Plagiarism & Attribution – The Seforim Blog

A Footnote on What the Chasam Sofer Did Not Say

February 4, 2026 Shnayer Leiman Comments 24 comments

The Problem. I’m the proud owner of a copy of Rabbi Shimon Finkelman’s Rav Pam: The Life and Ideals of Rabbi Avrohom Yaakov HaKohen Pam (second edition, seventh impression, June 2023, ArtScroll History Series, Mesorah Publications, Rahway, N.J.). It is a magnificently written and produced biography of Rav Pam, a close friend of my father, who like Rav Pam was a disciple of both Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz and Rav Dovid Leibowitz. The biography captures Rav Pam as our family…

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“Ha’Rotzeh Lichanek, Hitaleh B’Ilan Gadol”: Notes on some Literary forgeries of Jewish works in the the Late Modern Period (1756-1965)

November 11, 2022 Ezra Brand Comments 6 comments

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…

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Rabbi Joseph Hertz, Women and Mitzvot, Antoninus, the New RCA Siddur, and Rabbis who Apostatized, Part 1

May 6, 2019 Marc B. Shapiro Comments 79 comments

1. In my last post here, in discussing R. Joseph Hertz’s suggested alternative text for Maoz Tzur, I wrote that this suggestion “was simply made up by Hertz or perhaps suggested by an unnamed collaborator on his siddur commentary.” At least one person wondered if I had anything in mind when I wrote about “an unnamed collaborator.” Indeed, these words were chosen deliberately. I do not know anything specifically about collaborators on the siddur commentary. However, we do know about…

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Who Wrote the Late Volumes of Igrot Moshe?

January 20, 2019 Moshe Schorr Comments 32 comments

Though this article deals with a factual question, it often seems to devolve into an ideological one. I therefore wish to state: I have no horse in this fight. I have not taken halakhic positions from Igrot Moshe volumes 7-9. I went into this with a genuinely open mind, and in the course of researching this question, I have taken the affirmative and negative sides of this question at different points. Ever since Igrot Moshe volume 8 was published, and…

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Plagiarism, Citation, and Redemption

March 24, 2015 Jeremy Brown Comments 1 comment

the author of New Heavens and a New Earth; the Jewish Reception of Copernican Thought. He writes on science, medicine and the Talmud at Talmudology.com Plagiarism, it seems, has never been so widespread. Remember How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, the 2006 debut novel from Harvard undergraduate Kaavya Viswanathan? The author had plagiarized several passages from others (including Salman Rushdie) and the publisher Little Brown recalled and destroyed all its unsold copies. It’s not just…

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A Mild Case of Plagiarism: R. Abraham Kalmankes’ Ma’ayan Ha-Hokhmah

May 15, 2014 Shnayer Leiman Comments 0 Comment

1. The Accusation. Rabbi Joseph Samuel ben R. Zvi (d. 1703) – more popularly known as ר’ שמואל ר’ חיים ר’ ישעיה’ס – served as a member of the rabbinic court in Cracow for some 26 years, after which he was appointed Chief Rabbi of Frankfurt in 1689.1 An avid collector of books and manuscripts, he made good use of them in listing in the margins of his copy of the Talmud variant readings, emendations, and annotations to the text…

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Asufah of Rabbi Shmuel Ashkenazi

April 7, 2014 Eliezer Brodt Comments 0 Comment

אסופה, ארבעה מאמרים מאוצרות הר”ש אשכנזי שליט”א [‘העלם דבר וטעות סופר’, ‘הגונב מן הספר’, ‘הרמב”ם כמתרגם מלשון התלמוד ללשון המשנה’, ‘מילונות עברית כיצד’?], ערך והשלים והביא לבית הדפוס, יעקב ישראל סטל, בהשתתפות אליעזר יהודה בראדט, כריכה רכה, 166 עמודים. It is with great pleasure that I announce the release of another volume of Rabbi Shmuel Ashkenazi’s work- Asufah. As I have written in the past, we are trying to print the collected material Rabbi Ashkenazi has written over a seventy…

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חכמים הזהרו בציון מקורותיכם – חוסר עיון במקורות ועל ראשי תיבות

August 14, 2013 Akavia Shemesh Comments 0 Comment

לאחר שקראתי את הפוסט המעניין מאוד של פרופ’ מרק שפירו, אמרתי כי עכשו הזמן להוסיף עוד משהו בבחינת מעניין לעניין באותו עניין. מה הוא דיבר על דרכם של כותבים בדורנו, אף אני אכתוב על פרט מסויים בדרכם של הכותבים בדורנו. הפרט שאני רוצה להצביע עליו הוא שיש מחברים המציינים את המקור לדבריהם, ואף מפנים את הלומד לעיין באותו מקור, אבל הם עצמם לא עיינו באותו מקור. אילו היו מטריחים עצמם לעשות כן, היו רואים שמקור זה לא היה ולא נברא….

