Timely Thoughts

Zachary Truboff considers the experience of prayer, and what two recent publications on Tefillah emerging from the Religious Zionist community contribute.

Rav Moshe Feinstein does not praise the United States for not having fascists and communists, but for having a system of government that is particularly resistant to what came to be known as totalitarianism.

Akiva Shapiro offers reflections on Naomi Shemer's culture-changing song.

Israel is at war, and the suffering is difficult to bear. To better appreciate this transformation and the pressures of this moment, we have assembled a symposium of community leaders and thinkers to address the effect of the crisis on Diaspora Jewry.

In honor of the yahrtzeit of Dolce, the wife of Rabbi Eleazar of Worms, Chaya Sima Koenigsberg explores Rabbi Eleazar's moving elegy for his wife and reflects upon Dolce's character as a model for Koenigsberg's own life and the lives of Jewish women today.

Just in advance of the shloshim for David Ellenson, the former president of Hebrew Union College, Jonathan D. Sarna pays tribute to a man whose life, work, and friendships spanned the Jewish denominational divide.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, published here are excerpts from letters of an American student studying in Israel in 1973. These letters, written during and immediately after the war, shed light on Yeshivat Har Etzion in its formative years and the lasting impact of the Yom Kippur War.

It is customary to celebrate Tu Bi-Shevat by eating fruits and reciting the She-Hehiyanu blessing on them. This custom, however, has proved challenging in recent years as advances in technology have made it difficult to find new fruit—as defined by halakhah—to say the She-Hehiyanu

Tzvi Sinensky comments on the pitfalls of being overly dependent on the "Talmudic reid."

Shlomo Zuckier surveys and analyzes the debate over Zoom Seders during coronavirus.