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Or ha-Me'ir - R. Ze'ev Wolf of Zhitomir (d. 1800), hasidic preacher, disciple of R. Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezhirech. His book, Or ha-Me'ir (Korets, 1798), is important for its wealth of material on the history of Hasidism and teachings of its founders. R. Ze'ev criticized the behavior of the zaddikim of his day who had abandoned simple living for luxury. An opponent of noisy prayer, he contended that one should pray with kavvanah, with the object of elevating one's thoughts and realizing one's insignificance: "One ought to pray with fear and reverence and stand upright and not be heard, and only move the lips" (Or ha-Me'ir, Terumah).
Shanghai Imprints - Apart from J.J. Sulaiman's Kunteres Seder ha-Dorot (1921), the main period of Hebrew printing in Shanghai was during World War II and immediately after (1940–46), when remnants of Lithuanian yeshivot (Mir, Slobodka), as well as Lubavitch Hasidim, found refuge in Shanghai and printed – mostly photostatically – rabbinic, ethical, and hasidic works in limited editions for their own use. To the 80 items enumerated by Z. Harkavy (in Ha-Sefer, no. 9, 1961, 52–3; Hashlamot le-Mafte'ah ha-Maftehot (by S. Shunami, 1966), 3–4) have to be added – at least – the above work by J.J. Sulaiman and S. Elberg's Akedat Treblinka (Yid., 1946). Hebrew newspapers were printed in Shanghai as early as 1904. |
