The recent translation of the work of Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (Rav Shagar, 1949-2007) promises to elevate his distinctive thought to a broader audience of readers (Faith Shattered and Restored: Judaism in the Postmodern Age), many of whom will resonate with Dr. Yitzchak Mandelbaum’s comment on his discovery of Rav Shagar: “I knew I had…

The Rebbe’s entry for Parashat Bo (January 13, 1940) is unusual. Recorded in the scribe’s careful hand, with minimal annotation, it has two bold diagonal lines drawn through the center of the text, indicating that the Rebbe rejected it altogether. A brief and uncharacteristic first-person comment is appended: “more of what we said I do…

Really nice to meet with Jésica Neuah of Editorial Perspectivas to work on the tentative cover and book design of the Spanish edition of The Kabbalah of Forgiveness! Great to work with her and the whole team. G-d willing the book will be released in the summer of this year.

I had chills listening to Rabbi Shlomo Katz review the Rebbe’s words on this week’s parashah. I am grateful for his kind words of praise for my recent book on the historical context of the Aish Kodesh, but to tell the truth, I hardly recognized my own words from the masterful treatment they received from…

Chaim Kaplan recorded the mood in the Warsaw Ghetto in January 1942:  The cold is so intense that my fingers are often too numb to hold a pen. There is no coal for heating and electricity is sporadic or nonexistent. In the oppressive dark and unbearable cold your mind stops functioning. Yet even in such…

Five months into the Nazi occupation, the Jews of Warsaw struggled to keep up with the barrage of administrative decrees inflicted upon them by the Germans. When the Rebbe spoke on Parashat Vaera, which fell on January 6, 1940, the worst was still far off. The Nazis had replaced the leadership of the Jewish Council…

The winter of 5702 brutalized the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto with unforgiving cold. Chaim Kaplan, a school principal whose journal Scroll of Agony survived the war, recounts in his typically blunt prose how the physical privations of January 1942 affected the spiritual life of Ghetto inhabitants: Gone is the spirit of Jewish brotherhood. The…

The Sephardic Diaspora Spring 2018 Lecture Series Monday Nights @ 7:00 pm Main Auditorium, Touro College, 1602 Avenue J Brooklyn NY 11230 (718) 535-9333 Free and Open to the Public No hard questions, please. Image: Eleanora of Toledo, student of Benvenida Abravanel February 5: Who Was Benvenida Abravanel? February 12 :Who Was Samuel Usque? (No Class Feb…

On December 27, 1941, the Piaseczno Rebbe delivered his last recorded drashah on Parashat Vayigash in the Warsaw Ghetto. The previous month was especially brutal: an especially cold winter, combined with a severe coal shortage, exacerbated the typhus epidemic, and each morning a detail of the chevra kadisha patrolled the streets to collect the bodies…

Really pleased to receive author copies of the new Ukrainian translation of my first book! Thanks to translators Anton Kotenko and Oleksandra Nadtoky and all the great people at Dukh i Litera.

Brief video describing the life and work of Don Yitshak Abravanel (Abarbanel), a great Portuguese-Spanish Jewish thinker and leader.  Part of The Jews of Sepharad series.   Click here to view books by Dr. Abramson (remarkably amazing Chanukah reading)

My favorite editor, Laura Adkins of JTA, asked me for some thoughts on what Jewish institutions of higher education might face in the post-coronavirus era. I’m really glad she did! Please click here for the article.

Please join me on Thursday at 2PM for “Plague and Pandemic in Jewish History,” a brief overview of the experience of epidemics and pandemics in Jewish history. Please visit bit.ly/pandemicjewishhistory for more information.

Please join me for a special webinar on The Response to Pandemics in Jewish History, scheduled for Thursday, May 14 at 2:00 pm EST. Participation is free and open to the community, but registration in advance is required to maintain security and prevent the unwanted intrusions of intellectual vandals. Please click on the image or…

Some thoughts on COVID-19 in a Jewish context, recently published in OU Torah. Judaism, as we know it today, bears the scars of multiple plagues throughout history. Perhaps the largest is the weeks-long period known as sefirah, which commemorates the death of 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva in the 2nd century. The Rabbis of the…

Hello students of Jewish history! I hope you will have the opportunity to join me in one of three public presentations coming up. Here’s the relevant dates and times! Please click on the images for the links: The State of Israel: I SURVIVED JEWISH HISTORY, PT. XI Monday night, May 3 at 8PM EST, YouTube…

Now open to non-Touro College faculty! Please RSVP to James.Ligorski@touro.edu.

Part XI of the I SURVIVED JEWISH HISTORY series. If you have attended the previous Zoom classes, the link is still active; if not, please write me directly for the password.

Live chat moderated by The Shomer. Join us for a look at this very difficult period in Jewish history.