Articles

Parashat Shelach: The Wood Gatherer Setting an Example While the Israelites are in the desert, an anonymous man caught gathering wood on the Sabbath is summarily condemned to death by God. Ostensibly a sinner, could he have acted for the sake of Heaven? By Lior Tal Sadeh

Same Words, Different Worlds Jews and Christians share many of the same biblical texts, yet often find radically different meanings within them. Biblical scholar Marc Zvi Brettler explores how centuries of interpretation shaped those divergent readings – and what each tradition can learn from the other By Alex Stein

Parashat Behaalotecha: Leadership as Partnership When the people of Israel voice their complaints, however understandable, they raise God's ire. His overreaction is owing, perhaps, to different interpretations of the relationship between leaders and their flock By Lior Tal Sadeh

Parashat Naso: About the Monk Is the nazarite holy or a sinner? One view sees spiritual elevation in voluntary restriction. The other sees arrogance in rejecting permitted pleasures. Two fundamentally different worldviews about material life and spiritual growth By Lior Tal Sadeh

Parashat Bamidbar: Evil from Above When God appointed the Levites to serve the Tabernacle, a hidden message was passed on: No man is made an officer below unless he is made wicked above. Power corrupts – which is why we need checks and balances By Lior Tal Sadeh

Ruth, Revisited For Shavuot: ten facts you might not know about the Book of Ruth, the biblical text dominated by women By Dudu Cohen

Who’s Afraid of Talmudic Women? In the lecture series “Not Only Bruriah,” Prof. Ruhama Weiss revisits Talmudic women pushed to the margins, uncovering the strategies each developed to survive a male-dominated world By BAC Staff

The Road to the Holy City For medieval pilgrims, Jerusalem was the center of the world – radiant, sacred, and longed for. What they actually found was something else. Dr. Eyal Davidson explores the travel diaries of the Holy Land By Alex Stein

God Takes the First Step For most Israelis, God is distant, tribal, and political. Abraham Joshua Heschel proposed something radically different: a God who genuinely cares about humanity – and who takes the first step toward it By Alex Stein

Parashat Behar: The Power of Seven Seven days, seven years, seven verses. Judaism’s obsession with the number seven reveals a brilliant insight into life’s natural rhythm. From work-life balance to shmita, exploring what it means to let go By Lior Tal Sadeh

The Shulchan Aruch of Jewish Ideas Most Jews have been holding it ever since childhood, but it doesn’t receive the attention it deserves. A fresh look at the siddur – and why it may be the most important Jewish text of all By Alex Stein

Neither Safe Nor Separate From the Civil War to October 7, American Jews have rarely been far from the fault lines of their country’s history. Historian Eli Lederhendler traces the moments of crisis that tested Jewish-American identity and finds that the tensions of today are older than they seem By Gilad Halpern

The Time to Take a Stand The past two years have taught Meydad Eliyahu that reality surpasses all imagination. In the exhibition “My Life at the Moment” he presents works born out of the war, and speaks about creating in real time, and about the possibility of translating images of reality into an artistic language By Noa Sorek

Parashat Emor: Commentary Revolutions How did the Sages transform “eye for eye” into the idea of monetary compensation despite the Torah’s clear language? Exploring the hermeneutical revolution: charitable interpretation, internal contradictions, and the radical claim that meaning is created, not discovered By Lior Tal Sadeh

The Objects You Cannot Touch Where did the concept of muktzeh come from, and why does moving a hammer on Shabbat matter so much? Dr. Yoel Kretzmer-Raziel traces the history of this overlooked part of Jewish law from the Bible to the Talmud By Alex Stein