Chaim Miller’s Turning Judaism Outward, a comprehensive biography of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, has recently appeared. The Seforim Blog is happy to present this excerpt from pages 98-103 

Some truly fascinating insights into Menachem Mendel’s inner life have surfaced recently in his correspondence with Rayatz, first published in 2010.73 The Sixth and future Seventh Rebbes were in very close contact during this period; between 1929 until 1932 alone, Rayatz penned some seventy-two letters to his son-in-law and daughter.

In contrast to Reb Levik’s letters, which were almost exclusively devoted to Torah thoughts, Rayatz’s communications were extremely personal. We get a strong sense of what a thoughtful and caring man he was, and how much his relationship with his new son-in-law meant to him. The few letters of reply from Menachem Mendel that have been published are also extremely revelatory—a glimpse of the future Rebbe’s self-perception, his concerns, and his spiritual leanings.

Material like this is extremely rare. In his fifty years of public work, the Seventh Rebbe seldom spoke or wrote about himself.

From the correspondence, we see how important it was for Rayatz to be intimately connected with the personal lives of his family. The Sixth Rebbe chronicles his travels and experiences in detail, along with their emotional ups and downs. He expects Menachem Mendel to reciprocate and is disappointed when requests to his son-in-law to share his life experiences are not forthcoming. Menachem Mendel, by his own confession, lived in the world of thought, and the little details of everyday life were not important to him. “The reason I have not written,” he writes in the winter of 1930, “which I am sure without my letter you could fathom for yourself, is that it is difficult for me to find interesting events in my life to tell you. Just to fill a piece of paper with incidental details, to write a letter for the sake of writing a letter—why should I steal your time for that?”74

Rayatz is persistent. “I want to clarify,” he writes back, “that when you will contemplate the truth as it is, what a deeply personal relationship ought to exist between us, you will always find something interesting that will extend beyond one page.”75

But Menachem Mendel’s world is the world of ideas, not of events and feelings. In his next letter, which represents a fascinating insight into the Seventh Rebbe’s self-image, he attempts to clarify the matter.

“The reason why I have not written is due to the lack of interesting events to report. There are people for whom the central, overwhelming focus of their lives is in the world of thought, the world of ideas, and their main activities—activity being the sign of life—are focused inwards, to the ‘world set in their hearts’ (Ecc. 3:11), and not to the outside world surrounding them.

After this introduction, I must say that, while I do not consider it to be a particular virtue, it seems that—whether as a result of my natural disposition or outside influences—I am such a person. For as long as I can remember, there has been a paucity of interesting events in my life, things that I found personally engaging.”76

This, however, does not stop Rayatz from showering forth his emotions on paper: love and affection, repeated blessings for children and happy marriage, as well as his frustrations. In a letter penned after the festival of Shavuot, 1930, Rayatz wishes his son-in-law that “you and your wife, my precious daughter, should have a pleasurable life, with love and affection.”77 In a letter to Moussia on her twenty-ninth birthday, Rayatz writes, “My precious daughter! For everything in this world there is a limit and end, but the deep love of parents has no limit,” and he blesses her to have “fine, healthy, bright children.” 78

In a letter to Menachem Mendel the following year, Rayatz’s affections continue to gush forth, “If my thoughts about you went straight onto paper, I mean if thoughts themselves could write, without the need of an actual hand, I would already have heaps of letters.” 79 In another letter Rayatz signs off, “I am your father-in-law… who loves you at every moment.” 80

Sometimes we find Rayatz expressing his distress. In the spring of 1930, Rayatz writes of his “deep, great pain… that you did not merit to see the face of the ‘Holy of Holies’ [Rashab], his face literally shining with G-dly light, the Divine presence resting on him… nor to see the Chasidim in Lubavitch, their prayer and worship…. What an awful shame (chaval chaval) that you did not see all this.” 81

To Moussia he shares mixed emotions of visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem, “I cried earnestly over the fall of our Lubavitch. I kissed the stones of the Western Wall with a bittersweet pleasure.” 82

