Tradition Podcast Tradition Online

In this episode of the TRADITION/Or Chadash series, Shlomo Zuckier discusses the presence of Hasidism in contemporary Modern Orthodox life. Alon Meltzer queries Zuckier about his contribution to TRADITION’s “Rabbi Lamm Memorial Volume,” which analyzed R. Lamm's approach to Hasidut and how it formulated a key element in his manifesto of Torah u-Madda. Exploring the idea of academia and secular learning through the lens of gashmiyut, physical pursuit, and the elevation of it, Zuckier considers the role it played within Modern Orthodoxy, Yeshiva University, and the modern question of the rise of neo-Hasidut within the larger, contemporary Jewish world.

Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Zuckier, a member of TRADITION’s editorial board, is a Research Fellow at the Notre Dame Center for Philosophy of Religion, and a faculty member at Drisha Institute. He most recently edited “Contemporary Uses and Forms of Hasidut” (Orthodox Forum). 

Read “Study (of Hasidut) is Great, for It Leads to Action: Two Generations of Hasidut at Yeshiva University”: https://traditiononline.org/study-of-hasidut-is-great-for-it-leads-to-actiontwo-generations-of-hasidut-at-yeshiva-university

Watch a video recording of this and all the episodes in this series: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtyQnp_keuFRLsi-jDYN47ADJwrBOlH6q

In this episode of the TRADITION/Or Chadash series our editor Rabbi Jeffrey Saks has the tables (and microphone) turned on him and becomes the subject of the interview.  Jacquie Seemann Charak of Or Chadash in Sydney, Australia, questions Saks about his recent essay in the Rabbi Norman Lamm memorial volume, “The Extremes Are More Consistent But Absurd,” which explored R. Lamm’s writings on religious moderation as the hallmark of our community. It was also a chance to discuss what we’ve been doing at TRADITION these days and how the journal has evolved over the decades while remaining loyal to R. Lamm’s founding vision from 1958.

Read the essay here: https://traditiononline.org/the-extremes-are-more-consistent-but-absurd 

Watch a video recording of this and all the episodes in this series: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtyQnp_keuFRLsi-jDYN47ADJwrBOlH6q 

 

 

 

RCA – Rabbinical Council of America and its TRADITION Journal present a special conversation from the frontlines of Jewish life in Ukraine with Rabbi Mordechai Bald, Chief Rabbi of Lviv, in conversation with RCA President Rabbi Binyamin Blau, and TRADITION editor Rabbi Jeffrey Saks. Help support the Lviv Jewish community's emergency fund: https://lauderfoundation.com/ukraine

In the period preceding World War I a surprising number of young Jewish women in Habsburg Galicia left their traditional Orthodox homes for life in the Catholic Church (mostly in the Felician Sisters’ Convent in Krakow). Although the Jewish community tended to portray this phenomenon as kidnapping, and some families involved government authorities in their attempts to recover their daughters, the situation was far more complex. In her new book, “The Rebellion of the Daughters: Jewish Women Runaways in Habsburg Galicia” (Princeton University Press), historian Rachel Manekin performs a brilliant work of detection, revealing to her readers the inner lives of these young women. Delving into Polish police records, trial transcripts, and other first-hand materials and letters, Manekin introduces us to a world of intrigue, complicated family dynamics, relations between Jews and their surroundings, associations with the Church, as well as precursors to feminist thinking. She shines a new light on history that has implications for the Jewish world in all times and places. The relevance for contemporary educational practice is profound, and Manikin draws a straight line from the tragic events described in her book to the establishment of the Bais Yaakov movement and other advances in women’s Jewish education that have ongoing contemporary impact.

“The Rebellion of the Daughters” was recently reviewed in TRADITION by veteran educator Beverly Gribetz (open access here). In this episode of the podcast we bring together author and reviewer for a conversation about the book, the world it explores and its meaning for our own.

