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…

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?

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.