Four Rare Commentaries on Esther
With the approach of Purim, Chaim Eleazar Reich, Boro Park’s publisher of rare books, has put out reproductions of four old commentaries on Esther. R. Zecharya Ibn Saruk was an […]
With the approach of Purim, Chaim Eleazar Reich, Boro Park’s publisher of rare books, has put out reproductions of four old commentaries on Esther. R. Zecharya Ibn Saruk was an […]
The Sabbath Between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur is called Shabbath Teshuva (Sabbath of Repentance) or Shabbat Shuva (named for the Haftara Shuvu Yisrael — Hosea 14: 2-10– which is […]
During the last one hundred and fifty years great rabbis and scholars wrote important and interesting notes on the prayers and Piytim, but because these were published in periodicals or […]
Several years ago I wrote in this column about the Piyut Yetziv Pigam which is recited on the second day of Shavuot before the reading of the Haftara. I remarked […]
A Short time ago the Passover Haggadah of the Talmdic Encyclopedia came off the press in Jerusalem. The Haggadah which is entirely in Hebrew, consists of two parts. The first […]
Prof. Moshe Bar Asher of the Hebrew University has published in recent years several studies about the particular religious customs of the Jews of southwestern France. Prof. Bar-Asher discusses the […]
Since the times of the Gemara there has been a custom to not only hang Haman in effigy, but to burn the figure as well. Today, though, you’d be hard […]
For more than four centuries, up until the the years between the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and the Suez Canal Crisis in 1956, when a mass […]
Rectifying the Sin of the Tree of Knowledge. Back in the 18th century, a fascinating story circulated among Jews that the Queen of Prussia, Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, wife of King […]
Many summers ago, when I was single and studying in Paris at the Sorbonne, I decided to spend Shabbos Mevarchim in Strasbourg in the south of France. I stayed at […]