Talmud and Halakhah

In tribute to his son's hanahat tefilin and Bar Mitzvah, Lehrhaus Consulting Editor Jeffrey Saks explores a little-known, mysterious practice that appears in Agnon's short story Two Pairs.

It is customary to celebrate Tu Bi-Shevat by eating fruits and reciting the She-Hehiyanu blessing on them. This custom, however, has proved challenging in recent years as advances in technology have made it difficult to find new fruit—as defined by halakhah—to say the She-Hehiyanu

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

Shlomo Zuckier explores the nature of Yom Kippur and its relationship to atonement.

David Moster explores the meaning of Peri Etz Hadar.

Chaim Trachtman contributes to the Lehrhaus Symposium on the recent OU statement regarding female clergy.

In their latest for the Lehrhaus, Aryeh and Penina Dienstag study Talmudic narratives that balance the tension between sexual asceticism and pleasure through an overlooked literary motif: angels.

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

David Stein with a fresh look at the methods and priorities of teaching Talmud in Modern Orthodox day schools.

For Parshat Naso, Lehrhaus editor Yosef Lindell compares three twentieth-century rereadings of the Sotah ritual that make the passage more palatable to modern audiences.