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Chanukah books and Etymology, Miracles (?), Dreidel, Cards and Christmas: A Roundup of Previous Posts

Chanukah books and Etymology, Miracles (?), Dreidel, Cards and Christmas: A Roundup of Previous Posts

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Zerachya Licht, “חז״ל ופולמס חנוכה,” and Marc Shapiro, “The Hanukkah Miracle,” discuss the 19th-century controversy regarding the polyglot, Chaim Zelig Slonimsky, and the connection, or lack thereof, the miracle of the candles burning for eight days. Licht discusses Slonimsky in more depth in a two-part post, “Chaim Zelig Slonimsky and the Diskin Family,” part 1 and part 2.   Marc also discusses a potential Maccabean Psalm in his article here. Mitchell First traces the history and spelling of two terms associated with…

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The Hanukkah Miracle

The Hanukkah Miracle

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The Hanukkah Miracle Marc B. Shapiro In an earlier post I mentioned that I hoped to write about the nineteenth-century dispute about the historicity of the Hanukkah miracle of the oil. This dispute broke out after the publication of Hayyim Zelig Slonimski’s article claiming that Maimonides did not believe in the miracle. Fuel was added to the fire when R. Samuel Alexandrov publicly supported Slonimski and argued that the miracle of the oil was intended to be understood in a…

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The Identity and Meaning of Chashmonai

The Identity and Meaning of Chashmonai

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The Identity and Meaning of Chashmonai [1] By Mitchell  First (MFirstatty@aol.com)         The name Chashmonai appears many times in the Babylonian Talmud, but usually the references are vague. The references are either to beit Chashmonai, malkhut Chashmonai, malkhut beit Chashmonai, malkhei beit Chashmonai, or beit dino shel Chashmonai.[2]  One time (at Megillah 11a) the reference is to an individual named Chashmonai, but neither his father nor his sons are named.            The term…

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How much Greek in “Greek Wisdom”? On the Meaning of Hokhmat Yevanit

How much Greek in “Greek Wisdom”? On the Meaning of Hokhmat Yevanit

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How much Greek in “Greek Wisdom”? On the Meaning of Hokhmat Yevanit by Eliyahu Krakowski       In the medieval controversies over the study of philosophy, one of the major points of contention was the Talmudic prohibition against hokhmat yevanit. Modern historians, who are generally well-disposed toward the Maimonidean proponents of philosophy (often at the expense of the anti-rationalists), nevertheless often assume that the anti-rationalists had the better of this particular argument. The Maimonidean defense of philosophy against the…

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The Chanukah Omission

The Chanukah Omission

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The Chanukah Omission by Eliezer Brodt     Every Yom Tov has its famous questions that show up repeatedly in writings and shiurim. Chanukah, too, has its share of well-known questions. In this article, I would like to deal with one famous question that has some not-very-famous answers. A few years ago I dealt with this topic on the Seforim Blog (here). More recently in Ami Magazine (# 50) I returned to some of the topics related to this. This…

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“Torah Study on Christmas Eve” free Torah in Motion lecture by Marc B. Shapiro

“Torah Study on Christmas Eve” free Torah in Motion lecture by Marc B. Shapiro

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In the spirit of inyana de-yoma, Torah in Motion is offering, free of charge, Dr. Marc B. Shapiro’s lecture “Torah Study on Christmas Eve,” delivered on Christmas Eve, 2009. You can get it here. We invite all those who download the lecture to visit Torah in Motion’s website www.torahinmotion.org where over a thousand other lectures are available for download (including lectures by Dan Rabinowitz, Eliezer Brodt, and Marc Shapiro’s bundle of 103 lectures on great rabbinic figures, available here). We…

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