This High Holidays: Are we Praying to be Raised or Praying to be Lowered?

This High Holidays: Are we Praying to be Raised or Praying to be Lowered?

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This High Holidays: Are we Praying to be Raised or Praying to be Lowered? Yaakov Jaffe The high note of the Yamim Noraim service, both literally and figuratively, growing up, was the two-word phrase “mi yarum,” “who will be raised,” halfway through the U-Netaneh Tokef piyyut. These two words proceed the congregation’s cry of the now-anthem of the day “Repentance, prayer, charity can remove[1] the evil of[2] the decree,” and the two-word phrase carries a special intensity.[3] “Who will be…

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From Medina Raḥamim to Elul Seliḥot: Toward a Prehistory of Nocturnal Penitential Prayer

From Medina Raḥamim to Elul Seliḥot: Toward a Prehistory of Nocturnal Penitential Prayer

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From Medina Raḥamim to Elul Seliḥot: Toward a Prehistory of Nocturnal Penitential Prayer Aton M. Holzer Shulamit Elizur, the undisputed doyenne of piyyut scholarship, published in 2016 a characteristically magisterial study on the origins of the seliḥot liturgy.[1] This liturgical category – like the prayerbook as a whole – is not attested before the eighth and ninth centuries. The great payyetanim of late antique Eretz Israel – Yose ben Yose, Yannai, and R. Eleazar ha-Qalir – composed qinot, qerovot, and…

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Mikra Pashut: A New Reading of the Tanakh

Mikra Pashut: A New Reading of the Tanakh

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Mikra Pashut: A New Reading of the Tanakh David Curwin David Curwin is an independent scholar, who has researched and published widely on Bible, Jewish thought and philosophy, and Hebrew language. His first book, “Kohelet – A Map to Eden” was published by Koren/Maggid in 2023. Other writings, both academic and popular, have appeared in Lehrhaus, Tradition, Hakirah, and Jewish Bible Quarterly. He blogs about Hebrew language topics at www.balashon.com. A technical writer in the software industry, David resides in Efrat…

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The Aderet (part 2); Sonya Diskin and R. Yitzhak Yeruham Diskin; Zvi Glatt; and a New Letter from R. Herzog

The Aderet (part 2); Sonya Diskin and R. Yitzhak Yeruham Diskin; Zvi Glatt; and a New Letter from R. Herzog

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The Aderet (part 2); Sonya Diskin and R. Yitzhak Yeruham Diskin; Zvi Glatt; and a New Letter from R. Herzog Marc B. Shapiro Continued from here 1. Regarding R. Kook and the Aderet (R. Eliyahu Rabinowitz-Teomim), we find that R. Kook omitted something that the Aderet wrote. I don’t know if, strictly speaking, we can call this censorship, but R. Kook definitely omitted something that he was not comfortable with. Here is the Aderet speaking about himself in Nefesh David, p….

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Can Orthodoxy Decide Its Own History?

Can Orthodoxy Decide Its Own History?

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Can Orthodoxy Decide Its Own History? Rabbi Shmuel Lesher  The Making of a Godol In his 2004 review of Rabbi Nosson Kamenetsky’s controversy-sparking Making of a Godol,[1] Professor Mordechai Breuer notes a marked change happening within haredi culture, specifically book culture: The contents of the traditional Haredi bookshelf have expanded and transformed beyond recognition in recent generations. Alongside … the rabbinic classics … the shelves are now filled with books of types our ancestors could not have imagined.[2] Breuer is…

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A year in Berlin: The Beginning of Hebrew Printing in Berlin in c. 1699

A year in Berlin: The Beginning of Hebrew Printing in Berlin in c. 1699

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A Year in Berlin: The Beginning of Hebrew Printing in Berlin in c. 1699 by Marvin J. Heller The publishing of Hebrew books in Berlin is a relatively late phenomenon. The article provides a background to early Hebrew printing and then discusses the first Hebrew press in Berlin. It addresses Jewish history in Berlin, explaining why Hebrew printing began there at the end of the seventeenth century, almost two hundred and fifty years after it began elsewhere. Several unique works,…

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