Scholarship

Yitzchak Blau and Michael Broyde respond to recent articles that have driven conversation.

  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...

Yiscah Smith explores the conceptions of teshuvah presented in the writings of the Piaseczner Rebbe and the Ba’al Ha-Tanya, identifying in them a novel approach to personal growth that speaks to contemporary Jews.

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

Steven Gotlib reviews Raphael Zarum’s Questioning Belief: Torah and Tradition in an Age of Doubt.

Ari Elias-Bachrach explores the science behind lab-produced meat and cheese and the possibility of a realistic kosher cheeseburger.

Aton Holzer offers a novel interpretation of Isaiah 53 based on current events in Israel.

With a novel reading of Josephus and Gittin, Shana Schwartz proposes that the tragedy of the second hurban and the mystery of subsequent Jewish survival may be understood by reference to the physiological knowledge available in classical antiquity.

Zvi Grumet suggests that when read in sequence, the kinot of R. Elazar Ha-Kalir—often seen as the ones most difficult to understand—offer a powerful theological narrative from despair to hope.

Yaakov Jaffe and Menachem Butler explore the Halakhot of when fasting is proper and when it’s not.