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Issues 51-100

Articles

From Temple to Talmud – Post-Temple Judaism

Yair Furstenberg

Rabbinic Judaism is often described as having developed in reaction to the loss of the Temple and its sacrificial ritual. Certainly, the sages of the period were responding to some kind of crisis. But was it the physical destruction of Jeru

Boy Wonders – Child Rebbes

Gadi Sagiv

Ever since the position of Hasidic master began to pass as an inheritance from father to son, children have occasionally become rebbes overnight. But can they leave their toys long enough to lead? Gadi Sagiv In the summer of 187

Babylonian Deluge – Flood Myths

Uri Gabbay

The myth of a flood destroying mankind recurs time and again in ancient Near Eastern cultures – but without the biblical emphasis on divine justice and retribution Uri Gabbay George Smith, a low-level assistant in the Western As

The Pied Piper of Yom Kippur – A Lubavitch Tale

Levi Cooper

Variations on a Hasidic story may reveal the fears and doubts of the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef Schneersohn, who led Chabad through Stalin’s persecutions and two world wars, transplanted it in America, and transformed his

Till Death Do Us Part – Graveyard Weddings

Sara Barnea

Two orphans are about to tie the knot. But the wedding procession leads to the local cemetery. What was behind this strange 19th-century custom, and what storm brewed in its wake? Sara Barnea On the first day of Nisan, 1909, a J

Place in the Sun – Moshe Shapira

Tamar HaYardeni

Autodidact Moshe Shapira emerged from Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox Me’a She’arim as an expert in both astronomy and sundials. Two of his sun clocks can still be seen in Jerusalem, but it was the one he refused to make that sent him into self-

Salonika’s Mystic Quartet – Kabbalists in Salonika

Roee Horen

As one of the Ottoman Empire’s few Mediterranean ports, Salonika welcomed Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal. Four great mystics emerged from its shores – each with a different approach to redeeming the Jewish people Roee Horen

Columns

Book Review | Social Vision

Sara Jo Ben-Zvi

Rooting the Rebbe’s far-reaching campaigns directly in the Baal Shem Tov’s ideology, a sociologist explains why the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s vision was best suited to and carried out from the land of the free Sara Jo Ben-Zvi Social