Jewish Thought and History

Marc Dworkin re-examines the impact of Rav Shagar's thought on the English-speaking audience.

Zev Eleff and Menachem Butler explore the reception of Moses Mendelssohn in American Orthodox Judaism, focusing on a curious commotion surrounding the bicentennial of Mendelssohn's death

In the anniversary month of Yitzchak Rabin's assassination, Aton Holzer considers definitions and perspectives of who is a killer and what it means to kill.

David Fried forwards the surprising thesis that Maimonides was a medieval mystic.

Baruch Sterman describes how an encounter with a missionary led him to a greater understanding of Ramban's commentary on this week's Parshah.

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

  Oran Zweiter The first collection of she’elot u-teshuvot (rabbinic responsa to communal queries) printed in the United States, Ohel Yosef by Rabbi Yosef Eliyahu Fried...

The propriety of celebrating the downfall of enemies presents a complex web of questions and seemingly contradictory Jewish texts. Michael Kurin makes sense of this subject and proposes a framework for applying it to matters of Israeli public policy.

Yakov Z. Mayer reflects on the life of a remarkable Hasidic academic.

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.