Scholarship

Levi Morrow explores how the Rabbis use creative exegesis to save the world from drowning in a flood

How successful is the new book, Reclaiming Dignity: A Guide to Tzniut for Men and Women, at setting forth a new Torah-based vision for modesty? Laurie Novick offers a careful review, carefully considering both the personal essays and halakhic/hashkafic analyses set forward in this important work.

Zach Truboff on Rav Shagar, Israeli Post-Modernism and American Modern Orthodox Judaism.

Shlomo Riskin remembers how Yeshiva University's late Professor Louis Feldman helped him make the greatest decision of his life.

Lawrence Kaplan makes a case for Mendelssohn's vision for our time.

Yehoshua Pfeffer on self-abnegating vs. life-affirming teshuva.

Ariel Krakowski explores the connection between Maimonides and the Stoics.

Is true forgiveness possible? Michael Kurin explores the doubts raised by prominent twentieth century philosophers and considers how Jewish tradition offers a radically different conception of repentance and forgiveness, one that enables people to alter their reality vis-à-vis God and one another.

The Talmudic story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza is often used to highlight the destructive consequences of baseless hatred. In an intriguing reading, David Hellman suggests that the hatred that motivated the tale’s participants is more complex than meets the eye.

Natan Oliff explores the evolving role of truth throughout Tanakh and later Jewish history.