The Seforim Blog

A Short Note Regarding an Illustrated Title Page and A Possible Unicum   There are a series of books, Seder ha-haʻarakhah ve-haHanhagah, that record the tax law and taxes paid by the Mantuan community and were published in Mantua. [1] The taxes were calculated by communally elected assessment formulators.  The taxes were used to support the entire communal infrastructure, including the administration of communal organizations and funds for the poor.  As today, each person would provide an accounting of their…

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For a collection of posts on Purim see here.  These deal with topics as diverse as Jewish humor and parodies, a series on the the origins of hamantaschen (and here and here), banging at the mention of Haman’s name, piyutim for Purim, mishcholot manot, identifying the personalities of Megliat Ester in secular sources, how to approach the story of Ester with children by the late Elliot Horowitz, as well as a couple posts regarding his book on Jewish violence and…

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Correction and Apology For an Earlier Post A few months back we featured a fascinating two-part post about newly discovered documents from Rav Herzog’s Archive. One of the discoveries of the post was a document about Meir Kahane written to President Chaim Herzog by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik in the summer of 1984 which was surprisingly supportive of Kahane. A careful examination of the document by the family of Rabbi Soloveitchik reached the opposite conclusion. This letter is a crude…

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