The Seforim Blog

The Anatomy of a Mystery: Kohanim, Dissection, and Medical Training Throughout History Rabbi Edward Reichman, MD In September of 2024, I accidentally opened the portal to a priestly mystery. While searching for references to the first Jewish students to attend the University of Gottingen Medical School, I came across an antisemitic work published in 1753 about the general dishonesty of Jews and Jewish oaths.[1] Therein were a few disparaging references to Jewish physicians,[2] one of whom was named Lehmann Isaac…

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Hidden Treasures in Jewish Medical History at the British Library: A Post Cyber-Attack Homage Rabbi Edward Reichman, MD On October 28, 2023, the British Library (BL) fell victim to one of the worst cyber-attacks in British History.[1] Though its precious holdings thankfully remained physically unperturbed, access by scholars across the globe to the online catalog of its massive and formidable collection, some 170 million items, was disrupted. This incident shook the world’s bibliophiles to the core, and its impact on…

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An Unexpected Epistolary Discovery and the Shared Medical Journeys of Tuviya HaRofe and Gabriel Felix (late 17th– early 18th centuries) Rabbi Edward Reichman, MD On January 26, 2024, I received an e-mail from an independent Italian Hebraica scholar[1] with references[2] and a bibliographical correction regarding a Seforim Blog article I had written about Rabbi Dr. Shimshon Morpurgo (1681-1740), a prominent medical graduate of Padua.[3] In the correspondence, he refers to a manuscript housed in the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) Library…

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The Physician-Ḥaver in Early Modern Italy: A Reunion of Long Forgotten “Friends”[1] [2]לפרסומי מילתא ולזכר עולם כתבתי Rabbi Edward Reichman, MD Introduction The Italian Early Modern Period is fertile ground for Jewish medical historical study. Its appeal lies partially in the rich lives and interests of the Jewish physicians beyond the practice of medicine alone. For example, historians have written about physician-poets[3] and physician-philosophers,[4] as well as physician-rabbis. Here I introduce a new category of hyphenated physicians that has escaped…

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The Anatomy of an Auction: A Previously Undissected Body of Literature on the History of the Jews and Postmortem Dissection  Rabbi Edward Reichman, MD  The issue of autopsy and postmortem dissection has been exhaustively explored in halakhic literature.[1] If I were to ask where and when we find the first halakhic discussion about this topic, the immediate response would invariably be the teshuva of the Noda biYehuda, from the late eighteenth century.[2] It may be time to rewrite the medical…

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Jews, Medicine and the University of Padua: A Behind the Scenes Tour of a New Exhibit at the Jewish Museum of Padua November 2, 2022- December 31, 2022 By Rabbi Edward Reichman, MD The city of Padua (or Padova), just twenty-five miles southwest of Venice, has a rich and expansive Jewish history, though it is not typically on the itinerary of the Jewish traveler to Italy. One might perhaps recognize the city name as the penultimate stop on the train…

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