Author: trmarvin
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Birkat ha-Ilanot in the Southern Hemisphere
Birkat ha-Ilanot is a special blessing said once a year upon seeing blossoming fruit trees for the first time—the Talmud says, “in the days of Nisan.” But what if one sees such a tree for the first time in a month other than Nisan? What drew me to this topic is that Jewish law pertaining…
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How to Check your Girsa (Text) of the Talmud using Hachi Garsinan
The Talmud, being a massive corpus, is often subject to questions of girsa—textual variants. This is a live question already in the Gemara itself, which occasionally treats girsa issues in the Mishnah (e.g., חסורי מחסרא והכי קתני). It is also a not uncommon issue raised by Rishonim, and then in the period of the Acharonim…
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18 Essential Readings in Modern Orthodox Thought
Inspired by R. Josh Yuter’s excellent reading list, I’m sharing my own set of impactful readings that, I think, characterize Modern Orthodox thought. There’s Torah, theology, halachic theory, extended grappling with inyana de-yoma from science to Bible criticism to feminism, and a little bit of history. A few criteria I used to navigate the ideologically…
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How to Be a Book-Loving Minimalist
I’m not a hardcore minimalist (like, I own things), but I’m very drawn to minimalism: white walls, matchy pantry containers, capsule wardrobe, that sort of thing. As you might imagine, this does not jibe particularly well with being a bookworm, especially an Orthodox Jewish one who does lots of reading over Shabbat. But yes, I…
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How to Use Zotero to Organize your Research
Zotero is how I perform feats of research magic. I use it to: It’s like having a personally curated library. The first thing I do when I start a project is search my references and call up my reading notes. Zotero isn’t hard to use, but it has a learning curve and it can be…
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Setting Up a Personal Knowledge Management System
A Personal Knowledge Management is a way of saving, processing, and organizing the information and files you use every day in your work and life, so that you can access them easily when needed. Basically, it’s dealing with your digital stuff so it’s organized and works for you. Personal Knowledge Management is my secret sauce.…
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Rambam as Kabbalist: An Early Account
The idea that Rambam was actually a Kabbalist and not (or, depending on the theory, not just) a philosopher, became widespread about a century after his death. This idea takes two different forms: the first holds that Rambam turned his back on philosophy at the end of his life, renouncing his rationalist works, namely Sefer…
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The Unbearable Darkness of Being: On Ishay Ribo’s Seder ha-Avodah
Ishay Ribo’s remarkable, melancholy version of the Seder ha-Avodah, the piyyut recited in the Amidah of Musaf on Yom Kippur, traces a different theology of teshuvah than that classically outlined by Rambam in Hilchot Teshuvah. With much of the song drawn directly from the liturgy (which itself relies heavily, often verbatim, on Mishnah Yoma), Ribo’s…
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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Wikipedia
Like most scholars, my attitude towards Wikipedia used to be one of ire and resigned hostility. Then I learned to stop worrying and love the wiki. What happened to make me change my mind?
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54 Essential Books in Jewish Studies
The challenge of defining essential books in Jewish studies is as difficult as it is needed. Difficult, because there is so much important work out there and how do you choose what to include? Needed, because it takes experience to sift through the available books and interested readers rightfully want to know where to look.…