Description
Among Jacob Emden’s many works is Megillat Sefer, one of the most unusual, open, revealing, and unself-conscious egodocuments in Jewish and even general history. Written between 1752 and 1766, this work existed only in manuscript form for one hundred and thirty years, first in Emden’s hand and then in the hand of someone who copied the original. Emden’s handwritten version is no longer extant and only the copy exists. The work was first published in Warsaw, 1896 by David Kahane. In 1979 it was printed again in Jerusalem by Abraham Bick-Shauli who claimed that he was correcting mistakes in the earlier Kahana edition although his version is much less reliable, to the point of being worthless. I am now completing a new edition of this work with an introduction and extensive annotations. This work is a multi-faceted one and deserves analysis on a number of different levels. My interest in my presentation is to focus on one aspect of this fascinating work, what motivated Emden to write it, thereby situating this work in the context of other early modern Jewish examples of such writing.
This presentation is for the following text(s):
- Jacob Emden's Megilat Sefer (The Scroll of the Book)
Event Website
http://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/emw/emw2011/
Start Date
23-8-2011 9:30 AM
Location
University of Texas at Austin
Included in
Cultural History Commons, European History Commons, History of Religion Commons, Jewish Studies Commons
Introduction to Megillat Sefer by Rabbi Jacob Emden
University of Texas at Austin
Among Jacob Emden’s many works is Megillat Sefer, one of the most unusual, open, revealing, and unself-conscious egodocuments in Jewish and even general history. Written between 1752 and 1766, this work existed only in manuscript form for one hundred and thirty years, first in Emden’s hand and then in the hand of someone who copied the original. Emden’s handwritten version is no longer extant and only the copy exists. The work was first published in Warsaw, 1896 by David Kahane. In 1979 it was printed again in Jerusalem by Abraham Bick-Shauli who claimed that he was correcting mistakes in the earlier Kahana edition although his version is much less reliable, to the point of being worthless. I am now completing a new edition of this work with an introduction and extensive annotations. This work is a multi-faceted one and deserves analysis on a number of different levels. My interest in my presentation is to focus on one aspect of this fascinating work, what motivated Emden to write it, thereby situating this work in the context of other early modern Jewish examples of such writing.
This presentation is for the following text(s):
- Jacob Emden's Megilat Sefer (The Scroll of the Book)
https://research.library.fordham.edu/emw/emw2011/emw2011/8
