Meta-Reflections

Zev Eleff draws on lessons of nineteenth century print culture to help grapple with the Digital Age.

R. Shimshon Nadel explores the connection between the Hasmonean dynasty and the modern-day State of Israel.

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.

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.”

Tzvi Sinensky makes a case to consider Rabbi Norman Lamm as pathbreaking Talmud innovator.

Judah Kerbel explores how differing approaches to listening to music during Sefirat ha-Omer balance the appropriate role for subjectivity in halakhic decision-making.

The most enjoyable feature of the book is the brilliant and creative integration of the daily Talmudic folio Kurshan studies with experiences of her life.

Shlomo Zuckier explores some surprising connections between the Talmud and the field of behavioral economics.

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

In response to Tzvi Sinensky's earlier essay, Andrew Bennett presents Jewish legal scholar Robert Cover's and noted antisemite Carl Schmitt's thoughts on elu ve-elu.