Some Notes on Verifying the Authenticity of the Alleged Rav Yisrael Salanter Photographs

By Shnayer Leiman

There are some who claim that the photographs of R. Yisrael Salanter’s sons can be  used for the likeness of their father, since we have testimony that the sons looked almost exactly like their father. Let us examine the evidence.

1. Aside from the 3 published photographs of R. Yisrael’s son R. Yitzchak (see “The Recently Published Photographs of R. Yisrael Salanter”), the only other extant sketch of a son of R. Yisrael Salanter is the portrait of Lipman Lipkin (1846-1876).[1]

Indeed, Menahem G. Glenn would claim:[2]

The portrait of Dr. Lipkin reproduced in the Ha’asiph shows physical  features undoubtedly inherited from his father, a high, broad forehead, lively keen eyes, a prominent aquiline, sensitive nose, a short shorn beard encircling his face, making an impressive appearance. He must have borne a more striking resemblance to his father than any of his brothers. We thus have some idea of what his father, who never allowed himself to be photographed, looked like.

For our purposes, what needs to be noticed is that the likenesses of Lipman Lipkin and his brother R. Yitzchak are mutually exclusive. They are hardly interchangeable. And so, if the one is a replica of R. Yisrael Salanter, the other is not. But there is an even greater flaw in Glenn’s “testimony.” The sine qua non for testimony regarding any likenesses of R. Yisrael Salanter and a son of his – with the son shedding light on the image of the father — is: the witness must have seen both! But, Glenn, in all likelihood, never saw any of R. Yisrael Salanter’s sons. And I can say with absolute certainty that Glenn (1896-1978) never set eyes on R. Yisrael Salanter, who died in 1883.

2. In 1954, the earliest of the 3 extant photographs of R. Yitzchak Lipkin was published by his grandson, R. Hayyim Yitzchak Lipkin (1911-1988).[3] It appeared as follows:

At the right of the photo, the legend reads (in part):

According to eye-witness testimony, his likeness
[literally: his facial features] resembled that of his
father R. Yisrael.

Now this is more serious evidence. At least two issues, however, came to mind when I first saw this.

Issue 1: I suspect that almost every reader of this note has been told, at some point in his life, that he/she looks like his/her father, mother, or both. I have been told by some that I look “exactly” like my father, and by others that I look “exactly’ like my mother. In fact, I look “exactly” like neither, but inherited traits of both. In brief, this is hardly an exact science. So whenever someone testifies that A looks like B, it may well be more a personal opinion than a statement of fact.

Issue 2: I noticed that the “eye-witness” was not identified. Who was the witness? Is he a reliable witness? Did he actually see R. Yisrael and R. Yitzchak? Nothing in the 1954 volume sheds light on these questions.

In 2003, a fuller and much expanded edition of the 1954 R. Hayyim Lipkin volume appeared in print.[4] The photo and its legend were conspicuously absent! אין זה אומר אלא דרשני.

3. In 2017, R. Menahem Mendel Plato published a massive 445 page biography of R. Yisrael Salanter.[5] It included the following photograph of R. Yitzchak and the legend under it.[6]

The legend reads in part: “According to the testimony of his [i.e. R. Yisrael Salanter’s] descendant, Rav Dessler, his [R. Yitzchak’s] image is like that of his father.”

At last, the witness is identified. It is none other than Rav Eliyahu Dessler, a great-grandson of R. Yisrael Salanter, who is prominently featured elsewhere in the Plato volume.[7] He is surely a trustworthy witness for what he may have heard from others. But he cannot be an “eye-witness” for what R. Yisrael Salanter looked like. Rav Eliyahu Dessler (1892-1953) was born almost 10 years after R. Yisrael Salanter died in 1883.

In sum, until we have the testimony of an unequivocal witness who saw both R. Yisrael and R. Yitzchak, and testifies that indeed they looked almost exactly alike, we do not know what R. Yisrael looked like, other than by the vivid descriptions by those who actually saw him.[8] It is thus injudicious, to say the least, when a publisher recently reissued the classic anthology of R. Yisrael Salanter’s writings, אור ישראל, with an unidentified photograph of R. Yisrael’s son, R. Yitzchak, on the cover![9]

It honors neither R. Yisrael nor R. Yitzchak, who devoted their lives to teaching and telling the truth.[10]

NOTES

[1] Published in האסיף (Warsaw, 1884-85), part 2, p. 259.
[2] M.G. Glenn, Israel Salanter: Religious-Ethical Thinker, (New York, 1953), pp. 65-66.
[3] תורת רבי ישראל מסלנט (Tel-Aviv, 1954), part 2, p. 126.
[4] תורת רבי ישראל מסלנט (Jerusalem, 2003).
[5] אור ישראל מסלנט (n.p., 2017).
[6] Op. cit., p. 119.
[7] Op. cit., pp. 239-240. On Rav Dessler, see Y. Rosenblum, Rav Dessler (New York, 2000).
[8] Aside from the sources cited in “The Recently Published Photographs of Rav Yisrael Salanter,” see the description by R. Yitzchak Blazer, אור ישראל (Vilna, 1900), p. 120, ד“ה עליו נתקיים.
[9] אור ישראל (North Haven, Conn., 2020).
[10] I am indebted to my colleague, Zalman Alpert, who insisted that I address this issue; and to my son, R. Akiva, who provided the closing image of what the cover of a R. Yisrael Salanter anthology looks like when members of the family become interchangeable parts.

——————-

APPENDIX

Having devoted several postings to true and false claims (regarding photographs), we attach a brief, seasonal דבר תורה about true and false claims embedded in a commentary on the הגדה של פסח .

One of my favorite hasidic stories is about אמת. It reads as follows:

R. Pinchas of Koretz (1726-1791) was a man of truth. He devoted seven years to researching the definition of אמת. He spent another seven years researching the definition of שקר. He spent yet another seven years researching how one goes about acquiring truth and distancing himself from falsehood. In order to appreciate what R. Pinchas of Koretz accomplished, one need only examine the case of R. Shem of Kalshitz.

R. Shem of Kalshitz  used to go the mikvah in the darkness of the night, just prior to his fixed hours for Torah study after midnight. He ordinarily went to the mikvah together with an aide. One night, R. Shem noticed that the aide was sound asleep and he didn’t want to disturb him. He went by himself to the mikvah, deep in holy thought. Unfortunately, he stumbled and fell into a pit in the ground, breaking a rib in the process. The next morning, upon entering the  בית המדרש  for the morning prayers, the Hasidim were shocked not to see the Rebbe, R. Shem, sitting and learning in his usual seat. They made search, found him unconscious in the pit,  and brought him to his house. There, he spent many weeks in recovery, wrapped in bandages and barely able to move. During the entire recovery period, he never complained, indeed, he never even groaned!  His Hasidim asked him: “Rebbe, how is it possible that you haven’t groaned even once?” R. Shem answered: “I try to follow the teachings of R. Pinchas of Koretz, who taught that groaning — more often than is warranted by the pain —  is a subcategory of שקר. So, just to be on the safe side, I don’t groan at all.”   

                                           ———————————–

Since many are groaning about the arduous task of preparing for Passover, I thought the above story may prove useful. The story was translated (with minor modification) from the Hebrew version that appears in R. Shalom Meir Wallach’s  באהלי צדיקים   הגדה של פסח  (Bnei Brak, 1989, p. 159; Bnei Brak, 2007, p. 210). An English version of the Wallach Haggadah, entitled Haggadah of the Chassidic Masters, was published by ArtScroll in 1990 (and in many later editions; I saw the Fifth Impression published in 2020, where our passage occurs at  p. 115). Wallach’s Haggadah is a treasure trove of hasidic Torah, thought, and folklore.

The story itself teaches us how difficult it is to discover the truth, and how painful it sometimes can be when we strive to implement the truth. And it teaches these themes in more ways than one. Thus, for example, there never was a Rebbe named R. Shem of Kalshitz. I know this because there never was a town populated with Hasidim called Kalshitz. And a Rebbe without Hasidim will not long remain a Rebbe. (Kalshitz should not be confused with Kaloshitz, a small town in Galicia that did have a Rebbe, but never one whose name was R. Shem.) It is relatively easy, however, to identify the R. Shem of our story, since almost no Rebbe (or Rabbi, for that matter) bore the name Shem. The reference is clearly to R. Shem Klingberg (1870-1943), who was an outstanding rabbinic scholar  and Rebbe, known as R. Shem of Zaloshitz (also spelled: Zaloczyce and Dzialoshitz). Zaloshitz was a town some 44 kilometers northeast of Krakow, where R. Shem’s father, R. Avraham Mordechai served as Rebbe. R. Avraham Mordechai later moved to Krakow, and upon his death, was succeeded, as Rebbe, by his son R. Shem. R. Shem is properly known as מזאלושיץ בקראקא  האדמו”ר. Sadly, R. Shem died a martyr’s death in the Plaszow concentration camp in 1943.

The various accounts in the Wallach Haggadah give as the source for the story:  הקדמת אהל שם. No book by the name of  אהל שם   presents in its introduction the story of R. Shem of Zaloshitz. The reference should read: R. Shem Klingberg,אהלי שם על התורה ועל המועדים  (Jerusalem, 1961), הקדמה, p. 15. There, in a biography of R. Shem by one of his surviving sons (at the time), R. Moshe Klingberg, the story appeared in print for the first time.

The errors listed above appear in all the editions of the Wallach Haggadah, whether in Hebrew or in English. None of the editions even attempted to identify “R. Shem of Kalshitz.” Truth is elusive indeed. In general, see the essays on R. Shem of Zaloshitz in M. Unger, אדמו”רים שנספו בשואה  (Jerusalem, 1969), pp. 287-289; and in I. Lewin, ed., אלה אזכרה   (New York, 1972), vol. 7, pp. 266-270. R. Shem died על קידוש השם   on 28 Nisan 1943. 

The Recently Published Photographs of Rav Yisrael Salanter: Real or Imaginary?

By Shnayer Leiman

As early as 2006, and continuing through 2022, a flurry of photographs, purporting to bear the likeness of Rav Yisrael Salanter, have either appeared in print or have been posted on the Internet (see below, section II). While the publication of these photos certainly attests to his abiding influence well into the 21^st century, their authenticity seems less than certain, and demands investigation. At the very least, one wonders why the likeness of a world renowned rabbi, who died in 1883, did not come to light until almost 125 years after his death![1]

I. The Early Evidence for What R. Yisrael Salanter Looked Like.

A proper discussion of what R. Yisrael actually looked like must begin with an examination of the testimony of his contemporaries who interacted with him and knew him best. The Torah teaches us (at Dt.19:15) that a matter can be established by two or three witnesses, so we shall present below the testimony of three witnesses who knew R. Yisrael personally.[2]

1. In 1899, Emil Benjamin, published the first biography of Rav Yisrael Salanter.[3] At the time, Benjamin served as a teacher of Jewish religion in Memel, Prussia, a port city on the Baltic Sea with some 1000 Jews (today: Kleipeda in Lithuania). Benjamin, a native of Memel, was a disciple of R. Zvi Hirsh Plato (1822-1910) who was a son-in law of R. Samson Raphael Hirsch. R. Plato served as Rav of the separatist Orthodox community of Cologne, and head of its Teacher’s Seminary, where Benjamin was trained as a teacher. Benjamin was a young man between 1857 and 1878, the very years that R. Yisrael Salanter spent many a year in Memel, which served as a base of operations for his various educational activities in Lithuania, Prussia, Germany, and France. R. Yisrael invited Benjamin to serve as his aid during a significant portion of those years, and Benjamin wisely accepted the invitation. Intimately involved in R. Yisrael’s daily affairs, Benjamin was in a unique position to record for posterity what it was like to be in his presence. Benjamin wrote:[4]

Rabbi Lipkin was of medium height, seemingly strong but lean in stature, and of ordinary build. His outward appearance immediately revealed a man of unusual significance. The broad forehead, the interesting character reflected by the shape of his head, the sharp look, all reflected the great thinker that he was. His countenance was almost always flush red, probably due to the struggle between body and spirit within him. Often he was lost in thought, and he seemed to forget everything around him, and appeared to be talking to himself. In spite of his deep seriousness, his conversation was often spiced with a pleasant sense of humor and whimsical thoughts…Curiously, this humble and unselfish man never consented to allow the features of his face to be painted by the artist’s brush and, thus, to be preserved for posterity. [Italics mine, sl]

2. Yaakov Mark (1856-1929) was a graduate of the Telz Yeshiva (in Telshe, Lithuania) who devoted a good portion of his life to training Jews (in a variety of languages) to master bookkeeping, so that they could gain and hold jobs in the various countries where they would ultimately find themselves.[5] He also devoted his later years to making literary contributions to Hebrew and Yiddish periodical literature. His only book, entitledגדולים פון אונזער צייט (New York, 1927),[6] is devoted to biographies of the key persons that he knew personally, such as R. Hayyim Soloveichik, the Malbim, and R. Yisrael Salanter. His opening line regarding R. Yisrael Salanter reads: “In my younger years, I often had the privilege of meeting with R. Yisrael. I heard his public lectures, his private lectures, and had the opportunity to observe him at close range.” In his book, he writes:[7]

All who encountered him when walking in the streets, whether Jew or Gentile, greeted him courteously. Even in the most crowded street of Berlin it was rare that a passerby would not stop to behold the great thinker, who used to wander about while engrossed in deep thought. All were impressed by his stately figure, his especially handsome beard, and his particularly character-full head with its unusually wide forehead, his red-white face, his blue eyes, with his sharp, yet good-natured look. This, despite the fact that he never wore official rabbinic garb but, rather, simple lay dress, with an ordinary hat on his head – not particularly elegant – but always clean and tidy. How sad that no photograph of him exists! It was simply impossible to get him to agree to sit for a painting or a photograph. [Italics mine, sl]

3. David Sidersky (circa 1858-1943), a grandson of R. Yisrael Salanter who edited אמרי בינה (Warsaw, 1878), the first ספר by R. Yisrael that was printed during his lifetime and that listed his name as the author, also published a biography of his grandfather in 1936-7.[8] Sidersky wrote as follows:[9]

R. Yisrael, under no circumstances, allowed himself to be photographed. Indeed, not a trace of his image exists. [Italics mine, sl] This, however, is what he looked like: he was of medium height, handsome, with glowing face. He had a full beard, with curls surrounding its edges. He spoke pleasantly, and always greeted everyone warmly.

