Johannes Buxtorf the Elder was a prominent Christian Hebraist. Born in Westphalia in Germany, the son of a minister, he studied at Marburg and then at the Herborn Academy, a Calvinist institution of higher learning. He was professor of Hebrew for thirty-nine years at the university in Basel and was known by the title Master of the Rabbis. He is best known for his book, Synagoga Judaica, a study of the customs and culture of German Jewry.
Mar Abramowitz did not attend services in our temple. With a dozen or so other Ashkenazi refugees from Eastern Europe he worshiped in a tiny downtown loft that was said, by those who had never been…
A book titled in Ladino Obligasyon de los korazones [Duty of the Hearts] because it is translated from a text written by the pious gaon, our master Baḥya the judge, of blessed…