With Passover around the corner our minds are on the many preparations required to join our families around the Seder Table—and yet, who can forget the events of five years ago, when so many of us were isolated, locked-down, sheltering in place during that COVID Pesach of 2020. We’re pleased to share this episode of Moshe Kurtz’s “Shu”t First, Ask Questions Later” podcast, examining the COVID Zoom Seder controversy. Kurtz is joined by Yehuda Halpert, who takes us back to the pandemic halakhic literature, identifies important topics that the Jewish world wrestled with during those unprecedented days, and shows how those questions are still resonant for Jewish practice in 2025.

In a remarkable new essay appearing in TRADITION, Neti Penstein explores the interplay of halakhic sources in the writings of Maimonides, Rabbi Soloveitchik, and others, and brings her analysis of that wisdom to bear in offering a solution to a particular 50-year-old philosophical paradox about the meaning and mechanics of forgiveness. Penstein discusses her essay on the Tradition Podcast—and listeners will be reminded of the Rav’s closing remark in “The Halakhic Mind”: “Out of the sources of Halakhah, a new world view awaits formulation.”