If one reads the full biographical accounts of R. Yisrael Salanter by the three witnesses listed above, it becomes quite obvious that these are three independent accounts. Each records significant material about R. Yisrael Salanter that does not appear in the other accounts.[10] But there can be no question that Mark was influenced by Benjamin’s account, and that Sidersky was influenced by both Benjamin and Mark. The literary influence of the earlier accounts on the later accounts is obvious, even in the snippets translated above. Nonetheless, notice that only Benjamin mentions R. Yisrael’s sense of humor; only Mark refers to R. Yisrael’s blue eyes; and only Sidersky notes the curls that surrounded the edge of R. Yisrael’s full beard.

II. What Might R. Yisrael Salanter Not Have Looked Like?[11]

1. In 2006-2008, R. Shlomo Lorincz – a political leader of Agudat Yisrael during 1951-1984 and a חבר כנסת – published his classic work במחיצתם של גדולי התורה. In vol. 2, p. 14,[12] there appeared a striking photograph, with the name רבי ישראל סלנטר under it.

The photo appears to be that of a young R. Yisrael Salanter, perhaps 35- 45 years old. If so, the photo would have been taken between 1845 and 1855, at a time when the camera was mostly unknown and unavailable to the general public in Eastern Europe. One need not guess about the true identity of the person photographed. It is R. Yitzchak Lipkin (d. 1903), a son of R. Yisrael Salanter. Rav and Darshan, he was a distinguished תלמיד חכם who held several rabbinic posts in Lithuania before settling in Eretz Yisrael, where he died in his early 60’s.[13] Three photographs of him have been preserved by the Lipkin family. Aside from the early photo published by Lorincz, see below for two photos from a later period in his life:[14]

All that needs to concern us here is that R. Yitzchak Lipkin was R. Yisrael Salanter’s son, and not R. Yisrael Salanter himself. The photograph is a real picture of R. Yitzchak Lipkin, and an imaginary one of R. Yisrael Salanter. Not surprisingly, in later editions of במחיצתם של גדולי התורה , the misidentified photo was pulled. Thus, vol. 2, p. 14 now looks like this:[15]

2. On February 2, 2011, Jewish Currents magazine published the following tribute to R. Israel Salanter on his yahrzeit:

Not an ardent reader of Jewish Currents magazine (described by Wikipedia as a “a progressive, secular Jewish quarterly magazine and news site whose content reflects the politics of the Jewish left), I did not see this when it first appeared in print. It was brought to my attention later in 2011 by an East European Jewish historian about to publish an essay on R. Yisrael Salanter. She saw the tribute – and its photograph — on the Internet and was considering adding the photograph to her essay. She expressed surprise, since she had never seen a photograph of R. Yisrael Salanter. I immediately sent the following brief note to Jewish Currents magazine:

Thanks for remembering R. Israel Salanter on the day he died in 1883. Lest anyone be misled by the appended photograph, it clearly is a twentieth century photograph of someone other than R. Israel Salanter. In fact, it is a photograph of a Rumanian born rabbi (not a Litvak), Jacob Shachter, who was born after Salanter died. Shachter served with distinction as a rabbi in Manchester, England, then as rabbi in Belfast, Ireland. He died in Jerusalem in 1971.

Of course, I informed the East European scholar to cease and desist. Here I’ll add a bit more about Rabbi Shachter. He was a prolific author, whose publications included two very important works: a) A kind of Torah Shelemah on the Book of Proverbs, which gathers together all of Talmudic Commentary (Bavli and Yerushalmi) on the verses of Proverbs. It is entitled: ספר משלי בדברי חז“ל עם ביאור דברי יעקב (Jerusalem, 1963 and later editions), and b) The Student’s Guide Through the Talmud by Z. H. Chajes, translated, edited, and critically annotated by Jacob Shachter (London, 1952 and later editions). For our purposes, we need only to look at the title pages and frontispieces of two of his other publications, one in Hebrew and one on English: דברים לדוד (Jerusalem, 1966) and Ingathering: Collected Papers, Essays and Addresses (Jerusalem, 1966):

Clearly, the Shachter photo cannot pass for what R. Yisrael Salanter looked like. Even if we couldn’t identify the Shachter photo, a simple comparison of the beard in the photo with R. Yisrael Salanter’s beard as described by the testimony of eyewitnesses who knew him (“full beard, with curls surrounding its edges”) would have sufficed to disqualify the photo as a candidate for the actual likeness of R. Yisrael Salanter. In sum, the photograph is a real picture of R. Jacob Shachter, and an imaginary one of R. Yisrael Salanter.

3. On January 22, 2022, a YWN [Yeshiva World News] posting opened with a large imaginary photograph of R. Yisrael Salanter. It was, in fact, once again a photo of R. Jacob Shachter. To the credit of YWN, as soon as they were informed of the error the photograph was removed and replaced with a scan of the title page of R. Yitzchak Blaser’s classic anthology of R. Yisrael Salanter’s teaching, אור ישראל (Vilna, 1900).

4. In March of 2022, Rabbi Berel Wein’s Struggles, Challenges, and Tradition (Shaar Press) appeared in print. It is a magnificently produced volume, filled with vintage Rabbi Berel Wein wisdom. Alas, on p. 129 R. Jacob Shachter appears once again as R. Yisrael Salanter. One suspects that the culprit was an editorial assistant in charge of locating photos for the volume. Hopefully, the error will be corrected in the Second Impression.

We have listed 4 samples of misrepresentation of R. Yisrael Salanter. There are many more.[16] All one has to do is Google “Rabbi Israel Salanter.” One will see immediately many of the fake news photographs of R. Yisrael Salanter. And if you click on each one of the fakes, names like JewishHistory.org and Torah-Box.net will turn up. But it is neither history nor Torah, it is fake news. Sadly, once fake news is posted on the Internet, it multiplies even more rapidly than the Jews did in ancient Egypt. The Internet can be likened to the kind of sinner the Rabbis spoke about in b. Yoma 86b: כיון שעבר אדם עבירה ושנה בה…נעשו לו כהיתר “Once a person sins, and repeats the sin, he considers it permissible.” Indeed, once fake news is posted on the Internet, it is not merely considered possible news, it almost immediately becomes authoritative news. The only remedy, if there is one, is to never post in haste, and to post only after much review, including review by others. Moreover, any and all errors need to be corrected as quickly as possible on the very site where the posting first appeared.

Notes:

[1] None of the authors (listed below in section II) who posted photographs of R. Yisrael Salanter took the trouble to source, or verify the authenticity of, the photographs they posted. Methodologically, it is essential that any materials, whether manuscripts or photographs, published some 100 or more years after the death of the person they are ascribed to, or identified with, be verified. This is especially the case when a plethora of historical biographies and scholarly studies already exist on the key person involved – as is the case regarding R. Yisrael Salanter – and the existence of the posted photographs has eluded all of them. For the basic bibliography on R. Yisrael Salanter (through 1993), see Immanuel Etkes, Rabbi Israel Salanter and the Mussar Movement (Philadelphia, 1993), pp. 373-379; and Hillel Goldberg, Israel Salanter: Text, Structure, Idea (New York, 1982), pp. 309-329. Much more of significance has been published since then (e.g., ספר הזכרון קדוש ישראל (Bnei Brak. 2003); Hayyim Yitzchak Lipkin, ed., תורת רבי ישראל מסלנט (Jerusalem, 2003); and קדוש ישראל (Bnei Brak, 2014).

[2] Many other witnesses could have been adduced. See, for example, R. Baruch Epstein, מקור ברוך (Vilna, 1928), vol. 4, pp. 1800-1804, for a vivid account of a chance encounter with R. Yisrael Salanter in Vilna, 1879. Our purpose here is not to overwhelm the reader with sources. Rather, it is to gather the most persuasive sources, and not more than necessary.

[3] Rabbi Jsrael Lipkin Salant: Sein Leben und Wirken (Berlin, 1899).

[4] Op. cit., pp. 34-35. The German original reads: “Rabbi Lipkin war von mittelhoher, ziemlich kräftiger aber hagerer Natur und von regelmässigem Körperbau. Schon seine äussere Erscheinung liess sogleich einen Mann von ungewöhnlicher Bedeutung erkennen. Die mächtige Stirn, der interessante Charakter- kopf, der scharfe Blick verrieten den grossen Denker. Sein Antlitz war fast beständig gerötet, wohl infolge des aufgehobenen Gleichgewichts zwischen Körper und Geist. Oft war er derart in Gedanken versunken, dass er alles um sich herum zu vergessen schien und im Alleingespräch mit sich selber beschäftig war… Merkwürdiger Weise hat dieser bescheidene und selbstlose Mann niemals seine Einwilligung dazu gegeben, dass die Züge seines Antlitzes durch den Pinsel eines Malers nachgeahmt und der Nachwelt erhalten würden.”

[5] See Yaakov Mark’s entry in לעקסיקאן פון דער נייער יידישער ליטעראטור (New York, 1963), vol. 5, column 514.

[6] A much abridged, and freely translated, Hebrew version of Mark’s גדולים פון אונזער צייט appeared under the title במחיצתם של גדולי הדור (Jerusalem, 1958). An accurate English translation of the original Yiddish volume would make a significant contribution to Jewish scholarship and culture.

[7] גדולים פון אונזער צייט, pp. 88-89. The Yiddish original reads:

אלע וועלכע פלעגען איהם באגעגענען אויפ‘ן גאס, סיי אידען סיי גוים, האבען איהם
העפליכסט באגריסט. זאגאר אין די לעבהאפטסטע גאסן פון בערלין פלעגט זעלטען–
ווער איהם גלייכגילטיג פארבייגעהן און זיך ניט אפשטעלען באוואונדערן דעם
גרויסען דענקער, וואס פלעגט שטענדיג ארומגעהן פארזונקען אין געדאנקען
אימפאנירט האט אלעמען זיין שטאטליכע פיגור, זיין וואנדערבאר–שעהנעם הדרת
פנים, זיין אינטערעסאנטער כאראקטער–קאפ מיט‘ן גוואלדיגען ברייטען שטערן און
.וויס–רויטליכען פנים, זיינע בלויע אויגען מיט‘ן שארפען גוטמוטהיגען בליק
,טראצדעם וואס ער איז קיינמאל ניט געגאנגען אין אויפפאלענדע רבני‘שע קליידער
נאר אין פשוט‘ע בעל–הבית‘ישע, מיט א געוועהנליכער היטעל אויפ‘ן קאפ און אויך
,ניט באזונדערס עלעגאנט, נאר שטענדיג געווען ריין און זויבער. א גרויסער שאדען
וואס פון איהם איז קיין שום בילד ניט נאכגעבליבען. מען האט בשום–אופן ביי איהם
.ניט געקענט פועל‘ן זיך צו לאזען מאלען אדער פאטאגראפירען

[8] David Sidersky, ר‘ ישראל סאלאנטר ז“ל: תולדות חייו ופעולותיו“, היהודי (1936-7) 2:4,” pp. 57-60; 2:5, pp. 81-84; 2:6, pp. 112-114; 2:8, pp. 153-155.

[9] היהודי (1937) 2:8, p. 155. The Hebrew original reads:

.ר‘ ישראל לא רצה בשום אופן להצטלם ולא נשאר שום זכרון מדמות דיוקנו
וזה תבניתו: קומה בינונית, יפה תואר עם פנים מאירים, זקנו מגודל וקוצותיו
.תלתלים, שיחתו היתה בנעימות והיה מקבל תמיד את כל אדם בסבר פנים יפות

[10] Most notably, Sidersky’s account is the only one (of the three accounts) that lists the names of R. Yisrael’s (and his wife Esther’s) six children (four sons and two daughters): Malkah Hindah, Shmuel, Aryeh Leib, Hodah Libah, Yitzchak, and Yom Tov Lipman.

