Winter 2024 Issue Arrives

Tradition Online | February 5, 2024

TRADITION vol. 56 no. 1 (Winter 2024) has arrived with a special section of reflective essays on the current crisis in Israel and the Jewish world — view the full  Table of Contents. Subscribers will soon receive their issue in the post and have full access to content online. Select content open-access to all:

Jeffrey Saks’ Editor’s Note introducing the new issue (listen to an audio version here).

Alex S. Ozar with thoughts from the campus of Yale, “War in Israel, in New Haven.” Written shortly after the outbreak of the war, Ozar describes his and his students’ experiences and the import these events for the future of Jews in universities like Yale: “No one attends Yale strictly for the education. There is an extraordinary wealth of interesting, dynamic, brilliant peers, clubs, affinity groups, and even those of our students who learn Torah for hours each day and would never go to a frat party cannot resist the draw of participation in the broader Yale community. Yalies are Yalies. Or so our Jewish students thought; allowed themselves to think. After October 7th this illusion has been shattered, and it hurts.”

Sarah Rindner reviews the much-discussed Reclaiming Dignity: A Guide to Tzniut for Men and Women by Bracha Poliakoff and Anthony Manning, writing: “Reclaiming Dignity prods one to observe that tzniut is something of a paradox. It testifies to the power of outer appearances while also insisting on the importance of the internal. It objectifies women and also emphasizes their inner worth. Its excess is problematic just as is its absence. The line between overemphasis and underemphasis is slippery and obscure. It seeks to remove sexual gaze from everyday interactions just as it potentially intensifies it.

Other issue highlights:

Rabbis J. David Bleich and Daniel Z. Feldman have researched, written, and offer original scholarship on an array of halakhic challenges sitting at the intersection of Jewish sovereignty, war ethics, hostage negotiations, and national morale and morality.

Gidon Rothstein reviews a Hebrew book by R. Elisha Aviner on the complexity of parenting children who have left traditional observance.

Noam Stadlan offers a new approach to understanding R. Moshe Feinstein’s rulings on brain death.

Rami Schwartz surveys the halakhic and hashkafic teachings of R. Nachum L. Rabinovitch as depicted in the new volume of essays Pathways to Their Hearts: Torah Perspectives on the Individual.

& More… Plus: Our Summer 2023 issue, with its special section on “50 Years Since the Yom Kippur War,” is now paywall-free.

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