YU News

John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) was the 35 th President of the United States, the youngest person and only Catholic to be elected to that office to date. While still a Senator from Massachusetts, he met with Dr. Samuel Belkin, president of Yeshiva University, at a dinner celebrating the opening of the…

Documentation of Jewish religious, communal and intellectual life in the late 19th- early 20th centuries has become more accessible as a result of the digitization of the Henry S. Morais Papers, now available online through Yeshiva University Archives’ Finding Aids database. Henry Morais (1860-1935…

The Intellectual History and Rabbinic Culture of Medieval Ashkenaz, By Ephraim Kanarfogel, Wayne State University Press, 2013 was awarded the Goldstein-Goren prize for Best Book in Jewish Thought, by the International Center for Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University. For years the assumption of…

Over a century ago, news of the discovery of the Cairo Genizah in Egypt rocked the world of Jewish Studies. Scholars made pilgrimages to Cairo to study and gather the fragile fragments. Today students of the Genizah are able to sit comfortably at computers and virtually weave together document ...

Cantor Leib Lange, known as the “Muscover” hazan, officiated at High Holiday services at Yeshiva in 1945. Cantor Lange, a native of the Ukraine, studied at the Odessa Conservatory, and moved from Moscow to the United States in 1933. The patriotic red, white, and blue color scheme of the publicity…

Naomi Grunhaus, Professor of Judaic Studies at Stern College for Women, presents new insight into the commentary of R. David Kimhi (acronym Radak). The Challenge of Received Tradition (Oxford University Press) is the first since Frank Talmage’s seminal 1975 work to delve exclusively into Radak’s ...

The library staff at Yeshiva University mourns the loss of our dear colleague and friend, Miriam Meiri, ז"ל , who passed away last week. In his eulogy for his mother, Miriam’s son Ya’akov described her devotion to the Library where she spent over thirty years. Her work in the Library and its milieu…

Shi’ure Yesamah Av, by Eli Baruch Shulman. Michael Scharf Publication Trust of the Yeshiva University Press, 2013. Shi’ure Yesamah Av on the Talmudic chapters Keitsad Mevarkhin, Kol Sha'ah and Arvei Pesahim is a collection of insights and essays by Yeshiva University’s Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Eliahu ...

The Polish parliament recently re-affirmed a bill banning kosher slaughter (shehitah). The Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, has said he will resign if shehitah is not legalized in Poland. This is not the only time ritual slaughter has been under attack in Poland. In February 1936, a bill…

Index of References Dealing with Talmudic Literature, colloquially known as The Lieberman CD, is now available via the Internet. The Index, developed by the Saul Lieberman Institute of Talmudic Research at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, includes the Mishna, Tosefta, Jerusalem Talmud…