Jewish Thought and History

Bezalel Naor responds to Bezalel Safran's Straussian reading of the Rambam.

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.

In this essay, Weinberg reflects on the symbolic significance of tefillin and its message for our Jewish future.

Jennie Rosenfeld reviews David Bashevkin's "Sin-a-gogue: Sin and Failure in Jewish Thought."

In honor of the yahrtzeit of Dolce, the wife of Rabbi Eleazar of Worms, Chaya Sima Koenigsberg explores Rabbi Eleazar's moving elegy for his wife and reflects upon Dolce's character as a model for Koenigsberg's own life and the lives of Jewish women today.

Ari Lamm explores a recent instance of talmudic censorship, as well as its implications for thinking about Jewish-Christian relations and American society at large.

  Zach Truboff In 1933, as the month of Elul approached, the Jewish people faced a frightening array of dangers. That year, Hitler consolidated power as...

Did Rabbeinu Bahya mention a lightning rod centuries before it was discovered? Yaakov Taubes takes us on a journey through science, magic, and religion to help explain this medieval commentator’s cryptic comment about the Tower of Babel.

In the spirit of Hanukkah, Yaakov Jaffe offers an intriguing thesis tying together a series of Mishnayot in the fourth chapter of Pirkei Avot: they are all responding to various aspects of Epicurean philosophy.

Chesky Kopel looks at the various tellings and retellings of the controversial deal that Rudolph Kastner made with Nazi leadership in Budapest and argues that they represent a modern-day Midrashic presentation of the history.