Menachem Mendel Kasher
| Menachem Mendel Kasher מנחם מנדל כשר |
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| Born |
March 7, 1895 Warsaw, Poland |
| Died | November 3, 1983 (aged 88) Jerusalem, Israel |
| Language | Hebrew |
| Ethnicity | Jewish |
| Citizenship | Polish, Israeli |
| Notable awards | Israel Prize (1963) |
Menachem Mendel Kasher (Hebrew: מנחם מנדל כשר; March 7, 1895 – November 3, 1983) was a Polish-born Israeli rabbi and prolific author who authored an encyclopedic work on the Torah entitled Torah Sheleimah.
Kasher was born in 1895 in Warsaw, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire). His father was Rabbi Yitzhak Peretz. At the age of 19, he edited the periodical Degel Ha'Torah, the mouthpiece of the Polish branch of Agudath Israel.
In 1924, in response to a call from the Ger Rebbe, Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter, Kasher moved to Jerusalem, in Mandate Palestine, to establish the Sfas Emes Yeshiva in honour of the Rebbe's father, Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter. He subsequently served as the rosh yeshiva of the yeshiva for its first two years. He later helped bring the Rebbe to Palestine about six months after the outbreak of World War II.
Kasher's major work, Torah Sheleimah ("The Complete Torah"), is divided into two parts. The first part is the encyclopedia, the first work to publish all of the Written Law (the Pentateuch) and the Oral Teachings (Talmud and Midrashim) side by side. Kasher published from manuscript form several previously unknown midrashic works such as the Midrash Teiman. The latter part consists of the extensive annotations and addendum in which he uses his awareness of variant texts as well as his almost encyclopedic knowledge in all Jewish works to clarify many obscure points in the Talmud and the Rambam's commentary.
The first volume of Torah Sheleimah was published in Jerusalem in 1927 and included 352 entries to the first chapter of Bereishit. The 38th volume was still published in his lifetime (1983) and included Parshat Beha'alotcha.
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