Some Highlights of the Mossad HaRav Kook Sale of 2017

By Eliezer Brodt

For over thirty years, starting on Isru Chag of Pesach, Mossad HaRav Kook publishing house has made a big sale on all of their publications, dropping prices considerably (some books are marked as low as 65% off). Each year they print around twenty new titles. They also reprint some of their older, out of print titles. Some years important works are printed; others not as much. This year they have printed some valuable works, as they did last year. See here and here for a review of previous year’s titles.

If you’re interested in a PDF of their complete catalog, email me at eliezerbrodt@gmail.com

As in previous years, I am offering a service, for a small fee, to help one purchase seforim from this sale. The sale’s last day is Tuesday. For more information about this, email me at Eliezerbrodt-at-gmail.com. Part of the proceeds will be going to support the efforts of the Seforim Blog.

What follows is a list and brief description of some of their newest titles.

This is a critical edition of this Geonic work. A few years back, the editor, Yonason Etz Chaim put out a volume of the Geniza fragments of this work (also printed by Mossad HaRav Kook).

 This is the long-awaited volume two of the Gr”a on Shir Hashirim, heavily annotated by R’ Dovid Cohen.

This is a new edition of the beautiful work on Siddur from the Kesav V’Hakabalah, which has not been available for a while.

 This is a small work based on R’ Dovid Tzvi Hoffman’s lectures on Tefilah (translated from German). Of course, being that it’s from R’ Hoffman it’s important to own.

This is a large collection from a wide range of sources on the interesting topic of Chasairos V’yeseiros in Tanach.

This is an annotated edition of the small work of the Minsker Godol on Kiddush Hashem. For the back story behind why this work was written, see the following passage from R’ Meir Halperin’s classic and extraordinary biography, Hagodol MiMinsk.

This is an extremely useful and well organized work, based on the author’s PhD dissertation, dealing with many aspects of K’reiyas Hatorah before, during and after, such as Hagbah, the amount of Aliyos called, standing, selling of Aliyos and Shenayim Mikrah V’echad Targum.

This is a very useful collection of fifteen essays of Orthodox Theological Responses to the Holocaust. In 2007, Oxford University Press printed a book in English titled Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses during and after the Holocaust edited by Steven T. Katz, Shlomo Biderman, and Gershon Greenberg (689 pp.). The Oxford volume includes almost of all the essays that appear in this new volume and a few additional important orthodox responses not found in this new Hebrew volume. Its rather strange that there is no mention of the Oxford volume in the various introductions and notes, even though Gershon Greenberg, one of the editors of the Hebrew volume was also one of the editors of the English volume. Moreover, in the Hebrew edition, Greenberg  never cites the Oxford volume; only his essays about each response.

I would just like to add one source to the bibliography about the essays of R’ Kalonymos Shapiro from his Eish Kodesh. Recently, Dr. Daniel Reiser published a beautiful facsimile edition of R’ Kalonymos’ autograph manuscript of this classic  work alongside an annotated transcript. (TOC available upon request).

Just a few years ago, the great Talmid Chacham, writer and bibliographer (and much more), R’ Tovia Preschel, was niftar at the age of 91. R’ Preschel authored thousands of articles on an incredibly wide range of topics, in a vast array of journals and newspapers both in Hebrew and English. For a nice, brief obituary about him from Professor Leiman, see here. Upon his passing, his daughter, Dr. Pearl Herzog, immediately started collecting all of his material in order to make it available for people to learn from. Already by the Shloshim a small work of his articles was released. A bit later, she opened a web site devoted to his essays. This website is constantly updated with essays. It’s incredible to see this man’s range of knowledge (well before the recent era of computer search engines). A few months ago, Mossad HaRav Kook released volume one (424 pp.) containing some of his essays, and right before Pesach volume two was released (482 pp.) This is an extremely special treasure trove of essays and articles on a broad variety of topics. It includes essays related to Halacha, Minhag, bibliography, Pisgamim, history of Gedolim, book reviews, travels and personal encounters and essays about great people he knew or met (e.g.: R’ Chaim Heller, R’ Abramsky, R’ Shlomo Yosef Zevin, R’ Meshulem Roth, R’ Reuven Margolis, Professor Saul Lieberman). Each volume leaves you thirsting for more. At least another two volumes are in preparation by his daughter, Dr. Pearl Herzog. I wish her much Hatzlacha in this great service for readers of all kinds all over the world. Here is a table of contents of the two volumes.

Vol. I:

Vol  II: