Scholarship

Meir Ekstein contransts Rav Soloveitchik’s and Rav Lichtenstein’s respective approaches to Teshuva.

Alan Jotkowitz shares insights into Rambam’s Hilkhot Teshuvah

Yaakov Jaffe explores four themes of Psalm 24 as recited on the second day of Rosh Hashanah.

Pressed for time, people often skip reciting the korbanot section of the morning prayers. With the High Holidays approaching, Judah Kerbel makes the case that the korbanot are far more central and halakhically significant to our prayers than we often realize.

Hasdai Crescas criticized Maimonides for counting belief as a Mitzvah, arguing that we have no control over what we believe. Dovid Campbell explores a surprisingly common defense of Maimonides that places his views closer to those of Crescas than we might have initially imagined.

Lawrence Kaplan responds to AJ Berkovitz’s article on the many conflicting interpretations of a passage in Midrash Tehillim, highlighting two different approaches advanced by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik.

Steven Gotlib reviews Sam Leben’s book A Guide for the Jewish Undecided: A Philosopher Makes the Case for Orthodox Judaism.

The new book Reclaiming Dignity is taking the Anglo Jewish world by storm. Why? Emmanuel Bloch, who wrote his dissertation on the subject of tzeniut, argues that the work capitalizes on and extends a new, revolutionary halakhic and conceptual framework for tzeniut that has emerged only in recent years - one that offers a lens to the “soul of contemporary Jewish Orthodoxy.”

Why have stories of Jewish masquerade captured audiences since ancient times? In her latest, Malka Z. Simkovich explores the hidden meaning behind dressing up, from the Second Temple to '90s cinema.

With only two verses about him in the Book of Judges, not much is known about Tola ben Puah. Ami Hordes takes clues from his story's text and context to paint a fuller picture of who the judge was and why he was important.