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Chapter 1

Sefer Hasidim as an Open Book

Undistinguished and even awkward in style, often resembling a mass of casual jottings rather than a coherent literary composition, it is yet undoubtedly one of the most important and remarkable products of Jewish literature.

—Gershom Scholem

When Gershom Scholem described Sefer Hasidim as “often resembling a mass of casual jottings rather than a coherent literary composition,” he was onto something.¹ Not finding in the book a coherently written argument about a single subject divided into chapters, Scholem saw the segmented way the book is compiled as a defect. But there is another way of reading Sefer Hasidim and many other books written in medieval Ashkenaz, and that is to see them as embodying a unique approach to book composition. Scholars who work on individual rabbinic authors and their texts usually focus on the contents of the work, not on the way the text is structured.

The present chapter discusses Sefer Hasidim as a case study about ideas of composition and authorship also found in several other Hebrew texts from medieval Ashkenazic culture briefly surveyed in Chapter 4. These books are “open” in the sense that they were composed in small text units that the authors themselves sometimes combined into more than one parallel edition. The result is that there never was one original author’s composition (urtext) for many of these books. The surviving manuscripts consist of combinations of parallel and unique short passages that are often arranged in different sequences. Sefer Hasidim is an unusually well documented case of this kind of Hebrew open book written in early Ashkenaz.

Sefer Hasidim as Many Parallel Editions

Sefer Hasidim manuscripts consist of a series of short passages, defined by indentation, and sometimes numbered in some of the longer combinations. Very few of the many manuscripts of Sefer Hasidim have original paragraph numbers. The two longest manuscripts, Parma and former JTS Boesky 45 (see below), as well as most of the others, do not.² Only a small number of late, short manuscripts refer to individual passages by indicating their paragraph number.³ Although printing in some sense created a book called Sefer Hasidim, as it created a book called the Zohar,⁴ new manuscripts continued to be written based on earlier ones, and some scribes copied down new selections of short passages from Sefer Hasidim traditions.

Although Leopold Zunz already knew in 1845 about SHP as well as SHB, and Moritz Güdemann took both editions into account in his discussion of Sefer Hasidim in 1880, rabbis and scholars took a while to compare the differently numbered parallel paragraphs found in the two published editions.⁵ For most of the twentieth century, scholars assumed that the manuscripts other than SHP must be short sections of it or of SHB and therefore of little interest.

A potential departure from this binary way of looking at Sefer Hasidim as SHB and SHP came from an awareness that there was a rewriting of Sefer Hasidim that Zunz already recognized from a manuscript, dated 1299, owned by David Oppenheim, now in Oxford, Bodleian Library Opp. 340 (Neubauer 875), where the text is called “Sefer ha-Hasidut.” This text became the first 152 paragraphs of SHB (see Chapter 2).⁶

Despite its existence, the binary model of Sefer Hasidim as SHB and SHP has prevailed since the late nineteenth century. The dominant assumption has been that these two versions somehow represent different configurations of a lost original single composition that the author composed (urtext).

Nevertheless, a model that assumes that one original composition of Sefer Hasidim ever existed is untenable. This is not only because the sequence of the paragraphs in the two printed editions is so completely different but also because most of the twenty or so other manuscripts of different sizes of Sefer Hasidim are not textual witnesses to or fragments of either Sefer Hasidim Bologna or Parma, as we would expect if there had been an original single edition.⁷

This could have become clearer in 1985, when Rabbi Moshe Hershler published one of the other manuscripts: Vatican 285. Actually, he published the longer of two separate collections of Sefer Hasidim passages in that manuscript. Hershler’s annotations showed that the part of the Vatican manuscript that he published consisted of single paragraphs that he numbered, some topically unrelated to each other and without parallels in either SHB or SHP. Vatican 285 is not closely related to either SHB or SHP but is a separate edition.

