Scholarship

Rav Ronen Neuwirth suggests that the strictures of social distancing enable us to reduce this year's Lag BaOmer bonfires - which he sees as a very good thing.

Stephen Denker reconstructs Bert Katz's experience of Kristallnacht in Nentershausen.

Why do Orthodox Jews vote the way they do? Zev Eleff builds a case, using some unconventional data. 

Tzvi Goldstein's recent piece on Centrist and Haredi Orthodoxy has generated many responses from our readers. Today we share a response from Chaim Goldberg, who vigorously argues that the greatest pillar for contemporary Haredi ideology is not Ramhal's Mesilat Yesharim but Rav Hayyim Volozhin's Nefesh Ha-Hayyim.

With lyrical prose, Natan Oliff teaches us how to view prayer as a virtue and let it enter every aspect of our lives, making us into prayerful people.

Two readers respond to Michael Broyde's recent article on time-bound commandments. Leah Sarna critiques Broyde's omission of female scholarship, and Avi Siegal argues that Broyde's unifying theory skews the data.

Mitchell First explains the difference in the wording of the tenth commandment in Exodus and Deutoronomy in light of a grammatical insight by Benno Jacob.

Historian Jonathan Sarna places a recent decision by an Orthodox synagogue to modify the "prayer for the government" into sharp historical focus.

Pressed for time, people often skip reciting the korbanot section of the morning prayers. With the High Holidays approaching, Judah Kerbel makes the case that the korbanot are far more central and halakhically significant to our prayers than we often realize.

Sharon Galper Grossman and Shamai A. Grossman, leading doctors writing from quarantine, explain why even the Noda be-Yehuda, who requires that the sick person be before us, would agree that a public health crisis is subject to the leniencies of pikuah nefesh.