The Seforim Blog – Page 16 – All about Seforim – New and Old, and Jewish Bibliography

Legacy Judaica: Astrological Title Pages, R. Hutner, and Other Items of Note

May 2, 2022 admin Comments 12 comments

Legacy Judaica‘s Spring auction is on May 8, 2022. The catalog includes some especially rare first editions, Siddur ha-Shelah, (no. 119), Mesilat Yesharim (no. 45), a volume of the Bomberg edition of the Talmud (lot 10), and some other items of interest. Sefer Evronot, Offenbach, 1722, (lot no. 63) is an unusual Hebrew book because it includes paper cut-outs that are reattached to the book and form an interstellar calculator allowing precise determination of the calendar. Despite the celestial nature…

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New Seforim lists, Seforim sale, Highlights of the Mossad HaRav Kook Sale.

April 25, 2022 admin Comments 4 comments

New seforim lists, Seforim sale, Highlights of the Mossad HaRav Kook Sale. By Eliezer Brodt This is a the second in a new series which I hope to post monthly. The post (and series) hopes to serve a few purposes. It has a list of about one hundred items. The first section lists some new interesting seforim and thereby making the Seforim Blog readership aware of their recent publication. Second, to make these works available for purchase for those interested….

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Eruv Tavshilin: A Scribal Error or Deliberate Reformation?

April 21, 2022 admin Comments 1 comment

Eruv Tavshilin: A Scribal Error or Deliberate Reformation? by: Dan Rabinowitz The Washington Haggadah was written by the scribe Joel ben Simon, and is currently housed at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and is available online in a beautiful digital copy. Joel produced the Haggadah in the late 15th century. As so much of the core Hebraica collection at the Library of Congress, the manuscript was sold by Efraim Deinard to the Library probably around 1916. (Deinard was one of…

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Lectures on Hagadah Shel Pesach and about Hagaon Rav Chaim Kanievsky ZTZ”L’s Seforim

April 14, 2022 admin Comments 5 comments

Lectures on Hagadah Shel Pesach and about Hagaon Rav Chaim Kanievsky ZTZ”l’s Seforim By Eliezer Brodt Earlier this week I had a conversation with Rabbi Moshe Schwed of All Daf, about the Hagadah. Topics included: how many Hagadas there are in existence, various works on the development on the Pesach Seder, and seforim devoted to the Halachos of the Seder, by Rishonim and Achronim. It concluded with a short discussion about illustrated Hagadas and the reasons behind them, available here. It…

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Kitniyot and Mechirat Chametz: Paradoxical Approaches to the Chametz Prohibition

April 12, 2022 admin Comments 19 comments

“Contemporary Rabbis don’t bother to interrogate the sources of law and custom; instead, their purpose is to traffic in chumrot and create new prohibitions. They are unable to appreciate their hypocrisy … on the one hand, they roar like a lion against those who are open to change and the reformists, that one cannot alter an iota from what the kadmonim imposed, while on the other hand, casually discard the kadmonim whenever the achronim create new chumrot and they fight…

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Some Notes on Verifying the Authenticity of the Alleged Rav Yisrael Salanter Photographs

April 11, 2022 admin Comments 14 comments

Some Notes on Verifying the Authenticity of the Alleged Rav Yisrael Salanter Photographs By Shnayer Leiman There are some who claim that the photographs of R. Yisrael Salanter’s sons can be used for the likeness of their father, since we have testimony that the sons looked almost exactly like their father. Let us examine the evidence. 1. Aside from the 3 published photographs of R. Yisrael’s son R. Yitzchak (see “The Recently Published Photographs of R. Yisrael Salanter”), the only other extant sketch…

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