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Tag: Censorship

Review of Quntres

Review of Quntres

Review of Quntresby B. Jackson First, a quick note regarding Prof. Haym Soloveitchik's apparent position that anonymous critiques are inappropriate.  It appears that his position overlooks at least one example of just that.  As Dan Rabinowitz has pointed out in a prior post, R. Shmuel Aboab authored an ethical work which critiqued some of the perceived laxity of the day but did so anonymously.    Turning to the new online journal Quntres: An Online Journal for the History, Culture, and Art…

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Two Editions of R. Chaim Berlin’s Responsa: An Egregious Example of Censorship

Two Editions of R. Chaim Berlin’s Responsa: An Egregious Example of Censorship

Two Editions of R. Chaim Berlin‘s Responsa: An Egregious Example of Censorship by Eliezer Brodt R. Chaim Berlin, Sefer Nishmat Hayyim, She’elot u-Teshuvot, R. Ya’akov Kosovsky-Shachor ed., Beni-Brak, 2002, 412 pp. R. Chaim Berlin, Sefer Nishmat Hayyim, Mamorim u’Mechtavim, R. Ya’akov Kosovsky-Shachor ed., Beni-Brak, 2003, 424 pp. R. Chaim Berlin, Otzar Reb Hayyim Berlin, Shu”t Nishmat Hayyim, Jerusalem, 2008, 4 vol., 446, 462, 449, 298 pp. R. Chaim Berlin (1832-1912), the son of the R. Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin (author of the Netziv), although well known until recently none…

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Marc B. Shapiro – Responses to Comments and Elaborations of Previous Posts III

Marc B. Shapiro – Responses to Comments and Elaborations of Previous Posts III

Responses to Comments and Elaborations of Previous Posts III by Marc B. Shapiro This post is dedicated to the memory of Rabbi Chaim Flom, late rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Ohr David in Jerusalem. I first met Rabbi Flom thirty years ago when he became my teacher at the Hebrew Youth Academy of Essex County (now known as the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy; unfortunately, another one of my teachers from those years also passed away much too young, Rabbi Yaakov Appel)….

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Marc B. Shapiro: A Tale of Two Lost Archives

Marc B. Shapiro: A Tale of Two Lost Archives

A Tale of Two Lost Archives by Marc B. Shapiro I have spent much of my professional life rummaging through collections of documents, mostly in well-kept archives, but sometimes also in hard-to-reach places in basements and attics. Fortunately, I have made some great discoveries in these places, but I will now tell you a story that doesn’t have a happy ending. It begins around fifteen years ago, when I was researching the life of R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg. With the…

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The Saga of Publishing the Works of Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner

The Saga of Publishing the Works of Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner

The Saga of Publishing the Works of Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner:The Issue of Inclusion of Zionism and Rav Kook by David Glasner David Glasner, an economist at the Federal Trade Commission, is a great-grandson of Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner. This is his first contribution to the Seforim blog. Many readers of the Seforim blog may be interested, perhaps even pleased, to hear about the recent publication of a new volume containing a number of works of Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner…

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Mayim Hayyim, the Baal Shem Tov, and R. Meir the son of R. Jacob Emden

Mayim Hayyim, the Baal Shem Tov, and R. Meir the son of R. Jacob Emden

Sources contemporary to the Baal Shem Tov that attest to his deeds, or that even discuss him at all, are sparse. Although some secular sources, including tax records and other documents, have recently been unearthed by academic researchers, there is a paucity of Jewish texts. Most of the “historical” record regarding the Baal Shem Tov comes from a collection of stories, Shivhei Ha-Besht.[1] That work, however, was collected much later and is less reliable than others when assessing the Baal…

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