Reviews

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.

Esther Lindell reviews “The Haggadah about Nothing,” Rabbi Sam Reinstein’s not-too-serious exploration of how the Haggadah relates to Seinfeld, the ever-popular 90s sitcom.

Avi Baumol reviews Rabbi Eliezer Melamed's bold contribution to the halakhic literature on conversion standards.

As we begin to read Sefer Shemot, Yosef Lindell explores Koren Publishers' new series, The Tanakh of the Land of Israel, the first volume to use Rabbi Sacks’ Humash translation.

In this review, Chesky Kopel juxtaposes three new poetry books which illustrate today's trials and tribulations: Tikvah Hecht's "Tashlikh," Brian Rohr's "Shaken to my Bones: A Poetic Midrash on the Torah," and Eden Pearlstein's "Nothing is for Everyone."

Rabbi Ezra Schwartz reviews Nishmat HaBayit, a responsa collection by the Yoatzot Halacha of Nishmat

Wendy Zierler interprets a 2015 poem by the late Haim Gouri, reflecting on the challenges of aging, and on the complex and often mournful relationship between the Jewish people, their history, and their literature.

Naamit Sturm Nagel reviews 93Queen, a documentary about Judge Ruchie Frier and the Hasidic women's ambulance corps that she founded.

In this review of Professor Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin's new book on the ideology of exile in the thought of the Safed Kabbalists, Aron Wander unpacks an alternate proposal for Jewish national self-understanding that seeks to elevate, rather than negate, the Jewish people's exilic experiences.

Marc B. Shapiro reviews a new edited volume by Yoram Hazony, Gil Student, and Alex Sztuden that offers a traditional defense of revelation in light of modern biblical criticism.