Wednesday, March 12, 2008

"Our land abounds in nature's gifts..."

Australia, besides its other attributes, has some medieval manuscripts. No Hebrew ones, though, as far as I am aware. There are a few early modern Kabbalistic manuscripts, in a few places, including Melbourne. I once heard a funny story about a manuscript of Shoshan Sodot that was brought over by one of the people who fled Safed after the earthquake (1920s?) and moved to Perth. He gave it to a local monastery, where it languished for decades. A few years ago, someone convinced the monks to let him bring it to Israel, and it is now in the National Library.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Norcia presented it to the Perth jewish community who have loaned it to Israel. However it was after the 1837 earthquake. You might see the article in the Maccabean for November and December 2002.

3:23 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sorry that got cut off. It is a true story about the Shoshan Sodot found in the New Norcia monastery in Western Australia.

3:25 AM  

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