Articles by Atara Siegal

A Yawning Gulf? Attitudes Toward the Death Penalty in the Torah and Hazal

By Atara Siegal | Comment ()
A man is trapped in a closed, concrete room. All routes of escape are blocked and heavily guarded. Just outside, a group of trained, highly skilled men intend to kill him with cold precision. An outsider landing in the middle of this scene would be shocked, and employ all his resources to ... Read more →

“This is My Lord and I Will Beautify Him”: From the Beth Alpha Synagogue to Synagogue in Safed

By Atara Siegal | Comment ()
[i] The synagogue, whose title stems from the Greek word “synagein,” “to come together,”[ii] has for centuries been at the center of Jewish prayer, communal life, and Torah study. The structures, levels of formality, and exact uses of synagogues have varied greatly across time, place, ... Read more →

Miraculous Intervention in Halakhah

By Atara Siegal | Comment ()
The text is Bava Metsia 59b, one of the most renowned and important aggadic passages in the Talmud. R. Eli’ezer stands defiantly, calling on forces of nature to support his claim that tanuro shel Akhnai, a detachable oven,[i] is incapable of accepting tum’ah. After the Hakhamim disregard ... Read more →