Torah Personalities

There’s a miniature kaf at the beginning of the parashah. As Gabriel Slamovits explains, what the diminished letter says about how Abraham mourned for Sarah fits well with a prominent teaching of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, zt”l.

Seth Farber explores the Rav's 1932 in local Boston historical context.

Tovah Lichtenstein responds to and critiques Zev Eleff's counter-history, "What if Rav Aharon Had Stayed?"

Ben Frogel reviews a new volume that introduces thirty-five different Jewish approaches to virtue ethics and attempts to link them into one continuous tradition.

Chaim Trachtman shows how a careful examination of debates between Shammai and Hillel challenge our preconceived notions about them.

Ari Lamm writes in tribute to the late Louis Feldman, examining his scholarship in light of personal experience.

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.

The Ne’ilah prayer, which we recite only once a year, clearly represents a moment of great religious drama, but its precise nature and purpose are somewhat mysterious. Alan Jotkowitz presents four different models for understanding Ne’ilah, drawing upon the teachings of Rav Yehuda Amital, Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, and Rav Ya’akov Medan.

Tzvi Sinensky As chronicled in Robert Putnam’s 2000 classic book, Bowling Alone, loneliness is one of the vexing challenges of modern life. The advent of the...

Tzvi Sinensky responds to Lawrence Kaplan and continues the discussion on Mendelssohn and Jewish law.