Profs. Derek Penslar and Judith Bleich have documented how Jews serving in non-Jewish armies greatly divided rabbinic scholars. Some figures, including German scholars Rabbis Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) and Moshe Glasner (1856-1924), were enthusiastic supporters...
As is typically the case, the nomination of cabinet members comes with a ceremony hosted by the American president in the White House rose garden. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter took the podium to introduce four Jewish nominees, including Phillip Klutznick for the...
In the listing of the gifts presented by the leaders of each tribe on the day of the consecration of the Tabernacle, the gift of Netan-el ben Zuar of the tribe of Issakhar stands out from all the others. What makes this gift exceptional is not its content, for all...
The fourth book of the Torah, Bemidbar, best translated as “in the wilderness,” is a relatively detailed account of the variegated experiences of the Israelites over the thirty-eight-year period beginning after the exodus from Egypt and continuing until they are about...
In their book Noise, authors Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein describe how the universal passion for judicial discretion fell out of favor in the 1970’s. For many years the popular idea was that maximizing judicial discretion allowed judges to...
The sacral calendar in chapter 23 of the Book of Leviticus includes mention of what is subsequently called Yom Kippur. It is intended to be a day of “affliction” as well as a day of cessation from labor (Lev. 23:27-28). But what, exactly, constitutes “affliction” goes...
The Torah emphatically teaches that “the alien must not be wronged” (Leviticus 19:32). The Hebrew word for alien is “ger.” The quintessential Biblical commentator, Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac of Troyes, known by his acronym RaShI (1040–1105), notes that the word “ger” is...
One of the most celebrated rabbis of the early twentieth century was Rabbi Abraham Isaack Kook. Born in Poland in 1865, his genius was recognized before he enrolled in the fabled yeshiva of Volozhin. After serving a congregation in Lithiania at the age of 23, he soon...
As the YIVO institute describes him: “Nachman Blumenthal was especially interested in the power of language.” That is why he made it his lifelong mission to collect, categorize, and define the terms Nazis used in the pursuit of the Final Solution. By training,...
In its discussion about preparing for Passover, the Talmud (Pesahim 4b) concludes that according to the Torah a verbal renunciation of all leaven in a Jew’s possession is all that is required in order to fulfill the Scriptural requirement to destroy all hametz....