תיובתות דחפץ חיים תיובתות – עלומות בשולי ההדפסה הראשונה של המשנה ברורה חלק א

תיובתות דחפץ חיים תיובתות – עלומות בשולי ההדפסה הראשונה של המשנה ברורה חלק א

Comments 9 comments

תיובתות דחפץ חיים תיובתות – עלומות בשולי ההדפסה הראשונה של המשנה ברורה חלק א מנשה קפלן, רחובות Copies of the 1884 of the Mishnah Berurah first printing aren’t identical. Working from several surviving exemplars, Menashe Caplan documents the variants: Rav Chaim Elazar Wacks’s haskama appears in some copies but not others; the last line of the introduction comes in three versions (blank, a halakhic gloss, or thanks to three specific donors); a printing warning appears sporadically; three different subscriber lists…

Read More Read More

‘And How Can One Behold a Sefer Torah in Distress?’ On the Relationship between Rabbi Chaim Heller and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik

‘And How Can One Behold a Sefer Torah in Distress?’ On the Relationship between Rabbi Chaim Heller and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik

Comments 16 comments

‘And How Can One Behold a Sefer Torah in Distress?’ On the Relationship between Rabbi Chaim Heller and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik by Aviad Hacohen and Menachem Butler   This article, published on the occasion of the anniversaries of the passing of Rabbi Chaim Heller (14 Nisan 5720) and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (18 Nisan 5753), may their memories be a blessing, reexamines their relationship through a newly published body of correspondence, situating their bond within the intellectual and material…

Read More Read More

Birds’ Heads, Romaine Lettuce, and the Art of Reading a Haggadah

Birds’ Heads, Romaine Lettuce, and the Art of Reading a Haggadah

Comments 3 comments

Birds’ Heads, Romaine Lettuce, and the Art of Reading a Haggadah A persistent question arises with every illustrated Haggadah, whether a fourteenth-century Sephardic manuscript or a mid-twentieth-century Maxwell House edition: what function do these images serve? Are they merely decorative, do they provide commentary, or do they serve as documentary evidence of ritual practice? Furthermore, when these images draw from the visual culture of the surrounding non-Jewish world, as is often the case, does such borrowing diminish their Jewish character,…

Read More Read More

Etymologies of the Hebrew Calendar

Etymologies of the Hebrew Calendar

Comments 1 comment

Etymologies of the Hebrew Calendar By Dan D.Y. Shapira Dan (or, Dan D.Y.) Shapira is an Orientalist and grows more than fifty trees on the edge of the Judaean Desert. He’s a Full Professor at Bar-Ilan University. The month of Nisan begins the Hebrew year. Its name comes, ultimately, from Sumerian nisag (nig, “thing,” + sag (“head/first”), “first fruits” at about the spring equinox, via Akkadian and / or Aramaic. It should be observed that the names of the months…

Read More Read More

Book Review: Yosie Levine, Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi and the Battlegrounds of the Early Modern Rabbinate

Book Review: Yosie Levine, Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi and the Battlegrounds of the Early Modern Rabbinate

Comments 11 comments

BOOK REVIEW Yosie Levine. Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi and the Battlegrounds of the Early Modern Rabbinate. London: Littman Library, 2024. xiv, 266. Reviewed by Bezalel Naor Yosie Levine has tackled the enigmatic figure of Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi (1658-1718), a man whose title alone beggars the imagination. At first blush, the terms “Hakham” and “Ashkenazi” present an oxymoron. The term “Hakham” is generally reserved for Sephardic sages. (An outlier would be Hakham Isaac Bernays of Hamburg [1792-1849], but that is a discussion…

Read More Read More

How the “Songs of the Day” Were Chosen

How the “Songs of the Day” Were Chosen

Comments 10 comments

How the “Songs of the Day” Were Chosen By David Farkas* The morning prayer service concludes with the Song of the Day, the שיר של יום. All of them are taken from Tehillim, the Psalms. The question is, why were these particular Psalms selected for the different days of the week? This question is squarely addressed by the Gemara. For this reason, understandably, most commentaries to the Siddur that address it simply refer to the relevant passage, and proceed no…

Read More Read More