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Category: Modern Orthodoxy & Haredi Society

Breaching the Walls of History with Postscript

Breaching the Walls of History with Postscript

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Breaching the Walls of History By Dan Rabinowitz This essay first appeared in the Jewish Review of Books (Spring 2026) and is republished here. Its postscript appeared in the magazine’s Substack newsletter, which you can subscribe to here. Last December, on the eighth day of Hanukkah, the American haredi newspaper of record Yated Ne’eman published a long, impassioned article titled “Ufortzu Chomos Migdolai Vetimu Kol Hashmanim,” by Rabbi Michoel Sorotzkin. The Hebrew title is from the fifth stanza of the…

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‘And How Can One Behold a Sefer Torah in Distress?’ On the Relationship between Rabbi Chaim Heller and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik

‘And How Can One Behold a Sefer Torah in Distress?’ On the Relationship between Rabbi Chaim Heller and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik

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‘And How Can One Behold a Sefer Torah in Distress?’ On the Relationship between Rabbi Chaim Heller and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik by Aviad Hacohen and Menachem Butler   This article, published on the occasion of the anniversaries of the passing of Rabbi Chaim Heller (14 Nisan 5720) and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (18 Nisan 5753), may their memories be a blessing, reexamines their relationship through a newly published body of correspondence, situating their bond within the intellectual and material…

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Review of Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits, Jewish Women in Time and Torah

Review of Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits, Jewish Women in Time and Torah

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Review of Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits, Jewish Women in Time and Torah Ross Singer Ross Singer received rabbinic ordination from Professor Rabbi David Weiss Halivni, Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen, and Rabbi David Bigman. He has an MA in Talmud and Rabbinics from the Jewish Theological Seminary and is a graduate of the Mandel Jerusalem Fellows. He has published articles in The Edah Journal, The JOFA Journal, Amudim, Lehrhaus, The Jerusalem Post, and The Times of Israel. He is the translator of…

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Beyond the Masthead of the Beys Yaakov Journal, 1923-1980 – Part 2: ‘Abomination’ or Scandal? Mistranslation, Journalism, and the Halivni Controversy

Beyond the Masthead of the Beys Yaakov Journal, 1923-1980 – Part 2: ‘Abomination’ or Scandal? Mistranslation, Journalism, and the Halivni Controversy

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Beyond the Masthead of the Beys Yaakov Journal, 1923-1980 – Part 2: ‘Abomination’ or Scandal? Mistranslation, Journalism, and the Halivni Controversy By Dan Rabinowitz and Menachem Butler In Part 1 of this study, it was argued[1] that the Beys Yaakov Journal cannot be understood simply as an ideological mouthpiece of Agudath Israel, nor as an instrument of Orthodox withdrawal. Across decades, its editors repeatedly confronted intellectual challenges in public, publishing voices and materials that lay beyond the formal boundaries of…

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Between Authority and Inquiry: Beyond the Masthead of the Beys Yaakov Journal, 1923-1980 – Part 1

Between Authority and Inquiry: Beyond the Masthead of the Beys Yaakov Journal, 1923-1980 – Part 1

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Between Authority and Inquiry: Beyond the Masthead of the Beys Yaakov Journal, 1923-1980 – Part 1 by Dan Rabinowitz In December 1961, the Israeli edition of Beys Yaakov, the educational journal of the Agudath Israel–affiliated school system, published an article that sits uneasily with standard accounts of Agudath Israel’s twentieth-century intellectual posture.[1] Issue 6 of its second year reprinted in full a study on the archaeological and halakhic problems surrounding the base of the Temple menorah.[2] The identity of the…

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Can Orthodoxy Decide Its Own History?

Can Orthodoxy Decide Its Own History?

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Can Orthodoxy Decide Its Own History? Rabbi Shmuel Lesher  The Making of a Godol In his 2004 review of Rabbi Nosson Kamenetsky’s controversy-sparking Making of a Godol,[1] Professor Mordechai Breuer notes a marked change happening within haredi culture, specifically book culture: The contents of the traditional Haredi bookshelf have expanded and transformed beyond recognition in recent generations. Alongside … the rabbinic classics … the shelves are now filled with books of types our ancestors could not have imagined.[2] Breuer is…

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