“…in haredi communities in America and especially in Israel, “learning,” regardless of aptitude, has replaced working as a male adult norm”
In traditionally religious European communities, for example, most men worked for a living; the...
Category Archives: Jewish
“Rashi’s line-by-line explanations of the entire talmudic corpus opened the book of the Talmud in a way that was previously unparalleled”
Rashi’s line-by-line explanations of the entire talmudic corpus opened the book of the Talmud...
“The question, however, is whether the Synagogue, itself, particularly in its present form, can cope with the crisis which faces American Jewry”
The Synagogue is one of the major forces in Jewish life in America. The...
“The Tosafist schools set out to analyze the entire Talmud using all relevant talmudic passages as a context and backdrop for the text under scrutiny”
The Tosafists approached the talmudic text with a similar perspective: talmudic passages could be...
“…it’s mystifying that in our American Jewish organizational culture, we have a huge web of information, but we have not successfully networked, tracked and sequenced our people enough”
…it’s mystifying that in our American Jewish organizational culture, we have a huge web...
“The haredi camp encompasses both a number of hasidic sects and the spiritual descendants of their no less pious historical antagonists…”
The haredi camp encompasses both a number of hasidic sects and the spiritual descendants...
“Rabbis across the spectrum of Modern Orthodoxy…point to a community that has absorbed American understandings of the sovereign self”
While such disagreements on matters of Jewish law occupy the foreground, a series of...
“…both the Babylonian Talmud and Middle Persian literature are preoccupied with the preferred contours of the female body”
…it is noteworthy how, despite the differences in subject matter (Jewish marital law versus...
“What is clear is that the ongoing vitality of American Modern Orthodoxy, and ultimately its survival, will depend upon the emergence of new causes or visions that generate pride and solidify a broad identification…”
For over two centuries, factions both in Europe and North America loosely assembled under...
“Globalization is not comfortable — it challenges long-held assumptions and can be humbling and even humiliating. For us, it’s a historical default position”
The jazz pianist Herbie Hancock said that, “Globalization means we have to re-examine some...