בעין אגדת הירושלמי review

בעין אגדת הירושלמי יפה זלכה

In the Eyes of the Aggadah of the Yerushalmi  Yaffa Zilkah

Beit Morasha of Jerusalem 264 pp.

This interesting book explores various midrashim in the Yerushalmi and Babli.  The author describes how the angst and immediacy of the midrash in the Yerushalmi becomes with distance and time the more universal pathos of the Bavli.  For example, the same midrash in the Yerushalmi tends to have the place name and centers or opens with a mitzvah which is just done in Eretz Yisrael while these elements tend to get lost in the same version in the the Bavli.  It is well written and draws much of its inspiration from the writings of Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook.

Aryeh Shore 

סדר " תענית" כיצד review

סדר " תענית" כיצד  ?

 מסכת תעניות בירושלמי. דרכי עיצוב המסורת ועריכתן.  נורית בארי הוצאת אוניברסיטת בר אילן

   435  pages 

תשס"ט

 Exploring Ta'aniot 

Yerushalmi Tractate Ta'aniot - Forming and Redacting the Traditions

This is an excellent book in excellent Hebrew.  Some passages are so well written as to be considered of literary merit by themselves.  I found the observations that the original editing was just grouping braitot and the second stage was a formulistic "ask, answer, why, why" putting the braitot in a form for easy memory very useful.  A particular interesting explanation is given on how the insistence on conserving the original braitot leads to some awkward structures.  Similarly appreciated the explanations of how the prefaces of the sugiahs were place by the editors, explaining why the same sentence appears twice in a section. I believe her use of an excel chart to plot the frequency of Tanaim quoted in each generation is a sort of a first. (However, it the chart did not display any SD bars.)