Hot answers tagged historical-figures
16
Because "Alfasi" is really "al-Fasi". "Al-Fasi" is Arabic for "the Fezite" (Fez being the city in Morocco where he lived).
So kind of like how the word "of" gets swallowed in "USA", the word "the" got swallowed in "Rif". Wouldn't have made much sense to make his acronym stand for "Rabbi Yitzchak The".
16
1) Didnt Moshe Rabbeinu get divorced from Zipporah? See Rashi Bamidar 12:1, על אודות האשה: על אדות גירושיה. Sounds like he divorced her. I dont think this shittah is universal though. Still looking for more sources.
Tosafos in Yevomos 62:a dichsiv says that possibly he wrote her a Get.
2) Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer (chapter 30) brings down the following story ...
14
Megillas Antiochus lists five sons of Matisyahu: Yehudah, Shimon, Yochanan, Yonasan, and Elazar.
I Maccabees has the same names, but in rearranged order: Yochanan, Shimon, Yehudah, Elazar, and Yonasan. (It also gives their respective nicknames or cognomens: respectively, Gaddi, Thassi, Maccabeus, Avaran and Apphus.)
Rashi (to Deut. 33:11) mentions "twelve ...
13
The references to Rashi, Raavad, and R' Avraham ben haRambam* are explicated in Otzar Yisrael (and from there in the Daat Encyclopedia):
Rashi - to Prov. 5:19 cites an explanation of the word תשגה in the name of R' Moshe Hadarshan, who in turn bases it on an expression used by Eldad. In the area of halachah, Rashi (Pardes, Hilchos Treifos) accepts Eldad's ...
13
Here are a couple:
The very fact that the Megillah introduces him as איש, and takes the trouble to tell us his lineage and background, indicates that he was a person of importance. (It is true that איש can mean simply "a man," but quite often in Tanach, when a person is introduced with this term, it bears the connotation of "a prominent person" - one ...
12
The only divorce I can find in Tanach al pi peshat is Avraham's divorcing Hagar. The verse (Genesis 20:10) says:
גָּרֵשׁ הָאָמָה הַזֹּאת, וְאֶת-בְּנָהּ
Cast out this bondwoman and her son.
The word used is גרש which is the word used for divorce generally in Tanach (eg. Leviticus 22:13) and it seems to be the peshat here because we never hear of Hagar ...
10
I just want to point out that the Midrashic tradition of Mordechai being even originally a righteous individual is not completely unsupported by the text. Most (some would argue: all) midrashic material is inspired by textual subtleties and allusions, no matter how non-explicit.
From Esther Rabba (6:3)
ושמו מרדכי. הרשעים קודמין לשמן. "נבל שמו", " שבע בן ...
10
There has never been an official Chief Rabbi of the United States. Jonathon D. Sarna (in his American Judaism: A History. Yale University Press, 2004, page 105) explains this phenomenon thus:
But since there was no parallel Christian religious authority—no chief Protestant minister, no archbishop, not even a Catholic cardinal with nationwide ...
10
Shirei Musar Haskel - שירי מוסר השכל - page 39 mentions that in a few locations - (see for example) in the Peirush of Rabbi Moshe Butril to Sefer Yetzira he mentions Rav Hai Gaon as the author of Sefer Hakemitza which is on Kabala.
9
There is an opinion (Rit Algazi, in his commentary to Ramban's Hilchos Bechoros 8:65) that the rule about the son of a Jewish mother and non-Jewish father being Jewish comes with a caveat: it depends on how he was raised. If (as was often the case in earlier times) a non-Jew impregnated a Jewish woman (whether consensually or not) and afterwards wasn't ...
9
Toldos Tanaaim V'Amoroim Volume 2 Page 137 says that it is highly unlikely that Rabbi Yehuda ben Bava was the son of Bava ben Buta. Bava ben Buta lived in the times of Hordos (73/74 BCE - 4 BCE - source) and was a student of Shamai Hazakain (50 BCE–30 CE - source) while Rabbi Yehuda ben Bava was killed after Churban Beitar (135 CE - source).
8
There is little to indicate that the Rabbis went against Jesus, or that Jesus in his lifetime, even claimed to be a prophet or the messiah.
However, by the time Christianity started to make inroads in Israel, there were rules to keep Christians separate from Jews. The reasons for this were many, but the most clearly documented ones are that
Christians ...
8
Seder Hadoros puts the births of both of them in the same year (2233), and also cites Nesiv Hayashar quoting Birkas Shmuel that they were indeed twins.
8
Only three of his children are named in Tanach: his successor Rechavam, and two daughters named Tafath and Basemath, who married two of Shlomo's officials (I Kings 4:11,15).
R. Chaim Dov Rabinowitz (Daas Soferim) comments that it seems likely that Shlomo had 100 children or less (which would of course mean that most of his wives were childless), since in ...
8
His full name is R. Shlomo ben Avraham; here's the entry for him in Otzar Hagedolim. מרדוש (should properly be מדרויש or some variant thereof; Maharshal, in his teshuvah no. 29, where he brings the "chain of tradition" up to date to his own times, writes מדרוויש) is after the town where he lived - Dreux, France.
