Hebrew University

The National Library

I counted on the National Library at the Hebrew University as my senior citizen’s refuge, my succor in my declining years, a protective womb that leads to a new learning.  But all this will soon change.

The Covenantal Thought of David Hartman

By treating the covenant between God and the Jewish people as a partnership, David Hartman found room for autonomy alongside halakhic observance.

Leibowitz at 110

A scientist, a philosopher, and a sharp-tongued public intellectual, Yeshayahu Leibowitz was an oracle for some, a crank to others.  Two decades since his death, his ideas remain influential on Israeli society.

Ettinger’s Redemption

I am not sure I would have read Shmuel Ettinger if the award-winning Israeli film Footnote, which centers on the relationship between a father and son who are both members of the Talmud department of the Hebrew University, hadn’t whetted my appetite for gossip about that august institution.

Story Master from Ashkenaz

Today, the use of literary theory and criticism to study Midrash and Aggadah—non-legal and interpretive rabbinic literature—is a well-established and even popular endeavor.

What are Israel’s Rights in Judea and Samaria? Two Views

Two differing views of a controversial report on the legality of Jewish settlements in territories seized in the Six-Day War.

Freud in Zion

Three Jewishly-conflicted German speakers changed the course of modern history. By the time the first, Karl Marx, had died in 1883, Sigmund Freud and Theodor Herzl were rising stars in their twenties; later, they came to be neighbors living but a few doors apart on a Vienna street.