Holidays

"Who Knows" seems to have become a recurring question for so many of us. Erica Brown shares personal and biblical reflections on the meaning of this phrase for the age of coronavirus.

Esther Lindell reviews “The Haggadah about Nothing,” Rabbi Sam Reinstein’s not-too-serious exploration of how the Haggadah relates to Seinfeld, the ever-popular 90s sitcom.

As we prepare for Passover, enjoy these three poems by Bruce Black meditating on the past, present, and future of our Exodus.

Tzvi Sinensky explores the hidden world of Esther with the help of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

How can the mitzvot of Purim reveal the feminist ethics of the Megillah? Aton Holzer offers an enlightening new reading of the Megillah, suggesting that there is a profound connection between the text's structure and its ethics.

Yehoshua Pfeffer on self-abnegating vs. life-affirming teshuva.

This year, instead of thinking about the reasons for Jonah’s flight from Nineveh in particular, we can gain a new appreciation for his need to break free altogether. Ahead of Yom Kippur, Erica Brown considers the unique resonance of the book of Jonah in an era marked by isolation and quarantine.

Shimon Laufer examines how Rabbinic understanding of the holiday of Passover influenced the holiday of Purim, and how one of the oldest manuscripts of the Mishnah hints that the converse may be true as well.

Can we imagine a world in which the Exodus never occurred? David Curwin suggests that this - as well as a broader dispute about the relationship between Torah and history - is subject to a dispute between The Rav, R. Joseph Dov he-Levi, and his namesake, the Beit ha-Levi.

Chaim Katz examines the commonplace assumption that Rabbi Akiva's students died as a consequence of the Bar Kokhva rebellion, showing how the details depict a more nuanced story and provide a clue as to how Rabbi Akiva's Torah was passed down.