The Kabbalah of Relation by Rabbi Bezalel Naor book review

The Kabbalah of Relation by Rabbi Bezalel Naor book review

Comments 5 comments

Bezalel Naor, The Kabbalah of Relation (Spring Valley, NY: Orot, 2012) Before discussing Rabbi Naor’s new book, I must say that anything with his name on the cover should be of interest to any explorer of Jewish mystical tradition. Despite some twenty first-rate scholarly works in English and Hebrew, Bezalel Naor remains a “hidden light,” perhaps too brilliant for many to gaze upon directly. He is one of the leading intellectuals in the traditional world of Jewish scholarship—as he would…

Read More Read More

A Review of “Alo Na’aleh”

A Review of “Alo Na’aleh”

Comments 3 comments

The opinion of R’ Yoel Teitelbaum, better known as the Satmar Rebbe, opposing the State of Israel has recently received a resurgence of interest. With the shifting to the right of the Orthodox Jewish world in general, as well as attempts by some Israeli politicians to end Chareidi draft exemptions in particular, many Chareidim are now feeling sympathetic to the Satmar opinion. In any discussion online about Israel drafting Chareidim or cutting funding to yeshivas, there will always be one…

Read More Read More

Quiz Runoff

Quiz Runoff

Comments 500 comments

Written on 4 Shevat, 5773, the yahrzeit of R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg 1. In the last post, as the quiz question, I asked for the name of the first Hebrew book published by a living author. The answer is Nofet Tzufim by R. Judah Messer Leon. As the Wikipedia entry for Messer Leon states, this work “was printed by Abraham Conat of Mantua in 1475-6, the only work by a living author printed in Hebrew in the fifteenth century.” A…

Read More Read More

Hakirah, Metzitzah, and More

Hakirah, Metzitzah, and More

Comments 7 comments

Hakirah has performed a valuable service in dealing forthrightly with the matter of homosexuality. Issue no. 13 (2012) contains R. Chaim Rapoport’s “Judaism and Homosexuality: An Alternative Rabbinic View,” which I think is an outstanding presentation of the alternative to what has seemingly become the “official” haredi position in this matter. This “official” position is, in my opinion, so misguided that I would like to say a few words on the topic, since R. Rapoport did not go far enough…

Read More Read More

Winter book sale 2013

Winter book sale 2013

Comments 8 comments

This list consists of two parts. Part one is composed of seforim and books [two parts] which I came across while hunting for seforim. Most of these titles are very hard to find. Some of the prices are better than others. Almost all the books are in good shape. There is only one copy of most of these titles so they are being sold on a first come, first serve basis. Part two is a few lists of seforim which…

Read More Read More

A Letter from R. Nathan Kamenetsky

A Letter from R. Nathan Kamenetsky

Comments 3 comments

In response to my last post on the Seforim Blog, R. Nathan Kamenetsky sent me a long e-mail. Because of its value to those with an interest in the Lithuanian Torah world, I asked Rabbi Kamenetsky for permission to post it here, and he graciously agreed – Marc Shapiro The central figure, albeit a mostly passive one, in the story I shall tell below is R’ Maisheh Finkel, one of the twin sons who were the youngest children of the…

Read More Read More

Midrashic Exegesis and Biblical Interpretation in the Meshekh Hokhmah

Midrashic Exegesis and Biblical Interpretation in the Meshekh Hokhmah

Comments 3 comments

In honor of Yitshak Cohen’s just-published book, “Or Sameah” Halakhah u-Mishpat: Mishnato shel Ha-Rav Meir Simhah ha-Kohen al Mishneh Torah le-ha-Rambam, the Seforim Blog is happy to present this post in English, which is taken from a longer article to appear in the Jewish Law Annual. Introduction R. Meir Simhah Hacohen (henceforth: RMS) was born in 1843 in the village of Butrimonys, in the Vilnius district. Gaining renown as one of his generation’s leading scholars, in 1888 he was appointed…

Read More Read More

German Orthodoxy, Hakirah, and More

German Orthodoxy, Hakirah, and More

Comments 29 comments

1. I recently published a translation of Hirsch’s famous lecture on Schiller. You can see it here. At first I thought that this lecture remained untranslated into English for so long because of ideological concerns. (I still think that this is the reason it was never translated into Hebrew.) Yet before the article appeared, I was informed that the reason it did not appear in the English translation of the Collected Writings of Hirsch was not due to ideological censorship,…

Read More Read More

Blazing Critics

Blazing Critics

Comments 66 comments

Recently, the question of how critical a reviewer should be was raised by Pete Wells’ review of Guy Fieri’s Times Square restaurant. In that review, Wells eviscerates everything about the restaurant. For example, he asks Mr. Fieri: “Hey, did you try that blue drink, the one that glows like nuclear waste? The watermelon margarita? Any idea why it tastes like some combination of radiator fluid and formaldehyde?” Needless to say, Mr. Fieri was not pleased and he fired back, alleging…

Read More Read More

Rashbam the Talmudist, Reconsidered

Rashbam the Talmudist, Reconsidered

Comments 62 comments

* Abstract Rashbam (Rabbi Samuel ben Meir of Troyes) is known today primarily for his Biblical commentary, which is often seen as a forerunner to modern academic study of the Bible. Rashbam’s Talmudic commentary, by contrast, is often dismissed as merely a more “prolix” version of his grandfather Rashi, devoid of the critical methods that make his Biblical commentary unique. While a proper study of Rashbam’s Talmudic exegesis has yet to be written, this exploratory essay seeks to demonstrate that…

Read More Read More

Wine Strength and Dilution

Wine Strength and Dilution

Comments 24 comments

June 2009 Isaiah Cox trained as an historian at Princeton, and conducted postgraduate work in medieval history at King’s College London. He is also a technologist, with over 50 patents pending or issued to date. iwcox@alumni.princeton.edu There is a common understanding among rabbonim that wines in the time of the Gemara were stronger than they are today. This is inferred because we know from the Gemara that wine was customarily diluted by at least three-to-one, and as much as six-to-one,…

Read More Read More

A selection from Strictly Kosher Reading by Yoel Finkelman

A selection from Strictly Kosher Reading by Yoel Finkelman

Comments 0 Comment

’s recent book, Strictly Kosher Reading: Popular Literature and the Condition of Contemporary Orthodoxy. Coalescence The first function of Haredi popular literature involves the “coalescence” of the Jewish and the non-Jewish. In defining coalescence, Sylvia Barack Fishman distinguishes it from two other common ways of describing relationships between Judaism and general culture. First, “compartmentalization” involves a situation in which the Jewish tradition holds sway in its own spheres, such as the synagogue or Shabbat table, while non-Jewish culture dominates in…

Read More Read More

Who is Buried in the Vilna Gaon’s Tomb? A Contribution Toward the Identification of the Authentic Grave of the Vilna Gaon

Who is Buried in the Vilna Gaon’s Tomb? A Contribution Toward the Identification of the Authentic Grave of the Vilna Gaon

Comments 36 comments

1. Prologue This essay attempts to identify the authentic grave of the Vilna Gaon (d. 1797).1 As will become apparent, it surely is not the grave that Jewish pilgrims are shown today when they visit Vilna. We shall attempt to identify his authentic grave by applying the biblical rule: על פי שני עדים יקום דבר “a matter is established by the testimony of two witnesses.” We shall cite two different kinds of witnesses. One witness will represent primarily תורה שבכתב,…

Read More Read More