The other day my brother asked me if I had seen Massechet Hahammah (“The Tractate of the Sun”). I had never heard of it and he explained that it was related to Birkat Hahammah, the blessing over the sun, a once in every 28 year occurrence. I did a little searching and I easily found [...]
Legal Theory Bookworm: The Legal Theory Bookworm recommends A Constitution of Many Minds: Why the Founding Document Doesnt Mean What It Meant Before by Cass R. Sunstein. Here is a description: (the emphases are mine, MM) The future of the U.S. Supreme Court hangs in the balance like never before. Will conservatives or liberals succeed [...]
There is a good article in the Forward on the dilemmas facing the Conservative Movement. (hat tip) There are a number of interesting books, some which I haven’t read at all, about religion in America that I have learned about through numerous blog posts and comments on those posts which discuss some of the issues [...]
Last year there was some discussion of the new Oz ve-Hadar edition of the Aruch ha-Shulhan which included decisions of the Mishnah Berurah. One of the criticisms was that this decision seemed to belittle the authority of the Aruch ha-Shulhan, placing the Mishnah Berurah as the more authoritative work (see here and here for some [...]
The Apple Blog has reviewed the recent release of the DEVONthink Pro Beta (it looks very nice) and has also posted a comparison of it to Evernote.
Israel’s Origins:
The Jewish History Channel is back after a hiatus with two posts on Sephardim in Eastern Europe.
Louis Finkelstein from here admitting that he’s in the minority.
Praying With My Legs is a film project about the life and thought of Abraham Joshua Heschel. For an explanation of the title read here. You can find the website here. One nice feature of the website is an extensive bibliography of writings by and about Heschel.
In the first issue of Quntres (see here) there is an article by Shemuel Glick on self-censorship in the responsa literature. I recently posted on private vs. public pesak and Glick brings a quote from an introduction to a collection of responsa in which the author admits that there were responsa which he decided not [...]
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