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Upcoming Kestenbaum Auction #51 – Alphonse Cassuto Collection Part 2.

Upcoming Kestenbaum Auction #51 – Alphonse Cassuto Collection Part 2.

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Kestenbaum & Co. will be holding an auction this Thursday, June 23. The catalog is available online at the Kestenbaum site (link). This auction includes the second part of the Alfonso Cassuto collection which is heavily focused on books originating or relating to the Iberian Peninsula. One can read more about that collection at the website or see the last auction catalog. In addition, there are a few controversial books of note. First, lot 136 is the exceedingly rare first…

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Book Week 2011

Book Week 2011

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Book week has just begin in Eretz Yisrael. As I have written in previous years every year in Israel, around Shavous time, there is a period of about ten days called Shavuah Hasefer – Book Week (see here, here and here). Shavuah HaSefer is a sale which takes place all across the country in stores, malls and special places rented out just for the sale. There are places where strictly “frum” seforim are sold and other places have most of…

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Pashkevilin and Benny Brown’s New Book on The Hazon Ish

Pashkevilin and Benny Brown’s New Book on The Hazon Ish

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[cross-posted at the Michtavim blog] Following the internal self-destructive collapse of the proverbial ghetto walls within Jewish communities around the world, the actual walls of Jerusalem continue to be adorned with elaborate pashkevilin, broadsides, and as The Satmar Rebbe, the late Reb Yoel Teitelbaum, zy”a, once allegedly offered a deep philosophical preach: ‘Meah Shearim is sustained by the pashkevilin on her walls.’ Recent scholarship on these broadsides has been offered by Benjamin Brown, “The Socio-Religious Texture of the Meah Shearim…

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Yom Tov Sheni and the Customs With Regard to Travelers

Yom Tov Sheni and the Customs With Regard to Travelers

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J. Jean Ajdler of Brussels, Belgium, is a civil and structural engineer. He has published articles about medieval Jewish astronomy, the history of the Jewish calendar, and Talmudic metrology, and is the author of Hilkhot Kiddush ha-Hodesh al-pi ha-Rambam (Jerusalem: Sifriati, 1996). This is his first contribution to the Seforim blog. Abstract: In ancient times the customs of the communities were extremely variable the one from the other. Each community had its own customs and it was very jealous of…

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A Printing Mistake and the Mysterious Origins of Rashbi’s Yahrzeit*

A Printing Mistake and the Mysterious Origins of Rashbi’s Yahrzeit*

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In this post I would like to deal with tracing the early sources for the great celebrations that take place worldwide on Lag Ba-Omer, specifically at the Kever of Rashbi (R. Shimon b. Yochai) in Meron. A few years back on the Seforim Blog I dealt with some of these issues (link). More recently in Ami Magazine (# 22) I returned to some of the topics. This post contains new information and corrections that I have found which were not…

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Satmar From As Seen By An Insider: A Review of the New English Biography of Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe

Satmar From As Seen By An Insider: A Review of the New English Biography of Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe

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I recently bought the new biography of the Satmar Rebbe, called “The Rebbe. The Extraordinary Life & Worldview of Rabbeinu Yoel Teitelbaum. The Satmar Rebbe זי”ע”, by Rabbi Dovid Meisels (Canada 2011, distributed by Israel Book Shop). Rabbi Meisels is related to Rabbi Teitelbaum, and a staunch Satmar chossid, so you can be sure that the views espoused in the book are Satmar’s true opinions. I also recently bought Solomon Poll’s classic study if chassidim in Williamsburg in the 1950’s,…

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Seforim Sale

Seforim Sale

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While hunting for seforim and books I recently came across the following excellent titles for sale, from an old library. Most of these titles are very hard to find. Some of the prices are better than others, but all in all I think they are fair. Almost all the books are in great shape. The sale prices are only for the next three days. After that they might not be available. There is only one copy of most of these…

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A review of some Recent Torah Journals

A review of some Recent Torah Journals

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In this post I would like to focus on some recent Torah Journals that have come out in the past few weeks. In the future I hope to return to this topic of these Journals with a more in-depth look at their goals and the history of early Journals in general in relationship to this. As many of these journals have only been distributed this week I am just offering some quick remarks on them. In general different people like…

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Seforim Blog Pesach Roundup

Seforim Blog Pesach Roundup

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Here’s a roundup of Pesach and Haggadah-themed posts at the Seforim Blog. I. Racy Title Pages Update II 12.01.2005. Discusses the title page of the Prague Haggadah of 1526. This particular Haggadah used an illustration of a nude woman in the Haggadah’s quotation of Ezekiel 16:7 (“I cause you to increase, even as the growth of the field. And you did increase and grow up, and you became beautiful: you breasts grew, and your hair has grown; yet you were…

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New Writings from R. Kook and Assorted Comments, part 4

New Writings from R. Kook and Assorted Comments, part 4

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Continued from here. Returning to the issue of creation, I found an interesting comment in R. Hayyim Hirschensohn’s commentary on Rashi, Nimukei Rashi. For those who are unaware of this commentary, I recommend that you examine it. You can order a bound copy (even soft-cover) very cheaply at hebrewbooks.org. I think that this is one of Hirschenson’s greatest works. In his comment to Gen. 1:13 Hirschensohn writes that belief in eternity (which here apparently means eternal matter in the Platonic…

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The Date of the Exodus: A Guide to the Orthodox Perplexed

The Date of the Exodus: A Guide to the Orthodox Perplexed

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A pdf of this post can be downloaded here, or viewed here.The Exodus is arguably the fundamental event of our religion. The Sabbath is premised upon it, as are many of the other commandments and holidays. Yet if one would ask a typical observant Jew “in what century did this Exodus occur?,” most would respond with a puzzled look. The purpose of this article is to rectify this situation. Admittedly, the date of the Exodus and the identity of the…

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תפילת בית המדרש, התיאטרון הרומי וישיבת הקרנות

תפילת בית המדרש, התיאטרון הרומי וישיבת הקרנות

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דוד סג”ל מלבורן, אוסטרליה אף שלתפילה צורות הבעה ושמות שונים , הרי עיקר התפילה הוא אחד, והוא מוגדר ע”י הרמב”ם כך: “… חיוב מצווה זו /התפילה/ כך הוא, שיהא אדם מתחנן ומתפלל בכל יום ומגיד שבחו של הקדוש ברוך הוא ואחר כך שואל צרכיו שהוא צריך להם בבקשה ובתחנה ואחר כך נותן שבח והודיה לה’ על הטובה שהשפיע לו, כל אחד לפי כחו”. עיקרון זה מופיע בדברי הרמב”ם גם במקום אחר , בו הוא כותב: “לעולם יצעק אדם על העתיד…

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Rav Shmuel Ashkenazi, a contemporary Maecenas of the world of seforim.

Rav Shmuel Ashkenazi, a contemporary Maecenas of the world of seforim.

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A few years ago I began fundraising to print seforim of Rabbi Shmuel Ashkenazi. I am happy to announce that finally two volumes were just printed volume one is being sold in stores now and volume two will be released to be sold in stores before Shavos. In earlier posts I have put up some chapters of these new works. In one post I described Rabbi Shmuel Askenazi as follows: One of the hidden giants of the seforim world both…

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