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Category Archives: Marc B. Shapiro
The Marc Shapiro Voice
Marc B. Shapiro (b. 1962) writes as a collector of anomalies. He finds the passage a later editor removed, the responsum that says what the tradition now denies it said, the photograph cropped to hide a clean-shaven face. Then he … Continue reading
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The Chemist, the Professor, and the Giant
Marc Shapiro tells the gelatin story and lets one detail go by too fast. Louis Ginzberg (1873-1953), the great Talmudist at the Jewish Theological Seminary, ruled that gelatin is forbidden. He gave his reason without hedging. He knew R. Hayyim … Continue reading
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Marc Shapiro: Gelatin, Supposed Retractions, and Abraham Goldstein
Shapiro’s claim is about evidence and authority. A written responsum beats a remembered conversation, and the gelatin and dishwasher cases let him prove it twice. The dishwasher example is the cleanest piece of reasoning in the post. R. Moshe Feinstein … Continue reading
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Marc Shapiro: R. Yudel Rosenberg, R. Mordechai Elefant, and Sexual Abuse
Marc B. Shapiro wrote a typical Seforim Blog grab-bag, and the title shows the strain. He yokes together a correction to his own forgery scholarship, a long meditation on Mordechai Elefant’s memoir, and a short note on rabbinic responses to … Continue reading
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Marc Shapiro on Rabbinic Forgery
The strongest section is the first, on the phantom “A. Rosenberg.” Solomon Friedlaender forged a Yerushalmi to Kodashim, then invented a student, Rosenberg, to defend the forgery. The student praised the master. The master praised the student. Both were the … Continue reading
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Marc Shapiro on the Chanukah Miracle
What the post does well is map a small scholarly territory. It groups the material by question. Etymology gets one cluster: Mitchell First on the spelling and meaning of Chashmonai and Maccabee, with Dan Rabinowitz on the same. The miracle … Continue reading
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Marc Shapiro: ‘If this wasn’t so comical…’
Marc Shapiro (b. 1966) wins most of these exchanges, and he wins them on the simplest ground available: he tells the reader to look at the page. That move runs through the whole piece. Grossman charges him with citing Rivash … Continue reading
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The Question MO Will Not Ask
Do you accept historicism (that everything is a product of a time and place)? If not, on what grounds? The question is simple to state. It is difficult to answer. It is the question Modern Orthodox scholarship will not ask, … Continue reading
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Marc Shapiro: ‘Comments on recent books by R. Benji Levy and R. Eitam Henkin; R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik; and the first color photographs of R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg’
Marc B. Shapiro’s Levy and Henkin reviews each carry a sharp critical point. The Soloveitchik archive material is good for what it shows about how the Rav functioned in practice and how scholarship on him gets shaped by selective access … Continue reading
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‘Between East and West: The Life and Works of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg’
Marc B. Shapiro (b. 1966) opens his 1995 Harvard thesis with a dramatic story. Larry McEnerney would mark it up approvingly. He would also find places where Shapiro reverts to graduate-school habits. Look at the first sentence of the preface. … Continue reading
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