Assorted Comments

Assorted Comments

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Assorted Comments Marc B. Shapiro 1. In this post I mentioned the strange comment of R. Shabbetai Bass in his Siftei Hakhamim, Exodus 33:13, Moses thought that God was joking with him.[1] A few readers emailed me that in the new Mikraot Gedolot Ha-Maor this passage has been deleted, i.e., censored. Here is how the passage looks in the first edition of Siftei Hakhamim, published in R. Bass’ lifetime.. Here is the passage as it appears in the censored Mikraot Gedolot Ha-Maor. Fortunately, the new…

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The Pew Report and the Orthodox Community (and Other Assorted Comments), part 1

The Pew Report and the Orthodox Community (and Other Assorted Comments), part 1

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The Pew Report and the Orthodox Community (and Other Assorted Comments), part 1 Marc B. Shapiro 1. Here is a short piece I wrote a right after the appearance of the Pew Report. (The endnote is not part of the original article.) There has been a great deal of discussion in the wake of the recent release of the Pew Research Center’s “Portrait of Jewish Americans.” Some have focused on the report’s evidence of increasing intermarriage and lack of any…

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Tracing the history of eating milchigs on Shavuos

Tracing the history of eating milchigs on Shavuos

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Tracing the history of eating milchigs on Shavuos by Eliezer Brodt In this post I would like to deal with tracing the early sources for the minhag of eating milchigs on Shavuos. A version of this article was printed last year in the Ami Magazine (# 119). This post contains a few corrections and additions to that version. A much more expanded version of this article will appear in Hebrew shortly (IY”H). Eating the vast array of customary dairy delicacies…

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Fixing a Typesetting Error in Order to Understand The View of the Mishnah Berurah on Women Wearing Tefillin

Fixing a Typesetting Error in Order to Understand The View of the Mishnah Berurah on Women Wearing Tefillin

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Fixing a Typesetting Error in Order to Understand The View of the Mishnah Berurah on Women Wearing Tefillin by Michael J. Broyde mbroyde@emory.edu Please note that this piece isn’t meant to be construed one way or another as the view of the Seforim Blog. While there has been considerable recent discussion regarding women wearing tefillin, I will not review here the general topic but rather focus specifically only the view of the Mishnah Berurah.  I believe the view of the Mishnah Berurah…

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A Mild Case of Plagiarism: R. Abraham Kalmankes’ Ma’ayan Ha-Hokhmah

A Mild Case of Plagiarism: R. Abraham Kalmankes’ Ma’ayan Ha-Hokhmah

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A Mild Case of Plagiarism:  R. Abraham Kalmankes’ Ma’ayan Ha-Hokhmah by Shnayer Leiman 1.  The Accusation. Rabbi Joseph Samuel ben R. Zvi (d. 1703) – more popularly known as ר’ שמואל ר’ חיים ר’ ישעיה’ס – served as a member of the rabbinic court in Cracow for some 26 years, after which he was appointed Chief Rabbi of Frankfurt in 1689.1 An avid collector of books and manuscripts, he made good use of them in listing in the margins of his copy of the…

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Crafting the Commandments

Crafting the Commandments

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Albert D. Friedberg’s Crafting the Commandments has just appeared. The Seforim Blog is happy to present the following excerpt from the book’s conclusion. Scholars have ascribed far too much importance to Maimonides’ enumeration of the commandments and far too little to the motivations that lay behind his appropriation of R. Simlai’s aggadah as the basis for the enumeration and to the significance that Maimonides attached to this aggadah. The proximate reason for creating an enumeration was his need to have…

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