The Judith-“Milchig” Chanukah Connection
The Judith-“Milchig” Chanukah Connection by. Pearl Herzog When Chanukah arrives, many Jewish tables will tastily testify to the custom of eating dairy products over the course of those special eight […]
The Haggadah in the Garage — The Aron Wolf Herlingen Haggadah
HAGGADAH IN THE GARAGE IN MANCHESTER, AN HISTORIC PIECE OF JUDAICA TURNS UP IN AN UNLIKELY PLACE Arare illuminated Haggadah believed to have been commissioned to commemorate the birth of […]
Lag Baomer Pilgrimage to the grave of Harav Ephraim Encaoua
For several centuries after the passing of the tzaddik Harav Ephraim Encaoua (Elnkaoua, or Elnekave), thousands of Jews from Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and France gathered every Lag BaOmer at his […]
Purim of the Curtains
Nine years after the death of the Maharal, and a year after the last volume of Rabbi Heller’s Tosfos Yom Tov commentary on the Mishna was initially published in Prague, […]
Iggeres Alkabetz, the First Historically Recorded Tikkun Leil Shavuos
Years before composing the popular Friday night piyut, Lechah Dodi, the Kabbalist, Rabbi Shlomo HaLevi Alkabetz, (1505-1584) wrote a letter entitled Iggeres Alkabetz, about a wonderful Shavuos night he experienced […]
The Nadvorner Rebbe Keeps His Sukkah
The first day of Sukkos is the Yahrzeit of the Nadvorna Rebbe, Rabbi Mordechai Leifer ZT”L who passed away in 1894 (5655). Thousands of Jews from Galicia, Hungary, Poland and […]
The Haggadah in Marathi Translation
The Pesach Haggadah has been translated into more than twenty languages, but one of the most unusual is the one translated into Marathi, the native language of the Jews of […]
Four Rare Commentaries on Esther
With the approach of Purim, Chaim Eleazar Reich, Boro Park’s publisher of rare books, has put out reproductions of four old commentaries on Esther. R. Zecharya Ibn Saruk was an […]
Shabbat Teshuva — Shabbat Beinataim
The Sabbath Between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur is called Shabbath Teshuva (Sabbath of Repentance) or Shabbat Shuva (named for the Haftara Shuvu Yisrael — Hosea 14: 2-10– which is […]
A Note on a Yom Kippur Piyut
During the last one hundred and fifty years great rabbis and scholars wrote important and interesting notes on the prayers and Piytim, but because these were published in periodicals or […]