Letters & documents (History)

"Megaleh Temirin (Revealer of Secrets), ed. Jonatan Meir, Three volumes, Mosad Bialik, Jerusalem

Megaleh Temirin (Revealer of Secrets), first published in Vienna in 1819, is one of the sharpest and wittiest pieces of Jewish literature written in the first half of the nineteenth century, and is perhaps the most important piece of Hebrew prose composed before the stories of Mendele Mocher Seforim. A sly and complex story deriding Hasidism and Hasidim, it is told through the correspondence between the beadles of Hasidic courts and contemporary rabbis, and it presents a dark picture of  avaricious frauds and swindlers whose main concern was control over territory and the souls of believers, a goal achieved by beguiling the authorities and attacking all opponents. Perl lends his book a ‘Hasidic’ feel both in its physical design and in its language, presenting a Maskilic version of In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov that lays Hasidism bare so that no reader will ever be able to look at that, or any other Hasidic book, in the same way again. In addition to the book’s satiric sting, which would have been enough to bring its readers a dual pleasure, Perl’s hints at contemporary people and places, hidden within anagrams and numerological tricks. With the unraveling of these clues, which also include the use of actual Hasidic sources, the book is a valuable, contemporary view of historical reality. A meticulous reading of the book may therefore open a window on the hidden worlds of Hasidism and the Haskalah at the start of the nineteenth century.


The first volume (Imagined Hasidism) serves as an introduction to the complex satirical writings of Josef Perl of Tarnopol (1773-1839). At the center of the book stands an analysis of the satires, Megaleh Temirin (1819) and Bochen Tzadik (1838), including a systematic treatment of the ‘characters’ in the central works and a discussion of the dozens of manuscripts to be found in the Perl Archive in Jerusalem. Perl’s writings are analyzed here in the fuller context of Hebrew and Yiddish literature in general and Maskilic and Hasidic literature in particular, as well as other polemical writings and governmental records critical of Hasidism. The study thus presents a complex and nuanced picture of the relationship between literature and history, between the anti-Hasidic reports and the more complicated historical reality, and lays the groundwork for further research into the genre of nineteenth-century Maskilic satire.

The second and third volumes (Megaleh Temirin) present for the first time an annotated edition of Megaleh Temirin. It is based on the first edition and the scattered manuscripts and it includes a comparison to its Yiddish translation. The book is accompanied by appendices on its origins and contents, including fundamental treatments of several passages: an explication of the encoded names, the Hasidic sources used by the author, and the variants found in the manuscripts and in the only edition of the book in Yiddish.

The editor of the book, Professor Jonatan Meir, teaches in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University. He has published several articles on the Haskalah of Eastern Europe, Hasidism, and a number of varied topics in twentieth-century Kabbalah.


Contents

Volume 1  - Critical Edition

Concerning this edition
Key personalities
Sefer Megale Temirin – Critical Edition


Volume 2 - Appendixes:
1. Glossary, Abbreviations, Acronyms
2. Explanation of the Speaking Names
3. Perl’s Hasidic Sources
4. Manuscripts of Sefer Megale Temirin
5. Yiddish Introduction to Sefer Megale Temirin
Bibliographic Abbreviations

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Reviews:
(1) Dan Meron, 2013, ‘Megaleh Temirin’, Kivunim Hadashim 29, 55 pages (Hebrew)
(2) David Assaf, 2014, ‘Hasidim will not Read it but Tear it’, Haaretz, Tarbut ve-Sifrut, p .6 (Hebrew) http://onegshabbat.blogspot.co.il/2014/04/blog-post_18.html
(3) Eliezer Brodt, 2014, 'New book Announcement- Megale Temirin', The Seforim Blog http://seforim.blogspot.co.il/2014/01/new-book-announcement-megale-temirin.html
(4) Matan Hermoni, 2014,  הסבתא המופקרת של הספרות העבריתHaaretz, Sfarim (Hebrew) http://www.haaretz.co.il/.premium-1.2382365
(5) Shinichi Yamamoto, 2015, 山本　伸一, "ヨナタン・メイール編著『想像のハシディズム』", ユダヤ・イスラエル研究　第28号  http://www.waseda.jp/assoc-jsjs/jistudies.html
(6) David Biale and David Assaf,, 2015, 'Revealer Revealed', Jewish Review of Books, pp. 17-21  http://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/1454/revealer-revealed/
(7) Hillel Halkin, 2015, "Sex, Magic, Bigotry, Corruption- and the First Hebrew Novel', Mosaic Magazine,  http://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/2015/05/sex-magic-bigotry-corruption-and-the-first-hebrew-novel/
(8) Tomer Persico, 2015, "Interview", Lula'at haEl Blog, http://tomerpersico.com/2015/08/10/meir_perl/

The text and translation of the selected letters presented here (twenty-one in all) forms part of a hitherto unpublished corpus of letters in Syriac, Neo-Aramaic and Arabic written and sent during the 1880’s from Mosul to Berlin by Gabriel Jeremiah Shāmīr to Carl Eduard Sachau. The former was a local Assyrian book-collector and copyist whilst the latter was a renowned Orientalist and prolific scholar who edited and translated many Syriac and Arabic works.

