Tzvi Sinensky

With “Superman and Lois,” the newest TV series involving the character, premiering recently on the CW network, it’s a good time to recall that Superman was the 1938 brainchild of Jewish creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Many have suggested that the pair

Most of the medieval Christian antisemitic tropes, such as Jews as ritual murderers and cash-grubbing moneylenders, are hauntingly familiar. Hideous depictions associated Jews with Satan. Christians ascribed to Jews deformed bodily characteristics including pointed noses, horns, and hemorrhoids.[1] But one such bodily trope,

The story of masculinity, heroism, and Hanukkah has been told countless times in the past century. Depending on who is talking, it is variously recounted to champion a return to pre-rabbinic biblical values (think David Ben Gurion) or, more recently, as a call to

This year’s confluence of Passover and a pandemic has spurred countless halakhic questions. Among them: given that synagogue services are impermissible, should one praying individually still read Shir ha-Shirim on Shabbat Hol ha-Moed? On one level, this can be analyzed as a strict

Our confrontation with tragic realities sometimes provides a new lens through which to view familiar categories. This year, our experience of the novel coronavirus offers us new insight into the Ten Plagues, which are central to the coming holiday of Passover. Above all, it

Note: This article was subsequently republished in the book Esther in America. Megillat Esther tells us precious little about Esther’s inner world. We know about her early life: the death of her parents, her maturation in Mordecai’s house, and how she is

I regularly remind my talmidim and talmidot that learning, for yeshivah day school students, often requires unlearning what we first encountered while less mature. While I most commonly urge this unlearning regarding Tanakh and midrashim (think Vashti’s tail), for yeshivah students, this reminder

The problem is familiar enough: why does the Haggadah feature mikra bikkurim, the grateful farmer’s declaration, as the textual basis for analyzing the miracles of the Exodus, instead of the original story in Parshat Bo? Many of the classic solutions are widely known.

Watching the tempestuous political debates in the Jewish community mirror the fevered pitch of pre-election discourse throughout the United States, it occurs to me just how appropriate it is that Yitzhak Rabin’s 25th yahrtzeit falls out during these heady times. Today’s environment

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