Upcoming Kestenbaum Auction #51 – Alphonse Cassuto Collection Part 2.

Upcoming Kestenbaum Auction #51 – Alphonse Cassuto Collection Part 2.

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Kestenbaum & Co. will be holding an auction this Thursday, June 23. The catalog is available online at the Kestenbaum site (link). This auction includes the second part of the Alfonso Cassuto collection which is heavily focused on books originating or relating to the Iberian Peninsula. One can read more about that collection at the website or see the last auction catalog. In addition, there are a few controversial books of note. First, lot 136 is the exceedingly rare first…

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Book Week 2011

Book Week 2011

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Book Week 2011 by Eliezer Brodt Book week has just begin 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 and here). Shavuah HaSefer is a sale which takes place all across the country in stores, malls and special places rented out just for the sale. There are places where strictly “frum” seforim are sold…

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Pashkevilin and Benny Brown’s New Book on The Hazon Ish

Pashkevilin and Benny Brown’s New Book on The Hazon Ish

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[cross-posted at the Michtavim blog] Following the internal self-destructive collapse of the proverbial ghetto walls within Jewish communities around the world, the actual walls of Jerusalem continue to be adorned with elaborate pashkevilin, broadsides, and as The Satmar Rebbe, the late Reb Yoel Teitelbaum, zy”a, once allegedly offered a deep philosophical preach: ‘Meah Shearim is sustained by the pashkevilin on her walls.’ Recent scholarship on these broadsides has been offered by Benjamin Brown, “The Socio-Religious Texture of the Meah Shearim…

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Yom Tov Sheni and the Customs With Regard to Travelers

Yom Tov Sheni and the Customs With Regard to Travelers

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Yom Tov Sheni and the Customs With Regard to Travelers By J. Jean Ajdler J. Jean Ajdler of Brussels, Belgium, is a civil and structural engineer. He has published articles about medieval Jewish astronomy, the history of the Jewish calendar, and Talmudic metrology, and is the author of Hilkhot Kiddush ha-Hodesh al-pi ha-Rambam (Jerusalem: Sifriati, 1996). This is his first contribution to the Seforim blog. Abstract: In ancient times the customs of the communities were extremely variable the one from…

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A Printing Mistake and the Mysterious Origins of Rashbi’s Yahrzeit*

A Printing Mistake and the Mysterious Origins of Rashbi’s Yahrzeit*

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A Printing Mistake and the Mysterious Origins of Rashbi’s Yahrzeit* by Eliezer Brodt In this post I would like to deal with tracing the early sources for the great celebrations that take place worldwide on Lag Ba-Omer, specifically at the Kever of Rashbi (R. Shimon b. Yochai) in Meron.[1] A few years back on the Seforim Blog I dealt with some of these issues (link). More recently in Ami Magazine (# 22) I returned to some of the topics. This…

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