Summoning Enjoyer

Today, we are looking at this curious passage from the introduction to Shlomo Ephraim Luntschitz's (SEL) Torah commentary Kli Yakar. In it he is praising some "leaders of the three lands" for funding the publishing of the commentary he is writing. This is after previously mentioning that he was unable to publish one of his previous works due to a lack of funds. This all raises the question, who are the "leaders of the 3 lands"?

One group I can think of that this refers to would be the government of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. For context, SEL lived in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the mid/late 1500s through the early 1600s. During this period, the Commonwealth was run by a parliament called the Sejm, and a king who was elected by the noble class of the state. The Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth consisted of two primary parts, Poland and Lithuania.

This would get us to 2 lands, but its not clear what the 3rd would be (Prussia? As mentioned here: https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/111192/kli-yakar-introduction-three-lands). Also, why would the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth sponsor a Torah commentary? While it did have more freedom of religion than most European states at the time, this would be a strange act.

I think the more likely culprit would be The Council of Four Lands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Four_Lands. While one more land than mentioned by SEL, this seems to be the most likely body that would sponsor a Torah commentary.

What is this council? I had never heard of it before coming to write this post, but it seems like it was an essentially a governing body for the Jews of Poland-Lithuania, and according to https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4705-council-of-four-lands#anchor2, it was also at times referred to the "Council of Three Lands".

I cannot, in my searching the internet, find anything about the council specifically financially supporting books/Torah commentaries. I know that detailed records of the council exist, but I am a busy person and do not have time to delve deeply into Jewish politics in the PLC in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Today, we are talking about a Mishnah, specifically Eduyot 4:8 (which is the same as Yebamot 1:4). We have a disagreement here between the houses of Hillel and Shammai on a variety of issues related to marriage, but I find the conclusion rather heartwarming.

Today, I want to talk about this line in Chizkuni's introduction to his Torah commentary. Now there is no translation on Sefaria, and I can't seem to find one elsewhere on the internet. So, while my own Hebrew isn't yet great as I am still in the process of learning, I will give a shot at translating:

"For by my father's righteousness he sent up in smoke his right hand to the God of the Hebrews, he gave strength and might to copy/transcribe a book to the right (hand?) of his son"

The word I am translating as "he sent up in smoke" is generally used in regards to sacrifices (i.e., burning a sacrifice on an altar and causing its smoke to go up to God), or burning incense.

It is not entirely clear what Chizkuni means by this. There is very little I could find on this in a cursory search, just this page from the Ktav Publishing house:

Which states that: "[He wrote it] In memory of his father, who lost his right hand through his stead-fastness in the faith"

This seems like a good interpretation, but it still begs the question of how exactly his faith caused him to lose his hand. Unfortunately not much is known about Chizkuni in general, so this may remain a mystery. Some ideas are:

He got carpal tunnel/tendonitis from writing too much

He may have been harmed in some anti-Jewish Pogrom which caused him to lose his hand

Something else?

Regardless, it is quite a beautiful, if not unusual, way to describe his father's influence on his commentary

I was reading the introduction to Nachmanides' (Ramban) Torah commentary, and came across this very interesting passage. In it, he appears to be quoting from an Aramaic version of the Wisdom of Solomon (Also just called the Book of Wisdom, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Wisdom). I don't have my English version of this text (from the Charlesworth Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Vol 2), but the text quoted above does appear to line up with the version of the text given on Sefaria (chapter 7, lines 5-8). This is a text thought to have been written some time during the late Hellenistic/early Roman period, and it's genre is that of the Wisdom Literature, books like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes/Kohelet, which consist of some divine/wise figure giving advice.

What makes this quotation stand out is two-fold:

The Wisdom of Solomon is not considered canonical in Judaism. It was not included in the Tanach, so it is interesting that Nachmanides still found it worthy of quoting in the introduction to this commentary. Among different Christian denominations, it has varying canonicity.

The Wisdom of Solomon was originally written in Greek, but here he is referring to an Aramaic version. He refers to it as "מְתֻרְגָּם", which seems to indicate that he knows that it is a translation, but its not clear if he is aware of it's Greek origins.

All this raises the question: How did Nachmanides, sitting in Catalonia in the 1200s CE (although near the very end of his life he moved to Jerusalem), get his hands on an Aramaic translation of an Apocryphal piece of Jewish literature, which as far as we know was mainly preserved by Christians? There are a few possibilities:

An early Aramaic translation was made in antiquity, and was carried to Iberia during the broader Jewish Diaspora.

Nachmanides was reading from a Christian Aramaic (probably Syriac) version of the book, as the Peshitta (the Syriac translation of the bible) did include the Wisdom of Solomon. It is unclear how he would have gotten access to this, however, given that the Christian denominations that used the Peshitta were largely based in the Middle East.

There had been a more recent translation made, and that translation was being passed around during the time of Nachmanides.

Poking around the internet, I did find some more resources on this matter:

Nachmanides does appear to address the issue of canonicity, saying that while he does view the text as authentic, it was not written in with inspiration, so should not be considered canonical. In addition to this, it appears that he was not the only one to cite the Wisdom of Solomon, and that other Spanish Jews during his time period were citing it as well, alongside other works attributed to Solomon which we don't even know about.