Hanan Eshel is one of Israel’s most important archaeologists. Carta has published a number of field guides that he has written which will no doubt enrich anyones trip to Israel. Many of Carta’s publications are available outside of Israel through Eisenbrauns. Masada A Carta Field Guide by Hanan Eshel Carta, Jerusalem, 2009 144 pages, English [...]
I am posting the following mishnah and text from the Gemara not only because I couldn’t help laughing when I read them, I’ll admit it, but also because I serious want to know what people think of them. The mishnah is a bit more understandable, it is part of list of physical characteristics that disqualify [...]
Johannes Buxtorf (more here) (1564-1629) was a German Hebraist who authored Synagoga Judaica, a rich description of Jewish life and practice in early seventeenth century Germany. Among his other works, Buxtorf also authored books on Biblical and Rabbinic Aramaic and on Hebrew Grammar. Alan D. Corré has translated Synagoga Judaica (Juden-Schül) and it can be [...]
Newspapers, TV, and the Internet are full of discussions and retrospectives about 3 Days of Peace and Music, a.k.a. Woodstock, this summer being the forty year anniversary. (Is forty the new fifty?) For anybody who hasn’t seen the movie Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music, I highly recommend it. While many people think that [...]
The Israeli Foreign Ministry has recently published an extensive report detailing the legal and moral justification for Operation Cast Lead, a.k.a. the recent Gaza incursion in January of 2009. The full report can be found here. Despite doubts by some that Israel could seriously investigate its actions and that people should wait for the U.N. [...]
Manuscriptboy and Izgad have been doing a wonderful job of live-blogging the WCJS (World Congress of Jewish Studies) which is taking place this week in Jerusalem. Anyone who has ever been to a WCJS knows how overwhelming it can be at times. Ynet has an article (for now only in Hebrew) on one of the [...]
The Jerusalem Post has an article (hat tip) about the attempts by Chabad to have a Nazi recognized as a Righteous Gentile because he helped saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Chabad Lubavitch presented a request Monday to Yad Vashem to recognize a high-ranking military commander in the Third Reich as a righteous gentile for saving Rabbi [...]
My teacher Prof. Neil Danzig, in his comment to this post, reminded me that Rashi’s commentary to Moed Katan that is found in the standard editions of the Talmud is not Rashi’s. Whether Rashi ever wrote a commentary to Moed Katan is subject to some disagreement among scholars. See here (Hebrew) for a discussion on [...]
The Accordance web site has a number of short articles on various subjects. There is a very good introduction by Prof. Emanuel Tov to the Septuagint, “The Septuagint Translation of the Hebrew Bible: Its Nature and Importance for Scholarship,” Bulletin of the Comparative Culture Institute of Tokyo Women’s Christian University, Vol. 69 (2008).
Accordance, the unbelievable Mac program for scholars of Biblical and related literature, has just announced the first taste of a Rabbinics bundle which is in the works. Now available for download and purchase are Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, based on the Munich Codex provided by the Primary Textual Witnesses Project (PTWP) of Bar-Ilan University under the [...]
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