Scholarship

Ron Ennis explores the similarities and differences between Rambam, Maharal, and Rema, in their approaches to conflicts between science and Torah.

  Hershey H. Friedman & Linda Weiser Friedman Some scholars, such as Alfred North Whitehead, have argued that the Hebrew Bible lacks humor. However, a counter-argument...

The masters of hasidut and psychoanalysis both arrived at a counterintuitive understanding of human nature, according to which narcissism is a reflection of self-hate rather than self-love. Admiel Kosman traces this idea as it appears in the works of Erich Fromm, the Rebbe of Warka, and Martin Buber, focusing on the commandment to love one's neighbor as a behaviorist correction.

Was the Mishnah intended to serve as a legal text? This traditional assumption, which forms a central premise of the halakhic process, has been challenged by more recent scholarship. Dovid Campbell engages with this scholarship and performs his own close reading of some of the Mishnah's more enigmatic digressions to propose his conception of the Mishnah as a corpus of "found philosophy."

In this piece, Rabbi Dvir Cahana and Rabbanit Shalhevet Cahana illustrate different methods of relating halakha and aggadah in Talmudic analysis through the lens of the Talmudic narrative of the Oven of Akhnai.

Yosi Amram contends with the notion of being part of a Chosen People, exploring its universality across cultures and the responsibilities this chosenness entails.

Ned Krasnopolsky explores the roles of meaning and obedience in matan Torah.

  Mark Glass I. A long time ago in a galaxy far far away. … Growing up, that’s how the gabba’im of my youth minyan would determine if...

Surprisingly, Bible scholars have not addressed the remarkable intertextual conversation between Jacob's blessings in Genesis 49 and Deborah's song in Judges 5. Michael Bernstein offers his original etymological analysis of the two poetic texts.

Yonah Lavery-Yisraeli examines the complexities of interpersonal conflict and forgiveness which are demonstrated in the Talmud.