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Anim Zemiros – A Poem for All Ages by Rabbi Elchanan Adler book review

Anim Zemiros – A Poem for All Ages by Rabbi Elchanan Adler book review

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Feldheim Publishers, New York, 2020, 192 pages Reviewed by Myron Wakschlag Rabbi Myron Wakschlag is a musmach of Rav Ahron Soloveichik zt”l at Yeshivas Brisk of Chicago, and is currently an IT executive in the Washington, DC area. He has researched and published on the early Orthodox rabbinate in America. It is rare to find a book that is able to successfully illuminate a complex topic, yet still remain captivating and easily accessible. Rabbi Elchanan Adler’s new sefer on Anim…

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Torah & Rationalism – Writings of the Gaon Rabbenu Aaron Chaim HaLevi Zimmerman zt”l

Torah & Rationalism – Writings of the Gaon Rabbenu Aaron Chaim HaLevi Zimmerman zt”l

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Deviating from conventional book reviews I shall not enter into a discussion of the author – R. Chaim Zimmerman’s genius, schooling, breathtaking erudition, oeuvre, philosophies or his broader Weltanschauung. I leave that for the biographers, that is, if any will take up the challenge. Nor does this survey qualify as a comprehensive book review as I will explain later on. First, a word on the book itself. When a posthumously published book appears any critical minded reader wonders where the…

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Jewish Treasures From Oxford Libraries

Jewish Treasures From Oxford Libraries

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Ed. Rebecca Abrams and Cesar Merchan-Hamann / Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2020 / ISBN 978 1 85124 502 4 / Available in the USA via Amazon $55 307pp, 140 full-colour plates Oxford, the ‘City of Dreaming Spires’, is one of the world’s greatest repositories of Hebraica and Judaica, both books and manuscripts. This sumptuous volume was initiated at the encouragement and support of Martin J. Gross, a New Jersey philanthropist and Jewish community activist. It is a bargain at…

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Review of Mada Toratekha: Studying Gemara in Broad-based Depth 

Review of Mada Toratekha: Studying Gemara in Broad-based Depth 

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Review of Mada Toratekha Rav Yehuda Zoldan: Studying Gemara in Broad-based Depth ר’ יהודה ברנדס מדע תורתך מסכת ברכות, מכללת הרצוג, אלון שבות תשעט The Following post is a short review on a new work from Rabbi Professor Yehuda Brandes on Berakhot. For another recent article of Rabbi Brandes about Learning Gemara see this issue of Hakirah. For a sample chapter of this new work or to purchase this work email Eliezerbrodt@gmail.com Over the years, a variety of different styles…

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Berakhot Koren Talmud Bavli and Ein Aya

Berakhot Koren Talmud Bavli and Ein Aya

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Berakhot Koren Talmud Bavli (KE) is a translation (into English) of Rav Adin Even-Yisrael Steinsaltz’s Hebrew edition of tractate Berakhot. It comprises the text of the Talmud, the in-line commentary, the explanation of foreign words, the mini-studies (iyunim), the biographies of selected sages, the description of cultural objects (hahayim), descriptions of fauna and flora and more. As far as I’ve noticed, they never mention in the front matter nor in the advertising blurbs that they added informational notes that don’t…

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Sinful Thoughts: Comments on Sin, Failure, Free Will, and Related Topics Based on David Bashevkin’s new book Sin•a•gogue: Sin and Failure in Jewish Thought

Sinful Thoughts: Comments on Sin, Failure, Free Will, and Related Topics Based on David Bashevkin’s new book Sin•a•gogue: Sin and Failure in Jewish Thought

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A Bashevkin-inspired Bio Blurb: Rabbi Yitzchok Oratz is Rabbi of the Monmouth Torah Links community in Marlboro, NJ. His writings can be found in various rabbinic and popular journals, including Hakira, Ohr Yisroel, Nehoroy, Nitay Ne’emanim, and on Aish, Times of Israel, Torah Links, Seforim Blog, and elsewhere. His writings are rejected as often as they are accepted, and the four books he is currently working on will likely never see the light of day. “I’d rather laugh with the…

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The Lost Library by Dan Rabinowitz and the “Burial of Souls” by Yehuda Leib Katznelson: Different Expressions of the Same Sentiment

The Lost Library by Dan Rabinowitz and the “Burial of Souls” by Yehuda Leib Katznelson: Different Expressions of the Same Sentiment

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Having just completed Dan Rabinowitz’s superb book, The Lost Library, about the Strashun Library in Vilna, I am reminded of a remarkable, little-known short story written by a man who lived during the creation of the famous Strashun Library. He, like Rabinowitz, laments the loss of a famous Jewish library, though the literary nature of the lament differs. Rabinowitz has written a magnificent, captivating, thoroughly researched, historical lament. Our author has chosen the short story to metaphorically express his grief…

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Review of Kedushat Aviv: Rav Aharon Lichtenstein zt”l on the Sanctity of Time and Place

Review of Kedushat Aviv: Rav Aharon Lichtenstein zt”l on the Sanctity of Time and Place

