ETHICAL WILLS
Leviticus Rabba, Zunz dated it to the mid-seventh century. Mordecai Margulies has a long analysis of the midrash and its relation to other works and concluded that it can date no later than the late fifth century. See his Midrash Wayyikra Rabbah(Jerusalem , 1960), Part 5, pp. ix-xxxiii. These earlier, fifth-century, dates are also given in H.L. Strack and G. Stemberger , Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash(Minneapolis : Fortress, 1992), pp. 304 and 316, respectively.
4. See Joseph Dan '’s overview of the genre under“Ethical Wills” in the Encyclopedia Judaica 14, 530-32.
5. See Judah Goldin’s“Foreword” to the JPS reprint of Isracl Abrahams’ Hebrew Ethical Will (Philadelphia : Jewish Publication Society , 1976), p. 7.
6. The tradition of writings ethical wills did not die out in modern times but has continued, even in the post-Shoah world. See, for example, the collection edited by Jack Riemer and Nathan! Stampfer, Ethical Wills: A Modern Jewish Treasury(New York: Schocken, 1983).
8. It is interesting in this regard to think of the memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln . These memoirs are in a sense nothing more than an extended ethical will, as she herself says. It may be that the somewhat unorthodox character of the ethical will genre made it one of the few literary vehicles ope to women.
Riemer and Stampfer, Ethical Wills, p. 209.