Scholarship

In its opening verses, Parshat Shoftim describes a judicial system that enshrines pursuing Tzedek, or justice, as a core value. Benjamin Barer unpacks a Gemara in Sanhedrin that provides three distinct conceptions of the obligation to pursue justice, suggesting how we might build a more sacred society.

Michael Broyde offers a new theory for why halakhah obligates women in some time-bound positive mitzvot and exempts them from others.

Can Halakhah really countenance euthanasia? Alan Jotkowitz responds to Leead Staller

In time for Tisha Be-Av, Marc Eichenbaum offers a meaningful new reading of Eikha using modern psychological concepts like grief, trauma, and narrative construction.

What exactly did Rav Moshe Feinstein hold regarding our obligations toward secular law? Does Halakhah distinguish between the first forty days and afterward for gentiles? Michael Broyde responds to his critics.

Leead Staller argues for a more nuanced approach to euthanasia in Halakha.

Two letters to the editor provide alternative perspectives on the question of what Jewish law wants American abortion law to be.

Yaakov Taubes examines three hypothetical “What if?” books and what they can teach us about history, science, and halakhah.

In light of the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday, Michael Broyde considers what American abortion law halakhah might prefer.

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?