The Seforim Blog

Pets on Shabbat, Rabbi Morenu, and Epidemics Marc B. Shapiro 1. In my last post here I wrote as follows: R. Yitzhak Nahman Eshkoli calls attention to what he sees as another mistake made by those who published R. Moshe Feinstein’s works.[1] Here is Iggerot Moshe,Orah Hayyim 5, 22:21. According to the text of R. Moshe’s responsum, animals are muktzeh, even those that children play with. This means that R. Moshe held that pets are also muktzeh. Yet in the small…

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The Lost Library, Missing Manuscripts, Saul Lieberman, and More Marc B. Shapiro When I finished my new post, it ended up being so long that I had to split it into five parts. Here is part 1. 1. All of us are able to benefit from the Seforim Blog because of the efforts of Dan Rabinowitz, who founded the blog almost fifteen years ago. In the early days, there was only a relatively small amount of people who knew about…

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Reuven Elitzur, Saul Lieberman, and Response to Criticism, part 2 Marc B. Shapiro Since I mentioned R. Reuven Elitzur in my post here, let me note two other interesting items from his posthumously published book, Degel Mahaneh Reuven. On pp. 304-305 we learn that when Elitzur studied in Ponovezh, one of the students joined the Irgun. When some other students found out about this, they grabbed the Irgun student one night, covered his head with a blanket, and beat him terribly. The…

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Cemeteries and Response to Criticism Marc B. Shapiro In my last post here I said that when it is safe, I will go to Baghdad to visit the grave of the Ben Ish Hai. I cannot find a picture of the Ben Ish Hai’s grave online, but you can see it in R. Yaakov Moshe Hillel’s beautifully produced recent book, Ben Ish Hai, p. 337. However, this is from the old cemetery in Baghdad, and because of a government order…

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Apostates and More, Part 2 Marc B. Shapiro Continued from here 1. Another apostate was Rabbi Nehemiah ben Jacob ha-Kohen of Ferrara, who was an important supporter of R. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto during the controversy about him.[1]Here is the the final page of the haskamah he wrote in 1729 for R. Aviad Sar Shalom Basilea’s Emunat Hakhamim. R. Isaac Lampronte, in a halakhic discussion in his Pahad Yitzhak, refers to Nehemiah, but not by name.[2] He calls him אחד מן החכמים רך בשנים…

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The Seforim Blog is pleased to announce that esteemed Seforim Blog contributor Dr. Marc Shapiro is speaking at Young Israel Beth-El of Boro Park, 4802 15th Avenue in Brooklyn, this coming Saturday night December 21 at 8pm. The title of his talk is “Judaism and Islam: Some Historical and Halakhic Perspectives”.