From the JNUL:
1. Another volume of Machon Yerushalayim’s edition of the Or Zarua.
2. A possible new translation of the Rambam’s commentary on the Mishnah. From the description I wasn’t sure if the translation of his commentary is new.
Bein Din le-Din has a post on halakhic issues discussed in episodes of Srugim. Last week I ordered the entire first season of Srugim on DVD from Sifrutake. (The Srugim DVD’s aren’t yet on their website, but you can call them and order them.) The DVD’s are in PAL and are Region 2, therefore unwatchable on a regular TV here in America. The problem was solved by taking advantage of our need for a new DVD player and ordering one that can play DVD’s from Israel without any problem.
The Daf Yomi column in a recent issue of Makor Rishon featured a picture of Srugim, although I don’t think that there is a connection between the contents of the column and the picture, although I might be missing some Srugim knowledge.
There are two new books on conversion, the first which has already succeeded in causing quite a controversy.
1. Sifrut Ha-Shu”t: Ha-Giyyur Be-Rei Ha-Dorot
2. Zera Yisrael (See here, here, and here for some info about the controversy. Thanks to MB for the heads up via Facebook.)
On the Main Line has posted some very interesting sources about the way in which some Jewish travelers ate kosher food on their journeys. I would add the following from this exhibit (see under “Jews and the Liquor Trade”),
By the end of the eighteenth century about 80 percent of rural Jews in Poland-Lithuania were involved in the sale and production of liquor. According to available data, Jews comprised 94 percent of urban and at least 78.7 percent of rural tavern keepers among seven towns and fifty-one villages in Bielsk County (Podlaskie District) during this period. A centerpiece of the reform initiatives of the Prussian, Russian, and Austrian monarchs who annexed the Polish lands during this period was the elimination of the rural Jewish liquor trade, which they attempted by means of escalating concession fees and outright expulsions. Surprisingly, few rabbinic or Hasidic leaders protested these draconian measures. It appears they themselves were uncomfortable with the tavern keeping profession.
One might also want to read this selection from a famous responsum of the Maharshal (no. 72) about the lack of an obligation to cover one’s head, in which he pointed out, what was in his eyes, quite a hypocrisy.
And now I will reveal to you the disgrace of the Ashkenazim. Surely one who drinks forbidden wine (yein nesech) in a Gentile motel and eats fish cooked in their vessels and is acting strict when he believes the inn keeper that they haven’t cooked any food in this vessel, [they] are not suspected of anything and nobody doubts them, and they are treated with respect if they are rich and bossy. But one who eats food that is definitely kosher yet with an uncovered head, they are treated as if they have left the fold.
Here is something for those of you who are looking forward to tonight’s beginning of Lost: The Final Season. (hat tip)
Rav Ovadiah Yosef has paskened that if a man dies and doesn’t leave behind any sons, a daughter may say kaddish if there is a minyan that gathers in her home to study Torah or after psalms are read somewhere else. He explicitly forbids a woman to say kaddish in the synagogue. A little opening at best for some in the Orthodox world. (hat tip)
Here is the full text describing the decision to change Maharat to Rabbah, with the latter being suggested, after some discussion, by the Academy of the Hebrew Language. One snippet,
And so, after consultation with Rabbi Daniel Sperber, who is signing the klaf with me, we have decided that Sara Hurwitz’s title will now be Rabba. This will make it clear to everyone that Sara Hurwitz is a full member of our rabbinic staff, a rabbi with the additional quality of a distinct woman’s voice.
While not Orthodox myself, I can appreciate the importance of this move and applaud it as a further step in the empowerment of women within Jewish tradition and learning. See here for a less enthusiastic reaction.
