Some Highlights of the Mossad Harav Kook Sale of 2017
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Some Highlights of the Mossad HaRav Kook Sale of 2017 Some Highlights of the Mossad HaRav Kook Sale of 2017 By Eliezer Brodt For over thirty years, starting on Isru Chag of Pesach, Mossad HaRav Kook publishing house has made a big sale on all of their publications, dropping prices considerably (some books are marked as low as 65% off). Each year they print around twenty new titles. They also reprint some of their older, out of print titles. Some years important works are printed; others not as much. This year they have printed some valuable works, as they did last year. See here and here for a review of previous year’s titles. If you’re interested in a PDF of their complete catalog, email me at [email protected] As in previous years, I am offering a service, for a small fee, to help one purchase seforim from this sale. The sale’s last day is Tuesday. For more information about this, email me at Eliezerbrodt-at-gmail.com. Part of the proceeds will be going to support the efforts of the Seforim Blog. What follows is a list and brief description of some of their newest titles. 1. הלכות פסוקות השלם,ב’ כרכים, על פי כת”י ששון עם מקבילות מקורות הערות ושינויי נוסחאות, מהדיר: יהונתן עץ חיים. This is a critical edition of this Geonic work. A few years back, the editor, Yonason Etz Chaim put out a volume of the Geniza fragments of this work (also printed by Mossad HaRav Kook). 2. ביאור הגר”א ,לנ”ך שיר השירים, ב, ע”י רבי דוד כהן ור’ משה רביץ This is the long-awaited volume two of the Gr”a on Shir Hashirim, heavily annotated by R’ Dovid Cohen. 3. עיון תפילה,לר’ יעקב צבי מקלנבורג בעל ה’כתב והקבלה’, מהדיר ר’ משה צוריאל This is a new edition of the beautiful work on Siddur from the Kesav V’Hakabalah, which has not been available for a while. 4. על התפילה, ר’ דוד צבי הופמן, מאמרים על תהפילה ובית הכנסת שתורגמו ונערכו מהרצאותיו ע”י ר’ יהושע ענבל, קסה עמודים This is a small work based on R’ Dovid Tzvi Hoffman’s lectures on Tefilah (translated from German). Of course, being that it’s from R’ Hoffman it’s important to own. 5. העיקר , חסרר’ צבי רון, אוצר פירושים על החסרות ויתרות בתנ”ך, תקעד עמודים This is a large collection from a wide range of sources on the interesting topic of Chasairos V’yeseiros in Tanach. 6. קונטרס קידוש השם, ר’ ירוחם יהודה ליב פרלמן, הגדול ממינסק, על סדר הרמב”ם הל’ יסודי התורה, עם מראה מקומות, ביאורים ומפתחות ע”י ר’ הלל דוצי’ן, רנד עמודים. This is an annotated edition of the small work of the Minsker Godol on Kiddush Hashem. For the back story behind why this work was written, see the following passage from R’ Meir Halperin’s classic and extraordinary biography,Hagodol MiMinsk. 7. וזאת ,התורה ר’ דר’, חיים טלבי, מנהגי קריאת התורה בעדות ישראל, 640 עמודים This is an extremely useful and well organized work, based on the author’s PhD dissertation, dealing with many aspects of K’reiyas Hatorah before, during and after, such as Hagbah, the amount of Aliyos called, standing, selling of Aliyos and Shenayim Mikrah V’echad Targum. 8. מבית , לפרוכתר’ אברהם סתיו, פשט, עיון ומשמעות בעבודת יום הכיפורים. 9. עולם ,הקרבנות ר’ צבי אינפלד, ניתוח מעמיק ומקיף עניין הקרבנות. 10. משפטיך תהום ,רבה תגובות הגותיות אורתודוקסיות לשואה, עורכים: גרשון גרינברג אסף ידידיה, 355 עמודים. This is a very useful collection of fifteen essays of Orthodox Theological Responses to the Holocaust. In 2007, Oxford University Press printed a book in English titled Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses during and after the Holocaust edited by Steven T. Katz, Shlomo Biderman, and Gershon Greenberg (689 pp.). The Oxford volume includes almost of all the essays that appear in this new volume and a few additional important orthodox responses not found in this new Hebrew volume. Its rather strange that there is no mention of the Oxford volume in the various introductions and notes, even though Gershon Greenberg, one of the editors of the Hebrew volume was also one of the editors of the English volume. Moreover, in the Hebrew edition, Greenberg never cites the Oxford volume; only his essays about each response. I would just like to add one source to the bibliography about the essays of R’ Kalonymos Shapiro from his Eish Kodesh. Recently, Dr. Daniel Reiser published a beautiful facsimile edition of R’ Kalonymos’ autograph manuscript of this classic work alongside an annotated transcript. (TOC available upon request). 