The Lion’s Authority: A Cemetery Crisis in Paris |
As Operation Sha’agat Ha-ari – The Lion’s Roar – continues, we have an opportunity to examine another remarkable volume of responsa bearing the name Sha’agat Aryeh.
As noted previously, Rabbi Aryeh Leib Ginzburg (1695–1785) published a collection of his responsa under the title Sha’agat Aryeh. This volume contains “literary responsa” as distinct from “legal responsa”: there are no external questioners; rather, the scholarly author is in dialogue with himself.
This raises a compelling question: Did Rabbi Aryeh Leib’s contemporaries view him as a practical halakhic authority who could contend with contemporary issues? Or did they see him as a theoretician, buried in Talmudic minutiae and unable to offer meaningful halakhic guidance?
A window onto this question is found in a different volume. Sha’agat Aryeh was published in 1756 during the author’s lifetime, and another volume of his responsa appeared nearly a century after his death: She’elot U-teshuvot Sha’agat Aryeh Ha-hadashot [New Sha’agat Aryeh Responsa] (Vilna 1873). Like the first volume, the inquiries are self-posed, save for one section containing a query sent by a rabbi of stature. The sender was none other than Rabbi Yosef David Sintzheim (1745-1812), writing at the behest of his brother-in-law.
Architects of French Jewry
To appreciate the significance of this legal exchange, we must look at the two figures involved in posing the question. Rabbi Sintzheim would later become the president of the Grand Sanhédrin – the assembly of Jewish notables convened by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1807-1808. Following that episode, he was appointed as head of the Consistoire central........