The appearance in the 1980s of former JTS Boesky 45, still in private hands, did not lead to new textual studies, since this manuscript resembled the sequence of SHP and reinforced it as Sefer Hasidim. Then in 2006, three other short manuscripts of Sefer Hasidim were published and two others mentioned but not transcribed. The editor numbered in brackets the unnumbered paragraphs of each text. The three short manuscripts were different in many respects from the two printed editions, and this demonstrated that Sefer ha-Hasidut and Hershler’s Vatican 285 text were not the only manuscripts of Sefer Hasidim traditions that were different in form, as well as substance, from both SHB and SHP.⁸

The existence of such manuscripts, and several more not yet discussed in the scholarly literature, proves that Sefer Hasidim began not as a single original composition, but as many single paragraphs that the author and others combined differently into several editions of varying lengths. SHB and SHP were but two published versions of several different editions. It was an accident that they and not the others were published first. The more Sefer Hasidim manuscripts were published, the more obvious it became that neither SHB nor SHP could be the “real” Sefer Hasidim in any objective sense because they were outnumbered by several other editions from some twenty manuscripts (see Catalog and below).

The most ambitious set of publications of Sefer Hasidim traditions appeared online in 2007 as the Princeton University Sefer Hasidim Database (PUSHD), an invaluable research tool. For the first time, scholars could digitally search and compare sixteen versions of Sefer Hasidim. In 2015 the editor added three more: Moscow 103, Frankfurt am Main 94, and the Zurich Fragment. A few others remain to be added.⁹ These manuscripts confirmed further that Sefer Hasidim traditions were preserved in many short and some long editions made up of parallel and unique short passages arranged in different sequences and not as a single original composition that corresponded to either SHB or SHP, for example, or to some lost manuscript that the others resembled in structure.

But PUSHD also inadvertently reinforced the binary Bologna-versus-Parma character of Sefer Hasidim traditions in the editor’s analysis of the manuscripts, “The Recensions of Sefer Hasidim.” Despite wanting to transcribe all the manuscripts as equal, parallel editions of Sefer Hasidim, PUSHD divided the manuscripts into two groups. It then classified and described all of the manuscripts as they were supposedly related to either or both of the two printed editions (SHB or SHP). The editors of PUSHD apparently did this because most of the manuscripts have at least some parallel passages that are shared with the familiar Bologna edition or Parma manuscript or with both of them. The editorial decision to input SHB and SHP first because of their size or familiarity was one thing. To compare all the other manuscripts to one or both of them separately results in privileging those two editions as somehow being more Sefer Hasidim than all the other manuscripts, including former JTS Boesky 45, for example. This was an unintended but unfortunate consequence of how the database was structured. In the description section, the editors also refer to SHP and SHB as the “principal” versions of Sefer Hasidim, a misleading claim if truly parallel editions were intended.

Size alone does not make Bologna and Parma the “principal” manuscripts of Sefer Hasidim any more than a specific content justifies referring to SHP as “the comprehensive statement of German Pietism recorded in the Parma manuscript.”¹⁰ That formulation would exclude from German Hasidism not only the majority of Sefer Hasidim manuscripts but also the other pietistic works of R. Samuel he-hasid, of R. Judah he-hasid, and those of R. Eleazar of Worms as well.

Most of the Sefer Hasidim manuscripts contain some paragraph passages that are not found in either SHB or SHP, and each edition or small set of editions is independent of SHB and SHP even when one or more blocks of passages appear in more than one of them. The editions differ with respect to the order of the paragraphs as well as the contents. Since neither SHB nor SHP was the author’s original composition or derived from a lost original composition, all of the manuscripts need to be treated independently. This also means that each paragraph of any manuscript needs to be compared to all of its parallels.

With the exception of the Parma manuscript that was published in facsimile, we do not have much-needed published facsimiles of the other manuscripts.¹¹ Without them, scholars must rely on transcriptions that are of varying degrees of accuracy. PUSHD notes that it does not correct letters it transcribes even when it is obvious that they are scribal errors; the other short published texts have several errors of transcription.

