The problem was not that the stars of the Hanukkah story were too heroic, but that they confused their military heroism for the capacity of communal leadership.

“It was one of the decisive events in human history. Never before had men been convinced, as they were then, that an idea was something to fight for and to die for.”

Two friends, a leading Catholic thinker and a leading American rabbi, pay tribute to the late chief rabbi, and his legacy both here and in Europe.

When the established rabbis go silent, others, including civic-minded philanthropists and charismatic outsiders with inflammatory social-media presences, fill the void.

The author of our October essay joins us to talk about the sources of Jewish resilience, and to share his memories of the Six-Day War.

On the overuse of ḥag same’aḥ and the redundancy of gut yuntif.

This week, we dig through the archives to bring you excerpts from our best conversations on faith, mortality, tradition, obligation, and sin.

When news of the Jewish justice’s death spread last week, so did a lot of weird claims about how Jews should mourn and what they believe. It’s time to clear things up.

The liturgy of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is full of liturgical poems that stretch the bounds of the Hebrew language and the patience of worshipers.

Whether it’s Judeo-Arabic, or Judeo-Italian, or Judeo-Spanish, or the Judeo-German better known as Yiddish, they all mix in varying amounts of Hebrew.

The Israeli intellectual joins us to talk about the ideas in his best-selling book on the revolutionary political teachings in Moses’s last speech.

That’s the contention of a new book by a major historian of ancient Judaism. It deserves serious attention, but it also overstates its case.

An ancient rabbinic dispute pitted eminent scholars against one another. The Taḥanun prayer is rooted in that story of public shame and private distress.