RESURGENCE in Jewish History (Shabbaton at YILC, 5 Towns); Intrepid Rabbi-Explorers of the 3rd Century; Sephardic Diaspora in the New World

Really looking forward seeing my friends at YILC!


Meet the Intrepid Explorer-Rabbis of the 3rd Century


Recap of last week’s Guide for the Perplexed Seminar


Sephardic Jews in the New World


Eurafrican Jews in the Caribbean; Jewish Caribbean Migration Patterns; and a retrospective mini-documentary

Hard to believe such beautiful places exist!


Jewish Caribbean Migration Patterns


Eurafrican Jews in the Caribbean


The Sephardic Diaspora: Europe


Want to learn more Jewish History? Try one of these online courses!

Saga of Sephardic Jewry (New Online Course!); Volume II:Chapter 2 now online; Benjamin of Tudela; Guide for the Perplexed; Review of Koren’s New Mikraot Hadorot

Jewish History Lab Report: Friday, January 3, 2025


Benjamin of Tudela, Great Jewish Explorer of the 12th Century!


The Saga of Sephardic Jewry: New Course Now Online!


Stunning new work of Torah Scholarship: The Koren Mikraot Hadorot


Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed: Battle of the Translators

Shabbat in Rosyln, NY; Hello from Jerusalem;

Really looking forward to meeting this community!


Message recorded from Jerusalem last week


Medieval Antisemitism and the Spanish Inquisition

Invitation to LCM Breakfast; Caribbean Jews and the History of Chocolate; Spanish Disputations and the Pogroms of 1391

Please join me at our First Annual Breakfast!


Jews and Chocolate! Who knew?


Disputations and the Pogroms of 1391

The Jews of Bukhara (Sunday in Denver); the Maimonidean Controversy; Save the Date for Roslyn NY

Really looking forward to speaking to the Or Avner community in Aurora, CO!


The Maimonidean Controversy


Save the Date: Shabbaton in Roslyn NY, December 20-21

  • What Torah from the Years of Wrath is All About

    What Torah from the Years of Wrath is All About

    Please watch this brief video. Really hoping you will join us for the book launch on Monday, October 30! Please visit bit.ly/aishkodesh to RSVP and for more information.

  • Deciphering the Rosetta Stone of the Holocaust

    Deciphering the Rosetta Stone of the Holocaust

      The Aish Kodesh died 74 years ago, martyred in the Trawniki labor camp. Now, Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira is at the center of a surge of new research into the most profound questions surrounding the Holocaust. A new critical edition, prepared with phenomenal scholarly energy by Daniel Reiser, demonstrates that we have just started…

  • Hilula for the Piaseczno Rebbe

    Hilula for the Piaseczno Rebbe

    Conducted in darkness according to the Piaseczno custom, Rabbi Weinberger presided over a moving Hilula last night in honor of the Piaseczno Rebbe’s 74th yahrzeit. Visit http://www.aishkodesh.org/ and scroll down to watch the recording, featuring beautiful music by Yosef Karduner and of course the words of Rabbi Weinberger. He begins speaking at 1:00, and his opening joke…

  • Who Was Yehudah Ha-Levi?

    Who Was Yehudah Ha-Levi?

    Brief overview of the life and work of the great Sefardic poet and thinker, Yehudah ha-Levi.

  • Really Proud of this Photo

    Really Proud of this Photo

    This moment made me feel really great–standing with two great Hasidim of the Piaseczno Rebbe! On the left is R. Yoel Rubin, center (the amud ha-emtsa’i) is R. Weinberger of Kehillas Aish Kodesh, and there’s me on the right (out of uniform again). R. Weinberger just gave a great shiur on Rav Kook, and we…

  • With Rabbi Ari Silverstein @ Judaica Plus!

    With Rabbi Ari Silverstein @ Judaica Plus!

    Really happy to see the new book joining the impressive display of Piaseczno Hasidic works at my favorite local Jewish bookstore! Here I am (out of uniform, sorry) with Rabbi Ari Silverstein at Judaica Plus in Cedarhurst. 

  • The Rebbe’s Work in Amazon’s Top 100!

    The Rebbe’s Work in Amazon’s Top 100!

      Wow—I checked the site this morning, and discovered that the book on the Piaseczno Rebbe made it to the top 100 in its category on Amazon! Just behind classics by Elie Wiesel, Viktor Frankl, and Simon Wiesenthal! Really proud that people are finding this book meaningful. Thank you! Bit.ly\aishkodesh

  • Advance Copies Arrived!

    Advance Copies Arrived!

    Woo-hoo! Visit bit.ly/aishkodesh or click here for the 20% discount, or to RSVP for the book launch on the 30th (free and open to the community!)

  • Advance Copies Now Available (20% Discount)

    Advance Copies Now Available (20% Discount)

    I am delighted to inform you that advance copies of my new book are now available from Amazon (this is really advance–I won’t even get my own copy until next week!). I hope to have sufficient copies available for sale and signature at the Book Launch on October 30, but if you want to have…

  • Who Was Shmuel Ha-Nagid?

    Who Was Shmuel Ha-Nagid?

    Brief lecture on the life and work of Shmuel ha-Nagid, an important 11th century Spanish Jewish leader. Also: please join me for the launch of my new book, Torah from the Years of Wrath 1939-1943: The Historical Context of the Aish Kodesh (click here for more information). The launch is scheduled for Monday, October 30 at 7:00 pm…

  • Who Was Hasdai ibn Shaprut?

    Who Was Hasdai ibn Shaprut?

