Shailoth Uteshuvoth Ma’amar Mordechai [responsa]

HALBERSTADT, MORDECHAI

Joseph Karl Neumann

Brünn

1790

FIRST EDITION. Lechem Eden, containing glosses by Halberstadt’s son, Menachem Mendel, appended.

Vinograd, Brünn 45

The author was embroiled in many of the rabbinic controversies of his time - that involving Jacob Emden and Jonathan Eybeschuetz as well as the Cleves Get case. As a respondant, he is erudite and displays profound acumen. Responsum no. 30 deals with the case of an animal found with a needle adhering to the midriff. Such an animal was regarded as kosher by the Rhineland rabbinate on the basis of responsa by Solomon Ephraim Luntschitz and Isaiah Horowitz. However Halberstadt here proves these alleged responsa were in fact forgeries by the Bonn informer, Krauss “who forged and testified falsely in the names of those great scholars.” Halberstadt also proposed a solution to the problem of the ritual defilment of Kohanim (Priests) in the ghetto of Frankfurt am Main in which two streets of row-houses rendered all the residences forbidden from entry to Kohanim should a death occur in any individual house. Halberstadt proposed that a “Brandmauer” (fire-wall) be built to separate the two streets. The rabbis of Frankfurt were so opposed to this reasoning they condemned the entire volume to flames. According to B. Auerbach in his treatise, B’rith Avraham (Frankfurt, 1860) “not even two copies have survived in the whole City.” SeeYodea Sepher p. 383, no.1960; Aresheth, vol. I pp.441-2 and Carmilly-Weinberger, pp.176-7.