Jewish Thought and History

Henry Abramson debates Shaul Magid on the faith of the Aish Kodesh.

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

Stu Halpern weighs in on the eternal wisdom Torah u-Madda offers the world during the fraught times in which we live.

Udi Dvorkin offers a plea to take Rav Shagar at his full value, which means reading him in the original Hebrew.

Our traditional longing for the rebuilding of the Beit Ha-Mikdash elides uncomfortable questions about the dramatic differences between sacrificial worship and our current models of serving God. Meir Kraus argues that the time has come to engage in this difficult conversation, especially in light of the growing religious-political movement to restore Jewish presence on the Temple Mount. Kraus also proposes an “alternative vision” for a future Temple era.

The Talmud speaks of a mysterious passage on Bilam authored by Moses. What is it?

Ben Frogel reviews a new volume that introduces thirty-five different Jewish approaches to virtue ethics and attempts to link them into one continuous tradition.

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

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?

Lawrence Kaplan defends his translation of Halakhic Man and calls for more efforts to make Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik's writings accessible to English readers.