Scholarship

Countless explanations have been offered to explain the debate between Beit Hillel and Beit Shamai as to whether we light the Hanukkah candles in ascending or descending order. Yet remarkably, Hannah Abrams manages to offer a strikingly novel reading of this debate. Her analysis is well worth the read.

Isaac occupies the middle position among the three Patriarchs. Gavriel Lakser offers a novel reading of his character that portrays Isaac as a uniquely relatable figure for our times.

In honor of yesterday's Daf Yomi Siyum on Masekhet Eiruvin, Yaakov Jaffe describes how online maps and other technological tools have better enabled communities such as Boston/Cambridge to measure their tehum shabbat.

AJ Berkovitz offers a charitable perspective on American politicians' apparent errors in citing the Bible.

There’s a miniature kaf at the beginning of the parashah. As Gabriel Slamovits explains, what the diminished letter says about how Abraham mourned for Sarah fits well with a prominent teaching of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, zt”l.

Baruch Sterman, founder of the @Ptil Tekhelet Institute, tells the story of Rav Rabinovitch's pivotal role in the discovery of the tekhelet - and an episode of "The Worst Jobs in History," a 2004-2006 BBC series.

Many synagogue goers found the abbreviated High Holiday services we recently concluded quite appealing. Need we eventually go back to the way it was before coronavirus? Not really, argues Moshe Kurtz, surveying the substantial halakhic support for shortening the services every year.

Chaim Trachtman sees the Akeida as addressing the threat to human life, especially that of children, which is always inherent in the religious experience.

Mark Glass explores the implications of a little-known interpretation in which Lot's wife never turned to salt.

Does the Torah support a universalist or ethnonationalist political orientation? In this timely essay, Ezra Zuckerman Sivan explores the meaning behind key stories in Genesis through the framework of the Aleinu prayer.