Continued from here. Let me continue with Rabbi Herschel Grossman’s review. This post will complete my response to around a quarter of his review, so we still have a long way to go. Grossman writes (p. 42) According to Shapiro, “Maimonides would be surprised that . . . later generations of Jews . . . latched onto his earlier work;” and it “is certainly one of the great ironies of Jewish history that the Thirteen Principles became the standard by…
I belong to a small group of inveterate collectors of Jewish ephemera. We collect artifacts that many others consider of little or no significance, such as postage stamps; coins and medallions; old posters, broadsides, and newspaper clippings; outdated New Years cards; wine-stained Passover Haggadot; Jewish ornaments, objects (e.g., Chanukkah dreidels) and artwork of a previous generation; photographs and postcards; and the like. The items we collect – all of Jewish interest – take up much space in our homes; they…
Over Shabbos one of the hidden giants of the seforim world, both within ultra-orthodox and academic circles, was niftar; a man known as Rabbi Shmuel Askenazi. He was 98 and lived in Batei Ungarin in Meah Shearim. (seen here with Rav Yechiel Goldhaber) R. Ashkenazi authored many books and hundreds of articles in dozens of journals – both academic and charedi. Besides for authoring so much, he assisted many people in both circles helping in many areas of the Jewish…
Ed. Rebecca Abrams and Cesar Merchan-Hamann / Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2020 / ISBN 978 1 85124 502 4 / Available in the USA via Amazon $55 307pp, 140 full-colour plates Oxford, the ‘City of Dreaming Spires’, is one of the world’s greatest repositories of Hebraica and Judaica, both books and manuscripts. This sumptuous volume was initiated at the encouragement and support of Martin J. Gross, a New Jersey philanthropist and Jewish community activist. It is a bargain at…
Some of the worst epidemics we have known in our history have indirectly been the catalyst for important contributions by scholars who produced their valuable works under quarantine. Eliezer Brodt has published in these pages considerable lists of such scholarship, from bygone plagues down to the current terrible epidemic, which highlight the vast scope of this literary bounty. I recently came across a very interesting sefer-epidemic connection which I have not seen mentioned yet. This material highlights the contribution of…
H. J. Zimmels published the two passages from R. Avigdor just mentioned,[1] but there is another comment that appears as a note to R. Avigdor’s manuscript. It has recently been published by Miriam Weitman,[2] and states: וישם את אפרים לפני מנשה פי’ לא על יעקב אמ’, אל’ משה רבינ’ שם ראש דגל אפרי’ לפני מנשה בעבור שיעקב אמ’ ואחיו הקטן יגדל ממנו, ויהושע או אנשי כנסת הגדול’ כתבו, דאי משה כתבו אם היה לו [צ”ל היה לו לומר] אני שמתי…
Normally this time of the year I post to announce book week and to list out many of the seforim and books printed during the year. This year, due to Covid-19, there is no book fair. At this time there is “talk” of holding a fair in a few months, but who knows what the future will bring. Some publishing companies are currently running sales via their websites; others did not. What follows is a partial list of publishers on…
1. In my last post here I wrote as follows: R. Yitzhak Nahman Eshkoli calls attention to what he sees as another mistake made by those who published R. Moshe Feinstein’s works. Here is Iggerot Moshe,Orah Hayyim 5, 22:21. According to the text of R. Moshe’s responsum, animals are muktzeh, even those that children play with. This means that R. Moshe held that pets are also muktzeh. Yet in the small print the editor added that pets are permitted, even…
In the early modern period, we find reference in the works of Jews in the Islamic orbit to the ideal of a hakham shalem—expert in both Torah and the various forms of wisdom. If we wish to be yet more ambitious, we can imagine an individual who supplements these already daunting characteristics with a constellation of exceptional personal qualities. Rabbi Norman Lamm came remarkably close to meeting this extraordinary standard. He was a major thinker who articulated and embodied an…
לזכר נשמת אבי מורי ר׳ יעקב קאפל בר׳ משה יהודה הלוי גענויער ז״ל. היארצייט שלו י״ד סיון. For those studying Daf Yomi this week, there is a unique diagram that appears on Shabbat 98b. In the Vilna Shas one can see a closeup “picture” of one of the boards of the Mishkan (“קרש”) which would make Artscroll proud. While one might be familiar with diagrams that appear in the Talmud, those diagrams illustrate comments in the rishonim, mainly Rashi. Most…
and Charles (Bezalel) Manekin Rachel Manekin is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Maryland. Charles (Bezalel) Manekin is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland. The authors live in Jerusalem, Israel. Dedicated to the memory of our mothers, Matel Becher ע”ה and Dorothy Manekin ע”ה R. Israel Meir ha-Kohen Kagan’s statement in his Likutei Halakhot that it is “now” a “great mitzvah” to teach Torah to girls, has attracted a great amount of attention in recent…
When I finished my new post, it ended up being so long that I had to split it into five parts. Here is part 1. 1. All of us are able to benefit from the Seforim Blog because of the efforts of Dan Rabinowitz, who founded the blog almost fifteen years ago. In the early days, there was only a relatively small amount of people who knew about it, and Dan wrote all the posts. I encourage everyone to check…
Yeshayahu Vinograd (1933–2020), the renowned scholar and bibliographer, passed away on Thursday, 7 May 2020. He authored Otzar ha-Sefer ha-‘Ivri (Thesaurus of the Hebrew Book), Otzar Sifrei ha-Gra (Thesaurus of the Books of the Vilna Gaon), and (published) Siddur Ezor Eliyahu. The following reminiscences were written by Moshe Dovid Chechik at the request of the editors of The Seforim Blog, and translated from the Hebrew by Daniel Tabak. While most frontmatter is forgettable, one of the most amazing prefaces that…
When the lockdown began in Israel a few weeks ago, a friend of mine e-mailed me an article about plagues he was about to complete, asking if I had anything to add. Upon checking my collections of material, I found I had nothing special marked down in my indexes about the topic. At the time I had no plans of writing anything about it. However, a few weeks later, when I started preparing my e-mail of reading material which I…
The following is an excerpt from a forthcoming article of mine on when to say Kiddush Levanah. This is particularly timely, as this it deals with the segulah attributed to this tefiilah, and its possible connection to plagues. סגולת ברכת הלבנה1 בתחילת המאמר הבאתי דברי המגן אברהם בשם מגיד מישרים: “כ’ המגיד, כשמקדשין הלבנה במוציא שבת תהיה הצלחה. וכשתתכסה ולא תוכלו לברך אותו החדש לא יהיה מוצלח. דוק ותשכח”. והבאתי מה שכתב ר’ חיים אלעזר שפירא: ועיין במגן אברהם… ולמאן…