Latest Articles

Putting Magic in its Place: Appreciating Contextual Differences

Moses’ farewell speech in Deuteronomy functioned as a “last lecture,” recounting forty years of history and laws to the generation imminently entering the Land of Israel. Thus, we as readers should anticipate the rehashing of laws that once appeared in earlier books of the Bible. Does ... Read more →

Four Media of Worship: Rav Soloveitchik’s Worship of the Heart

By Miriam Khukhashvili | Comment ()

Worship of God, that elusive and daunting concept, often conjures up images of contemporary life that we would like to believe aptly represent its actual meaning. There is the uniform-clad hayyal (soldier) dancing with the “Na Nach kippah”-wearing hasid, the earnest old lady assigning ... Read more →

Approaching Bereshit

By Zahava Gersten | Comment ()

It is a common scene in many Jewish elementary schools. A boy is learning Humash, and his rebbe tells him that dinosaurs never existed. Perplexed, the boy asks how this could be true if archeologists had actually found evidence of dinosaurs’ existence by digging up their bones. “Those are ... Read more →

The Real Challenge of Tsniut

By Jamie Epstein | Comment ()

Many non-Jews are puzzled when they see a woman walking with long sleeves in the summer. I have experienced this myself multiple times. When walking around on a summer day, I always feel like people are looking at me strangely, almost as if to say, “Is she insane?” Although covering up ... Read more →

Walking the Tight Rope Called Life

By Mati Engel | Comment ()

Reviewed Book: Reuven Ziegler, Majesty and Humility: The Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (Jerusalem: Urim Publications). Yeshiva University is an institution that seeks to exemplify the relationship between Torah u-Madda, a philosophy adopted by the university in 1946 as its ... Read more →

Editors’ Thoughts: “A Time to Mourn and a Time to Dance”

By Gabrielle Hiller | Comment ()

[i] On April 7, 1959, the Knesset of the State of Israel passed a law establishing the twenty-seventh of Nissan as the day on which to memorialize the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. The concept of a memorial day is not new to the Jews. Our calendar is filled with days ... Read more →

How Long Will You Limp Between Opinions?: On the Difference Between the Academy and the Yeshivah

By Simcha Gross | Comment ()

[i] In his recent Kol Hamevaser op-ed, “Shut Down the Bible Department,”[ii] Elliot Resnick argued that Yeshiva University should close its Bible department because the professors there “destroyed my core beliefs without replacing it with anything.” Mr. Resnick ... Read more →

In Defense of the “Shocking” and “Anti-Traditional”: A Response to Elliot Resnick

By Nathan Hyman | Comment ()

In the last issue of Kol Hamevaser,[i] Elliot Resnick claimed that the pedagogical approach of Yeshiva College’s Bible department is seriously harmful to students. He accuses the department of destroying students’ core beliefs and leaving them confused. On this basis, he argues that the ... Read more →

Yeshiva College, Please Tolerate Benei Torah

By Judah Diament | Comment ()

I thank Elliot Resnick for bringing to the fore the issue of academic Bible at YU. While it has been a gnawing issue for many students for decades, he is to be complimented for taking the time to raise it in a public forum. Mr. Resnick argued for shutting down the Bible department, or, ... Read more →

The Presence of Narrative and the Poland Trip

By Gavriel Brown | Comment ()

Deep within the quiet back rows of the Okopowa Street Cemetery in Warsaw stands a dignified monument to members of the Bund, a Jewish secular socialist movement, who died in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943.[i] The relief inside the stone shows a robust amateur soldier, a rifle in one hand, a ... Read more →

The Wartime Activities of R. Barukh Rabinowicz

By Akiva Weisinger | Comment ()

Recently, I came across a startling paragraph in Yeshayahu Jelinek’s The Carpathian Diaspora: The Jews of Subcarpathian Rus’ and Mukachevo, a book chiefly dealing with the history of the Holocaust in the Carpathian Mountains.[i] In the midst of a paragraph describing his general ... Read more →

A Late Twentieth-Century Pogrom, Made in the USA: What We Talk About When We Talk About the Crown Heights Riot

By Chesky Kopel | Comment ()

The Events On the evening of August 19, 1991, the Lubavitcher Rebbe departed Crown Heights on his weekly visit to the graves of his wife and his father-in-law, the Frierdiker (Previous) Rebbe, in the Old Montefiore Cemetery in Queens. The Rebbe’s motorcade included, at this point in his life, ... Read more →

An Interview with Simon Goldberg

By Staff | Comment ()

Note to Readers: Simon Goldberg graduated from YC in 2012 with a major in History. He is the founder of the Student Holocaust Education Movement (SHEM) at YU, and, for the past four years, has served as the Executive Director at Triangles of Truth, a non-profit organization that aims to honor ... Read more →

Eliezer Berkovits’ Post-Holocaust Theology

By Yoni Zisook | Comment ()

Faith After the Holocaust is Orthodox rabbi and theologian Eliezer Berkovits’ most comprehensive and systematic work on the Holocaust.[i] It describes both his major Jewish theological contribution to the study of God and evil and his response to the abundance of post-Holocaust literature ... Read more →

The Jewish Thought Magazine of the Yeshiva University Student Body

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Issue 8.2: Judaism and Other Faiths