Book Reviews

Contemporary midrashim are often the province of women writing about women. One capable practitioner of the art is Michal Lemberger, a nonfiction writer, poet, and journalist, as well as a teacher of Tanakh as literature.  Inspired by the Book of Ruth— which, among biblical books, is unusual for the centrality of female characters and its […]

In his latest book, Dr. Marc Shapiro continues his penchant for exploring Orthodoxy from differing—and, at times, controversial—perspectives. In this volume, he focuses on lying and truth-telling as they have played out in the tradition. His scholarly erudition and engaging prose style make this book a delight to read for both scholars and novices. Dr.

Adam Ferziger might have said of the latest brouhaha over the Rabbinical Council of America’s vote to deny the ordination and hiring of women in rabbinical roles, “I told you so.” In Beyond Sectarianism, he posits that Modern Orthodoxy’s “slide to the right” is not a one-directional development, but that the growth of both hareidi

What is Modern Orthodoxy? Michael J. Harris, a rabbi serving the Hampstead Synagogue in London as well as an academic with a Ph.D. in philosophy, teaching in the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge, applies the skill sets of both his disciplines to answering this question. He defines Modern Orthodoxy as “the attempt to combine full

Debra Band’s new volume of illuminated texts for Kabbalat Shabbat and Friday night home rituals is both visually breathtaking and conceptually very ambitious. She has provided multiple commentaries, artistic and literary, for the texts, as well as conceptual approaches to them from historical and scientific perspectives. This is a book designed to encourage hiddur mitzvah,

The family is an institution most of us take for granted. We grow up in families and hope to create our own. So why has the family become such an important topic in the Jewish community today? According to the Pew Research Center, “In 2011, 4.2 million adults were newly married, about the same number

If All the Seas Were Ink is a marvelous weave of personal memoir, study of Talmudic texts, and evocation of the classics of English and world literature. If you are a fan of all these genres, as am I, you are in for an irresistible read. The book is structured around the tractates of the

These two books explore ostensibly the same subject matter—the holiday and fast day cycle of the Jewish year—but could not differ more in tone, sensibility, intended audience, and purpose. Beautiful Days, Holy Days is a collection of divrei Torah (words of Torah) appealing to a frum audience—that is, believing and mitzvah-observant Jews who “walk the

So much of what many of us know or think we know about East European foremothers is traditional wisdom at best, characterized by unfounded generalizations or created nostalgia. This volume is the first collection of essays devoted to the study of the experiences of Jewish women in Eastern Europe. The introduction by editors Paula Hyman