March 31, 2022

The BEST: An Experiment in Criticism

Yitzchak Blau writes on C.S. Lewis’ “An Experiment in Criticism” for The BEST: “Literature does provide pleasure, but it surely does more than that. It opens readers to new horizons, inspires them to analyze ideas, and connects them to a more profound sense of the good. If so, a poem must both be and mean.”
March 24, 2022

The BEST: The Idea of the Holy

Chaim Strauchler on “The Idea of the Holy” for “The BEST”: Empiricism says things that cannot be measured do not really exist. Writing at the start of the 20th century, Rudolf Otto cried foul. There’s something within us (and beyond us) that cannot be reduced to external observation. This anti-reductionist approach is a critical weapon in a Ben or Bat-Torah’s arsenal today.
March 16, 2022

The BEST: The Bridal Canopy

For this Purim-edition of “The BEST” Jeffrey Saks offers a reading of S.Y. Agnon’s “The Bridal Canopy” and its message for the holiday. “Naturally, if this novel’s plot twist is to take place on any particular day of the year, Purim is pre-programmed for such a thing. On this holiday of masks and disguised identities, what is concealed will be revealed, and God works it all out for his faithful in the end.”
March 10, 2022

The BEST: Paradise Lost

Dov Lerner writes on what makes John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” so revolutionary and so significant to the religious reader: “Milton dismantles the epic celebration of mortal combat so paradigmatic of Homer and Virgil—depicting belligerence as the blemish of the weak, and resilience as the sign of the strong.”