Lawrence Kaplan
Law, Lore, and Theory
In his new book, Chaim Saiman points out that this “exclusive focus on the precise details of religious practice” left the Pharisees, the forebears of rabbinic Judaism, open to Jesus’s critique that they mistook “the legal trees for the spiritual forest.”
Moses, Murder, and the Jewish Psyche
Sigmund Freud had always identified with Moses. At the end of his life, as the Nazis rose to power, he returned to the Bible and the origins of the Jewish psyche. We all know his scandalous theory—or do we?
Thoroughly Modern Maimonides?: A Rejoinder
To sharpen Stern’s point, we may say that the person who believes God literally gets angry metaphorically angers God.
Thoroughly Modern Maimonides?
Three recent books elucidate what, if anything, Maimonides has to say to us today.
Kashrut and Kugel: Franz Rosenzweig’s “The Builders”
In 1923, Franz Rosenzweig wrote an open letter to Martin Buber on being bound by Jewish law in the modern age. Interestingly, he was just as concerned with minhag (custom) as halakha.