Editor's Pick ·
Passover Celebrates Both “Freedom from” and “Freedom for”
American Jews’ two narratives of liberation.
Shalom Carmy
Shalom Carmy teaches Bible and Jewish philosophy at Yeshiva University and is an affiliated scholar at the university’s Cardozo law school. He is also the editor emeritus of Tradition, a journal of Orthodox thought.
Latest Content
Editor's Pick ·
Does Repentance Require Sincerity, Action, or Both?
And must nations and people atone for the sins of their ancestors?
Editor's Pick ·
How the Holocaust Caused a Secular Crisis of Faith
The question of fitting the Shoah into the Jewish calendar reveals a deeper debate over its meaning.
Editor's Pick ·
Would God Rather Be Abandoned Than His Law Disobeyed?
Faith in honest doubt.
Observation ·
Podcast: Shalom Carmy on Jewish Understandings of Human Suffering
By Shalom Carmy, Tikvah Podcast at MosaicCommitted to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Editor's Pick ·
Matzah Is the Bread of Freedom Precisely Because It Is the Bread of Affliction
Appreciating the frugal life in an age of abundance.
Editor's Pick ·
Understanding the Complex Thought of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik
Law, Zionism, and imitation of God.
Editor's Pick ·
Understanding Anger, and Its Antidote
With some help from Maimonides, Aristotle, Dr. Johnson, and Chekhov.
Response ·
Daniel Gordis’s Hapless Americans Aren’t Quite so Hapless
By Shalom CarmyIn “ How America’s Idealism Drained Its Jews of Their Resilience ,” Daniel Gordis holds that American Jewry suffers from not being resilient in crisis. He offers two reasons. One is that popular Ameri...
Editor's Pick ·
Judaism, Christianity, and the Afterlife
Jews are less apt to place issues of salvation and damnation at the center of their religious consciousness.
Editor's Pick ·
Prayer, for All Its Public Features, Is an Affair between Man and God
Some reflections on solitary prayer and mixed-sex seating.
Editor's Pick ·
Did the Sinn Féin Influence an Israeli Chief Rabbi’s Vision of Jewish Politics?
Halakhic thought tends naturally to theocracy.
Editor's Pick ·
To the Hebrew Poet Nathan Alterman, a Jew at a U.S. Political Convention Is Akin to an Old Man at a Nursery School
I like Ike, but does Ike like me?
Response ·
Can the Zoom Seder Foster Faith?
By Shalom CarmyI will not address the technical halakhic issues raised by the Zoom seder. Those who rule on such weighty matters, and particularly those who do so in the public spotlight, should be individuals who h...
Editor's Pick ·
Why Routine Is as Important to Prayer as Concentration
And how it enriches other realms of life.
Editor's Pick ·
Richard Holbrooke, Self-Knowledge, and the Jewish Idea of Repentance
When “To thine own self be true” is bad advice.
Editor's Pick ·
What Jews Can Learn from John Henry Newman
He understood that an education that excluded God was not satisfactory.
Editor's Pick ·
Hannah Arendt’s Inadvertent Warning about the Dangers of Parochial Intellectual Pretension
Through her own lack of solidarity with her people.
Editor's Pick ·
Tinkering with Israel’s Electoral System Won’t Heal Its Political Divides
Even Ben-Gurion didn’t like it—but it works.
Editor's Pick ·
Can Jewish Thought Flourish as Judaism Becomes Increasingly Out of Step with American Culture?
Seven decades of Tradition.
Editor's Pick ·
The Sabbath Is an End in Itself, Not a Path to Inner Peace
What Lieberman saw that Heschel didn’t.
Editor's Pick ·
Childrearing Involves Not Just Assigning Duties but Instilling a Sense of Duty
Finding Ben Sasse’s vanishing adult.
Editor's Pick ·
How Religious Ritual Makes It More, Not Less, Meaningful to Seek Forgiveness
A little anxiety doesn’t hurt.
Editor's Pick ·
The Problem with Herman Melville’s Reading of the Book of Jonah
Where is Jonah’s remorse?
Editor's Pick ·
Should Jews Be Wary of All Transnational Institutions?
Of Babel and Brexit.
Editor's Pick ·
A Religious Conservative Reflects on the U.S. Election
Fighting the deterioration of political debate.
Editor's Pick ·
For Aharon Lichtenstein, Modern Orthodoxy Was Not about Compromise
It was about living Judaism to its fullest.
Editor's Pick ·
The Life, and Afterlife, of Job
Committed to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Editor's Pick ·
Holiest of Holies
Committed to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.