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.”…
Parshanut: English Translations of Medieval and Modern Rabbinic Bible Commentary (Exegetical, Philosophic, Kabbalistic and Hasidic) Yisrael Dubitsky* Commentaries are arranged in chronological order, and then by book. For space and simplicity sake, works are identified only by their author’s and translator’s names or publishers; for further bibliographical information, copy and paste the call numbers into the JTS online catalog under “Search: Call Number begins with…” Items not (yet?) found in the JTS Library do not have call numbers associated with…
The Targum Yonason is a fairly standard commentary on the Torah (we are only discussing the Torah one). Now, as most are aware, in fact this is not from Yonason but instead is more correctly called Targum Yerushalmi (Jerusalem Targum). In academic circles it is referred to as Pseudo-Jonathon. In all likelihood, the original name was in fact Targum Yerushalmi but was abbreviated as ת”י and thus mistakenly expanded to be תרגום יונתן and not the correct תרגום ירושלמי. Various…
There is a discussion on the always-wonderful-blog On The Main Line regarding a portrait attributed to Rashi. Someone MENACHEM BUTLER raised the well-known collection of famous Rabbinic personalities which appeared on an edition of the Shulhan Arukh. The edition to which they are referring to is the Shulhan Arukh printed in Mantua in 1721-23. This edition includes the standard commentaries as well as the commentary of R. Gur Areyeh Finzi (d. 1753). On the title page Finzi (or the printer)…
In a follow-up to Professor Carmi Horowitz’s recent post at the Seforim blog, I wanted to discuss, in a bit more detail, the new reprint of the Midrash Lekah Tov and further bolster Prof. Horowitz’s conclusion that this new reprint falls short of expectations as well as the Makhon who did this. In the world of Hebrew books there are many books published almost daily, while there is much quantity should not be mistaken for quality. In truth this is…