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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…
Scenes from everyday life are scarcely to be found in these pages. Rather you will feel that you have been transported for a while to some far-off, exotic country where different flowers grow and…
Now when I was a young lad, sitting amidst the dust of the feet of those bound up with the houses of study, I would never hear them speaking anything sensible about the Hasidim, explaining and…
And after the rabbi [Joseph Karo] went to Safed he studied in the study house of the rabbi, our master, Jacob Berab, and became a disciple of our master R. Berab, as is written in several places. The…
Abraham Menaḥem Kohen Porto to the prince and magnate, chieftain and nobleman, our teacher R. Menaḥem Azariah de Fano—may his Rock and Redeemer preserve him—greetings to his glorious excellency!
Beh…
Now comes the turn, with awe and reverence, awe and reverence without end, of my father, the pious, God-fearing, learned one, may his strength be for the Torah [see Esther 2:15], the supernal light…
In 1930, Chaim Elazar Shapiro (Spira), the Hasidic rebbe of Munkacs, Czechoslovakia (today, Mukachevo, Ukraine), traveled by rail to Vienna and Trieste and by ship to Alexandria, where he and his…
When our teacher Rabbi Solomon, who was a rabbi here in Aleppo, passed away without any male children, the rabbis [of the city] consulted among themselves, and with the elders of the people and the…
One of the most important things that the government has introduced in Russia to improve education among Jews is the decree that each community must choose a…
This is a short essay on the debate concerning practical halakhic issues that took place between the sages of Safed and those of Jerusalem wherein the sages of Safed saw fit to implement the ruling…