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No chapter in the history of the Jewish people during the last several hundred years has been as shrouded in mystery as that of the Sabbatian movement. On one point, at least, there is no longer any…
This is what the episode of the Generation of the Dispersion was all about; that they were afraid of a Flood and accordingly sought to erect a tower up to the heavens. One has, however, to understand…
The Hasid praises the Almighty on the right hand, and the unbeliever tosses away and truncates the principles of faith on the left, while the Torah scholar, standing in the center, maintains silence…
There is one people in the world alone who are not sufficiently concerned with “human knowledge” and who have neglected the public instruction of their youth in the laws of etiquette, the sciences and…
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…
I truly heard a mouth of holiness uttering these words, namely the holy and honored one of the Almighty, the most renowned, illustrious, saintly, and godly kabbalist, our teacher, R. ḥayim of Sanz of…
This illustration of an armillary sphere is from a treatise on astronomy, Sefer mareh ha-ofanim (The Appearance of the Heavenly Beings), by Solomon ben Abraham Avigdor. The treatise was mostly a…
In the back of a manuscript collection of astronomical texts, which includes one of Abraham Ibn Ezra’s works on the use of the astrolabe (a tool for astronomical calculations), is a set of crude but…
Says Moses, son to my Master, my father, R. Israel—may the memory of the righteous be for a blessing for the world to come—seeing that the illustrious author [Joseph Karo] of the Bet Yosef [Th…
Behold, I am aged and gray-headed—I know not the day of my death [see Genesis 27:2]! And when am I going to provide for my own house (Genesis 30:30), which I built, and for my children…