December 30, 2024
Published by Tradition Online at December 30, 2024
Yair Sheleg, a respected journalist and author, has penned an important Hebrew book, tracing historically important developments in the Religious Zionist world and questioning its future directions. In English the book might be called “The Triple Thread,” and Yitzchak Blau reviews Sheleg’s assessment of how the combination of the three values of religion, nationalism, and humanism are or are not properly balanced by the community today.
December 27, 2024
Published by Jeffrey Saks at December 27, 2024
Hanukka’s requirement of “ner ish u-beyto” makes the candle-lighting mitzva a house-bound one. Avraham Stav, who wrote this dispatch last Hanukka from the Gaza border, asked how myriad Israeli soldiers dwelling in the field, and those Israelis displaced from their homes, help us reevaluate and expand the meaning of “bayit” as we light our candles.
December 26, 2024
Published by Tradition Online at December 26, 2024
Simple Hanukka lights seem insufficient to the scale of modern holiday celebrations. Many Jewish homes now contain displays similar to those of their gentile neighbors – but with Hanukka themes. Chaim Strauchler questions the motivation for these enhancements and what they say about this moment in American Jewish life.
December 24, 2024
Published by Tradition Online at December 24, 2024
Todd Berman uses an essay on Hanukka presented in a new English volume on the Jewish holidays to understand the challenging philosophy of R. Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (Shagar). The Hanukka lights function as a springboard to discuss the tension between the individual and tradition. “Living Time” is a book that offers insight into the mind of this iconoclastic Israeli thinker, a postmodern rabbi who has been both praised and criticized.
December 22, 2024
Published by Tradition Online at December 22, 2024
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.”
December 20, 2024
Published by Tradition Online at December 20, 2024
R. Joseph Grunblatt, whose 11th yahrzeit is observed this Shabbat, was a talmid hakham, teacher, intellectual, orator, spiritual guide, and communal leader. His successor as rabbi of Queens Jewish Center, Judah Kerbel, takes us on a tour of R. Grunblatt’s writings in the TRADITION Archives, highlighting his openness, thoughtfulness, independence, and courage.
December 19, 2024
Published by Tradition Online at December 19, 2024
R. Moshe Feinstein is known for his patriotic embrace of his adopted home in the United States. But Moshe Kurtz’s closer look presents a more nuanced and skeptical version of R. Feinstein’s positions on an array of issues, including his many reservations about American public policy, and the fundamental nature of non-Jewish society.
December 17, 2024
Published by Tradition Online at December 17, 2024
How can a rabbi instill hope and meaning even on a cancer ward? How does one learn how to really listen? Is it really possible to help people make sense of and even find meaning in their suffering? These and other weighty questions are addressed by Hanan Balk in his important book, “Wisdom from the House of Healing: Transformative Encounters of a Hospital Chaplain” (Ktav), reviewed by David Fine.
December 16, 2024
Published by Tradition Online at December 16, 2024
TRADITION’s Winter 2024 issue featured an essay by Dr. Aliza Bazak on “Shaming in Rabbinical Court Rulings in Israel: A Modern Commentary on Medieval Rabbinic Sanctions in Divorce Cases,” examining the mechanism of shaming as a tool to obligate recalcitrant husbands to grant their wives a divorce. She suggests that, as opposed to Jewish communities elsewhere, in Israel shaming is not an effective measure in obligating husbands to grant a divorce. Bazak was a guest on the “Medabrim Mishpatim” program to discuss her TRADITION essay. Watch now…