The JNUL has an excellent site regarding the history of the Shmitta controversy. They have the materials divided by year and the materials contain broadsides and other important but difficult to obtain materials. The site is here.
For those interested in the topic of the permissibility of praying to angels and the controversy surrounding this topic see the post on Machnesi Rachamim and Plagiarism which has been updated a bit and now includes some interesting scans. One scan in particular, the title page, is a case of a very elaborate and somewhat unique illustrated title page. In the next couple of days I hope to return to this topic and debunk a popular explanation regarding a well-known…
What follows is a post from the Seforim blog’s frequent and erudite contributor, R. Eliezer Brodt. This post is an excerpt of a chapter from his upcoming book on the halachos and minhagim of Rosh HaShana. The post below deals with the statement, whose source is from R. Yosef Karo’s maggid, (known as Mishna), to refrain from eating meat on Rosh HaShana. This statement appears to be contrary to an (actual) Mishna in Chulin. R. Brodt hopes to have this…
As a somewhat belated followup to an earlier discussion at my AJHistory blog (z”l), I would like to add the following to the list of interesting-academic-footnotes: There is something reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges in the seemingly infinite series of translations represented in [Azariah] de Rossi’s Hebrew translations of the Latin translation of the Greek account of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, made only more dizzying by Joanna Weinberg’s English translation of de Rossi’s Hebrew translation of the…
What Do Adon Olam and ס”ט Mean ? [1] by By Marc B. Shapiro ס”ט 1. People often refer to me as a Modern Orthodox intellectual. There are actually quite a number of us out there. If you hear someone using words like “ontological,” “existential,” “mimetic,” and now, “tergiversation”[2] you can assume he in in our club. Also, another telltale sign is that when we give divrei Torah you will hear us refer to Philo, the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha (if we…
In Search of Memory:Towards An Understanding of the BaladhurBy Rabbi Eliezer Brodt In a recent post at the Seforim blog, while reviewing R. Ovadiah Yosef’s recent work, Chazon Ovadia, I wrote as follows: “R’ Ovadiah Yosef is world famous for his unbelievable memory, resulting in a tremendous bekius. I once joked that he must have had someone develop a computer program and attach it to his brain to help him retain so much information and recall it at all times.”…