[11] The formulation of the question is a playful echo of the title of the essay by Shimon Steinmetz entitled “What Might R. Yisrael Salanter Have Looked Like?,” On the Main Line, March 2, 2010. That essay was part II of his previous essay entitled “What Did R. Yisrael Salanter Look Like?,” On the Main Line, March 23, 2006. Both essays are must reading for this topic.

[12] במחיצתם של גדולי התורה (Jerusalem, 2006-8), 2 vols.

[13] For important writings by, and about, R. Yitzchak Lipkin, see R. Hayyim Yehoshua Kosovsky, ed., חוט המשולש (Jerusalem, 1904); R. Yitzchak Lipkin, לוחות אבנים (Jerusalem, 1978); and “רשימות רבי יצחק ליפקין בן רבינו” in ספר הזכרון קדוש ישראל (Bnei Brak, 2003), pp. 97-100.

[14] Cf. the Steinmetz essays cited above, n. 11.

[15] במחיצתם של גדולי התורה (Jerusalem, 2010), fifth edition, vol . 2, p. 14.

[16] On September 24, 2020, an essay was posted on the Internet entitled “Eating by Example on Yom Kippur, an Epidemic Story.” It revisited the story of R. Yisrael Salanter’s response to the cholera epidemic in Vilna in 1848. Once again, a photo of Rabbi Jacob Shachter was prominently displayed as the likeness of R. Yisrael Salanter.

New Seforim Lists & Book Sale

By Eliezer Brodt

This is a new series which I hope to post monthly.

The post (and series) hopes to serve a few purposes. It has a list of about one hundred items. The first section lists some new interesting seforim and thereby making the Seforim Blog readership aware of their recent publication. Second, to make these works available for purchase for those interested. Third, the second part of the list are some harder to find books, for sale.

Part of the proceeds will be going to support the efforts of the Seforim Blog.

Contact me at Eliezerbrodt@gmail.com for more information about purchasing or for sample pages of some of these new works.

ההודעה הזו היא הראשונה מסדרה חדשה של הודעות שאני מקווה לפרסם מדי חודש בחודשו. הסדרה משרתת מספר מטרות. באופן קבוע תהיה בכל הודעה רשימה של מאה פריטים – כאשר החלק הראשון יכלול כמה ספרים מעניינים חדשים ובכך יידע את קהל הקוראים של בלוג הספרים בפרסומים האחרונים. שנית, להנגיש את העבודות הללו למעוניינים לרכישה דרכי. שלישית, בחלק השני של הרשימה, שהיא בעצם רוב הרשימה, יהיה ניתן למצוא ספרים נדירים למכירה, יד שנייה, אבל במצב מצוין. חלק מההכנסות יועברו לתמיכה במאמצים של בלוג הספרי.

צור איתי קשר בכתובת Eliezerbrodt@gmail.com למידע נוסף על רכישה או לדפים לדוגמה של יצירות חדשות.

Part One

ספרים חדשים

1. דרשות תלמיד הרא”ש על התורה, מכתב יד, בעריכת פר’ יעקב שפיגל, עז+461 עמודים

2. רועי גודלשמידט, דורשי רשומות: רטוריקה, עריכה, למדנות ומעמדות חברתיים בספרות הדרוש במזרח אירופה

3. ר’ יצחק ריינס, וזה דבר השמיטה, מכתב יד, בעריכת ר’ בועז הוטרר

4. חסדי אבות, פירוש מסכת אבות לרבי דוד פרווינצאלו, מכתב יד, בעריכת פר’ יעקב שפיגל

5. מאיר רפלד, המהרש”ל וספרו ים של שלמה, 288 עמודים

6. נוה שלום, פירוש על תפסיר רב סעדיה גאון

7. גאון ישראל, על ר’ שלמה זלמן אויערבאך זצ”ל, 1021 עמודים, מאת חיים שלמה רוזנטל

8. זהר עמר, ספר הרפואות של אסף הרופא

9. אריה מורגנשטרן, משיח בן יוסף ובניין ירושלים מחוץ לחומות, מיסטיקה ריבלינית ומציאות היסטורית [שוב על קול התור]

10. אהרן איתן, חרדיות ישראלית אידיאולוגיה, ריאליה, זכויות אדם

11. ורב יעבוד צעיר; מיתוסים וסמלים בין יהדות ונצרות – שי לישראל יעקב יובל [ספר יובל]

12. פירוש רבינו זכאי על הרי”ף למסכת גיטין

13. גיליונות הירושלמי של רבי שאול ליברמן – שלושה כרכים, בעריכת פר’ משה עסיס 2564 עמודים

14. משה הלל, חזון טברימון, מהדורה מצומצמת

15. ר’ יצחק סילבר, אין עוד מלבדו, בענייני הכשפים והשדים, ושאר כחות הנעלמים והסגוליים… וענין הע”ז… עד דורינו…. כישוף, עין הרע ועוד, 660 עמודים

16. מעבר יבוק, אהבת שלום דפוס חדש עם מפתחות חדשות

17. ר’ יגאל אלון, משפטי הנפש, מחלות נפש לאור ההלכה, תקמד עמודים

18. סמ“ג לאוין א-קכו, עם מבוא מקיף ומתוקן ומדור שינויי נוסחאות מתוקן [מהדורת צילום], פורמט חדש, 1100 עמודים

ספרים של ר‘ יעקב ישראל סטל

1. סְגֻלָּה: גליון לתורה ולתעודה המופיע מעת לעת – אסופת גיליונות 25-01. ירושלים תשפב. 414 עמודים, כריכה רכה.  

2. גנזי תפילין: אסופת גנזים מתורתם של ראשונים בענייני מצוַת תפילין. ירושלים תשפ”ב (הדפסה שניה מתוקנת). 74 עמודים, כריכה רכה.

3. ‘אחר שלישים במועצות אשית’: יוצר לחתן מאת רבינו יצחק ב”ר אלעזר הלוי עם פירוש לאחד מן הראשונים באשכנז. ירושלים תשעט. 74 עמודים, כריכה רכה.

4. ארבע דרשות נישואין: לאחד מחכמי ביזנטיון הקדמונים. ירושלים תשפב. 98 עמודים. כריכה רכה.

ספרים בהדפסה חוזרת, הוצאת האיגוד

1. תשובות המהר”ם מרוטנברג וחבריו שני כרכים, עמנואל שמחה (מהדיר)

2. מנחת שי על חמישה חומשי תורה

3. הנוספות למנחת שי

Part Two

ספרים משומשים

1. דב רפל, הויכוח על הפלפול, $21

2. שמואל דוד לוצאטו, מבוא למחזור בני רומא $38

3. הרב אברהם אליהו קפלן, דברי תלמוד, חלק א, $23

4. כתבי ר’ ישראל סלנטר [מהדיר: מרדכי פכטר], $20

5. תרבות וחברה בתולדות ישראל בימי הביניים, קובץ מאמרים לזכרו של הלל בן ששון, $33

6. מחקרים בספרות התלמודית לכבוד שאול ליברמן, $28

7. ח”י גורלאנד, לקורות הגזירות על ישראל, $36

8. שמואל דוד לוצאטו, בית האוצר, $24

9. מסלות לתורת התנאים [מאמרים מר’ דוד צבי הופמן, ר’ חיים שאול האראוויטץ ור’ ישראל לוי], $23

10. יש”י חסידה, רב האיי גאון רשויות לפרשיות התורה, $17

11. שי”ר, תולדות גדולי ישראל ב’ חלקים, $40

12. ר’ הילמן, חקרי זמנים חלק ג, $23

13. ר’ שמואל מסנות, מדרש דניאל ומדרש עזרא, $27

14. יצחק בער לעווינזאהן, תעודה בישראל, $25

15. יונה פרנקל, דרכו של רש”י לתלמוד, $30

16. יעקב לוניגר, דרכי המחשבה ההלכתית של הרמב”ם, $32

17. הלל לוין, הכרוניקה, לתולדות יעקב פרנק, $33

18. יעקב נחום אפשטיין, מבוא לספרות האמוראים, $34

19. יעקב נחום אפשטיין, מבוא לספרות התנאים, $34

20. ספרים על מסכת מועד קטן: פירש רש”י האמיתי\ פירוש ר”ש בן יתום\ מצבת משה, $29

21. מחברות עמנואל [מהדורות דב ירדן], $48

22. טעמא דשביתא, יסודותיה הרעיוניים של השמיטה, $13

23. פסקי הלכה של ר’ חיים אור זרוע, $20

24. יוסף כהן, מקורות וקורות , $32

25. שרגא אברמסון, כללי הרמב”ן, $23

26. נפתלי בן מנחם, פתחי שערים, $25

27. מסכת דרך ארץ, מהדורת היגר, ב’ חלקים, $46

28. משיבת נפש על התורה תמימה, $24

29. מגילת אחימעץ [מהדיר: ב’ קלאר]

30. ר’ אליהו בחור, ספר התשבי, מהדורות מכון הרב מצליח, כולל הערות וביאורים מכת”י של ר’ יעקב עמדין, ר’ ישעיה פיק ועוד, $22

31. לשון מדרשים, מוסד רב קוק, $21

32. עץ ארץ חלק ד, זייני, $19

33. ישראל תא שמע, הנגלה שבנסתר – 20$

34. אבן עזרא, שמות, מהדורת פליישר, $27

35. תרגום אונקלוס ברלינר, $34

36. אם למסורת, שמואל ביאלובלוצקי

37. ישעיהו גפני, יהודי בבל בתקופת התלמוד, $18

38. ר’ יקותיאל יהודה גרינוואלד, מהרי”ל וזמנו, $17

39. הנ”ל, תולדות הרב אלעזר קאליר וזמנו, מחבר ספרי אור חדש, $17

40. הנ”ל, לתולדות הסנהדרין בישראל

41. מאיר אוריין, סנה בוער בקוצק, $15

42. יוסף היינימן, עיוני תפילה, $25

43. רב צעיר, תולדות הפוסקים ג’ חלקים, $55 [חדש]

44. דוד תמר, אשכולות תמר, $22

45. שרה קליין ברסלבי, פירוש הרמב”ם לסיפור בריאת העולם, $20

46. הנ”ל, פירוש הרמב”ם לסיפורים על אדם בפרשת בראשית, $20

47. עלי מרצבך, הגיון הגורל, $20

48. יוסף פונד, תנועה בחרבות מנהיגות אגדות ישראל לנוכח השואה, $22

49. גדליה נגאל, סיפורי הדיבוק בספרות ישראל, $222

50. אברהם דוד, עלייה והתיישבות בארץ ישראל במאה הט”ז, $20

51. א”מ הברמן, המדפיס קורנילייו אדיל קינד ובנו דניאל ורשימת הספרים שנדפסו על ידיהם, $14

52. ישעיהו ליבוביץ, יהדות עם יהודי ומדינת ישראל, $24

53. משה אידל, קבלה וארוס, $24

54. רש”י על התורה, מהדורת ברלינר, $26

55. ר’ יצחק מק”ק פוזנא, לב טוב [תרגום מיידיש], $18

56. אמנון שמש, הכתר סיפרו של כתר ארם צובה, $25

57. מ’ טננבלאט, התלמוד בהתהוותו ההיסטורית, $24

58. ביכלר, עם הארץ הגלילי, $19

59. א”א אורבך, חז”ל אמונות ודעות [כריכה קשה], $32

60. ר’ חיים ביברפלד, מנוחה נכונה קצור הלכות שבת, $14

61. יצחק לוין, מבוקר לערב, $19

62. משה אידל, החסידות בין אקסטזה למאגיה, $25

63. הרב שך שהמפתח בידו, משה הורוביץ, $23

64. מחקרים בגיאוגרפיה היסטורית יישובית של ארץ ישראל, $19

65. י”ז כהנא, מחקרים בספרות התשובות, $27 [מצוין]

66. יין הטוב על תרגום, ב’ חלקים,$25

67. כתבי ד”ר יוסף זליגר, $25

68. כהן, אוצר הבאורים והפירושים, $28

69. הגהות הגר”א נשים נזיקין קדשים וטהרות, $21

70. ספר היובל לכבוד ג’ שלום, $24

71. טלי ברנר, על פי דרכם ילדים וילדות באשכנז, $22

72. מחזור ארם צובה כרך מבואות, $20

73. אם לבינה, ר’ יעקב עמדין, $26

74. יוסף היינימן התפילה בתקופת התנאים, $25

75. תשבי, נתיבי אמונה ומינות כריכה רכה, $24

Guide and Review of Online Resources – 2022 – Part I

By Ezra Brand

Ezra Brand is an independent researcher based in Tel Aviv. He has an MA from Revel Graduate School at Yeshiva University in Medieval Jewish History, where he focused his research on 13th and 14th century sefirotic Kabbalah. He is interested in using digital and computational tools in historical research. He has contributed a number of times previously to the Seforim Blog (tag), and a selection of his research can be found at his Academia.edu profile. He can be reached at ezrabrand-at-gmail.com; any and all feedback is greatly appreciated.[1]

Intro

It’s an exciting time to be a reader of scholarship, and to be engaged with the field. The dramatic shift to “remote” and “virtual” over the past two years may be on par with the shifts to writing and the codex around the 9th century) and the printing press in the 15th.[2]

Digital publishing has become more and more mainstream. As defined by Wikipedia (in entry “Electronic publishing”):

“Electronic publishing (also referred to as publishing, digital publishing, or online publishing) includes the digital publication of e-books, digital magazines, and the development of digital libraries and catalogs. It also includes the editing of books, journals and magazines to be posted on a screen (computer, e-reader, tablet, or smartphone.”

