Holidays

In this riveting short story, Leah Cypess retells a medieval Shavuot legend of how a Jewish community was saved from a deadly sorcerer.

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.

As we commemorate Yom HaShoah, Shay Pilnik urges us to add a Modern Orthodox voice to a discourse increasingly dominated by secular perspectives.

As another Pesach in isolation approaches, Will Friedman examines how Rabbinic texts take solo sedarim into account.

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 approach the Seder, Joe Wolfson invites us to consider how children’s questions help adults appreciate the true meaning of Pesach.

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.

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.

Ariel Clark Silver describes how Queen Esther’s story inspired women’s rights activist Louisa May Alcott’s short fable of an Aster who wisely ruled the kingdom of the flowers.

Jennifer Caplan reviews Esther in America, a timely volume featuring essays by a number of Lehrhaus editors that addresses how the characters and themes of Megillat Esther have been integrated into American thought and culture over time.