Or Yisrael [responsa]

LIPSCHUETZ, ISRAEL BEN ELIEZER

The Widow Sizmann

Cleves

1770

FIRST EDITION. THE ONLY HEBREW BOOK PRINTED IN CLEVES. Numerous printed corrections pasted in. On title, signature of former owner "Simon Halewa" in Sephardic cursive script

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

The work centers upon the Cleves Get controversy (1766-67), one of the great causes célèbres of the eighteenth century, which involved most of the great rabbinic authorities of the day: Jacob Emden, Ezekiel Landau ("Noda bi-Yehudah"), Aryeh Leib of Metz ("Sha'agath Aryeh"), Saul Loewenstamm of Amsterdam, Joseph Steinhart of Fuerth, Shlomo Chelma ("Merkeveth ha-Mishneh"), Saul Halevi of Hague, et al. Perhaps the most important touchstone of the controversy is the halachic definition of the "shoteh" (the insane). It was the contention of the Frankfurt Beth Din that the husband was mentally instable, thus invalidating the "get" or bill of divorce that he granted his wife. 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 validating the Cleves Divorce 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, who was reduced to "a frequenter of concerts and a chess-player." R. Nathan Maas, of the Frankfurt Beth Din, is singled out for especially harsh invective and called "Nathan ha-Azati" - a reference to the infamous Sabbatian prophet Nathan of Gaza (see f. 9v.). On the following line, several words have been overlaid with a printed strip containing a “corrected” reading. See EJ, Vol. V, cols. 613-615