Regarding Hebrew books specifically, and for recent data, Israeli National Library annual statistics for 2020 state (Hebrew, my translation):

“In 2020, digital publishing was significantly expanded. Not all the digital books have been processed [by the library] yet, but already 799 digital books have been registered in the National Library, from publishers, research institutions, private individuals and more […]

For many in the past year, digital publication has become the primary mode of distribution, as opposed to paper. Notable in this area is the relatively small amount of children’s books (8%) compared to the high number of digital reference literature (69%).

The share of [books put out by] associations (43%) is particularly high, especially for reference books in the field of Israeli society and Jewish studies. [The share of books put out by] [p]rivate publishers (37%) include[s] many biographies, rabbinic literature and a few children’s books that have come out. Commercial publishers released most of the digital prose books.”

Specifically regarding rabbinic literature, one scholar pointed out already in 2016: “Searching for ancient original Jewish sources online, it is astonishing how diverse and numerous are the websites that are available.”[3]

At the same time as the trend towards digital publishing and distribution is occurring, there is also a movement towards “open access”. In this context, “open access” means an academic resource, whether databases, journals, or other tools, with no paywalls or subscriptions required to access content.

Over the first few decades of electronic resources, most of the resources were proprietary. They were generally available on a CD, which had to be bought. With the shift to the internet, many of these resources became available online, but required a subscription.

The movement towards freely available scholarship has continued to gain steam, making a huge amount of cutting edge scholarly publications available for free, and for all. In addition, there are a huge amount of grassroots initiatives to make available primary sources for study.

Open-access can be financially sustained in one of the following major ways:

1. Volunteer work
2. Funding by institution (esp. non-profit, university, or government) or individual donation
3. Advertising

The open-source resources in this guide are mostly supported in one of the first two ways.

Besides for full open-access, another model is called “freemium”. Freemium, as I use it in this context, means that some very basic part is provided for free, with the hope that the main product will be bought.

Some examples of freemium content that I’ve found helpful are:

Amazon listing pages for books. Amazon has bibliographical info, blurbs of reviews by scholars and media, crowd-sourced reviews and free excerpts of ebooks for Kindle, called “sample”, and the ability to add to a list.

Another example is JSTOR, with bibliographical info and first page of article.

On these resources, see more detail later in the guide.[4]

Electronic vs. physical – pros and cons

Electronic material has a lot of advantages, though there are some disadvantages.
For the intellectually curious, the relative ease of access is honestly astonishing, and it’s truly a wonderful time to be a book lover (not to mention the higher level of book typesetting).

Of course, physical books have certain advantages, tangible and intangible, that people get roused up about, especially traditionalists. And of course Orthodox Jews don’t use electronic sources on Shabbat and holidays. But electronic sources have their own massive advantages:

1. Instantly accessible
2. Searchable
3. Can do various data analysis
4. Easily shared and saved via copy-paste and screenshots
5. Easily highlighted and annotated
6. Text size can be customized
7. Takes up far less physical space
8. Allows for new forms of scholarship (such as Prof. Moshe Koppel’s algorithms for proving authorship, discussed in a number of Seforim Blog posts).[5]

I personally have switched over to electronic texts wherever possible.

Of course, traditional physical seforim and internet-based resources aren’t mutually exclusive. One can have the best of both worlds. In Modern Orthodox yeshivot it’s been a common sight already for many years for people to have a laptop before them. Admittedly, the main use of the laptop is for notetaking, but it can also act as a portal to a world of supplemental seforim.

About this guide

Jewish culture is stereotypically one of the book. There is understandably a huge literature on of books in Jewish history. For one example, on the material aspect of books in Jewish history, see Malachi Beit-Arié’s monumental 700-page book, Hebrew Codicology, recently finalized, and available for free online here and here. With the shift to virtual, Jewish studies haven’t been slacking.

Scope of the Guide

This guide will mostly not cover resources related to the following topics:

1. Primary sources and studies of Tanach/Bible , Dead Sea Scrolls, Pseudepigrapha (=”Seforim Hitzonim”), meaning works up to the period of Chazal, circa 100 BCE. So for example, I didn’t include Bar Ilan University’s Mikra’ot Gedolot Haketer (מקראות גדולות הכתר – see on this project Wikipedia here (English) and here (Hebrew)) or their weekly Parshat Hashavua sheet.
2. At the opposite end, the Late Modern period (circa 1850-2000). So it won’t cover resources related to modern Hebrew literature, Haskalah, Zionism, the modern State of Israel, Holocaust, contemporary Jewish thought and hashkafa, or more contemporary seforim (such as R’ Ashlag’s commentary on Zohar, and those of his descendants).

A large part of my annotations are taken from the descriptions provided by the maintainers of the project and from Wikipedia. All translations are my own, unless noted otherwise.

My translation is sometimes loose, and I did not always fact-check. The info in this guide should definitely be double-checked if used for anything more scholarly.

In general, my main intention is to raise awareness and point readers to some of the incredible resources currently available to anyone with an internet connection.

Note: The website of the resource is hyperlinked in the name. In cases where only a part of a website is relevant to the resources under discussion, I try to link to the page on the website that best acts as a portal to the resources.

Another note: It’s quite incredible how much is now available on the internet. At the same time, projects become outdated and links become broken very rapidly. I hope to be able to update this guide every once in a while, but unfortunately the rapid changes in the layout of the internet is one of the blessings and the curses that come with this new medium (victims of the unfortunate phenomenon of “link rot”).

While researching this guide, I constantly found new resources that I was not aware of, and I’m certain (and hoping, in a good way) that this guide will rapidly become more and more outdated as more resources come online, and (negatively) as links break.

Other Guides

There are other guides, such as that of university library guides and other websites.[6] However, many of these guides are meant for students and researchers, and less for the general educated reader with an interest in these topics. In addition, many previous guides are from ten years ago or longer, and many of the links no longer work .

Outline of this Guide

Primary texts

A huge amount of primary texts have been transcribed and scanned, and are readily available.

Primary texts – transcribed

Digital editions in text format.[7]

Open-access

1. Sefaria . Large number of texts, as well as English translations.
   1. Wikipedia – English: “Sefaria has a vast library of Jewish text, including Tanakh, Talmud, and Jewish prayers alongside sources in philosophy, mysticism, Jewish law, and newer works. Some works, such as Tanakh and Talmud, feature English translations. These are either crowdsourced, provided by publishers, or in the public domain. Contains a complete English translation of Rashi’s commentary on the Torah, the William Davidson Talmud translation,[8] and a complete translation of Ibn Ezra’s Torah commentaries, one of the only resources to have a complete translation of these works in English. Many works are linked with their respective commentaries. For example, clicking on a verse in Tanakh will open a window on the side, allowing the user to open a commentary on that verse.”
   2. Some of the texts available, all highly credible works, and that I’ve personally used in Sefaria for study (all with hyper-linked table of contents, transcribed, searchable, downloadable, ability to make text larger, and many other features):
      1. Steinzaltz-Koren translation into English and commentary on Talmud Bavli
      2. Guggenheimer translation and commentary of Talmud Yerushalmi
      3. Mishnat Eretz Yisrael commentary on Mishnah
      4. Jastrow Dictionary
2. Al-Hatorah (על-התורה) .
   1. I only discovered this resource while researching this guide. My take: Recommended. Both Al-Hatorah as well as Sefaria are very user friendly and powerful both for looking up references, as well as for studying. However, not all of the transcriptions on Al-Hatorah are complete.
   2. Al-Hatorah has more developed tools for serious study (see my “story” earlier in this piece). While Sefaria has a bit of a cleaner interface and more modern UX/UI with lots of whitespace.
   3. The UX/UI is quite similar to the “Bar Ilan Responsa Project,” where the Table of Contents are set up as “trees”.
   4. From the About page: “ALHATORAH.ORG was founded by Rabbi Hillel & Neima Novetsky and their children, Yonatan, Aviva, Ariella, and Yehuda. Hillel is a musmakh of RIETS (YU) and earned an MA in Jewish History from Bernard Revel Graduate School and a PhD in Bible from Haifa University. Neima earned an MA in Bible from Bernard Revel Graduate School (YU) and teaches in Torah institutions in Israel. The content of the website is the product of an ongoing, worldwide, collaborative effort of Rabbis, scholars, educators, and laypeople.”
   5. See also their mission statement.
   6. Some of the works available there (many from recent critical editions):
      1. Targum Yerushalmi – Neofiti (תרגום ירושלמי – ניאופיטי). See description there: “This targum, based on a single known manuscript (Neofiti 1) in the Vatican Library copied in 1504, is the only known complete text of the “Targum Yerushalmi” on the Torah. Previously known brief extracts related to this targum had long been known in manuscripts of what is referred to by scholars as the “fragment targums”, which are cited in Jastrow’s Dictionary under the rubric “YII” and appear in various editions of Miqraot Gedolot interspersed with Targum Pseudo Jonathan under the rubric “Targum Yerushalmi”. Extensive manuscript pages of related material were also discovered in the Cairo Geniza in the 20th Century. This electronic text has been provided by the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (CAL) project of the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion. It was originally entered under the guidance of Prof. M. Sokoloff for the preparation of his A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic based on the multi-volume editio-princeps of Prof. A. Diez-Macho (1968ff.) and a photographic edition of the manuscript by Makor Press. Additional marginal or interlinear variants have been added by CAL staff based on the photographs.”
      2. Mishnat Eretz Yisrael – modern scholarly commentary on Mishnah. (This commentary also in Sefaria, as mentioned in its entry.)
      3. Steinsaltz-Koren commentary on Talmud Bavli in Hebrew (Sefaria has the English translation and commentary, as mentioned in its entry.)
      4. List of translated works into English.
      5. Visualizations. Very interesting visualizations: timelines, maps, and lists.
3. Daat (דעת).
   1. Has both books as text, as well as scanned PDFs. Includes lots of out-of-copyright books, as well as recent open-access scholarly books, see here, and here.
   2. Wikipedia – Hebrew: “Daat is a Hebrew website whose main content is texts in the fields of Judaism and the humanities that were collected from various printed sources. The site contains learning and teaching materials in various fields: Bible, Torah Sheba’al Peh, Shabbat and festivals, Jewish history, Jewish thought, literature, studies of the Land of Israel, Shemita, medicine and halakhah, education, Hasidism, family studies, Hebrew law, army and war, the Holocaust, and more. The site includes extensive databases containing entire books, full text of articles published in about 30 different journals, photos and maps, illustrations, photographs and presentations.”
4. Kodesh.Snunit (סנונית – מאגר ספרות הקודש). Basic rabbinic texts.
   1. Great for referencing Tanach. Often is the first to come up in Google searches in Hebrew. For example, if I come across a reference to “Bereishit 1:1”, I’ll just google בראשית א, and generally the first result is to the first chapter of Bereishit.
5. Wikitext – Hebrew (וויקיטקסט).
   1. Wikipedia – Hebrew: “In May 2009, the Hebrew Wikitext reached 25,000 text units upon completion of uploading all of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah.”
   2. Due to the fact that it’s a crowd-sourced project, it very much has the feel of a “work-in-progress”, with lots of individual chapters missing transcriptions, and of uneven editorship.
   3. Despite this, a great resource, and one that many of other websites draw on.
   4. For example of interesting sefer found there, see R’ Heiman’s Toldot Tana’im VeAmora’im. I recently used Wikitext’s transcription to do various analyses of the entire corpus of names of rabbis found in Chazal.
6. Historical Dictionary Project of the Hebrew Language (המילון ההיסטורי ללשון העברית).
   1. Not especially user-friendly, meant for rigorous research.
   2. Wikipedia – Hebrew: “Includes a database of all the major works of the Hebrew language in antiquity. As of 2012, more than 7,900 works have been typed into the database, which include more than nine million words, and contain more than 36,000 entries. Work on the database continues consistently, both because of the need to update the database according to updated research, as well as due to the discovery of additional ancient works.”
7. Mamre Institute (מכון ממרא).
   1. Wikipedia: “The Mamre Institute is an Israeli research institute aimed at providing accessible and accurate texts for the Hebrew Bible, Mishnah, Tosefta, Babylonian Talmud, Jerusalem Talmud, Mishneh Torah and Targum Onkelos.”
8. Ben-Yehuda Project (פרויקט בן-יהודה) .
   1. Wikipedia – Hebrew: “The project includes, among other things, poetry, fiction, translation, research (עיון) and essays in Hebrew from the Middle Ages to the present day. As of October 2021 it includes over 28,000 works, by about 1,000 different authors.”
9. An Invitation to Piyut (הזמנה לפיוט).
   1. Tremendous database of piyyutim, with a huge number of piyyutim transcribed.
   2. Wikipedia – Hebrew: “A cultural-educational project that works to preserve and revive the traditions of piyyut and prayer of the Jewish people, through a website, publishing, conservation activities, community education and cultural events. The site has about 1,000 columns and articles, including personal columns, memoirs, introductory passages, and reviews. Among the authors of the site are Prof. Ephraim Hazan, Dr. Meir Buzaglo, Prof. Haviva Pedia, Prof. Edwin Seroussi, Rabbi Dr. Benny Lau and many others.”
10. Grimoar .
    1. Focuses on kabbalistic texts.
    2. Wikipedia – Hebrew: “A database collecting a large amount of Kabbalah books and books of Jewish thought typed and open for use.”
    3. Unfortunately, the website contains no bibliographical information whatsoever, such as on what edition or manuscript the text is based on. In general it’s unclear who hosts the website.
11. Chabad Library.
    1. Works of Chabad Chasidut transcribed.
12. Ramhal.net (קהילת הרמח”ל).
    1. Works of the Ramhal transcribed.
    2. From the About page: “The community was founded in 2002 with the aim of making Ramchal’s teachings accessible to the general public.”
13. Hassidout.org. Works of Kabbalah transcribed.
14. Moreh Nevuchim (מורה נבוכים) with mark-up.
    1. See description here: Hillel Gershuni and Yohai Makbili, “Guide for the Perplexed – Glossary and bibliography” (2019).