Single Paragraphs as the Initial Unit of Composition

A clue to Sefer Hasidim’s origins in short paragraph units is suggested by the fifteenth-century moralistic work from medieval Germany called either Sefer Hasidim Qatan or Sefer ha-Maskil by R. Moses b. Eleazar ha-Kohen. The author admonishes his reader not to use a codex as a place to store “scraps of your written ideas” (pitqei ketavekha ve-‘inyanekha).¹² That may be a good way of thinking about the beginnings of Sefer Hasidim and other Ashkenazic Hebrew books. Authors wrote down short paragraphs on scraps of parchment and then copied the paragraph units on pages or gatherings of parchment pages.

The process of rabbinic authors and students keeping notebooks (yalqutim) of passages that they wanted to recall or recopy, commonplace books, suggests how Judah might have composed, rather than collected, short passages of Sefer Hasidim, and how students wrote down what they heard from him directly, as we learn from his student, R. Isaac b. Moses of Vienna, and from Judah’s son, R. Moses Zaltman, or from what they read. The fact that most of the short manuscripts or parts of longer ones are referred to as liqqutim or yalqutim may but need not mean “miscellany” in the sense of an anthology taken from one or more authors’ writings. It may also refer to scholars and students writing down passages or notes for future reference, regardless of their source.¹³ Many of the short manuscripts are introduced by the title “liqqutim.”¹⁴ The so-called liqqutim of Sefer Hasidim are not taken from the longer manuscripts of Sefer Hasidim but are independent gatherings taken from many hundreds of single paragraphs, some of which also appear, with variants, as parallels in other editions. Any paragraph may contain a better reading than its parallels in other editions, regardless of the date of the manuscript in which it is preserved.

Another sign that editions of Sefer Hasidim were composed in small units of text is found in a report by Judah he-hasid’s son, R. Moses Zaltman, who preserved his father’s comments on the Humash (Pentateuch) that they studied together. In one passage, R. Moses Zaltman reports that just before his father died in 1217 he “wrote two pages of Sefer Hasidim” (katav bet dappim mi-sefer hasidim).¹⁵ Groupings of up to a dozen paragraphs, enough text to occupy two pages, are common in parallels between SHP and former JTS Boesky 45; Cambridge Add. 379 and Oxford Add. Fol. 34 (Neubauer 641); and SHB, the editions with the most topically arranged passages.

For the idea of a bi-folio as the meaning of “bet dappim,” compare in Sefer Hasidim: “If a person comes across a bi-folio (shenei dappim), on one page of which there is writing and one that is blank, and he needs the blank page, he should not cut it off.”¹⁶

The process of how some of the longer editions of Sefer Hasidim were written from small text units is suggested in a passage in Sefer Hasidim that describes how the Talmud was put together:

If a man has to sell books, he should sell books of Oral Torah rather than books of Written Torah. For books of Oral Torah are like wool and flax that people work and weave. That is why (a tractate of Talmud) is called a masekhta, a term taken from weaving, as in “into the web” (‘im ha-masekhet) (Judges 16:13–14), as is written about Samson. Laws (halakhot) (are combined) into chapters (li-feraqim), and one gathers together everything pertaining to a subject and that is called a tractate (masekhta).¹⁷

This passage appears only in SHP 667 and SHB 932 but not in former JTS Boesky 45, 290, even though parallels to SHP 666 and to SHP 668, the passages immediately before and after SHP 667, are found in it. This pattern is another sign that individual paragraphs migrated from one edition to another. The passage refers to the building up of the Talmud text from smaller to larger units. By analogy, Sefer Hasidim is made up of the author’s single paragraphs or groupings of them, many of which he then further combined into topical booklets (mahbarot). This is the case in Parma and former JTS Boesky 45; Cambridge Add. 379 and Oxford Add. Fol. 34 (Neubauer 641); and eventually in SHB.

