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The fact that at a crossroads in Jewish history two “fathers of the world” met, men who were to become trailblazers in religious philosophy, is of major importance. The…
Printing, which Jews adopted immediately after its invention, helped to unify far-flung communities. Where previously Jewish learning had been transmitted through the individual copying of manuscripts…
Says the youth, Gedaliah, the Lord has granted me the merit to begin the work of heaven, today Wednesday, the 23rd of Tammuz, 5347 (July 29, 1587). I have fixed it for a fast and remembrance for ever…
Seek ye out the book of the Lord (Isaiah 34:16), and read The Holy Epistle [so] called to water the flock, go and browse.
This sumptuous velvet and gilt-metal-thread embroidered Torah ark curtain most likely began its life as the wedding gown of a well-to-do Jewish woman of the Ottoman Empire. It was unstitched and…
It has not always been easy to break with the more than two-thousand-year-old manner of translating the Hebrew Bible, the word-for-word manner. Thus in Gen. 14.1–2 (cf. vv…
I am the man they call, at times, mem-bet-aleph, which are the [Hebrew] initials of Michael ben Abraham. At other times I am called aleph-mem-koph: Abraham Michael Cardozo. I am of the Marranos of…
This silver Torah pointer from Poland is inscribed in Hebrew: “The hand [i.e., pointer] of Joseph Halevi, crowned with success, donated in the name of his son Abraham on the eve of R[osh] H[ashanah]…
These two Torah pointers (yadayim) are from Galicia, one made of ivory and brass and the other of wood. Yadayim (hands) are used during public reading of the Torah, so that the reader may avoid…
Midrash [ . . . ] is not mere reference to the past: it is the enlistment of the past in the service of the present. Even more specifically, it is a reinsertion into the present of the original divine…