Holidays

David Bashevkin articulates a religious educator’s perspective on why people become religious

Why is the Haggadah such a disorganized text? Lehrhaus editor Yosef Lindell offers a strikingly novel approach to the dynamic nature of the Passover seder.

Julie and Uri Goldstein offer a timely Haggadah for reflection this year.

Eli Rubin reflects on the meaning of revelation, innovation, and history at the giving of the Torah.

David Polsky explores the similarities and differences between Hamas and the Jewish Zealots at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple.

In time for Tisha Be-Av, Marc Eichenbaum offers a meaningful new reading of Eikha using modern psychological concepts like grief, trauma, and narrative construction.

The Poland trip has become de rigueur for Modern Orthodox gap-year students. But seismic changes in contemporary Poland and shifting trends in Modern Orthodoxy mean that the content and meaning of these trips are different than they used to be. David I. Bernstein, who has been leading Poland trips since 1992, tells the story of the student Poland experience, then and now.

In a rare piece of Lehrhaus Purim Torah, Mark Glass explores—with surprising halakhic rigor—whether the Pokémon named Bulbasaur’s use of a Solar Beam attack would constitute cooking on Shabbat.

Tzvi Sinensky suggests that the Megillah itself confronts the question of Purim's legitimacy.

Leah Sarna argues that this is the Passover to tell the stories of enslaved Jewish women: of the victims of October 7, who were and likely still are subjected to sexual violence, and of the heroic women in the era of the Exodus, who fought to ensure the perpetuation of the Jewish people.