Paragraphs are indicated by indentations, sometimes with an enlarged initial word or letter, and at times also numbered. In the longer manuscripts we see the product of different combinations of topical booklets. These topical editions, such as the first part of Parma (SHP I) and the first edition in ed. Bologna (SHB I=par. 153 ff.), both of which consist of fourteen topical blocks, are arranged in the same topical order, but the individual parallel paragraphs contained in notebooks on the same topic are arranged in different sequences. Editions of Sefer Hasidim made up of topical notebooks may each be each thought of as a book (sefer) (see below).¹⁸

At the beginning of ed. Bologna there is a reference to a book made up of different topical booklets: “And the author of this book (sefer) who composed/compiled in a booklet (be-mahberet) discussions on pietism, humility, and the fear of God” (ba‘al zeh ha-sefer asher hibber divrei ha-hasidut, ve-ha-‘anavah, veha-yir’ah kol ehad ve-ehad be-mahberet).¹⁹ Writing short passages and then copying them into topical booklets and then combining those into a book is what characterizes SHB, SHP, and the other three manuscripts mentioned earlier.

The passage just quoted is found at the beginning of Sefer ha-Hasidut, the separate work that eventually became the beginning of SHB (see Chapter 2). A reference to a topical notebook, like those found in some Sefer Hasidim editions, is found in R. Eleazar of Worms’s Sefer ha-Roqeah. After discussing several customs connected with the dead, R. Eleazar of Worms says that they are “from R. Judah hasid’s notebook” (mi-mahberet r. yehudah hasid), and this suggests that Judah himself wrote a topical mahberet on the subject of the dead, one of the fourteen topics arranged as a book in SHP and former JTS Boesky 45, in Cambridge Add. 379 and Oxford Add. Fol. 34 (Neubauer 641), and three different times in SHB.²⁰ Elsewhere, “sefer” is also found as a large unit of text. For example, SHP 721 has a title in the middle of the section on books: “I found this in another book” (zeh mazati be-sefer aher), and the last part of SHB begins “This is copied from another Sefer Hasidim” (zeh hu‘ataq mi-sefer hasidim aher).

The independence of the single paragraph as the unit of composition, regardless of how such short units were combined in different editions, is also seen in how stories are placed one after the other on related themes but without any literary connection. Rearrange the order or remove one and nothing would be missed. Consider the following three exempla from a section in SHP on prayer (391–585) and note how disjunctive they are despite their overlapping themes. These are three of four paragraphs that appear in the same sequence in both SHP and former JTS Boesky 45 and SHB with significant variations between each parallel paragraph:

SHP 463, former JTS Boesky 45, 196, and SHB 781

It once happened that people were protesting (in the synagogue when the Torah was being read), and the protester would not allow the Torah scroll to be returned to its place in the ark. It was a fast day, and someone said, “Say the Prayer [i.e., Shemoneh ‘esreh] seated or else the proper time for praying the afternoon service will pass. But do not walk out on the Torah scroll, (as it is said), ‘And they that forsake the Lord shall be consumed’ (Isa. 1:28).” But he made a mistake (when he was reciting the Prayer), which proves that if he had so desired he could have prayed the Prayer standing. And (the verse) “And they that forsake the Lord shall be consumed” (Isa. 1:28) applies only to when the Torah is actually being read. A man should not leave the synagogue until the entire Prayer is completed, unless he must relieve himself or throw up.

SHP 464, former JTS Boesky 45, 196, and SHB 782

A story about an old woman who used to come early to pray (in the synagogue) and (who did other) good deeds. After she died, she appeared in a dream to the good men. They said to her, “What (is it like) in that world?” She said to them, “They are judging me [SHB: hitting me] harshly. When the other righteous men and women are happy and at peace, they chase me away.” (They said, “What did you do wrong?”) She said, “When I was alive, I used to leave the synagogue during the Qedushah prayer. I did not wait until (everyone else) left the synagogue.”

SHP 465, former JTS Boesky 45, 196, SHB 783

There once was a woman who went out of the synagogue before the community finished praying. She sent her maid to her husband to bring her the house key. When (her husband) left the synagogue, he asked his wife, “Why was it necessary for you to have the keys (then)”?

She said, (“I needed them) because gentile women were coming to exchange some pawns that are needed in the house of frivolity” [SHB: prayer] [i.e., church vessels].

