Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel
An excellent introduction to an ancient philosopher
By Israel Drazin TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on May 20, 2015
Philo (about 20 BCE to about 50 CE) of Alexandria, Egypt, is one of Judaism’s great philosophers. The noted scholar Harry Wolfson wrote in his book Philo that Philo was the first Jewish philosopher who “contributed anything new” to Jewish-Greek philosophy. Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel offers readers a good introduction to this famous thought-provoking philosopher ...
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During the Holocaust years, Purim celebrations were forbidden to the Jews. Christians and Jews could not even own the book of Esther. Such decrees did not stop the Nazis from poking fun at the Jews on this Jewish holiday. With diabolical glee, the Nazis frequently orchestrated special killings with the Jewish festivals. On Purim in 1942, the Nazis hanged ten Jews in Zdunka Wola to avenge the hanging of Haman’s sons. Similar ...
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Author: Rabbi Shiloh Ben-David. Book: Shalom Aleichem: A Collection of Halachos, Aggados, and Anecdotes about Greeting People.
ISBN-13: 978-9657599136; 217 pages; Publisher: Self-Published; Price: $23.95. Rating: 2.5 * out of four.
The 20th century Orthodox scholar and philanthropist Irving Bunim, in his monumental study on Pirke Avoth, makes a profound observation about the significance of an ordinary greeting.
One of the famous and most important questions asked about Hanukkah reads: What is Hanukkah? [i.e., “Why do we celebrate Hanukkah?”]. The question strikes a modern reader as odd. Surely, the Jews must have known about the holiday’s significance for several centuries! On the surface, one could argue that the question is purely rhetorical in nature. It serves to help provide the rabbinical teachers with a new interpretation of the famous Maccabean ...
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