December 25, 2025
What does a movie about Christian apologist C.S. Lewis’ “conversion” to a life of faith have to teach believing Jews and those who struggle with belief? Apparently quite a lot says David Farkas in this film review.
December 23, 2025
Chaim Strauchler critiques a form of Jewish support for NYC’s mayor elect, describing it as a transactional model of Jewish politics prioritizing narrow communal gain over collective responsibility. He claims that such politics fragments Jewish advocacy, undermines democratic citizenship, and abandons Israel. Strauchler calls instead for a Zionist-inflected ethic of responsibility to the Jewish people and the American common good.
December 22, 2025
Eli Rubin’s “Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity” (Stanford University Press) presents a groundbreaking study of Chabad Hasidism. Through close readings of primary texts, historical analysis, and engagement with modern philosophy, Rubin traces the historical evolution of the movement’s theology. Todd Berman, who recently reviewed the book for TRADITION, held a conversation with Rubin at Jerusalem’s Yeshivat Eretz HaTzvi.
December 18, 2025
Chaim Strauchler profiles Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain” which depicts a world where time, agency, and moral responsibility erode, symbolized by illicit gambling. Strauchler suggests that this culture of passivity mirrors today’s rise in youth gambling and reflects a broader loss of faith in cause-and-effect pathways to success. Jewish historical and contemporary parallels, from Haredi lotteries to R. Leon Modena’s Hanukka-season gambling, show how magical thinking emerges when predictable structures falter. Hanukka ultimately calls us back to courageous agency.
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