Even when the majority of paragraphs in both manuscripts of the same edition are in the same sequence, some individual paragraphs are found in one but not in the other manuscript, testifying again to the independent circulation of individual paragraphs.
For example, the text of former JTS Boesky 45 follows the structure of SHP. Parallel passages are in the same sequence most of the time, but a few paragraphs found in former JTS Boesky 45 are not in SHP, and some two hundred individual paragraph passages found in SHP are not in former JTS Boesky 45.
Similarly, Cambridge Add. 379 and Oxford Add. Fol. 34 (Neubauer 641) are structurally similar to each other. Both of these manuscripts consist of three large blocks of text: Sefer ha-Hasidut, a version of SHB I and a version of SHP II. Although many passages are present in the same order in both, other passages are missing in one or the other, especially in the second and third blocks of text.
So, too, Vatican 285 is closely related to JTS 2499, but some paragraph parallels are missing in the latter that starts with Vatican 285 [10]. Most of the text has single parallels either in SHP and former JTS Boesky 45 or SHB or all three, but Vatican 285 [123–147] has parallels only in JTS 2499.
Oxford Or. 146 (Neubauer 782) is very close to Oxford Opp. 614 (Neubauer 2275), but individual paragraphs are not always in both manuscripts of each set. These two manuscripts are made up of single paragraphs many of which have parallels in SHP, plus former JTS Boesky 45, or SHB and its parallels. These two Oxford manuscripts consist of two texts joined together here: PUSHD [1–9] and [10–19] that begins with a separate title: “This, too, is from Sefer Hasidim” (gam zeh mi-sefer hasidim). If the second text were located in a different manuscript or separated from the first part by other passages, it would be listed as an independent edition. Joined together, it is more like a compound edition, like SHP I and II, rather than as two separate ones.
Many of the paragraphs in the first text, and one in the second, have parallels in Frankfurt 94 as well as in single parallels of SHP and SHB. All these texts, then, are related and there is no closer relationship between these two Oxford texts and SHP than to the others. It is not clear if Oxford, Or. 146 (Neubauer 782) is a copy of Opp. 614 (Neubauer 2275) or the other way around or if both derive from a third manuscript.31
In addition to the six editions of Sefer Hasidim that exist in single manuscripts and the five found in two manuscripts each, SHB itself constitutes a compound text that contains three topical editions that I referred to as SHB I, SHB II, and SHB III, making a total of fourteen editions of Sefer Hasidim.32 Thus, although we have over twenty manuscripts, there are only fourteen editions. None of these editions can be reduced to the author’s original single composition. All of them are parallel versions of Sefer Hasidim. A parallel paragraph in any one of them can contain better readings than the parallels found in the other editions, regardless of the date of the manuscript. Late manuscripts can contain better readings of a parallel paragraph than early manuscripts.
Some of the editions of Sefer Hasidim probably go back to R. Judah hehasid himself, who wrote, copied, and recombined many paragraphs in different ways in multiple parallel topical notebooks and combined them into parallel editions. A few of his students or his son may have copied down other editions. Throughout, it is the single paragraph and small groups of them that need to be examined for establishing the best text of any passage, not any one edition in which a paragraph appears, regardless of when a manuscript was copied.
The conclusion that follows from the structural variance in single manuscript editions, in the sets of Sefer Hasidim manuscripts, and from the structure of SHB is that the fourteen editions are not derived from a single original composition. Rather, all of them ultimately drew on a reservoir of thousands of short passages. R. Judah he-hasid composed Sefer Hasidim in individual paragraph units that he and later others combined and recombined into blocks of different sizes. Some were written down in units of two or more paragraphs from the beginning. In some cases, notebooks of a hundred or more, including “duplicates” that may be his rewritings of single paragraphs, were produced. None was written as a single integrated composition or book. Hasidei ashkenaz quoted Saadia but they did not imitate him when it came to book composition.
From a consideration of the manuscripts and patterns of parallels and unique passages, one should consider all manuscripts of Sefer Hasidim and SHB to be different combinations of single-paragraph compositions. Assigning greater weight to any of these editions is a consequence of a tradition in nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship that thought of Sefer Hasidim as a conventional book. In fact, it is an Ashkenazic open text, in the sense defined here of parallel editions from the beginning, and it needs to be understood as multiple in form, as an inverted pyramid, not as an author’s single original composition that he revised, Israel Ta-Shma’s meaning of “open book.”
It is likely that R. Judah he-hasid was the author of most of these single paragraphs and also of the sequences of fourteen topics that form different editions in Cambridge Add. 379 and Oxford Add. Fol. 34 (Neubauer 641); in SHP and former JTS Boesky 45; and in SHB that itself contains three sets of topically arranged booklets of related paragraphs. Once Judah was gone, students or his son may have selected single paragraphs from the many that Judah had written and assembled them into various combinations of “liqqutim,” without most of the social vision that he had advocated. Regardless of the subjects in any manuscript, all of them are Sefer Hasidim, a series of writings and rewritings of Judah’s short texts. In addition, Judah and his student R. Eleazar b. Judah of Worms wrote and rewrote different overlapping compositions, and it is to those forms of open texts that we now turn.
Chapter 2
Rewriting Jewish Pietist Traditions
Once published, S[efer] H[asidim]—without distinction between what Soloveitchik termed S[efer] H[asidim] I and the rest of the book—stood as an independent work of medieval rabbinic scholarship that carried the halo of German Jewish piety with it into the sixteenth century and beyond.
—Edward Fram
Sefer Hasidim was always a work in progress, an open text of a special kind, rather than a single fixed book. Over time, some fourteen different editions came into being, some topical, others made up of unrelated paragraph units; some of over a thousand paragraphs, others but a few passages strung together.
Besides Sefer Hasidim, Judah also produced different but related texts such as his Zava’ah (Commands) and Sefer ha-Kavod (Book on the Divine Glory). R. Eleazar of Worms, for his part, wrote many private penitentials and different but overlapping halakhic works, large compositions about theological matters, different commentaries on the prayer book, and dozens of piyyutim (see below and the bibliography). Because each author’s own compositions overlap, other writers can cite passages that appear in more than one work by referring to different titles. A comparison of the texts attributed to each author indicates not a set of unique, original, and distinct compositions but a fluid range of overlapping and multiple expressions of different though related texts all composed of small text units. After considering how Judah and Eleazar each wrote overlapping or fluid texts, I look at how one French Jewish author rewrote Sefer Hasidim.
Overlapping or Fluid Texts
Textual overlap or fluidity has long been noted about ancient rabbinic works and about heikhalot texts that unknown editors produced. Short sections of related texts circulated, and editors combined them in different works.1 In many Ashkenazic books, an additional kind of fluidity exists: one rabbinic author might write more than one related text in short paragraph units on the same subject. This pattern of composition is different from an author revising a single