Scholarship

Ezra Sivan follows up last year's piece about how the Exodus leveled social boundaries with an article about what the Pesah story teaches us about social distancing today.

This article was written and accepted for publication in the summer of 5783/2023 and scheduled to appear after the holidays. Because of the outbreak of Israel’s “Iron Swords” war with Ḥamas following the murderous attack on Israel on Shabbat/Simḥat Torah (7 October, 2023), we agreed that publication needed to be postponed. Now, five months into the war with no end in sight, we are nevertheless witness to renewed political tensions, public demonstrations, disagreements and paralysis in appointing judges and the President of the Supreme Court, together with resumption of talk of the “judicial reform.” Despite the continuing tragedy of the war in the south and warfare in the north, a review of how our sources treat the separation of powers and majority rule may help us avoid repeating some of the mistakes of the pre-war political and ideological divisions in Israel and contribute to a more reasoned consideration of the issues.

Daniel Shlian explores instances of pun usage in Jewish text.

Ben Frogel reviews a new volume that introduces thirty-five different Jewish approaches to virtue ethics and attempts to link them into one continuous tradition.

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.

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.

Zvi Grumet suggests that when read in sequence, the kinot of R. Elazar Ha-Kalir—often seen as the ones most difficult to understand—offer a powerful theological narrative from despair to hope.

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

Tzvi Sinensky As chronicled in Robert Putnam’s 2000 classic book, Bowling Alone, loneliness is one of the vexing challenges of modern life. The advent of the...

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