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Category: Mishnah & Halakhic Codes

The Vanishing Note: Devorah, Women Dayanim, and a Missing הערה‎ in Hilchos Dayyanus

The Vanishing Note: Devorah, Women Dayanim, and a Missing הערה‎ in Hilchos Dayyanus

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Whilst learning siman ז of Choshen Mishpat with my chavrusa, we found ourselves reading two different books. We were each using the Machon Yerushalayim edition of the Tur, we were on the same page, and we were looking at the same footnote — note ל״ב of the הגהות והערות. But my chavrusa’s note said almost nothing, and mine went on for some length. A comparison of title pages explained the discrepancy: I was working from the edition of תשנ”ג (1992/93),…

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Wrestling with the Ketsot – Review of ‘New Heavens: The Ketsot ha-Hoshen and the Rise of Lamdanut’, by Noam Samet

Wrestling with the Ketsot – Review of ‘New Heavens: The Ketsot ha-Hoshen and the Rise of Lamdanut’, by Noam Samet

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“…We also studied the Ketsot ha-Hoshen… The book was expensive, and my brother obtained a copy for consultation and decided to transcribe it in his fine handwriting. Only after prolonged arguments with me did my brother agree that we should first study it, and after each sugya and topic decide what was worth copying. We maintained this method throughout the two years we spent at Telz. Day after day we worked through the Ketsot ha-Hoshen, the Netivot ha-Mishpat, the novellae…

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Quiz Answers; Response to Criticism; Rav Schwab Writes to the Rogochover

Quiz Answers; Response to Criticism; Rav Schwab Writes to the Rogochover

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1. Let me begin with the riddles from my last post here. A. Where do we find that Shammai not only disagrees with Beit Shammai, but also agrees with Beit Hillel? B. In the days of the tannaim a certain item was unquestionably muktzeh. However, in the post-talmudic period, some hold that this item is no longer muktzeh. What item am I referring to? Provide the actual source in the Talmud and later authorities to justify your answer. The answer…

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Translating the Aruch HaShulchan with AI: Method and Lessons

Translating the Aruch HaShulchan with AI: Method and Lessons

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(PhD) Joshua Broyde is an AI/ML Healthcare & Life Sciences specialist at Google Cloud, where he works from strategy to implementation with enterprise medtech, healthcare, and biopharma companies to design, build, and deploy secure, production-grade AI and Generative AI systems. He has a PhD in the field of Computational Biology. Abstract I present a complete AI-written English translation of the Aruch HaShulchan — Rabbi Yechiel Michel Epstein’s comprehensive nineteenth-century code of Jewish law — covering all four sections of the…

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תיובתות דחפץ חיים תיובתות – עלומות בשולי ההדפסה הראשונה של המשנה ברורה חלק א

תיובתות דחפץ חיים תיובתות – עלומות בשולי ההדפסה הראשונה של המשנה ברורה חלק א

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מנשה קפלן, רחובות Copies of the 1884 of the Mishnah Berurah first printing aren’t identical. Working from several surviving exemplars, Menashe Caplan documents the variants: Rav Chaim Elazar Wacks’s haskama appears in some copies but not others; the last line of the introduction comes in three versions (blank, a halakhic gloss, or thanks to three specific donors); a printing warning appears sporadically; three different subscriber lists circulate in different combinations. Nothing is accidental. The Chafetz Chaim sat in the Warsaw…

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A New Halakhic Compendium of Jewish Belief

A New Halakhic Compendium of Jewish Belief

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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 also now freely available online, translated (in part at least)…

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Review of Rav Zvi Hirsch Grodzinsky’s Taharas Yisroel

Review of Rav Zvi Hirsch Grodzinsky’s Taharas Yisroel

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Shmuel Lubin is a doctoral candidate in biology and creator of “The Rishonim” podcast. ר’ צבי הירש גראדזענסקי טהרת ישראל, הלכות נדה, לראשונה מכתב יד, ע”י מכון תפארת צבי, [נדפס ע”י מכון עלה זית], תקסח עמודים The publication of a new sefer on Hilchos Niddah is not necessarily cause for celebration in the often-saturated world of halachic literature. But when such a publication is based on an early 20th century manuscript from the American heartland, it at least merits a…

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Stet in the Beit Yosef: Fish and Milk, from Typographical Error to Typological Exemplar

Stet in the Beit Yosef: Fish and Milk, from Typographical Error to Typological Exemplar

