Holidays

Through a careful reading of the Tosefta and its parallels, David Matar argues that Hillel led the Pharisaic faction to a populist victory over the Sadducean priests over the matter of offering the Pesach Sacrifice on Shabbat.

In advance of Shavuot, Stuart Halpern reviews Reading Ruth, a succinct but poignant new literary commentary on the Book of Ruth, by Leon Kass and his granddaughter Hannah Mandelbaum.

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.

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.

Eliav Grossman contextualizes the femininity emerging from some of Proverbs' best known passages

Shlomo Zuckier reviews Rav Aharon Lichtenstein's just-released book on teshuvah

Gilad Goldberg describes the bewildering experience of reporting for emergency reserve duty on October 7.

David Fried explores the humra of pat Yisrael during the aseret yemei teshuvah.

The Maccabees were renowned as gibborim. But what exactly is gevurah, and what does it mean for dicussions about manhood and Zionism? Tzvi Sinensky uses Hanukkah as a starting point for this contemporary conversation.

Zach Truboff draws upon the thought of Rav Kook and Rav Shagar to explore the themes of light and darkness and their application to Hanukkah.