Her husband said to her, “You have sinned because you left the synagogue (during the service). Besides, you sent for the keys in order to give the pawns to (the Christian women) who would then go to their house of frivolity [SHB: prayer], [i.e., church]. Look how you have replaced the holy (synagogue) with an abomination” [SHB: impure, i.e., church]!

No effort was made to connect these paragraphs. They function as separate texts that are related thematically to women and/or prayer, like three research notes that are put into the same file for future reference.

Linguistic Independence of Single Paragraphs

Although it is sometimes assumed that the language of SHB tends to be smoother and reworked compared to the language of parallel passages in SHP, linguistic evidence actually supports the independence of individual paragraphs, wherever they may be found, as being more or less awkward or reworked. Moreover, the linguistic independence of individual paragraphs applies to all parallels in the twelve editions of Sefer Hasidim, not just to SHP compared to SHB. A single paragraph in any edition can have an earlier linguistic form than any of the other parallels of that passage found anywhere else. This is another reason why all parallel passages need to be compared.

Simha Kogut demonstrated this in his detailed comparative study of the language of SHP and SHB (actually SHM 2).²¹ His linguistic analysis of a sample of parallel passages in both printed editions showed that a single passage found in either one could be linguistically earlier than the parallel passage in the other. The textual quality of individual parallels varies, showing omissions by scribes based on similar phrase endings (homoioteleuta) in both directions, and there are variant readings due to scribal errors when any two or more text parallels are compared.²²

Kogut’s findings support the approach taken here that Sefer Hasidim was composed in single or small groups of paragraph units that the author at first and then others combined differently in various short and long editions. Because paragraphs were combined more than once, we see variance in the sequencing of parallel passages in the different editions.

It is also sometimes claimed that Parma is closer to Mittelhochdeutsch and is therefore earlier than SHB. But it is not the case that the convoluted Hebrew found in many Sefer Hasidim passages, in SHB as well as SHP and in other manuscripts, derive from contemporary medieval German syntax. There were no written prose models of medieval German available even to hear, only poetry, and everyday spoken medieval German or proto-Yiddish that Jews could hear and speak would not be convoluted but relatively clear and linear. The complicated Hebrew syntax of Sefer Hasidim is due to Judah’s attempt to create a new form of narrative Hebrew from earlier Hebrew models, not from contemporary German patterns. Any parallel paragraph in any edition of Sefer Hasidim can be more or less awkward than its parallel elsewhere.²³

Single Paragraphs of Sefer Hasidim Circulate in Other Texts

Examples of Scholem’s and Dan’s impression that most of Sefer Hasidim is made up of relatively disjunctive passages are short quotations from Sefer Hasidim found in Judah’s other writings and in the works by other authors. In such cases, single paragraphs stand out as independently produced texts. For example, Dan cited Sefer Hasidim passages found in different texts as in Oxford Opp. 540 (Neubauer 1567) and Oxford Opp. 111 (Neubauer 1566). They are traditions that were not only composed but also transmitted singly. A story in Sefer Hasidim also appears in the thirteenth-century Hebrew story cycle of ninety-nine stories, and there are other such brief Sefer Hasidim parallels in other Hebrew compositions.²⁴

From these single passages, Dan inferred that when they are not found in our Sefer Hasidim (ha-sefer she-be-yadeinu), meaning mainly in Parma, they derive from the lost “original sefer hasidim” (sefer hasidim ha-meqori).²⁵ But such paragraph texts are not traces of “the original Sefer Hasidim” because there is no evidence that one original Sefer Hasidim ever existed, and the paradigm that assumes Judah himself wrote only one edition of his short passages needs to be set aside. The paradigm I am proposing instead is of an inverted pyramid. It assumes that Judah first wrote thousands of individual paragraph traditions. He combined these into some of the dozen or so editions preserved in over twenty manuscripts. Some editions are made up of topical notebooks, but others contain short passages with no obvious similarities. The origins of how Sefer Hasidim came into existence should be sought not in the long edited texts but in the short paragraph units that circulated and that the author, and then others, combined into the dozen or so parallel editions of Sefer Hasidim that survived. The rest of this chapter illustrates how individual paragraphs circulated throughout the corpus of Sefer Hasidim manuscripts and in the first edition.