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Plagiarism, Halakhic Paradox, and the Malbim on Kohelet

July 10, 2013 Marc B. Shapiro Comments 2 comments

1. A story recently appeared alleging plagiarism in the writings of R. Yonah Metzger. Such accusations are nothing new and the topic of plagiarism in rabbinic history is of great interest to me. Many of the scholars of Jewish bibliography have also written about the phenomenon, and a good deal on the topic has appeared on the Seforim Blog. Suffice it to say that every generation has had problems in this regard, and we see even see apparent instances of…

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On the Plagiarism of a Tach-ve-Tat Chronicle

July 28, 2011 Dan Rabinowitz Comments 4 comments

On the Plagiarism of a Tach-ve-Tat Chronicle During this period, between the 17th of Tamuz and the 9th of Av, there is an increased focus upon various historical calamities that befell the Jewish people. Jewish history is unfortunately replete with such examples. Some instances have spawned specific days of commemoration while others have produced whole bodies of literature. And, while the literature surrounding these events is diverse, covering liturgy, poetry, history, we focus on one type: the chronicle. Additionally, our…

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Attribution and Misattribution: On Computational Linguistics, Heresy and Journalism

July 11, 2011 Moshe Koppel Comments 0 Comment

Prof. Moshe Koppel is on the faculty of the Computer Science Department at Bar-Ilan University. He has published extensively on authorship attribution, as well as on a diverse array of topics of Jewish and scientific interest. A few days ago, newspaper readers from New Jersey to New Zealand read about new computer software that “sheds light on the authorship of the Bible” . By the time the news circled back to Israel, farteitcht and farbessert, readers of Haaretz were (rather…

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More on Chaim Bloch

April 22, 2010 Marc B. Shapiro Comments 4 comments

In a previous post I mentioned how the non-Jewish Austrian minister Leon Bilinski was descended from the rav of Posen, R. Samuel ben Moses Falkenfeld, the Beit Shmuel Aharon. More information about Bilinski’s Jewish roots is found in Chaim Bloch’s Ve-Da Mah she-Tashiv (New York, 1943), p. 74 n. 1. In general, I have found that when Bloch is reporting about other people’s biographies and history in general, he is very reliable. It is only when he is somehow involved…

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Caught in the Act: An Unknown Admission of Plagiarism

December 11, 2008 Dan Rabinowitz Comments 0 Comment

While we have had the opportunity to discuss plagiarism on multiple occasions, it is rare in the Jewish world that a plagiarizer is caught and admits their mistake. As such I wanted to discuss such an example. R. Yosef HaKohen Schwartz (1875-1944) was a veracious reader. Many of his responsa are devoted to notes on newly printed seforim. Indeed, the equally well-read bibliophile, R. Reuven Margoliyot, was in the habit of sending his new books for R. Schwartz’s comment. Needless…

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Tevie Kagan: The Enigmatic R. David Lida Part II

November 24, 2008 Tevie Kagan Comments 20 comments

R. David of Lida and Sabbateanism The case for Sabbatean leanings in R. David ben Aryeh Leib of Lida’s works are somewhat cloudy. The first clear accusation in this regard is from R. Yaakov Emden in his Toras Hakanaos. Specifically, R. Emden, dealt with the conclusion of one of Lida’s poem’s entitled Shir Hillulim, which was printed with his Migdol David. Shir Hillulim was written in honor of a torah dedication in Amsterdam in 1680. It was comprised of verses…

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Tevie Kagan: The Enigmatic R. David Lida

September 17, 2008 Tevie Kagan Comments 57 comments

Tevie Kagan works in the Seforim industry. This is his first post for the TraditionOnline Seforim blog. Part I: R. David of Lida and Plagiarism R. David ben Aryeh Leib of Lida (c.1650-1696) is a fascinating and enigmatic figure. He was the rabbi of multiple communities over the course of his lifetime including Lida, Ostrog, Mainz, and the Ashkenazic community in Amsterdam. He was forced to leave Amsterdam under a cloud of alleged plagiarism and possible Sabbatean beliefs; though he…

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