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Azariah de Rossi on Chad Gadya

Azariah de Rossi on Chad Gadya

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As a somewhat belated followup to an earlier discussion at my AJHistory blog (z”l), I would like to add the following to the list of interesting-academic-footnotes:There is something reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges in the seemingly infinite series of translations represented in [Azariah] de Rossi’s Hebrew translations of the Latin translation of the Greek account of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, made only more dizzying by Joanna Weinberg’s English translation of de Rossi’s Hebrew translation of the Latin…

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Marc Shapiro: What Do Adon Olam and ס”ט Mean?

Marc Shapiro: What Do Adon Olam and ס”ט Mean?

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ס”ט 1. People often refer to me as a Modern Orthodox intellectual. There are actually quite a number of us out there. If you hear someone using words like “ontological,” “existential,” “mimetic,” and now, “tergiversation” you can assume he in in our club. Also, another telltale sign is that when we give divrei Torah you will hear us refer to Philo, the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha (if we are confident that we can pronounce the word properly ), Shadal, or Cassutto. Of…

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In Search of Memory:Towards an Understanding of Baladhur

In Search of Memory:Towards an Understanding of Baladhur

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In a recent post at the Seforim blog, while reviewing R. Ovadiah Yosef’s recent work, Chazon Ovadia, I wrote as follows: “R’ Ovadiah Yosef is world famous for his unbelievable memory, resulting in a tremendous bekius. I once joked that he must have had someone develop a computer program and attach it to his brain to help him retain so much information and recall it at all times.” To this, one anonymous commenter wrote as follows: “Actually, there is a…

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Bibliography of English Translations of Medieval and Modern Rabbinic Bible Commentaries

Bibliography of English Translations of Medieval and Modern Rabbinic Bible Commentaries

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* Commentaries are arranged in chronological order, and then by book. For space and simplicity sake, works are identified only by their author’s and translator’s names or publishers; for further bibliographical information, copy and paste the call numbers into the JTS online catalog under “Search: Call Number begins with…” Items not (yet?) found in the JTS Library do not have call numbers associated with them and contain instead only basic bibliographic information. Only significantly lengthy (more than a chapter or…

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A New Book Collecting Commentaries on Targum Yonason

A New Book Collecting Commentaries on Targum Yonason

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The Targum Yonason is a fairly standard commentary on the Torah (we are only discussing the Torah one). Now, as most are aware, in fact this is not from Yonason but instead is more correctly called Targum Yerushalmi (Jerusalem Targum). In academic circles it is referred to as Pseudo-Jonathon. In all likelihood, the original name was in fact Targum Yerushalmi but was abbreviated as ת”י and thus mistakenly expanded to be תרגום יונתן and not the correct תרגום ירושלמי. Various…

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Rabbinic Portraits

Rabbinic Portraits

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There is a discussion on the always-wonderful-blog On The Main Line regarding a portrait attributed to Rashi. Someone MENACHEM BUTLER raised the well-known collection of famous Rabbinic personalities which appeared on an edition of the Shulhan Arukh. The edition to which they are referring to is the Shulhan Arukh printed in Mantua in 1721-23. This edition includes the standard commentaries as well as the commentary of R. Gur Areyeh Finzi (d. 1753). On the title page Finzi (or the printer)…

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Midrash Lekah Tov, part Deux

Midrash Lekah Tov, part Deux

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In a follow-up to Professor Carmi Horowitz’s recent post at the Seforim blog, I wanted to discuss, in a bit more detail, the new reprint of the Midrash Lekah Tov and further bolster Prof. Horowitz’s conclusion that this new reprint falls short of expectations as well as the Makhon who did this. In the world of Hebrew books there are many books published almost daily, while there is much quantity should not be mistaken for quality. In truth this is…

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Carmi Horowitz: A Critique of Two New Reprints

Carmi Horowitz: A Critique of Two New Reprints

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* Two new works have recently appeared on the market: a new edition of Midrash Lekah Tov and a new edition of the Perush on Sefer Yezirah of R. Yehudah b. Barzilai Barceloni. The following is based on an initial perusal of the two works. I have not read through the entire volumes. I. The new edition of Lekah Tov consists of three volumes published by Zikhron Aharon Jerusalem with a forward by Yonatan Blier. The first volume is on…

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Elliott Horowitz responds to David Kaufmann on Bugs Bunny

Elliott Horowitz responds to David Kaufmann on Bugs Bunny

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has written a letter to The Forward, available below to readers of the Seforim blog. (It has not yet appeared in The Forward.) As noted in the letter below, Prof. Elliott Horowitz has written two articles on the very question that Kaufmann discusses. See his “Odd Couples: The Eagle and the Hare, the Lion and the Unicorn” Jewish Studies Quarterly 11:3 (August 2004): 243-258, and “The People of the Image,” The New Republic 223:13 (September 25, 2000): 41-49. This is…

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Barukh Dayan Ha-Emet: Rabbi Dr. Noah Rosenbloom

Barukh Dayan Ha-Emet: Rabbi Dr. Noah Rosenbloom

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For those who have not seen the obituary notice in the New York Times (Aug 14, 2007; B6), the Seforim blog records the passing of Rabbi Dr. Noah Rosenbloom, a pulpit rabbi for over fifty years and longtime faculty member at Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women. He was the author of Luzzatto’s Ethico-Psychological Interpretation of Judaism: A Study in the Religious Philosophy of Samuel David Luzzatto (New York: Yeshiva University, 1965); Tradition in an Age of Reform: The Religious…

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Charles H. Manekin — Moritz Steinschneider’s Indecent Burial

Charles H. Manekin — Moritz Steinschneider’s Indecent Burial

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University of Maryland, College Park / Bar Ilan University Over a century has passed since the death of Moritz Steinschneider, the great orientalist, bibliographer, and historian of Jewish literature and culture. When Steinschneider died in 1907 at the age of 91, he was recognized by many as the greatest Jewish scholar of the previous century. His scholarly output numbered over fourteen hundred publications, ranging from short notices to books of over a thousand pages, a number that does not take…

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Mayer I. Gruber — How Did Rashi Make a Living?

Mayer I. Gruber — How Did Rashi Make a Living?

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Professor in the Department of Bible Archaeology and the Ancient Near East Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheva, Israel It has long been taken for granted that Rashi engaged in viticulture, which is to say, the cultivation of vineyards and the preparation and sale of wine made from the grapes he cultivated. However, in 1978 the question of how Rashi made a living was reopened by Haym Soloveitchik. Indeed, Soloveitchik asserted: “Indeed the presumption is against anyone being a winegrower…

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The Unintended Perils of Plagiarizing

The Unintended Perils of Plagiarizing

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While we have previously discussed several instances of plagiarism, I wanted to discuss one more which is interesting in its irony. Originally printed in Vienna, in 1820, Hut HaMeshulash b’Sha’arim, was reprinted in 1998. This sefer is actually three-seforim-in-one arranged based on the order of the parshiyot. The three are from a grandfather, father and son. They are, respectively, Sha’ar Asher by R. Asher Lemel HaLevi, chief rabbi of Eisenstadt; Sha’ar HaMayim by his son-in-law, R. Jehiel Mihel, also the…

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