Category: Issue 9.5: Israel

Letter from the Editor

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,...

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,...

Halakhic Morality and the Halakhic Personality: a Review of “By His Light: Character and Values in the Service of God”

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

“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?

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

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

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

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

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

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....