There are many customs associated with Shavout, you can read about some here and here. One, is staying up all night and learning Torah (or at least part). This custom, which began in the 16th century in Safet spread rather quickly throughout the Jewish world. R. Yosef Karo, the author of the Shulkan Orakh lent a spiritual side. R. Karo stayed up all night and was studying with his student R. Shlomo Alkabtz (author of Lecha Dodi) and the following…
There is what appears at first glance to be a technical passage (although some may find it of interest on its own) in the Talmud dealing with the issue of which types of impurity bars one from Torah study. The Talmud states “הזבים והמצורעים ובעולי נדות קורין בתורה ושונין מדרש הלכות והגדות ובעלי קרי אסור בכולן” “A zav, a metzorah, boli niddot, are permitted to read from the Torah, study Midrash, Laws, and ‘agadot, however a ba’al keri can study…
When one discusses the “Jewish” date of the world, the source used is the book Seder Olam. In fact, this is the source where we get to our counting of this being the 5766 year of the world. There was a rather intriguing controversy about whether the edition we have of Seder Olam is a corrupted edition or not. R. Moshe Hagiz, pehaps most well know for his campaign against R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzato, had a very interesting correspondence with…
Menachem Mendel has posted about a very interesting revision to the English Kehati edition of the Mishna.
I have previously briefly mentioned a couple of problems with the new work Kuntress Ha-Teshuvot haHadash, now I would like to give a full review. First, I am no expert in the teshuva literature, that being said I was somewhat disappointed with this book. The book first contains a long introduction into the teshuva literature in general. It discusses such topics as the importance of the literature, the pervasiveness or lack there of, as well as censorship in the teshuvot…
The Vilna edition of the Shas printed by the Romm Press has become the standard edition of the Shas. This Shas had many important additions and corrections that prior ones did not. One of those was the inclusion of the comments of R. Jacob Emden. However, it appears that one comment, a rather important one was left out. R. Emden in Gitten page 60 made a comment regarding the Hassidim, this does not appear in the Vilna Shas. In the…
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As some of you know I have an interest in meshumdim and their wide affect on modern day Judaism. Thus, Yehoshua Mondshine’s latest installment in his series on corrupted stories is especially good. Some may recall our earlier post on Mondshine’s earlier piece about the “classic” ba’al teshuva story and its root in a Shai Agnon story, I think this one is equally as good. This story is a Habad story and it basically goes like this. There was a…
I have already discussed the most recent book of R. Margulies and provided a bibliography of his works, I now want to turn to a brief biography of him. R. Margulies was born in 1889 and was known, from the time of his youth, as extremly erudite. Although he recieved ordination, he did not become a Rabbi and instead opened a bookstore in Lemberg. It is said that although his store was always full of talmidi hakhmim it was unclear…
First, I want to post a bibliography of R. Margulies’s works and then I shall discuss some biogrpahical details in the next post. This bibliography is not a scientific one in that I do not attempt to list every edition. Rather, I am listing just the works and some bibliogrpahical information as I see fit. Most of this information comes from Naftali Ben Menachem’s bibliogprahy of R. Margulies’s books which was printed in Sefer Margolious. 1) Toldot Adam (Lemberg 1912)…
Mossad HaRav Kook has published Peninem u-Margoliyot which is a collection of articles by R. Reuven Margoliyot. These articles originally appeared in the journal Sinai and are now republished in a single volume. It seems that the impetus to collect and publish these was not so that people could have access to them (although perhaps this played a small role). Instead, Mossad HaRav Kook was forced, as it was, to publish these. In the last few years, in honor of…
There is an excellent site discussing various issues with eruvin, many of them contemporary (especially in light of the seforim which have been published on the topic in the last couple of years, many dealing with the Brooklyn controversy). Today, he has the second part of his series on the St. Louis eruv controversy which includes a rather fascinating discussion regarding two seforim printed at the turn of the 20th century. Both of those seforim are available online, if one…
There is a rather interesting teshuva which appears in R. Avrohom Weinfeld’s Lev Avrohom. In it he discusses whether one can recite Shir HaMa’alot to the tune of Hatikvah. He first explains that this question involves the question of whether a tune from an impure source is appropriate to use. He begins by discussing the two well-known teshuvot (the Teshuvot haBakh and the Krach shel Romi) dealing with using non-Jewish tunes for Jewish songs. However, without getting into all of…
As some have already noted, there is a completely new edition of Boaz Cohen’s Kuntras HaTeshuvot. This edition edited by Shmuel Glick totally reworks Cohen’s work. Supposedly this new work benefited from many subsequent bibliographies as well as the Institute for Jewish Bibliography. While this is an vast improvement in my quick read (I only received it today) I was amazed at what this lacked and in my mind errors. The first is for the entry for the Besamim Rosh…
To the left are pictures what are supposed to be the Klausenberger Rebbe burning the book HaGaon (discussed here previously) with the Hametz. Additionally the final picture is him saying the Yehi Ratzon from the Ateresh Yehoshua when burning books of heresy. If you click on the images you can see them enlarged. Here is the full text of the Yehi Ratzon יהי רצון מלפניך ה’ אלוקי ואלוקי אבותי, כשם שאנכי באתי לבער את ספרי החיצונים והמשכילים אלה, כן יסור…