The main focus of this study is a methodological analysis of private letters written by Spanish emigrants from the Americas to their relatives and friends back in Europe, with an intensive discussion about the interaction and blurring between the public and the private spheres in private correspondences, kept and preserved in a public space (the archive). Questions of source criticism and a detailed assessment of the scientific production on the topics of letter writing and private correspondences in general, and emigrant-letters, specially, constitute the first part of the study. Emigrant letters from the colonial period can be found in a wide array of archival sources. Private archives of noble families, merchant houses and merchant institutions often hold large vaults of correspondence of some prominent member, but also public archives in Spain provides several types of documents containing private letters: notarial records and files from court cases do contain a good number of letters. A very important source for Spanish emigrant letters, because they were written by the greatest number of different letter writers, stem from solicitations for emigration licences, which were required by Spanish subjects in order to legally cross the Atlantic Ocean.
Depending on the varying contexts of their archiving, the analysis of the letters’ contents requires different methods and peculiar precautions and aspects have to be reflected to reach an acceptable degree of hermeneutical understanding of each single text. The private and intimate, innate to the form of private or familiar letters as a genre, stand in a fascinating contrast to the manifold public contexts present from the production of the letter itself, to the transport, reshipment, lecture, all the way to its archiving (and lecture by the modern scholar).
The central corpus of analysis are the mentioned letters from emigration solicitudes, commonly called cartas de llamada or recruitment letters. With their help, hopeful solicitors tried to prove that their husbands wanted them in order to reunite in their new home, or that a relative (quite often an uncle or cousin) wanted them to come and had work to offer. Letters of this type were also the basis of the most important existing edition of emigrant letters by Enrique Otte from 1988, a work which is generally considered the spark that triggered interest in such letters as historical sources within the historiography of Spanish America. His work, which was limited to the years 1540-1614, was followed by several other editions of emigrant letters, some of them also using cartas de llamada. However, none of these editions offered a systematical comparison of the existing editions or tried to exhaustively identify the archival series containing such letters. Most editions also made very limited use of the documents surrounding the letters in the solicitudes. Last – but not least – one has to state a complete chaos concerning the practice and standards for the edition of the original documents, which differ considerably - methodologically and qualitatively. This study, thus, also makes an effort to develop a solid basis for possible future editions.
Searching in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, 1213 hitherto unknown and unpublished letters could be added to the 1017 cartas de llamada already published in other editions. This study analysis this closed corpus quantitatively in demographic and temporal-spatial aspects and qualitatively tries to answer question about the use of the letters in the keeping-up of familiar ties and organization of chain-emigration. Special attention is also given to the communicative behaviour of the emigrants, which is studied both qualitatively – by taking a look at the strategies employed to secure the transoceanic contact despite the many obstacles like wars, shipwrecking, and lack of infrastructure – and quantitatively – by comparing the time needed for full circuits of correspondence, frequency of letter writing, etc.

This article analyzes the history of editions of letters written in America by Spanish emigrants to their families and friends during the colonial era. We also trace how Spanish and Latin American historiography made use of emigrant letters as historical sources, calling attention to a hitherto too gullible belief in the "authenticity" and "intimacy" of such documents. We put special emphasis to the so-called cartas de llamada (recruitment letters), which are the best known and most widely used type of Spanish emigrant letters of the colonial period, showing the various interweavements of the public and private spheres due to intentions and selections by the letters' authors, recipients, and Crown officials. We also advert to the existence of a considerable number of falsifications among the archived letters.

This paper studies the interaction between clerical and lay English Catholics on the Continent in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In contrast with Protestant exiles, who established separate exile churches, Catholic expatriates did not create churches specifically for the exiled laity. Catholics abroad did nonetheless get support from the religious convents, colleges, and monasteries, where they received some pastoral care, and liturgical nourishment. How this interaction gained particular features in the context of expatriate Catholics is discussed in three cases which are attributed great importance in Counter-Reformation Catholicism: sodalities, preaching, and saint veneration.

