All Articles

Bringing Gilad Home: Halakhic Perspectives

By Yosef Bronstein | Comment ()
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

By Chumie Yagod | Comment ()
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?

By Gavriel Brown | Comment ()
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

By Hannah Dreyfus | Comment ()
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

By Ariel Caplan | Comment ()
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

By Gilad Barach | Comment ()
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

By Rachel Weber | Comment ()
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 →

The Untraveled Road from Ma’aleh Adumim to Alon Shevut

By Talya Laufer | Comment ()
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

By Chesky Kopel | Comment ()
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 →

Israel, Judaism, and the Treatment of Minorities

By Rabbi Yosef Blau | Comment ()
Israel’s Declaration of Independence[i] states that “by virtue of our natural and historic right and on the strength of the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly (we) hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the state of ISRAEL.”[ii] ... Read more →

The Daughters of Tselofhad and Halakhic Progressivism

By Toviah Moldwin | Comment ()
In recent years, there has been a significant amount of dialogue within the Orthodox community, particularly among the left-wing Modern Orthodox, over issues of halakhic progressivism, or the attempt to consciously change Halakhah to conform to a standard more in line with our modern values and ... Read more →

Tirha de-Tsibbura and the Modern Synagogue

By Toviah Moldwin | Comment ()
For centuries, if not millennia, the synagogue, as the locus of Jewish communal prayer, has served as the primary focal point of Jewish communal and religious activity. Communal prayer brings together Jews of all different ages, religious backgrounds, and professions to unite with the common ... Read more →

Communal Obligation and the Right to Strike

By Dani Lent | Comment ()
[i] Strikes, in the conception of many Jews today, have a clear association with Israeli society. They are what cause disruptions to travel plans, cancellations of soccer games, and the boredom of thousands of schoolchildren. Whereas the international trend over the past few decades has been a ... Read more →

David, Son of Jesse

By Chesky Kopel | Comment ()
“And I will dishonor myself even more, and be low in my own esteem…” (King David) [i] It was a momentous celebration in the City of David. The Ark of God had been rescued from captivity, and throngs of people paraded it through the streets, rejoicing as they had never done before. Young ... Read more →