September 30, 2025
Published by Tradition Online at September 30, 2025
Two years ago TRADITION produced a special volume timed with the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. At the time it seemed like nearly ancient history. Little did we know that past was merely prologue, and that shortly after the issue was released we were once again thrown into a traumatic war, similarly launched by sneak attack on an Autumn Yom Tov. Now, after nearly two years of war and ongoing anxiety for our soldiers and those held in captivity, in the hope that our readers will find it meaningful at this troubling, tragic time in Israel, TRADITION has made the content of our entire “Yom Kippur War After 50 Years” symposium issue (Summer 2023) open access as a digital book.
September 29, 2025
Published by Jeffrey Saks at September 29, 2025
The goral (casting of lots) takes a central role on Yom Kippur – from the method the high priest used to select which goat should be sent to the desert, to the sailors’ use of goral to determine that Jonah was the cause of the storm. Some think goral reveals a divine truth, but David Curwin presents another perspective in which the goral is actually a random roll of the dice which allows us to achieve our spiritual goals for the holiest of days.
September 28, 2025
Published by Tradition Online at September 28, 2025
As we prepare this week for Yom Kippur we will bring our readers a new daily offering from the TRADITION Archive offering insight and teaching for the High Holy Day. 52 years ago the Jewish world found itself in a situation not terribly dissimilar from our own. War arrived brutally and by surprise on an Autumn Yom Tov. Writing in the pages of TRADITION a half-century ago, Rabbi A.H. Rabinowitz, Chief Rabbi of the Air Force, asked “Why Yom Kippur?”—aside from Egyptian tactical strategy and hope for surprise, what was the spiritual meaning of the State being attacked on our holy day?
September 25, 2025
Published by Tradition Online at September 25, 2025
Marina Zilbergerts offers a reading of the classic novel “The Little Prince” as a companion text to the lifelong journey of teshuva, reminding her to resist the superficiality of the materialist glance, to take responsibility, and to hold fast to a faith that lies beyond reason—a special pre-Yom Kippur entry in “The Best.”
September 21, 2025
Published by Tradition Online at September 21, 2025
What might R. Soloveitchik have thought about anti-aging interventions? Responding to Jason Weiner’s recent TRADITION essay, Shlomo Zuckier draws on teachings of the Rav to suggest that extending life through medical intervention aligns with his vision of lessening human suffering and approaching redemption.
September 18, 2025
Published by Tradition Online at September 18, 2025
From Sioux City to Memphis, New York to Los Angeles, and everywhere in between, synagogues faced an internal debate about separate seating for men and women and the partitions between them. Many of them turned to none other than R. Moshe Feinstein. Moshe Kurtz lays out the halakhic debate, societal factors, and reception by one of the Iggerot Moshe’s most ardent interlocutors: The Satmar Rav.
September 16, 2025
Published by Tradition Online at September 16, 2025
With the launch of the new “Lamm Legacy Library” we gain access to a treasure trove of archival material from the founder of TRADITION, Rabbi Norman Lamm z”l. Tzvi Sinensky offers a brief guided tour of items in the vast library reflecting on R. Lamm’s concerns and motivations leading up to the creation of our Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought in 1958.
September 14, 2025
Published by Tradition Online at September 14, 2025
Today’s Daf Yomi (Horayot 13a) implies that halakhic triage obligates one to save a man before a woman. The issue has significant ethical implications for contemporary medicine—who takes precedence for ICU admission in modern hospitals, or who should emergency responders treat first at the scene of an accident or after a terrorist attack? Revisit Alan Jotkowitz’s TRADITION essay surveying a variety of approaches to this complicated case of medical ethics.
September 12, 2025
Published by Tradition Online at September 12, 2025
In remembering the renowned educator, R. David Ebner zt”l, who passed away this week, his student David Rozenson paints a portrait of a man who did not “rage against the dying of the light,” but searched, taught, sang, danced, and wrote, and in so doing helped countless talmidim to navigate the Daf of Life.