Browsed by
Contributor: Dan Rabinowitz

Breaching the Walls of History with Postscript

Breaching the Walls of History with Postscript

Comments 42 comments

Breaching the Walls of History By Dan Rabinowitz This essay first appeared in the Jewish Review of Books (Spring 2026) and is republished here. Its postscript appeared in the magazine’s Substack newsletter, which you can subscribe to here. Last December, on the eighth day of Hanukkah, the American haredi newspaper of record Yated Ne’eman published a long, impassioned article titled “Ufortzu Chomos Migdolai Vetimu Kol Hashmanim,” by Rabbi Michoel Sorotzkin. The Hebrew title is from the fifth stanza of the…

Read More Read More

Birds’ Heads, Romaine Lettuce, and the Art of Reading a Haggadah

Birds’ Heads, Romaine Lettuce, and the Art of Reading a Haggadah

Comments 3 comments

Birds’ Heads, Romaine Lettuce, and the Art of Reading a Haggadah A persistent question arises with every illustrated Haggadah, whether a fourteenth-century Sephardic manuscript or a mid-twentieth-century Maxwell House edition: what function do these images serve? Are they merely decorative, do they provide commentary, or do they serve as documentary evidence of ritual practice? Furthermore, when these images draw from the visual culture of the surrounding non-Jewish world, as is often the case, does such borrowing diminish their Jewish character,…

Read More Read More

Beyond the Masthead of the Beys Yaakov Journal, 1923-1980 – Part 2: ‘Abomination’ or Scandal? Mistranslation, Journalism, and the Halivni Controversy

Beyond the Masthead of the Beys Yaakov Journal, 1923-1980 – Part 2: ‘Abomination’ or Scandal? Mistranslation, Journalism, and the Halivni Controversy

Comments 12 comments

Beyond the Masthead of the Beys Yaakov Journal, 1923-1980 – Part 2: ‘Abomination’ or Scandal? Mistranslation, Journalism, and the Halivni Controversy By Dan Rabinowitz and Menachem Butler In Part 1 of this study, it was argued[1] that the Beys Yaakov Journal cannot be understood simply as an ideological mouthpiece of Agudath Israel, nor as an instrument of Orthodox withdrawal. Across decades, its editors repeatedly confronted intellectual challenges in public, publishing voices and materials that lay beyond the formal boundaries of…

Read More Read More

Lecture at Young Israel Beth El of Borough Park featuring Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Brodt

Lecture at Young Israel Beth El of Borough Park featuring Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Brodt

Comments 5 comments

Lecture at Young Israel Beth El of Borough Park featuring Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Brodt The event details are: Topic: “The Vilna Gaon in Fact and Fiction: Kol HaTor and Beyond.” Date: Wednesday, February 4. Time: 8:00 PM (doors open at 7:30 PM). Location: Downstairs in the social hall, 4802 15th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11219. Entry: Men use the front door; women use the rear door. Program: Lecture followed by Maariv. Contact: 718-435-9020 | yibethel.org. (sign up for future events)  

Between Authority and Inquiry: Beyond the Masthead of the Beys Yaakov Journal, 1923-1980 – Part 1

Between Authority and Inquiry: Beyond the Masthead of the Beys Yaakov Journal, 1923-1980 – Part 1

Comments 10 comments

Between Authority and Inquiry: Beyond the Masthead of the Beys Yaakov Journal, 1923-1980 – Part 1 by Dan Rabinowitz In December 1961, the Israeli edition of Beys Yaakov, the educational journal of the Agudath Israel–affiliated school system, published an article that sits uneasily with standard accounts of Agudath Israel’s twentieth-century intellectual posture.[1] Issue 6 of its second year reprinted in full a study on the archaeological and halakhic problems surrounding the base of the Temple menorah.[2] The identity of the…

Read More Read More

Chanukah Controversies, Customs and Scholarship: A Roundup & Update

Chanukah Controversies, Customs and Scholarship: A Roundup & Update

Comments 3 comments

Chanukah Controversies, Customs and Scholarship: A Roundup & Update We are working on creating a better system to navigate past posts [please contact us at Seforimblog-at-gmail if you are interested in volunteering]. In the interim, here is a collection of Chanukah-related posts along with some new material: (As an aside, the Seforimblog’s internal style guide uses the Ashkenazic transliteration of the holiday name. Nonetheless, each author has the freedom to use whichever they prefer.) Controversies and Contested History Nearly every…

