Halachot Pesukot

Halachot Pesukot (Hebrew: הלכות פסוקות, lit. 'Legal rulings') is a condensed rabbinic work attributed to Yehudai Gaon in the Geonic Era, containing chapters on common Jewish halachic themes. The work was compiled in the 8th century, two hundred years after the closing of the Babylonian Talmud.^[1] It was written in Aramaic, and follows the format of Halachot Gedolot which antedates it by about 20 years.^[2]

Authorship

While the work is generally attributed to Gaon, then the head of the Sura Academy, some scholars disagree that he wrote the work, and attribute scholarship to Rabbi Exilarch Natronai Bar Habibai Nasi.^[1][3] Gaon, who was blind, did not write with his own hands but rather dictated by scribes. Hai Gaon, one of the later Geonim and head of the Pumbedita Academy, noted that "anything that the sages did not hear from his mouth they do not attribute to him when it contains a difficulty, nor do we rely on it, because we say that the scribe was the one who made the mistake or that someone else wrote in his name".^[1]

In his 1998 book The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture, Robert Brody, a professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, concluded that the Halachot Pesukot was written outside of Iraq.^[1]

Editions

In 1886, A.L. Schlossberg published in Versailles an edition of Halachot Pesukot which he based on the Oxford Manuscript. In 1911, David Solomon Sassoon purchased a handwritten manuscript of the work while visiting Yemen, which based on its style, appears to have been written in Babylon or Persia in the ninth or tenth century.^[4] A description of the manuscript is found in Sassoon's Ohel Dawid catalogue. The manuscript was first published by his son, Solomon David Sassoon, in 1951,^[5] and has been published several times since then by other editors.^[6][7]

Schlossberg's edition, which he prepared from the Oxford Manuscript, differs slightly from the Sassoon Manuscript version. Schlossberg's edition contains 3 additional halakhic discourses on Megillah, Hanukkah, and kosher wine, which do not appear in Sassoon's copy. Conversely, Sassoon's copy contains 2 additions not found in Schlossberg's edition: Berakhot and the defects of slaughtered animals in the Land of Israel.^[8]

References

1. Stampfer, Y. Zvi (2017). "A Mechanism for Change in Traditional Culture: A Case Study from the Judicial Jewish Codes of the Geonic Period". The Jewish Quarterly Review. 107 (2): 131–156. ISSN 0021-6682.
2. Ibn-Daʾud, Avraham; Ben-Ḥalaftâ, Yôsê (1955). M.D. Yerushalmi (ed.). Seder ʿolam raba ṿe-seder ʿolam zota ṿe-sefer ha-Ḳabalah le-ha-Rabad (in Hebrew). Jerusalem: Gil Publishers. p. 27. OCLC 754774918.
3. Epstein, Yaakov Nachim (1945). "תשלום פירוש הגאונים: לטהרות" [The Supplement to the Gaonic Commentary to Taharot]. Tarbiz (in Hebrew). ט"ז (ב'/ג'): 71–134. ISSN 0334-3650 – via JSTOR.
4. David Solomon Sassoon, Ohel David (vol. 1), Preface, Oxford University Press : London 1932, pp. x-xi. (OCLC 71513156).
5. Yehudai Gaon (1951). Sassoon, S.D. (ed.). Sefer Halachot Pesukot (in Hebrew). Jerusalem: Mekitze Nirdamim. OCLC 1140886734.
6. Yehudai ben Nahman (2016). Etz-Chayim, Yehonatan (ed.). Halachot Pesukot Ha-shalem, based on the S. Sassoon MS (in Hebrew). Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook. OCLC 993219181.; (OCLC 880847587)
7. Yehudai ben Nahman (1999). Sefer Halachot Pesukot le-rav Yehudai Gaon z"l (in Hebrew). Jerusalem: Mekhon 'Ahavat Shalom'. OCLC 233180091.
8. Sassoon, D.S. (1932). Ohel Dawid - Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts in the Sassoon Library. Vol. 1. London: Humphrey Milford: Oxford University Press. p. 124. OCLC 912964204.

Further reading

• Danzig, Neil (1993). Mavo le-Sefer Halakhot pesuḳot ʿim tashlum Halakhot pesuḳot [Introduction to Halakhot Pesuqot with a supplement to Halakhot Pesuqot] (in Hebrew) (Mahadurah sheniyah ʿim tiḳunim ṿe-hosafot ed.). The Jewish Theological Seminary of America. ISBN 978-965-456-026-9.