Requires subscription or purchase

15. Bar Ilan Responsa Project . Massive number of texts, with very high level of accuracy. Requires subscription.
    1. Wikipedia – English: “The database consists of one of the world’s largest electronic collections of Jewish texts in Hebrew. It includes numerous works from the Responsa Literature. The database also includes the Bible and the Talmud (with commentaries); articles about Jewish law and customs; Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah and the Shulchan Aruch with main commentaries; Zohar, Midrashim, and the Talmudic Encyclopedia.”

Primary texts – scanned

Mostly searchable via OCR, and in PDF format.

Open-access

1. HebrewBooks .
   1. Wikipedia – Hebrew: “Free online digital library for Torah literature. The site contains about 61,000 scanned Torah books and journals, from the beginning of printing to contemporary authors, most of them in Hebrew. The books can be viewed, downloaded and textually searched for in the book’s content. The site is accessible in Hebrew and English.”
   2. HebrewBooks is likely well-known to most readers. However, something that might be less well-known is that HebrewBooks has a new search page, officially in beta: https://beta.hebrewbooks.org/#gsc.tab=0. It’s a much more powerful search engine, with many new, modern features (bringing it closer to the Otzar HaChochma experience).[9]
2. Israel National Library (הספרייה הלאומית).
   1. Links to seforim accessed via search or direct link, no way to browse. However, the “Halach Brura” index (see later, under section “Index”) often links to it.
   2. Unfortunately, due to many changes and updates to the National Library website over the years, many of the links to the website found at outside websites are now broken.
   3. Presumably, the best way to find the work is to as follows:
      1. Search the name of the work in the National Library website search box (“Merhav”).
      2. Filter for “Available online” AND “Books”
      3. Click on “Online access”
   4. URLs of open-access works appear to following template: “https://www.nli.org.il/he/books/NNL_ALEPH00XXXXXXX/NLI”. For example, Ohev Yisra’el: https://www.nli.org.il/he/books/NNL_ALEPH001091556/NLI
3. Center for Jewish History.
   1. Links to seforim accessed via search or direct link, no way to browse. Has many primary texts available. Couldn’t find a simple way to search for seforim. However, the “Halach Brura” index (see later, under section “Index”) often links to it. For example, the sefer “Derech Yeshara”.
4. Portal HaDaf HaYomi (פורטל הדף היומי) .
   1. Has a few hundred scanned seforim, mostly relating to Talmud Bavli, many of them not available elsewhere. Examples: R’ Kashet’s highly methodical works on lomdus ( קובץ יסודת וחקירות ; אמרי במערבא ; פלפולא דאורייתא ; דרכי התלמודים ; see also there R’ Kashash’s similar style work, קובץ מיסודות הש”ס); R’ Amitai’s well-researched and highly-structured works on Torah and science (דע מאיין באו ; הידיעות המדעיות שבדברי חז“ל ; היחס שבין היקף המעגל לרוחבו ; באהלי שם ; מנא להו ; אמונה טהורה); R’ Pinchuk’s intro to Talmud Yerushalmi (מבוא ללימוד התלמוד הירושלמי); some great works on Talmudic humor (Engleman’s שעשועי ; Lifshitz’s ברוח טובה ).
5. Goethe University Frankfurt Library.
6. Massorti.com . Has all of Lieberman’s Tosefet Rishonim and Tosefta Kifshuta available. See links at Halacha Brura > מפרשי תוספתא.
7. Abuelafia.blogspot.
   1. A number of seforim by the medieval kabbalist R’ Avraham Abulafia, published recently by R’ Amnon Gros. This is R’ Gros’s website.[10]
8. Google Books.
   1. No way to browse, only search. But relevant works can be found using Halacha Brura’s index (see appendix), see this webpage especially. Has a few hundred scanned manuscripts and early printed works.
9. Israel613 .
   1. An eccentric website, mostly dedicated to contemporary hareidi works and polemics. However, there are some PDFs of interest, of historical hasidic works. No realy browsing capabilities on the website, but can be found using Halacha Brura’s index (see appendix).
10. Google Drive. Sometimes individuals upload scans of seforim, and share the links. For example, the full set of R’ Moshe Cordevero’s Or Yakar is currently hosted by an unknown host on Google Drive (see Halacha Brura > Kabbala > “אור יקר, ר’ משה קורדוברו, פרוש על הזהר, ירושלים תשכ”ב”).
11. Epidat .
    1. See description at the website of European Association for Jewish Studies (EAJS): “Epidat, short for epigraphic database, is a research platform for Jewish funerary epigraphy. Currently, Epidat contains transcriptions, translations, descriptions, and iconographic documentation of 43,838 headstones (with 79,972 digital images) from 233 historical Jewish cemeteries, spanning a period of 900 years (1040-1952) and covering six European countries (Germany, The Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Latvia and Czechia).”

Requires subscription or purchase

12. Otzar HaHochma (אוצר החכמה).
    1. Generally requires subscription. However, interestingly enough, as of this writing (23-Jan-2022), it appears that the entire basic Otzar HaHochma is open-access, and has been for three months already! As per the pop-up notification on the website, and the banner at the top while browsing: “בס”ד 19/10/2021 . Dear users, the system is undergoing upgrades at this time, some users may experience technical difficulties, therefore we are giving free access to the beta site: beta.otzar.org. This service will be free of charge until further notice. Please note the printing option as well as the add-on packages are available for purchase only on the old website.” Add-ons include seforim from the following publishers (in order of price): Oz VeHodor, Mossad HaRav Kook, Mechon Yerushalayim, Mechon Ahavat Shalom, Mechon Ofek, Mechon Hochmat Shelomo.
    2. Wikipedia – Hebrew: “Otzar HaHochma is a database containing over 110,000 Torah and academic books scanned in the same format as the original printing pages that have undergone optical character recognition, which allows information to be retrieved using a search engine embedded in the system. In version 19.0 (summer 2021) of the database there are 112,749 titles. The update rate of the database is about 5,000 books annually. The database allows the books to be divided into categories, such as: Bible and its commentators; Mishnah and its commentaries; Babylonian Talmud and its commentaries; Jerusalem Talmud and its commentaries; Kabbalah; Mussar; Hasidut; history; disputes (פולמוסים); journals; community books (ספרי קהילות), jubilee books (ספרי יובל), memorial books (ספרי זיכרון), manuscripts and first editions.”

Primary texts – manuscripts – scanned and transcribed

Open-access

1. Ktiv (כתיב) .
   1. Wikipedia – Hebrew: “The Ktiv project, launched with the 17th World Congress of Jewish Studies in August 2017, is the next stage in the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts’s life, designed to make photographs of all Hebrew manuscripts in the world accessible to the public on the Internet. Upon its launch, four years after the digitization project began, Ktiv had full scans with an excellent resolution of 45,000 manuscripts (out of 90,000) that together hold 4.37 million pages available to the public. The project was organized in collaboration with the National Library of France (BnF), the Rabbinical Seminary of America (JTS), the Palatine Library, the British Library, the National Library of Austria, the Bavarian State Library, the Rosenthaliana Library, Yad Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the Vatican Library, Hebrew Union College, The State Library in Berlin, the National Library of Russia, the National Library of Florence, and more.”
   2. See also “Moreshet B’reshet” of the National Library of Israel. From the page: “This page focuses on webpages set up by the National Library over the years. Although these webpages are not updated, they preserve valuable items and information for future generations. Therefore, these sites are maintained and made accessible.”
   3. For example, see the webpage for searching for images of Talmudic manuscripts (עיון בכתבי היד).
2. Friedberg projects. Each will have its own entry below. See YouTube video for recent discussion of some of these projects (uploaded 2-Feb-2022). Each will have its own entry below. All require registration (free). The first two projects appear to be the ones most actively used and developed: Hachi Garsinan and Genizah Project.
   1. Hachi Garsinan – The Friedberg Project for Talmud Bavli Variants (הכי גרסינן).
   2. Friedberg Genizah Project.
   3. Mahadura – the Friedberg Site for Transcriptions and Synopsis (מהדורא).
   4. Yad Harambam (יד הרמב”ם – פרוייקט פרידברג לשינויי נוסחאות ברמב”ם).
   5. The Nahum Collection of Yemenite Manuscripts (אוסף נחום לכתבי יד תימניים).
   6. The Friedberg Judeo-Arabic Project (פרויקט פרידברג לערבית יהודית).
3. Hachi Garsinan – The Friedberg Project for Talmud Bavli Variants (הכי גרסינן).[11]
   1. Requires registration (free).
   2. From the webpage:
      1. “The Hachi Garsinan site displays all variant-readings of the Talmud Bavli, including images and transcriptions, with sophisticated comparison tools between the variants.
      2. The “Hachi Garsinan” site is meant to serve the wide range of all Bavli learners and researchers: from academic researchers, through Yeshiva communities and Torah students, as well as anyone interested in exploring the variations of the Talmud Bavli and its transformations throughout the ages.
      3. The site contains high quality digital images of all original textual witnesses that exist for the Talmud Bavli (manuscripts, early printings, Genizah fragments, binding fragments and other fragments), accompanied by precise transcriptions of the text in the image. The site integrates additional functions, including full text search, Sussmann catalog, Dikdukei Sofrim, and also save, copy and print options.
      4. The Amuta was established as a joint venture of the “Friedberg Genizah Project” (FGP) and the “Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society”(FJMS). The textual witness’ transcriptions, as well as the software for connecting the image and its transcriptions, are prepared by the Amuta Transcription Team.
      5. Five hundred years after the publication of the Talmud Bavli masterpiece in Venice by Daniel Bombergi, the Hachi Garsinan Talmudic project, is a breakthrough presenting all variant-readings in a precise and sophisticated manner.”
   3. See the review by Amit Gvaryahu: ““We Read Thus”: On Hachi Garsinan and Learning Talmud in the 21st century | The Talmud Blog” (June 19, 2016).
   4. Also includes the following foundational works, open-access and user-friendly:
      1. Jacob Sussman, Otzar Kitvey Yad Talmudiyyim (יעקב זוסמן, אוצר כתבי–היד התלמודיים)
      2. R’ Raphael Nathan Nata Rabbinovicz, Dikdukei Sofrim (ר’ רפאל נתן נטע ראבינאוויטץ, דקדוקי סופרים)
      3. Many relevant articles (“Ref. Materials > Introductions”).
4. Friedberg Genizah Project .
   1. Requires registration (free).
   2. From the homepage:
      1. “The Friedberg Genizah Project (FGP) presents a real revolution in the study and research of the field of Cairo Genizah and Jewish Studies in general. Its main task is to computerize the entire corpus of Genizah manuscripts and Genizah-related materials: images, identifications, catalogs, metadata, transcriptions, translations and bibliographical references. In the course of this project a full digitization of the entire Genizah collections has been done, together with a huge database which is accessible to every scholar and student. The project also introduces new designated tools for Genizah research which are based on advanced technologies of image processing.
      2. The Site was developed by Genazim Digital, headed by Professor Yaacov Choueka. Currently it is supported by the Association for the Study of Jewish Manuscripts.”
5. Mahadura – the Friedberg Site for Transcriptions and Synopsis (מהדורא).
   1. I tried browsing existing projects, got a lot of errors.
   2. From the homepage:
      1. “The Mahadura site is designed to create, preserve and share transcriptions and synopses of manuscripts and early printings. The site is meant for Academics, Biblical and Religious Scholars, anyone who is interested in publishing new transcriptions of ancient Jewish texts and preparation of critical revisions. Currently the site allows the user to create new projects in any area of Jewish studies, including uploading of images and texts and to create new transcriptions of manuscripts and prints in a simple painless way, and to view images and transcriptions, and to try the transcription tools in the existing projects. The creator of each project will be able to define a closed group of colleagues to work together on a project, and then decide when it will be publically available. In the future you will be able to create variant synopsis comparisons, using specialized algorithms.
      2. The Amuta was established as a joint venture of the “Friedberg Genizah Project” (FGP) and the “Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society”(FJMS).”
6. Yad Harambam (יד הרמב”ם – פרוייקט פרידברג לשינויי נוסחאות ברמב”ם).
   1. Requires registration (free).
   2. From the webpage:
      1. “The “Yad HaRambam” site was established for the purpose of presenting all versions of the Rambam’s Mishneh Torah (“haYad haHazaka”). It includes images, transcriptions and a sophisticated synopsis (comparison) system between versions.
      2. The site is meant to serve all who want to study the Mishneh Torah; academic researchers, Torah students in Yeshivot, everyone who is interested in historical versions of The Mishneh Torah and its changing unfolding versions through the ages.
      3. The site includes high resolution digital images of early versions of the Mishneh Torah including manuscripts and early printings. Each image is supplemented by an accurate transcription.
      4. The site also integrates additional functions, including full text search on all Rambam textual witnesses, the ability to save, copy and print, personal workspaces, and more.
      5. The Amuta was established as a joint venture of the “Friedberg Genizah Project” (FGP) and the “Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society”(FJMS). The textual witness’ transcriptions, as well as the software for connecting the image and its transcriptions, are prepared by the Amuta Transcription Team.”
7. The Nahum Collection of Yemenite Manuscripts (אוסף נחום לכתבי יד תימניים).
   1. Requires registration (free).
   2. From the webpage:
      1. “The aim of this website is to present efficient research tools for researchers interested in the Nahum Collection of Yemenite Manuscripts. The website contains about 80,000 high-quality digital images of the (mostly) handwritten fragments and volumes in this collection. The site also contains short (1-2 lines) identifications of these manuscripts, whenever available, as well as scanned images of the corresponding entries from the relevant catalogs The site is under continuous development, and we hope to include in it more information in the future. The shelfmarks of the various manuscripts were primordially determined by the existing shelfmarks as marked on the manuscripts and in the catalogs, and when these were missing, new serially shelfmarks were given. In addition, there is a correspondence table in the website that enables direct access to the available information according to the entry-number in the above-mentioned catalogs. Viewing entire volumes can be efficiently browsed using special software that simulates the manual flipping of pages as in a real book. This Site was initially developed by Genazim Digital, headed by Professor Yaacov Choueka and is now supported by the Association for the Study of Jewish Manuscripts.”
8. The Friedberg Judeo-Arabic Project (פרויקט פרידברג לערבית יהודית).
   1. Requires registration (free).
   2. From the webpage:
      1. “This site is designed to assist researchers of the Judeo-Arabic gain a comprehensive and fundamental knowledge of this language, especially in the lexicon, semantics, idiomatic expressions, and word-related areas. This is done by establishing an extensive computerized corpus of titles and advanced software that can search for words and phrases and display their instances in the corpus (or selected parts thereof) with suitable context and various statistics.
      2. For every page of every work in the corpus, a good quality image is available and can be viewed with its transcription, for testing and comparison. In the first stage, the site will contain Judeo-Arabic titles that have already appeared in print, focusing on titles that were written up to the 16th century. With time, the corpus will be expanded, hopefully encompassing all Judeo-Arabic titles in the mentioned group.
      3. When the corpus will be sufficiently broad, advanced tools of computational linguistics and natural language processing will be developed and will reveal interesting structures and linguistic connections that can be discovered only with the help of a computerized system. This Site was initially developed by Genazim Digital, headed by Professor Yaacov Choueka and is now supported by the Association for the Study of Jewish Manuscripts.”
   3. Includes foundational works, open-access:

