Literature

Ari Hoffman on the most important living Jewish writer.

Sarah Rindner contemplates whether Torah u-Madda as it’s sometimes interpreted can engender unreflective allegiance to trends in contemporary society that might harm our religious communities.

In the next finalist installment from our short story competition, Lior Zoë Perets’ period fiction explores the rabbinic instruction to “rise up and strike first.”

R. Yitzchak Blau analyzes the 2018 book, Was Yosef on the Spectrum?

In tribute to his son's hanahat tefilin and Bar Mitzvah, Lehrhaus Consulting Editor Jeffrey Saks explores a little-known, mysterious practice that appears in Agnon's short story Two Pairs.

The zogerke or firzogerin, once the vernacular translator in the women’s section of the synagogue, has faded into distant memory. Dalia Wolfson reimagines her for our times.

Shalva Muschel offers some perspective on George Elliot's leading Jews and the newest attempt to gain a fuller appreciation of Daniel Deronda.

Bezalel Naor offers a stirring, other-worldly rendition of Rav Kook's poem "The Conversation of the Angels"

Eileen Watts puts the writings of Bernard Malamud in conversation with today's immigrant debate.

Twelve years after the passing of R. Menachem Froman, his daughter-in-law, the scholar and activist Tchiya Froman, considers R. Froman’s literary critique of the Gush Emunim settlement enterprise and his determination that Judaism requires a feminine revolution.