Jewish Thought and History

After six months suspended between quarantine, isolation, and uncertainty, it’s natural to want to run away from home, especially as Yom Kippur looms and we realize it’s time for a change. But, as Matthew Nitzanim explains, this understandable reaction would miss the point of Teshuvah: everything we need to work on is right here, wherever it is we find ourselves.

Tanya's description of the Godly soul as a literal portion of divinity is an empowering notion for many spiritual seekers. It is also, however, inconsistent with longstanding Jewish theological doctrine regarding the unity of God. Elisha Price examines several possible interpretations of Tanya's words, placing them in a broader kabbalistic and rabbinic context, to suggest that Chabad's conception of the soul is both "rational and precedented."

For Parshat Naso, Lehrhaus editor Yosef Lindell compares three twentieth-century rereadings of the Sotah ritual that make the passage more palatable to modern audiences.

David Silverstein explores Rabbi Nachum Rabinovich’s approach to Aveirah Li-Shmah and how this relates to his broader concept of autonomy as a halakhic value.

Ari Hoffman explores the expansive visions of Jewish peoplehood embedded in two major, recently published novels

Lehrhaus editor Yehuda Fogel asks: What does R. Nosson Bratslaver's understanding of controversy have to do with Hegel?

Yaakov Jaffe examines the anti-Christian polemic in Maharam of Rottenberg's Kinnah about the burning of the Talmud.

Drawing upon the teachings of the Piaseczner Rebbe, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, and others, Yiscah Smith proposes a model for reimagining contemporary Jewish leadership on both the communal and personal levels.

Tzvi Goldstein's recent piece on Centrist and Haredi Orthodoxy has generated many responses from our readers. Today we share a response from Chaim Goldberg, who vigorously argues that the greatest pillar for contemporary Haredi ideology is not Ramhal's Mesilat Yesharim but Rav Hayyim Volozhin's Nefesh Ha-Hayyim.

Contemporary physicians have been heroic in the battle against COVID-19, but what was it like to be one of a handful of Jewish doctors confronting the Bubonic Plague during the 17th-century in Italy? Prolific medical halakhist and historian Eddie Reichman takes a close look at the four Jewish graduates of the Padua medical school class of 1623.