The Babylonian Talmud and Jerusalem Talmud had roughly the same starting point, so why did only one of them become a canonical book?
Tu B’Av, the Jewish Valentine’s Day
“There’s nothing in the world I’d rather do than helping people find love,” says a matchmaker
Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai’s Choice: Jerusalem or the Jewish People?
Shortly before the destruction of the Second Temple, with Jerusalem under siege by the Romans, Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai made a very difficult decision, leaving his beloved and holy city behind to its fate. Feeling he could not save it, he decided to try something different in an attempt to keep the Jewish People alive.
What We Do Isn’t Written, What Is Written Isn’t Done: The Story of the Oral Torah
The Bible may be the Book of Books, but when you look closely, you can see there’s an enormous gap between what is written in it and what the Jews actually practiced. This gap is part of the basic operating system of Judaism. How exactly does it work?
Keepers of Jewish Treasures: Meet the Participants of the International Judaica Curators Conference
Some 50 men and women charged with preserving the cultural treasures of the Jewish People came from all over the world to attend a professional conference which now took on a different, deeper, and more urgent significance. “Here, we felt a little less alone” was something we heard from everyone we spoke to. Here’s a peek behind the scenes into the world of those who seek to protect the cultural heritage for the Jewish People.
Stetl-Mentality and Non-Native Ignorance: David Weiss Halivni and Gerson Cohen on the Ordination of Women
An old letter that has recently surfaced at the National Library of Israel sheds new light on a controversy which rocked the world of Conservative Judaism some 40 years ago…
The Story of a Nation That Redeems Its Captives
From Abraham who saved his nephew from captivity, to IDF helicopters carrying Israeli hostages back from Gaza – for thousands of years, Jews have fought, paid any sum necessary, and even endangered their lives to redeem and save their brethren from captivity and imprisonment
Prayer’s Light in Wartime’s Darkness
Since the horrific events of October 7 and the subsequent war, a large chorus of voices have turned to the heavens, hoping to deal with their pain and confusion by praying to a higher power. This has been a typical Jewish response to war since biblical times, and continues into the modern age. Let’s explore some of these powerful wartime prayers, and find out where they truly come from.
Embracing the Light of Hanukkah
Jewish pride is exemplified annually in the tradition of lighting the hanukkiah candles, but the Hanukkah story itself is actually full of themes of concealment and hiddenness. So why is Hanukkah celebrated with this self-confident display of our Judaism and why is this practice so very important, especially in dark times like these, when Hanukkah will be celebrated amidst a backdrop of Jewish suffering and war.
The Mysterious Case of Joseph G. Weiss’s Hasidic Library
Prof. Joseph G. Weiss was one of the 20th century’s leading scholars of Hasidism. Following Weiss’s tragic death in 1969, his mentor Gershom Scholem selected 250 books from his former student’s personal collection to be brought to the National Library in Jerusalem. Yet something happened along the way. To this day it’s not clear what became of many of these books…