Punishment, Progress, Or Impossibility? Three Medieval Accounts of Exile

Jews have been confronting the concept of exile for thousands of years. How did Jewish thinkers respond to this phenomenon? @Michael Weiner outlines three medieval responses.

Wake Up Sleeping One! Yehudah Ha-Levi’s Dramatic Use of Genre and Narrative Voice in...

Yaakov Jaffe examines Yehudah Ha-Levi's High Holiday poem "Yashen, Al Teradam"

God Is Other People

In a chapter adapted from his new book, Be, Become, Bless: Jewish Spirituality between East and West, Yaakov Nagen suggests based on the Zohar that the world endures when we see Godliness in another person's face.

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.

In God’s Country: The “Zionism” of Rashi’s First Comment

Elli Fischer reads one of Rashi's most famous comments against the grain.

Insanity and Hope

Warren Zev Harvey reflects on the pain and fear of Israel’s current moment, finding unexpected hope in R. Joseph Kaspi’s anti-deterministic theory of history. The essay was originally published in Hebrew and translated by the author.

The Living Bibles of the Vatican Library

AJ Berkovitz explores the "life" of Jewish books, from authors to owners to outside the margins.

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.

Maimonides at the Museum

David Fried reviews The Golden Path: Maimonides Across Eight Centuries, the companion volume to the Yeshiva University Museum’s exhibit on Maimonides.

Commanding Knowledge

Elliot Salinger with an erudite and accessible article on Rambam's philosophy of "knowing."