SHABBAT READING
The Torah Scroll: How the Copying Process Became Sacred: Prof. Emanuel Tov, The Torah.com, Feb. 22, 2023 — The contemporary halakhah (Jewish law) for scribes writing a Torah scroll is exceedingly stringent. The scribe of a Torah scroll should be a God-fearing person. Before beginning to write, as well as before the writing of a holy name, the scribe must recite a blessing. Even the ink needs to be blessed.[1] R. Solomon Ganzfried (1804–1886), in his Keset HaSofer—a standard if strict halakhic compendium for scribes— mentions the practice of scribes immersing themselves in a mikvah before writing a divine name:
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Introducing a Sunday Series from Douglas Murray: Things Worth Remembering: Douglas Murray, The Free Press, Feb. 19, 2023
Ilan Ramon and the Words That Soared: Meir Y. Soloveichik, Commentary Magazine, March 2023
Was Lincoln Jewish?: Stuart Schoffman, Jewish Review of Books, Feb. 12, 2019
Rembrandt’s Very Human, Very Accurate, Very Jewish (and Very Unclassical) David: Meir Soloveitchik, Mosaic Magazine, Dec. 20, 2018
George Washington and the Jews: George Washington, My Jewish Learning — This letter, written by George Washington in 1790, is a response to Moses Seixas, warden of the Touro Synagogue in Newport. In it, Washington addresses the tolerance and freedom of religion in the newly established nation:
Book Review | Kreisky, Israel, and Jewish Identity: Liam Hoare, Fathom Journal, Winter 2022 — On 28 September 1973, two Palestinian terrorists from the Syrian Ba’athist faction As-Sa’iqa hijacked a train near Marchegg on the Austro-Czechoslovak border and took four Soviet Jewish émigrés hostage.
The Herd of Independent Minds: Ruth R. Wisse, Mosaic, Nov. 6, 2014 — At a Jewish literary retreat I attended this past summer, at the height of the Gaza war, fault lines opened between those anxiously following news from Israel and others apparently indifferent or professing concern for the “suffering on both sides.”
Chaim Grade: Portrait of the Artist as a Bareheaded Rosh Yeshiva: David E. Fishman, Jewish Review of Books, Fall 2022 — I first met Chaim Grade (pronounced Grahdeh) in the spring of 1975, when he visited our home in the Bronx.