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(Translated by David Strauss) Rav Elyakim Krumbein studied with Rav Soloveitchik at YU and made aliya in 1973. He has been a ram at Yeshivat Har Etzion since 1981 and heads its Tochnit Bekiut. He also served as a Pedagogic Advisor at Herzog College. Rav Krumbein’s guides for self-study on the Bavot, Ketubot and other tractates are widely used by Yeshiva students, and he has also written two volumes of study guides on Gittin and Kiddushin entitled Sho’el K’inyan. He…

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Review of My Father’s Journey by Sara Reguer

Review of My Father’s Journey by Sara Reguer

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About a year ago, Seforim Blog readers were informed by Prof. Marc Shapiro of the publication of Sara Reguer’s book My Father’s Journey, and they were further advised that this book would be of great value to anyone interested in the history of the yeshiva movement and Eastern European orthodoxy (see here). The following review illustrates the contribution the book indeed makes to these fields of study. This basis of this memoir is essentially a diary which affords readers a…

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Translations of Rabbi Judah Halevi’s Kuzari

Translations of Rabbi Judah Halevi’s Kuzari

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Daniel J. Lasker is Norbert Blechner Professor of Jewish Values at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought. He has published widely in the fields of medieval Jewish philosophy, the Jewish-Christian debate, and Karaism. This is Professor Lasker’s third essay at the Seforim blog. On the occasion of the publication of: ספר הכוזרי. הוא ספר הטענה והראָיה לדת המושפלת לרבי יהודה הלוי תרגם מערבית-יהודית לעברית בת זמננו מיכאל שוַרץ הוצאת הספרים של אוניברסיטת…

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As The Kohen Exits The Sancta: A New Edition of Reb Zadok ha-Kohen of Lublin’s Tzidkat ha-Tzadik

As The Kohen Exits The Sancta: A New Edition of Reb Zadok ha-Kohen of Lublin’s Tzidkat ha-Tzadik

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Josh Rosenfeld is the Assistant Rabbi at Lincoln Square Synagogue and on the Judaic Studies Faculty at SAR High School. This is his fourth contribution to the Seforim Blog. Tzidkat ha-Tzaddik Commentary, Notes, & Excurses Ne’imot Netzah by R. Aharon Moseson 2 Vols. 532 + 564 pp. Arad: Makhon Ne’imot ha-Tzedek, 2015 “The Books of the ‘Kohen’, written by the very own hand of our Master, the Holy man of God, the Kohen Gadol, without peer, Reb Zadok ha-Kohen of…

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The Valmadonna Broadside Collection: a Review Essay

The Valmadonna Broadside Collection: a Review Essay

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The Writing on the Wall: A catalogue of Judaica Broadsides from the Valmadonna Trust Library, edited by Sharon Liberman Mintz, Shaul Seidler-Feller and David Wachtel, London-New York: 2015, 320 pp. Jews have been collecting books or manuscripts for centuries. A related category that is collected by fewer is ephemera, including broadsides, documents and letters of historical significance. Of late, a few annual auctions have included some of these documents among the other objects to be auctioned. Sadly, after their appearance…

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Bridging the Kabbalistic Gap Nefesh HaTzimtzum by Avinoam Fraenkel reviewed by Bezalel Naor

Bridging the Kabbalistic Gap Nefesh HaTzimtzum by Avinoam Fraenkel reviewed by Bezalel Naor

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Recently there has been a spate of English translations of the classic of Mitnagdic philosophy, Nefesh ha-Hayyim by Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin (1749-1821), eminent disciple of the Vilna Gaon. This is perhaps the most glorious—certainly the lengthiest—of the translations, one that attempts to rewrite the debate between Hasidim and Mitnagdim. The present edition, the most extensive to date, is divided in two volumes. Volume One consists of a Hebrew-English edition of the entire book with the exception of the famous…

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Review of James A. Diamond, “Maimonides and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon” (2014) by Menachem Kellner

Review of James A. Diamond, “Maimonides and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon” (2014) by Menachem Kellner

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is Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Jewish Thought at Shalem College, Jerusalem, and the Wolfson Professor Emeritus of Jewish Thought at the University of Haifa, where, among many other posts, he served as Dean of Students and Chair of the Department of Maritime Civilizations, and founding director of Be-Zavta, a program in Jewish enrichment. His most recent book is Menachem Kellner: Jewish Universalism, edited by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Aaron Hughes in Brill’s Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers, and…

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Review of Dovid Bashevkin’s Sefer Berogez Racheim Tizkor

Review of Dovid Bashevkin’s Sefer Berogez Racheim Tizkor

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Rabbi Yitzchok Oratz, a musmach of Beth Medrash Govoha, is the Rabbi and Director of the Monmouth Torah Links community in Marlboro, NJ. אהרן יצחק הלוי ארץ כי הוא ידע יצרנו: הערות והארות, ציונים ומראה מקומות, על עניניבחירה, חטא, ותשובה. מיוסד על ספר “ברגז רחם תזכור” להרב דוד אליקים בשבקין. Introduction In wrath, remember mercy. For He knows our nature . . . God knows the nature of every generation, Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin has written a Sefer uniquely appropriate for…

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