The Seforim Blog – Page 153 – All about Seforim – New and Old, and Jewish Bibliography

A Response to Dr. Shapiro: A Defense of the Torah Temimah

February 10, 2008 admin Comments 10 comments

A Response to Dr. Shaprio: A Defense of the Torah Temimahby: Y. Lander (of the Ishim v’Shitot blog) I read with interest Dr. Shapiro’s recent post questioning the accuracy of R’ Baruch Epstein’s tale concerning his dialogue with the Netziv’s first wife, Rayna Batya. Dr. Shapiro points to several discrepancies in R. Epstein’s account and based on those discrepancies posits that R’ Baruch deliberately contrived the story in order to call attention to the plight of women in his time….

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Ofeq Institute and the New (English) Version of the Messilat Yesharim

January 30, 2008 admin Comments 0 Comment

Ofeq Institute and the New (English) Version of the Messilat Yesharimby Eliezer Brodt The Messilat Yesharim, by R. Moshe Chaim Luzzato (Ramchal), is one of the foundational works of mussar. [1] The Gra, among others, praise the Messilat Yesharim.[2] As such, any addition to its oeuvre is important in its own right. The Ofeq Institute* has recently published an English translation of an alternative version of the Messilat Yesharim. This version is fundamentally different than the standard edition of Messilat…

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Mayim Hayyim, the Baal Shem Tov, and R. Meir the son of R. Jacob Emden

January 29, 2008 admin Comments 2 comments

Sources contemporary to the Baal Shem Tov that attest to his deeds, or that even discuss him at all, are sparse. Although some secular sources, including tax records and other documents, have recently been unearthed by academic researchers, there is a paucity of Jewish texts. Most of the “historical” record regarding the Baal Shem Tov comes from a collection of stories, Shivhei Ha-Besht.[1] That work, however, was collected much later and is less reliable than others when assessing the Baal…

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“Derashot Shel Maran: A Little Studied Aspect of Maran Ovadiah Yosef’s Weltanschauung” at the Michtavim blog

January 25, 2008 admin Comments 0 Comment

In a recent post at the Michtavim blog entitled “Derashot Shel Maran: A Little Studied Aspect of Maran Ovadiah Yosef’s Weltanschauung,” I discuss a shift within the research and writings of Dr. Kimmy Caplan from the area of sermons of historical American rabbis to the contemporary haredi community and contemporary Orthodox historiography (the latter which will be the subject of an upcoming post at the Michtavim blog). I believe that his varied areas of research have reunited in his recent…

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Pini Dunner — Mercaz Agudat Ha-Rabbanim Be-Lita, Kovno, 1931

January 21, 2008 admin Comments 18 comments

Pini Dunner B.A (Hons), formerly rabbi of London’s Saatchi Synagogue, is an avid collector of polemical and controversial Hebraica, with a very large, diverse private collection of such material. Many items in his collection are unknown and unrecorded, and relate to long forgotten, obscure controversies. This is his first post at the Seforim blog in a series about rare polemical pieces from his personal collection. Mercaz Agudat Ha-Rabbanim Be-Lita, Kovno, 1931 Pini Dunner(London, England) In the mid-1920s the rabbi and…

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About Rabbi Avraham Korman

January 20, 2008 admin Comments 0 Comment

In his recent post at the Seforim blog, Prof. Marc B. Shapiro mentioned Rabbi Avraham Korman [at note 33] and as some readers have requested additional information on the latter, please see below: