Obituary: R. Yosef Buxbaum zt”lby Marc B. Shapiro The Torah world lost a very important figure earlier this month, with the passing of R. Yosef Buxbaum at age 62. In fact, I can’t think of anyone, in the entire history of Torah publishing, who achieved as much as he. There is a lot that can be said about Rabbi Buxbaum, but for the purposes of the Seforim blog his relevant achievement is the founding, and directing for many years, of…
Kestenbaum & Company will be holding a auction on March 22 and their catalog is available online here. For those interested in a free sefer, someone is offering the KeMotzei Shalal Rov for free[!], you can contact them at avadar21-at-gmail.com.
Rabbi Henkin and The First Heter Agunot in AmericaBy Adam Mintz The tragedy of the agunah, the woman who is unable to receive a get from her husband, has plagued the Jewish people since time immemorial. Rabbis and scholars throughout the centuries have contended with this issue in an attempt to free agunot to remarry. In the United States this issue was first formally addressed following World War I. European Jews soldiers, fighting on both sides of the war, were…
OnTheMainLine has an informative post about C.D. Ginsburg, with links to some of the latter’s publications, and includes a stellar picture of the famous apostate. For his The Massorah Compiled from Manuscripts, Lexically and Alphabetically Arranged, see I, II, III, IV, V, VI [PDF].
R. Avraham ben haGra: A Victim of Plagiarism? In several previous posts at the Seforim blog, I have discussed instances of plagiarism and, in this post, I would like to mention one of the more famous instances of plagiarism within Jewish literature. To be clear, the issues of plagiarism under discussion lack any ambiguity, these discussed are limited to when the entire book is republished with the only difference being the authors name at the beginning. One of the smaller…
The famed and prestigious Goldman Rare Books [est. 1978] has announced their new web-presence, where remarkable items from their collection of Hebraica & Judaica — including: American Judaica, Amsterdam, Bible, Children, Early Printing, Ephemera, German Judaica, Haskalah, Judeo Arabic, Liturgy, Manuscripts, Miscellaneous, Old Yiddish, Periodicals, Rabbinics and Yiddish — are now available for viewing and purchase at GoldmanRareBooks.com.