Institute to Publish Accurate Texts of Ancient Rabbinic Works Established in U.S.

The establishment of an Institute for Research in Rebbinics to publish accurate texts based on all the available ancient rabbinic works was announced here today by the Jewish Theological Seminary. The institution was established through a grant made by Louis M. Rabinowitz of New York, in whose honor the Institute was named.

Dr. Louis Finkelstein, president of the Seminary, said that to make scientific additions possible, photographs were made of original manuscripts in the libraries of the British Museum, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and the Vatican, as well as in the state libraries of Berlin and Vienna. Other manuscripts that will be examined come from the Geniza, a room in an ancient synagogue in Cairo where lost Hebrew manuscripts were stored for several centuries until they were recovered by Solomon Schechter. The two oldest manuscripts that will be studied were photographed at the Vatican Library. One of them dates back to the seventh century.

“The publication of these texts,” Dr. Finkelstein said, “will virtually revolutionize the study of rabbinic literature and history. It is obvious that we cannot have a clear appreciation of the development of rabbinic Judaism so long as our information is based to a large extent on misquotations and copyists’ errors. The number of corrections to be made in any book is astonishingly great.” The task of preparing, correcting and publishing the books with the original versions will take about ten years, at a cost of $250,000 to $300,000. Nine books, including the Mishnah and its kindred texts, are scheduled for publication.