Methodology

Malka Simkovich explores how Chazal approached our sacred texts in their midrashic allegories and how this issue continues to effect our approach to the torah today.

Yaakov Jaffe provides an ideological argument against including ideology in our Chumashim.

Thanks in part to several new publications, portions of the Orthodox world have been engaging with modern biblical scholarship in a more significant way than ever before. Gil Perl provides a four-step framework for how Jewish days schools might profitably teach many aspects of biblical criticism that do not conflict with our mesorah.

Joshua Berman, a leading Tanakh scholar, has written a compelling book that addresses head-on many of the challenges posed by biblical criticism. Michael Harris explains.

The dynamic conversation continues with three letters to the editor widening our perspective on Torah u-Madda. Steve Gotlib grapples with the challenges of living Torah u-Madda in the real world; Ezequiel Antebi Sacca adds a Sephardic view from Argentina; and Eugene Korn adds insight to the Jewish view on Christianity.

Elinatan Kupferberg argues that the boundaries between Torah and Madda have blurred and evolved throughout Jewish intellectual history. This erudite analysis upends our assumptions about Torah u-Madda and breathtakingly reimagines its past, present, and future.

Yaakov Beasley looks at Hayyim Angel's scholarship and evaluates it as an exemplar of Modern Orthodox Bible study.

In unpacking the meaning of a tricky verse from Eikhah that we say as part of the Shofar service on Rosh Hashanah, Mitchell First introduces us to the literary principle called hendiadys, which can help us understand various phrases throughout Tanakh.

What inspired Azariah de Rossi to take a work that cut against the grain of rabbinic views of the Septuagint and make it accessible to his Hebrew-reading fellow Jews?

Laurance Wieder's After Adam was named the Book of the Year in 2019 by First Thing's John Wilson, but has been largely overlooked in the Jewish community. The Jewish Review of Book's Michal Leibowitz seeks to remedy this in her review of Wieder's lyrical retelling of the Bible.