Reviews

Ben Rothke reviews Harold Gans's new book The Cosmic Puzzle: A Scientific Investigation into the Existence of God, asking the question: Is the proof of God best left to the scientific method?

David Fried reviews a recent book that considers the divergence of Rabbis Yitz Greenberg, David Hartman, and Jonathan Sacks from the teachings of R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik.

Sima Fried reviews Jonathan Boyarin’s Yeshiva Days, illuminating the challenges of examining a community as both an insider and an outsider.

What motivated the first Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rav Herzog, to work tirelessly on the seemingly quixotic project of running the modern State of Israel on the basis of Halakhah? Reviewing Alexandar Kaye's new book on the subject, Rabbi Shalom Carmy explains.

Steven Gotlib reviews Raphael Zarum’s Questioning Belief: Torah and Tradition in an Age of Doubt.

In honor of the recent release of Moshe Koppel's new Koren/Maggid book, Judaism Straight Up: Why Real Religion Endures, Elli Fischer traces the decades-long trajectory of Koppel's "Torah of the Kishkes" philosophy of Judaism.

Judah Kerbel Reviews Deborah E. Lipstadt's Antisemitism: Here and Now.

In advance of Shavuot, Stuart Halpern reviews Reading Ruth, a succinct but poignant new literary commentary on the Book of Ruth, by Leon Kass and his granddaughter Hannah Mandelbaum.

The Agnon scholar, Jeffrey Saks, sees some Agnonian work in modern Israeli literature.

In his review of Glenn Dynner’s recent book on Polish Hasidism, Jon Kelsen argues that Dynner is engaged in an act of resistance against the prevalent view of interwar Hasidism as a movement in decline.