Modern

Zach Truboff looks at the miracle of the Hanukkah oil through the lens of Franz Rosenzweig and emphasizes the importance of the belief in miracles for a meaningful religiosity.

Yosef Lindell recounts the controversy surrounding different attempts at translating the Tishrei prayers.

Aton Holzer offers an existential perspective on the transition from Yom Kippur to Sukkot and applies some Heideggerian concepts to the festival of gathering.

Yaakov Jaffe traces the origins and evolution of the custom to shake the lulav in different directions.

In his latest for the Lehrhaus, Steven Gotlib reviews the recently published collection of essays, Strauss, Spinoza, and Sinai: Orthodox Judaism and Modern Questions of Faith, which tries to answer: is there a philosophical defense of Orthodoxy in the modern world?

What do you get when you read George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda alongside Rav Soloveitchik’s Kol Dodi Dofek? A cross between Zionism and feminism, argues Eileen Watts.

What can we learn from Rav Kook's writings before he immigrated to the land of Israel? As Yom Ha-Atzma'ut approaches, Levi Morrow reviews Yehuda Mirsky's new prehistory of Rav Kook.

Is God revealed through our speech? In his review of Ariel Evan Mayse’s Speaking Infinities, Steven Gotlib explores this question in the thought of the Maggid of Mezritch.

Yisroel Ben-Porat offers historical, hashkafic, and personal reflections on what’s often called the “Judeo-Christian” tradition and whether a Torah u-Madda outlook can embrace the study of Christianity.

Sefaria has recently published a new bilingual digital edition of Talmud Yerushalmi. Taking stock of this development, Zachary Rothblatt offers an erudite synthesis of the history of Yerushalmi.