Choosing Our Chosenness: Answering the Call with Spiritual Intelligence
Yosi Amram contends with the notion of being part of a Chosen People, exploring its universality across cultures and the responsibilities this chosenness entails.
Reclaiming Shepherd Leadership — For Our Leaders, For Ourselves
Drawing upon the teachings of the Piaseczner Rebbe, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, and others, Yiscah Smith proposes a model for reimagining contemporary Jewish leadership on both the communal and personal levels.
Notes of Defiance: Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, Diana Blumenfeld, and the Question of Cultural Genocide
Alia Saphier examines the concept of cultural genocide, how it relates to the Holocaust, and how both Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and Diana Blumenfeld fought for the longevity of Jewish music.
The Shekhinah as a Tool for Political Critique: The Mystico-Political Thought of Rabbi Menachem...
Twelve years after the passing of R. Menachem Froman, his daughter-in-law, the scholar and activist Tchiya Froman, considers R. Froman’s literary critique of the Gush Emunim settlement enterprise and his determination that Judaism requires a feminine revolution.
Shabbat on the Lower East Side Through the Prism of an Early American Posek
Oran Zweiter
The first collection of she’elot u-teshuvot (rabbinic responsa to communal queries) printed in the United States, Ohel Yosef by Rabbi Yosef Eliyahu Fried...
The Destruction of Babylonia, Detailed: R. Yonatan’s Petihta to Megillat Esther
Tamar Weissman and Batnadiv HaKarmi explore R. Yonatan's introduction to Megillat Esther, per Masekhet Megillah in the Talmud, and its relationship to biblical history.
A Torah Theodicy: The Very Goodness of Evil
Gavriel Lakser offers a new approach to the problem of evil based on the beginning of Genesis.
Bati Le-Gani and the Triumph of Humanity
In honor of Yud Shevat, The Lehrhaus presents an excerpt from Eli Rubin’s forthcoming book Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity: An Existential History of Chabad Hasidism. Rubin explores the theological meaning of an influential series of discourses by the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, R. Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn.
Is Modern Orthodoxy Ready to Accept Rabbi Yitz Greenberg?
Steven Gotlib reviews the magnum opus of legendary Jewish thinker Yitz Greenberg, considering ways in which Greenberg’s newest synthesis of his ideas bring him back into conversation with the Modern Orthodox community.
To Be a Stiff-Necked People
Is Jewish stubbornness a stereotype or a source of pride? In the Torah, it appears as a criticism, but also as a veiled praise for the people of Israel’s unique power of commitment. Zach Truboff highlights this strength in an application of the words of the Piaseczner Rebbe to our current moment of crisis.