Browsed by
Category: Maimonides & Rationalism

A New Halakhic Compendium of Jewish Belief

A New Halakhic Compendium of Jewish Belief

Comments 10 comments

A New Halakhic Compendium of Jewish Belief Y. Tzvi Langermann Professor Y. Tzvi Langermann is Professor Emeritus of Arabic at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. He has published widely on science, religion, and philosophy in medieval Jewish and Islamic cultures. Over the past thirty-plus years Rabbi Eliezer Melammed (b. 1961) has been issuing volumes of up-to-date rulings on halakhah. The series, called Peninei Halakha (“Pearls of Halakhah”) is very popular; on sale in most Israeli bookstores, it is…

Read More Read More

‘And Moses Hid His Face’: Isaac Abarbanel and Maimonides on the Nature of Prophecy

‘And Moses Hid His Face’: Isaac Abarbanel and Maimonides on the Nature of Prophecy

Comments 2 comments

‘And Moses Hid His Face’: Isaac Abarbanel and Maimonides on the Nature of Prophecy Eric Lawee Eric Lawee is a full professor in the Department of Bible at Bar-Ilan University, where he teaches the history of Jewish biblical scholarship. His *Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah: Canonization and Resistance in the Reception of a Jewish Classic* (2019), published by OUP, won the 2019 Jewish Book Award in the category of Scholarship of the Jewish Book Council (Judges’ Remarks below) and was…

Read More Read More

Two Books by R. Bezalel Naor, R. Meir Simhah of Dvinsk, Michael Lerner, and More

Two Books by R. Bezalel Naor, R. Meir Simhah of Dvinsk, Michael Lerner, and More

Comments 58 comments

Two Books by R. Bezalel Naor, R. Meir Simhah of Dvinsk, Michael Lerner, and More by Marc B. Shapiro 1. R. Bezalel Naor is well known for his enormous contributions to what we can call “Rav Kook Studies”. His outstanding translations and analysis have cemented his reputation as one of the leading interpreters of Rav Kook, as well as the most prolific writer on Rav Kook in English. I personally owe a great debt to Naor, as can seen in…

Read More Read More

Maimonides on Free Will, Divine Omniscience and Repentance

Maimonides on Free Will, Divine Omniscience and Repentance

Comments 1 comment

Maimonides on Free Will, Divine Omniscience and Repentance Ben Zion Katz The problem of reconciling the notions of man’s free will and Divine omniscience is an ancient one. As early as Mishna Avot 3:15 Rabbi Akiva states that “everything is known [by God] but permission (i.e. free will) is given [to people]”. Maimonides begins to tackle this question in his Laws of Repentance (הלכות תשובה) from Book One (The Book of Science סּפּר המדע) of the Mishnah Torah. In chapter…

Read More Read More

Final Response

Final Response

 Final Response By Marc B. Shapiro In response to Rabbi Herschel Grossman’s strong criticisms of my Limits of Orthodox Theology, I wrote four responses on the Seforim Blog. You can view them here, here, here, and here. I then stopped responding even though there are still many criticisms I could have commented on. Readers can compare Grossman’s arguments with my replies and draw their own judgment. Grossman has recently responded to my posts and offered further criticisms in an article published in Dialogue. See here. I do…

Read More Read More

Notes on the Book of Samuel, and the Eternal Sanctity of the Temple in Maimonidean Thought

Notes on the Book of Samuel, and the Eternal Sanctity of the Temple in Maimonidean Thought

Comments 24 comments

Notes on the Book of Samuel, and the Eternal Sanctity of the Temple in Maimonidean Thought By Rabbi Avi Grossman avrahambenyehuda.wordpress.com Rabbi Label Dulitz, who passed away last week, was an iconic figure at YUHSB. I was privileged to first meet him when I began my studies at the school in the fall of 1996. That year, Rabbi Dulitz was teaching Talmud to part of the tenth grade, but some of us lucky freshmen got to sit in his afternoon…

Read More Read More

image_pdfimage_print