Torah Personalities

The biblical figure of Esther is often interpreted by traditional and modern commentators as a heroine of active leadership. Naama Sadan offers a novel perspective, according to which Esther confronts national crisis in female-coded ways, triumphing and saving her people through internally-focused activism.

Raphael Jospe and Zach Truboff write regarding recent articles that have driven conversation.

As 2021 comes to a close, the Lehrhaus team is delighted to highlight many of the thought-provoking essays we’ve published this year, with a diverse array of incredible thinkers and writers.

Jared Rutner explores Rabbi Sacks’s economic views.

The masters of hasidut and psychoanalysis both arrived at a counterintuitive understanding of human nature, according to which narcissism is a reflection of self-hate rather than self-love. Admiel Kosman traces this idea as it appears in the works of Erich Fromm, the Rebbe of Warka, and Martin Buber, focusing on the commandment to love one's neighbor as a behaviorist correction.

Bezalel Naor translates and contextualizes a poem by Pinchas Peli about the home of Rav Kook.

How do Moses Mendelssohn and Revelation jibe? Judah Kerbel offers some perspective.

Aryeh Klapper with some new translation-stylings of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik's Halakhic Man.

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

David Berger's reflection commemorating the passing of Yaakov Elman, ob"m.