As we find ourselves this week during the “hol ha-moed” between Israel’s fifth trip to the ballot box in less than four years and next Tuesday’s contentious American election we dip into the TRADITION archives for the best writing and thought on democracy as a Jewish virtue, with offerings by Shalom Carmy, Michael Avi Helfand, and Gerald Blidstein z”l.

Readers may have been following the complicated and disturbing story out of Israel’s Assuta Medical Center, in which a fertilized embryo was mistakenly implanted in the wrong woman. This episode touches on medical, legal, and halakhic issues of Solomonic complexity in myriad ways. Over the years TRADITION has published numerous articles which address and anticipated aspects of the case.

Israeli Religious-Zionist ideologues and educators spend enormous energy attacking “postmodernism,” but the postmodernism they critique doesn’t actually exist. Yoel Finkelman wonders why  so much time and energy is expended citing imaginary opponents when there are actual serious intellectual concerns that need to be addressed?