Holidays

Max Hollander analyzes the Talmudic narrative of Pardes and the four rabbis who entered it.

Jerome Marcus comments on the connection between davening with sinners and playing politics.

Michael Kurin explores different interpretations of what marks an end of mourning the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash.

Rabbi Yaakov Jaffe comments on the poetry, context, and tension of Yehuda Ha-Levi's "Tziyon Halo Tishali" Kinnah.

Max Hollander compares the two parables most often used to define Shemini Atzeret in the traditional commentators.

Ned Krasnopolsky explores the roles of meaning and obedience in matan Torah.

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.

Yaakov Jaffe delves into two possible themes of the song Maoz Tzur.

Does halakhah have something to say about the subjectivity of aesthetic experience? Yosie Levine investigates the case of fashioning a replica Temple Menorah as adjudicated in the eighteenth century and what it can tell us about halachic thinking about art and aesthetics.

Tzvi Sinensky explores the Biblical origins of Tu be-Av.