November 9, 2022

Isaac, Ishmael & Marilynne Robinson

As we prepare to read the twinned stories of the banishment of Ishmael and the binding of Isaac we revisit this installment from our The BEST series, in which our editor Jeffrey Saks offered a reading of Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Gilead." In this work about fathers and sons, and our Father in heaven and His children, Robinson (a devout Christian) puts into the mouth of her protagonist an extended homily on the Patriarch Abraham and his sons.
November 7, 2022

No News Is Bad News

Genesis 18—read this Shabbat—presents Abraham and Sarah’s welcoming angelic strangers into their home who bear the sweet prophecy that the couple will finally have a child together. It is as if their reward for their generous hospitality is this news; to say it slightly differently, perhaps the appearance of the strangers was a test. But why are angels dispatched to deliver to Abraham and Sarah “news” which is not news at all, and which was in fact the central focus of the previous chapter? Eitan Mayer offers answers…
November 3, 2022

Democracy Archives

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.
November 1, 2022

The Israeli IVF Imbroglio

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.
October 30, 2022

Postmodernism as Religious-Zionist Moral Panic

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?
October 27, 2022

Derrida and Sacks at the Tower of Babel 

Postmodernism, deconstruction, and midrashic readings help us make sense of the enigmatic tale of the Tower of Babel – read in synagogues this Shabbat. Miriam Feldmann Kaye marshals the thought of Jacques Derrida and Jonathan Sacks to construct meaning out of the confusion wrought through the bilbul at Bavel.
October 24, 2022

The Flood Story Reconsidered

How are we meant to read the biblical Flood story? History or metaphor? This question was explored in numerous essays in the pages of TRADITION and reader responses over the course of a decade by Shubert Spero, David Shatz, and Joel Wolowelsky. Revisit and reconsider those articles as we prepare to read of the Flood again this Shabbat. 
October 20, 2022

REVIEW: America’s Book

Anyone who wishes to better understand the trajectory of American religious history and the origins of today’s contested religio-political order would find it helpful to begin with Mark A. Noll’s new volume, “America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794-1911.” Yisroel Ben-Porat, in a sweeping review of the volume, suggests that Orthodox Jews in particular might find it useful for thinking through our place in questions about religion-state relations.
October 13, 2022

Hakhel Revived or Reenacted?

With the arrival of Sukkot following Shemitta all minds are turned to the once-in-seven-year observance of the Hakhel ceremony in Jerusalem (or at least its symbolic reenactment). Nine Shemitot ago, in one of TRADITION's earliest issues, Rabbi Gersion Appel published two articles in our pages about the historical assembly and its potential revival in the then-new State of Israel.