Book week 2014 By: Eliezer Brodt Book week just began in Eretz Yisrael. As I have written in previous years every year in Israel, around Shavous time, there is a period of about ten days called Shavuah Hasefer – Book Week (see here, here, here here, here here and here). One should take advantage of this sale as a law was passed recently against sales on newly published books, for the first 18 months after the book was published, except…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…