LIPSCHUETZ, ISRAEL BEN ELIEZER, Or Yisrael [responsa]

(CLEVES GET CONTROVERSY)

The Widow Sizmann

Cleves

1770

FIRST EDITION. THE ONLY HEBREW BOOK PRINTED IN CLEVES.

Vinograd, Cleves 1. Carmilly-Weinberger, pp. 168-70

Concerned with the Cleves Get controversy, one of the great causes célèbres of the 18th century, that involved most of the great rabbinic adjudicators of the day.; including, Jacob Emden, Ezekiel Landau (Noda Be-Yehuda), Aryeh Leib of Metz (Sha'agath Aryeh), Saul of Amsterdam and many others. In the present copy of Or Yisrael, page 33 follows page 31, yet with the correct catchword and evidently with no lack of text. Nevertheless, passages were clearly censored due to the severity of language against the Rabbinate of Frankfurt a/Main, the author himself slights them as “insolent idiots” and other choice epithets based upon many clever plays on words (see ff. 16-17). The author relates that a broadside signed by ten prominent Polish Rabbis stating that the Cleves Divorce was valid, was subsequently publicly burnt by the Beth Din of Frankfurt. He states that a “Pashkevil” was thereafter published, belittling these Polish Rabbis, especially R. Shlomo of Chelma, the author of Mirkeveth HaMishna, slighting him as "a frequenter of concerts and a chessplayer." R. Nathan Maas, author of Binyan Shlomo, is also singled out with harsh invective and called Nathan Ha-Azati - a play on words meaning both “insolent “ and the namesake of the infamous Sabbatian prophet (see ff. 9b line 16, and immediately after this, the harsher “Nathan Ha-Satan”). Six words have been overlaid with a printed strip containing a differing “corrected” reading.