The Jewish Thought Magazine of the Yeshiva University Student Body
In this issue of Kol Hamevaser, we explore the connections and interactions between Halakhah and Psychology. It is apparent from overarching halakhic principles and specific halakhic practices that Halakhah accounts for the way that...
The Torah commands us, “ve-halakhta bi-derakhav” – “you shall walk in His ways,” and Rambam interprets this as a call to imitatio dei (imitating God). Elsewhere, he writes that God cannot be defined positively,...
The bleak and brutal nature of warfare creates an atmosphere of moral ambiguity. By definition, wartime is not an ideal state; how, then, do the rules of morality and Halakhah create a le-ka-tehillah infrastructure...
It’s hard to be a Jew. This classic refrain has spilled off the lips of Jews throughout the ages as they struggled through the worst of predicaments. Sometimes, they faced outright physical persecution and...
1 “In order to eliminate and prevent discrimination within the meaning of this Convention, the States Parties thereto undertake… Not to allow, in any form of assistance granted by the public authorities to educational...
The saga of Gilad Shalit’s capture, captivity, and release has captivated the Jewish people for over five years. In the week between the announcement of a prisoner-swap deal and Gilad’s eventual release, Israel was...
Claim: The only way to true knowledge - that is to say, universal, necessary, and certain knowledge - is through the path of science. This viewpoint is certainly compelling; scientific experiments are replicable, available...
In 2009, when Nir Barkat, the mayor of Jerusalem, opened a parking garage on Shabbat, thousands of Ultra-Orthodox Jews took to the streets in violent protests. A counter-protest was organized by secular Jews who...
Titters and giggles are clearly audible from the back row. The teacher prowls alertly up and down the aisles of the small synagogue, rushing over angrily to squash the small rebellions that sporadically break...
AC: You function both as an educator/administrator in a flourishing yeshivah high school, the Torah Academy of Bergen County (TABC), and as the rabbi of the relatively large Congregation Rinat Yisrael. Both of these...
1 Why learn Nakh?2 It is a foolish question, really. Virtually all Torah Jews agree that learning Nakh constitutes talmud Torah, and it should therefore follow that a Jew’s familiarity with all twenty-four books...
This summer, while explaining my choice to study at Stern College to someone who had never heard of Yeshiva University, I was challenged by one question more than any other. This question was not...
Reviewed Book: Yoel Finkelman, Strictly Kosher Reading: Popular Literature and the Condition of Contemporary Orthodoxy (Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2011). Even at Yeshiva University, a Modern Orthodox institution, students are familiar with the...
Jewish education is a subject of vital concern to many of us, as it ensures the strong continuity of our people. The face of Jewish education is constantly changing in today’s world. The style...
