Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from December, 2008

Of Making Many Books

And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end (Ecclesiastes 12:12) A pdf version of this essay  can be downloaded here [*] Years in brackets refer to an individual’s or book author’s year of birth Thought experiment for the day: Anyone born 1945 would be pushing towards 80 and mostly past their prime. So name any Charedi sefer written by someone born post war that has or is likely to enter the canon, be it haloche, lomdus, al hatorah or mussar. Single one will do for now — IfYouTickleUs (@ifyoutickleus) July 27, 2022 A tweet in the summer which gained some traction asked for a book by an author born from 1945 onwards that has entered the Torah and rabbinic canon or is heading in that direction. I didn't exactly phrase it this way and some quibbled about 'canonisation'. The word does indeed have a precise meaning though in its popular use it has no narrow definition. Canonisation, or ‘entering the canon’ is generally understood to

Mutterings

The time of week when I most think of this non-entity of a blog is Friday night. It starts in shul , me sitting hidden away in the alcove that is my place, assuming no one has pinched it or there is no simche with brothers, uncles, nephews and cousins far removed from all over the globe taking up the spare and not so spare seats. It is always my seat, chair is more like it, and a rather wobbly one at that, that goes first as I have a revered minhag passed down to me from previous generation to tuck in kugel and salad after the candles have been kindled and if I turn up to shul late, well, unlike a plate of kugel , whatever is missed is shul can always be made up. The only downside of course being that my seat gets pinched and unfortunately I'm not one of those who shove people off MY seat. First because I don't really have a seat as that was nicked ages ago and second the place I do have to rest my posterior is in reality no more than a tiny space improvised once a week