More than once, Rayatz expresses his concerns at the thought of his religious son-in-law walking the streets in what was becoming an increasingly dangerous city for Jews, “I am always thinking about how you walk in the city, whether you are taking the necessary precautions.” 83

Rayatz also showed, on one occasion, a fondness for allegory and riddle which did not seem to engage Menachem Mendel. In a letter from the summer of 1929, Rayatz concludes, in a postscript, “Contemplate well the fine pearl which G-d has given you for many long, good years, physically and spiritually.” 84 Receiving no response, he repeats the following winter, “Regarding the fine gift, the precious pearl, do you still not understand what I mean? Or did you already fathom my riddle?” 85

Menachem Mendel’s reply is brief: “Regarding the ‘fine pearl,’ I still do not understand to what this refers.” 86

Rayatz has no choice other than to decipher his own riddle: “The fine pearl which G-d has given you, is my daughter, your honorable wife. (That was what I implied in my letter, but you did not discern what I intimated).” 87

Rayatz also takes much interest in his new son-in-law’s daily routine. “Write to me in detail your daily schedule,” he requests. 88 On another occasion, “I would like to know what you are learning, which tractate? What are you learning in Chasidut? How much time per day, i.e., in each twenty-four hours? Do you have any fixed study times? What are they?” 89 In a 1932 letter Menachem Mendel reports that he is currently learning tractate Bava Batra, but that “regarding a fixed daily schedule, since coming from Russia, I still have not managed this.” He also confesses to having challenges in his learning, “because of mental exhaustion, or from feeling distracted.” 90

Of particular interest are the future Rebbe’s spiritual leanings. In a typically unassuming fashion, Menachem Mendel expresses his yearnings for an arousal to teshuvah (return to G-d). The month of Elul is coming imminently, which is the month of preparation [for the High Holidays] and teshuvah. What, then, is the way, and what is the advisable method, that will affect me, so that I can ultimately have a heartfelt sense of yirat Shamayim [fear of Heaven]—tangibly in the here and now, so that I actually feel the change?91

In response to a request from Menachem Mendel for a blessing to understand Chasidut, Rayatz conveys his wishes, “You should be blessed with a genuine grasp of Chasidut, to become one with it, to study it, to understand it, and to observe it.”92

Menachem Mendel is extremely grateful, and explains how much Rayatz’s blessing means to him.

The reason why I asked you for a blessing to understand Chasidut… is simply because I pine for it. I wrote a request to Your Holiness for this blessing because I believe that if you desire something from the depths of your heart and being, then, whether it be through a blessing or through prayer, you will influence on High that all these things should take effect down here in this world, in me.93

At the end of 1931, Menachem Mendel posed a question to his father-in-law about the very essence of Chabad identity. In Berlin, Menachem Mendel had been exposed to the courts of non-Chabad Rebbes.94 These strands of Chasidut, stemming mainly from Poland and Galicia, seemed to Menachem Mendel to better capture the spirit of the movement’s founder Rabbi Israel Ba’al Shem Tov. They did not focus to such a great extent on the in-depth study of Chasidic wisdom; and just as the Ba’al Shem Tov had been known as a miracle worker, the Chasidim of these movements made much emphasis on their own Rebbes’ miraculous powers—something which was more muted in Chabad.

Menachem Mendel’s penchant for intellectual honesty could not help him wonder and inquire of his father-in-law, “At first glance, the path and teachings of Chasidut taught by the Rebbes of Vohlynia-Poland-Galicia seem closer to the path and teachings of the Baal Shem Tov’s Chasidut than the teachings of Chabad, especially in the emphasis on miracle-working.”95

The question prompted a fifteen-page reply from Rayatz, rich in anecdotal history of the movement, with many accounts of why miracle-working became unimportant in the Chabad system.96 Menachem Mendel was ecstatic. His preference for a dialogue of ideas rather than feelings had finally been met, and he found the material gripping.

