Does halakha care about our feelings? This might be one of those instances where it actually depends on the context. In the fourth installment of “Unpacking the Iggerot,” Moshe Kurtz investigates to what extent kavod ha-beriyot, human dignity, plays a role in R. Moshe Feinstein’s halakhic decision-making.

In our next installment of “Unpacking the Iggerot,” Moshe Kurtz investigates how R. Feinstein adjudicated a contentious dispute over a breakaway minyan, and what it means for the broader topics of economic competition, employment rights, and rabbinic authority.

Should I wear a kippa in today’s climate? This is a question being asked by many Jewish men. In this next installment of Moshe Kurtz’s new TraditionOnline series, “Unpacking the Iggerot,” we go back to the 1970s when many felt they could not cover their heads in the American workplace, and look at how R. Moshe Feinstein navigated a conflict between practical necessity and religious imperative with an eye on the long arc of how to best preserve halakhic integrity in American Orthodoxy.

In the mid-1960s R. Moshe Feinstein ruled that a microphone could be used for Megilla reading. In the first entry in our new “Unpacking the Iggerot” series, Moshe Kurtz addresses the implications of this decades-old ruling for issues that arose during COVID-19 and for our current post-pandemic era.