SPARKS AND CONDENSATION

Chaim asked: " All this info on Rebbes seems to be copied and pasted from another source. care to share the source of your info?"


Actually, tayere Chaim, it is a condensation of notes from reading different sources. Some of the information comes from RavSig (http://www.jewishgen.org/Rabbinic/) , some from Artscroll. Much from the internet - several different sources, some of which contradict each other. And much else from books I own. It's a patchwork.


The condensation of notes is an msword file of several hundred pages, representing several years of looking things up, jotting them down, comparing, and looking them up again when I find contradictions or differences. If I find several different sources that give the same data, and one or two sources that say something else, I'll try to figure out why they differ. Sometimes ten or twenty different webpages all copied the same incorrect source. Often what appear to be different sources are actually pastings from an original source - which may have erroneous data to begin with.


There is also a fascination with the sequence of data... mention of Rav Simcha Bunim leads to trying to find out who he was, which brings up the Chiddushei HaRim, whose thought was furthered by the Sfas Emes....

But if you mention Rav Simcha Bunim, you must also mention Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, which brings up the Chozeh of Lublin....

The interweave of all the pieces is fascinating.

And it highlights two different chains of inheritance, one being family relationships, the other being teacher-student relationships. Rabbi Ploni (*), who was the student of Alef, who was a student of Beis, whose teacher Gimmel also taught.....

[Note: both of these are different facets of the chain of person to person transmission all the way back to Sinai. Often the teacher-student transmission is the greater of the two. Hence the commandment to ‘discuss it, and teach it to your sons and sons’ son’, as it says in Devarim 6:7 "Ve shinantam le bneicha, ve dibarta bam be shivteicha b'veiteicha, u velechteicha va derech, u veshachbeicha u vekumeicha" (And you will teach them diligently to your children, and discuss them when you sit in your home, and when you walk on the road, and when lie down and when you get up).]

[Sidetrack: Ploni (Ploni Almoni = John Doe) seems a clear cognate of Fulan, which is often borrowed from Arabic into the other Muslim languages, meaning 'so-and-so', 'whomever', 'old whatsis-bucket'.]



A SPARK IS A SPARK IS A SPARK

Now, how does the looking up thing work out in practice?

Here's an example.

E-kvetcher ( http://search-for-emes.blogspot.com/), upon reading a previous post, commented: " Cossacks! - reminded me of this scroll down to read the contents of the letters!"
Which directed me to the "Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of Turkey", that being a lyrically nasty letter which they (the Cossacks) wrote as their answer to a demand that they submit to the Sultan's authority.

Cossacks
To make complete sense of it one needs to know that Cossacks were originally Ruthenian peasants who fled to the steppes to get away from taxes and exploitation in Poland and Russia. Later they were militarized to protect the boundaries of Russia, particularly from the barbarians south of the border.

[There is much more detail about the Cossacks here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossack and here: http://www.history-magazine.com/cossacks.html ]


Zaporozhian host & Pereyaslav
It helps if one looks up who the Zaporozhian host were. A little research will clarify that these were the Cossacks based in the Ukraine along the Dnieper, formerly an independent polity, but after the treaty of Pereyaslav autonomous under the Tzar.

[Pereyaslav: a fortified border settlement of Kiev founded in the tenth century, destroyed by the barbarian hordes in the thirteenth, garrison and council city of the Cossacks in the Ukraine in the seventeenth century. The treaty of Pereyaslav tied the Ukrainian Cossacks to the Russian state as an autonomous hetmanate.]


Potemkin
Further reading brings up the name 'Grigory Potemkin'. Who was Grigory Potemkin?

To quote from a Wikipedia entry (here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Alexandrovich_Potemkin ), Prince (Reichsfürst) Grigori Alexandrovich Potemkin-Tavricheski (September 13, 1739 (NS: September 24)–October 5, 1791 (NS: October 16)) was a Russian general-field marshal, statesman, and favourite of Catherine II the Great. He is primarily remembered for his efforts to colonize the sparsely populated wild steppes of Southern Ukraine, which passed to Russia under the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji (1774). Among the towns founded by Potemkin are Kherson, Nikolaev (Mykolayiv), Sevastopol, and Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipropetrovsk).


