Derashot ḥatam sofer (Sermons of Ḥatam Sofer)

Moses Sofer

1809

A sealed Torah was given to us; it is doubtless a Torah of Truth but it is disguised. Every day the Holy One, blessed be He, renews those who study it for its own sake and they find a new taste in it, like a suckling at the breast [ . . . ] yet those who breach it are not blessed in this manner, for they say there is only one Torah, and scripture merely has its plain meaning.

Translated by
Maoz
Kahana
.

Credits

Moses Sofer, Sefer Ḥatam Sofer : ʻal ha-Torah, ed. Yosef Naftali Shṭern, vol. 1. Be-reshit (Jerusalem: Mekhon Ḥatam Sofer, 2007), 142a.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 6.

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Creator Bio

Moses Sofer

1762–1839

Moses (Mosheh) Sofer (also Schreiber) was a major rabbinic leader who did much to shape Orthodox Judaism and Hungarian Jewry. Born and educated in Frankfurt, he first held rabbinic positions in Moravia and Burgenland. In 1806, he accepted the position of rabbi of Pressburg (now Bratislava, Slovakia); there, he founded a major and influential yeshiva, where numerous significant Hungarian rabbis received their training. Sofer was famous for his uncompromising opposition to Reform Judaism. He published very little during his lifetime, but his roughly 1,500 responsa were published posthumously (some included in this volume) under the title of Ḥatam Sofer.

Related Guide

Rabbinic Scholarship, 1750–1880

Despite the challenges of the early modern period, rabbinic scholarship flourished in Central and Eastern Europe in the latter half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century. 

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