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Archive for Halakhic Literature

Women Teaching from Behind a Curtain

About twenty years ago, there was some controversy in Israel regarding Nechama Leibowitz teaching male students at R. Shlomo Riskin’s yeshivah. If my memory and the reports are correct, R. Shach opposed it entirely, and R. Ovadiah Yosef said that she could continue to teach, just that it would have to be from behind [...]

Barack Obama and Jewish Law

Orin Kerr has a post at the Volokh Conspiracy in which he asks “Who Would Barack Obama Nominate to the Supreme Court?” Kerr brings a few quotes from Barack Obama regarding judges, one of which is,
I taught constitutional law for 10 years, and . . . when you look at what makes a great [...]

How many mistakes in this article?

The JTA really needs some help fixing this article.
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“Kitzur Shulchan Aruch” published in Portuguese

Portuguese-speaking Jews will be able to study the landmark “Code of Jewish Law” in their mother tongue.
The two-volume set of the “Kitzur Shulchan Aruch,” or “Code of Jewish Law,” authored some 350 years ago by Rabbi Yosef Caro of Spain, was published [...]

Guide for Halakhic and Egalitarian Minyan

From an email list to which I subscribe, JA pointed out the following article form Ynet.
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New guide for the halachic and egalitarian minyan
Egalitarian minyans are rampant throughout the country. Now thanks to PHD candidates Michal and Elitzur Bar-Asher they have a halachic guide to follow
Can women receive the maftir aliya? Lead the Hallel? Recite the [...]

Conception Sine Concubito

In response to a post on Ben Sira at Ancient Hebrew Poetry, Iyov brought a story found in the Alphabet of Ben Sira which describes Ben Sira’s lineage. One should read it to get the full story. What is interesting from the viewpoint of the history of halakhah is the role which this story played [...]

Project Cotar

I stumbled across a new project by those at Bar-Ilan who brought you the Responsa Project. Project Cotar (Collection Of Torah Articles by the Responsa Project) includes an index and articles from a number of journals which discuss halachic issues such as Tzohar, Zachor le-Avraham, and Ha-Ma’ayan. Their web site also says that it [...]

Who wrote the Shulhan Arukh?

At first glance, the question “Who wrote the Shulhan Arukh?” is almost rhetorical-R. Joseph Caro. As I mentioned in a previous post, there are certain scholars who entrust no small part of their research and writing to students and research assistants. Among those who have been accused of such a methodology was none other [...]