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Chiddushim
Chidush ( he, חִדּוּשׁ; also transliterated as chiddush, hiddush or hidush), sometimes used in its plural form, chidushim ( he, חִדּוּשׁים), is a novel interpretation or approach. Historically referring to Torah topics, the term is widely used in rabbinic literature to describe a form of innovation that is made inside the system of the halakha, as distinguished from shinuy, an innovation outside tradition. Etymology comes from the Hebrew root word ( he, חדש), meaning . The usage of the word in this context originated from the language of Talmudic analysis and argumentation in the Gemara. It passed into Yiddish, where it is at times used informally. In rabbinic literature Nachmanides states that it is an "obligation imposed upon us to search through the subjects of the Torah and the precepts and bring to light their hidden contents". What "powers" Chidushim? MaaYana Shel Torah asks regarding "VaYayLech Moshe" (31:1) - where did he go? and answer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Zusia Friedman
Alexander Zusia Friedman ( he, אלכסנדר זושא פרידמן) (9 August 1897 – November 1943)Seidman, Hillel. "Alexander Zusia Friedman", in ''Wellsprings of Torah: An Anthology of Biblical Commentaries'', Vol. 1. Nison L. Alpert, ed. Judaica Press, 1974, pp. xii–xxiii. was a prominent Polish Orthodox Jewish rabbi, communal activist, educator, journalist, and Torah scholar. He was the founding editor of the first Agudath Israel Hebrew journal, ''Digleinu'' (Our Banner), and author of ''Ma'ayanah shel Torah'' (Wellsprings of Torah), an anthology of commentaries on the weekly Torah portion, which is still popular today. He was incarcerated in the Warsaw Ghetto and deported to the Trawniki concentration camp, where he was selected for deportation to the death camps and murdered around November 1943. Early life Friedman was born in Sochaczew (Sochatchov), Poland in 1899. His father, Aharon Yehoshua Friedman, was a poor shamash (synagogue caretaker); his mother sup ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rabbinic Literature
Rabbinic literature, in its broadest sense, is the entire spectrum of rabbinic writings throughout Jewish history. However, the term often refers specifically to literature from the Talmudic era, as opposed to medieval and modern rabbinic writing, and thus corresponds with the Hebrew term ''Sifrut Chazal'' ( he, ספרות חז״ל "Literature f oursages," where ''Hazal'' normally refers only to the sages of the Talmudic era). This more specific sense of "Rabbinic literature"—referring to the Talmudim, Midrash ( he, מדרש), and related writings, but hardly ever to later texts—is how the term is generally intended when used in contemporary academic writing. The terms ''meforshim'' and ''parshanim'' (commentaries/commentators) almost always refer to later, post-Talmudic writers of rabbinic glosses on Biblical and Talmudic texts. Mishnaic literature The Midr'she halakha, Mishnah, and Tosefta (compiled from materials pre-dating the year 200 CE) are the earliest e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hebrew Transliteration
The Hebrew language uses the Hebrew alphabet with optional vowel diacritics. The romanization of Hebrew is the use of the Latin alphabet to transliterate Hebrew words. For example, the Hebrew name spelled ("Israel") in the Hebrew alphabet can be romanized as ' or ' in the Latin alphabet. Romanization includes any use of the Latin alphabet to transliterate Hebrew words. Usually, it is to identify a Hebrew word in a non-Hebrew language that uses the Latin alphabet, such as German, Spanish, Turkish, and so on. Transliteration uses an alphabet to represent the letters and sounds of a word spelled in another alphabet, whereas transcription uses an alphabet to represent the sounds only. Romanization can refer to either. To go the other way, that is from English to Hebrew, see Hebraization of English. Both Hebraization of English and Romanization of Hebrew are forms of transliteration. Where these are formalized these are known as "transliteration systems", and, where only some wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Notarikon
