Showing Results 111 - 120 of 153
[ . . . ] We have nooses fastened around our necks; when the pressure abates for a moment, we utter a cry. Its importance should not be underestimated. Many a time in history did such cries resound…
With zeal and zest I threw myself into the work to help assemble archive materials. I was entrusted to be the custodian, I hid the material. Besides me, no one knew. I confided only in my friend Hersh…
On the nights before Passover, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur, my mother would send me to the butcher with some birds to be slaughtered according to ritual so the meat would be kosher—that is, clean…
That which God puts in my mouth I shall express (Numbers 22:38) in succinct and easy language, so that it will be simple for the discerning to grasp. And my purpose is to inform everyone to whom this…
Remember me, O my God, for the good (Nehemiah 5:19). Amen
I began to write the first Torah Scroll, with the help of God, today, 2 Heshvan, the twenty-second of October, in the year 5302 [1541]. It…
When I Judah, the son of my master, the wise and righteous R. Jacob ḥayyat, peace be upon him, was in Spain, I tasted a little honey, and my eyes were enlightened. And I took it upon myself to seek…
Thus spoke David, son of Isaac, son of Eliezer, son of Isaac, son of Abraham, son of Menahem, son of Isaac, son of Obadiah, son of Isaac—known as “the wealthy one”—son of Elijah, known as “the holy…
At the beginning of the month of Tammuz 5349 [began June 15, 1589], in order not to remain idle, I began to give lessons in Torah to the son of Manasseh Levi of blessed memory and to Joseph the son of…
[ . . . ] Let us return to my maternal grandmother, Matte, of blessed memory. After she married off my late aunt Ulk, she was left penniless with the fatherless child my mother, may she live…
There was a mysterious jar on one of the shelves. It contained about twenty gray, hard, colorless, tasteless little rods and did not have a label. This was very strange, because it was a German…