It appears that at least one controversial book can not escape being criticized even after a significant passage of time. In this case, R. Dov Eliach’s book the R. Elijah, Gaon of Vilna, published five years ago and, at the time, subject to some harsh criticism, is the subject of a new magazine – אמת מול שקר (Truth Against Lies) published by “the Institute for Truth and Faith.” That is, the entire purpose of this magazine is to disproving and…
Review of Halikhot Shlomo, by R. Shlomo Zalman AuerbachBy Eliezer Brodt There is a well known joke which claims that some gedolim have actually been “writing from their graves.”[1] The most famous person to be “guilty” of this charge is R. Moshe Sofer (Hatam Sofer) as he printed nothing[2] in his lifetime and yet we have volumes and volumes of his Torah on literally every area and – to this day – they continue to be published.[3] Obviously, all of…
Obituary: R. Yosef Buxbaum zt”lby Marc B. Shapiro The Torah world lost a very important figure earlier this month, with the passing of R. Yosef Buxbaum at age 62. In fact, I can’t think of anyone, in the entire history of Torah publishing, who achieved as much as he. There is a lot that can be said about Rabbi Buxbaum, but for the purposes of the Seforim blog his relevant achievement is the founding, and directing for many years, of…
R. Avraham ben haGra: A Victim of Plagiarism? In several previous posts at the Seforim blog, I have discussed instances of plagiarism and, in this post, I would like to mention one of the more famous instances of plagiarism within Jewish literature. To be clear, the issues of plagiarism under discussion lack any ambiguity, these discussed are limited to when the entire book is republished with the only difference being the authors name at the beginning. One of the smaller…
The famed and prestigious Goldman Rare Books [est. 1978] has announced their new web-presence, where remarkable items from their collection of Hebraica & Judaica — including: American Judaica, Amsterdam, Bible, Children, Early Printing, Ephemera, German Judaica, Haskalah, Judeo Arabic, Liturgy, Manuscripts, Miscellaneous, Old Yiddish, Periodicals, Rabbinics and Yiddish — are now available for viewing and purchase at GoldmanRareBooks.com.
ManuscriptBoy has an interesting post on photocopying manuscripts from the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts at the Jewish National and University Library, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Givat Ram campus). Read all about it here.
