One day, when I was in my early 20s and teaching Torah to religious newbies in Jerusalem, I felt the bedrock of belief shudder beneath me. There’s a reason the sages wrote that the air of Jerusalem makes one wise. I could feel the vibe everywhere. I loved how a cosmetician might share a Torah…
A 15th century printed book of the Torah fetched a record $3.87 million at an auction in Paris. Three buyers attempted to outbid each other over the telephone during the sale which the Christie’s auction house organized on April 30, the news website actualitte.com reported Thursday. Christie’s listed the buyer as “anonymous” but said the…
Under pressure from the local rabbinical court, a London Orthodox rabbi ended the practice of women carrying a Torah scroll during prayers at his synagogue. Rabbi Harvey Belovski told congregants last week that the rabbinical court had ordered him to stop a practice that he had initiated last year, in which women carried the Torah…
Have you ever scrolled through Buzzfeed thinking, ‘If only this could be a little more Jewish?” Someone in the wide netherworld of the Internet has heard your prayers and answered them. The result is BuzzTorah, a spoof of the news site that launched a thousand listicles created by Yeshiva University students. The website self-describes as…
A publisher from Berlin is preparing to launch the first German-language children’s edition of the Torah since 1964. The first volume of “Tell your Children-The Torah in Five Volumes” is scheduled to be offered for sale next month by Ariella Books, a German Jewish children’s publisher. The previous edition was released half a century ago…
One hundred Torah scrolls that were looted from Hungary during World War II were discovered in Russia by a chief rabbi of Hungary. Rabbi Slomo Koves, executive rabbi of the Unified Hungarian Jewish Congregation, or EMIH, discovered the scrolls and other pieces of Judaica in the Lenin Library in the town of Nizhniy Novgorod. Hungary’s…
A Hungarian rabbi said on Tuesday he had uncovered 103 Torah scrolls stolen from Hungarian Jews during World War Two and stashed in a Russian library, adding he planned to restore and return them to the Jewish community. Slomo Koves, chief rabbi of the Unified Hungarian Jewish Congregation, said he had found the scrolls while…
A few of the author’s many blue inks on paper. / Jeffrey K. Salkin It’s time for me to confess my hobby. I collect and use fountain pens. I have no memory of how I first got into this particular way of writing. No, it has nothing to do with the fabled “Today I am…
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