The American Yekkes[1] By Yisrael Kashkin As I march around town grasping my Hirsch Siddur, I sometimes am asked, “Are you a Yekke?” to which I answer, “I am an American Yekke.”[2] This statement draws puzzled looks as if I had said that I were an Algonquin Italian. “America is a Germanic country and my family has lived here for a century,” I say, attempting to explain but provoking usually even more puzzlement. For those who want to hear more,…
Royal Attire: On Karaite and Rabbanite Beliefs by Hakham Mordecai ben Nisan The Karaites are a Jewish group who have been important for centuries of Jewish history, wrote many writings, and are a still extant minority today. Yet most people never get to hear much about them, especially not in their own words. When people in a typical rabbinic beth midrash encounter them, it is often in statements such as that of the Mishna Berura (27:33), that wearing tefillin down…
Rav Kook’s Attitude towards Keren Hayesod – United Israel Appeal By Rav Eitam Henkin, Hy”d (Translated into English by Rachelle Emanuel) This article originally appeared in Hebrew in HaMayan 51:4 (2011), pp. 75-90. Today is the yahrzeit of the Rav Eitam and Naama Henkin, who were cruelly murdered one year ago. May Rav Eitam’s important writings, surely with us only thanks to Naama’s support, be an aliyat neshama for both. Hy”d. · “It is well known that the person who…
Jews in Wonderland John M. Efron John M. Efron is the Koret Professor of Jewish History at the University of California-Berkeley and author of German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic (Princeton University Press, 2016). This is his first contribution to the Seforim Blog. Although an important sesquicentennial anniversary took place on September 5, 2016, few people outside of Berlin, and not even that many there will have paid much attention to it. As generally happens with selective historical…
Text Manipulation on the Left – A Recent Incident by Yisrael Kashkin We have seen on this blog several posts that cite examples of censorship and text manipulation in literature within the Orthodox community. Generally, the practitioners of this tendentious editing have been described here as being among our brethren from the right wing of the community. However, the act of text manipulation happens as well among our brethren from the left wing. One notable example occurred recently in an…
The Meaning of the Word Hitpallel (התפלל) By Mitchell First[1] MFirstAtty@aol.com It is clear from the many places that it appears in Tanakh that התפלל connotes praying. But what was the original meaning of this word? I was always taught that it meant something like “judge yourself.” Indeed, the standard ArtScroll Siddur (Siddur Kol Yaakov) includes the following in its introductory pages: “The Hebrew verb for praying is מתפלל; it is a reflexive word, meaning that the subject acts upon…