Bamidbar

Drawing upon the teachings of the Piaseczner Rebbe, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, and others, Yiscah Smith proposes a model for reimagining contemporary Jewish leadership on both the communal and personal levels.

For Eve Grubin, Bilam's hidden messages is a lesson for the Torah and for life.

Dan Ornstein juxtaposes the narratives of Cain and Jonah and explores the motif of anger.

Dan Ornstein examines the rabbinic interpretation of the phrase "ba-asher hu sham," and applies it to the current conflict in Israel.

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?

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.

Daniel Brauner analyzes the character of Balaam -- specifically, why Balaam is considered so wicked in the eyes of Chazal.