Scholarship

Building on ideas from Jacques Lacan and Rabbeinu Bahya ibn Pakuda, Zach Truboff offers an innovative psychological reading of the Cain and Abel story.

Shmuel Winiarz contributes to the Lehrhaus Symposium on the recent OU statement regarding female clergy.

Yoni Nouriel examines an episode in the Talmud where Shimon Ha-Tzadik describes his encounter with an impure Nazir.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Outside the Land of Israel, we add an extra day to several holidays. Michael Kurin wonders: why not on Hanukkah?

Seth Farber explores the Rav's 1932 in local Boston historical context.