From the depths of the heart I thank you for this precious gift. May I be so bold as to make an earnest
suggestion from Your Holiness—if a request is necessary and if it will help. I am strengthened by the hope that from time to time you will honor and delight me with letters like this. I lack a lot of knowledge about the background of Chasidut and its history…. and so with every fact that I gain in this area, I rejoice “as if finding a great prize” (Ps. 119:162).97

Still, the issue of miracles bothered him. In the current day and age, wouldn’t stories that conveyed a sense of the supernatural be helpful to bring Jews closer to Judaism? Intellectual arguments alone did not seem to be sufficient—especially in Germany.

I cannot restrain myself from requesting additional explanation about a subject that has puzzled me for a long time. Again and again, I hear people say that “In Chabad, we have no interest in miracles,” etc. I found a similar sentiment expressed in your letter…. This might have been appropriate for the early Chasidim; they certainly had no need of such stories, for their hearts and minds were pure. But nowadays, the pressures of the times etc., have diminished people’s spiritual sensitivities, and they are engulfed by material concerns. They perceive everything in a very materialistic way, and their souls are desensitized to the sublime and the lofty. It seems difficult to fix this through ideas alone… On the other hand, miracles, and stories of the wonders performed by tzadikim inspire people to rid themselves from the focus on material matters. They will jar even a lowly soul, or someone who has spiritually fallen.98

No response from Rayatz to this request is printed, but in these lines we can already discern the Seventh Rebbe’s creativity and sensitivity to the needs of a spiritually numbed generation. If the old approach no longer works, Menachem Mendel argued, then we need to re-examine it. It was this bold willingness to introduce new pedagogic methods  suitable for the contemporary milieu that would make the Seventh generation of Chabad under his leadership so hugely influential.

73 Igrot Rayatz vol. 15 (New York: Kehot, 2010).

74 Letter of 18th Shevat 5690, ibid. p. 74.

75 Letter of 6th Adar 5690, ibid. p. 77.

76 Letter of 2nd Nisan 5690, ibid. p. 78.

77 Ibid. p. 88.

78 Letter of 25th Adar 5690, ibid. p. 83.

79 Letter of 23rd Adar 5961, ibid. p. 103.

80 Letter of Erev Chag Ha-Sukkot 5690, ibid. p. 66.

81 Ibid. p. 81. See also p. 105,

82 Letter to Moussia, 5th Elul 5689, ibid. p. 60.

83 Letter of Erev Chanukah 5690, ibid. p. 71.

84 Letter to Menachem Mendel, 5th Elul 5689, ibid. p. 59.

85 Letter of 26th Tevet 5690, ibid. p. 74.

86 Letter of 18th Shevat 5690, ibid.

87 Letter of 25th Adar 5690, ibid. p. 82. Emphasis added.

88 Letter of Erev Chanukah 5690, ibid. p. 70.

89 Letter of 9th Tevet 5691, ibid. p. 101.

90 Letter of 11th Shevat 5692, ibid. pp. 114-5

91 Letter of 26th Menachem Av, 5689, ibid. pp. 63-4. Rayatz’s reply is ibid. pp. 62-3.

92 Letter of 24th Kislev 5691, ibid p. 101.

93 Letter of 4th Shevat 5691, ibid.

94 We have seen, at the very least, he had visited the Chortkov Rebbe, the Belzer Rebbe and prayed in the synagogue of the Dombrova Rebbe.

95 Menachem Mendel’s letter of request is not printed, but the question is repeated by Rayatz at the introduction to his response (see following note).

96 The full response is printed in Igrot Rayatz vol. 2, pp. 361-377, and was initially publicized just a few years after Menachem Mendel
received it, in the Chabad journal Hatamim (vol. 2, pp. 150-159). It appears in English translation in Shimon Neubort (trans.), Branches of the Chassidic Menorah vol. 1 (New York: Sichot in English, 1998), pp. 137-162.

97 Letter of 2nd Shevat 5692, Igrot Rayatz vol. 15, p. 112. In English, Neubort p. 163. See also Reshimot installment 138.

