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In the year 1856 Jacob Freud wrote, in Hebrew, several announcements on a sheet of paper, titled, “Gedenkblatt,” that is, “Memory Page,” and inserted it into the family Bible. The first announcement pertained to the death of his father, Shlomo, on February 21, and his burial on February 23, 1856. The second announcement noted the birth of his own son Shlomo, that is, Sigmund, on May 6, 1856. Jacob gave Sigmund the same first name as that of his father, a common Orthodox Jewish tradition. Sometime later a third notation was added, this time celebrating the emergence of baby Sigmund's three lower central incisor teeth.
In my book there appears a photograph of the Gedenkblatt. The last announcement reads as follows: “On the Fourth of [?] [1] 856 my son mentioned above, long may he live, got three teeth” (pp. 32-34). The deciphering and transposition into Hebrew print of this announcement, the first to be made, was accomplished by Menahem Schmelzer, Professor of Medieval Hebrew Literature at The Jewish Theological Seminary of America. (The apparent illegibility of the text had baffled previous biographers.)
This brief communication concerns the uncertainty of the word connoted by the question mark in the brackets, that is, to the specific month of the year. The original script and, specifically, the name of the month cited, as seen from the photograph of the text, are not clear. The lack of clarity of the written word is due to the illegibility of the script and fading of the ink. Since incisors usually appear sometime between six and nine months after birth, and sometimes even later, and since Jacob noted that the year was 1856, it was assumed by Prof. Schmelzer and myself that the month could have been either November or December. This uncertainty therefore necessitated putting a question mark in its place.