ManuscriptBoy: Moritz Steinschneider’s online presence has been significantly augmented by the Jewish National Library’s Digitized Book Repository. They seem to have scanned all of his German books, as well as the Hebrew translation of his general work ‘Sifrut Yisrael’. And also includes an interesting anecdote that someone once told me how Prof. Moshe Bar Asher shut himself in a room for a couple of days, and emerged having taught himself Ugaritic.
Published several weeks ago, Rabbi Hillel Goldberg, Executive Editor of both the Intermountain Jewish News and of Tradition, has written a ‘Review Essay‘ (“Discontinuities: The Case of Saul Lieberman,” reviewing Elijah J. Schochet and Solomon Spiro’s Saul Lieberman: The Man and His Work), in Tradition 40:3 (Fall 2007): 69-75. A PDF of this article is only available to subscribers to TraditionOnline and/or members of the Rabbinical Council of America. While the aim of a “Review Essay” is usually focused on…
Ohr Yisrael no. 50 (Tevet, 5768); 256 pages. The new issue of Ohr Yisrael, no. 50. has a couple of articles I wanted to highlight. First, they have a section devoted to essentially whether the ArtScroll Gemara is a good thing or not. While in the United States the English version has been around for awhile, only recently has the Hebrew edition been on the market and it appears that it is very popular. Thus, there are those who are…
December 2007 New Book List By Eliezer Brodt As previously mentioned before from time to time we hope to write up lists of new seforim with a short description. Here is a list of some new seforim that came out in the past few weeks [some of these seforim will be the subject of their own longer posts]. Iggeret Hamussar (Jerusalem, 2007); 269 pages. This sefer is the last will and testament of the Rambam (with nikkud) that he wrote…
In addition to my work that will continue at the Seforim blog — we’ve got some great posts going up soon — I have recently started a new blog, the Michtavim blog, an affiliate of the Seforim blog, where I hope to provide interested readers with up-to-date references and discussions of the latest scholarship from the world of academic Jewish studies and Orthodox Judaism. Over the next weeks, in addition to posting my musings on a daily basis, I will…
The Customs Associated with Joy on Chanukah and Their More Obscure Sourcesby: Eliezer Brodt In previous posts we have discussed some of the customs relating to Chanukah, in this post I wanted to address those customs connected to Simcha (joy) and do so by highlighting some rather unknown sources. Amongst the topics I will discuss are eating a seudah, dairy products, sefuganiot, playing cards and dreidel. 1. Seudah R. Eliezer Ashkenazi (1512-85) writes in the introduction to his classic work…