98 Igrot Rayatz, ibid.

Book
week 2014

By:
Eliezer Brodt

Book week just began in
Eretz Yisrael. As I have written in previous years every year in Israel, around
Shavous time, there is a period of about ten days called Shavuah Hasefer – Book
Week (see here, here, here here, here  here and here).

One should take
advantage of this sale as a law was passed recently against sales on newly
published books, for the first 18 months after the book was published, except
for book week. Many of the companies offer sales for the whole month. Shavuah
HaSefer is a sale which takes place all across the country in stores, malls
and special places rented out just for the sales. There are places where
strictly “frum” seforim are sold and other places have most of the secular
publishing houses. Many publishing houses release new titles specifically at
this time.

 In my lists I sometimes include an older
title if I just noticed the book. As I have written in the past, I do not
intend to include all the new books. Eventually some of these titles will be
the subject of their own reviews. I try to include titles of broad interest.
Some books I cannot provide much information about as I just glanced at them
quickly. Some books which I note, I can provide Table of contents if requested,
via e mail.

As this list shows
although book publishing in book form has dropped greatly worldwide, Academic
books on Jewish related topics are still coming out in full force.

As in previous years I
am offering a service, for a small fee to help one purchase these titles (or
titles of previous years). For more information about this email me at
Eliezerbrodt-at-gmail.com. Part of the proceeds will be going to support the
efforts of the the Seforim Blog.

Bar Ilan University

Merkaz Zalman Shazar:

This year at the Shazar
booth there are some otherwise hard to track down books, related to Poland from
Tel Aviv University available for some reduced prices amongst the titles of
interest are;

17.
זיכרונות יחזקאל קוטיק דוד אסף (מהדיר) שני חלקים

18. פנקס פתוח, מרדכי נדב

19. קרקא קזימייז קראקוב, אלחנן ריינר (עורך)

20. בין זיכרון להכחשה, יואל רבא

 The
Bialik Institute:

21.
פירוש רש”י למסכת ראש השנה, מהדורה ביקורתית, מהדיר אהרן ארנד, מוסד ביאליק,     

22. ברכה זעק, ממעיינות
ספר אלימה לר’ משה קורדובירו ומחקרים בקבלתו, אוניברסיטת בן גוריון, 262 עמודים.

23. עמנואל טוב, ביקורת
נוסח המקרא, מהדורה שנייה מורחבת ומתוקנת, נ+411+32 עמודים

 24. שמא יהודה
פרידמן, לתורם של תנאים, אסופות מחקרים מתודולוגיים ועיוניים, ביאליק, 534 עמודים
[מצוין], [ניתן לקבל תוכן העניינים].

25. שמואל ורסס, המארג של
בדיון ומציאות בספרותנו, מוסד ביאליק

 26. יהושע בלאו, בלשנות עברית, מוסד ביאליק

 27. יוסף פרל, מגלה טמירין, ההדיר על פי
דפוס ראשון וכתבי-יד והוסיף מבוא וביאורים יונתן מאיר, מוסד ביאליק.  ג’
חלקים. כרכים ‘מגלת טמירין’ כולל 345  עמודים +מח עמודים; כרך ‘נספחים’ עמ’
349-620;  כרך ‘חסידות מדומה’ עיונים בכתביו הסאטיריים של יוסף פרל, 316
עמודים.

Machlelet Herzog:

28. תוספות רמב”ן לפירושו לתורה, שנכתבו בארץ ישראל, יוסף
עופר יהונתן יעקבס, 718 עמודים, [מצוין] [ראה כאן]

29. נטועים, גליון יח,
214 עמודים

  30. היא שיחתי, על דרך לימוד התנ”ך, ישיבות הר עציון והוצאת
קורן, 264 עמודים [מלא חומר מעניין].

31. תמיר גרנות אמונה ואדם לנוכח השואה, ב’ חלקים, [ראה כאן]
ישובות הר עציון.

