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Category: Portraits & Photographs

Pini Dunner — Unknown Picture of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, c.1930s

Pini Dunner — Unknown Picture of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, c.1930s

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Pini Dunner B.A (Hons), formerly rabbi of London’s Saatchi Synagogue, is an avid collector of polemical and controversial Hebraica, with a very large, diverse private collection of such material. Many items in his collection are unknown and unrecorded, and relate to long forgotten, obscure controversies. This is Pini Dunner’s second post at the Seforim blog; his first post, “Mercaz Agudat Ha-Rabbanim Be-Lita, Kovno, 1931,” is available here. Photographs of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson z”l, are numerous…

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Rabbinic Portraits

Rabbinic Portraits

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There is a discussion on the always-wonderful-blog On The Main Line regarding a portrait attributed to Rashi. Someone MENACHEM BUTLER raised the well-known collection of famous Rabbinic personalities which appeared on an edition of the Shulhan Arukh. The edition to which they are referring to is the Shulhan Arukh printed in Mantua in 1721-23. This edition includes the standard commentaries as well as the commentary of R. Gur Areyeh Finzi (d. 1753). On the title page Finzi (or the printer)…

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Jews, Beards and Portraits

Jews, Beards and Portraits

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“If men be judged wise by their beards and their girth, Then goats would be the wisest creatures on Earth.” With the High Holidays approaching one of the more interesting attributes which takes a more prominent position is that of shaving or facial hair. Of course, prior to any Shabbat or Yom Tov, one is supposed to shave and take a haircut. Yet, for the High Holidays, there is a special emphasis on facial hair. One of the attributes that…

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I See Dead People

I See Dead People

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Mary Roach in her excellent book “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers” discusses some of the facinating facts relating to dead bodies. However, she does not discuss some of the more interesting Jewish incidents of dead bodies. The first is the fairly well known story of R. Yehuda Aszod (1794-1866). R. Aszod’s grandson wrote a biography of his grandfather. Portions of this biography are included in R. Aszod’s commentary on the Torah, Divre Mahri. “My grandfather never allowed for…

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Rabbinic Pictures

Rabbinic Pictures

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Menachem Butler notes that the custom of having portraits done of Rabbinic figures dates back to the 16th century and has now been applied to YU. He also raises the issue of the permissibility of such portraits in like of the injunction against making graven images. There is a fairly substantial literature on the topic of Rabbinic pictures. In my previous post, I note that Mark included a picture of himself in his book. This was fairly common to include…

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