Holidays

Yaakov Jaffe examines Yehudah Ha-Levi's High Holiday poem "Yashen, Al Teradam"

Ranana Dine explores the depictions of suffering in haggadot.

Eliezer Finkelman discusses the meaning of perfect repentance.

Yakov Ellenbogen reviews Susan Weingarten's Haroset: A Taste of Jewish History.

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.

Several reasons are given in our tradition about the reason for the fast on the Tenth of Tevet. The liturgy for the day takes a stand on what the true reasons are, but Yaakov Jaffe questions whether this stand is the right one.

Stephen Denker reconstructs Bert Katz's experience of Kristallnacht in Nentershausen.

Daniel Berkove shows how parallels between the building of the Tabernacle and the building of Pharaoh's storage cities shed light on the differences between civilizations that those structures represent.

Ezra Zuckerman Sivan examines how the yibbum triangle of Ruth, Tamar, and Lot's daughters teaches us how to rebuild our lives in a time of upheaval.

For Parshat Zakhor, this short story by Shira Eliaser richly imagines the world of King Saul and the clandestine encounter that brought Haman’s Amalekite ancestors into the world.