On the Times Commonly Presented for Birkat HaL’vana: Part 1
…over the besamim, because Saturday night and Sunday have nothing to do with Rosh Hodesh more than other days of the week. Our Rosh Hodesh is actually distributed perfectly evenly…
Crafting the Commandments
…rather than commands. Supporting these with scriptural proof texts, he labels them with the solo term mitsvah, a label that he also uses to designate rabbinical directives. The scriptural mitsvot…
Marc B. Shapiro – Forgery and the Halakhic Process, part 2
…never even heard of the dispute over the volume. Unlike the case of Besamim Rosh, the reliability of Auerbach’s Eshkol is almost never mentioned in traditional rabbinic literature, and the…
Kitniyot and Mechirat Chametz: Paradoxical Approaches to the Chametz Prohibition
…Besamim Rosh that alleges kitniyot source is from the Karaites. There is no basis for this assertion. On the contrary, the extant evidence demonstrates that Karaites affirmatively rejected any prohibition…
Maimonides and Prophecy, R. Pinhas Lintop, R. José Faur, and More Examples of Censorship
…into their cultures.[8] Among other things, I was surprised to see R. Lintop write:[9] הגאון המשכיל הנפלא בספרו בשמים ראש רנ”ב בשם אחד מהראשונים He assumes that Besamim Rosh preserves authentic medieval…
Moshe Samet and Manuscripts vs. Books
…Samet has written some of the best pieces most notably on the Besamim Rosh, the teshuvot that were atributed to R. Asher b. Yehiel (Rosh) but are most likely a…