Magnes Press:

 Reuven Mass:

  

Mechon
Ben Tzvi:  

Kibutz Hamuchad:

Shocken –JTS:

Carmel Publishers:

The Israel Academy of
Sciences:

Yeddiot Seforim:

Some Random Academic
works at book week:

Ahavat Sholom is also having a book
sale this week. Here is a list of some of their newer titles:

Albert D. Friedberg’s Crafting the Commandments has just appeared. The Seforim Blog is happy to present the following excerpt from the book’s conclusion.

Scholars have ascribed far too much importance to Maimonides’ enumeration of the commandments and far too little to the motivations that lay behind his appropriation of R. Simlai’s aggadah as the basis for the enumeration and to the significance that Maimonides attached to this aggadah. The proximate reason for creating an enumeration was his need to have a reasoned and methodical outline of all Torah legislation in front of him, a reminder of topics to guide his preparation of the upcoming code of law, a massive and unique undertaking. Thus we find him saying in the introduction to the ShM [Sefer ha-Mitzvot]:

All this [I would do] in order to guard against omitting any topic [emphasis added] from discussion, for only by including them in the enumeration of the commandments [heading the various treatises] would I insure against such omission.

This sense is reinforced by some of the Rules, especially Rules 7 and 10-14, which are essentially taxonomic rules rather than definitions of what constitutes a mitsvah. I posited that the logically unnecessary identification of this outline with R. Simlai’s count of 613 commandments owed its existence to Maimonides’ desire to incorporate the two fundamental beliefs of the Jewish faith, God’s existence and His oneness, into the legal realm, and thus transform their intellection into obligations, a dramatic departure from the preceding geonic paradigm. I inferred this conclusion from a dispassionate and unapologetic assessment of the mitsvah count. Maimonides stretched the meaning of mitsvat ‘aseh well beyond its common rabbinic usage, relying uncharacteristically on an aggadah of questionable legal worth, a homiletic creation with didactic aims and no pretensions of being precise, and resorted to a contrived and hardly compelling logic to arrive at the numerical target, likely fully aware of the variant results that could be legitimately obtained.

The enumeration, qua a reasoned list of commandments, has diverted the attention of the countless students of his works ever since the ShM left his hands. But I posit that it was not R. Simlai’s dictum that 613 commandments were given to Moses at Sinai that was significant, but rather R. Hamnuna’s accompanying exegesis. Maimonides used R. Hamnuna’s midrashic exegesis that the verses I am the Lord thy God and Thou shalt have no other God before Me specifically formed part of the count of 613 commandments to prove that to intellect the existence of God and His oneness constituted a positive, performative obligation. The credibility of R. Hamnuna’s exegesis was even more firmly established when Maimonides inferred from its language what he believed was a theological truth: the nature of the commandments to believe in the existence of God and to believe in His oneness was categorically distinct from the nature and motivation underlying the rest of the commandments. He explained this distinction by averring that the former were philosophically demonstrable truths, capable of being apprehended without the medium of revelation, while the latter were only conventions, necessitating the mediation of a lawgiver and prophet.

The two articles of faith occupy the most prominent position in the MT, appearing in the opening lines of the Sefer ha-Madda’. In a letter to his disciple, Joseph b. Judah, Maimonides wrote that he undertook to compile a code of law in his zeal for the glory of God, “in seeing a nation bereft of a truly comprehensive book (diwan) of law, and bereft of clear and correct [theological] notions.”  Only the inclusion of these two beliefs in the canon of law could have satisfied the requirements of “a truly comprehensive book (diwan)” containing “correct theological notions.”  In sum, the unequivocal and unique statement found in R. Simlai’s aggadah, that the beliefs in God’s existence and His oneness constituted positive obligations, led Maimonides to appropriate the aggadah, adopt its numerical value of 613, and conflate it with the outline that he was preparing—all despite the constraints that it imposed.