Rachel Manekin is associate professor of Jewish studies at the University of Maryland. She is the author of “The Jews of Galicia and the Austrian Constitution: The Beginning of Modern Jewish Politics.”

Dr. Beverly Gribetz has recently retired as the Principal of the Evelina de Rothschild-Tehilla School in Jerusalem.

 

In TRADITION’s Fall 2021 issue, we published an essay penned by Rabbi Shubert Spero – a longtime contributor to our pages. In fact, this essay, his 26th in TRADITION, arrived 60 years after his first appearance in the journal and coincided with his 98th birthday. We took the opportunity to spend an afternoon chatting with Rabbi Spero in his Jerusalem apartment about this essay, “The Problematic Metaphors of Righteousness,” along with matters related to the philosophy of language and morality, and issues he has encountered over his long rabbinic and academic career in “doing philosophy” in the service of getting at the underlying questions which should animate contemporary Jewish life and practice. We also turned our attention to his thinking about Zionism and the state of the State of Israel.

Rabbi Dr. Shubert Spero served in the rabbinate for over 30 years in Cleveland prior to his Aliyah in 1983. In Israel he was the Irving Stone Professor of Jewish Thought at Bar-Ilan University, and has published widely on halakha, morality, the Holocaust, the thought of Rabbi Soloveitchik, Religious Zionism, and many other topics in numerous articles and books.

Visit the archives of TraditionOnline.org to read the open-access version of his most recent essay and all of his contributions to TRADITION. 

 

In TRADITION’s recent Fall 2021issue we published a wide-ranging review essay, authored by Prof. Jeffrey R. Woolf, surveying the scope and significance of the writings of Rabbi Prof. Yitzhak (Isadore) Twersky zt”l, which were recently collected and published in Hebrew as “Ke-Ma’ayan ha-Mitgabar” (Law and Spirit in Medieval Jewish Thought), edited by Prof. Carmi Horowitz and published by Merkaz Zalman Shazar. 

The essay is available in our open-access archive: https://traditiononline.org/book-review-yitzhak-isadore-twersky-law-and-spirit-in-medieval-jewish-thought-edited-by-carmi-horowitz 

Order a copy of “Ke-Ma’ayan ha-Mitgabar”: https://www.shazar.org.il/product/%D7%9B%D7%9E%D7%A2%D7%99%D7%99%D7%9F-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%AA%D7%92%D7%91%D7%A8-2

R. Twersky, who passed away in 1997, was a Hasidic Rebbe heading the Talne Shtibel in Boston, and university professor at Harvard, where he was an internationally lauded authority on Rabbinic literature and Jewish philosophy—recognized especially for his scholarship on Maimonides. But for those who know him, especially his Hasidim and graduate students (and those who could lay claim to both titles), R. Twersky was really so much more than these lines from his CV. We thought it would be enlightening to put Professors Woolf and Horowitz together for a conversation. As you’ll hear they discussed a wide range of subjects: Why translate Prof. Twersky’s English articles for an Israeli audience, and how does our understanding of the shape of his oeuvre change when the essays are gathered between two covers? What was his unique contribution to Jewish Studies? Why did he emphasize the interaction of spirituality and halakha? What is the legacy and long-range import of his work?

Watch a video recording of this conversation: https://youtu.be/MC0eJIAV1GU 

Carmi Horowitz has taught at Ben Gurion and Bar Ilan Universities, served as Rector of the Touro Graduate School of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem and of Lander Institute, as President of the Givat Washington Teachers College, and as head of the Michlalah Yerushalayim Graduate Program in Jewish Thought. Jeffrey Woolf teaches in the Talmud Department at Bar Ilan University, specializing in the history of halakha, Medieval and Renaissance Jewish History, the Philosophy of Rabbi Soloveitchik, and the interaction between Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Both Professors Horowitz and Woolf studied under and completed their doctorates with Prof. Yitzhak Twersky at Harvard University.