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Chanukah Controversies, Customs and Scholarship: A Roundup & Update

Chanukah Controversies, Customs and Scholarship: A Roundup & Update

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Chanukah Controversies, Customs and Scholarship: A Roundup & Update We are working on creating a better system to navigate past posts [please contact us at Seforimblog-at-gmail if you are interested in volunteering]. In the interim, here is a collection of Chanukah-related posts along with some new material: (As an aside, the Seforimblog’s internal style guide uses the Ashkenazic transliteration of the holiday name. Nonetheless, each author has the freedom to use whichever they prefer.) Controversies and Contested History Nearly every…

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Pesach, Haggadah, Art & Sundry Matters: A Recap of Important Seforimblog Articles

Pesach, Haggadah, Art & Sundry Matters: A Recap of Important Seforimblog Articles

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Pesach, Haggadah, Art & Sundry Matters: A Recap of Important Seforimblog Articles Among the more interesting aspects of the history of Haggados, is the inclusion of illustrations. This practice dates back to the Medieval period and, with the introduction of printing, was incorporated into that medium. Marc Michael Epstein’s excellent book regarding four seminal Haggadah manuscripts, The Medieval Haggadah: Art, Narrative & Religious Imagination, was reviewed here, and a number of those illustrations, were analyzed in “Everything is Illuminated: Mining…

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Kabbala, Halakha and Kugel: The Case of the Two Handed Blessing

Kabbala, Halakha and Kugel: The Case of the Two Handed Blessing

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Kabbala, Halakha and Kugel:  The Case of the Two Handed Blessing*           In parshat Vayehi, Yaakov simultaneously blesses his two grandchildren, Ephraim and Menashe by placing one hand upon each of their heads.  Today, there is a widespread custom of blessing one own’s children on Friday night (although some only do it on the eve of Yom Kippur).  This custom most likely originated with the Hasedi Ashkenaz in the 14th century but quickly spread to the rest of Europe, including France,…

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The First Artichoke Controversy of 2012

The First Artichoke Controversy of 2012

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The First Artichoke Controversy of 2012 By Leor Jacobi Recently a kashrut controversy surrounding traditional Italian fried artichokes has received major media coverage in the New York Times and the Seforim Blog (twice, in chronological order, not order of importance).  In order to prove the antiquity of Jewish artichoke consumption, depictions of artichokes in medieval illuminated haggadot have been adduced. These were the topic of a lesser-known artichoke controversy in 2012 here in the comments section of the Seforim Blog, which can be as nasty…

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The Not-So-Humble Artichoke in Ancient Jewish Sources

The Not-So-Humble Artichoke in Ancient Jewish Sources

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The Not-So-Humble Artichoke in Ancient Jewish Sources Susan Weingarten Susan Weingarten is an archaeologist and food historian living in Jerusalem. This is an adapted extract from her paper ‘The Rabbi and the Emperors: Artichokes and Cucumbers as Symbols of Status in Talmudic Literature,’ in When West met East: the Encounter of Greece and Rome with the Jews, Egyptians and Others: Studies presented to Ranon Katzoff on his 75th Birthday. Edited by D. Schaps, U. Yiftach and D. Dueck. (Trieste, 2016)….

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The Humble Artichoke

The Humble Artichoke

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The New York Times recently discussed a novel ruling of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate.  The Rabbanut held that artichokes fall into the category of prohibited foods.  This is not because they are listed as such in the Torah. Rather the expansion of the biblical category is because of a secondary concern, the presence of insects.  Those insects may reside in the heart which without opening the tight leaves that comprise the vegetable one is unable to determine if insects are…

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