Scholarship

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

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.

What is the halakhic status of those mourning the loss of their parents-in-law? Aaron Ross, inspired by his personal experience, grapples with the lack of formal aveilut rituals for non-biological relatives.

Jeffrey Fox contributes to the Lehrhaus Symposium on the recent OU statement regarding female clergy.

Max Hollander analyzes the Talmudic narrative of Pardes and the four rabbis who entered it.

The debate about Torah u-Madda and pop culture continues. Noah Marlowe argues that Chaim Potok's literature offers a useful conceptual framework for, and embodiment of, a profound confrontation between Judaism and elite elements of general culture.

Tamar Ron Marvin argues for the importance of recognizing a Jewish idea of Aliyat Ha-Dorot.

Rabbi Yaakov Jaffe comments on the poetry, context, and tension of Yehuda Ha-Levi's "Tziyon Halo Tishali" Kinnah.

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.

How did Esther shape the way Puritans saw the ideal role of the contemporary woman? Cotton Mather, a major player in the Salem Witch Trials, had much to say in his Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion. Stuart Halpern of Yeshiva University explains, wishing us all a Puritan Purim.