TOSAFOT ON TRACTATE AVODAH ZARAH, MANUSCRIPT ON PARCHMENT Elhanan ben Isaac of Dampierre and Judah ben Isaac of Birina(?) Scribe: Moshe [Franco-German, 14th century]

116 leaves, 12 5/8 x 10 inches; 320 x 254 mm, written in brown ink in Ashkenazic script, decorated elongated letters on fols.1v, 69r, 72r, 90r, catchwords, some decorated (fols. 88v, 104v), modern foliation in ink; evidence of marginal mildew staining throughout with subsequent remargining or strengthening chiefly of upper out corners,  several leaves remargined all around, fol. 1 mounted on paper, marginal fraying and larged scattered holes on fols. 1-10 and 109-116 with partial loss of text. Modern half brown morocco over cloth, 2 green morocco spine labels (one unaccomplished); rubbed.

Abraham Monson (owner’s inscription, fol. 1v) — Samuel David Luzzatto — Solomon Halberstam (shelf no. 58)

Hirschfeld (ms. no. 65); Elhanan’s tosafot were published by David Fraenkel (Husiatin 1901) from a copy of this manuscript; M. Y. Blau published Rabbi Judah’s tosafot from the present manuscript in Shitat ha-Kadmonim al Massekhet Avodah Zarah, 1969; E. E. Urbach, Baale ha-Tosafot, 1980, pp. 253-260, and esp. p. 254, note 9, and p. 332, note 80; Y. Ta-Shema in Moriah, 2, (1970), p. 60; Haym Soloveitchik, Principles and Pressures: Jewish Trade in Gentile Wine in the Middle Ages, 2003, p.148 (in Hebrew)

The tosafot are critical and explanatory glosses on the Talmud produced by French and German rabbinical scholars of the twelfth to thirteenth centuries.  Their authors, known as Tosafists, exercised a profound influence on the dialectic study of Talmud and determine Jewish thought and practice until the present day.  Rabbi Elhanan ben Isaac of Dampierre was a Tosafist and liturgist who was a grand-nephew of Rabbi Jacob Tam, the most prominent of the French Tosafists.  In 1148, in the middle of writing his commentary on Avodah Zarah, the Talmudic tractate that deals with idolatry, he was martyred for refusing to convert.  Because of his premature death, his work was continued by Rabbi Judah ben Isaac of Birina(?), probably a discipline of Rabbi Elhanan, as attested to in our manuscript on fol. 61r. 

From fols. 1 through 61r, the present manuscript contains the Tosafot of Elhanan ben Isaac.  This text ends with Avodah Zarah 35a.  On fol. 61r we find the following the inscription: “until here is the work of Rabbi Elhanan ben Rabbi Isaac of Dampierre of blessed memory.  From here on it is the work of Rabbi Judah ben Isaac of Birina(?), who wrote his commentary of the basis of the tosafot of Rabbi Elhanan ben Rabbi Isaac.”  Fols. 61r through 80v contain the tosafot of Judah ben Isaac of Birina (?) and on fol. 80v, the scribe writes: “From here on I copied from another manuscript.”  The remaining leaves (81r-116v), probably represent the continuation of Judah ben Isaac of Birina’s tosafot.  The identity of Rabbi Judah ben Isaac of Birina is disputed, Israel Ta-Shema suggested that he was identical with Rabbi Judah ben Isaac (Judah Sir Leon of Paris, also called Gur Aryeh, 1166-1224), but E.E. Urbach has disputed this view. 

The tosafot found in this volume are not identical with the ones printed on the pages of standard Talmud editions.  The volume also contains marginal notes, written in earlier and later hands, with the references to Talmudic folios written in a later hand.  On fol. 22v, the name Moses is conspicuously decorated, alluding to the name of the scribe.