TRADITION’s seasonal roundup of noteworthy new titles in Jewish studies and learning, with offerings on biblical studies, teshuva, pregnancy loss, citrons and Cleveland, and more…

Writing from the Gaza front, Rabbi Avraham Stav considers words that lead men into battle from the Bible and Maimonides to Tolkien and Churchill. The charge to the troops must animate their fighting spirit and offer faith and trust in the ideals for which they risk their lives. In the current war, what gives Stav strength is not so much the knowledge that God is fighting for us, but that we are fighting for Him. In this war we are aware that there are values greater and higher than life itself.

In the aftermath of the 5784 Simhat Torah pogrom, a religious thinker cannot help but ask “Where was God?” Aton Holzer outlines the problem, rejects popular approaches, and demonstrates that ancient Jewish sources validate and even encourage the question. A second, related matter: How can we be assured that our own religious tradition never could perpetrate what radical Islam has wrought upon us?

Israeli poet Bacol Serlui turned to Tehillim as the rockets began falling on Simhat Torah and her son was called away to war: “I sat with my Tehillim, reciting from beginning to end until the close of the holiday, until my tears dried up and the breaking news broke me once again. I recite the Psalms again and again and feel that the Tehillim are reading me, dubbing my fear and sorrow, giving me a voice. Three millennia ago a Jew sat and poured out the agony of his soul in times of peace and war, and here he reaches out a hand of prayer and speaks to our own day, until we will be redeemed.” Read Serlui’s essay on King David, the warrior poet, and his Psalms’ ability to reach us across the millennia.