Culture

Bezalel Naor translates and contextualizes a poem by Pinchas Peli about the home of Rav Kook.

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.

Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar tells the story of a funny-yet-poignant experience from when she lived in an Amish community and sought to bring some of her friends to see the ocean.

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

As the annual infertility awareness Shabbat approaches, Shoshanah Haberman reflects on the biblical stories of our infertile foremothers, connecting them to her own experiences and to the lives of women today.

Aton Holzer reflects on Jerusalem and Zionism.

  Rebecca Cypess As the only musical instrument used in modern Jewish liturgy, the shofar possesses a humble form. Halakhah forbids the modification of the shofar’s...

In honor of Shavuot 5784, Dalia Wolfson presents five new bilingual poems that explore the themes of the third perek of Mishnah Bikkurim and contemplate their possible inversion.

Organizations advocating for Jewish renewal in Israel have become increasingly popular in the last decade, seeking to transcend the religious-secular divide and articulate a vision of Jewish civilization as a shared identity. David Sperber explores the ways that these organizations effectively seek to recreate models that have already long existed in non-Orthodox denominations, but to wrap them in the idioms and culture of Orthodoxy. He argues that failure to recognize the non-Orthodox contributions is unjustified and hopes that Israeli society can grow to "recognize renewal wherever it has taken root."

At what point in Jewish thought does artificial intelligence go too far? In this short story, Olga Lempert writes about a world where humanity itself might be replaced by the machines they create