Jewish Thought and History

David Fried reviews Diana Lobel's Moses and Abraham Maimonides: Encountering the Divine, which argues that the categorization of Moses Maimonides as an Aristotelian philosopher and his son Abraham as a Sufi mystic is an oversimplification.

Jared Rutner explores Rabbi Sacks’s economic views.

What was Alexander Hamilton's relationship to Judaism? In his review of a new book about Hamilton's Jewish world, Lehrhaus editor Yisroel Ben-Porat explores the arguments to be made for a "Jewish" founding father.

Levi Morrow reviews four new books that examine and apply the thought of R. Joseph B. Solovetichik of blessed memory. Image: below

Reuven Mohl explores Rav Soloveitchik’s understanding of Areivut in Kol Dodi Dofek.

What do Paul, Purim costumes, and Purim torah all have in common? Yehuda Fogel delves into the meaning of hiddenness and its role in revelation on Purim.

In this essay, Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman reflects on his family history and Hasidic pedigree.

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?

Yisroel Ben-Porat grapples with whether the case of the pregnant Sotah has implications for the debates surrounding abortion.

Marc B. Shapiro reviews a new edited volume by Yoram Hazony, Gil Student, and Alex Sztuden that offers a traditional defense of revelation in light of modern biblical criticism.