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Category: Italy & the Sephardic World

‘אֲשֶׁר שַׂמְתִּי עֲרָבָה בֵיתוֹ’ ו’לֶחֶם לַנְּעָרִים’ – השימוש המִשני בערבות הלולב וההושענות למנהג איטליה הקדום

‘אֲשֶׁר שַׂמְתִּי עֲרָבָה בֵיתוֹ’ ו’לֶחֶם לַנְּעָרִים’ – השימוש המִשני בערבות הלולב וההושענות למנהג איטליה הקדום

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השימוש המִשני בערבות הלולב וההושענות למנהג איטליה הקדום* “…The aravot, with which they observed the commandment of lulav, or the ‘ritual of the aravah’ (on Hoshana Rabah), would be discarded after their use. However, the German sages, as a token of their love for mitzvot, were wont to keep them in order to perform future mitzvot, such as for burning chametz or baking matzot on erev Pesach. The German custom has a Talmudic basis, that if an object is used…

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Churches, Ronald McDonald, and More

Churches, Ronald McDonald, and More

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1. In a recent post I mentioned R. Leon Modena, so let me note the following. In my article on entering churches, available here, I mention that R. Modena entered churches to hear the sermons. I also quote R. Eliezer Waldenberg’s description of R. Modena as an איש הפכפך. Only after my article appeared did I find that R. Solomon Scheinfeld uses similar language in describing R. Modena : הוא היה גדול בתורה וחכמת העולם, היה גאון בטבעו, אבל כדרך…

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Jews in Wonderland

Jews in Wonderland

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John M. Efron is the Koret Professor of Jewish History at the University of California-Berkeley and author of German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic (Princeton University Press, 2016). This is his first contribution to the Seforim Blog. Although an important sesquicentennial anniversary took place on September 5, 2016, few people outside of Berlin, and not even that many there will have paid much attention to it. As generally happens with selective historical amnesia that which was once world…

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Rav Avraham Chai Reggio Brings A Sefer To Life

Rav Avraham Chai Reggio Brings A Sefer To Life

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Note: I would like to thank Rabbi Gad Bouskila of Congregation Netivot Israel in Brooklyn for helping me decipher Rav Avraham Reggio’s handwriting Rav Avraham Chai (Vita) ben Azriel Reggio (1755-1842) was the Rav of Gorizia, in northern Italy for over forty years. During that time period, he answered Sha’aylot both locally and from abroad, wrote a Sefer Torah, performed 300 circumcisions, and gave many Drashot that changed people’s lives. We are told that the Derashot he gave before Neilah…

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Engaged Couples, צעירים, and More

Engaged Couples, צעירים, and More

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1. Regarding engaged couples having physical contact, this is actually the subject of a section of the book Penei Yitzhak by R. Hezekiah Mordechai Bassan. Here is the title page. This book was published in Mantua in 1744 by Menahem Navarra who was a descendant of R. Bassan. Navarra, who was at this time a doctor, not a rabbi, was nevertheless very learned in Torah matters. (He would later be appointed rabbi of Verona. ) Navarra included three essays of…

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Assorted Comments on R. Jacob Emden, Ashkenazic Views of Sephardic Gedolim, and More

Assorted Comments on R. Jacob Emden, Ashkenazic Views of Sephardic Gedolim, and More

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1. Since I have discussed R. Jacob Emden in many posts, let me add the following. If you examine Emden’s Birat Migdal ha-Oz you find that he refers to himself as הסריס. Here is the Berditchev 1836 edition of the work, p. 135a. I think all would agree that this is a strange title to give oneself. In this work, p. 116a, he also calls himself שלו. On p. 44a he refers to himself as שאול. On pp. 101b and…

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Yehuda Azoulay’s Maran: The Life and Scholarship of Hacham Ovadia Yosef

Yehuda Azoulay’s Maran: The Life and Scholarship of Hacham Ovadia Yosef

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’s Maran: The Life and Scholarship of Hacham Ovadia Yosef has just appeared. The Seforim Blog is happy to present this excerpt. Chapter 17: Back to Jerusalem In 1958, Hacham Ovadia was invited to serve as a judge on the Jerusalem bet din, beside Rabbi Waldenberg and Rabbi Qafih. His gratitude for being able to move back to Jerusalem is displayed in his third volume of Yabia Omer, published in 1960, and his joy and satisfaction at serving on this…