Life in Israel mentions that some Haredim are finding fault with the incoming Chief Rabbi of the Army that he doesn’t have a beard. First of all, who cares what the “Haredi Street”, i.e. people who have nothing better to do with their time than to envy a person who can be both a rabbi and a combat helicopter pilot, secondly, it reminds me of a story that I heard from David Weiss Halivni and was brought in his book, The Book and the Sword: A Life of Learning in the Shadow of Destruction
I came to the United States on February 11, 1947, as part of a group of orphaned children under the age of eighteen—my papers were ready in Germany before I actually became eighteen—who were brought to this country for adoption under the auspices of Eleanor Roosevelt, who headed a committee for children found in the European theater of war.I remember that we arrived at midday and were taken to an orphanage on Caldwell Avenue in the Bronx, where they served us cold milk.I still savor the taste; after years of starvation, to be able to drink as much cold milk as one wanted was a memorable event. But then in the evening they served a dinner with meat, and the question of Jewish dietary laws came up.If I remember correctly, out of fifteen children, three ate kosher, and they followed my lead. They were in a precarious psychological state, and I worried about them. (One of these children, by the name of Rosenfeld, jumped to his death from a building a few months later.)
I wanted to make sure the meat was kosher, and the director obliged me by bringing in a young man who supervised the kitchen to see that it conformed to the dietary laws. The young man, I later found out, was from one of the right-wing yeshivot, Torah VeDaath, but he had no beard. It was the first time I had seen a rabbi without a beard, so naturally I had some hesitation about his supervision. Since I was very hungry and anxious to eat, as were the people following me, I tested him by asking him a question on the law. I was already ordained and asked him the kind of question I would have been asked in Sighet, an interpretation of a text that is part of a commentary on the Shulchan Aruch, which we had to study for ordination. The commentary was called Peri Megadim, and I subsequently learned that rabbinical students in the United States did not study it as intensively as we did in Europe.
I asked the young man the question and he did not know the answer. His not knowing made me doubt his reliability, and we did not eat. The incident proved to be embarrassing to the management. The place had a reputation for being strictly kosher and we, who had come from Europe, from concentration camps, did not want to eat there. We also had a problem of language. We couldn’t talk to the orphanage staff because we did not know English well enough. Someone had the bright idea to bring in a social worker who could speak Yiddish to try to convince us to eat. They brought a social worker by the name of Shulamit Halkin, granddaughter of the Netziv, who also happened to be the sister-in-law of Professor Saul Lie berman, the scion of a famous scholarly family in Lithuania. She spoke a different Yiddish, Lithuanian Yiddish— I was more accustomed to Galician Yiddish. She addressed herself earnestly to me. But speaking Yiddish is no guarantee, no certificate of kashrut, of meeting the dietary requirements. We had to go to sleep without eating meat. But she had asked me, “If I take you to the person who I think is the greatest Talmud scholar, will you go?”
I said, “Of course I’ll go.”
The next morning, February 12, 1947, she took me to Professor Lieberman’s home. I was enormously impressed by his erudition, which probably was unrivaled by that of any living scholar. Even when he didn’t want to impress, he was impressive. This time he wanted to impress. He wanted to make sure that I would eat. He explained that the meat was kosher even though the fellow who supervised didn’t know how to answer my question. After a few hours of discussion, he sent me back to the orphanage, where we stayed for a few more days and then were sent to another orphanage; and we ate, of course.
From this first, long discussion with Professor Lieberman that day, concerning Talmudic subjects, I remember only one “Tosafot”, a passage of medieval commentary on the Babylonian Talmud, on Tractate Chulin 97a, in which I had the upper hand because I remembered it better than he did.At the time he did not say anything. But as I left —when I was already at the door and turned back to thank him again—I noticed that he had taken out the Chulin folio of the Talmud, turned to the first page, and begun to study.I asked him “Why Chulin?” and he answered, “If I forgot one Tosafot, who knows how many others I may also have forgotten?” Erudition is a steady endeavor.
(pp. 78-81)
When I heard Prof. Halivni tell the story he added that when he saw Prof. Lieberman he thought to himself “another clean-shaven man.” He also gave some more details of their learning, how they gradually realized that the other was very learned.
