Rare Complete Collection: Issues of "HaPeles" - The First Agudah Monthly Journal

Rare Complete Collection: Issues of "HaPeles" - The First Agudah Monthly Journal

Important collection consisting of five thick volumes of all the issues of the Agudah monthly journal HaPeles, published by the editor, the gaon Rabbi Eliyahu Akiva Rabinowitz, av beit din of Poltova. Including the first issue!

HaPeles was the first Hebrew-language Agudist and Orthodox monthly journal published. It was published from Tishrei/October 1900 for five complete years,  ending in 1905.These are all the issues from the first five years. The journal's lead editor and publisher was the gaon Rabbi Eliyahu Akiva Rabinowitz, av beit din of Poltova. Rabbi Rabinowitz's goal was to draw Jews' hearts close to their Father in Heaven, His Torah and His traditions, and to defend them from evil winds - as opposed to other journals that were published by maskilim with anti-Orthodox content.

Over the course of the 19th century, many Jewish journals were published, but most identified with the "enlightenment." At that same time in Eastern Europe, HaCarmel, HaMelitz, and HaTzefirah were published. In the Land of Israel and Germany, the Orthodox published journals such as HaLevanon and Der Israelite or Machzikei HaDat that was published in Galicia. Yet in all of Russia-Poland, there was not one explicitly conservative Orthodox journal.

The title HaPeles had two meanings. Aside from its being a "level" to determine what to draw near and what to distance, it also would clear a path [יפלס נתיב] in people's hearts. Part of the journal was filled with Torah novellae and halachah, yet most was philosophy and publicity, with a considerable number of the articles written by Rabbi Rabinowitz himself. Rabbi Kook and Rabbi Yehudah Leib Tzirelson, along with other rabbis, also occasionally published articles in this journal. HaPeles often took issue with the secular, especially the Zionist movement, and, in the words of the editor, also suffered harassment from the Zionists.

At the end of 1905, HaPeles stopped coming out. Although the editor complains of the publication's financial difficulties in the last issue, he maintains that the reasons for its closure were not economic, but that severe restrictions were placed on its content. This was likely as a result of the 1905 revolution and the pogroms that took place at that time.

In 1971, Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Levine, editor of Hamodia, published a magazine called HaPeles named after the monthly journal Rabbi Rabinowitz published, as well as a newspaper entitled Hamodia. The newspaper was published for a year, and he published memories of his father, Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Levine therein. In 2012, Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach's people began to publish a daily called HaPeles due to the dispute in the Lithuanian (yeshivah) community.

Volume I: Berlin, 1900-1. 768 pp. 24 cm.

Volume II: Berlin, 1901-2. 774 pp. 24 cm.

Volume III: Berlin, 1902-3. 768, 20, 2 pp. 24 cm. Including all the details of the first rabbinic conference in Krakow.

Volume IV: Berlin, 1903-4. 762, 2 pp. 24 cm.

Volume V: Berlin, 1904-5. 768 pp. 24 cm.

Overall fine-very fine condition. Original bindings, elegant and embossed.