Kuban hat
While reading all this, one may remember that images of Cossacks show them wearing a type of furry tarboush. What is that thing called? Research will lead one through some interesting stuff ("Cossack slut: an Eastern-European trollop whose fashion sense is stuck in the Reagan era"), including pictures of Kuban style hats (so-called for the Cossacks from the Kuban river area, mostly Krasnodarsky Krai - it is the classic squatty fur pill box with a coloured inner cap visible from the top) and a definition of an ushanka (earflap hat; a hat with flaps that can be tied up, or tied at the chin to cover the ears), and papakha (a tall fur pillbox or cylinder hat, originally from the Caucasus, which was part of cavalry and Cossack uniforms under the tsars, though limited to officer ranks under the Soviets, after a period of being out of favour because of Cossack resistance to the Reds). But no clear indication of what the Kuban Cossack hat may have been called - possibly papakha or papakhi, but I have not been able to confirm that.
Hmmm, I'll have to keep looking.


Chassidic hats
The hat thing reminded me of the fur hats worn by Chassidic rebbes.
In brief: Shtreimel = fur hat which is round and flatter than it is tall. Spodek = a barrel shaped fur hat favoured by Gerrer Chasids. Kulpak = a cone shaped fur hat.
But note that spodek means a plate or saucer, which seems to imply a shape more like what is commonly identified as shtreimel. One source says that Satmarrer Chossids wear shtreimlech, another says only Russians wear them. And a third states categorically that a kulpak is a tall skullcap made out of fur. There are surprisingly few good sources for information on head gear on the internet. Tzarich iyun.


Hetman and Petliura
Back to the letter of the Whatsobunny Cossacks to Sultan Thingyding.
A word catches my eye: HETMAN. I remember reading about the Ataman Simon Petliura (yemach shemo) back in the seventies. So, what does 'hetman' mean? And is it the same as 'ataman'?

Hetman is explained as derived from German Hauptman (same as Dutch 'hoofdman'), whereas 'ataman' is presumed to be from Turkic: Ata (father, hence chief) with 'man' postfix. Both terms mean more or less the same thing: leaders of Cossack bands and cavalry troops. It is quite possible that they are actually the same term, and equally possbily the etymological truth resembles neither of the explainations given. The title is, in any case, obsolete.


Chelmnitski
And again, back to the epistle of the Thinggangdooki Haidamaks to the Grand Poobah of Turkey. One of the famous hetmans listed in the article is 'Bohdan Khmelnytsky'. A very familiar name. Bogdan Chelmnitski yemach shemo was the Cossack chieftain whose violent revolt destroyed the Jewish communities of Poland and the Ukraine. His name has cropped up in several places. Unfortunately the wikipedia article (here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohdan_Khmelnytsky ) about him appears to be mostly hagiography, with only scant reference to the terror that he and his followers inflicted on what had been a flourishing Yiddishe velt.


Shabbasai Zvi
The article does mention Shabbasai Zvi, however. I'll have to reread those books about Shabbasai Zvi which I bought a few years ago. Maybe I should look up Jacob Frank. And I should probably also see if some of my books about Turkey and Turkish history and society have anything to say about the Donmeh.

[Donmeh: a sect of crypto-Jews or Sabbateans, being the descendants of the followers of Shabbasai Zvi who ostensibly converted to Islam but maintain some cultish behaviours from the good old days of false messianism - comparative religion meets avodah zara, possibly some fascinating stuff here. Now mostly resident in Istanbul.
I read somewhere that many Turkish politicians untill the seventies or eighties were Donmeh, but that is probably nothing more than another conspiracy theory about the Jews. I'll have to retrace my steps and try to remember where I read that, and what it was that I read. Betcha that the Donmeh are also accused of being Masons and CIA stooges.]



And back to rebbeim
So, in conclusion, yes that letter from the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of Turkey is a riotous hoot (though absolutely un-printable, for all of its eloquence), and as you can see one thing which you look up will lead to other things. Which you also look up. And at some point you see a relationship with something else. It simply happens.

Looking up one Chassidic rebbe leads to another Chassidic rebbe. Behind each rebbe you will find more rebbes. If one rebbe said something, some other rebbe probably said something that is somehow also relevant. Or someone quoted him, in a context that relates to something else.