and ending with polished prose. Certain features of the Ambrosiana manuscript discussed in the second excursus suggest, in fact, that Modena may even have written out drafts of some sections of the autobiography before transcribing them into the manuscript in their present form. One very creative feature of Modena's Hebrew style that comes across only imperfectly in the translation is his skillful use of biblical allusions.
Like many other Hebrew authors, especially in premodern times, Modena enjoyed taking a fragment of a biblical verse, well known to the reader in its scriptural or rabbinic context, and applying it in a fresh and linguistically catchy manner in a new context.8 An example from early in the autobiography will illustrate a simple type of such adaptation. Modena writes about a dispute between his father and his paternal uncles.
This quarrel lasted more than thirty-two years and, he says, diminished the family's potential business profits: "ve-'im hayu la-ahadim hayah beineihem 'osher yoter mi-me'ah elef" (had they united, together they would have had wealth in excess of one hundred thousand). The translation "had they united" does less than justice to the allusion here. The phrase "ve-'im hayu la-ahadim" is borrowed from part of a verse in Ezekiel (37:17), "ve-hayu la-ahadim be-yadekha" (and they shall become one in your hand). In Ezekiel, a group of sticks "become one" in the prophet's hand, symbolizing God's messianic promise to gather all the dispersed children of Israel and reunite them in their land under King David.
Modena intended the reader of his autobiography to recall the passage in Ezekiel and admire his original and clever use of this reference in a new, rather mundane, context. In more involved examples of this creative adaptation of biblical verses, Modena ingeniously altered words in order to convey entirely new meanings while retaining an echo of the original. Thus, in a passage describing his daughter Diana's first husband, Jacob Halevi, Modena changed the words in Exodus 4:36, "hatan damim la-mulot" (a bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision) to "hatan tamim le-ma'alot" (a son-in-law of perfect virtues). Interestingly, either the copyist Soave or the editor of the first printed edition, Kahana, failing to understand the pun, transcribed incorrectly "hatan damim le-ma'alot," thus obliterating Modena's artful adaptation.
In a translation it is very difficult to convey these sorts of literary devices. The reader interested in studying this aspect of Modena's style more thoroughly should consult the new Hebrew edition of Hayyei yehudah by Carpi. In the textual notes to this translation I have supplied biblical references selectively, with special attention to passages containing adaptations of or wordplay on biblical texts. Like most other Hebrew works of its period, Modena's is peppered with abbreviations. For the most part I have translated them as if they had been written out in full in the original, for example "of blessed memory" for z-l, the abbreviation for zikhrono li-verakhah.
The frequently used abbreviation alef-alej for adoni avi, "my master, my father," has been rendered somewhat freely as "my revered father." For dates rendered according to the Jewish anno mundi system, Modena recorded the year sometimes with and sometimes without the letter h (he'), the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which stands for the millennium 5(000). In the latter instance I placed the number 5 in brackets. Far too many events take place on r-h, rosh hodesh, for all of them actually to have occurred on "the first day of the month," namely, the new moon. I have preserved the ambiguity of the original by translating rosh hodesh "at the beginning of the month," except, of course, when the day of the week is also given and it corresponds to the day of rosh hodesh.
The phrase "leil bi'at yom X," which Modena employs quite often, is rendered "the night of the arrival of [day] X," in order to capture the reality of Jewish calendrical reckoning, which regards a day as beginning the previous night in accordance with the verse in the biblical Creation story, "and it was evening, and it was morning" (Genesis 1:5 etc.). In the original, names of people are almost invariably preceded by some designation. Women are called mar at; men are called r for rabbenu. I have left these words, "mistress" and "master," respectively, untranslated, because they are not proper titles.
Only when a genuine title is involved have I rendered it in the text. Thus m-hr-r (morenu ha-rav rabbenu) along with its variants (e.g., k-m-h-r-r, kevod morenu ha-rav rabbenu), the official designation of a scholar who had been ordained rabbi, is translated "Rabbi," and the abbreviation h-h-r (he-haver) is rendered haver, the title formally accorded to students who had not yet attained rabbinical rank. The rendition of Italian family names poses something of a problem. Did Jews called mi-x, "of X," in Hebrew go by the name "da [or di] X" in Italian?
