Scholarship

Can we learn Torah from Star Wars, superheroes, or the hit Netflix show ‘The Crown’? Olivia Friedman, a teacher at Ida Crown Jewish Academy in Chicago, says yes, arguing that bringing pop culture into the Judaic studies classroom in a meaningful way not only makes learning more fun, but models the type of integration that Modern Orthodoxy stands for.

Ariel Evan Mayse considers the neo-Hasidic approaches of Shlomo Carlebach and Zalman Schachter-Shalomi.

David Schwartz explores thematic similarities between the Hanukkah miracle and Pharaoh’s dreams.

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

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

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.

Moshe Koppel Reviews Chaim Saiman's Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law.

In honor of Yud Shevat, The Lehrhaus presents an excerpt from Eli Rubin’s forthcoming book Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity: An Existential History of Chabad Hasidism. Rubin explores the theological meaning of an influential series of discourses by the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, R. Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn.

In his latest for the Lehrhaus, Steven Gotlib reviews the recently published collection of essays, Strauss, Spinoza, and Sinai: Orthodox Judaism and Modern Questions of Faith, which tries to answer: is there a philosophical defense of Orthodoxy in the modern world?

How was the original Seder experienced, and how do we constitute a Jewish collective? Joel Levy and Leon Wiener-Dow argue that the collective must begin with the independent-minded individual.