Scholarship

What exactly did Rav Moshe Feinstein hold regarding our obligations toward secular law? Does Halakhah distinguish between the first forty days and afterward for gentiles? Michael Broyde responds to his critics.

Did the Founding Fathers derive their biblical values from the Hebrew Bible, or just the Old Testament? Yisroel Ben-Porat reviews "Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land."

Herzl Hefter provides critical perspective on a stream of Akeidah interpretation from Kierkegaard to the Rav

In his latest for the Lehrhaus, Aton Holzer sheds light on the hidden roots of Hanukkah–exploring the political and theological meaning of the holiday from the Second Temple period through the Talmud.

Was the teiva an attempt to save Moshe's life? David Fried challenges our assumptions about the purpose of the wicker basket in the river.

Ezra Sivan uncovers hidden meaning in what happened and didn't happen during the Israelites' journey in the wilderness.

Louis Jacobs, the controversial British rabbi and theologian, died 15 years ago. Steven Gotlib reviews Harry Freedman’s new book on Jacobs’ life, and considers how what happened to Jacobs should inform the way we draw the boundaries of Orthodoxy today.

Malka Simkovich explores how Chazal approached our sacred texts in their midrashic allegories and how this issue continues to effect our approach to the torah today.

The new book Reclaiming Dignity is taking the Anglo Jewish world by storm. Why? Emmanuel Bloch, who wrote his dissertation on the subject of tzeniut, argues that the work capitalizes on and extends a new, revolutionary halakhic and conceptual framework for tzeniut that has emerged only in recent years - one that offers a lens to the “soul of contemporary Jewish Orthodoxy.”

Those of us who feel deeply connected and indebted to Hasidism should ask ourselves a difficult and perhaps painful question: Is Netivot Shalom the sefer that we want to represent us to the rest of Am Yisrael?