April 7, 2024
Published by Tradition Online at April 7, 2024
Homes, be they our private homes, the Mishkan, or the State of Israel, are formed of promises, and October 7th challenged these promises and undermined our understanding of ourselves. As we hit the 6-month mark of this war and as we stumble through both horror and uncertainty, Rachel Sharansky Danziger considers how the Book of Leviticus offers comfort, and a way to visualize the path ahead.
April 4, 2024
Published by Tradition Online at April 4, 2024
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.
April 2, 2024
Published by Tradition Online at April 2, 2024
“This war opened a new channel for me to connect with our religious world. I look at my duties and halakhic habits with new eyes,” writes Avraham Stav in another dispatch from the war. How do halakha, Torah study, and especially prayer transform our IDF soldiers and support their mission? How does it turn an army base into a space in which “the Lord your God who walks among you in your camp to protect you and to deliver your enemies to you”?
March 31, 2024
Published by Tradition Online at March 31, 2024
TRADITION’s most recent issue features a special section with short reflective essays on the events of October 7th and the ongoing war in Israel. In this episode, two of those authors meet to discuss the topics touched on in those very personal pieces of writing. Chaim Strauchler engages with Alex S. Ozar, who serves as a rabbi with the Orthodox Union’s JLIC and the Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale University. Alex’s essay, “War in Israel, in New Haven” captures the raw emotions, trauma, and fear of last Simhat Torah. He wonders: Is the Golden Age of American Jewry, in fact, over? He shares reflections on the Jewish experience on the Yale campus over the past number of months and what that experience says about the future of American Jewry. Amidst many frightening anecdotes, he communicates optimism about his students and the prospects for future Jewish success.
March 28, 2024
Published by Tradition Online at March 28, 2024
Chaim Strauchler recently introduced us to the concept of “Ghost Mitzvot” which are beginning to come “back to life” with renewed interest and observance in our modern era. They have also awoken a set of questions by a pair of interlocutors aiming to tease out differences in the examples cited. Yaakov Jaffe, following an earlier post about tekhelet by Baruch Sterman, considers the case of new wheat (hadash) and the forces at play.
March 26, 2024
Published by Tradition Online at March 26, 2024
In 2017 a stroke deprived Eitan Ashman of many of his language facilities, but not of his mind or passion for Torah. A new Haggadah gathers many sensitive insights crafted by Eitan himself, together with voices of many friends, neighbors, and teachers. Jeffrey Saks writes that because it arrives at a particular moment in which we are all feeling battered and in need of some extra “koach,” these elegantly simple observations on the Haggadah—together with the useful and commonsensical tips to make our Seder more inclusive—are so touching and so powerful.
March 25, 2024
Published by Tradition Online at March 25, 2024
Responding to Chaim Strauchler’s recent essay about “Ghost Mitzvot” which fell out of use or disappeared and have surprisingly regained popularity in our own era, Baruch Sterman, of the Ptil Tekhelet Institute explains why the “royal and rarest blue” tzitzit strings and the process of producing them may be more of a unique story.
March 21, 2024
Published by Tradition Online at March 21, 2024
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.
March 20, 2024
Published by Tradition Online at March 20, 2024
Tomorrow, Ta’anit Esther, 11 Adar II, marks the 57th yahrzeit of Mrs. Tonya Soloveitchik, whom her husband described in the pages of TRADITION as “A woman of great courage, sublime dignity, total commitment, and uncompromising truthfulness.” Mrs. Soloveitchik’s achievements on behalf of Jewish life and education have not been widely known or appreciated in the wider Orthodox community. We were pleased to offer a corrective to the historical record with Dr. Tovah Lichtenstein’s portrait of her mother, “Mrs. Soloveitchik: A Biographical Sketch.”