Scholarship

Did Rav Soloveitchik buy into Nietzsche’s critique of religion? Alex Ozar reviews Daniel Rynhold and Michael Harris’s book, which surprisingly argues that the answer to this question is yes.

In his review of Michael Hattin’s commentaries on the books of Joshua and Judges, Francis Nataf explores how greater collaboration between creative Tanakh teachers could help reduce the number of overly speculative readings.

Malka Simkovich hunts for Jewish texts in some unlikely places.

Chesky Kopel analyzes an early Zionist text to give insight into Jewish reactions to the Armenian genocide.

Ben Greenfield examines the curious parallels between the stories of Moshe in the ark and the splitting of the sea.

Infertility figures as a tragic theme not only on Rosh Hashanah but also in biblical narrative and modern life. This morning, Yael Leibowitz writes lyrically on The Birthplace of Infertility.

Sharing his Torah commentaries in English for the first time, Nissim Bellahsen of France examines the role of Moses in the atonement for Joseph's sale.

Batya Hefter explores a Hasidic understanding of “Sinai consciousness” and proposes a way to re-experience it on Shavuot.

In a chapter adapted from his new book, Be, Become, Bless: Jewish Spirituality between East and West, Yaakov Nagen suggests based on the Zohar that the world endures when we see Godliness in another person's face.

At the height of the cholera epidemic in 1831, Hatam Sofer delivered a timely sermon on a perplexing midrash to Parshat Ki Tavo. The take-home, suggests Elli Fischer, is all-too familiar in the COVID era.