To Be, or Not to Be, a Holy People

Steven Gotlib reviews Eugene Korn’s To Be a Holy People: Jewish Tradition and Ethical Values, a book which asks hard questions about whether Halakhah can integrate with the demands of contemporary ethics.

Tzaddik ve-Ra Lo: Revisiting the Problem of Evil in Chaim Grade’s My Quarrel with...

Marina Zilbergerts presents the philosophical questions posed by Chaim Grade's “My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner,” and compares his arguments to those of other major thinkers such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche.

Judaism and Christianity: A Star-Crossed Affair?

Steven Gotlib reviews Eugene Korn’s book on the future of Jewish-Christian relations.

In Search of an Exiled Past: A Review of Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin’s Toda’at Mishnah, Toda’at...

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.

Character And Covenant

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.

Moana and the Call of Jewish Destiny

Sarah Rindner considers Moana's Disney revolution and its Jewish parallels.

A Journey Across the Ages: Esther in America

Jennifer Caplan reviews Esther in America, a timely volume featuring essays by a number of Lehrhaus editors that addresses how the characters and themes of Megillat Esther have been integrated into American thought and culture over time.

Book review of For Women and Girls Only: Reshaping Jewish Orthodoxy through the Arts...

In his review of Jessica Roda's For Women and Girls Only: Reshaping Jewish Orthodoxy through the Arts in the Digital Age, Ben Rothke considers the ways Orthodox women have dealt with halachic obstacles a claim a space for themselves as performers using new and social media.

Lost Literary Worlds: A Review of David Torollo’s edition of Yedaya ha-Penini’s Sefer ha-Pardes

Tamar Ron Marvin reviews a new translation of the Sefer Ha-Pardes

The Simple Judaism of a Rosh Yeshiva-Novelist

In a continuing series on great, modern Israeli thinkers, Joe Wolfson explores the powerful themes in a novel by Rav Haim Sabato.