February 15, 2021

REVIEW: Authentically Orthodox

How did American Orthodoxy in the twentieth century search out authentic expressions of Jewish life and culture? Partially by measuring its religious experiences against various expressions of Americanism. Yaakov Bieler reviews Zev Eleff’s “Authentically Orthodox."
February 11, 2021

The BEST: “Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions”

“No man is an island,” wrote John Donne in “Meditation XVII.” Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz unpacks the depths of this classic prose poem and draws connections to the thought of Rabbi Sacks, who agreed that “any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind.” This week in the Rabbi Sacks Bookshelves Project.
February 9, 2021

Telltale Textiles from Biblical Times

The recent discovery of several scraps of purple-dyed fabric from the times of David and Solomon opens a small but significant window into the lives of the people who lived in Eretz Yisrael in ancient times – Baruch Sterman and Judy Taubes Sterman explain.
February 7, 2021

REVIEW: The Principles of Judaism

By turning to R. Yosef Albo to explore principles of Jewish faith, Samuel Lebens provides an interesting presentation. However, Howard Wettstein suggests, Lebens accomplishes the truly noteworthy by bringing the mystical side of Jewish thought into contact with medieval and even current analytical philosophy.