"Inquire O Yea Consumed in fire"/ שַׁאֲלִי שְׂרוּפָה בָּאֵשׁ

Below is a revised version of my introduction to the Qinah (liturgical dirge recited on Tisha B'av) שַׁאֲלִי שְׂרוּפָה בָּאֵשׁ written by R. Meir of Rothenburg about the burning of the Talmud in Paris in 1242. 

שַׁאֲלִי שְׂרוּפָה בָּאֵשׁ לִשְׁלוֹם אֲבֵלַיִךְ הַמִּתְאַוִּים שְׁכֹן בַּחֲצַר זְבֻלָיִךְ:

“inquire, Oh Yea consumed in fire, for the peace of those who Mourn you, who desire/crave to dwell in the Courtyard of your Habitation.”

With these words, R. Meir of Rothenberg (c.1215-1293) opens his lament over the burring of the Talmud in Paris in 1242.

At first glance, this Qinah is rather strange. The majority of Qinot focus on the destruction of the temples, the 10 rabbis martyred by Rome, the crusades. Yet here, we lament the burning of books. While the Talmud is at the center of Jewish life, why should books (or more accurately, manuscript codices) be mourned, after all, one need but look around the average Jewish home to find more books than any rishon could have dreamed of owning. The fear that Torah learning would end in 1242 did not come to pass and despite many book burnings and persecutions, there are more Jewish books in existence today than at any point in Jewish history. Why then the mourning over books? After all, while replacing manuscripts was prohibitively expensive, unlike much of what we mourn for, they can be replaced. To understand what motivated the Maharam to write his lament, a bit of historical context is in order.  

In 1233, due to the escalation of the controversy surrounding the Moreh nevuchim and yad hachazakah, and ban against the works of rambam by R' yonah gerondi (שערי תשובה) the church ordered the works of the rambam burned in Paris. 3 years later, an apostate Jew, Nicholas Donin submitted a listing of 36 charges against the Talmud to (pope) Gregory the 9th.

Subsequently, on June 25-27, 1240, a public disputation regarding the Talmud was staged. Though R. Jehiel of Paris valiantly defended the honor of the Talmud, the outcome was known to all; the Talmud was found guilty of heresy and 24 wagon loads(!) of manuscripts were confiscated and subsequently burned. Just to put this in perspective, each work that was burned was laboriously copied by hand and was quite expensive. The loss of even a few Talmudic manuscripts must have been a tragedy, the burning of nearly all Hebrew manuscripts in France, home to many great academies was a tragedy with no adequate point of historical comparison. The burning of the Talmud in 1242 and the subsequent burnings of Hebrew book over the next three centuries destroyed untold hundreds if not thousands of Hebrew books and manuscripts. Remember that unlike today, many texts existed in a handful if not 1 copy and their destruction meant that the Torah theses volumes contained was lost forever. We mourn for the academies which were deprived of their ability to learn, for the Torah which was permanently lost, for the Glory of Torah, our most holy possession which was diminished.

The Maharam's fear that Torah would be forgotten looms writ large in the kinah.

On tisha b'av we mourn for communities, places and individuals but why a book?

Living in an age of print and digital media, the fear that the words of Torah might be lost has lost its resonance. We are accustomed to Batei midrash lined with Sefarim, plentiful Sefarim for purchase and large judaica collections in university libraries.

But in the age of the manuscript, those few Sefarim which were extant were prohibitively expensive and thus their burning represented a very real threat to the continuity of Torah.

Indeed, we have only a single complete medieval manuscript of the talmud, the Munich 95 manuscript.

As someone who has had the privilege of working with the material survivors of “a world which is no more”, the Maharam’s all-encompassing fear for the future of Torah and existential doubts hit close to home. Did God chose us thousands of years ago, revealing in fire eternal law, only for that law to be consumed by the fires of man. Maybe, God forbid we have gotten everything wrong and we are not the “chosen people” but the people destined to be lowly, despised and alone among the nations, perused and devoured like rabbits chased by an eagle.

And yet, that which the Maharam feared did not come to pass. The medieval period witnessed the destruction of uncountable works of Torah, many of which are lost to us forever, their manuscripts being few in number and exhausted by the ravages of time and Antisemitism. Yet, despite the dark clouds of persecution, culminating in the Shoah which ravaged European Jewry, its sefarim and torah scholars, the fervent wish of generations, that the words of Torah never depart from among the people of Israel have miraculously been fulfilled. Against all odds, there are more seforim available today than at any prior time in Jewish history.

And thus, returning to the Maharam’s fervent wish to sit in the Courtyard of God’s habitation, we who learn Torah in all its various forms are the fulfillment of that wish.

While the complete loss of Torah which the Maharam feared did not come to pass, we still mourn for the Crown of Torah which was diminished, whose radiance was dulled and blackened as Words given in Divine Fire were consumed in human fire.