The mistake regarding the name "Leon da Modena" that has perpetuated itself in publication after publication provides a case in point. In the autobiography (fol. 5a), Modena, who in Hebrew was known as Yehudah Aryeh mi-modena, states explicitly that he signed his name in Italian "Leon Modena da Venezia," as he was not a resident of Modena at all. Rather, he relates, that was the Italian city in which his ancestors had settled after migrating from France. His grandfather had moved from Modena to Bologna, and Leon himself had been born and later settled permanently in Venice. Interestingly, the only place in the autobiography that he writes "da Modena" (fol. 35b) is the exception that proves the rule, for in that instance he is copying in Hebrew transcription a reference to himself in Italian in a book by Manasseh ben Israel.
In general, therefore, Hebrew toponymic names in the autobiography have been treated in the translation as simple family names (Mordecai Modena, Moses Fano, etc.), unless the preposition "of" occurs in the text in the form of the Hebrew transcription of the Italian da or di (two examples: fols. 6a and 14a) or it is known from other sources or seems implicit from the context in the autobiography that the person actually lived in the place (two examples: fols. 4b [see historical note] and 24b). For Italian personal names that vary in the vernacular sources as regards the use of single or double consonant (e.g., Grasin/Grassin), the spelling with double consonant has been adopted for the sake of consistency.
A somewhat simplified system of Hebrew transliteration has been employed, omitting the underdot that in more scientific transliterations distinguishes het from he' and tet from tav, rendering tzadi by tz, and using v for both vet and vav. All Hebrew words in titles and extracted phrases have been rendered in lowercase letters (including proper nouns) because Hebrew does not distinguish between capital and lowercase letters. The symbols ' and ' represent alef and 'ayin, respectively. Wherever a Hebrew transcription of an Italian word reflects the Venetian dialect by dropping a final vowel, that spelling has been retained in the translation (as in Leon for Leone, Francolin for Francolino, camin for camino). Finally, for converting dates from the Jewish calendar to the Gregorian, use was made of Eduard Mahler's Handbuch der judischen Chronologie (Leipzig, 1916)
A Collaborative Edition This edition of The Life ofjudah is a collaborative effort of Jewish and general historians, and the introductory essays and historical notes are meant to demonstrate its value for both Jewish studies and European history as a whole. The first introductory essay, entitled "The Significance of Leon Modena's Autobiography for Early Modern Jewish and General European History," coauthored by myself and Theodore Rabb, provides a sketch of some of the fascinating features of Jewish social life in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Italy reflected in the autobiography and suggests ways in which this and other sources about the Jews might be studied comparatively with beneficial results. Howard Adelman's introductory essay, "Leon Modena:
The Autobiography and the Man," draws on an intimate knowledge of the man's biography and works to present a fresh overview of his life and to lay the groundwork for a new assessment of this very important figure of early modern Jewish history. Natalie Davis's illuminating essay, "Fame and Secrecy: Leon Modena's Life as an Early Modern Autobiography," places the work within the context of European autobiography, both Christian and Jewish, and shows just how fruitful a comparative study of Jewish autobiography can be. The historical notes compiled by Howard Adelman and Benjamin Ravid, on the basis of primary information in Jewish literary sources and in the Venetian archives as well as on the latest research on Venice, illuminate the author's life and place him within the wider context of Venetian and Italian Jewish history at the end of the sixteenth century and during the first half of the seventeenth.
(Words or passages in the text annotated in the historical notes are indicated by a superscript letter.) Benjamin Ravid's essay, "The Venetian Ghetto in Historical Perspective" (excursus i), presents a succinct and up-to-date description of the setting in which Leon Modena lived. We hope that this collaborative work will serve students and teachers alike by providing a worthy addition to the small library of Jewish autobiographies from the early modern period that have already been translated, in whole or in part, into English, including the popular memoirs of Gliickel of Hameln, the oft-cited autobiography of Solomon Maimon, the memoirs of Ber of Bolechow, the memoirs of David Reuveni, and the handy autobiographical excerpts (including one from Hayyei yehudah) in Leo W. Schwarz's Memoirs of My People.
These works, as well as many other Hebrew ones less accessible to the general reader—such as the memoirs of Josel of Rosheim, the autobiographical sections of Abraham Yagel's Gei' hizzayon, and the memoirs of Leon Modena's younger contemporaries, Yom Tov Lippman Heller (Megillat eivah, represented by a short excerpt in Schwarz's Memoirs of My People), Asher Halevi (a brief excerpt from which can be found in English translation in Jacob R. Marcus's The Jew in the Medieval World), and Modena's own grandson Isaac min Haleviim—offer promising opportunities for studying the social history of the Jews within the context of early modern European history and, as Natalie Davis's essay suggests, for investigating the genre of Jewish autobiography from a comparative perspective. Princeton, New Jersey Mark R. Cohen Eve of Rosh Hashanah 5748 September 23, 1987
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