Stories from Jewish History

Stories from Jewish History

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Coffee with Rabbenu Yonah
☕Sensitive, turbulent, unafraid but filled with deep humility, Rabbenu Yonah was the conscience of thirteenth-century Spain—and beyond.
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Dr. Tamar Ron Marvin
The Curious Case of Eldad ha-Dani
🗺️ Eldad ha-Dani turned up in Qayrawan, Tunisia, one day in the late ninth century, claiming to be of the lost tribe of Dan and possessed of halachot…
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Dr. Tamar Ron Marvin
2
Nisan 5784: The Mysterious Fifth Cup
🍷 Is one actually supposed to pour, or even drink, a fifth cup of wine at the Pesach seder? What does the Talmud actually say, and what about Eliyahu…
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Dr. Tamar Ron Marvin
The First Families of Ashkenaz
🏰 The four famed families of Rome and the multi-branched Kalonymos family were renowned as founders of Ashkenazi culture. Today, we further untangle…
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Dr. Tamar Ron Marvin
8
The Last Maimonidean Controversy? The Controversy of 1304-1307
🎓 We have a rich trove of sources documenting the Maimonidean controversy of 1304-1307, which drew in the Rashba, allowing us to see how the nature of…
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Dr. Tamar Ron Marvin
3
The Origins of Ashkenazi Jewry
🏰 Today we begin a series on the formation of Ashkenaz, in the broad sense of northern Europe, covering the period from its beginnings, explored here…
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Dr. Tamar Ron Marvin
5
Tishrei 5785: The Lives and Afterlives of U-Netaneh Tokef
❤️‍🔥 The haunting Rosh Hashana piyut U-Netaneh Tokef has a contested backstory, but the complex realities behind its many lives and afterlives tells…
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Dr. Tamar Ron Marvin
Sivan 5784: The Origins of Tikkun Leil Shavuot
🌃 The Kabbalistic practice of staying awake late into the night of the holiday of Shavuot and studying Torah has its roots in the Zohar, but was…
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Dr. Tamar Ron Marvin
Adar I 5784: Lost Books of the Bible
❓A relatively large number of books are mentioned in Tanach that have not come down to us. What can we ascertain about their contents and whereabouts?
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Dr. Tamar Ron Marvin
Av 5784: Rebuilding Jerusalem - The Emblematic Case of the Ramban Synagogue
🕍 What we know—and don't know—about the famously renewed synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of that Old City, and what it tells us about rebuilding in the…
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Dr. Tamar Ron Marvin
1
Shevat 5784: On the Supposedly Sabbatean Origins of the Tu bi-Shevat Seder
🌱 The practices surrounding Tu bi-Shevat, the new year of the trees, go back to Geonic times and pick up Kabbalistic meaning before a brief…
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Dr. Tamar Ron Marvin
Tamuz 5784: What We've Lost—and What We've Gained
🔥 An exploration of how the period of mourning beginning in Tamuz marks both destruction and renewal, exile and redemption, through the lens of our…
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Dr. Tamar Ron Marvin
© 2025 Tamar Ron Marvin
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