DRAFT. This edition: January 28, 1998; First edition: September 19, 1997.
In [WRR1], Witztum, Rips and Rosenberg found a surprising correlation between famous rabbis and their dates of birth and death, as they appear as equidistant letter sequences in the Book of Genesis. We make a smaller or equal number of mistakes, and find the same phenomenon in Tolstoy's eternal creation "War and Peace".
Dror Bar-Natan Institute of Mathematics The Hebrew University Giv'at-Ram, Jerusalem 91904 Israel. drorbn@math.huji.ac.il |
Brendan McKay Department of Computer Science Australian National University Canberra, ACT, 0200 Australia. bdm@cs.anu.edu.au |
1. Introduction
1.1. Acknowledgement
2. Their choices, our choices
2.1. Modifications to specific appellations
2.2. Modifications to the list of personalities
2.3. Our list of appellations
3. The Results
4. Bibliography
Our inspiration comes fully from reading the paper [WRR1] by Witztum, Rips and Rosenberg (WRR). The outline of the story in [WRR1] is as follows:
In [WRR1], WRR write:
The list of appellations for each personality was provided by Professor S.Z. Havlin, of the department of bibliography and librarianship at Bar Ilan University, on the basis of a computer search of the "Responsa" database at that university.Contrary to what is suggested by the above quote, many of the appellations WRR do not even appear in the Bar-Ilan Responsa database [Re]. Thus in addition to the Responsa database [Re] we will also refer to the Margalioth Encyclopedia [Marg], used by WRR to select the rabbis, and to the highly-regarded Encyclopedia Hebraica [Heb] used by WRR in several of their other investigations. We (like WRR) also use other sources as needed.
The convergence of erany and his date of death, y"d tmvz, in War and Peace. |
We note that there may be a case for removing the name imdy` altogether, for it is just the name of a town were the Yaabez was briefly a Rabbi, and not his last name. The Yaabez himself wrote in [Ya],
... The busy Yaakov Israel known as Yaabez good omen was never called Yaakov Emdyn (imdy`) (as has done the honourable in the address on this letter as is the deplorable habit in the tongues of the people). It is known I am not from the people of Emdyn, was not born there, do not expect to see it, but am looking after its welfare and benefit as in the former times when I was under it's load, [and] so also am I now diligent for it's remedy. ...Little did his plea help, and the Yaabez has several common appellations which are variants of the word imdy`. We keep them in our list.
At this point we got the advice of two wise men. One suggested that we look at [Hei], a book on the Jewish laws in the state of Moravia, where Rabbi Menachem Mendel was the state's Rabbi. From the other wise man we learned to check the citations in the footnotes. One footnote, on page 111 of [Hei], he checked himself. It lead to an article [Marx], that contain a letter written by the son of a nephew of Rabbi Menachem Mendel in the late 17th century, only a few dozen years after Rabbi Menachem Mendel died in 1661. In that letter Rabbi Menachem Mendel's surname is given as qracmal. The following day (and a continent away), we checked the footnote on page 102. It lead us to two articles, [Har] and [Ka], devoted to our Rabbi and his descendents. Both articles use the spelling qrakmal extensively and not just in passing, and the latter one even explains where the name comes from! It relates the name qrakmal to a certain earlier Dayan, Rabbi Jonah Krochmals in the city of Cracow, where Rabbi Menachem Mendel was born. A transcript of the tombstone of Rabbi Jonah Krochmals is given in [Zo, page 180] and Krochmals is spelled qrakmalw there. Thus there is no doubt that the original spelling of the name Krochmal is qrakmal and we remove the appellation qrvkml from our list, putting qrakmal instead.
Note that here we corrected new to old, while in the case of Rabbi II-25, Rabbi Yitshak HaLevi Horowitz we corrected old to new. Whatever inconsistencies WRR have we are allowed to have too.
We also note that once it is clear that qrakmal is an acceptable spelling for Krochmal, the usage of this spelling is mandatory according to the WRR rules, which state explicitly that Yiddish names are spelled as in the original Yiddish. Recall that qrakmal is a Yiddish word.
