Medieval

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 epikorus and the min apparently represent two different kinds of heretic in traditional Jewish literature. Elisha Price traces the evolving meaning of each term in Hazal and medieval writings, clarifying the differences between the major genres of Jewish heresy and helping illuminate for us why they matter.

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

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

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.

In this essay, Brandon Marlon analyzes the presence of Ibn Ezra in the poetry of Robert Browning.

David Curwin “Ahavah mekalkelet et ha-shurah.” — Bereishit Rabbah 55:8 The sages used the above phrase “love bends the line” to describe Abraham’s actions before the akeidah:...

David Berger's eulogy for Revel's late Prof. Arthur Hyman, a leading scholar of Medieval Jewish philosophy.

The biblical account of the holiday we refer to as Shavuot bears no relationship at all to the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. The emergence of the association between this harvest festival and the Sinai covenant has therefore occupied both traditional and academic thinkers for centuries. Tzvika Aviv argues for a previously unexplored approach to the question, one which bridges the mystical insights of the Zohar with current scientific knowledge regarding wheat genetics.

Jerome Marcus responds to Bezalel Naor's earlier essay, delving further into the worlds of Maimonides and Rabbi Nahman of Breslov.