Min haMuvhar

Haredi religious leaders in Israel believe that yeshiva students should be exempt from military service. Rabbi Alan Yuter discusses the halakhic--and practical--rejections to that approach.

In The Heart of the Five Megillot, Rabbi Hayyim Angel draws on classical rabbinic interpretation, literary analysis, and contemporary scholarship to illuminate the enduring power of Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther. If you are a member of the Institute and receive Conversations, you should have received Rabbi Hayyim Angel's book, The Megillot Companion (Conversations 47).

Judaism does not ask us to abandon our particular commitments in the name of a universal humanity. Rather, it teaches us to see that the God who calls us into covenant is also the creator of those who stand outside that covenant.

In his work, Iyyunim BeParashot HaShavua (series 1, 2002), Rabbi Elhanan Samet presents a meaningful analysis of a debate between Rabbi Yitzhak Arama (Spain, 1420-1494) and Rabbi Yitzhak Abarbanel (Spain, Italy 1437-1508). The following essay is based on Rabbi Samet’s study.

We are to see life as a journey with an unfolding road ahead. When we reach one goal, we should then look ahead to our next goal. Once we stop this process, our lives stagnate and regress into the past.

Francis Idris offers a significant review of Rabbi Marc D. Angel's book, Maimonides, Spinoza and Us, Toward an Intellectually Vibrant Judaism.

Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, asked Rabbi Zev Eleff to address four questions about the state of Modern Orthodoxy.

Re’eh:

Not Cooking a Kid in Its Mother's Milk: 

Pagan Ritual, Compassion, or Covenantal Discipline?

The commandments are given as a sign of love and caring; they provide a path to a meaningful, constructive and moral life. The “Thou shalt not”s are as important as the “Thou shalt”s.  "No" sometimes means "Yes, I care about you."