The Book of Ruth tells one of the Hebrew Bible’s most beautiful and beloved stories—chronicling how a childless widow from a foreign land rises to become the ancestress of Israel’s greatest king. But as Dr. Leon Kass and his coauthor (and granddaughter) Hannah Mandelbaum demonstrate in their new book, Reading Ruth: Birth, Redemption, and the […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher.  The idea of social justice marks a cleavage in the American Jewish consciousness. Its advocates believe that social justice represents the very best ethical impulses of Judaism, and that the pursuit of social justice is […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher. The United States is undergoing a spike in violent crime. Murder rates have increased drastically in big cities across the country, from Atlanta and New York to Milwaukee and Seattle. For the roughly 7 million Jews […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher. To understand the Palestinian people and the region, one must understand the enduring cleavages and party affiliations that make up Palestinian politics. In 2007, shortly after legislative elections that led to a surprising victory for the […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher. Last week, the language-learning app Duolingo introduced a new course on Yiddish. The course sparked significant interest, and provoked significant controversy. In the app’s menu, each language is represented by the flag of the primary country […]