Scholarship

Victor M. Erlich expounds on the meaning of the word "Leviathan."

Alan Kadish offers a vision for how Orthodox Jews should think about "chosenness."

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.

What theological language can we use to describe our current pandemic moment? In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, Jeremy Brown takes scope of the ancient and modern notions of plague theodicy and reviews some ideas from the 2021 National Jewish Book Award Winner Torah in a Time of Plague.

We only rarely have the opportunity to compare and analyze instances where a rabbi or scholar changed his interpretation over time, yet R. Yom Tov Lipman Heller published his Mishnah commentary, Tosafot Yom Tov, twice in his lifetime. Yaakov Jaffe examines the evolution of R. Heller's interpretation of the term “the Mouth of the Earth” in Pirkei Avot.

Tragic events this past summer brought a wave of protests against racial injustice that shows few signs of abating. Yitzhak Grossman shares how rabbinic leaders in the United States and Israel have historically approached the tactic of protest, and explores what their views might mean for our current moment.

Rebecca Cypess considers the life and work of the Italian Jewish Renaissance composer Salamone Rossi, his rabbinic supporter Leon Modena, and the controversies over 17th century polyphonic music in the synagogue.

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.

For Parshat Naso, Lehrhaus editor Yosef Lindell compares three twentieth-century rereadings of the Sotah ritual that make the passage more palatable to modern audiences.

Did Rabbeinu Bahya mention a lightning rod centuries before it was discovered? Yaakov Taubes takes us on a journey through science, magic, and religion to help explain this medieval commentator’s cryptic comment about the Tower of Babel.