Rabbi Yitzchak of Migdal (article summary)

Praying for the safety of everyone in Eretz Yisrael. May this post be in their merit.

Here is a summary of an article from a few weeks back in the Jewish Link. You can read it in the following ways: paid Substack article, Jewish Link HTML, and flipdocs.

Here is a brief summary of the points in the article.

1. In our sugya, Rabbi Yitzchak of Migdal states that the gathered coins were arranged in towers (Migdalim). This is an eponymous statement. What does this mean? Is this attribution, or even this very person, fabricated?
   

2. First off, no, Rabbi Yitzchak of Migdal is well established. Here are a bunch of places where he says things, and the Amoraim with whom he interacts.
   
   Second, here is a pattern of the type of comments he makes. They are fairly few, so it is difficult to truly establish a pattern. He will explain a Mishnah or brayta. He is active in Midrash Aggadah. Also, in the halachic topic of ritual impurity.
   

3. I’d suggest that רִבִּי יִצחָק מִגְּדָּלָאה means of Migdal, which we can establish is a place.
   

4. What about pseudepigraphic attributions? I’ve written about this topic in the past, delve into some aspects of it a bit more here.

   1. Maharatz Chajes, people named after prominent halacha they taught. Such as Rabbi Yitzchak of Migdal.

   2. R’ Reuven Margolies, rejects one of Maharatz Chajes’ examples explaining it as a misreading; OKs idea if they said but one halacha, but unconvinced if they say multiple statements, like Rabbi Yitzchak of Migdal. (Indeed, see above for other statements and patterns.)

   3. Rabbi Louis Jacobs disagrees with Margolies, greatly expands pseudepigraphic statements.

   4. I disagree with Jacobs elsewhere, a little bit elaborated here. There are many reasons we might find a matchup of name and statement. Someone can be drawn to statements relating to his name. People might remember the statements when stated by that particular person. It could be random chance, given name frequency and topic frequency. E.g. Chizkiyah is popular and speaks about all sorts of kinyanim in Kiddushin. Then he says something about Chazaka. Would you say this is pseudepigraphic?? Also, given enough statements and topics, randomly some will correspond, so instead you need to consider pointwise mutual information. I’d imagine that this is something that even academic people focused on analyzing texts, but not involved in mathematics, could readily overlook