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Simhah ben Samuel of Vitry

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Simhah ben Samuel of Vitry(Hebrew:שמחה בן שמואל מויטרי;died 1105) was a FrenchTalmudistof the 11th and 12th centuries, pupil ofRashi,and the compiler ofMachzor Vitry.He lived inVitry-le-François.

Machzor Vitry

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Machzor Vitrycontains decisions and rules concerning religious practise, besidesresponsabyRashiand other authorities, both contemporary and earlier. The work is cited as early as the 12th century inJacob Tam'sSefer ha-Yashar(No. 620) as having been compiled by Simchah; and the sources from which the compiler took his material—theSederRav Amram,theHalachot Gedolot,and others—also are mentioned.Isaac ben Samuel,a grandson of Simchah, also refers[1]toMachzor Vitrycompiled by his grandfather.

Various additions were afterward made to thismachzor,a large proportion of which, designated by the letterת'‎ (= "tosafot" ), are byIsaac ben Dorbolo.The latter often appends his name to such additions; and in one place he says plainly: "These explanations were added by me, Isaac b. Dorbolo; but the following is from the Machzor of R. Simchah of Vitry himself".[2]Other additions are byAbraham ben Nathan,author ofHa-Manhig,and are designated by the lettersאב "ן‎, his initials.

Extant manuscripts of the Machzor

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Several manuscripts ofMachzor Vitryare extant, the oldest of which, according toAbraham Berliner[3]is fromIsaac Samuel Reggio,currently in theJewish Theological Seminary of Americalibrary (NY JTS 8092).[4]It containsMachzor Vitryproper without any additions. A second manuscript, in theBodleian Library,Oxford (Neubauer,Cat. Bodl. Hebr. MSS.No. 1100), is said to have marginal annotations byEleazar ben Judah,author of theSefer ha-Rokeach(Michael,Or ha-Chayim.No. 1214). The third manuscript is in theBritish Library(Cod. Add. Nos. 27,200 and 27,201), and contains still other additions; this manuscript served as basis for S. Hurwitz's edition ofMachzor Vitrypublished by theMeḳiẓe Nirdamim Society(Berlin, 1893). The edition is very faulty, as the editor used no critical judgment in his work; instead of the original treatises it contains some from theSefer ha-TerumahofBaruch ben Isaacand from theEshkolofRavad.[5]A fourth manuscript is inParma-Biblioteca PalatinaParm. 2574 (DeRossi cat. no. 159),[6]which appears to be of similar age to the Reggio manuscript.[4] Two recently published papers suggest that another manuscript (MS ex- Sassoon 535) is earlier[7](mid-12th century), and that there are in fact a corpus of thirteen extant Mahzor Vitry manuscripts.[8]

Only the British Library (Cod. Add. Nos. 27,200 and 27,201),[9]JTS (NY JTS 8092),[10]Moscow (Guenzburg 481),[11]and Paris (AIUH133)[12]manuscripts are digitized and available online. The others are found in libraries, except for MS ex-Sassoon 535 (Sassoon-Klagsbald 535), which was anonymously purchased fromSassoonin 1975 and has since been inaccessible in a private collection.[7]

Additions to the Machzor proper

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Machzor Vitrycontains many prayers and liturgical poems (piyyutim), which are distributed throughout the work. Besides these scattered poems the British Library manuscript has (pp. 239–260) a collection of piyyutim which was published by Brody under the titleKontres haPiyyutim.(Berlin, 1894). In the published edition of this Machzor there is also a commentary on the PesachHaggadah,which, however, does not agree with that by R. Simchah b. Samuel of Vitry printed atVilnain 1886. The latter commentary, which agrees with the one cited byAbudrahamas being found inMachzor Vitry,was taken from a manuscript of that machzor—probably from the parchment copy owned by theVilna Gaon,[13]although no particular manuscript is mentioned in the Vilna edition itself.

The published edition ofMachzor Vitryalso contains a commentary onPirkei Avot.This commentary is found in the British Library manuscript, but in neither of the others. It is really a commentary byJacob ben Samson,the pupil of Rashi,[14]amplified in the present Machzor. Many midrashic sayings, which are cited as such inMachzor Vitry,have been preserved in that work alone. Thus the passage cited (p. 332) from theMidrash Tehillimis no longer found in the present midrash of that name. Likewise there are found inMachzor Vitrycitations from theJerusalem Talmudwhich are lacking in the existing editions of the latter.

Editions

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Machzor Vitry was published in 1891 byMekitze Nirdamim.[15]A new edition, based on Cod. Add. Nos. 27,200-27,201, Sassoon-Klagsbald 535, NY JTS 8092, Ginzberg 481, Bodleian 1100, Bodleian 1101, and Bodleian 1102 was published by Aryeh Goldschmidt between 2003 and 2009.[16][17]

Footnotes

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  1. ^responsum No. 835, inMordechai,on Mo'ed Katan
  2. ^Machzor Vitry,p. 244
  3. ^In his additions to Hurwitz's introduction toMachzor Vitry(p. 172
  4. ^abMAḤZOR VITRYinJewish Virtual Library
  5. ^Machzor Vitry,pp. 752 et seq.
  6. ^Zwiep, Irene E.; Schrijver, E.; Hoogewoud, F. J. (2006).Omnia in Eo: Studies on Jewish Books and Libraries in Honour of Adri Offenberg, Celebrating the 125th Anniversary of the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana in Amsterdam.Peeters Publishers. p. 155.ISBN9789042919082.Footnote 18last access 2014-09-04
  7. ^abS. Stern and J. Isserles,"The Astrological and Calendar Section of the Earliest Mahzor Vitry Manuscript ( MS ex- Sassoon 535)",Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism,15.2 (2015), pp. 199-318.
  8. ^see J. Isserles, "Mahzor Vitry: A Study of Liturgical-Halakhic Compendia from Medieval Franco-Germany",Jewish History35 (2021), pp. 1-29.
  9. ^"British Library".bl.uk.Retrieved2021-12-08.
  10. ^"מחזור ויטרי NY JTS 8092".web.nli.org.il.Retrieved2021-12-09.
  11. ^"מחזור ויטרי".nli.org.il.Retrieved2024-05-13.
  12. ^"Paris (F), Bibliothèque de l'Alliance Israélite Universelle, H 133 - Notice Medium (édition avancée)".medium-avance.irht.cnrs.fr.Retrieved2022-07-21.
  13. ^Rav Pe'alim,p. 19
  14. ^concerning whom compare Schechter,Einleitung zu Abot des R. Natan,p. ix.
  15. ^"מחזור ויטרי"(in Hebrew).
  16. ^Mạhzor Ṿiṭriin libraries (WorldCatcatalog)
  17. ^"The Maḥzor Vitry of the British Library (Add MS 27200-Add MS 27201)".

Jewish Encyclopedia bibliography

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This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain:Singer, Isidore;et al., eds. (1901–1906)."Simhah b. Samuel of Vitry".The Jewish Encyclopedia.New York: Funk & Wagnalls.

  • S. Hurwitz, Einleitung und Register zum Machzor Vitry, with additions by A. Berliner, Berlin, 1896–1897;
  • A. Epstein, in Monatsschrift, 1897, pp. 306–307;
  • idem, in R. E. J. 1897, pp. 308–313;
  • Michael, Or ha-Ḥayyim, No. 1214.
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