Join me in Passaic-Clifton this Shabbos!

Very proud to mark the completion of a cycle of Talmud study on Tuesday night. Here is the video that is scheduled for that morning, describing the process for the 100k+ viewers who follow Jewish History in Daf Yomi at http://www.alldaf.org. New Series! Jewish History in the Torah The Mystery of Michelangelo’s Hebrew Support this……

Who was Rudolf Samoylovich? Livestream of the Siyum ha-Shas (Completion of study of the Babylonian Talmud) October 21 A message from the great people at AllDaf.org: The Jews of Venice New Series! Jewish History in the Torah

Good morning fellow students of Jewish history: I’m very honored to be marking a Siyum ha-Shas (completion of a cycle of study of the Babylonian Talmud) and would love to share the celebration with you. I’ve been working on this since April 2019, producing one video per each folio of the Talmud (2,711 when I’m……

Lecture Delivered after the Assassination of Mr. Charlie Kirk Question and Answer Session went long Azariah da Rossi and the Earthquake of 1570 New publication! Celebrating a completion of study of the Babylonian Talmud

Need something to read this Elul? Try one of these… Wednesday evening: “Mistakes were made (but not by me)”: A new approach to Vidui (confession) Thursday Evening: Webinar hosted by the University of Maryland

The “Other” Famous Medieval Jewish Explorer Wednesday Night: Rabbi Katz on Forgiveness! (My lectures are September 10, 17)

Personal Reflections on his Historical Contributions Starting this Wednesday Evening with Rabbi Katz! (I’m speaking on September 10 and 17) Thank you Charlotte R. Alexander!

What does Judaism look like with 400 years without Rabbis or Jewish books? Unpacked on Hasidism Teshuvah Unpacked with Rabbi Shua Katz

I’m really thrilled to be cruising the Douro River this summer with Kosher Riverboat Cruises, lecturing on the history of Spanish and Portuguese Jewry (my wife plans to come along, which means I really have to bring my A-game). I just learned that there’s only 18 cabins left, so if you’re interested, please click the……

On Parashat Beshalah (January 20, 1940), a young rebel escaped from the notorious Pawiak Prison, located not far from the Piaseczno Bet Midrash. Andrzej Kott, the 21-year old leader of the military wing of a resistance movement called the Polish People’s Independence Action, was a child of assimilated Jewish parents who had converted to Christianity….…

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……