The Seforim Blog

Notes on the Book of Samuel, and the Eternal Sanctity of the Temple in Maimonidean Thought By Rabbi Avi Grossman avrahambenyehuda.wordpress.com Rabbi Label Dulitz, who passed away last week, was an iconic figure at YUHSB. I was privileged to first meet him when I began my studies at the school in the fall of 1996. That year, Rabbi Dulitz was teaching Talmud to part of the tenth grade, but some of us lucky freshmen got to sit in his afternoon…

Read More Read More

Recent Notes On Hebrew Pronunciation By Rabbi Avi Grossman Edited by Mr. Jonathan Grossman  Many of the ideas discussed in this article were in my notebook for some time, and just as I was getting around to preparing them for publication, my prolific colleague Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein sent a copy of Professor Geoffrey Khan’s The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew to me. After reading it and briefly corresponding with the author, I concluded that it was time to…

Read More Read More

Concerning Athei Merahiq, Nasog Ahor, and the Ravia Mugrash, and More by Rabbi Avi Grossman (The author would like to express his gratitude to those who supported the recent publication of his Haggadat Hapesah. Contact him at avrohom.grossman@gmail.com to obtain a copy. Parts of this post originally appeared here.) Recently, I was privileged to be part of a fun-yet-esoteric discussion on matters of Hebrew grammar. First, some background: there is a grammatical phenomenon in Biblical Hebrew known as “nasog ahor,”…

Read More Read More

On the Times Commonly Presented for Birkat HaL’vana, Part 3 By Avi Grossman Some time ago, my first article appeared on the Seforim Blog (link). It felt good to join the club. In the comments section, readers took much more issue with the opinion of Rabbi Bar Hayim that I mentioned at the outset than they did with any of the arguments I myself was advancing, and it it even got a little personal, but along the way, I was…

Read More Read More

On the Times Commonly Presented for Birkat HaL’vana: Part 2 By Avi Grossman Continued from here The Truth About The Beth Yosef’s Position A while ago I received this from a disputant (I have not edited any of his writing): In the Shulkhan Arukh (chapter 426 paragraph 3) it was ruled that one has to wait till seven days have passed, and the Rema did not override the halachik ruling of the Mechaber (the Shulkhan Arukh). Therefore this is the…

Read More Read More