We haven’t been posting, but we’ve been busy. We have updated some of the earlier maps with improved data and better identifications. We also have some shiny new toys to share.
First up is Harei Besamim, by Rabbi Aryeh Leib Horowitz (1847-1909), a contemporary and “competitor” of Maharsham in Galicia. During his career, he served terms as the rabbi of Seret, Stryi, and Stanislav (I’ll take “Galician Cities that Start with ‘S’” for $500, Alex). (Yes, we are aware that Seret is in Bukovina, that Stanislav is now called Ivano-Frankivsk, and that he was also the rabbi of Zaliztsi early in his career.)
We have a map (click here) and a plot by year. The plot by year is fairly unremarkable; it’s in line with most of what we’ve seen before, a rise in his earlier career followed by a plateau, with a typically high degree of noise.
He is not very well-known today; he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. But he wrote over 600 responsa, to over 200 communities. His correspondents included major rabbinic and Hasidic figures. And he also provides some excellent contrast data to Maharsham. We haven’t formulated any hypotheses about what this means, but the data is good, and our mission is to provide good data. As for an explanation, tzarich iyun, or rather, tzarich data. Maybe once we map Beit Yitzchak and Sho’el U-meshiv, or digitize the census of Galicia from 1900, things will be clearer.
Look out for Moshe’s upcoming post on the Seforim Blog (Sunday) on whether data analysis can tell us whether the late volumes of Igrot Moshe are forgeries.
