In the spring of 1970, a team of archeologists uncovered at En-Gedi the mosaic pavement of a synagogue from the Byzantine period. The reading of the inscription in the mosaic presented difficulties; even after the text had been established, its meaning was by no means clear. Particularly puzzling was an adjuration which included a curse against anyone who revealed to the Gentiles, “the secret of the village.”
Various scholars advanced different interpretations. Saul Lieberman suggested that the “secret” referred to was the method for the cultivation and manufacture of balsam employed by the villagers, which was their main industry. In the light of this interpretation, he was also able to explain the rest of the adjuration.
Lieberman published his explanation in a note entitled, “A preliminary Remark on the Inscription of En-Gedi” (Tarbiz, Oct. 1970). Although the comment is brief, it is buttressed by cogent proofs in support of his interpretation, including a quote from the Palestinian Talmud mentioning a prohibition against revealing trade secrets. Since it involved a significant archeological discovery which aroused wide interest, Lieberman’s note conveyed something of the quality and extent of his scholarship to circles generally unacquainted with his work.
Commentator of Talmudic and Midrashic Literature
Lieberman has concerned himself with the interpretation of ancient texts for more than forty years. Combining brilliant mastery of the entire Talmudic and rabbinic literature with a penetrating knowledge of the ancient world, he clarified numerous passages in the Talmud and Midrash, discovered the correct meaning of man hundreds of words and phrases, and shed new light on customs, beliefs and institutions mentioned in Talmudic and Midrashic literature.
Saul Lieberman was born in Motol, near Pinsk, in 1898, to a family of great rabbinic scholars. He studied at the yeshivoth of Malcz and Slobodka. In the early 1920’s he attended the University of Kiev. Following a brief sojourn in Palestine, he continued his studies in France. In 1928, after his return to Palestine, he was asked to collaborate in a Hebrew translation of the Palestinian Talmud. Lieberman admitted he had never studied the Palestinian Talmud: “I am a yeshiva bachur, and in the yeshivoth people didn’t study the Yerushalmi.”
However, he did not decline the offer, but asked for time to study the Palestinian Talmud. In only a year and a half he went over the entire Palestinian Talmud several times. From his intensive study, Lieberman concluded that what was needed was not a translation, but a critical edition and an new commentary as the text of the Palestinian Talmud was corrupted in many places and the meaning of numerous passages was unclear. Lieberman proceeded to apply himself to this task.
His debut in the world of Jewish scholarship was Al Hayerushalmi (1929), part of which is devoted to a discussion of the character of the text corruptions in the Palestinian Talmud and ways of emending them.
While working of the Palestinian Talmud, he studied Talmudic Philology and Greek language and literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1931 he was appointed lecturer in Talmud at the University, and at the same time he taught at the Mizrachi Teacher Seminary in Jerusalem. During those years he published a series of textual studies of the Palestinian Talmud in Tarbiz. In a treatise entitled Talmuda shel Keisarin (1931), he expressed the view that while most of the Palestinian Talmud had been composed in Tiberias about the end of the fourth century CE, the first three tractates of the Order of Nezikin had been collated about fifty years earlier at Caesarea. This was followed in 1934 by HaYerushalmi Kifshuto, a commentary on the tractates of Shabbath, Eruvin and Pesachim of the Palestinian Talmud, based on Talmudic manuscripts and early rabbinic works.
These publications made Lieberman known in wide rabbinical and scholarly circles and brought him in contact with renowned scholars in various countries, many of whom probably were not aware that their correspondent was still a comparatively young man. When the editor of an European rabbinical publication, on a visit in Jerusalem, called on Lieberman, he was surprised to meet a clean-shaven man in his thirties. He had expected to meet an old white-bearded rabbi.
As a result of his study of the Palestinian Talmud, Lieberman recognized the necessity for clarifying the Tannaitic sources, especially of the Tosefta, on which no commentaries had been composed by the early authorities and to whose elucidation only few scholars of later generations had devoted themselves. In a comparatively short period, Lieberman was able to compose Tosefeth Rishonim (4 vols., 1937-1939), a commentary on the entire Tosefta, with textual corrections based on manuscripts, early editions and quotations found throughout early rabbinic literature. During this period he also wrote “Tashlum Tosefta,” an introductory chapter to the second printing of M. S. Zucker-mandel’s Tosefta edition (1937), in which he examined Tosefta quotations in early rabbinic works that are not found in the Tosefta text.
