Interesting Posts and Articles #389

1) First, that Agudah video about poverty in the holy land:

Blogs discussing it, not in the way anticipated: Hirhurim (The Sad Collapse), Rationalist Judaism (The Charedi Tragedy of Ignoring Chazal) and Emes VeEmunah. See also Cross-Currents. It was originally on Vimeo, but then that was password protected. It then was reposted on YouTube, it seems by the same party. Which seems to mean that it was not pulled because of backlash.

2) Hirhurim also has a post on Yosef's sale and Biblical critics:

However, beginning approximately 50 years ago, critics started objecting to this proposal. They argued that these doublets do not indicate separate sources. Indeed, the text reads better when a single source is assumed.

Last year, I had a series of posts (one, two, three, four) discussing Yosef's sale.  I think the switch-off of descriptive language (Medanites, Midianites, Ishmaelites) might well come from multiple sources, but these are each taking turns telling what is a complex, single story. And that the brothers pull up Yosef and sell him to the Ishmaelites, who are the Medanites and Midianites. And they do so on Yehuda's suggestion, while Reuven was away. Thus, they foiled Reuven's own plan for saving Yosef.

3) At the Seforim blog, Lawrence Kaplan's review of The Genius.

Eliyahu Stern's recent book on the Vilna Gaon has generated a lot of discussion. The Seforim Blog is happy to present Lawrence Kaplan's review of the work which will be followed up by a three-part post by Marc Shapiro

4) The Maccabeats with a new song for Chanukkah.


5) It has been a while since I've done one of these roundups. Here is the most recent one from Life in Israel and the most recent one from Yeranen Yaakov.