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I was then in Warsaw for the second time. That city had always exerted a powerful attraction for me, with its great and all-encompassing Jewish life. When I was in the Polish capital for the first…
Sunday, 15th of the aforementioned month [Elul; 10.9.1623]. The Sipahis [feudal cavalrymen] and the Janissaries [professional infantry corps] and all the king’s slaves and ministers came to speak with…
[Sabbatai’s] illumination grew steadily more intense up to the thirteenth day of the month of Adar [23 February]. On that day his brother came for a stay, along with four of Vani Effendi’s men.…
And in it they will find a commentary appropriate to everyone and in it many precious midrashim, sharp pilpulim, light and weighty, Sinai and uprooter of mountains (Berakhot 64a, that is both breadth…
Why should I write to you about myself? Nothing has happened in the meantime in my personal life. My son is still with me, as before. He is still an Extern. He knows the gymnasium [university…
Even in the past, some thirty to forty years ago, when Jewish life in Russia was still very conservative, there was a difference between those cities and towns located…
“The living faith has vanished. . . . All that remains is poetry!” A superficial observer of life in the ghetto might come to more or less the same conclusion about the way…
Mordecai recorded these events. And he sent dispatches to all the Jews throughout the provinces of King Ahasuerus, near and far, charging them to observe the fourteenth and fifteenth days of Adar…
The creator of the popular ritual of placing an orange on the Seder plate describes exactly how this innovation arose, its intended significance, and the problematic erasure of its origins.
18 April 7 pm. News. Amzanak told us that the CO [commanding officer] had asked him how many men we had, what they were doing, and whether many could work with wagons, and Amzanak said that we had…