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Past Issues (PDF)
22. Jewish Leadership
21. The Year in Israel
20. Halakhah and Minhag
19. Torah, Literature, and the Arts
18. Kol Hamishtakker (Part I, Part II)
17. Jewish Denominations and Sects
16. Academic Jewish Studies
15. Family and Community
14. Musar and Jewish Ethics
13. Orthodoxy in the 21st Century
12. Jewish Philosophy
11. Qol Hamevaser
10. Jewish Education
9. Politics and Leadership
8. Spirituality: Teshuva and Tefillah
7. Israel at 60
6. Emunah
5. Torah U’Madda
4. A Nation Unto Itself?
3. Derekh Ha-Limmud
2. Judaism and Pop Culture
1. Religious Growth & Change-
Popular Articles
- Orthodox Forum 2.0: Thoughts on the future of the Orthodox Forum
- A Burning Fire and a River of Tears
- A Crisis Deeper than Just Tuition
- Truth And Consequences
- Feature - Kol Hamevaser Forum on the Orthodox Forum
- About Us
- Strictly Kosher: How Haredi Literature Reflects and Influences Haredi Culture
- “A Tree Planted on Many Waters”: Something About R. Aaron Levine z”l
- Single-Sex Education: Still Le-ka-tehillah
- An Interview with Rabbi Yosef Adler
Latest Articles
“A Tree Planted on Many Waters”: Something About R. Aaron Levine z”l
1 When almost all of my mother’s local friends, and most of her relatives, were dead, and she could not go out on her own, and I was away much of the time, how did she continue to live at home? Without new friends and companions, there would have been no alternative to a nursing [...]
A Crisis Deeper than Just Tuition
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 feared for their lives. Other times, Jews were pressured into giving up their religion ... Read more →
“The Government of Israel Believes in Education”…for Some: Schooling for Israel’s Arab Citizens
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 institutions, any restrictions or preference based solely on the ground ... Read more →
Bringing Gilad Home: Halakhic Perspectives
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 submerged in an intense and emotionally charged public debate about the ... Read more →
Teaching Experience
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 for analysis to anyone (well, anyone who understands ... Read more →
Shabbat: A Time of Rest or Unrest?
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 held placards that read “No Religious Coercion” and “Jerusalem is for ... Read more →
Teaching Prayer: Obstacles, Goals, and Strategies
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 out as the minutes of obligatory silence creep by. Creases in the siddur expertly ... Read more →
An Interview with Rabbi Yosef Adler
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 sound like daunting commitments; together they are undoubtedly difficult to ... Read more →
Nakh: The Neglected Nineteen
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 of Tanakh is not only proper and appropriate, but mandated and expected. ... Read more →
Single-Sex Education: Still Le-ka-tehillah
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 about the double curriculum, nor about the relatively homogenous student body, but was rather the ... Read more →
Strictly Kosher: How Haredi Literature Reflects and Influences Haredi Culture
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 haredi, or Yeshivish, community. This ... Read more →
The Untraveled Road from Ma’aleh Adumim to Alon Shevut
Reviewed Book: Haim Sabato, In Quest of Your Presence: Conversations with Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Yedioth Aharonoth Books and Chemed Books, 2011). This past Rosh Hodesh Elul, for the first time in recent Israeli publishing history, a non-fiction book was sold out before ... Read more →
Editors’ Thoughts: A Magazine and its Visions
Welcome to a new year of Kol Hamevaser, born in an ever-changing Yeshiva University. In our communities, both here in New York and elsewhere, a new year means new opportunities and frustrations, conversations and controversies. Already in the opening weeks of this academic year, we at Yeshiva ... Read more →
Editors’ Thoughts: A Transformative Time for Jewish Education