What the Rich Owe the Poor
In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi,’ the deep Jewish roots of income equality, and the shared dignity it brings
The Genius of Judaism and Bernard-Henri Lévy
The morally minded French public intellectual applies 21st-century chutzpah to our radical age
The Talmud as Epic
This week’s ‘Daf Yomi’ brings to life rabbinic heroes on their intellectual battlefield: larger-than-life figures worthy of Greek drama
Why the Talmud Allows Jews to Profit Off Gentiles
In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi’ Talmud study, focusing on religious duty over secular egalitarianism
Not in Heaven
Man’s authority to interpret the Torah in a ‘postmagical age’ is the subject of this week’s ‘Daf Yomi’ rabbinical debate
Michael Chabon’s Apollo Mission to the Past
The new Moonglow is a novel in the form of a memoir, a superhero comic in the form of prose, and a paean to the fading Greatest Generation
The Coin of the Realm
In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi’ Talmud study, the finer points of monetary transactions, and the attendant honesty ingrained in them
At Home in History, and Nowhere Else
Saul Friedländer’s ‘small masterpiece in the literature of the Holocaust’
Need a Reason to Hope This Campaign Season? Try the Timeless Talmud.
Can it get any worse? Yes, yes, it can, a lot worse, but the continuity of learning in the ‘Daf Yomi’ cycle has remained unbroken.
Lost and Found
In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi,’ how the Talmud transforms absolute Torah commandments into contingent human laws, prizing practicality over literalism
The Jew Who Killed the Banks?
Alan Greenspan: genius or villain? A new biography, ‘The Man Who Knew,’ prosecutes and praises the conductor of a wild market ride
The Book That Obama Won’t Read, But Hillary Clinton Should
Sixty years after the Suez Crisis, two new histories of the Egypt-Israel conflict try to garner lessons on the Mideast and American power in a changing world
I Swear
A simple dispute over ownership leads the Talmudic sages into a debate, in this week’s ‘Daf Yomi,’ about the value of a spiritual oath versus secular claims of honesty
The Mother Tongue
In an excerpt from ‘The People and the Books,’ a portrait of Glückel of Hameln, the 17th-century Jewish woman whose access to Judaism’s foundational stories was through the Tsenerene, a Yiddish retelling of the Torah
Jew vs. Non-Jew vs. Jew
In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi,’ Talmudic sages attempt to deal with the risks inherent in communal loyalty taking precedence over common law and principled justice
Heidegger Was Really a Real Nazi
Is the philosopher’s complexity enough to excuse his overt anti-Semitism? A dive into the so-called ‘black notebooks’ from the 1930s is revealing.
‘Against Everything’ Is a Brilliant Exercise in Hope
Mark Greif’s thought-provoking new collection of essays defiantly refuses to lay waste our powers, getting and spending
Smoothing the Path to a Sinner’s Repentance
In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi,’ ancient oral law makes it easier for thieves to regain spiritual balance with their victims—a reminder of the kinship of all Jews
Jonathan Safran Foer’s Nice-Jewish-Boy Fiction
Campus Week: The bestselling writer’s ambitious new ‘Here I Am’ represents the triumph of sentimentality and sincerity over irony and anger, which is a great loss
Thievery Corporation
In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi,’ how the theft of a pregnant cow leads the Talmudic sages to examine the concept of wages
Is ‘An Eye for an Eye’ Really an Eye for an Eye?
In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi,’ Talmudic rabbis reinterpret a famous biblical verse to allow compassion to trump logic
Reality Bites, for Immigrants With Smartphones
Lara Vapnyar’s ‘timely’ and ‘insightful’ new novel, ‘Still Here,’ wonders what the American dream looks like to former Russians
An Ox, a Donkey, a Sheep, and a Garment Walk Into a Bar…
In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi,’ dissecting the hermeneutics that governs the Talmud’s approach to law
The Unsettling Exploits of Daniel Silva’s Mossad Superspy
In the new thriller ‘The Black Widow,’ master Israeli agent Gabriel Allon is forced to confront hard questions about ISIS
Law v. Lore
In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi,’ competing strands of legal wrangling and storytelling in the ancient compendium of Jewish thought
Burden of Proof
In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi,’ the rabbis spin out all the hypotheticals—and then some—from a few simple verses from Exodus about open pits and a goring ox to see who might be at fault when things go wrong
Tied Up in Knots Over a Goring Ox
In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi,’ the Talmud tries to make sense of an incoherent Biblical law about awarding damages