Stuart Halpern
Where She Has Gone
The book of Ruth has inspired Oscar-winning films, medieval kabbalists, rugged kibbutzniks, and gifted artists. What is it about this book that makes it so engaging?
A Comic Megillah?
Megillat Esther has long balanced the comic and the graphic in its content and interpretations. A new Koren graphic novel takes the challenge a bit more literally.
Jacob in the Bosom of Abraham
When Abraham met Jacob.
Now a Museum, the Synagogue was Meticulously Restored . . .
The synagogue is a mikdash me’at, a little sanctuary or temple. But what really makes a shul holy and how should they be remembered?
Depths of Devotion
Aldous Huxley wrote a poem where Jonah was “seated upon the convex mound of one vast kidney” of the fish that swallowed him, while George Orwell gave an interpretation of the Bible story in a review of Henry Miller. Read Stuart Halpern’s romp through Jonah’s reception history.
Smitten with Sympathy
As the sea split, God shushed the angels, saying, “My handiwork is drowning in the sea and you are reciting songs before me?”
Jonah: The Sequels
“And shall I not care about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not yet know their right hand from their left, and many beasts as well?”
Friendship in the Fields of Moab
Naomi and Ruth have mourned together and are now setting off on the 50-mile journey from the plains of Moab to Bethlehem, toward an uncertain future—alone but side by side.
Was Exodus a Trick?
“Let us deal shrewdly with them," the Bible quotes Pharaoh as saying. On the deceits of the Exodus story.
Haman, Builder of Towers, Brother of Abraham?
A new book raises the possibility that interpretive motifs from within both Jewish and Islamic traditions might have led to the uniquely Islamic tradition that Abraham and Haman were brothers.