The Staggering Brilliance of Rambam’s Fourth Chapter of The Laws of Repentance
Alan Jotkowitz shares insights into Rambam’s Hilkhot Teshuvah
Endless Exploration: Judaism’s Only “Principle of Faith”
Hasdai Crescas criticized Maimonides for counting belief as a Mitzvah, arguing that we have no control over what we believe. Dovid Campbell explores a surprisingly common defense of Maimonides that places his views closer to those of Crescas than we might have initially imagined.
Reclaiming the Classical Sephardic Tradition: Tracing its Origins and Evolution
Avi Garson traces the rise and fall of the classical Sephardic tradition and calls for a renewed return to its fundamental principles.
A Call for Order: Maimonides and the Mishnah
Yaakov Taubes explores the background to Maimonides’s explanation for how the Mishnah is ordered.
Trajectories of Tradition: King David on Skin Lesions and Tent Impurities
AJ Berkovitz traces the reception history of a Midrash Tehillim that seems to equate the reading of Psalms with Torah study, offering a fascinating case study of how tradition evolves.
The Pregnant Sotah: A Case Study in the Ethics of Abortion
Yisroel Ben-Porat grapples with whether the case of the pregnant Sotah has implications for the debates surrounding abortion.
The Philosopher and the Mystic?
David Fried reviews Diana Lobel's Moses and Abraham Maimonides: Encountering the Divine, which argues that the categorization of Moses Maimonides as an Aristotelian philosopher and his son Abraham as a Sufi mystic is an oversimplification.
Confronting Biblical Criticism: A Review Essay
Marc B. Shapiro reviews a new edited volume by Yoram Hazony, Gil Student, and Alex Sztuden that offers a traditional defense of revelation in light of modern biblical criticism.
A Year in Review – 2022
As 2022 comes to a close, the Lehrhaus team is proud to feature some highlights from our contributions this past year. Yet again, we have published at least one hundred original pieces across a wide variety of genres.
The Directional Shaking of the Lulav: Bible, Mysticism, and Religious Polemics
Yaakov Jaffe traces the origins and evolution of the custom to shake the lulav in different directions.