Read More Read More

Reading Over the Brisker Rav’s Shoulder

Reading Over the Brisker Rav’s Shoulder

Comments 30 comments

The Jewish Review of Books recently published its Fall issue, which features several excellent articles, including a discussion of the recently published Chaim Grade novel. Below is a reprint of an article from their Summer issue, “Golden Ledgers” by Dan Rabinowitz, with a short postscript. Seforim Blog readers can get a 50% discount on a subscription to the Jewish Review of Books by using this link.  Golden Ledgers by: Dan Rabinowitz To get to the Judaica Research Centre archives in…

Read More Read More

Depicting Difference: The Tower of Babel and the Language of Sacred Art

Depicting Difference: The Tower of Babel and the Language of Sacred Art

Comments 1 comment

Depicting Difference: The Tower of Babel and the Language of Sacred Art “For form is only the manifestation, the shape of content.” Ben Shahn, The Shape of Content, p. 72 Genesis chapter 11 presents the narrative of the Tower of Babel, detailing how, contrary to the divine directive to disperse and populate the earth, the descendants of the flood’s survivors congregated in a single city and commenced construction of a substantial tower. God intervened to prevent further cooperation among them…

Read More Read More

Ten Commandment Representations in Hebrew Manuscripts & Books: Artistic Approaches to Theological Issues in Judaism

Ten Commandment Representations in Hebrew Manuscripts & Books: Artistic Approaches to Theological Issues in Judaism

Comments 3 comments

Ten Commandment Representations in Hebrew Manuscripts & Books: Artistic Approaches to Theological Issues in Judaism Dan Rabinowitz Today, the Ten Commandments or Decalogue[1] are among the most prominently featured symbols associated with Judaism. The Decalogue is represented by two tablets, generally connected and rounded at the top. This representation occupies a central place within synagogue architecture, often displayed on the exterior or interior of the edifices and frequently above the ark itself, which is regarded as the most sacred element…

Read More Read More

The Mother Haggados: Models for Modern Analysis of Printed Jewish Illustrations

The Mother Haggados: Models for Modern Analysis of Printed Jewish Illustrations

Comments 4 comments

The Mother Haggados: Models for Modern Analysis of Printed Jewish Illustrations There is a long tradition of illustrating Haggados, dating back to at least the early Middle Ages. Likely only a small portion of those manuscripts has survived. However, most have been reprinted, and their imagery has been meticulously analyzed and cataloged. These manuscripts can broadly be divided into two categories based on their places of origin: Sephardic or Ashkenazic countries. The former includes the creation cycle and the Exodus…

Read More Read More

The Illusory Portrait of R. Yom Tov Lipmann Heller: Deceptive Art and Jewish Images in Vienna

The Illusory Portrait of R. Yom Tov Lipmann Heller: Deceptive Art and Jewish Images in Vienna

Comments 5 comments

The Illusory Portrait of R. Yom Tov Lipmann Heller: Deceptive Art and Jewish Images in Vienna By: Dan Rabinowitz For if I am deceived, I am. for he who is not, cannot be deceived; and if I am deceived, by this same token I am. Wolfgang Kemp after St Augustine of Hippo (Epigraph to Rembrandt Hoogstraten: Colour and Illusion) On October 8, 2024, Vienna’s Museum of Fine Arts, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, opened the exhibit “Rembrandt – Hoogstraten Colour and Illusion.”…

Read More Read More

April Fools! Tracing the History of Dreidel Among Neo-Traditionalists and Neo-Hebraists

April Fools! Tracing the History of Dreidel Among Neo-Traditionalists and Neo-Hebraists

Comments 12 comments

April Fools! Tracing the History of Dreidel Among Neo-Traditionalists and Neo-Hebraists These explanations [for playing with the sevivon] are far from reality. Why do no sources dating from the Maccabean period, and only in the last few hundred years, mention playing sevivon? If “Hakhamim” decreed it, or it was the custom in ancient times, of if “Beis Din shel Hashmonaim” established it, why is it not mentioned for all these generations? Yitzhak Tesler, “Ha-Dreidel (Sevivon) be-Chanukah: Mekoroseha, Ta’amyah, u-Minhagyah,” Or…

Read More Read More

Yaakov Mark and Two Episodes from Vilna’s Great Synagogue Related to Yom Kippur

Yaakov Mark and Two Episodes from Vilna’s Great Synagogue Related to Yom Kippur

Comments 10 comments

Yaakov Mark and Two Episodes from Vilna’s Great Synagogue Related to Yom Kippur David Livni was born in Vilna in 1870. He was educated in traditional Orthodox schools and joined the proto-Zionist Hovevi Tzion movement. In 1906, he and his wife and five children moved to Israel. The children were among the first students of Herzliya Gymnasium, and David was one of the founders of Tel Aviv and its Great Synagogue. He served on its board until he fell out…

Read More Read More

image_pdfimage_print