The story doesn't end there. When we tried to find a"c hi"r as a signature in Rabbi Ricchi's books, we failed. What we did find was a different permutation of these letters, ahi"cr, which appears with its expansion, any hxiyr imnval cy ryqy (me the young, Immanuel Hai Ricchi). We note that in Hebrew the latter expansion makes much more sense than the former, and that the dictionary of acronyms [AY] lists the latter acronym but not the former. Including "ahi"cr" as an appellation is senseless for the same reasons as above, but it still makes more sense than including "a"c hi"r". So we deleted "a"c hi"r" and inserted "ahi"cr".
After the first version of this note was widely circulated, we finally found a single reference to the variation a"c hi"r, in [Shi]. That source refers to an acronym that appears as a signature on an addendum, only available in Zurich, to Rabbi Ricchi's book "miwh cvwb". Neither the original edition of that book, nor any of his other books that we checked, contain that acronym; the original edition of "miwh cvwb", like many of Rabbi Ricchi's other books, contains ahi"cr. We don't have the resources to check the manuscript in Zurich, so at the moment we don't know if the acronym a"c hi"r really appears there or if [Shi] copied it with the c misplaced. However, we can see two things clearly: if the acronym a"c hi"r exists at all it is a signature and not an appellation, and the WRR claim to have admitted only widely used pronounced acronyms is false.
The old and new lists, a comparative table | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
# | Original entry | we remove | we add | new entry |
1 | hawkvl, hrab"d, hrab"y, hrb ab"d, rby abrho |
rab"d wny | hawkvl, hrab"d, hrab"y, hrb ab"d, rab"d wny, rby abrho |
|
2 | zri abrho, yxcqy, rby abrho | zri abrho, yxcqy, rby abrho | ||
3 | hmlaj, rby abrho | hmlaj | rby abrho | |
4 | abrho sbi, xrvr hmr, rby abrho | --- completely removed --- | ||
5 | rby ahr` | rby ahr` | ||
6 | miwy hwo, miwy y/h/v/h | miwy y/h/v/h | bil miwy h', miwy h' |
bil miwy h', miwy h', miwy hwo |
7 | avpnhyo, rby dvd | avpnhyo | avpnhyyo | avpnhyyo, rby dvd |
8 | dvd hngyd, rby dvd | --- completely removed --- | ||
9 | dvd nyev, rby dvd | dvd nyev, rby dvd | ||
10 | rby cyyo | hmhrc"a, mhrc"a | hmhrc"a, mhrc"a, rby cyyo | |
11 | bnbnwt, rby cyyo | bnbnwt | bnbnwty, hrb hcby"b, hrb cby"b, rb cby"b |
bnbnwty, hrb hcby"b, hrb cby"b, rb cby"b, rby cyyo |
12 | bil hns, bil ns, kpvsy, rby cyyo |
bil hns, bil ns, kpvsy |
kapvsy | kapvsy, rby cyyo |
13 | hmhrc"w, cyyo wbty, mhrc"w, rby cyyo |
hmhrc"w, cyyo wbty, mhrc"w, rby cyyo |
||
14 | cvt yayr | cvt yayr | ||
15 | rby yhvdh | yhvdh sg"l | yhvdh sg"l, rby yhvdh | |
16 | mhr"y iyaw, rby yhvdh | mhr"y iyaw, rby yhvdh | ||
17 | rby yhvsf | rby yhvsf | ||
18 | mgny wlmh, rby yhvwi | mgny wlmh, rby yhvwi | ||
19 | hmhry"e, hmhrym"e, erany, yvsf erny, mhry"e, mhrym"e, merany, merny, rby yvsf |
hr"y erany, hr"y erny, r"y erany, r"y erny |
hmhry"e, hmhrym"e, hr"y erany, hr"y erny, erany, yvsf erny, mhry"e, mhrym"e, merany, merny, rby yvsf, r"y erany, r"y erny |
