Commentary

David Fried reviews Diana Lobel's Moses and Abraham Maimonides: Encountering the Divine, which argues that the categorization of Moses Maimonides as an Aristotelian philosopher and his son Abraham as a Sufi mystic is an oversimplification.

Yosef Lindell argues that the Haggadah focuses on the story of the Exodus rather than on the laws of the paschal sacrifice as a way of looking forward towards the future redemption.

Jonah Mac Gelfand explores the neo-Hasidic theology of obligation to do mitzvot that emerges from the fascinating writings of Rabbi Arthur Green.

David Zvi Kalman reviews Koren Publishers’ new graphic novel version of Megillat Esther.

Menachem Kellner reviews Judaism’s Challenge: Election, Divine Love, and Human Enmity.

In commemoration of the upcoming Sheloshim of Rav Moshe Kahn, Mindy Schwartz Zolty shares a Hesped of her teacher in which she discusses his derekh ha-limmud and his derekh as a melamed.

Marina Zilbergerts presents the philosophical questions posed by Chaim Grade's “My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner,” and compares his arguments to those of other major thinkers such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche.

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.

Why did the women bring musical instruments out of Egypt? In her first Lehrhaus article, musicologist Rebecca Cypess draws a fascinating historical analogy between biblical and African-American slavery to shed light on the Exodus in Jewish tradition.