Single Paragraph Parallels in Short Manuscripts of Sefer Hasidim

One way to see how single paragraphs circulated as Sefer Hasidim is to consider the shorter manuscripts and compare how parallel single paragraphs vary within blocks of text parallels from manuscript to manuscript. This section of the chapter is not a description of the different manuscripts of Sefer Hasidim. That is found in the Catalog. Rather, I want to illustrate here how individual paragraphs differ when we compare blocks of parallel texts in different manuscripts. Although the analysis that follows requires paying close attention to many details, this is the best way to demonstrate how paragraphlength texts circulated throughout the corpus of Sefer Hasidim parallel editions.

Of the dozen editions of Sefer Hasidim (see below), six are found in only one manuscript each. They are: Frankfurt Oct. 94; Zurich Heidenheim 51; Oxford Mich. 568 (Neubauer 1098); the Zurich Fragment; Vatican 285 A, and Freiburg 483. When we look at each of these manuscripts and compare any parallel passages in other manuscripts, we find the presence or absence of individual parallel paragraphs. These comparisons demonstrate that single paragraphs circulated throughout the corpus of Sefer Hasidim manuscripts.

For example, in the Frankfurt manuscript, single, unnumbered paragraphs on different topics are mostly found as single paragraph parallels in other manuscripts. Unnumbered paragraphs are indicated below in square brackets. Three different paragraphs each claims that it is a shortened version of a fuller parallel paragraph found elsewhere. For example, in Frankfurt f. 270r, line 11, [1] the text says: “and he elaborated on this further” (ve-he’erikh sham yoter). A parallel passage with such additional sources is found in parallels in Milan Ambrosiana X.111 sup. [18], Oxford Opp. 340 (Neubauer 875) [18], Moscow 103 [18], as well as in Nîmes 26 [18] and SHB 18. Only Frankfurt par. [1] abbreviates the text, and that paragraph is more derivative than the parallels that contain the fuller version of the passage.

Or, Frankfurt, f. 270v, [14] ends with the phrase “and he expanded further with verses and other proof texts” (ve-he’erikh yoter bi-fesuqim u-re’ayot). The version of the same passage but with biblical and other proof texts is found in SHB 1120, its only parallel.

In contrast to these two examples of MS Frankfurt abbreviating a paragraph that has a parallel elsewhere with more sources, Frankfurt, f. 271r, [19] refers at the end to such a parallel but it does not exist: “and he added many talmudic proofs” (ve-he’erikh harbeh re’ayot min ha-talmud). But in the parallel to Frankfurt [19], SHB 1065, there are no additional references, and this means that the expanded paragraph to which Frankfurt [19] refers apparently has not survived.

Frankfurt [33–40] and [46] correspond to single parallels in the same sequence but with omissions in Ox. Opp. 614 (Neubauer 2275) and Ox. Or. 146 (Neubauer 782) [1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 15, 17, 18] (for both). An exception to the parallel sequence is Frankfurt [46] that corresponds to Oxford Opp. 614 (Neubauer 2275) [13] and Oxford, Or. 146 (Neubauer 782) [13] and also to SHP 211 and former JTS Boesky 45, 103. There also are single paragraph parallels for each of these paragraphs in SHP and former JTS Boesky 45 but, with one exception, not in SHB and its parallels.²⁶ Frankfurt [42, 44, 45, 47–49] seem to be unique to this manuscript, but Frankfurt [43] has parallels in SHP 72 and former JTS Boesky 45, 56; in Vatican 285 [30] and JTS 2499 [30]; and in SHB 21–22. This pattern is a good illustration of how single paragraphs circulated. Even when blocks of paragraphs appear in two or more manuscripts, some individual paragraphs do not appear in all of the parallel blocks.