      1. מרדכי עקיבא פרידמן, מילון הערבית יהודית מימי הבינים : לתעודות הגניזה של ספר הודו ולטקסטים אחרים

9. Talmud Yerushalmi digital critical edition (תלמוד ירושלמי מהדורה דיגיטלית).
   1. Project of Prof. Menachem Katz of University of Haifa. In beta, only Yevamot is available.[12]
   2. An incredible project, with tremendous potential.
10. Hebrew Manuscripts : Free Texts . Hosted on archive.org. From the About section: “Hebrew and Judaica manuscripts from Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library.” Currently shows 334 manuscripts.
11. Digitized Items: Hebrew Manuscripts . From the About page: “[t]his project will make 1.5 million digitized pages freely available over the next three years. Portions of the Bodleian and Vatican Libraries’ collections of Hebrew manuscripts […] have been selected for digitization by a team of scholars and curators from around the world.”
    1. Based on my count, links to 773 Bodleian manuscripts, and 641 Vatican manuscripts.
    2. See also here: Hebrew Manuscripts and Printed Books, wide range of ways to browse 806 Bodleian manuscripts.

Requires subscription or purchase

12. The Sol and Evelyn Henkind Talmud Text Databank ; Primary Textual Witnesses to Tannaitic Literature.
    1. From the home page:
       1. “Welcome to our new integrated website: Cooperative Development Initiative – Created by CDI Systems in partnership with the Saul Lieberman Institute of Talmudic Research of the Jewish Theological Seminary and Bar Ilan University’s Institute for Computerization in Jewish Life.
       2. This new resource upgrades and integrates the three Judaic studies databases developed by these institutions:
          1. The Sol and Evelyn Henkind Talmud Text Databank.
          2. The Index of References Dealing with Talmudic Literature, offering pinpointed citations from hundreds of classic and modern scholarly works directly related to the specific selected passage within Talmudic literature.
          3. Primary Textual Witnesses to Tannaitic Literature.”
    2. See under section “Bibliographic info” for “The Index of References Dealing with Talmudic Literature”.

[1] I’d like to thank Eliezer Brodt, Sholom Licht, and my father and brother for looking over previous drafts of this piece, and providing very helpful comments and feedback. Of course, the final product is mine, for better or for worse.
[2] On the late shift to writing, Yaakov Zussman and others have convincingly argued that Torah Sheba’al Peh was written down only in the post-talmudic era, besides for midrashim in Eretz Yisrael.  For the Jewish shift to using the codex, see Malachi Beit-Arie, Hebrew Codicology (2022), pp. 39ff (the entire book is open-access on Academia.edu). For the influence of the printing press on the Jewish community, see Zeev Gries (2007), The Book in the Jewish World, 1700–1900.
[3] “Apolline Thromas, “12 Digital Resources of the Rabbinic Literature: Radical Change with a Click of the Mouse“, in: Ancient Worlds in Digital Culture (2016).
[4] It should be pointed out that many resources that are behind a paywall can be accessed for free by using easy to use “shadow libraries”. Especially for academic literature, Sci-Hub and Library Genesis (Libgen) are some of the best such libraries. Of course, every person must decide whether they consider this contravention of paywall to be halachic and/or ethical.
[5] Koppel, “Attribution and Misattribution: On Computational Linguistics, Heresy and Journalism” (July 11, 2011): “Some of this work has been applied to topics of particular interest to students of Jewish texts, such as strong evidence that the collection of responsa Torah Lishmah was written by Ben Ish Chai (although he often quoted the work as if it were written by someone else) and that all of the letters in Genizat Harson are forgeries”. Moshe Schorr, “Who Wrote the Late Volumes of Igrot Moshe?” (January 20, 2019): “Given the preponderance of evidence that the later Igrot Moshe volumes are real (and spectacular), I think we can put the various theories of alternative authorship to rest. The claims of the editors — that the latest teshuvot were dictated — explains the ‘steroid spike’, and all available evidence supports their central contention, that they didn’t change the actual content. In short: it’s legit.”
[6] Here are some guides that I found especially useful:

Guides by librarians: 

1. eBooks | Libraries and Information System | Bar-Ilan University
2. Talmud & Oral Law | Libraries and Information System | Bar-Ilan University
3. Jewish History | Libraries and Information System | Bar-Ilan University
4. המכללה האקדמית הרצוג > ספריות > מאגרים בחוג ללשון עברית
5. המכללה האקדמית הרצוג > ספריות > מאגרים בחוג למחשבת ישראל
6. המכללה האקדמית הרצוג > ספריות > מאגרים בחוג לספרות עברית
7. Center for Jewish History > LibGuides > A-Z Databases
8. ארון הספרים היהודי המקוון – מאגרי מידע ואתרי ספרים סרוקים | Safranim’s Blog
9. Recommended Websites – *Jewish Studies – Research Guides at Northwestern University
10. eTexts – Directory of Judaica online resources – Guides at Penn Libraries
11. Resources for Doing Research – Jewish Studies – Guides at Johns Hopkins University
12. Turning the Page: Jewish Print Cultures & Digital Humanities – An EAJS Roundtable

Others: 

1. מאגר תורני – ויקיפדיה
2. Torah database – Wikipedia
3. השפה העברית – קישורים
4. פורטל הדף היומי > כלי עזר ללומד
5. הלכה ברורה > ספרייה וירטואלית
6. Search Engines and Other Web-Resources | The Talmud Blog
7. Textual Witnesses | The Talmud Blog:
8. Rabbinics
9. Online Resources for Talmud Research, Study, and Teaching

For a relevant university syllabus, see Prof. Aaron Ahrend’s syllabus to his course “Research Guidance in Bibliography and Writing”, which I took many years ago in the course of my MA in Talmud at Bar-Ilan, see here. The course and course packet went over many digital tools, however the syllabus available online only gives topic headings, and bibliography of published articles.
[7] On the genre, see Kenneth M. Price, “Electronic Scholarly Editions“, in: Susan Schreibman and Ray Siemens (Eds.),  A Companion to Digital Literary Studies (2008); Greta Franzini et. al., “A Catalogue of Digital Editions”, in Digital Scholarly Editing: Theories and Practices, pp.161-182; Menachem Katz et. al., “Talmud Yerushalmi Digital Critical Edition – IRCDL 2022” (2022).
[8] In the About page there: “includes Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz’s complete Modern Hebrew and English translations of the Talmud”.
[9] Thanks to Eliezer Brodt for bringing this new tool to my attention.
[10]  See Boaz Hus, שאלת קיומה של מיסטיקה יהודית, 2016, pp. 146-147, for a discussion of these editions. (Book available in Kotar here.)
[11] See review here: Menachem Katz, Assael Shmeltzer, Hillel Gershuni, Sara Preis, “The Hachi Garsinan Project as a Critical Edition of the Talmud Bavli“, (September 2017).
[12] See full overview here: Menachem Katz et. al., “Talmud Yerushalmi Digital Critical Edition – IRCDL 2022” (2022).

Mavericks, Mystics, & False Messiahs: Episodes from the Margins of Jewish History by Rabbi Pini Dunner (Toby Press, 2018)

Reviewed by Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein

The first chapter of this book sets the tone by introducing the reader to the oft-retold story of the famous 17^th century false Messiah, Shabbetai Tzvi (1626–1676), and how he and his handler Nathan of Gaza bamboozled much of world Jewry. As the story unfolds, more and more people began to believe that Shabbetai Tzvi was indeed the scion of David sent to redeem the Jewish people, but the story climaxes with Shabbetai Tzvi’s conversion to Islam from which point more and more became suspicious of the dubious character. Although he died in near anonymity and was buried in an unmarked grave, the repercussions of his rise and fall still reverberate throughout Jewish history.

Secret followers of Shabbetai Tzvi, known as Sabbateans continued to exist for centuries after Shabbetai Tzvi’s death. They were known for their antinomian behavior and non-standard Kabbalistic teachings. The witch-hunt against Sabbateans led to one of the most explosive controversies in Jewish History, in which Rabbi Yaakov Emden (1697–1776) accused Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz (1690–1764) of being a closet follower of Shabbetai Tzvi. Rabbi Dunner dramatizes this story in Chapter 3 of his book, peppering the narrative with details little-known to those who have already heard about the controversy.

In Chapter 4, Rabbi Dunner tells the sordid tale of a seemingly paranoid man named Isaac Neiberg from Mannheim who divorced his young bride of one week in the town of Cleves and fled Germany. The sordidness focuses not on the young groom, but on the rabbinic controversy that erupted over the validity of this man’s gett (“bill of divorce”). The question centered on what sort of insanity passes the Halakhic threshold to legally disqualify a person from effectuating a divorce.

