Timely Thoughts

In this next installment in our Israel symposium, Erica Brown argues that for Jewish students after October 7, choosing secular college is just not the choice it used to be.

Yakov Z. Mayer reflects on the life of a remarkable Hasidic academic.

Aton Holzer explores the changing nature of Jewish interactions with Rome from Maccabees through the Rabbinic period.

At the height of the cholera epidemic in 1831, Hatam Sofer delivered a timely sermon on a perplexing midrash to Parshat Ki Tavo. The take-home, suggests Elli Fischer, is all-too familiar in the COVID era.

Channa Lockshin Bob Editor’s Note: We are running a number of pieces for the sheloshim of Professor David Weiss Halivni z"l. For Elli Fischer’s introduction...

Pressed for time, people often skip reciting the korbanot section of the morning prayers. With the High Holidays approaching, Judah Kerbel makes the case that the korbanot are far more central and halakhically significant to our prayers than we often realize.

Shumel Hain discusses how we can bridge the "Tragic Gap" between the world envisioned in the blessing on budding fruit tress and our current reality of pandemic and tragedy

In his latest for the Lehrhaus, Steven Gotlib reviews the recently published collection of essays, Strauss, Spinoza, and Sinai: Orthodox Judaism and Modern Questions of Faith, which tries to answer: is there a philosophical defense of Orthodoxy in the modern world?

David Selis and Zvi Erenyi share their memories of JTS Librarian Professor Menahem Schmelzer for his sheloshim.

Can we solve the growing problem of materialism in the Orthodox community? Tzvi Sinensky explains how Rabbi Norman Lamm’s Sukkot sermons shine some light on the matter