Notarikon ( he, נוטריקון ''Noṭriqōn'') is a Talmud, Talmudic and Kabbalah, Kabbalistic method of deriving a word, by using each of its initial (Hebrew: ) or final letters () to stand for another, to form a sentence or idea out of the words. Another variation uses the first ''and'' last letters, or the two middle letters of a word, in order to form another word. The word "notarikon" is borrowed from the Greek language (νοταρικόν), and was derived from the Latin language, Latin word "notarius" meaning "shorthand writer." Notarikon is one of the three ancient methods used by the Kabbalists (the other two are gematria and temurah (Kabbalah), temurah) to rearrange words and sentences. These methods were used in order to derive the esoteric substratum and deeper spiritual meaning of the words in the Bible. Notarikon was also used in alchemy. The term is mostly used in the context of Kabbalah. Common Hebrew abbreviations are described by ordinary linguistic terms. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meir Lublin
Meir Lublin or Meir ben Gedalia (1558 – 1616) was a Polish rabbi, Talmudist and Posek ("decisor of Jewish law"). He is well known for his commentary on the Talmud, ''Meir Einai Chachamim''. He is also referred to as Maharam (Hebrew acronym: "Our Teacher, Rabbi Meir"). Biography Maharam was born in Lublin, Poland. He was descended from a family of rabbis, and his father, Gedaliah, was an eminent Talmudist. His principal teacher was his father-in-law, Isaac ha-Kohen Shapiro, rabbi of Kraków. Maharam's knowledge of the Talmud and Poskim was such that he was invited to the rabbinate of Kraków in 1587, when he was not yet thirty years old. In 1591 he became rabbi at Lemberg. (In Lemberg he was engaged in a controversy with Rabbi Joshua Falk concerning a bill of divorce.) In 1613 he became rabbi at Lublin and established a yeshiva. He was well known in the role of Rosh Yeshiva there, owing to his renown as a Talmudic scholar. Many of his students became prominent rabbis or heads of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Halakah
''Halakha'' (; he, הֲלָכָה, ), also transliterated as ''halacha'', ''halakhah'', and ''halocho'' ( ), is the collective body of Jewish religious laws which is derived from the written and Oral Torah. Halakha is based on biblical commandments (''mitzvot''), subsequent Talmudic and rabbinic laws, and the customs and traditions which were compiled in the many books such as the ''Shulchan Aruch''. ''Halakha'' is often translated as "Jewish law", although a more literal translation of it might be "the way to behave" or "the way of walking". The word is derived from the root which means "to behave" (also "to go" or "to walk"). ''Halakha'' not only guides religious practices and beliefs, it also guides numerous aspects of day-to-day life. Historically, in the Jewish diaspora, ''halakha'' served many Jewish communities as an enforceable avenue of law – both civil and religious, since no differentiation of them exists in classical Judaism. Since the Jewish Enlightenment (''Haska ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chumash (Judaism)
''Chumash'' (also Ḥumash; he, חומש, or or Yiddish: ; plural Ḥumashim) is a Torah in printed and book bound form (i.e. codex) as opposed to a Sefer Torah, which is a scroll. The word comes from the Hebrew word for five, (). A more formal term is , "five fifths of Torah". It is also known by the Latinised Greek term Pentateuch in common printed editions. Etymology The word is a standard Ashkenazic vowel shift of , meaning "one-fifth", alluding to any one of the five books; by synecdoche, it came to mean the five fifths of the Torah. The Modern Hebrew and Sephardic pronunciation is an erroneous reconstruction based on the assumption that the Ashkenazic accent, which is almost uniformly penultimately stressed, had also changed the stress of the word. In fact, preserves the original stress pattern and both pronunciations contain a shifted first vowel. In early scribal practice, there was a distinction between a Sefer Torah, containing the entire Pentateuch on a p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meir Abulafia
:''Meir Abulafia is commonly known as "the Ramah" (Hebrew: רמ"ה). He should not be confused with Moses Isserles, known as "the Rema" or "the Rama" (Hebrew: רמ"א).'' Meir ben Todros HaLevi Abulafia ( ; c. 1170 – 1244), also known as the Ramah ( he, הרמ"ה) (an acronym of his Hebrew name), was a major Sephardic Talmudist and Halachic authority in medieval Spain. Biography He was the scion of a wealthy and scholarly family, the son of Todros ben Judah, to whom the physician Judah ben Isaac dedicated his poem, ''The Conflict of Wisdom and Wealth,'' published in 1214. In his 30s, he was already one of the three appointed rabbis on the Toledo Beth Din (one of the other two was Joseph ibn Migash's son, Meir). As the Spanish kings gave the Jews more self-rule, Rabbi Abulafia played a substantial role in establishing ritual regulations for Spanish Jewry. He was also the head of an important yeshiva in Toledo. He was so highly esteemed in Toledo that on his father's death in 122 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abraham Ben David
