EVERY SIGNATURE MATTERS - THIS BILL MUST PASS!
CLICK - GOAL - 100,000 NEW SIGNATURES! 75,000 SIGNATURES HAVE ALREADY BEEN SUBMITTED TO GOVERNOR CUOMO!
EFF Urges Court to Block Dragnet Subpoenas Targeting Online Commenters
CLICK! For the full motion to quash: http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/hersh_v_cohen/UOJ-motiontoquashmemo.pdf
Friday, February 07, 2025
This is the story of a controversy that shook the world of Torah study and academic research 120 years ago. “The truth is that I forged it. I did not find a manuscript, but everything I wrote was composed from the words of the sages that I gathered from various sources.”
Did It Exist or Not? The Missing Order of the Jerusalem Talmud
Discoveries and disappointments, rumors and accusations, fraudsters and conspiracies—along with an adventurous journey across the dusty roads of Turkey. This is the story of a controversy that shook the world of Torah study and academic research 120 years ago.
As if the early decades of the 20th century weren’t turbulent enough—especially in the Jewish world—a storm that erupted in 1905 sent shockwaves through the community of Torah scholars for years. It was a global controversy, brimming with drama, and if you aren’t already familiar with this story, it’s about time you heard it!
Before diving into the details, let’s set the stage. The Mishnah, compiled by Rabbi Judah the Prince around 200 CE, is divided into six orders (shas): Zera’im (Seeds), Mo’ed (Festivals), Nashim (Women), Nezikin (Damages), Kodashim (Holy Things), and Taharot (Purities). Each order is further divided into tractates.
About 150 years later, in the Land of Israel, the Jerusalem Talmud was compiled. Later, in Babylonia, the Babylonian Talmud was written. Both Talmuds expand upon and explain the Mishnah, documenting legal discussions and the evolution of Jewish law as debated by the sages of their time. However, not every tractate of the Mishnah is included in the Talmud (Gemara), and some tractates appear in only one of the two Talmuds. For instance, the Babylonian Talmud contains tractates from parts of Kodashim, but the Jerusalem Talmud lacks the order of Kodashim altogether.
Or at least, that’s what was believed—until 120 years ago. And thus, the controversy was born.
A Lost Manuscript or a Fabrication?
For centuries, scholars debated whether the Jerusalem Talmud once included the order of Kodashim and was lost over time, or if it was never compiled in the first place. According to Maimonides and several other authorities, a Jerusalem Talmud for Kodashim did exist nearly 1,700 years ago. Others argue that it never did.
In 1868, Rabbi Benjamin Hirsch Auerbach claimed he had heard that a manuscript of the Jerusalem Talmud on Kodashim was hidden in the Vatican Library in Rome. This rumor attracted fraudsters, who, in 1873, attempted to collect money from unsuspecting Jews to fund a trip to Rome, where they would supposedly retrieve and publish the lost text. However, they were exposed before any damage was done, and Vatican experts confirmed that no such manuscript existed in their collection.
Fifty years later, in the 1920s, Rabbi Mordechai Farhand, a dayan (rabbinical judge) from the Nitra community, traveled to the Vatican to search for the manuscript. He found nothing.
But in fact, the Vatican episode was one of the milder chapters in the saga of the missing tractate.
A Dramatic Announcement
In 1905–1906, an electrifying proclamation spread across the Jewish communities of Europe. According to the announcement, Rabbi Shlomo Yehuda Elgazi S”T (Sephardi Tahor, or “pure Sephardi”), also known by the Ashkenazi surname Friedländer, from the city of Satmar, had discovered the lost Jerusalem Talmud order of Kodashim. He intended to publish it, complete with his own original commentary, as a continuation of his earlier work Cheshek Shlomo, which covered other orders of the Jerusalem Talmud.
Excitement swept through the world of Torah study. Leading rabbis endorsed the printing of the long-lost text. A year later, the first volume, containing the tractates Chullin and Bekhorot, was offered for sale.