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A Third Way: Iyyun Tunisai as a Traditional Critical Method of Talmud Study

A Third Way: Iyyun Tunisai as a Traditional Critical Method of Talmud Study

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The following is an excerpt from an article with the above title by Joseph Ringel. The full article, including the footnotes detailing the source materials, and the appendix, have been published in the Fall 2013 issue of Tradition (46:3), and is available for purchase at http://www.traditiononline.org/. In recent years, scholars have taken a renewed interest in elucidating the specific methods used to study Jewish texts in yeshivas, both past and present. For example, Daniel Boyarin elucidated the classical late medieval/early…

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The Jewish Reaction to the Livorno Earthquake of January 27, 1742

The Jewish Reaction to the Livorno Earthquake of January 27, 1742

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On January 27, 1742 (כב’ שבט תק”ב) an earthquake shook Livorno, Italy to its core. All through the preceding months rumbling shuddered throughout the city. Pasqual R. Pedini, a recognized cleric at the time, elucidated in a letter beginning with the incipient rumblings of Jan. 16 carrying on until 27th a vivid depiction of the earthquake’s manifestation and impact (The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, London 1809; VIII p. 568, “An Account of the Earthquakes Felt in…

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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Some Remarks On Aristotle, Dante Alighieri, Immanuel of Rome, R. Moshe Botarel and Bertrand Russell

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Some Remarks On Aristotle, Dante Alighieri, Immanuel of Rome, R. Moshe Botarel and Bertrand Russell

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For nearly a millennium, the name “Aristotle” has resonated within Jewish culture (as within European culture generally) in a way difficult for we moderns to fully grasp. Not merely a philosopher (or even the Philosopher, as he is often designated), he represented (accurately and justly, or otherwise) a weltanschauung, or even a cluster of them: rationalism, scientism, materialism, skepticism, atheism. In this essay, we discuss a miscellaneous variety of perspectives toward Aristotle found in our tradition. R. Moshe Botarel R….

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R. David Nieto’s Matteh Dan, Life on Other Planets and Jewish Reactions to Copernicus

R. David Nieto’s Matteh Dan, Life on Other Planets and Jewish Reactions to Copernicus

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R. David Neito and the Mateh Dan R. David Nieto was born in 1654 in Venice and died in England in 1728. Aside for being a tremendous talmid hakham, Nieto also had degrees in science, philosophy, and was a medical doctor. He was a Rav, Dayan and Darshan in Leghorn for a while. He then was hired to be Rav of the Sefardi Kehila in England in 1701. Besides for being a multi-talented Rav, he was a prolific writer authoring…

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Modena, Gilgul, and an Unpublished Letter

Modena, Gilgul, and an Unpublished Letter

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Someone in a comment to a recent post mentioned an article that appears in the latest issue of the journal Ets Hayyim. This journal is published by the “students and hassidim of Bobov.” [Supposedly this journal is a break-off of the excellent journal Kerem Shlomo.] The journal is comprised of what most torah journals are today, there is a section publishing manuscripts hiddushei torah, general hiddushei torah, some articles on halacha etc. In this fourth and most recent issue there…

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Azariah de Rossi on Chad Gadya

Azariah de Rossi on Chad Gadya

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As a somewhat belated followup to an earlier discussion at my AJHistory blog (z”l), I would like to add the following to the list of interesting-academic-footnotes:There is something reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges in the seemingly infinite series of translations represented in [Azariah] de Rossi’s Hebrew translations of the Latin translation of the Greek account of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, made only more dizzying by Joanna Weinberg’s English translation of de Rossi’s Hebrew translation of the Latin…

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Will The Real First American Jews Please Stand Up?: A Review of Machon Yerushalayim’s New Book About the Jews of Recife

Will The Real First American Jews Please Stand Up?: A Review of Machon Yerushalayim’s New Book About the Jews of Recife

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In the history of Jews on the American continent, many are unaware that the first Jewish settlement in the Americas was not in North America, but instead South America. Specifically, the Brazilian city of Recife was the first formal Jewish community in the Americas. Recife, for a brief period of time, came under the control of the Dutch government. In 1630 they took Recife from the Portuguese, this event was key in establishing a Jewish community, as the Portuguese enforced…

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