05
Nov
2013

Rabbinic Emissary Collection

categories: Collection Holdings

A group of manuscripts that we have assembled over a period of several years is the rabbinic emissaries collection.  In Hebrew they were referred to as shadarim, an acronym for shilluhe de-rabbanan.

Rabbinic emissary document from Tiberias to communities in Tunisia and Libya, 1922. Large manuscript on parchment, dated 5682 [1922], intended as a letter of introduction in which the great sages of Tiberias authorize Rabbi Yaʻaḳov Ṿaḳnin to collect funds for the needy of that city. The first five paragraphs each begin and end with the same word. The top of the document is scalloped with the center taking the form of an arch. The calligraphy is beautifully executed, indicating that the document was probably written by a professional scribe. The document bears the signatures and official stamps of over forty rabbis from the Maghrebi community in Tiberias. The letter is addressed to rabbis and leaders of the large centers of Jewish settlement in Tunisia and Libya. The great Talmudic sage Rabbi Meir, also known as Rabbi Meir Baal ha-Nes, whose tomb is in Tiberias, is referred to frequently to add more gravity to the request of the emissary and the rabbis who sent him.

Rabbinic emissary document from Tiberias to communities in Tunisia and Libya, 1922.
Large manuscript on parchment, dated 5682 [1922], intended as a letter of introduction in which the great sages of Tiberias authorize Rabbi Yaʻaḳov Ṿaḳnin to collect funds for the needy of that city.

  The Jewish community living in Palestine under Ottoman rule was both poor and pious.  Its members lived off the charity of Jewish Diaspora communities that sent funds to the Holy Land to support the Jews living there.  The rabbinic academies, old age homes, orphanages, and hospitals thus sent on an almost regular basis men to various parts of the world to raise money.  In order to prove that they were legitimate representatives of the institutions that sent them, these emissaries carried letters of introduction which they presented to the rabbis and notables of the Jewish communities to which they were sent.  The letters shed light on Jewish life in Palestine before the secular immigrants from Eastern Europe began arriving in large numbers.  Up until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Jewish community in the Holy Land was composed of Sephardic Jews (of Spanish origin) who had been there for several centuries, and the ultra-orthodox Jews who had come from Central and Eastern Europe (known as Ashkenazim) who had come  in the 18th and 19th centuries.  Both these communities, Ashkenazic and Sephardic, lived primarily in what were known as the four holy cities: Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberius, and Safed.  And both sent emissaries to members of their respective communities in the Diaspora for the purpose of collecting funds.  Many of the emissaries were important rabbis and Talmudic scholars and some even stayed on in the communities to which they were sent as rabbis and preachers.  The economic, social and religious inter-connectedness between Jews in Palestine and those in the Diaspora is a subject for exploration and study and Yale’s collection provides a rich resource for research in this area.   They can be found in Manuscripts and Archives at the Sterling Memorial Library.

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