In his concluding remarks, Rabbi Dunner implies that the ruling that this gett was not disqualified later influenced Rabbi Moshe Feinstein (1895–1986), who ruled that a person who is seemingly mentally unstable in some aspects, but is not totally insane, is not rendered a shotah in Halacha. This reviewer had the privilege to sit on a bus next to Rabbi Meir Simcha Auerbach, a son of Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach (1910–1995), who affirmed that his father whole-heartedly agreed with Rabbi Feinstein’s ruling on this matter.

In his work Mateh Levi (§19), Rabbi Mordechai Horovitz (1844–1910) published a responsum that he ascribed to Rabbi Nosson Maaz (1720–1793), a judge on the Frankfurt court, that laid out the reasons for disqualifying the gett. Nonetheless, some have questioned the authenticity of this responsum by claiming that it was not really written by Rabbi Maaz. Despite Rabbi Dunner’s seemingly neutral position on this question, Rabbi Mordechai Emanuel of Beitar Illit, a renowned scholar who edited and published Rabbi Nosson Maaz’s writings wrote to this reviewer that a comparison of the linguistic expressions used in the responsum published by Rabbi Horovitz and those used in Rabbi Maaz’s recently published-for-the-first-time works reveals that the responsum is most likely authentic.

The common denominator among all the misfits and charlatans that Rabbi Dunner discusses in this interesting book is that each chapter has some connection to the City of London (save for the chapter about Shabbetai Tzvi): In his chapter about the Emden-Eybeschutz controversy, Rabbi Dunner mentions that Rabbi Emden’s father, the esteemed author of responsa Chacham Tzvi, was offered the post of the Chief Rabbi of London, but declined. In the chapter about the Cleves Gett, London appears again as the runaway groom’s destination. (By the way, that story concluded with a happy ending, as the young couple later reconciled and remarried.)

Another chapter focuses on the legacy of the folk-doctor Shmuel Falk (1708–1782), popularly known as the Baal Shem of London. He was reputed to have been a master Kabbalist and healer, and much lore has sprung up about him. Rabbi Emden accused him of being a follower of Shabbetai Tzvi, but that remains to be conclusively proven. Interestingly, for many years a portrait of Shmuel Falk was misidentified as that of the more famous Rabbi Yisrael Baal Shem Tov (1698–1760).

Rabbi Dunner also presents the reader with a biographical chapter about the forger Rabbi Yehudah Yudel Rosenberg (1860–1935), who is most known for making the legends about the Maharal of Prague (1512–1526) and the Golem become mainstream, and for publishing a counterfeit commentary to the Haggadah Shel Pesach ascribed to the Maharal. Rabbi Rosenberg also published other forgeries, including a work entitled Choshen Mishpat, which claims that the twelve jewels of the High Priest’s breastplate have made their way to the Belmore Street Museum in London.

Other chapters in this book that pay homage to London by mentioning the Old Smoke include the one devoted to the peculiar story of Lord George Gordon (1751–1793)—a British aristocrat who led a failed revolt against the English crown (look up: The Gordon Riots) and eventually converted to Judaism—and the one dedicated to the fantastic tale of the escapades of an infamous Hungarian Jew named Ignatius Timotheus Trebitsch-Lincoln (1879–1943), whose various occupations include thief, member of the UK Parliament, international spy, and Buddhist monk. I am fairly confident that all these mentions of London are not unrelated to Rabbi Dunner’s hometown.

Although Rabbi Dunner presents this book to a popular audience and therefore did not provide the reader with well-sourced footnotes for every detail that he discusses (as befits a scholar of his caliber), he did offer a conclusion that sheds light on many of the different sources from which he culled information in preparing this captivating book.

Rabbi Dunner is a scion of a great rabbinic family and an alumnus of the most prestigious Yeshivas of contemporary times. He currently serves as a popular rabbi in Beverly Hills, but is also celebrated as a well-known lecturer, scholar, and social critic. His lectures and essays are thoroughly educational (and sometimes even humorous in his own way) and have special appeal to Jews of all stripes—including Hareidim, Religious Zionists, and even Secular Jews. Rabbi Dunner also boasts a magnificent and impressive collection of Judaica, including rare books, documents, leaflets, and pictures related to the history of the Jewish people. These resources no doubt aid Rabbi Dunner in his scholarly and rabbinic expertise.

R. Yudel Rosenberg, R. Mordechai Elefant, and Sexual Abuse

Marc B. Shapiro

1. Many readers of the Seforim Blog are aware of R. Yudel Rosenberg, the fascinating talmid chacham and posek who for some reason was also drawn to forgeries. Ira Robinson has recently authored a complete biography of Rosenberg, A Kabbalist in Montreal: The Life and Times of Rabbi Yudel Rosenberg. This wonderful book is certainly deserving of a complete review on the Seforim Blog, but here I would just like to comment on a criticism of me.

On p. 219 Robinson discusses the letter of R. Hayyim Hezekiah Medini that Rosenberg included in his Sha’arei Zohar Torah.

The letter of Rabbi Medini as published by Yudel Rosenberg has been challenged as a forgery by Rabbi Yaakov Hayyim Sofer, David Zvi Hillman, and Marc B. Shapiro on the grounds that some linguistic elements of the letter are foreign to Rabbi Medini’s style and may well have come from the pen of Rabbi Rosenberg.

In the note to this passage, Robinson refers to my Seforim Blog post here, where in addition to mentioning the points made by R. Sofer,[1] I write:

Let me also add that the way Medini (=Rosenberg) concludes the forged haskamah is not like any of his other letters, which are included in Iggerot Sedei Hemed (Bnei Brak, 2006). In the authentic letters, before his name Medini always adds הצב”י or הצעיר, which he does not do in the forged haskamah. In his authentic letters, he also never closes them by adding to his name רב ומו”ץ בעיר הקדש חברון. Therefore, there can be no doubt that the letter of approbation sent by Medini to Rosenberg is simply another one of the latter’s forgeries.

Robinson states (p. 219 n. 25):

On one of his points Shapiro is mistaken. He wrote in his blog: “In the authentic letters, before his name Medini always adds ha-tsa’ir, which he does not do in the forged haskamah.” In Yudel Rosenberg’s work, the Medini letter does close with yedido ha-tsair.

Here is the haskamah, and indeed Robinson is correct that הצעיר appears. I can’t explain why I wrote otherwise.[2]

Since we are discussing the forged haskamah, let me add two additional points relating to the final lines. I looked through all the letters in Iggerot Sedei Hemed and in none of them does this expression appear:

כנפשו הטהורה וכנפש ידידו

Furthermore, R. Medini always adds הי“ו or less commonly ס“ט after his name. Both of these are missing here.

While on the topic of forgeries, let me mention something else. In my post here I deal with the notorious forger, Chaim Bloch. One of the forgeries I mention is his creation of an alternate version of שפוך חמתך in the Passover Haggadah. In Bloch’s forgery, instead of “Pour out Your rage upon the nations that do not know You,” followed by more lines beseeching God to destroy the wicked ones, a more universalist formulation is found that begins with שפוך אהבתך. This forgery, which Bloch claims is from a 1561 Worms manuscript, reads as follows:

Pour out Your love on the nations who have known You and on the kingdoms who call upon Your name. For they show loving-kindness to the seed of Jacob, and they defend Your people Israel from those Who would devour them alive. May they live to see the sukkah of peace spread over Your chosen ones, and to participate in the joy of Your nations.

This translation is taken from R. Jonathan Sacks’ Haggadah (The Applebaum Edition), p. 120. Unfortunately, Sacks did not know about the history of Bloch and thought he was dealing with an authentic text. Sacks introduces the phony prayer as follows:

In one manuscript from Worms, 1521, there is a unique addition to the Haggada alongside “Pour out Your rage.” It is a prayer of thanks for the righteous gentiles throughout history who, rather than persecuting Jews, befriended them and protected them at times of danger.

3. Readers of the Seforim Blog might recall that on a few occasions I cited passages from the memoir of the late R. Mordechai Elefant, Rosh Yeshiva of Itri and builder of a vast Torah empire. These were the first times that passages from the memoir that he dictated appeared in print. I was then one of the few people who had a copy of the memoir, and a number of readers can attest that I did not agree to share it with them because I did not have permission from the person who gave it to me. Subsequently, Mishpacha got a copy of it and published some selected (and “touched up”) portions.[3]

In September 2019, R. Pini Dunner[4] published the memoir and you can view it here (Although this site says May 1, 2013, in reality Dunner only uploaded it in 2019.)

Dunner writes:

Rabbi Elefant’s candid memoirs are startling, not just because they reveal much that one would hardly have expected from a top-tier Rosh Yeshiva, but even more because of the very frank revelations he willingly shared regarding the background to his extraordinary life.

I distinctly recall his many sardonic observations about life and people; he was a true iconoclast who had clearly never read the memo about how senior public servants should express themselves, and particularly rabbis. At the same time, he was an extraordinary scholar, who could lecture on any Talmudic topic, without prior warning, to discerning peers and students, dazzling them with both his vast knowledge and his keen intellect.

Those who examine the Elefant memoir will come away shocked that the author was a leading rosh yeshiva. R. Aharon Rakeffet’s response after completing the memoir was that R. Elefant was “fifty percent gadol, fifty percent gangster.”[5] One thing is sure: R. Elefant was one of the most fascinating Torah scholars in recent memory, and there really was no one like him.

Anyone who reads the memoir must wonder why R. Elefant would have wanted himself to be remembered in the way the memoir describes. Certainly, no one whose only exposure to R. Elefant is through his Torah works could imagine the author’s colorful life. In fact, in R. Elefant’s posthumously published Mi-Zahav Mordechai he is described on the title page as שר התורה הגאון האמיתי.

R. Elefant was obviously an unusual person, and as with other writers of memoirs in rabbinic history (e.g., R. Leon Modena, R. Jacob Emden, R. Elijah David Rabinowitz-Teomim), he was an independent thinker who did not believe in following the herd. R. Elefant, as with all memoir writers, wanted us to learn about his experiences and views, things we would not know about if we only looked at his yeshiva persona.

I asked R. Nathan Kamenetsky about R. Elefant after I read the memoir, and I gave R. Kamenetsky a copy of it. (R. Kamenetsky worked closely with R. Elefant in Itri). But I did not know R. Elefant, so anything I suggest will be speculation.

When I finished reading the memoir, and was wondering why R. Elefant would want all this unusual information made public, I thought of two possible reasons. The first is pride, to show that one can be a talmudic scholar—and R. Elefant was an authentically great one—and at the same time be “with it”, that is, to be able to travel around the world and have relationships with all sorts of unusual people. Looking at matters this way, the memoir can perhaps be seen as subversive, in that although R. Elefant lived in one world, and had great respect for the rabbis of that world, he also happily lived in another world and wanted to show people how he did it.

The other possibility I thought of is that R. Elefant actually felt guilty about how he lived his life, and the memoir was his way of making matters right, as it were. He was a rosh yeshiva and was therefore given great respect. He was also close to a number of gedolei Yisrael. Perhaps R. Elefant felt uncomfortable in his role, where he was regarded as a שר התורה and a גאון אמיתי, since unlike the other roshei yeshiva and gedolim, his life was not one of “only Torah.” Is it possible that R. Elefant was putting it all out there to set the record straight, that is, to let people know who he really was, because in the end he felt guilty that he was placed in the same category as other roshei yeshiva? Could it be that R. Elefant, who had so many interests and couldn’t be happy spending his life entirely in the beit midrash, felt guilty being compared to the roshei yeshiva and gedolim whose entire lives were focused only on Torah study and spiritual improvement? I can’t help but think that if R. Elefant had children, and was busy raising them, he wouldn’t have had his wanderlust and need for adventure.

R. Elefant himself tells us that in addition to his “lamdan side,” he also has a “shaygetz (irreligious) side” (p. 40). I cannot imagine any other rosh yeshiva saying such a thing about himself. R. Elefant’s “shaygetz side” was not something that most would have known about had he not revealed it, and it is this side of him that people have found shocking. Obviously, R. Elefant knew they would find it shocking, yet he still wished to make it public. My sense is that he was a man of truth, and did not want to pretend. He wanted people to know what he was about, with all of his complexity.

I think it is very telling that after mentioning his “shaygetz side,” R. Elefant adds, “Thank G-d that side of me didn’t manifest itself in my students.” This line shows that, at the end of the day, R. Elefant was not very proud of this side of him, which I think lends credence to my suggestion that the memoir was his way of setting the record straight so that the world not think of him as someone he was not. (A close student of R. Elefant told me he liked this suggestion.) Also noteworthy is that right at the beginning of the memoir, R. Elefant states: “But I don’t kid myself. I know I’m not a spiritual model for my students, nor do I ever make out that I am.” 

Even if I am wrong in discerning R. Elefant’s ultimate motivation, memoirs by their nature provoke thoughts in the reader, and the two suggestions I mention are what the memoir brought to my mind.

