Scholarship

The Talmud criticizes the heretic Elisha ben Avuyah, or Aher, for listening to Greek music. But what did he do wrong? Todd Berman uses a close reading of Rashi’s comments on the Talmudic passage to explain.

Why is the Haggadah such a disorganized text? Lehrhaus editor Yosef Lindell offers a strikingly novel approach to the dynamic nature of the Passover seder.

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

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.

Moshe Kurtz regales us with his love of science fiction & fantasy, suggesting that the genre’s literature, movies, and games can teach Torah lessons in ethics and morality, but cautioning that Torah u-Madda ought not to become Torah u-Movies.

Yitzchak Etshalom comments on the relationship between Lavan and Yaakov.

Yisrael Kashkin and Jeffrey Saks provide a timeline for the Rav's American arrival.

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.

Shmuel Hain comments on the leap year parshah-gap between Israel and the Diaspora.

The Hasidic work, Aish Kodesh, under the scholarly microscope, by Henry Abramson.