BROOKLYN, NY — Portuguese-speaking Jews will, for the first time in 138 years, be able to study the landmark Kitzur Shulchan Aruch in their mother tongue following its release by a Brazilian-based Chabad-Lubavitch publishing house.
Landmark Work a First for Portuguese Speaking Jews
BROOKLYN, NY — Portuguese-speaking Jews will, for the first time in 138 years, be able to study the landmark Kitzur Shulchan Aruch in their mother tongue following its release by a Brazilian-based Chabad-Lubavitch publishing house.
The two volume set features Rabbi Shlomo Ganzfried’s original Hebrew alongside a Portuguese translation. It is published by the Maayanot firm headed by Rabbi Dovid Weitman, founder of Beit Chabad Morumbi in S. Paulo.
When it was published in 1870, the Kitzur, as it is colloquially known, quickly gained popularity for its condensing of rulings found in the seminal Shulchan Aruch, or Code of Jewish Law, authored some 350 years earlier by Rabbi Yosef Caro of Spain. Many people, including children, study the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch on a regular basis, preferring its easy-to-grasp codification as an introductory birds-eye-view to daily Jewish life.
Included in the new edition is a timeline of the development of Jewish law from Moses until modern times and a collection of biographies of the major legal decisors in Jewish history. Diagrams and illustrations help the reader understand difficult concepts, such as how to build a sukkah; and an appendix explains all of the 39 types of primary labor forbidden on Shabbat.