11. מאמרי טוביה, רשימות ומאמרים לר’ טוביה פרשל, א-ב. Just a few years ago, the great Talmid Chacham, writer and bibliographer (and much more), R’ Tovia Preschel, was niftar at the age of 91. R’ Preschel authoredthousands of articles on an incredibly wide range of topics, in a vast array of journals and newspapers both in Hebrew and English. For a nice, brief obituary about him from Professor Leiman, see here. Upon his passing, his daughter, Dr. Pearl Herzog, immediately started collecting all of his material in order to make it available for people to learn from. Already by the Shloshim a small work of his articles was released. A bit later, she opened a web site devoted to his essays.This website is constantly updated with essays. It’s incredible to see this man’s range of knowledge (well before the recent era of computer search engines). A few months ago, Mossad HaRav Kook released volume one (424 pp.) containing some of his essays, and right before Pesach volume two was released (482 pp.) This is an extremely special treasure trove of essays and articles on a broad variety of topics. It includes essays related to Halacha, Minhag, bibliography, Pisgamim, history of Gedolim, book reviews, travels and personal encounters and essays about great people he knew or met (e.g.: R’ Chaim Heller, R’ Abramsky, R’ Shlomo Yosef Zevin, R’ Meshulem Roth, R’ Reuven Margolis, Professor Saul Lieberman). Each volume leaves you thirsting for more. At least another two volumes are in preparation by his daughter, Dr. Pearl Herzog. I wish her much Hatzlacha in this great service for readers of all kinds all over the world. Here is a table of contents of the two volumes. Vol. I: Vol II: The Hanukkah Miracle The Hanukkah Miracle Marc B. Shapiro In an earlier post I mentioned that I hoped to write about the nineteenth-century dispute about the historicity of the Hanukkah miracle of the oil. This dispute broke out after the publication of Hayyim Zelig Slonimski’s article claiming that Maimonides did not believe in the miracle. Fuel was added to the fire when R. Samuel Alexandrov publicly supported Slonimski and argued that the miracle of the oil was intended to be understood in a non-literal fashion, with the oil representing Torah. (He later retracted this view, presumably due to public pressure.) There is no longer a need for me to write in any detail about this matter after Zerachyah Licht’s recent comprehensive Seforim Blog posthere , which also includes Slonimski’s original article.[1] However, there are a few points I would like to add. In my post here I wrote: To give an example . of how [R. Samuel Moses] Rubenstein’s later thought broke with tradition, see his Ha-Rambam ve-ha-Aggadah (Kovno, 1937), p. 103, where he claims that the story of the miracle of Hanukkah is almost certainly a late aggadic creation, and like many other miracle stories in aggadic literature was not originally intended to be understood as historical reality:[2] ספק הוא אם הנס של “פך השמן” הוא אפילו הגדה עממית קדומה, קרוב שהוא יצירה אגדית חדשה מבעל הברייתא עצמו או מאחד מבעלי האגדה, ונסים אגדיים כאלו רבים הם בברייתות וגמרא ומדרשים ע”ד ההפלגה כדרכה של האגדה. ולבסוף הובן נס זה למעשה שהיה. עיין שבת כ”ג א’. [טעם ברייתא זו הובא גם במגילת תענית (פ”ט) אבל כמו שנראה היא הוספה מאוחרת, ועיין (שם) ובפסיקתא רבתי (פיסקא דחנוכה) עוד טעם להדלקת נרות חנוכה[. During the most recent Hanukkah I was using R. Joseph Hertz’s siddur, the Authorized Daily Prayer Book. Based upon how he describes the holiday and the lighting of the menorah, omitting any mention of the miracle of the lights (pp. 946-947), I assume that he also didn’t accept it literally. Note how he states that the lights were kindled during the eight-day Dedication festival, and this is the reason for the eight days of Hanukkah, rather than offering the traditional reason that the eight days of Hanukkah commemorate the eight days that the menorah miraculously burnt. Three years to the day on which the Temple was profaned by the blaspheming foe, Kislev the 25th 165, Judah Maccabeus and his brethren triumphantly entered the Holy City. They purified the Temple, and their kindling of the lights during the eight-day festival of Dedication—Chanukah—is a telling reminder, year by year, of the rekindling of the Lamp of True Religion in their time. Ad kan my words in the prior post. Some time ago I was asked if I know of any other traditional authors who deny the literalness of the Hanukkah miracle. It could be that R. Isidore Epstein should be added to the list, as in his classic work Judaism he describes Hanukkah and the kindling of lights, but mentions nothing about the miracle. However, unlike Hertz whose comments were in a siddur and directed to Jews, Epstein’s book is directed towards a general reader, and can still be used as a college text.