In the second half of the book, I turned my attention to the sub-section of positive commandments and drew some conclusions from the way they are described and defined in the Halakhot. While my readings hinged on what Maimonides actually wrote, I recognized that, being human, Maimonides was bound to make the occasional mistake. That said, the exceptional (but more than occasional) omission of the formulaic phrase “X is a mitsvat ‘aseh” at the start of a topical discussion held my special attention because of the implausibility of it being forgotten: the phrase is rich, bold, highly informative, and consistent with Maimonides’ sustained interest for making categorical distinctions. Additionally, and just as importantly, my readings focused on how Maimonides expressed himself. The rhetoric, the literary presentation of his ideas, and the logic of composition mattered as much to me as the slight inferences one could arrive at by noting the absence or presence of a particular term, elements which have constituted the more traditional way of studying his works.

I began the book’s second section by noting that in the Halakhot, Maimonides moves away from the contrived artificiality adopted in the ShM of using the term mitsvat ‘aseh to designate all types of legal themes: here he applies the term to a very specific case, that of an absolute and unconditional obligation. Combing scriptural and rabbinic sources, Maimonides searches for clear indications of unconditional commands and imperatives to perform well-defined acts. These he designates boldly and prominently at the commencement of each topical
discussion, with a formulaic phrase that states that the directive at hand is a mitsvat ‘aseh. Where Maimonides withholds the mitsvat ‘aseh designation, I theorized that he must have done so because the scriptural and/or rabbinic evidence was insufficient to make such a determination. I tested for this evidentiary insufficiency, and when confirmed, I theorized further that under the influence of reigning Islamic legal theory (which was also heavily if not wholly influenced by rabbinic thinking), Maimonides opts for a softer definition. As a result, certain scriptural directives are categorized as recommendations rather than orders, wise pieces of advice rather than commands. Supporting these with scriptural proof texts, he labels them with the solo term mitsvah, a label that he also uses to designate rabbinical directives. The scriptural mitsvot include such prominent directives as to love and fear God, to imitate Him, to appoint a king, to heed the call of a prophet, to rebuke the sinner, to honor the wise, to testify in court, and a few others.

I conjectured further that Maimonides deliberately withheld the scriptural designation from certain commandments that had been labeled as scriptural in the ShM when the plain reading of the scriptural text did not appear to provide sufficient evidence for them, even when rabbinic interpretation suggested otherwise. To this end, he chose an artful but somewhat concealed literary device to designate them as such, the participle of correct practice. This is the case with such prominent practices as the recitation of the Shema, the binding of the tefillin, the writing and placing of the mezuzah and the study of Torah.

In the heavily politicized atmosphere of Cairo, where Rabbanites were both assiduously courted and continuously attacked by sectarian groups (largely Karaites) over the role of the oral law in interpreting Scripture, Maimonides chose to keep his radical opinions hidden yet recoverable. When applied to the legal sections of the Torah, Maimonides’ peshateh di-qera hermeneutics would likely raise hackles among his own co-religionists and, worse yet, give comfort to the deniers of the oral law. His carefully planted literary cues could lead the reader who is familiar with rabbinic terminology and unburdened by popular and superficial conclusions to discover the Master’s true opinion or at the very least sense his ambivalence.

Maimonides was informed by a hermeneutics of peshateh di-qera that was firmly and demonstrably anchored in the Andalusian tradition. His insistence on presumed philological validity, however, left him uneasily placed, uncomfortably close to sectarian investigation and interpretation. Ironically, this led him at times to mount a struggling defense of his own traditional Rabbanite views, well aware that the plain sense of Scripture did not lend convincing support for such a stance.

Consciously or unconsciously, Maimonides navigated his legal system between the Rabbanites and the Karaites, upholding the former’s respect for authoritative tradition and the latter’s insistence on relying only on philologically informed readings. Maimonides’ extraordinarily novel application of peshateh di-qera to the halakhic corpus threatened the very foundations of a Rabbanism, one that was intimately intertwined with the Talmud and its authority. Nahmanides understood this too well when he criticized Rule 2:

[F]or this book of the master, its content is delightful, full of love [based on Song of Songs 5:16] except for this principle, which uproots great mountains of the Talmud and throws down fortified walls of the Gemara. For the students of the Gemara, this notion is evil and bitter. Let it be forgotten and not said.

