Monthly Archives: December 2011

Hanukkah and Piyyut (Part 3)

Posted on December 29, 2011 by

The third and last (albeit slightly belated) installment of the series on Hanukkah and Piyyut (Part 1, Part 2). In the days of the Geonim (i.e., the Babylonian sages that followed the rabbis of the Talmud), individuals and communities sent … Continue reading →

Posted in Piyut, Readings | Tagged , , , , , | 15 Comments

Life in a Day

Posted on December 24, 2011 by

I don’t generally get to watch movies, and to say the least, my media intake is wanting, eclectic and uneven: An occasional Israeli drama about Orthodox Jewish singles living in the Jerusalem ‘swamp’, minimalist Iranian art-house flics, and a film … Continue reading →

Posted in General Culture, Ruminations, Uncategorized | Tagged | 1 Comment

Hanukkah and Piyyut (Part 2)

Posted on December 24, 2011 by

In the first part of this series I discussed an intriguing “historical” tradition in a piyyut by Elazar Birabi Qilir. In this second part I turn to an interesting juxtaposition of the cosmos and the Tabernacle in another piyyut for … Continue reading →

Posted in Piyut, Readings | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Hanukkah and Piyyut (Part 1)

Posted on December 20, 2011 by

Hanukkah begins today and since I have been working for some years now on Hebrew liturgical poems for this feast, I thought it would be nice to share with the readers of the Talmud Blog some interesting bits and pieces … Continue reading →

Posted in Piyut, Readings | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

Halakha in the Holiday Season

Posted on December 19, 2011 by

While vendors here in the open-market already began selling sufganiyot a few months ago, the recent displays of hanukiyot are a sure sign of the impending holiday season. Veteran readers of The Talmud Blog may recall Shai’s classic 2009 post … Continue reading →

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Announcements Regarding The Talmud Blog Book Club (TBBC)

Posted on December 8, 2011 by

A little over a month ago we announced the first session of our “Book Club”.  While I’m sure many of our readers are just waiting for the moment to share their thoughts on Ishay Rosen-Zvi’s Demonic Desires, over here in … Continue reading →

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The Academy

Posted on December 6, 2011 by

A lot has changed since my father called me into his office at Children’s Hospital, some two decades ago, to show me something called “The World Wide Web”. The adolescent gaming nerd that I was, I pictured some kind of … Continue reading →

Posted in Announcements, Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Captivated

Posted on December 1, 2011 by

Last night, Dr. Youval Rotman of Tel Aviv University lead the inaugural discussion of Hebrew University’s  Group for the Study of Late Antiquity. The Group, which was started by Uriel Simonsohn and I in order to create an active scholarly community for researchers … Continue reading →

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