By presenting a Catholic case of confessional mobility, this essay contributes to scholarship on early modern exiles, which is dominated by work on Protestant migration. It also speaks to the study of the Catholic Reformation, by examining how this was shaped in a situation of mobility. In both cases, and more generally, it nuances the study of institutional and localised confessional lives. The evidence discussed in this article suggests that much of the exiles devotional and liturgical lives, and their sense of belonging, is to be found in informal networks and communal understanding, rather than in focused clear-cut institutions. This has bearing upon the records that have been created and passed on to this day, and their visibility in historical research.

Retomamos el 25.º aniversario de de las Cartas privadas de Enrique Otte para hacer un repaso por las ediciones de similares cartas producidas desde entonces. Se analizan los fondos de los que se han sacado, se establece una tipología de cartas y se revisan las variadas prácticas de edición. También se proponen estándares de edición y se pronuncia por un cambio hacia ediciones digitales (TEI).

This essay combines literary criticism with archival work in order to explore the relationship between two material signs that were often connected figuratively in English Renaissance literature, the seal and the hymen. While the seal authorised, authenticated and secured letters and other documents, many thought the hymen did the same for virginal female bodies. Looking at plays and poems in relation to the material culture of sealing in early-modern England, I analyse metaphors and similes which represent the seal as a kind of epistolary hymen and the hymen as a kind of human seal. In doing so, I demonstrate how Shakespeare, Donne and other authors drew on material and rhetorical traditions as they engaged with this reversible analogy. The essay focuses on the paradoxical fact that defloration was rhetorically linked with both the stamping and breaking of seals, acts of creation and destruction respectively. I conclude by discussing aspects of the hymenal seal that destabilise its status as reliable sign of patriarchal authority, especially the possibility of counterfeiting.

This article is about passion and prurience, about those who write love letters and the scholars who subsequently wish to read them.It examines some ofthe practical and textual difficulties that the scholar encounters in attempting to trace an intimate relationship through the fragments ofcorrespondence which survive in public collections. It confronts some of the interpretive limits that time and distance impose upon individual letters, as well as suggesting some new reading strategies for literarycorrespondence.

"The celebrated 1710 trial of Doctor Henry Sacheverell has been viewed as a classic example of the politicised 'state trial'. This work offers a critical edition of original texts and documents necessary for understanding the trial's significance. Previous historians have largely accepted the printing by Jacob Tonson of the 'authorised version' of the trial's proceedings as authoritative. This edition sets the Tonson account in its proper historical, and polemical, context by showing that it was not the only account on offer in the early eighteenth century of the trial's proceedings, and that it's authoritative status was hotly contested, particularly by Tories, but also by radical Whigs.

The texts collected in this edition consist of unique manuscripts and rare printed tracts, most existing in only one copy and never before reproduced. By consolidating them in one volume, it is now possible for scholars to consult and compare these accounts in a readily accessible volume. The sheer variety of different responses to the trial become apparent, and demonstrate that any quest to establish one authoritative account of the trial is unrealistic."

During the first third of the 16th century there was a burst of messianic interest among the Jews of Italy. The messianic interest was fed by constant rumors suggesting that the ten lost tribes have been found, and are on their way back to their ancient homeland led by a big victorious army. It was also claimed that unnatural signs seen by many people in various places, prove that Jewish redemption is at hand, and that Christian and Muslim kings, Sultans, princes and even the Pope are aware of this process and its inevitable consequences for them.
Based on an analysis of some 30 letters, sent between Italy and Israel in the years 1402-1532, I argue that the Jewish expectations for a redemption led by the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel were influenced by European hopes that Prester John would come to their help to eradicate the Ottoman-Islamic threat. These hopes flourished in Italy from the 1430's on due to the political convergence between Italy and Ethiopia, perceived as the land of Prester John, at that time.
I also indicate a shift in the image of the ten tribes, from an image, common between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, of religious piety and complete detachment from what was happening outside their world, to a belligerent military image. This new image is explicitly expressed in the rumors, from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, that the tribes are on their way to become, once more, an active political and martial factor in the world history.
The new militant image, I claim, stems from a Jewish reading of the German anti-Semite traditions of the "Red Jews". According to these traditions the Ten Tribes are wild and fierce warriors and barbarian cannibals. They were prisoned in a remote and isolated place because they endanger the mere existence of the civilized (Christian) world. The Christian traditions of Prester John and the Red Jews, when read through Jewish eyes, have become a source for consolation and messianic hope.
Sixteenth century Jewish messianism was a historical messianism. It was affected by the international and geo-political situation, and envisioned as the rise of a political and martial Jewish power (the ten tribes) as a new and significant player in world politics.

