Exactly 120 years ago the world also saw the coincidence of a plague and the shemitta year. Jeremy Brown explores how this gave rise to a variety of halakhic deliberations on how to manage the needs of working the land and producing enough food in Eretz Yisrael, with the obligations of observing the sabbatical year. Those considerations have had long-lasting consequences for shemitta policies on the national scale, and resonate with our own pandemic days.

Megillat Esther is a scroll of hiding and seeking – its mysteries have not yet been fully revealed. In this unmasking of one of the book’s curiosities Phyllis Silverman Kramer and Mordecai Kramer explore the 6 appearances of the word Yehudim with a double-yud spelling and correlate them to 6 particular miracles and corresponding halakhic observances.