|
20 | pry mgdyo, rby yvsf, tavmyo | --- completely removed --- | ||
21 | hryb"r, yiqb byrb, mhr"y byrb, rby yiqb |
mymvngyl | hryb"r, yiqb byrb, mhr"y byrb, mymvngyl, rby yiqb |
|
22 | bil hlq"e, cagyz | cagyz | mhr"y cgyz, r"y cgyz |
bil hlq"e, mhr"y cgyz, r"y cgyz |
23 | hmhry"l, yiqb hlvy, yiqb sg"l, mhr"y hlvy, mhry"l, mhr"y sg"l, mvly`, rby yiqb |
yiqb lvy, mhr"y lvy |
hmhry"l, yiqb hlvy, yiqb lvy, yiqb sg"l, mhr"y hlvy, mhry"l, mhr"y lvy, mhr"y sg"l, mvly`, rby yiqb |
|
24 | hyib"u, hryib"u, hr"y imd`, hr"y imdy`, imdy` |
hryib"u, hr"y imd` |
r"y imdy` | hyib"u, hr"y imdy`, imdy`, r"y imdy` |
25 | hvrvvyu, yxcq hlvy, rby yxcq |
hvrvvyu | hvrvbyu, yxcq lvy |
hvrvbyu, yxcq hlvy, yxcq lvy, rby yxcq |
26 | xmc xdq, qrvkml, rby mnco, rby mindl |
qrvkml | qrakmal | xmc xdq, qrakmal, rby mnco, rby mindl |
27 | hmhrm"z, hmzl"`, zkvta, zkvtv, mhrm"z, mhr"o zkvt, mwh zkvt, mwh zkvta, mwh zkvtv, qvl hrm"z, rby mwh |
zkvta, zkvtv, mwh zkvta, mwh zkvtv |
hmhrm"z, hmzl"`, mhrm"z, mhr"o zkvt, mwh zkvt, qvl hrm"z, rby mwh |
|
28 | mrglyt, pny mwh, rby mwh | mrglyt, pny mwh, rby mwh | ||
29 | rby izryh | rby izryh | ||
30 | a"c hi"r, ywr lbb | a"c hi"r | ahi"cr, hv` iwyr | ahi"cr, hv` iwyr, ywr lbb |
31 | hmhrw"w, mhrw"w, mzrcy, rby wlvo, wriby, wr wlvo |
hmhrw"w, mzrcy, wr wlvo |
mhrw"w, rby wlvo, wriby | |
32 | rby wlmh | cilma, wlmh clma | cilma, rby wlmh, wlmh clma | |
33 | --- new Rabbi --- | ayznweae, ayznwee, ayyznwee, mhr"o a"w, rby mayr |
We have shown our list of appellations to Professor Menachem Cohen, of the Bible Department at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. In reference to our list and to the original WRR-Havlin list he wrote in [Co2]:
... I see no essential difference between the two lists for the purpose of using them for skip experiments in any text.
P1 | P2 | P3 | P4 | |
our list on War and Peace | 620 | 19 | 31 | 2 |
our list on Genesis | 201,278 | 13,099 | 294,296 | 9,524 |
the WRR list on Genesis | 453 | 5 | 570 | 4 |
Comparing the first and the last row, we see that our list does as well on War and Peace as the WRR list does on Genesis. Tolstoy would have enjoyed knowing that. Some of the numbers in the middle row are "middle of the way", smallish but not very small. They are "smallish" because our list is still highly correlated with the original WRR list, on which it was based. The fact that they are not very small needs to be explained by WRR, not by us. Why is it that an equally valid list of appellations (our list) does so much worse than their list on Genesis?
Comment: The computations of the significance levels for
our list was carried out using a program WRR gave us,
els2.c
. We modified it to work under Unix and re-wrote
the permutation test part, but made no modifications to the main part
of the code. The text we used was also given to us by WRR, and consists
of the first 78,064 letters (the length of Genesis) of a Hebrew
translation of Tolstoy's War and Peace.
© Copyright (1997) Dror Bar-Natan, drorbn@math.huji.ac.il and Brendan McKay, bdm@cs.anu.edu.au.