The Tefillin Strap Mark: In Search of an Obscure Minhag

In tribute to his son's hanahat tefilin and Bar Mitzvah, Lehrhaus Consulting Editor Jeffrey Saks explores a little-known, mysterious practice that appears in Agnon's short story Two Pairs.

One Life to Live: Torah u-Madda Today

Sarah Rindner contemplates whether Torah u-Madda as it’s sometimes interpreted can engender unreflective allegiance to trends in contemporary society that might harm our religious communities.

Listening to the Jews of Silence in Soviet Popular Culture

Jewishness, antisemitism, popular culture and Russian television in the postwar era? Historian Maya Balakirsky Katz explains.

Shylock: An Unlikely Jew Named Jacob

Victor M. Erlich offers insight into an infamous Shakespearean character.

The Zogerke’s Vort

The zogerke or firzogerin, once the vernacular translator in the women’s section of the synagogue, has faded into distant memory. Dalia Wolfson reimagines her for our times.

The Autism Question and Beyond: Rereading the Joseph Saga 

R. Yitzchak Blau analyzes the 2018 book, Was Yosef on the Spectrum?

There Are Jews Everywhere: Divine Revelation through the Other in Malamud’s “Angel Levine”

Eileen Watts puts the writings of Bernard Malamud in conversation with today's immigrant debate.

The Christian Monks Who Saved Jewish History

Malka Simkovich hunts for Jewish texts in some unlikely places.

We Are All Ozickians Now

Ari Hoffman on the most important living Jewish writer.

Gilgamesh and the Rabbis: Knowledge and its Price from Uruk to the Beit Midrash

What do Adam, Enkidu, and Reish Lakish all have in common? Eli Putterman explores.