Also, if you haven’t already seen it Menachem Mendal has a very interesting post about using oat matzo for pessach. He also has a great post on another story assumed to be of Jewish origin which is not (the story of the two brothers and the temple mount). Also one hopes that Mississippi Fred McDowell will post on his excellent site English Hebraica, on the early haggadas printed with English or in England. Finally, although not directly related to pesach,…
The first fully illustrated haggadah was the Prague 1526 haggadah. This haggadah was reprinted in 1977 by Mekor and is now available for everyone at the Jewish National University Library site here. (They have other important haggadas available for viewing including some of the earliest haggadas). The Prague haggadah is filled with fascinating and important illustrations. As we have seen previously, the Prague haggadah contained nudes, which when appropriated later were removed. This included in the haggadah context as well…
I hope to have a few posts in the coming days discussing some of the artwork found in various haggdah. While for hundreds of years artwork played an integral part of the haggadah recently this has fell into disuse. While there are few notable exceptions to this, Raskin, Moss Haggadahs, this practice of richly illustrating the haggdah has been replaced with a focus on commentaries. One of the reasons, however, the practice of illustrating the haggadah, can be found in…
Now, as the Yiddish newspaper Der Yid has gotten around to commenting on the book HaGaon, I thought it would be worthwhile flesh out the entire controversy surrounding this book. Interestingly, R. Kamentsky in Making of a Godol actually discusses this very topic, although not in the context of HaGaon. HaGaon written by R. Dov Eliakh in three volumes discusses everything and anything having to do with the Vilna Gaon. Most of the book is not controversial at all, instead,…
Rabbi David Feldman, who is well known for his book on issues relating to Jewish law and the beginning of life (abortion, birth control etc.), has now published via Yashar Books, a book on end of life issues and Jewish law. This book covers such topics as reproductive technology, stem cells, organ transplants, suicide, and determining death. Although it covers such weighty topics it is a rather easy read. Rabbi Feldman eschews highly technical discussion and instead has opened the…
Not that this is surprising, as Dei’ah veDibur is the English version of the Yated Neeman, but they have also posted the article and the new ban from below on their site in English.