This week’s Talmud study reveals legal debates that refine the limits and nature of inherently abstract concepts

When new inventions made widespread sinning the norm, ancient rabbis adapted. The Talmud’s God approved.

The origin of a famous anecdote shines light on the compromises of Conservative and Reform Judaism

A Talmudic discussion of Hanukkah and Sabbath candles leads to a lesson in the sacred and profane

Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractal geometry, pens a disturbing new memoir on mathematics—and survival

Study of the Talmud’s second tractate reveals how the rabbis stuck to logic and made it sacred

Food-obsessed Jews, including an obese matriarch, are subtly rendered in Jami Attenberg’s The Middlesteins

The last chapter of the first tractate brings modern readers back to sex, bowel movements, and thunder

This week’s Daf Yomi considers—with Chaucerian verve—whether a rabbinic elite spoke for the Jewish people

In a haunting memoir, an Upper West Sider puts family secrets—including AIDS—under the microscope

One Talmudic rabbi’s prayers work, while others’ fall on deaf ears. Is humility more pleasing to God than pomp?

Michael Chabon’s new novel Telegraph Avenue is typically stylish, but overwritten

A coup at the rabbinic academy deposes Gamliel and unleashes a torrent of questions

In this week’s Talmud reading, the soul addresses God, but the body has its own agenda

The latest collection from the great Jewish poet Frederick Seidel expresses intimate revulsion at human feats