Commentary

Drawing upon Jewish history and human anatomy, Shmuel Chaim Naiman demonstrates how the Land of Israel serves as a collective body for the collective Jewish soul.

Twelve years after the passing of R. Menachem Froman, his daughter-in-law, the scholar and activist Tchiya Froman, considers R. Froman’s literary critique of the Gush Emunim settlement enterprise and his determination that Judaism requires a feminine revolution.

The biblical figure of Esther is often interpreted by traditional and modern commentators as a heroine of active leadership. Naama Sadan offers a novel perspective, according to which Esther confronts national crisis in female-coded ways, triumphing and saving her people through internally-focused activism.

Written in dense rabbinic Hebrew, MiLishkat HaDarom, the responsa of Australian Rabbi Yehoram Ulman, has not yet received the attention it deserves for it nuanced presentation of family case law.

Alan Jotkowitz reviews a newly-published volume of the Rav's writings on Zionism, and unpacks what they can mean for the Jewish State and Diaspora communities today.

Mollie Fish reviews Mitchell First’s new book, From Eden to Exodus: A Journey into Hebrew Words in Bereshit and Shemot.

In honor of Yud Shevat, The Lehrhaus presents an excerpt from Eli Rubin’s forthcoming book Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity: An Existential History of Chabad Hasidism. Rubin explores the theological meaning of an influential series of discourses by the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, R. Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn.

Hillel Rapp explores how Israel education has changed in a post-Oct. 7 world.

Yosef Lindell reviews Avigail Rock's recent book about the classical Biblical commentators.

Steven Gotlib reviews the magnum opus of legendary Jewish thinker Yitz Greenberg, considering ways in which Greenberg’s newest synthesis of his ideas bring him back into conversation with the Modern Orthodox community.