Scholarship

Elli Fischer looks back at 30 years of Daf Yomi celebrations.

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.

The study of ta’amei ha-mitzvot—the rationales underlying commandments—is a popular source of spiritual meaning, but does it also have relevance to halakhic practice? Dovid Campbell explores an intergenerational rabbinic debate regarding the relationship of ta’amei ha-mitzvot and the requirement to perform mitzvot with a proper intention.

Bezalel Naor translates and contextualizes a poem by Pinchas Peli about the home of Rav Kook.

Rabbi Daniel Reifman reviews Christine Hayes' Whats Divine about Divine Law?

Miriam Gedwiser explores the raven's role in parashat Noah

The biblical figure of Esther is often interpreted by traditional and modern commentators as a heroine of active leadership. Naama Sadan offers a novel perspective, according to which Esther confronts national crisis in female-coded ways, triumphing and saving her people through internally-focused activism.

Batya Hefter explores a Hasidic understanding of “Sinai consciousness” and proposes a way to re-experience it on Shavuot.

In this second-place prize-winning essay for Hadar’s annual Ateret Zvi contest, Nehemia Polen approaches a vexing episode in the Torah through new lens: what if Moses and Aaron were denied entry to the Land of Israel not because of what they did when obtaining water from the rock but because of where they escaped to right before?

William Gewirtz discusses the necessity of a Halakhic Dateline.