The Seforim Blog – Page 151 – All about Seforim – New and Old, and Jewish Bibliography

Marc B. Shapiro: A Tale of Two Lost Archives

August 12, 2008 admin Comments 5 comments

A Tale of Two Lost Archives by Marc B. Shapiro I have spent much of my professional life rummaging through collections of documents, mostly in well-kept archives, but sometimes also in hard-to-reach places in basements and attics. Fortunately, I have made some great discoveries in these places, but I will now tell you a story that doesn’t have a happy ending. It begins around fifteen years ago, when I was researching the life of R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg. With the…

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Some Literary, Scholarly & Halachic Perspectives on Medieval Ash

August 8, 2008 admin Comments 1 comment

Some Literary, Scholarly & Halachic Perspectives onMedieval Ashkenazi Attitudes Toward Martyrdom by Yitzhak of בין דין לדין Prose George Eliot, in Daniel Deronda, depicts the ineffable, exquisite Mirah Lapidoth contemplating her recent abortive suicide attempt: She went on musingly– “I thought it was not wicked. Death and life are one before the Eternal. I know our fathers slew their children and then slew themselves, to keep their souls pure. I meant it so. (George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, Chapter XVII) She…

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Jews, Drinking & Kiddush Clubs

August 5, 2008 admin Comments 0 Comment

The popular press, in this case Newsweek, does not always get Jewish practices correct. Newsweek just published a short piece on Jewish drinking and specifically mention “Kiddush clubs.” While the article makes it appear that this is a new problem, (and to be fair, it seems that is what they were erronously told by those they spoke with), in fact, as is almost always the case, ain hadash tachas ha-shemesh – there is nothing new under the sun. First, the…

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All New Posts are at a New Address

August 5, 2008 admin Comments 0 Comment

All new posts for the Seforim blog appear at the new address www.seforim.traditiononline.org However, you can still access the old post on this site or, all the old posts, including comments, have been moved to the new site and are accessible there.

More on Ma’adane Eretz on Shevi’it

July 31, 2008 admin Comments 0 Comment

More on Ma’adanei Eretz on Shevi’it Between the ‘Inner Family Circle‘ and the Published Word By Yitzchak Jakobovitz a) In a recent post on the Seforim Blog, Rabbi Chaim Rapoport spoke of the extent to which some disciples of the late Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach have gone in order to disassociate their late mentor from the heter mechirah, a procedure that he defended robustly in his work Ma’adanei Eretz. To this end, a censored version of the original work was…

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Meir Hildesheimer – Historical Perspectives on Rabbi Samson Rapha

July 23, 2008 admin Comments 0 Comment

On the recent occasion of the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888), Dr. Meir Hildesheimer of The Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch Cathedra for the Research of the Torah im Derekh Eretz Movement (Bar-Ilan University), delivered a paper entitled “Historical Perspectives on Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch,” at the Jüdisches Museum in Frankfurt (7 June 2008). The remarks below appear with the express permission of Dr. Hildesheimer. Historical Perspectives on Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch by Meir…

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