יום שלישי, ט״ו תמוז תשפ״וTuesday, June 30, 2026
Follow Us
Rabbi Elli Fischer is a translator, writer, and historian. He edits Rav Eliezer Melamed's Peninei Halakha in English, cofounded HaMapah, a project to quantify and map rabbinic literature, and is a founding editor of Lehrhaus. Follow him @adderabbi on Twitter or listen to his podcast, "Down the Rabbi Hole."
Read More
As a real cultural institution, the fool represents society's ability to self-criticize but in a contained, limited manner.
Is the founding of modern Israel the beginning of our geulah? I don't have much to say about whether this is or isn't a messianic moment, but it seems fairly clear to me that the events of the past 80 years can be described as a geulah.
I cannot think of doves without considering their counterparts, ravens. I'm from Baltimore, a city that named its football team after Poe’s famous poem. Perhaps next year thinking about the Ravens will bring me a bit more joy…
Funny enough, the data shows that using the term milchig isn't just Ashkenormative but it's Litve-normative!
I greatly enjoyed studying all of these works, and I especially enjoyed reading them together. Each offers something important that the others do not, and each is an outstanding example of a different subgenre within contemporary halachic/Talmudic literature.
It's an ancient Hebrew name, a tribal affiliation, that also confers social status and serves as a surname. This status is meticulously preserved through the generations – a non-Levi would not dare claim this status to obtain the second aliyah, and if one did, he would soon be discovered.
Nobody ever wants to be associated with Beis Shammai. Have you ever been to a college campus with a Shammai House? Has a rabbi, or group of rabbis, ever compared their approach to that of Beis Shammai?
Each circle is crucial. Each circle reinforces and enables the others, and each contributes to the extraordinary effort that we must collectively make.
From the goatees of pre-war German rabbis and post-war American rabbis, to the never-groomed beards of Chabadniks, to the thick mustaches of religious Zionists in the 1970s and 1980s, facial hair can signal group identity and ideological affiliation.
I'm a sucker for songs that see hills and mountains as obstacles to be overcome - Still Haven't Found what I'm Looking For, Climb Every Mountain, and The Climb to name a few.
I see a lot of my grandmother in my daughter, who is also a preschool teacher, and it is shaping her persona, too.
Even the other Hebrew words for soul or spirit – like nefesh and neshamah – are related to the words for breathing.
It seems from chapter 27, one of the sharpest chapters in his book, that the people of his age simply could not imagine that they would lose their hold on Eretz Yisrael.
Failure to acknowledge the hierarchy of values causes us to risk losing sight of the forest for the trees.
It never ceases to amaze how someone who endured such horror and tragedy as a teenager can emerge from the ashes and accomplish so much.
The question was enough to completely enthrall me. Even as World War II raged, Jews were asking about how to best perform mitzvot.
June 26, 2026 