Seemingly overnight, contradictions that had puzzled scholars for centuries—regarding laws of ritual slaughter, Temple service, and sacrificial offerings—were resolved. Difficult halakhic questions found clear answers, all thanks to Friedländer’s newly printed Talmud.
A Treasure Hunt Across Turkey
Where had Friedländer found the lost order of Kodashim?
In his introduction to Tractate Chullin, he described the discovery in vivid detail. According to his account, his brother, Eliyahu Elgazi, traveled to Izmir on business and purchased books from the estate of Rabbi Yehoshua Benveniste, who had died in Turkey 250 years earlier. Among the volumes were first-edition printings of the Jerusalem Talmud, annotated by Benveniste himself. Eliyahu, knowing his brother was writing a commentary on the Jerusalem Talmud, sent the books to him.
In one of the volumes, Friedländer allegedly found two old letters that deepened the mystery.
One letter, signed by the Chief Rabbi of Constantinople, expressed support for publishing Rabbi Benveniste’s annotations on the Jerusalem Talmud for Kodashim. This suggested that such a manuscript did indeed exist. The letter detailed how a converso named Don Abraham HaLevi, who lived in Lisbon, had befriended a priest from Barcelona who was also a former converso. The priest entrusted Don Abraham with a bundle of manuscripts, which he then carried with him to Turkey. There, he gifted them to Rabbi Benveniste, who had helped him return to Judaism. Among the documents, Rabbi Benveniste was astonished to find the long-lost Jerusalem Talmud on Kodashim.
But the second letter painted a different picture. According to this letter, Rabbi Benveniste ultimately decided not to publish the manuscript, fearing that it would be seen as heretical. At the time, the Jewish world—especially in Turkey—was still reeling from the false messianism of Shabbetai Tzvi, whose radical teachings had led to the abolition of many religious commandments. The discovery of a “new” Jewish text, especially one as significant as a missing section of the Talmud, might have raised suspicions and been used as justification for further religious upheaval.
Friedländer was captivated by these letters. He had to find the manuscript.
His brother Eliyahu and their friend, Rabbi Yaakov Kobi, embarked on an adventure across Turkey, searching for descendants of Rabbi Benveniste in the hopes that one of them still possessed the treasure. Eventually, they tracked down a villager named Suleiman Benveniste, who showed them an amulet wrapped in silk, claiming it was the missing Talmud. To their disappointment, the manuscript was in terrible condition, with large sections missing.
Eliyahu and Yaakov convinced Suleiman to send the manuscript to Friedländer in Hungary, promising him a share of the profits from its publication. According to Friedländer, a colophon at the end of the text revealed that the scribe, Yitzhak Bar Yosef Albergloni, had copied the Talmud in the year 1212 from a carefully edited manuscript once owned by Hai Gaon, the leader of Babylonian Jewry at the time.
If true, this was a stunning discovery. The lost Jerusalem Talmud had finally been revealed.
The War for the Truth
But the euphoria was short-lived. The first to dampen the excitement of Torah scholars and talmudic researchers was Rabbi Dov Aryeh Ritter of Rotterdam, who, in an article, described his initial joy at hearing about the discovery—only to later express disappointment upon realizing it was a forgery. Soon, other rabbis across Europe began questioning the authenticity of the book. Rabbi Dov Baer Ratner of Vilna published a series of articles exposing Friedländer’s fraud.
Friedländer, however, did not sit idly by. He fiercely responded to anyone who suggested that the text was a forgery. One of his students, Avraham Rosenberg, wrote a scathing rebuttal in his book Aneh Kesil (Answer a Fool), directly attacking Rabbi Ratner.
Another prominent critic of Friedländer was Rabbi Meir Dan Plotzky, who, in his book She’alu Shalom Yerushalayim, systematically analyzed the text and demonstrated that it was fraudulent. Another of Friedländer’s students, Yosef Ben Mahar”i, came to his teacher’s defense in his book Herev Nokemet (Avenging Sword), launching personal attacks on Rabbi Plotzky but failing to address the substantive evidence of forgery.