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Rabbi Dr. Holzer is Director of the Mohs Surgery Clinic in the Department of Dermatology, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, and is an assistant editor of the recent RCA Siddur Avodat HaLev. ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9852-3958/ 28 Binyamin, Beit Shemesh, Israel 9952200/ Aton.holzer@gmail.com A passage in the magnum opus of R. Joseph Karo (Maran, or the Mehaber, 1488-1575), the Beit Yosef (YD 87:5) tends to be reckoned among the more consequential scribal errors in Jewish legal texts. [ה] ”דגים וחגבים מותר…

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Review of Ha-Sefer ha-Kollel (Kitāb al-Ḥāwī) by Rabbi David ben Saʿadya al-Ger

Review of Ha-Sefer ha-Kollel (Kitāb al-Ḥāwī) by Rabbi David ben Saʿadya al-Ger

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Marc Herman is an assistant professor in the Department of Humanities and a core member of the Centre for Jewish Studies at York University. His research focuses on Jewish and Islamic intellectual history in the medieval Mediterranean. He is the coeditor of Accounting for the Commandments in Medieval Judaism: Studies in Law, Philosophy, Pietism, and Kabbalah (Brill, 2021) and his monograph, titled After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Islamic World, is under contract with the University of Pennsylvania Press….

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Organizing the Mitzvot and the Sefer Ha-Chinukh

Organizing the Mitzvot and the Sefer Ha-Chinukh

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Yaakov Taubes is the rabbi at Mount Sinai Jewish Center in Washington Heights, New York. He also serves as an assistant director at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva University, and is a PhD candidate in Medieval Jewish History at the Bernard Revel Graduate School for Jewish Studies. He can be reached at rabbi@mtsinaishul.com. This article follows from the excellent piece by Eli Genauer about the printing and reorganization of the Sefer ha-Chinukh. To review, Genauer described how…

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New Book Announcement: Mesoras Torah Sheba’al Peh by Harav Professor Shlomo Zalman Havlin

New Book Announcement: Mesoras Torah Sheba’al Peh by Harav Professor Shlomo Zalman Havlin

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ר’ שלמה זלמן הבלין, מסורת התורה שבעל פה, יסודותיה, עקרונותיה והגדרותיה ב-ג [ב’ חלקים], 1048 עמודים I am very happy to announce the recent publication of an important two-volume work, which will be of great interest to readers of the Seforim Blog. Mesoras Torah Sheba’al Peh by Harav Professor Shlomo Zalman Havlin, of Bar-Ilan University’s Talmud department. There are various “agendas” in the following post: The first: to further the Seforim Blog’s mission to inform its readership of new works…

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The Unusual Word Tzafufim in Pirkei Avos

The Unusual Word Tzafufim in Pirkei Avos

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* On a recent Shabbos afternoon I was learning the Yerushalmi to Peah when my thoughts turned – for reasons described below – to the famous passage in Pirkei Avos (5:5) עומדים צפופים ומשתחווים רווחים. Every schoolboy is familiar with the phrase. The Mishna sets forth ten miracles regularly experienced in the times of the Temple. The eighth of these, as set forth above, is that though the people stood crowded in the Temple courtyard, they were nevertheless able to…

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A Review of Parashas Hamelech – Al Mitzvas Hakhel, by Rabbi Moshe Parnes

A Review of Parashas Hamelech – Al Mitzvas Hakhel, by Rabbi Moshe Parnes

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Jackson, NJ Sefer Parashas Hamelech on the mitzvah of Hakhel offers a unique and illuminating contribution on one of the lesser-studied mitzvos of the Torah. It fits the modern genre of encyclopedias on arcane subjects, while also combining elements of older and more established trends in Torah publications, weaving it all together in deft scholarly fashion. It is both an exhaustive accumulation of sources primary and secondary on its topic as well as a lively sefer iyun, providing fresh and…

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The Meaning of the Word Eduyos in מסכת עדיות

The Meaning of the Word Eduyos in מסכת עדיות

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Mr. Farkas received his rabbinic ordination from Ner Israel Rabbinical College in 1999. He lives with his family in Cleveland, Ohio, where he serves as Senior Corporate Counsel for one of the largest energy distribution companies in the United States. Masechet Eduyos is a unique volume of the Talmud. It is the only halachic tractate not confined to a single defined area of law. It is, rather, a collection of Mishnayos on diverse topics, some of which appear elsewhere throughout…

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Depression Angles

Depression Angles

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Introduction: Depression angles measure the level of darkness or illumination prior to sunrise and, in a parallel fashion, after sunset. There are two halakhic disagreements that might appear to relate to the use of depression angles. First, there is a long-standing argument about what defines the transition from one day to the next and what is (merely) an indicator that the transition has occurred. Some consider the appearance of three stars as the basis of a definition, while others assume…

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