Of course, Maimonides would not have conceded this point: he would have maintained that his paradigm flowed quite naturally from the pages of the Talmud. Did not the Talmud’s quest for peshateh di-qera support the distinction between divine and man-made law? Did not the rabbis of the Talmud acknowledge that explicitly stipulated scriptural laws enjoyed an epistemic advantage over and a distinction from man-made laws? To Maimonides the answer to these two questions was a resounding yes.

Thanks to his remarkable codification, Maimonides left an indelible mark on Jewish law. Unfortunately, an important part of his jurisprudence, the exquisitely fine distinctions he made between divine and human law and between command and advice, was never fully appreciated, perhaps because of its radical import—or perhaps because Maimonides, for his own good reasons, hid many of these contributions behind formulaic omissions, terminological nuances, and subtle literary devices. It is this rich and layered nuancing that in some modest way I have tried to recover.

New Seforim and books 2014

by Eliezer Brodt

Although the world, has been shifting more and more to E- books, seforim and books are still being printed in full force in the Jewish world. What follows is a list of new seforim and books I have seen around in the past few months. Some of the titles are brand new others are a bit older. I am well aware that there are new works worth mentioning that are not included. Due to lack of time I cannot keep track of every book of importance nor comment properly on each and every work. I just try to keep the list interesting. For some of the works listed I am able to provide a Table of contents or a sample feel free to email me at eliezerbrodt@gmail.com. I hope you enjoy!

 I hope to return to this special work shortly.

A few years ago I wrote about this sefer and the censorship of various parts. This new editions is complete. What is interesting is that the censored edition had a Haskamah from Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach while the new edition is uncensored, based on the advice of Rabbi Steinman and Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky.

This work deals with four great Achronim; the Machaneh Ephrayim, K’tzot
HaChoshen, Rabbi Akiva Eiger, and the Minchat Chinuch. The author
provides a brief history of each one of these Achronim and then he delves into
their methods. He provides four samples of Torah of each one of these Achronim
with the background of the related sugyah and presents their methods clearly.
It’s a more in-depth version of Rav Zevin classic work Ishim Vishitos in
English. A Table of contents is available upon request.

New sefer announcement: Asufah of Rabbi Shmuel Ashkenazi

By Eliezer Brodt  

אסופה, ארבעה מאמרים מאוצרות הר”ש אשכנזי שליט”א [‘העלם דבר וטעות סופר’, ‘הגונב מן הספר’, ‘הרמב”ם כמתרגם מלשון התלמוד ללשון המשנה’, ‘מילונות עברית כיצד’?], ערך והשלים והביא לבית הדפוס, יעקב ישראל סטל, בהשתתפות אליעזר יהודה בראדט, כריכה רכה, 166 עמודים.

It is with great pleasure that I announce the release of another volume of Rabbi Shmuel Ashkenazi’s work- Asufah. As I have written in the past, we are trying to print the collected material Rabbi Ashkenazi has written over a seventy year period. Many additional volumes are ready to go to print, but we lack funds to
do so [any help would be greatly appreciated].

This new volume is composed of four articles. Two of these articles (no. 3 and 4) were printed in Leshonenu and Leshonenu L’Am, almost fifty years ago. A third article (no. 2) was partially printed in a recent volume of Yeshurun, and the fourth article (no. 1) was supposed to have been printed in the journal
Or Yisrael but was excluded from the volume right before printing.

The first article deals with mistakes that great people have made in their writings. The point of the collection is to show that anyone can make a mistake, however this does in no way detract from their greatness. This sampling is only a small part [18 samples] of a much larger collection of similar kinds of mistakes that we hope to print in the future.

The second article is a list of 85[!] cases of plagiarisms. It’s seventy two pages long and includes a very broad introduction on the subject. Hopefully this list will encourage others to collect similar instances and work to complete such a list.

