Scholarship

Zev Eleff and Menachem Butler explore the reception of Moses Mendelssohn in American Orthodox Judaism, focusing on a curious commotion surrounding the bicentennial of Mendelssohn's death

Aton Holzer offers an existential perspective on the transition from Yom Kippur to Sukkot and applies some Heideggerian concepts to the festival of gathering.

Gabriel Greenberg looks at a Talmudic passage on what to do when you don’t know which day is Shabbat and the insights it provides for our current situation.

Max Hollanders compares the theological issues raised by alien life and AI.

As we begin to read Sefer Shemot, Yosef Lindell explores Koren Publishers' new series, The Tanakh of the Land of Israel, the first volume to use Rabbi Sacks’ Humash translation.

In time for Tisha Be-Av, Marc Eichenbaum offers a meaningful new reading of Eikha using modern psychological concepts like grief, trauma, and narrative construction.

Steven Gotlib explores mentalism through a halakhic lens -- in particular, the need for a disclaimer stating that no magic is genuinely being performed.

Noah Marlowe offers a personal reflection on the experience of simultaneously studying Hilkhot Aveilut and coping with loss from a clinical social work perspective. He explores the similarities and differences between the two lenses and how they could each benefit from being in conversation with each other.

We will all be much more distant from each other this Rosh Hashanah. That’s why, argues Ranana Dine, it’s time to revive the tradition of sending physical greeting cards.

Is God revealed through our speech? In his review of Ariel Evan Mayse’s Speaking Infinities, Steven Gotlib explores this question in the thought of the Maggid of Mezritch.