Ruth Langer’s book on Birkat HaMinim, Cursing the Christians?: A History of the Birkat HaMinim has just been published. From the preview on Google Books it looks like an informative read. For a discussion of this blessing in an earlier historical context, see Yaakov Teppler’s Birkat haMinim: Jews and Christians in Conflict in the Ancient [...]
Here is a special prayer for the Carmel Fire victims.
As I wrote in this previous post, the question of what is the proper blessing over Bamba is causing some people to be quite perplexed. The Bamba Blessing Wars have heated up with the latest battlefield being the Yosef family. Apparently, last week R. David Yosef published a book with a letter from his father, [...]
In the manuscripts of the Babylonian Talmud, Menachot 43b, we read, Rabbi Yehudah [1] would say: A person is obligated to recite the following three blessings every day-[Praised are you...] who has not made me a Gentile (גוי); who has not made me a woman (אשה); [*] who has not made me an ignoramous (בור). [...]
The question is raised a number of times by the Tosafot as to whether one recites a blessing on an act which is a observed out of custom, and not a legal obligation (see Tosafot Sukkah 44b s.v. kon be-mikdash kon be-gevulin; Taanit 28b s.v. amar shema mina minhag avoteihem be-yedeihem; Berachot 14a s.v. yamim [...]
Amen to these words.
While discussing the laws of a mezuzah, R. Yehiel Michel Epstein, the author of Arukh ha-Shulhan, says that “ויש מי שרצה לומר כשנכנס לבית שיש שם מזוזה יברך אקב”ו לדור בבית שיש בו מזוזה ואינו עיקר דלא מצינו ברכה זו בשום מקום” (“And there is someone who wanted to say that when one enters a [...]
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