January 12, 2025

New and Noteworthy Books

TRADITION’s seasonal roundup of noteworthy new titles in Jewish studies and learning, with offerings on halakha and mental health, peshat and aggada, and definitive new histories of Jewish Provence, the medieval Jewish wine trade, the Soviet dissident movement, and more…
January 9, 2025

TRADITION Questions: The Pawed Prince

Chaim Strauchler connects a peculiar Russian youth trend to a classic Hasidic parable and questions what it means for today’s Jewish educators and youth.
January 7, 2025

Embracing Torah to Face the War

As we prepare to conclude reading Sefer Breishit, we are re-publishing this column by Rachel Sharansky Danziger, who reflected on cycling through the Book last year in the early months of the war. A year later, the war is still being waged and her insights are no less powerful: On Simhat Torah 2023, we set out on two journeys: our planned-for journey through the weekly Torah reading, and a harrowing voyage down the path of loss and war. The second trek challenges us daily, while the first helped Rachel Sharansky Danziger through each challenge posed along the way. As the two looped into each other, they changed her understanding of them both.
January 5, 2025

REVIEW: Reclaiming Redemption

Moshe Taragin’s “Reclaiming Redemption” (Mosaica) explores the contemporary Jewish nation that has emerged “from the tunnel of history”—a people who are no longer bystanders or objects, but actors on the world stage. In this new existence, redemption, once an abstract concept, now looks very real and practical. Elie Weissman reviews…