Torah Study

What is the Torah’s core message and purpose?

Eastern Christianity includes prayer and a festival honoring the martyrdom of a woman and her seven sons who, in the time of Antiochus IV, refused to eat pork. The Talmud reimagines their story, depicting the woman and her sons as refusing to worship an idol in Roman times. This change reflects the rabbis’ tendency to downplay martyrdom in favor of a piety model centered on “dying” through exhaustive Torah study.

A male priest recites and inscribes a curse that the sotah is compelled to orally ingest and disclose the “truth” without listening to her words. Set in the wilderness period, and framed as a narrative passed down from mother to daughter, the short story of Iʿezer and Shifra by David Frischmann (a 20th century Hebrew fiction writer) highlights how, when she is accused of being a sotah, Shifra’s ignorance of Torah dooms her.

I went from dismissing biblical criticism to embracing its truth, and having to rebuild my religious identity. Five aspects of my religious life have been profoundly enhanced.

The Torah’s program to democratize knowledge and create an educated laity.

A Post-Destruction model of Jewish Identity: Reading and studying Torah as if our life depended on it.

A Personal Reflection

An analysis of why the approach taken by TheTorah.com has found such a large audience among the Orthodox at this time.

How do they differ? What are their respective goals? And why the two should not be confused.

Moses and R. Judah HaNasi implore: “I would be most grateful if you would maintain the Torah after me.”

How Jews responded to the celebration of Jesus’ birth by creating a cynical version of Christmas Eve lampooning him.

Lernen versus learning, davenen versus prayer: an ethnographic analysis of how Orthodox Jews define themselves.

To uphold the covenant, Deuteronomy requires two forms of torah study: Learning the commandments and learning the reasons for keeping them. But what happens if even that fails?

Deuteronomy envisions a king constantly reading torah and limiting his wealth and resources. Is this how kings are described in the rest of the Bible? What was kingship like in the ancient Near East?