The Kabbalat Shabbat Memorandum by Rabbi Prof. Daniel Sperber

The Kabbalat Shabbat Memorandum by Rabbi Prof. Daniel Sperber

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The Kabbalat Shabbat Memorandum       Sivan 5773 by Rabbi Prof. Daniel Sperber The recent rather acrid debate on women leading the Kabbalat Shabbat service appeared, at first, to be primarily a halachic one. But it soon overflowed into additional areas, revealing it as a clearly political polemic. Indeed, I found the whole discussion which appeared on a whole series of blogs, and a major published article, most astonishing. We are not talking about women reading the Torah and/or having aliyot. The…

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Book week 2013

Book week 2013

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Book week 2013 By: Eliezer Brodt Book week just began in Eretz Yisrael. As I have written in previous years every year in Israel, around Shavous time, there is a period of about ten days called Shavuah Hasefer – Book Week (see here, here here, here  here and here). Many of the companies offer sales for the whole month. Shavuah HaSefer is a sale which takes place all across the country in stores, malls and special places rented out just…

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Partnership Minyanim and More

Partnership Minyanim and More

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Partnership Minyanim and More Marc B. Shapiro 1. A few people have wanted me to comment on the recent debate between Rabbis Barry Freundel and Zev Farber about the so-called Partnership Minyanim in which women lead Kabbalat Shabbat. See here. The issue goes back to R. Freundel’s article in Tradition 44:2 (2011) on the topic. I was planning to respond to this article when it first appeared, and even wrote some pages, but I never completed the piece. Since the issue has once again…

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Deciphering the Talmud: The First English Edition of the Talmud Revisited. Michael Levi Rodkinson: His Translation of the Talmud, and the Ensuing Controversy

Deciphering the Talmud: The First English Edition of the Talmud Revisited. Michael Levi Rodkinson: His Translation of the Talmud, and the Ensuing Controversy

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In honor of the publication of Marvin J. Heller’s new book, Further Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book (Leiden, 2013), the Seforim Blog is happy to present this abridgment of chapter 13.                                                                                                                     Deciphering the Talmud: The First English Edition of the Talmud Revisited.       Michael Levi Rodkinson: His Translation of the Talmud, and the Ensuing Controversy      Marvin J. Heller The Talmud, the quintessential Jewish book, is a challenging work.  A source of Bible interpretation, halakhah,…

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Rav Kook’s Missing Student

Rav Kook’s Missing Student

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Rav Kook’s Missing Student[1] by Bezalel Naor Recent years have seen a breakthrough regarding the elusive identity of “Monsieur Chouchani,” the mysterious vagabond who in the capacity of mentor, exerted such an incredibly profound effect upon the Nobel-laureate novelist Elie Wiesel as well as the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas in the post-war, post-Holocaust years in France. I am referring to the identification of Chouchani as none other than Hillel Pearlman, an early student of Rav Kook in his short-lived Jaffa Yeshivah.[2] Pivotal…

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‘Masa’ot Yerushalayim’ and the ‘Sabba Kaddisha’ R. Shlomo Eliezer Alfandari

‘Masa’ot Yerushalayim’ and the ‘Sabba Kaddisha’ R. Shlomo Eliezer Alfandari

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‘Masa’ot Yerushalayim’ and the ‘Sabba  Kaddisha’ R. Shlomo Eliezer Alfandari By: Moshe Maimon One of the greatest and most unique Torah scholars, Sephardic or otherwise, of the past 100 years was R. Shlomo Eliezer Alfandari . His life spanned about a century[1] and his prolific rabbinic career included stints in Istanbul, Damascus, Safed and Jerusalem. Besides for being an outstanding scholar with a near-photographic memory he was also extremely diligent and was a prodigious writer of responsa and novellae. Additionally, he…

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