In this paper I have analyzed connection between rumors on the Holocaust circulating in Warsaw ghetto and emergence of knowledge on that issue among the public opinion and ordinary inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto.
I have focused on rumors regarding extermination in other villages and towns and on rumors regarding letters that were allegedly sent by the deportees who, in fact, were sent to Treblinka death camp.

Prof.univ.dr. Gheorghe POPOVICI Conf.univ.dr. Carmen ALBERT REȘIȚA-NOVI SAD 2012 Traduceri rezumate în limba engleză: Alina COTEA-GUGA 9 Volumul a fost realizat cu sprijinul Consiliului Județean Caraș-Severin și al Universității "Eftimie Murgu" Reșița j I BANAT-ISTORIJA I MULTIKULTURALNOST atenții relativ constante direct f ' w ... epistolare dintre Dr. Vlad Popovici* , le româno sârbe au făcut de-a lungul timpului obiectul unei sau tannpnHoi'V lst1(£lcllor-dovadă stând titlurile care abordează sau tangența! tema Prime|e referirj jstorjogra(ice |a relatile loan Rațiu și liderii politici sârbi aparțin biografului săû "nțfic 'a Universitatea .Babeș-Bolyai" din Cluj-Napoca. This work was supported by CNCSIS-UEFISCSU, project number PN ll-RU PD-425/2010.

In this paper I have analyzed connection between rumors on the Holocaust circulating in Warsaw ghetto and emergence of knowledge on that issue among the public opinion and ordinary inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto. I have focused on rumors regarding extermination in other villages and towns and on rumors regarding letters that were allegedly sent by the deportees who, in fact, were sent to Treblinka death camp.

Distinctions between public and private — however problematic and contested — turn on notions of borders or boundaries and this essay examines approaches to collections of private and, in some cases, highly personal papers that have found their way into public repositories. What qualities attach to these private/public papers?  What makes an archived document ‘private’?  What protocols govern scholarly access to these particular elements of the archival record? Finally, and more significantly, what are the effects of this categorization? The essay concludes by considering how the productivity of the ‘private’ may be bound up with questions of value.

The early 19th century was a period of intense turmoil and chaos in the Spanish-speaking world: The Napoleonic Wars and French occupation of the Peninsula in the 1800s, independence movements in the Americas, the liberal constitution of Cádiz, Napoleon’s defeat, and the reinstallation of the Bourbons in the 1810s, and finally, the second constitutional period, the iron fist of restoration, and the eventual loss of most American possessions between 1821 and 1825. The least affected areas in the midst of this turmoil were the loyalist islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, metaphorically the “eye of the hurricane.” It is within this context that a corpus of some dozen letters, preserved in the Spanish National Archive, were written. They were produced in the circum-Caribbean region—most in Puerto Rico—and addressed mainly to relatives and business partners on the other side of the Atlantic. The letters in question were archived without accompanying documentation, probably seized by authorities loyal to the restoration of the Ancien Régime. As a central element, this digital resource—“En el Ojo del Huracán”—displays these primary sources in an online presentation.

Beyond the historiographic value of the sources, the project explores the differences between traditional and digital edition standards (TEI) for digital letter editions with the aim of showcasing the benefits of implementing the digital paradigm and for different visualizations, functionalities, analysis and incorporation in larger infrastructures.

Cet article entend détailler un moment clé de redéfinition des frontières raciales dans la petite ville de Nambucca Heads sur la côte nord des New South Wales : le processus de la ségrégation de l’école en 1915. L’examen minutieux de tous les aléas de cet événement, et en particulier l’étude des diverses formes de « réactions aborigènes » auxquelles ce processus a donné lieu, permettra de s’interroger sur les conditions d’émergence d’une discrimination explicite, inconnue jusqu’alors, entre Noirs et Blancs.

It is clear to anybody who has ever heard of Napoleon that he was a military genius. In just a few years, He managed to conquer the majority of Europe, dividing it between the French empire and satellite states. What most people ignore however, is Napoleon’s life long wish and efforts towards a durable peace in Europe and in the world, as reflected in his official correspondence. With the help of various historical evidence, such as personal letters written by the Emperor and abstract of discourses, this paper intends to shed some light on this mostly unknown aspect of his personality; that of the man who wrote of peace, even when he was facing war.

Encounters between researchers and the archive are embodied ones: it is not only the intellectual, but also the physical (and emotional) dimensions of the encounter that endow it with its unique texture. While there is remarkably little published commentary on the material properties of what we encounter in the archives, central to these experiences is the often unacknowledged power and attraction of paper. In this essay I draw on the experience of reading Greta Garbo’s intimate correspondence with Mercedes de Acosta to pose questions about the materiality of archival artefacts and to argue for the cultivation of material literacy.