Another illustration of how individual paragraphs circulated from manuscript to manuscript is seen in Zurich Heid. 51. It consists of unnumbered single paragraphs on different topics, some of which have single parallels elsewhere. The first three paragraphs are about women and have single parallels in SHP (and its parallels not listed here) in a topical notebook on women (SHP 1084–1193): Zurich [1]=SHP 1169 and former JTS Boesky 45, 471; Zurich [2]=SHP 1136 and SHB 498; and Zurich [3]=SHP 1154 and SHB 506. Following this we find single paragraphs about prayer: Zurich [4] is parallel to SHP 574 in a topical notebook on prayer (SHP 391–585); Zurich [PUSHD 5] on hasidut is parallel to SHP 1049 in a topical notebook on that subject (975–1065), and so on.²⁷

From an annotated published version of Oxford Mich. 568 (Neubauer 1098), we see that most of the single paragraphs are about praying or writing liturgical items connected to prayer. Only [1] and part of [6] and [8] have any parallels. The manuscript is mid-thirteenth century, and in the same codex is a copy of Judah he-hasid’s “Shir ha-Kavod (Song of Glory).”²⁸

The Zurich Fragment consists of two short blocks of topically related paragraphs. The first block, [1–8], is on the dead and has parallels in SHP 331–337, former JTS Boesky 45, 147–148, and also in SHB 733–739, but Zurich Fragment [5] is also found in Vatican 285 [52] and its near twin, JTS 2499 [52].

The second block, Zurich Fragment [9–12], is on prayer and is parallel to SHP 394–397, former JTS Boesky 45, 167–168, and SHB 754–757, but [10] is also found in Vatican 285 [60] and JTS 2499 [60]. Large notebooks on the two topics of the dead and prayer appear in the same order in SHB III, and nearly together in other topical editions in SHP I and SHB I and II. When we compare the parallel blocks, individual paragraphs are found in some manuscripts but not in others.²⁹

Vatican 285 A, a separate edition of Sefer Hasidim, consists of 37 paragraphs that have single parallels mainly in SHB and not in SHP or former JTS Boesky 45. A significant number of them are from the first 152 paragraphs of SHB, that is, the separate text known as Sefer ha-Hasidut. Vatican 285 A is now numbered in PUSHD with paragraph numbers added to the longer text in Vatican 285 from [148–184]. A new numbering just of this text would run from [1–37]. Although some paragraphs may be unique [1–2], and others found as single parallels in SHB, the largest part is a block parallel to SHB 68–113 with several single paragraphs missing from Vatican 285 A.

Another example of parallel blocks of text that differ with respect to single parallel paragraphs is seen in the torn Freiburg manuscript. It consists of three short groups of paragraphs that have blocks of parallels in SHP. Freiburg [966–969] is parallel to those numbered paragraphs in SHP I in a topical block about honoring parents (kibbud av va-em) (SHP 929–974); Freiburg [979–986] is parallel to those numbered paragraphs in SHP I in a topical block on pietism (hasidut) (SHP 975–1065); and Freiburg [1056–1073] is parallel to those numbered paragraphs in SHP I in a topical block on pietism and ritual slaughter and purity (hasidut, shehitah ve-taharah) (SHP 1066–83).

One of the parallel paragraphs found in both Freiburg and SHP is not in the parallel block in SHB. Although Freiburg [966, 967, and 969] are found in SHB 579 and 580, Freiburg [968] is not there. This difference also shows how single paragraph parallels can vary within parallel blocks of text in different manuscripts.³⁰

Single Paragraphs in Editions with More Than One Manuscript

The independence of single paragraph units can be further illustrated when we compare Sefer Hasidim editions that each contains two manuscripts. Some manuscripts were copied from others, resulting in sets of two manuscripts that resemble each other in much of their sequencing. Editions of Sefer Hasidim with two manuscripts each are Parma Heb. MS 3280, De Rossi 1133 (SHP), and former JTS Boesky 45; Cambridge Add. 379 and Oxford Add. Fol. 34 (Neubauer 641); Vatican 285 and JTS 2499; Oxford, Opp. 614 (Neubauer 2275) and Oxford Or. 146 (Neubauer 782); Nîmes 26 and Oxford, Mich. 155 (Neubauer 1984).

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.