Scholarship

Authors mis-citing citations on authors citing authors. What gives? Yiddish.

The call to learn Torah at night surprisingly comes from a verse in Lamentations. Yaakov Weinstein discusses what we can learn from this, and what it means for the practice of staying up on Shavuot.

Amitai Bin-Nun provides a fresh and intriguing perspective on the story of the Golden Calf by reading it in light of the Talmudic passage in Menahot detailing an encounter between Moses and R. Akiba on Mt. Sinai where God is tying crowns to the letters of the Torah scroll.

A growing list of dati le’umi leaders and thinkers frame war as a desirable state and even an opportunity for spiritual elevation. Religious Israeli activist Ariel Shwartz traces this trend with alarm and argues that it contradicts deep-rooted Torah values. Translated by Mordechai Blau.

Yaakov Jaffe explores Yehuda Ha-Levi's Yom Le-Yabasha.

Shalom Carmy The last couple of weeks have brought two worthwhile assessments of Rav Shagar’s Faith Shattered and Restored: Judaism in the Postmodern Age, Matt Lubin’s...

Yaakov Jaffe analyzes the multiple meanings of a medieval Jewish poem and popular Shabbat table song.

Steven Gotlib explores similarities between Rabbis Dov Singer and Arthur Green in their models of prayer and how this model can make prayer meaningful even when experiencing doubts in one’s faith.

Our modern Shabbat experience has been called "a taste of the world to come." But was this the case for the first Shabbat in the desert? Ezra Zuckerman Sivan considers the question.

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.