Letter from the Editor
For my post high school gap year I studied in an Israeli Midrasha. While at first I struggled to catch on to classes in hebrew and grappled with cultural differences like casual lice breakouts,...
Category: Issue 9.5: Israel
Issue 9.5: Israel
For my post high school gap year I studied in an Israeli Midrasha. While at first I struggled to catch on to classes in hebrew and grappled with cultural differences like casual lice breakouts,...
Rav Kook’s Thoughts on Slavery: Coherence and Tension
One of the monumental societal changes that occurred in the 19th century was the abolition of slavery. That this was done primarily because of a moral argument made significant waves in Jewish thought...
Halakhic Morality and the Halakhic Personality: a Review of “By His Light: Character and Values in the Service of God”
Reviewed Book: Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, By His Light: Character and Values in the Service of God. Edited by Rabbi Reuven Ziegler (Maggid Books, 2016) On the morning of April 20, 2015, upon hearing the...
“He Spoke Within a Cloud”: A Nebulous Narrative and its Normative Implications
Upon receiving news of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, sets off to meet the nation in the desert. Now Moses’ father in law, Jethro, the chieftain of Midian, heard all that...
Would The Maccabees Ban the Maccabiah?
Are sports a worthwhile and valuable Jewish activity? By the number of minyanim and kosher stands at athletic events, attendance appears to be a Halakhic obligation. But is playing or watching sports a Jewish...
Of Homelands and Promised Lands: A Meditation On Exile
Yosef Hayyim Yerushalmi posited that the first exiles in history were the first couple – Adam and Eve. Banished from the Garden they initiate human history, history as wandering and displacement. In the same...
Review of Letters to Talia
Reviewed Book: Letters to Talia (Yedioth Ahronoth. 2005) On October 25, 1971, a high school girl living on an unnamed kibbutz near Haifa sent a letter to a twenty-year-old hesder student whom she had...
Holistic and Holy: A Halakhic Approach to Eretz Yisrael
This is an edited transcript of a short lecture delivered by Rabbi Michael Rosensweig at a conference honoring both Rabbi Dr. Bernard Rosensweig and Rabbi Dr. Sol Roth. The edited transcript was prepared by R....
Between Community and Communion
Reviewed Book: R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Morality: Essays on Ethics and Masorah (New Milford, CT: Maggid Books, 2017). While the wisdom of clichéd aphorisms warns us to “never judge a book by its...
Of Priorities and Perspective: Land for Peace in the Thought of Religious Zionist Thinkers
In the aftermath of the Baruch Goldstein massacre,[1] Rabbi Dov Lior, Chief Rabbi of Kiryat Arba and rosh yeshiva of its hesder yeshiva, eulogized Goldstein in front of the beit midrash of the yeshiva....
