Some Assorted Comments and a Selection from my Memoir. part 1
…where you can go back to the old issues of the YU newspapers, the yearbooks, Torah journals etc. and see the truth. Yet because of how this will look in…
The 1526 Prague Haggadah and its Illustrations
…from the beis midrash of Rav Elazar Rokei’ach. Numerous pirushim have been written about Chad Gadya, based on all the methods of learning Torah.[31] Be that as it may, many…
April Fools! Tracing the History of Dreidel Among Neo-Traditionalists and Neo-Hebraists
…Only two mitzvot of Chanukah are mentioned in Rabbinic sources: lighting candles and reciting the full Hallel. Over the centuries, many other practices came to be associated with Chanukah. Some…
The Twice Told Tale of R’ Yonasan Eybeshutz and the Porger
…Urim Vtumin, B’nei Ahuva, and Ya’aros Dvash. However due to the difficult situation he found himself in over the controversies regarding Kameos ascribed to him, that were allegedly Sabbatean in…
Non-Jewish Iconography in Hebrew Books
…1560 haggadah. This illustration appears in manuscripts as well, and in the Darmstadt Haggadah, it is not a hare hunt but a deer hunt. The deer, of course, is a…
Borders, Breasts, and Bibliography
…that “both Charles Wengrov and Elliot[t] Horowitz have pointed to earlier manuscript antecedents of Prague’s usage of such illustrations,” but then takes issue with “Hor[o]witz’s contention that Spanish Jews were…
