Torah Personalities

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.

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. 

The Haredi community in Israel and its institutions have resisted army service and other forms of societal integration since the founding of the State. As the controversy over drafting Haredi citizens continues to feature in headlines, Nathaniel Helfgot revisits a well-known but underexplored episode in early Israeli history: the meeting and correspondence between Prime Minister David Ben Gurion and Rabbi Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz, known as the Hazon Ish.

Shana Strauch Schicks's reflection commemorating the passing of Yaakov Elman, ob"m.

The back-and-forth about Shadal and Modern Orthodox kiruv continues. Here are letters to the editor by Daniel Klein and Simon Levy.

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.

Richard Hidary's reflection commemorating the passing of Yaakov Elman, ob"m.

Zev Eleff offers a rejoinder and some reflections on "What if Rav Aharon Had Stayed?"

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.