A baraita cited in both the Palestinian and the Babylonian Talmud (pKetubot 12:3, 34d-35a = pKil'aim 9:4, 32a-b; bKetubot 103a-b) describes Rabbi's dying testament to his sons. In the Babylonian version, Rabbi designates his elder son, Gamaliel, as his successor, and his younger son, Shimeon, as the next hakham. In its analysis of this part of the testament, the BT interprets Rabbi's declaration, which begins, curiously, with the younger son and the lesser position, as concessive: although the younger son is wise, the elder shall be the patriarch. In the continuation of this discussion, the Talmud manifests its concern over Gamaliel's appointment: Gamaliel does not “fill his forefathers' place in wisdom.” This problem is so great, according to the BT, that it would negate the elder son's claim to the dynastic position were it not that Gamaliel has another quality, “fear of sin,” with respect to which he does, in fact, “fill his forefathers' place.”

Professor Meir Benayahu's collection of documents includes a contractual agreement between some Jewish merchants in Aleppo and a hakham by the name of Yeshaya Attia. In it, Attia undertakes to go to the city of Manchester in England to serve as the spiritual leader of a colony of Aleppine merchants there. The document is very important because it enables us to fix, with a high degree of probability, the date of the founding of the Aleppine community in Manchester, the first of many communities of Jews from Aleppo in the West. The document also sheds light on the reasons why Jews emigrated from Aleppo to Manchester and the way in which they organized into a community in their new home. This article traces the background of Jewish emigration from Aleppo to Manchester and the model that the mother community of Aleppine Jewry adopted in dealing with communities made up of emigrants from Aleppo.

At the end of his short treatise Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, Franz Rosenzweig predicated the restoration of what he called healthy consciousness upon the recognition of death7apos;s sovereignty. “[One] must direct [one's] life to no other goal but death,” he wrote. “A healthy man has the strength to continue towards the grave. The sick man invokes death and lets himself be carried away in mortal fear.” Rosenzweig juxtaposed the Grim Reaper with weary life. The healthy understanding knows that death will dash life to the ground. Yet it takes comfort from knowing that death will accept it with open arms. In the end, eloquent life falls silent as the eternally taciturn one speaks, “Do you finally recognize me? I am your brother.”In his notes to the English translation, Nahum Glatzer remarks with shock, “This concluding chapter–on death–stands in a striking contrast to the final passage of The Star of Redemption.” As if to offset our text's more mordant tone, Glatzer then quotes verbatim the seemingly life-affirming paragraphs that conclude Rosenzweig's magnum opus. Glatzer is not the only commentator to emphasize the importance of life in Rosenzweig's system. Indeed, Else-Rahel Freund notes that The Star of Redemption begins with the phrase “from death” and concludes with the words “into life.”