É. Apor (ed.): David Kaufmann Memorial Volume: Papers Presented at the David Kaufmann Memorial Conference, November 29, 1999, Budapest.
RICHLER, Benjamin: Some Observations on Weisz's Catalogue of the Kaufmann Collection
SOME OBSERVATIONS ON WEISZ'S CATALOGUE OF THE KAUFMANN COLLECTION Benjamin Richler (Jerusalem) The Kaufmann Collection of MSS in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences is renowned primarily for its holdings of a small number of very valuable MSS. First and foremost among them is the Kaufmann Mishna , MS Kaufmann A 50, probably the earliest complete copy of the entire text of the Mishna. The text of this MS is considered to be the most accurate of all existing MSS and it is the basis of all critical editions of the Mishna. If scholars in all fields of Judaica were requested to compile a list of the ten most important Hebrew MSS extant, I am certain that the Kaufmann MS would be among the few that would appear on every list. Two other well known MSS in the collection are illuminated MSS, the Kaufmann Haggadah , an illuminated Haggada written in Spain in the 14th century and the Kaufmann Mishneh Torah , an illuminated copy of Maimonides' book written in Cologne in 1295 or 1296. The Kaufmann Collection, however, includes almost six hundred other MSS and is one of the fifteen largest collections of Hebrew MSS in the world. The only key or index to its holdings is the catalogue compiled by Max Weisz at the request of Kaufmann's wife in 1906, just before the collection was donated to the Academy. Now, a catalogue of MSS can be a blessing or a curse; it can illuminate or hide. The best catalogues will of course accurately describe each and every treatise or fragment of a book included in the collection, in effect, bringing to light, or illuminating the contents of the library described. At the other extreme are catalogues that are so vague and so full of ambiguous descriptions that the reader realizes that he cannot rely on its descriptions and must examine the MSS himself in order to determine its true contents and, if the collection described indeed includes precious items, they will eventually be discovered by some curious researcher. The truly dangerous catalogues, those that hide the truth, are catalogues that give the impression that they provide complete descriptions of the MSS and acquire the trust of the reader, when in fact they gloss over treatises written in the MSS without mentioning them or provide mistaken identities to various works. If, for instance, a catalogue were to mistakenly describe an early unknown Targum on the Pentateuch as a 19th century copy of Targum Onkelos, it would effectually "bury" the MS, as few scholars, if any at all, would bother to consult 17