Maharshal lists him among the primary ...
8
Mesorah has it that Rabbi Elimelech from Lizensk was famous for starting out as a massive talmid chacham whilst Litvish, and converting to Chasssidus later after being persuaded by his brother Reb Zusha.
Lehavdil Rabbi Yochanon Kohein Gadol after serving for 80 years became a Zedoki.
8
The Talmud (Megillah 14a) writes:
הרבה נביאים עמדו להם לישראל, כפלים כיוצאי מצרים, אלא, נבואה שהוצרכה לדורות - נכתבה, ושלא הוצרכה - לא נכתבה.
Many prophets arose for the Jews: more than twice the number of Jews in the Exodus [1200000, but this language is likely meant to be understood as a really, really big number]. However, those prophesies ...
7
The rumor is false.
The earliest I can find the phrase 'Shimshon HaGibur' goes back to 1831, long before modern zionism or Hertzl.
It can be found in the book צמח דוד
Google books also shows other phrases such as Shimshon our Hero from books in 1801, but those are in English and not the exact phrase. I would not be surprised to find it occurring even ...
7
The Gemara in Sanhedrin 71a cites a baraisa which contains the opinion that there never was and never will be an actual case of a ben sorrer umoreh and analyzes whose opinion it agrees with. Neverhteless R. Yonasan is quoted as saying he in fact witnessed such a case.
At any rate, Absalom died via divine punishment, he was not executed by a Beis Din (nor ...
7
The Talmud refers to Rut the Moabite and Naamah the Ammonite (King Shlomo's great-grandmother and wife respectively) as such at the very top of Bava Kamma 38b.
ויאמר ה' (אל משה) אל תצר את מואב ואל תתגר בם מלחמה וכי מה עלה על דעתו של משה לעשות מלחמה שלא ברשות אלא נשא משה ק"ו בעצמו אמר ומה מדינים שלא באו אלא לעזור את מואב אמרה תורה צרור את המדינים והכיתם ...
7
To quote S. from On The Main Line:
Rashi was known by Christians as Rabbi Solomon Jarchi (Yarchi) because of a mistake, the mistake being that it was thought that 1) he was from Lunel and 2) that the yud stood for ירחי, which was Hebrew for "from Lunel" (Lunel as in luna as in moon).
This mistake was so entrenched that the Chida (page 6 in linked ...
7
"Non" (whom the Metzudas David identifies as Nun) is mentioned in Divrei HaYamim 1 7:27 as the son of Elishama ben Amihud, the nasi of Efrayim (Bamidbar 1:10).
7
Here is what I could dig up about him:
He lived sometime in the (late) second century. This is evident from Shabbos 23b which places him at the same time as Rav Huna who passed away in 296 (wikipedia).
He had two children named Rav Iddi and Rav Chiya (Gemora there).
He lived in Bavel as is evident from the story with Rav Huna. Rav Huna began lecturing in ...
7
Megilla 13b says that Ester would "rise from the bosom of Achashverosh and immerse herself and sit in the bosom of Mordechai". Tosfos Harosh asks how this was permitted due to the law of "havchana" (the requirement for a women to abstain from relations for three months between husbands to identify the father), and explains that she utilized ...
6
There was Nechemia 7:7 Which lists Mordechai amongst the leaders of Israel. And also Ezra 2:2 Which does likewise.
6
According to Divrei HaYomim 1 8:33 and Divrei Hayomim 1 9:39 his real name was Ashba'al.
ונר הוליד את קיש וקיש הוליד את שאול ושאול הוליד את יהונתן ואת מלכי שוע ואת אבינדב ואת אשבעל
The Radak explains why he is called Ish Boshes since his name ended in Ba'al it was translated to Boshes, and according to Rashi it was changed to Boshes as a deragortory to ...
6
Perhaps you mean the king of Cheshbon?
Cheshbon was the capital city of Sichon, king of the Amorites ("Emorim"). The Jews conquered it.
See Numbers 21:21--27:
Israel sent emissaries to Sichon king
of the Amorites ... Sichon, however,
did not let Israel pass through his
territories. Instead, Sichon mustered
up all his people, and went out to
...
6
According to this note (in the list of commentators used by Nechama Leibowitz in her own essays on the Torah), he was a dayan in the Sephardic community of Hamburg, and died in 1701 (R. David Nieto, in his letter cited below, gives it as Cheshvan 5462, which matches the claim of 1701).
It seems, too, that the correct Latin-alphabet spelling of his family ...
6
From: http://www.mail-archive.com/daf-discuss@shemayisrael.co.il/msg01649.html (or http://shemayisrael.co.il/pipermail/daf-discuss_shemayisrael.co.il/2008-March/001616.html)
"The Ben Yehodaya cites the Zohar and the Arizal, that in fact Esther herself
did not have relations with Achashverosh, but instead there was a "Shidah" - a
demon - who appeared ...
6
R. Eitam Henkin (R. Y.H. Henkin's son) wrote an essay on the curious Rashi.
He claims there that the text attributed to Rashi was a later interpolation by an errant student, since it is not referred to by any of the subsequent commentaries for centuries. His argument is not the usual "must have been an errant student" type, but rather is quite convincingly ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
