American Orthodoxy

Alan Jotkowitz explores how frequently overlooked passages in the writings of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks can help pave a path forward for us on theological issues in a post-Covid world.

Jonathcan Muskat explores the different ways Rabbi Soloveitchik communicated about Mehitzah.

In this next installment in our Israel symposium, Erica Brown argues that for Jewish students after October 7, choosing secular college is just not the choice it used to be.

In a never-before-published memoir, Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein recalls the politics that surrounded Yeshiva University upon the death of President Bernard Revel and the search for his successor. 

As the Covid-19 pandemic looks like it might be subsiding, Ezra Schwartz, a Rosh Yeshiva at Yeshiva University, incisively examines competing trends toward decentralization of synagogue life and centralization of halakhic decision-making that are reshaping the Modern Orthodox world.

Concluding our series on the recent Siyum ha-Shas, Channa Lockshin Bob wonders: What do we want the next Women's Siyum ha-Shas to look like?

Yisrael Kashkin explores similarities between Yekkes and Hasidim.

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.

Is the Mishnah racist? To answer the question, begs Elli Fischer, is to get a better understanding of both Judaism and Race

Laura Shaw Frank contributes to the Lehrhaus Symposium on the recent OU statement regarding female clergy.