Scholarship

Yitzchak Etshalom comments on the relationship between Lavan and Yaakov.

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.

In a rare piece of Lehrhaus Purim Torah, Mark Glass explores—with surprising halakhic rigor—whether the Pokémon named Bulbasaur’s use of a Solar Beam attack would constitute cooking on Shabbat.

Tzvi Sinensky suggests that the Megillah itself confronts the question of Purim's legitimacy.

Shlomo Zuckier offers a close literary reading of the fascinating Ketia bar Shalom narrative on Avodah Zarah 10b!

In honor of the yahrtzeit of Dolce, the wife of Rabbi Eleazar of Worms, Chaya Sima Koenigsberg explores Rabbi Eleazar's moving elegy for his wife and reflects upon Dolce's character as a model for Koenigsberg's own life and the lives of Jewish women today.

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

Jennie Rosenfeld reviews David Bashevkin's "Sin-a-gogue: Sin and Failure in Jewish Thought."

Did Rabbeinu Bahya mention a lightning rod centuries before it was discovered? Yaakov Taubes takes us on a journey through science, magic, and religion to help explain this medieval commentator’s cryptic comment about the Tower of Babel.

Shmuel Hain Reviews Chaim Saiman's Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law.