Tanakh

R. Yitzchak Blau analyzes the 2018 book, Was Yosef on the Spectrum?

Joshua Shapiro explains how close readers of the Biblical text can find a unifying theory for reason behind the ten plagues.

In his letter to the editor, Gershon Klapper draws upon three medieval sources that undermine Ben Greenfield's recent reading of the Zohar on the three attributes of the Avot.

The significant linkages between the Garden of Eden narrative and the commandment concerning cutting down trees in time of war suggest a profound message about how we should live in an imperfect world.

  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...

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

This week's Parashah introduces us to the city of Shechem. Tamar Weissman examines the various appearances of this city throughout Tanakh, explaining that while it is a city of rupture, it is also one of covenant and fraternity.

The stories of Hagar and Ishmael's banishment and subsequent rescue by the angel and that of a cast-out baby Moses on the Nile rescued by Pharaoh's daughter are seemingly dissimilar, but this close reading by David Curwin argues that their strong parallels have a lesson to teach about the importance of being active and not succumbing to passivity.

Sarah Rindner asks what the Book of Leviticus, Leonard Cohen and the Liberty Bell all have in common.

In this second-place prize-winning essay for Hadar’s annual Ateret Zvi contest, Nehemia Polen approaches a vexing episode in the Torah through new lens: what if Moses and Aaron were denied entry to the Land of Israel not because of what they did when obtaining water from the rock but because of where they escaped to right before?