Abraham ben David ( – 27 November 1198), also known by the abbreviation RABaD (for ''Rabbeinu'' Abraham ben David) Ravad or RABaD III, was a Provençal rabbi, a great commentator on the Talmud, ''Sefer Halachot'' of Rabbi Yitzhak Alfasi and ''Mishne Torah'' of Maimonides, and is regarded as a father of Kabbalah and one of the key and important links in the chain of Jewish mystics. Biography RABaD's maternal grandfather, Rabbi Yitzhak b. Yaakov Ibn Baruch of Mérida (1035–1094), who had compiled astronomical tables for the son of Shemuel ha-Nagid, was one of five rabbis in Spain renowned for their learning. Concerning the oral history of his maternal grandfather's family and how they came to Spain, the RABaD wrote: "When Titus prevailed over Jerusalem, his officer who was appointed over Hispania appeased him, requesting that he send to him captives made-up of the nobles of Jerusalem, and so he sent a few of them to him, and there were amongst them those who made curtains an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Talmud
The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the centerpiece of Jewish cultural life and was foundational to "all Jewish thought and aspirations", serving also as "the guide for the daily life" of Jews. The term ''Talmud'' normally refers to the collection of writings named specifically the Babylonian Talmud (), although there is also an earlier collection known as the Jerusalem Talmud (). It may also traditionally be called (), a Hebrew abbreviation of , or the "six orders" of the Mishnah. The Talmud has two components: the Mishnah (, 200 CE), a written compendium of the Oral Torah; and the Gemara (, 500 CE), an elucidation of the Mishnah and related Tannaitic writings that often ventures onto other subjects and expounds broadly on the Hebrew Bible. The term "Talmud" may refer to eith ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Ibn Migash
Joseph ibn Migash or Joseph ben Meir HaLevi ibn Migash or Yosef Ibn Meir Ha-Levi Ibn Megas or José ben Meir ibn Megas (early 1077 – c. 1141) ( he, יוסף בן מאיר הלוי אבן מיגאש) was a Rabbi, Posek, and Rosh Yeshiva in Lucena (actually Spain). He is also known as Ri Migash (), the Hebrew acronym for "Rabbi Joseph Migash". Biography Joseph ibn Migash was probably born in Seville (though Steinschneider believes it was Granada). He moved to Lucena at the age of 12 to study under the renowned Talmudist Isaac Alfasi. He studied under Alfasi at Lucena for fourteen years. Shortly before his death (1103), Alfasi ordained Ibn Migash as a rabbi, and - passing over his own son - also appointed him, then 26, to be his successor as Rosh Yeshiva (seminary head). Joseph ibn Migash held this position for 38 years. Rabbi Abraham ben David, in his work '' Sefer ha-Kabbalah'' (Book of Tradition), mentions Joseph ibn Migash, a grandfather who had the same name, as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geonim
''Geonim'' ( he, גאונים; ; also transliterated Gaonim, singular Gaon) were the presidents of the two great Babylonian Talmudic Academies of Sura and Pumbedita, in the Abbasid Caliphate, and were the generally accepted spiritual leaders of the Jewish community worldwide in the early medieval era, in contrast to the ''Resh Galuta'' (exilarch) who wielded secular authority over the Jews in Islamic lands. ''Geonim'' is the plural of (''Gaon) , which means "pride" or "splendor" in Biblical Hebrew and since the 19th century "genius" as in modern Hebrew. As a title of a Babylonian college president it meant something like "His Excellency". The ''Geonim'' played a prominent and decisive role in the transmission and teaching of Torah and Jewish law. They taught Talmud and decided on issues on which no ruling had been rendered during the period of the Talmud. The Geonim were also spiritual leaders of the Jewish community of their time. Era The period of the Geonim began in 58 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