There are those who knew R. Elefant who believe that one must distinguish between his younger days, when he was completely engrossed in Torah study, and later in life when he realized that he had a knack for raising money. It was then that he started traveling the world and hanging out with celebrities, politicians, and other colorful characters. Some will regard this as a limud zekhut for the entire bizarre and eye-opening memoir. Others will probably say that while R. Elefant raised a lot of money and built a Torah empire, the toll it took on him, as seen in how he chose to portray himself in his own memoir, shows that it was not worth it.

The copy of the memoir that Dunner placed online has become internationally famous, and you have to love the title he gave it: “An Elephant Never Forgets”. Yet Dunner’s copy is missing the first page, so let me provide it now.

In Dunner’s copy the handwriting on p. 59 can’t be read. Here are pages 58-59 from my copy so you can see the passage in its entirety.

The first thing to note is that R. Elefant’s claim that Saul Lieberman felt that he should have been made chief rabbi, and because he didn’t get this he went to JTS, is completely mistaken (as is much else in the memoir). R. Kook died in 1935 when Lieberman was 37 years old. At that young age he certainly never had any thoughts of becoming chief rabbi. The language “first chief rabbi of Israel” also doesn’t make any sense, as Lieberman left Israel for JTS when it was still Palestine.

Lieberman was actually a big supporter of his friend R. Isaac Herzog’s candidacy for the Chief Rabbinate. (Even when he was in Ireland, R. Herzog was a member of the advisory board of the Harry Fischel Institute which Lieberman headed at the time of R. Kook’s death.[6]) Chaim Herzog writes that his grandfather, R. Samuel Isaac Hillman, and Lieberman “organized a small campaign staff” to support R. Herzog’s election.[7] When R. Herzog was chosen, Lieberman was one of the signatories on the document proclaiming him Chief Rabbi. (I thank the late R. Eitam Henkin for sending me this.)[8]

R. Elefant then refers to R. Avraham Yisrael Moshe Solomon as a noted talmid chacham. Yet he was never a rav in Shanghai and he was not the father of Rabbi Baruch Shimon Solomon of Petah Tikvah. The story dealing with R. Kook, which is a famous one, is also mixed up. What was said to the Brisker Rav—and there are different versions concerning who said it—is that in R. Kook’s eyes all Jews are like family, and that is why he is so friendly with them. The version R. Elefant offers makes no sense, as R. Solomon’s comment to the Brisker Rav does not follow from what the Brisker Rav told him. In the note on the left side of the page, someone added [9]: “By R’ Kook every Yid is מבשרך אל תשעלם.”

The story at the bottom of the second page is unfortunate and does not make R. Elefant look good, as we see that he did not know of the view that one can cook in a keli sheni. This was obviously what Lieberman held, and this was also the view of R. Chaim Soloveitchik and R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik. R. Hershel Schachter writes as follows in Nefesh ha-Rav, p. 170:

במשנה ברורה (סי‘ שי“ח ס“ק ל“ט) הביא דעת כמה מן האחרונים להחמיר שלא לעשות תה, אפילו בכלי שני. ורבנו אמר בזה הלשון – שהסבא שלו היה מדקדק במצוות, והיה משתמש בשקיות תה בכלי שני, ואף הוא היה נוהג אחריו להקל בזה ג“כ

The story is also unfortunate as all R. Elefant had to do was ask Lieberman why he was using the tea bag in a keli sheni, and he would have been given the answer. Although one can criticize Lieberman’s association with the Jewish Theological Seminary, it is not every day that one is in the presence of someone with indescribable knowledge of Bavli, Yerushalmi, Tosefta, and Midrash. I would have assumed that R. Elefant would have taken advantage of the time he was with Lieberman for something more constructive than rebuking him.

4. In his recent Seforim Blog post here, Edward Reichman mentions R. Judah Messer Leon and his book Nofet Tzufim which was published in 1475. He also mentions that Nofet Tzufim was the answer to one of my earlier quizzes, where I asked what was the first Hebrew book published in the lifetime of its author. See here. In his post, Reichman discusses another fascinating book, R. Abraham Portaleone’s Shiltei ha-Giborim (Mantua, 1612 [Reichman mistakenly gives the date as 1607]). This book also has the honor of being “a first,” for it was the first Hebrew book to use European punctuation, including the question mark.[10]

5. The Chaim Walder affair has once again brought the issue of sexual abuse to the limelight. It also looks like the fallout from this event, unlike earlier scandals, will have a real impact in the haredi world, as many rabbis really are taking the issue seriously. What is needed is a scholarly study of how rabbis over the years have responded to the issue of sexual abuse. I am not referring to a work designed to condemn the rabbis for not doing enough, but to an academic study that would show how responses have changed over the years, how some rabbis took the matter seriously and other did not, and how with more understanding of the effects of sexual abuse rabbinic attitudes began to change.

One example of the sort of sources that would be used in such a study is R. Elijah Rabinowitz-Teomim (Aderet), Ma’aneh Eliyahu, no. 32. The Aderet deals with a case where a girl was raped by two young Jewish men. Her family wanted to report this to the police so that the rapists would receive a fitting punishment. However, the Aderet tells us that he convinced the family not to make a public issue of the matter, so as to prevent a hillul ha-shem, and to avoid confrontation with dangerous people.

דברתי אל לבם להשקיט הדבר, לבל יתחלל שם ישראל בעמים מהפקרות ופריצות צעירי הנערים, לאנוס ולנאוף ולחלל שבת ולרצוח, וגם יש סכנה בדבר לריב עם עזי פנים כמותם, ושמעו אלי

The first reason, avoidance of hillul ha-shem, certainly remains a significant factor today in the desire to keep matters of sexual abuse from being publicly aired.

Another relevant ruling, which shows how matters were handled in the past by a truly great figure, is found in R. Menachem Mendel Schneersohn (the third Lubavitcher Rebbe), Tzemah Tzedek, Yoreh Deah, no. 237. R. Schneersohn was asked the following question: A rabbi was playing with a נער on Purim and stuck his hands into the pants of the youth. The rabbi claimed that he did so because he (the rabbi) was unable to perform sexually. He thought that this was due to his small testicles, and he wanted to see if he was unusual in this regard. In other words, the rabbi was conducting a medical examination on the youth, and one can only wonder how many other boys were also subjected to this rabbi’s examinations. R. Schneersohn decided that the rabbi should not be removed from his position, as he provided a good explanation for his behavior.

What we see from these responsa (and others can be mentioned) is how much attitudes have changed in modern times. Our response would be very different than that of the Tzemach Tzedek, and I think we all would find the “justification” the abusive rabbi offered to be ludicrous, but that is only because we have been exposed to many things, including crimes perpetrated by trusted religious figures, that people in the Tzemach Tzedek’s day could never have imagined.[10]

6. As this post has discussed forgeries, I must call attention to a bombshell new book with wide-ranging implications by R. Moshe Hillel. It is titled חזון טברימון and makes a strong case that R. Yaakov Moshe Toledano created many forged documents. Often we think of forgers as shady characters, however R. Toledano was a respected rav who held a number of important positions, including Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv. In the election for Sephardic Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel, he lost to R. Isaac Nissim. R. Toledano was also a posek who authored the responsa volume Yam ha-Gadol.

It is beyond depressing to think that such a distinguished person could have been responsible for numerous forgeries. If Hillel’s claim is found to be accurate, a good of deal of scholarship, which relies on documents published by Toledano, has to be thrown out. This is every scholar’s nightmare, that the conclusions he or she reaches are based on fraudulent information.

Hillel also argues that the location of R. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto’s grave in Tiberias, which has become a popular pilgrimage site, is an invention of R. Toledano who created a phony “tradition”. For some initial discussion of Hillel’s book, see here where you can also download the book. Those interesting in purchasing a copy should contact Eliezer Brodt.

7. This summer my Torah in Motion trips resume. You can find information about them here.

8. For those interested in my Iggerot Malkhei Rabbanan, copies are still available at Mizrahi Book Store here.

9. Some years ago, I discovered at the University of Scranton a VHS tape of a 1985 lecture from Prof. Isadore Twersky. (I had already known of this lecture, as when I arrived in Scranton one of my colleagues mentioned to me how unusual it was that Twersky sat for his presentation.) I turned the VHS into a DVD, and a few weeks ago I had the tech people at Scranton turn it into a digital file and upload it to the University of Scranton’s YouTube channel. You can see the video here. This is the only video of a Twersky lecture to be found on the internet, and I am sorry that the sound is not so good. I don’t know whose idea it was to set up an Israeli flag next to Twersky as he spoke. If you look at the beginning of the video you can see that Twersky was actually sitting right in front of a cross, so maybe someone thought that a Jewish star was also needed. I know of only one other video where you can hear Twersky speaking, and that is found here where he introduces Chaim Grade.

Quiz

1. In section 4 I mentioned some bibliographical firsts, so for a quiz question I ask the following: Which Hebrew book was the first one to use footnotes (and the footnotes even used Arabic numerals)?

2. For those who would like a different sort of quiz question: Soon it will be Pesach, so please point to a halakhah on Pesach that the Shulhan Arukh decides in accord with the Rosh, while the Rama records the practice in accord with the Rambam and the Rif.

Answers should be sent to me at shapirom2 at scranton.edu 

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[1] I did not refer to R. David Zvi Hillman’s letter which appears in Etz Hayyim 10 (5770), p. 379.
[2] As mentioned, Robinson’s book deserves an extensive review, but here is one bibliographical point. On pp. 134ff., Robinson discusses R. Shlomo Zalman Auerbach’s correspondence with Rosenberg concerning the halakhic status of electricity. Robinson states that R. Auerbach’s Jan. 8, 1935 letter that strongly criticizes Rosenberg’s approach is unpublished. Yet the letter actually appears in R. Auerbach’s Meorei Esh ha-Shalem (Jerusalem, 5770), pp. 368ff.
[3] Mishpacha, Dec. 18, 2013.
[4] See here. Even before Dunner published the memoir, his copy was circulating and was placed online in June 2019. See here.
[5] Listen here at minute 72.
[6] See Sefer ha-Yovel for Harry Fischel (Jerusalem, 1935), Hebrew section, pp. 11, 20, English section, p. 8.
[7] Chaim Herzog, Living History (New York, 1996), p. 28 (called to my attention by Rabbi Jacob Yellin). According to Chaim Herzog, Lieberman would become his parents’ closest friend. See Elijah J. Schochet and Solomon Spiro, Saul Lieberman: The Man and His Work (New York, 2005), p. 52.
[8] In 1935 R. Herzog was a candidate for the chief rabbinate of Tel Aviv. The other candidates were R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik and R. Moshe Avigdor Amiel. It is of interest that the Hazon Ish supported R. Herzog’s candidacy. See Dov Eliach, Be-Sod Siah (Jerusalem, 2018), pp. 258-259. One might have expected R. Meir Berlin (Bar-Ilan), the great Mizrachi leader (and Lieberman’s father-in-law), to have supported R. Herzog or R. Amiel as they were both leading figures in Mizrachi, while R. Soloveitchik had no Mizrachi connections at this time. Yet because of his familial connection to R. Soloveitchik, Berlin put his support behind him. In a Nov. 10, 1935, letter from R. Herzog to Lieberman, R. Herzog writes as follows regarding the lack of support from Berlin, whom he calls מנהיגנו הנערץ והאהוב:

 

אין בלבי שום תרעומות עליו כי סוף סוף הרב הנ“ל הוא קרובו ובל תדין את חבירך וכו‘, ועוד כי בודאי עשה מה שעשה בלב שלם וטהור מתוך הכרתו הפנימית

You can see the letter here where a number of letters from the Lieberman archive have been uploaded. The source of these letters is not indicated, which means that they were not uploaded in accordance with the regulations of the Jewish Theological Seminary Library.
[9] תשעלם should be written תתעלם, and the passage comes from Isaiah 58:7. The verse actually has לא instead of אל. Yet a number of early rabbinic sources cite the verse with the word אל, so this was probably found in their texts. Indeed, critical editions of the book of Isaiah (Kittel, C.D. Ginsburg) report that many manuscripts have אל. Yet it is interesting that even though the verse appears with לא in every Tanakh printed today, rabbinic authors continue to cite the verse with אל. In fact, the Tolna Rebbe makes a big deal about how the first letters of מבשרך אל תתעלם spell אמת. See Tanḥumekha Yesha’ash’u Nafshi: Tolna (Jerusalem, 2004), pp. 235, 405, 506, 698.
[10] See Cecil Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance (Philadelphia, 1959), p. 315.
[11] R. Solomon ben Adret, She’elot u-Teshuvot ha-Rashba, vol. 1, no. 571(b), deals with a case where a woman accused her husband, who was also a rabbi, of: 1. sexually abusing their son, 2. having sexual relations with his slave, 3. being a heretic. However, in this case it is not clear that the woman was to be believed, as she made the accusations as part of her dispute with her husband. Things got so bad that she hired a non-Jew to bring her accusations before the government, knowing that if she was believed her husband would be burned. (She clearly wanted to get rid of him for good.) This case is discussed by Norman Roth, Jews, Visigoths and Muslims in Medieval Spain (Leiden, 1994), pp. 195-196.