Tzvi Sinensky

The identity of the person who walks the goat to Azazel is, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, a riddle wrapped in mystery. The Torah puzzlingly (Vayikra 16:21) calls him an ish itti, literally a "man of time." Unsurprisingly, adopting a variety of

David Moss’ classic Hagadah features a folio adorned with a series of mirrors interspersed among various historical Jewish personalities, drawn from different cultures and eras. The borders of the page are inscribed with the Seder’s classic injunction that “in every generation, each individual

Another Purim piece, this time placing the midrashic and feminist readings of Vashti's character alongside one another.

Newest piece is up on the Lehrhaus!

My newest piece: How Sefer Haggai is the source for seeing Elul as a time of repentance, and what this means for the pivotal month to come.

Published this piece in honor of Tu be-Av this past Thursday. Better posted here late than never :-)

First piece in the Jewish Link, ahead of Tisha B'Av. A meaningful and safe fast to all. https://www.jewishlinknj.com/features/26145-tisha-b-av-lessons-from-maker-ed

This was the parsha mini-shiur I taught to Kohelet's high school students this morning, the last day of classes. As you can tell throughout and especially at the end of the shiur, I will miss them tremendously and the feelings are mutual... https://www.

I read with interest Dr. Lawrence Kaplan’s insightful essay concerning the key role oral instruction plays in the thought of Moses Mendelssohn. I appreciate his complimentary words regarding my earlier piece concerning Mendelssohn’s notion of the Oral Law as living script, and

More highlights from my current series on Torah study at Yeshivat Har Etzion's Virtual Beit Midrash: As captured by Rambam (Hilkhot Yesodei Ha-Torah 2:1-2) and many others, the dialectic between reverence and enjoyment animates the life of the servant of God generally. As

https://www.thelehrhaus.com/commentary/dr-norman-lamms-trailblazing-talmudic-methodology/ Two trends are particularly prominent in contemporary Modern Orthodox Torah study. First, the last two decades have seen a rise in the popularity of non-halakhic spiritual texts, particularly hasidut. The popularity of Netivot Shalom, Sfat Emet, the Piazescner,

Very much enjoying working on my current VBM series on Torah study. I particularly enjoyed writing the section below, in which I discuss Talmud Torah as a form of self-actualization. http://etzion.org.il/en/shiur-04-purpose-talmud-torah-part-2 A final perspective on the nature of talmud

Originally published at The Lehrhaus. As chronicled in Robert Putnam’s 2000 classic book, Bowling Alone, loneliness is one of the vexing challenges of modern life. The advent of the smartphone era has complicated matters further, generating numerous studies and much hand-wringing throughout the

I still remember the Friday night of December 27, 2002. I spent that year back at Yeshivat Har Etzion, and I was almost entirely immersed in the Israeli culture. I had Israeli roommates, Israeli chavrutot and attended Israeli shiurim. And so it came as

The Jewish blessing LeChaim, to life, represents a bedrock principle of Judaism. And not just because Sholom Aleichem declared as much in Fiddler on the Roof. This is particularly true on Yom Kippur, an anxious day on which we plead with Hashem to extend

It is one of the most paradoxical moments of the Jewish year. As the sun begins to set and night begins to fall, we declare אור זרוע לצדיק, that light is planted for the righteous. Is this not an outright contradiction? What is more,

For much of his career, Anthony Flew, born in 1923, was known as a powerful advocate of atheism, arguing that one should presuppose atheism until empirical evidence of a God should surface. As late as 2003, he was one of the signatories of the

If you were a Jew living in Mosul a few hundred years ago, you might not have sufficed with just walking to the side of the river, or even tossing some bread into the river. More likely, if you followed common Kurdish custom, you

In the midst of the fifteenth century, Spanish Jewish philosopher R. Yosef Albo formulated an unusual thesis. He claimed that each of the three central blessings of Rosh Hashana’s Musaf prayer, Malchuyot, Zichronot and Shofarot, alludes to a cardinal principle of faith. Although

http://www.thelehrhaus.com/scholarship/2017/9/13/narcissus-and-the-nazir The legend of Narcissus is well known. As enshrined in the later Roman poet Ovid’s classic retelling, the young man selfishly spurns countless romantic suitors and friends. One such nymph, who had been cruelly

Looking at the pain and suffering of the people of Houston and other affected communities, I am reminded of Rav Soloveitchik's haunting reading of the story of Iyov in his classic Kol Dodi Dofek. The Rav wonders what lesson Iyov was meant to derive

It ought to go without saying – but, unfortunately, it no longer does – that the events of this past week have been utterly disgraceful. That the President of the United States would draw an equivalency between Neo-Nazis and their opposition, thereby fraying the bonds that

Tzitzit, Parshat Shelakh teaches, are to be adorned by tekhelet, generally assumed to be a shade of blue. What does tekhelet represent? The Torah seems to be silent on the matter. In seeking to decode its symbolism, it is worth noting that tekhelet makes

Most discussions of elu ve'elu divrei Elokim hayyim center on the motto's first two words. What happens when we look more closely at the enigmatic concluding phrase, divrei Elokim hayyim? Find out on The Lehrhaus!

Although isru chag, the day following Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot, is widely observed as a moderately joyous day, the halakhic literature is hardly in unanimous support. Rif, Rambam and Rosh fail to codify isru chag. What is more, as noted by Magen Avraham (O.