Scholarship

Kate Rozansky explores the life of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai through the prism of the women in his life.

Steven Gotlib reviews Raphael Zarum’s Questioning Belief: Torah and Tradition in an Age of Doubt.

David Fried reviews Diana Lobel's Moses and Abraham Maimonides: Encountering the Divine, which argues that the categorization of Moses Maimonides as an Aristotelian philosopher and his son Abraham as a Sufi mystic is an oversimplification.

Shlomo Zuckier asks what we can learn from Shaul's mistakes in this week's Haftara.

Ezra Sivan probes the Sabbath and the Torah's call to love God.

Aryeh Klapper analyzes Rav Shaul Yisraeli’s classic work on civilian casualties in Halakhah.

In her winning Ateret Zvi essay, Leah Sarna explores two simultaneously true stories about pregnancy: it is at once a beautiful, incredible miracle, and also a demanding journey, both physically and mentally, that often feels more like a catastrophe. Studying the Torah's accounts of pregnancy in Tazria and Rivkah's life, Sarna offers a moving analysis of what it means to hear, tell, and live these stories.

May one opt to participate in a potentially dangerous vaccine trial? This theoretical halakhic question has suddenly become all-too-urgent. Sharon Galper Grossman and Shamai Grossman explore.

Tzvi Sinensky comments on the pitfalls of being overly dependent on the "Talmudic reid."

Laurance Wieder's After Adam was named the Book of the Year in 2019 by First Thing's John Wilson, but has been largely overlooked in the Jewish community. The Jewish Review of Book's Michal Leibowitz seeks to remedy this in her review of Wieder's lyrical retelling of the Bible.