American Orthodoxy

Yoni Zolty and Jordan Soffer respond to Jeff Fox's recent article on football and halakhic values.

Jeffrey Fox examines whether watching football is problematic from a Torah point of view.

Marc B. Shapiro reviews a new edited volume by Yoram Hazony, Gil Student, and Alex Sztuden that offers a traditional defense of revelation in light of modern biblical criticism.

As 2022 comes to a close, the Lehrhaus team is proud to feature some highlights from our contributions this past year. Yet again, we have published at least one hundred original pieces across a wide variety of genres.

In his first article for the Lehrhaus, Akiva Garner explores the phenomenon of vulnerability through both Jewish texts and modern psychology–and highlights its unrecognized significance in Jewish living and meaning.

In his latest for the Lehrhaus, Steven Gotlib reviews the recently published collection of essays, Strauss, Spinoza, and Sinai: Orthodox Judaism and Modern Questions of Faith, which tries to answer: is there a philosophical defense of Orthodoxy in the modern world?

As Juneteenth sparks another round of discussion of blacks and the American experience, Chaim Trachtman compares and contrasts the Jewish and Black experiences in America through the lens of Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book.

On this flag day, Moshe Kurtz surveys the arguments for and against displaying national flags in synagogues.

Today's letters to the editor rethink the utility of Torah u-Madda in today's world. Noam Stadlan reminds us that all knowledge is God's creation and thus inherently valuable, while Larry Grossman (author of “The Rise and Fall of Torah U’Madda“) argues that Torah u-Madda fails to address the various issues that now confront Modern Orthodoxy.

The debate about Torah u-Madda and pop culture continues. Noah Marlowe argues that Chaim Potok's literature offers a useful conceptual framework for, and embodiment of, a profound confrontation between Judaism and elite elements of general culture.