    Brief lecture on the life of Hasdai ibn Shaprut, an important 10th century Jewish leader in Andalusia, who set the foundations for the Golden Age of Spanish Jewry. Part of the Jews of Sepharad series, visit jewishhistorylectures.org for more information.  

The Jews of Bukhara (Denver, CO); The Jews of the Lesser Antilles; Varieties of Crypto-Jewish Identity; Wait, Alexander Hamilton was Jewish?

Looking forward to a wonderful Shabbat in the Denver Jewish community!


Our Itinerary of Discovery in the Western Caribbean


Channel Members


Premiering at 10am ET


  • The Mishnah: Creating a Portable Judaism HIS 155 Lecture 1.5

    The Mishnah: Creating a Portable Judaism HIS 155 Lecture 1.5

    Compiled by Rabbi Yehuda Ha-Nasi in an exceptionally difficult time for the Jewish people, the Mishnah created the possibility of creating a “portable Judaism.” After the destruction of the Temple in 70 and the dramatic escalation of the diaspora, the Mishnah allowed Jews to define their religion within an intellectual and textual context, outside of…

  • Philo Judaeus of Alexandria: Jews in the Greek World

    Philo Judaeus of Alexandria: Jews in the Greek World

    Virtually ignored by Jewish philosophers, Philo of Alexandria represented the high point of synthesis between Greek and Jewish thought in the ancient world, and had a huge influence on early Christian thinkers. A prominent representative of the Egyptian Jewish community to the Roman Emperor, and well-respected in his day by his coreligionists, he nevertheless had…

  • The Dreyfus Affair (This Week in Jewish History)

    The Dreyfus Affair (This Week in Jewish History)

    Wrongly accused of espionage, Captain Alfred Dreyfus was sentenced to Devil’s Island on the basis of remarkably tenuous evidence. May critics, including the famous writer Emile Zola, argued that Dreyfus was unfairly charged simply because he was a Jew in the French army. As evidence mounted that another officer was guilty, the Dreyfus Affair exposed…

  • Who Was Josephus?

    Who Was Josephus?

    Captured by the Romans, Josephus was a Jewish general who ultimately served as a military advisor to General Titus. Josephus recorded his first-hand observations of the destruction of the Temple, and went on to a brilliant literary career in Rome, describing Jews and Judaism to a wider audience. Who was Josephus–traitor to his people or…

  • Rembrandt and the Jews (This Week in Jewish History)

    Rembrandt and the Jews (This Week in Jewish History)

    Rembrandt is well-known for his depictions of Jewish subjects, both as contemporary portraits and as models for Christian biblical characters.

  • Who Was Josephus? Fall 2013 Lecture Series in Jewish History Resumes This Week

    Who Was Josephus? Fall 2013 Lecture Series in Jewish History Resumes This Week

    Photo: Aryeh Abramson looks out over Iroquois Falls, Ontario, Canada, where he spent the Sukkot vacation visiting his grandparents. Captured by the Roman General (and later Emperor) Vespasian while defending the Galilee, Josephus ultimately turned against his coreligionists and served as an advisor to the forces besieging Jerusalem during the first Roman-Jewish War. His first-hand…

  • Free Download of Maimonides on Teshuvah by Dr. Henry Abramson

    Free Download of Maimonides on Teshuvah by Dr. Henry Abramson

    Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) was one of the greatest minds the Jewish people ever produced: philosopher, jurist, physician, and an extremely prolific writer who left us classics like The Guide for the Perplexed and the Mishneh Torah.  For several years I have been in the habit of reviewing his Laws of Repentance in the weeks leading up to the…

  • Pope Gregory I and the Jews (This Week in Jewish History) Dr. Henry Abramson

    Pope Gregory I and the Jews (This Week in Jewish History) Dr. Henry Abramson

    Pope Gregory I (“the Great”) was one of the most influential Church leaders of the medieval period. His policy on the treatment of Jews in Christian Europe, known by the Latin phrase “Sicut Judaeis,” instituted an official if ambivalent position that lasted from the sixth century to the beginnings of the modern era.

  • Jewish Children Forced Into the Tsar’s Army (This Week in Jewish History)

    Jewish Children Forced Into the Tsar’s Army (This Week in Jewish History)

    Reeling from the humiliating defeat of the Crimean War, the Russian Empire decides its policy of forcibly conscripting Jewish boys into military service is counterproductive, and finally abandons the cruel decades-old policy of taking underage children into thirty-one years of military training and service.

  • The Fox in the Ruins: The Roman-Jewish Wars (HIS 155 Lecture 1.3)

    The Fox in the Ruins: The Roman-Jewish Wars (HIS 155 Lecture 1.3)

      To view the Prezi associated with this lecture, please click here. Excerpt from “The Jewish Diaspora: A Brief History” Henry Abramson 3. The Roman-Jewish Wars Our sources for the Roman-Jewish wars of the first and second centuries are more substantial than those of earlier periods, primarily because the importance of developments in this tiny…

  • Judaism and the Origins of Christianity HIS 155 Lecture 1.4

    Judaism and the Origins of Christianity HIS 155 Lecture 1.4

    Born in turbulent times, Christianity emerged from its intensely Jewish roots to become the official religion of the Roman Empire within a remarkably brief period of time.  As a daughter religion to Judaism, however, dissent between the two faiths slowly dominated the discourse as Christianity became less of a Jewish movement, and more of a…

Visits to Synagogues in Bordeaux and Libourne (France); Another Open Letter to Jewish Participants in anti-Israel Protests re: Amsterdam; Conference Presentation on Sheptytsky and WW II

Fantastic Voyage of Discovery with Kosher River Cruises


A Difficult Conversation


Recent Conference Presentation in Toronto


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