Before the TRADITION World Headquarters closes down for Passover, our associate editor, R. Yitzchak Blau provides you with eight installments from archives to enrich your mind and spirit over Yom Tov. Take one a day for eight days along with a daily dose of matzah and holiday joy, even as our minds are all focused on the troubles in Israel this year.

A journey to Ethiopia uncovers the fragile remnants of a once-isolated Jewish community and the quiet heroism sustaining it today. Through the lens of handmade matzah and a massive communal seder, Avraham Wein reflects on faith, poverty, and longing—where “the bread of affliction” becomes a living symbol of endurance, and a prayer that next year, they will be free in Israel.

A sweeping new biography reintroduces Nahmanides as a towering, dynamic thinker shaped by controversy, creativity, and change. Mordechai Z. Cohen’s review highlights Oded Yisraeli’s masterful synthesis of Ramban’s halakhic, exegetical, and kabbalistic writings, tracing his evolution into a “genius at the crossroads” whose bold integration of tradition and innovation continues to shape Jewish thought (Stanford University Press).