Scholarship

Yaakov Jaffe provides an ideological argument against including ideology in our Chumashim.

On Yom Ha'atzmaut, Zach Truboff reflects on Rav Shagar's insistence that the Israeli present must be rooted in the past, and explores the redemptive power of Torah as an answer for modernity.

In unpacking the meaning of a tricky verse from Eikhah that we say as part of the Shofar service on Rosh Hashanah, Mitchell First introduces us to the literary principle called hendiadys, which can help us understand various phrases throughout Tanakh.

Beth Kissileff explains how Moses' complaint about not being the Israelite's nursemaid shows how he is unfit for leadership.

AJ Berkovitz traces the reception history of a Midrash Tehillim that seems to equate the reading of Psalms with Torah study, offering a fascinating case study of how tradition evolves.

Nachum Krasnopolsky explains Rashbam's interpretation of the splitting of the sea as an educational experience.

Steven Gotlib reviews Eugene Korn’s To Be a Holy People: Jewish Tradition and Ethical Values, a book which asks hard questions about whether Halakhah can integrate with the demands of contemporary ethics.

Ayelet Wenger weaves together the personal, historical and exegetical in advance of reading Sefer Shemot.

In his letter to the editor, Gershon Klapper draws upon three medieval sources that undermine Ben Greenfield's recent reading of the Zohar on the three attributes of the Avot.

There’s a miniature kaf at the beginning of the parashah. As Gabriel Slamovits explains, what the diminished letter says about how Abraham mourned for Sarah fits well with a prominent teaching of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, zt”l.