The Seforim Blog

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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How Jews of Yesteryear Celebrated Graduation from Medical School: Congratulatory Poems for Jewish Medical Graduates in the 17th and 18th Centuries: An Unrecognized Genre Rabbi Edward Reichman, MD Edward Reichman, Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, is the author of The Anatomy of Jewish Law: A Fresh Dissection of the Relationship Between Medicine, Medical History and Rabbinic Literature (Published by Koren Publishers/OU Press/YU Press, 2022), as well as the forthcoming, Pondering Pre-Modern(a) Pandemics in Jewish…

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The Discovery of a Hidden Treasure in the Vatican and the Correction of a Centuries-Old Error Rabbi Edward Reichman, MD In 2018, I was invited to speak at a conference co-sponsored by the Vatican and the CURA Foundation entitled, Unite to Cure: A Global Health Care Initiative. The mission of the conference was to “convene leading decision makers in medicine, business, media, advocacy and faith to encourage multidisciplinary collaboration, increase investment in research and innovation… education and better access to…

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