Changing the Immutable: How Orthodox Judaism Rewrites Its History Marc B. Shapiro I am happy to announce that my new book is now with the printer and should be at the distributor by May 4. Amazon and book stores will have the book not long after that. Changing the Immutable has taken quite a long time and I hope readers find that it was worth the wait. One of the main reasons it has taken so long is that some…
ArtScroll’s Response and My Comments by Marc B. Shapiro My recent post here was more popular than my typical post. I base this statement on the fact that I received more emails from readers than usual and the post was picked up by a variety of different websites. The part dealing with the censorship of Rashbam was translated into Hebrew here (with one of the commenters calling for a herem to be placed on ArtScroll)[ and see also here. ArtScroll has now issued its response….
Self-Censorship in the Arukh ha-Shulhan, ArtScroll’s Latest Betrayal, and Other Assorted Comments Marc B. Shapiro 1. R. Mordechai Rabinovitch has recently published the second volume of his commentary on the Arukh ha-Shulhan, dealing with the laws of Hanukkah. I strongly encourage anyone who prepares for the holiday by studying the halakhot in the Arukh ha-Shulhan to use R. Rabinovitch’s valuable work. Interestingly, R. Rabinovitch vocalizes the work as Arokh ha-Shulhan. This is based on the fact that these words, with this vocalization, appear in Isaiah…
The Netziv, Reading Newspapers on Shabbos, in general & Censorship (part one)* By: Eliezer Brodt Previously, I have touched on the topic of the Netziv reading newspapers on weekdays and on Shabbos [here and here]. In this post I would like to revisit the subject, and also deal with some cases of censorship in the Netziv’s seforim.[1] I would like to stress at the outset that this is a work in progress[2] and not intended L’Halacha; each person should consult his own Rav. In 1928, R’…
Today, censorship of Hebrew books takes place on many levels. Although previously the censorship of Hebrew books was driven in large part due to external concerns, today, most of the censorship takes place internally, by Jews for Jews. This censorship is generally driven by the false notion that Orthodox Judaism is and was monolithic. Of course, students of history know that this is entirely false; within the confines of Orthodoxy, there was diversity of opinion and practice (perhaps due to…
New Writings from R. Kook and Assorted Comments, part 3 Marc B. Shapiro Continued from here. As I have dealt in this post with Maimonides and the Genesis story, it is as good a time as any to mention what I believe it to be an error that is repeated very often. I saw it most recently in Nathan Aviezer’s article “When Torah and Science Collide” (Tradition, Fall 2009). He writes as follows: Did God create the universe? Seemingly a…