Despite mounting skepticism, Friedländer published another volume of the so-called Jerusalem Talmud—this time on the tractates Zevachim and Arakhin.
Meanwhile, the Rebbe of Gur and many others demanded to see the original manuscript, which Friedländer claimed was kept by Suleiman Benveniste. But Friedländer repeatedly evaded such requests. No one ever saw the manuscript or the letters he claimed to have discovered in Turkey.
The Mask Falls
Jewish Europe was in turmoil. Some were thrilled by the discovery, while others decried it as an elaborate fraud. At the height of the controversy, Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Halevi Horowitz of Hermannstadt published damning information on another deception by Friedländer: He had claimed to have received an amulet from a Zurich museum, allegedly written by Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschutz, from which he supposedly deduced that Eybeschutz was a Sabbatean. Rabbi Horowitz’s investigation, however, revealed that no such amulet existed—Friedländer had fabricated the entire story to bolster his supposed expertise in deciphering manuscripts. With this revelation, many concluded that his “students” Avraham Rosenberg and Yosef were fictitious as well, and that Friedländer himself had authored the books defending his fraudulent claims.
The final blow to Friedländer’s reputation came from the rabbis of Dvinsk—Rabbi Yosef Rosen, known as the Rogatchover Gaon, and Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk—who officially declared the Jerusalem Talmud on Kodashim a forgery. It remained unclear, however, whether Friedländer had personally forged it or had acquired the forgery from another source.
Over time, pieces of real information about Friedländer surfaced. He had claimed to have studied at the famed Volozhin Yeshiva and to have served as deputy rabbi of Frankfurt, head of a rabbinical court in western Germany, assistant rabbi of Satmar, and head of a yeshiva. None of this was true.
So, who was he, really?
He was born in Belarus under the name Zusia. A gifted and intelligent young man, but certainly not a Sephardi named Elgazi. He married a woman, abandoned her during his wanderings, and later married another without ever divorcing the first. He was a talented scholar, impressing rabbis with his knowledge and articles published in Torah journals.
“The Truth Is That I Forged It”
There is no doubt that Friedländer had a unique talent. He crafted a complex and intricate story about discovering the manuscript, and if he indeed wrote it himself, he must have possessed deep knowledge of rabbinic literature and persuasive writing skills. According to Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Yanovsky in his 1913 pamphlet Tzaid Ramaiah (Hunting for Fraud), Friedländer relied heavily on the book Yafeh Einayim by Rabbi Aryeh Leib Yellin. This book compiled Talmudic discussions from across rabbinic literature, making it an excellent resource for inserting relevant citations—or even fabricating new ones.
Friedländer also exploited legal rulings by Maimonides and his contemporaries that lacked explicit sources. Conveniently, he “found” those missing sources in his own forged Jerusalem Talmud. In response to Rabbi Yanovsky’s accusations, Friedländer published a rebuttal pamphlet titled Letz Hayayin (The Wine Jester), predictably attacking his critic rather than addressing the evidence.
Years after Friedländer’s death, the truth came to light. In a 1951 article published in HaPardes, Rabbi Yekuthiel Yehuda Greenwald described his encounters with Friedländer in Khust and later in Satmar. As a young man, Greenwald had been impressed by Friedländer’s charismatic and mysterious persona, supporting him during the Jerusalem Talmud controversy. But in the article, written nearly 40 years after the scandal, Greenwald revealed what Friedländer had once admitted to him: “The truth is that I forged it. I did not find a manuscript, but everything I wrote was composed from the words of the sages that I gathered from various sources.”
Many books and articles have been written about this strange affair. Today, it is widely known that the Jerusalem Talmud order of Kodashim is a forgery, and yet it was reprinted in facsimile edition in Israel in 1996 and in the United States in 2003. But does anyone actually want to study it?
If you still have your doubts, come visit the National Library, order a copy from our rare books collection, and see for yourself!