Talmudic Readings

Miriam Gedwiser explores the time Rabban Yohanan ben Zakai's students sought to comfort their teacher.

Miriam Gedwiser Sometimes, returning to a familiar text uncovers something new. In this essay, I hope to reexamine the story of the Oven of Akhnai...

Lawrence Kaplan responds to AJ Berkovitz’s article on the many conflicting interpretations of a passage in Midrash Tehillim, highlighting two different approaches advanced by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik.

We only rarely have the opportunity to compare and analyze instances where a rabbi or scholar changed his interpretation over time, yet R. Yom Tov Lipman Heller published his Mishnah commentary, Tosafot Yom Tov, twice in his lifetime. Yaakov Jaffe examines the evolution of R. Heller's interpretation of the term “the Mouth of the Earth” in Pirkei Avot.

Elli Fischer on Rasbhi's passing, his legacy, and some other rabbinic legacies, as well.

Yoni Nouriel examines an episode in the Talmud where Shimon Ha-Tzadik describes his encounter with an impure Nazir.

In the wake of recent painful times for the Jewish people, Batsheva Leah Weinstein discusses the ways halakha guides emotion through pain and joy.

Dina Brawer explores "certainty" and "doubt" in rabbinic tradition.

The classification of certain people as "athenes" receives wide expression in Talmudic stories and even practical halakhic application. Shayna Herszage-Feldan considers the varieties of asthenes descriptions in Talmudic texts, proposing that the category encompasses the condition that is today diagnosed as contamination-focused obsessive compulsive disorder.

In his latest for the Lehrhaus, Dan Ornstein creatively imagines the story of the Talmudic sage Rabbi Yohanan through his teachings on the Book of Job. The short story is followed by a reflection on the methodology and power of "contemporary midrash."