Holidays

Matt Lubin reflects on the holiday of Shavuot.

Aaron Cohen surveys the fascinating literature surrounding antipodal etrogim.

As the year turns from Elul to Tishrei, enjoy Ben Corvo's collection of poems relevant to the High Holiday themes and liturgy.

Erica Brown considers the little-discussed prohibition on planting during the Nine Days and what it teaches about the nature of mourning and joy.

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.

Harris Bor meditates on the world of Passover in his new poem for the Lehrhaus.

It is customary to celebrate Tu Bi-Shevat by eating fruits and reciting the She-Hehiyanu blessing on them. This custom, however, has proved challenging in recent years as advances in technology have made it difficult to find new fruit—as defined by halakhah—to say the She-Hehiyanu

Ayelet Wenger offers a creative, intertextual reading of the story of Rabbi Akiva and the Wolf on the Temple Mount.

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.

Batya Hefter explores a Hasidic understanding of “Sinai consciousness” and proposes a way to re-experience it on Shavuot.