Humash

In an earlier Lehrhaus piece, Jeffrey Saks pointed to an obscure custom referenced by Shai Agnon not to eat until the tefillin strap marks fade from one’s arm. Here, Mois Navon shares what happened when he tried adopting this custom for himself.

Ben Greenfield examines the curious parallels between the stories of Moshe in the ark and the splitting of the sea.

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.

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.

What does the Torah mean when it says to "guard your nefesh (soul)"? Lehrhaus editor David Fried reevaluates the common understanding of a Torah mandate for healthy living.

Ezra Sivan challenges our understanding of the fifth commandment and all of Sefer Devarim.

Ezra Sivan probes the Sabbath and the Torah's call to love God.

Ben Greenfield God isn’t angry with Sarah, when she laughs at the idea of birthing a child in her old age (Gen. 18:12-15). God is...

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.

Leah Sarna argues that this is the Passover to tell the stories of enslaved Jewish women: of the victims of October 7, who were and likely still are subjected to sexual violence, and of the heroic women in the era of the Exodus, who fought to ensure the perpetuation of the Jewish people.