Israeli Culture

With masterful translation, Tzvi Novick offers a glimpse of Israeli culture to our English readers.

In this thoughtful essay, Cypess reflects on the melody that is carrying Israel in the wake of October 7th.

Tehila Wenger offers a short story on loss, eternity, and olive trees .

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

Our traditional longing for the rebuilding of the Beit Ha-Mikdash elides uncomfortable questions about the dramatic differences between sacrificial worship and our current models of serving God. Meir Kraus argues that the time has come to engage in this difficult conversation, especially in light of the growing religious-political movement to restore Jewish presence on the Temple Mount. Kraus also proposes an “alternative vision” for a future Temple era.

Zach Truboff on Rav Shagar, Israeli Post-Modernism and American Modern Orthodox Judaism.

Ari Elias-Bachrach examines the Israel Cheif Rabbi's recent decision not to bury the mother of a get-refuser.

Rav Ronen Neuwirth suggests that the strictures of social distancing enable us to reduce this year's Lag BaOmer bonfires - which he sees as a very good thing.

Yitzchak Blau and Michael Broyde respond to recent articles that have driven conversation.

In honor of his tenth yahrtzheit, art historian Jackie Frankel Yaakov explores the art of Jewish Israeli artist Edwin Salomon (1935-2014). She argues that he was able to embrace his own expressionistic, Surrealism-evoking style when these approaches were marginalized in the Israeli art, shedding light on the ways he processed his experiences in the Holocaust and as a new immigrant to Israel.