Ockham’s Razor tells us that we should dismiss the common belief.
While it is possible that he in fact wrote several hundred teshuvot to Russia, and they were all chucked into a fire by some angry Hungarian muttering obscenities about Litvaks, this strikes me as incredibly improbable. Out of 675 responsa of Hatam Sofer for which we have place data, a grand total of three were sent anywhere within the vast Russian Empire. Thus, trivial as it may sound, in Jewish terms, Hatam Sofer sent teshuvot to all of Switzerland.īut even on this relatively lenient standard, the prevailing assumptions are all wrong. Poskim only sent responsa to places with Jews, so “all of Europe” really means “every Jewish area in Europe.” So to answer the trivia question we opened with, Hatam Sofer sent teshuvot to the only two towns in Switzerland where Jews were allowed to live at the time. Europe is a big place and Jews were only in some parts of it. Today one might hear in the oylem that “Hatam Sofer sent teshuvot to all of Europe”. One of our central goals is to try to understand the halakhic world as it was perceived by people at the particular time, not as we presently interpret it. I mentioned we were mapping the responsa of Hatam Sofer and his first question was: “and was he sent questions from all of Europe?” Not long ago, I (Moshe) was in the backseat of my grandfather’s car, and we were schmoozing about HaMapah.
Let’s start with a trivia question: Hatam Sofer (1762-1839) sent responsa to every single Jewish community (in existence at the time) in one modern-day country.