There are two new list of out-of-print seforim available. The first, is via email, you can request the list from sba-at-sba2.com. The second is mainly a list of German imprints (it includes a couple of books Solomon Schechter owned) and can be viewed here. Additionally, Kestenbaum recently had their latest auction, unfortunately their catalog is no longer available online, but if you previously downloaded the catalog you can see the price results here.
There is a new work in Jewish bibliography focusing on American Jews. This work “Hebrew Printing in America 1735-1926: A History and Annotated Bibliography” by Yosef Goldman. (It can be obtained by contacting Y. Goldman at ygbooks -at- yahoo.com). As the subtitle states, is much more than a bibliography. This work, is at the very least the starting point for any research on American Jewery, and can be viewed as a history of American Jewry. The book includes a listing…
Mississippi Fred McDowell, has posted re: the Vilna Gaon’s Yerushalmi edition. However, I would like to discuss which edition of the Bavli the Vilna Gaon had. This is a rather important especially in light of the numerous emendations to the text the Vilna Gaon made. As when one is amending something it is important to know what exactly they have amended. Every morning Birkat HaShahar are recited. Among these blessings are three anomalous ones. These there, as opposed to the…
The names utilized for Seforim are rather unique. As opposed to most cultures who title their books based upon their content (think Da Vinci Code about a code Da Vinci did), Jewish book titles, for the most part, have no relationship to their content. Additionally, for many, the title of the books supersedes that of the actual author to such an extent that many authors are only known by their book titles. So while many are aware of the Shach…
When one discusses the “Jewish” date of the world, the source used is the book Seder Olam. In fact, this is the source where we get to our counting of this being the 5766 year of the world. There was a rather intriguing controversy about whether the edition we have of Seder Olam is a corrupted edition or not. R. Moshe Hagiz, pehaps most well know for his campaign against R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzato, had a very interesting correspondence with…
The Vilna edition of the Shas printed by the Romm Press has become the standard edition of the Shas. This Shas had many important additions and corrections that prior ones did not. One of those was the inclusion of the comments of R. Jacob Emden. However, it appears that one comment, a rather important one was left out. R. Emden in Gitten page 60 made a comment regarding the Hassidim, this does not appear in the Vilna Shas. In the…
