Meta-Reflections

In this personal reflection, Phil Lieberman addresses the unique pain that accompanies the loss of an abusive parent and considers the uneasy coherence of this pain with Jewish traditions of mourning.

In these difficult times for Israel, Aharon Frazer of Alon Shvut is thinking about the fundamental sanctity of human life and the long game. Can war and weapons really take us toward the messianic age?

A growing list of dati le’umi leaders and thinkers frame war as a desirable state and even an opportunity for spiritual elevation. Religious Israeli activist Ariel Shwartz traces this trend with alarm and argues that it contradicts deep-rooted Torah values. Translated by Mordechai Blau.

Yonah Lavery-Yisraeli offers a careful examination of an enigmatic discussion in the Shulhan Arukh’s laws on neighborly relations. She demonstrates how “radical presence” and attention to sensory details is an essential strategy for halakhic decision-making.

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.”

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.

Yaakov Taubes explores the background to Maimonides’s explanation for how the Mishnah is ordered.

Jonah Mac Gelfand explores the neo-Hasidic theology of obligation to do mitzvot that emerges from the fascinating writings of Rabbi Arthur Green.

In commemoration of the upcoming Sheloshim of Rav Moshe Kahn, Mindy Schwartz Zolty shares a Hesped of her teacher in which she discusses his derekh ha-limmud and his derekh as a melamed.

With lyrical prose, Natan Oliff teaches us how to view prayer as a virtue and let it enter every aspect of our lives, making us into prayerful people.