The third article deals with the Rambam as a translator. As is well known, the Rambam wrote his classic work Yad Hachzakah in the Hebrew of the Mishna, as opposed to Talmudic Hebrew which is comprised of many Aramaic loanwords as well.  Thus, the Rambam had to translate many Aramaic terms into Hebrew. This article deals with this topic and shows many interesting points related to this.

The fourth article is a review of the popular Hebrew dictionary HaMilon HaChadash, by Avraham Even-Shoshan. This article was first published in 1967 in the language journal Leshonanu in three parts. Some of the material from these articles was added into later editions of the dictionary. There is a wealth of information in this article about words and expressions. Rabbi Ashkenazi had made a 12 page index for his own personal copy of the article; this index is published here for the first time in this volume. Additionally,
Rabbi Ashkenazi added many notes which he recorded over the years on the side of his copy of the article. All of the above addenda have been included in this printing.

 In sum, this volume is of importance to any person interested in the Jewish book or the Hebrew Language.

The book was printed in a limited run of 300 copies and is not being sold in retail stores. If one is interested in purchasing a copy he can do so either through me, or at Beigeleisen in the U.S. or Girsa in Jerusalem. The price of the book, including air mail shipping to the U.S., Canada or England is $24.

For a sample of this work or for any other information regarding this project, feel free to email me at: eliezerbrodt@gmail.com

Megale Temirin, was first published in Vienna in 1819, and is considered one of the sharpest and wittiest pieces of Jewish literature written in the first half of the nineteenth century. It is perhaps the most important piece of Hebrew prose composed before the stories of Mendele Mocher Seforim. A sly and complex story deriding Hasidism and Hasidim, it is told through the correspondence between the beadles of Hasidic courts and contemporary rabbis. It presents a dark picture of avaricious frauds and swindlers whose main concern was control over territory and the souls of believers, a goal achieved by beguiling the authorities and attacking all opponents. Perl lends his book a ‘Hasidic’ feel both in its physical design and in its language, presenting a Maskilic version of the classic work Shivchei Habesht– that lays Hasidism bare so that no reader will ever be able to look at that, or any other Hasidic book, in the same way again.

In addition to the book’s satiric sting, which would have been enough to bring its readers a dual pleasure, Perl’s hints at contemporary people and places, hidden within anagrams and numerological tricks. With the unraveling of these clues, which also include the use of actual Hasidic sources, the book is a valuable, contemporary view of historical reality. A meticulous reading of the book may therefore open a window on the hidden worlds of Hasidism and the Haskalah at the start of the nineteenth century.

The first volume (Imagined Hasidism) of this collection serves as an introduction to the complex satirical writings of Josef Perl of Tarnopol (1773-1839). At the center of the book stands an analysis of the satires, Megale Temirin (1819) and Bochen Tzadik (1838), including a systematic treatment of the ‘characters’ in the central works and a discussion of the dozens of manuscripts to be found in the Perl Archive in Jerusalem. Perl’s writings are analyzed here in the fuller context of Hebrew and Yiddish literature in general and Maskilic and Hasidic literature in particular, as well as other polemical writings and governmental records critical of Hasidism. The study thus presents a complex and nuanced picture of the relationship between literature and history, between the anti-Hasidic reports and the more complicated historical reality, and lays the groundwork for further research into the genre of nineteenth-century Maskilic satire.

The second and third volumes (Megale Temirin) present for the first time an annotated edition of Megale Temirin. It is based on the first
edition and the scattered manuscripts and it includes a comparison to its Yiddish translation. The book is accompanied by appendices on its origins and contents, including fundamental treatments of several passages: an explication of the encoded names, the Hasidic sources used by the author, and the variants found in the manuscripts and in the only edition of the book in Yiddish.

The editor of the book, Professor Jonatan Meir, teaches in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University. He has published numerous articles and books on the Haskalah of Eastern Europe, Hasidism, and a number of varied topics in twentieth-century Kabbalah.

For a Table of Contents or more information about purchasing this work, feel free to contact me at Eliezerbrodt@gmail.com

 The set of three books is on sale for $62 before shipping. Shipping is available worldwide.