He subsequently published Shekiin (1939), on Jewish legends, customs and literary sources found in Karaite and Christian polemical writings, and Midreshe Teman (1940), where he showed that the Yemenite Midrashim had preserved exegetical material which had been deliberately omitted by the Rabbis. Also in 1940, Lieberman published a variant version of the Midrash Rabba on Deuteronomy. In his view, this version had been current among Sefardi Jewry, while the standard text had been that of Ashkenazi Jewry.
Studies on Jewry in Roman Palestine
That year Lieberman resigned as dean of the Harry Fischel Institute for Talmudic Research in Jerusalem, a post he had held since 1935, to serve as professor of Palestinian literature and institutions at The Jewish Theological Seminary of America. After his arrival in the United States, he began to contribute to American scholarly publications. Among his more extensive articles were studies on the life of the Jews in Roman Palestine. In his two books Greek in Jewish Palestine (1942) and Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (1950), he traced the influence of the Hellenistic culture on Palestine Jewry during the Roman period. In 1945 he published Hilkhot Hayerushalmi, a treatise on the Palestinian Talmud which had been discovered in the Cairo Geniza and which he identified as the work of Maimonides, written in the Rambam’s own hand.
In the beginning of the 1950’s, Lieberman, who had been appointed dean of the Seminary’s rabbinical school in 1949, returned to the systematic elucidation of the Tosefta. He undertook the publication of the Tosefta text based on manuscripts, including fragments from the Geniza, accompanied by explanatory notes, and an extensive commentary entitled Tosefta Kifshuta. The latter work combined philological research and historical observations with a discussion of the entire Talmudic and rabbinic literature which quotes or comments upon the relevant Tosefta text. Between 1955 and 1967 ten volumes of this new edition appeared, representing the text and commentaries on the Orders of Zeraim and Moed and part of the Order of Nashim. The text and commentaries on the rest of Nashim were in print in 1972.
While concentrating on his work on the Tosefta he found time to write Sifre Zuta (1968), in which he advanced the view that this halachic midrash was in all likelihood finally edited by Bar Kappara in Lydda. He also continued to contribute articles to scholarly periodicals and miscellanies, served as editor of a variety of texts and added notes to the works of fellow scholars. In an essay in the H. Albeck Jubilee Volume (1963) he showed that Yaakov b. Hayim b. Adoniyahu, the corrector of the first printing of the Palestinian Talmud, had not compared manuscripts consistently, as he claimed, but had done so only on occasion. His contribution to the H. A. Wolfson Jubilee Volume (1965), of which he was an editor, dealt with “Some Aspects of After Life in Early Rabbinic Lieterature.”
In 1963, Lieberman’s attention was drawn to the existence of a commentary in manuscript on the Tosefta by Rabbi Yitzchak b. Zalman of Lemgo, an 18th century Dutch rabbi. Lieberman examined part of the manuscript and published a specimen of it in his Tosefta edition. While he expressed the hope that the manuscript would find a publisher, he personally undertook the preparation for printing of another Tosefta commentary which had remained in manuscript, namely, David Pardo’s Chasde David on the Order of Taharoth. The first two of three projected volumes appeared in 1970-71.
As he approaches his seventy-fifth birthday, Lieberman can look back on a life of great scholarly achievements. What is the secret of his productivity? Is it the great industriousness, the fine qualities of mind, the retentive memory with which he has been blessed? Lieberman considers it G-d’s answer to the daily prayer he recites with deep devotion:
“Have mercy upon us and inspire our hearts to understand and to discern, to hearken, to learn and to teach, to observe, to do and to fulfill in love all the teachings of Thy Torah. Enlighten our eyes in Thy Torah…”
By Tovia Preschel
Jewish Book Anuual
1973