Jewish Thought and History

In a never-before-published memoir, Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein recalls the politics that surrounded Yeshiva University upon the death of President Bernard Revel and the search for his successor. 

Marina Zilbergerts presents the philosophical questions posed by Chaim Grade's “My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner,” and compares his arguments to those of other major thinkers such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche.

Ayelet Wenger weaves together the personal, historical and exegetical in advance of reading Sefer Shemot.

Tovah Lichtenstein responds to and critiques Zev Eleff's counter-history, "What if Rav Aharon Had Stayed?"

Seth Farber explores the Rav's 1932 in local Boston historical context.

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.

This essay by Aaron Zeitlin—originally published in Yiddish in 1967 and translated here into English by Daniel Kraft—explores Aaron’s father Hillel Zeitlin’s approach to anti-semitism by way of the Book of Jonah.

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

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

In 1927, Rabbi Boruch Ber Leibowitz wrote a poem, an ode to Rabbi Hayyim Soloveitchik of Brisk. Nati Helfgot provides the background and a translation.