Moses inaugurated Jewish national independence. The prophet Jeremiah comes to oversee its collapse.

Bruriah is the only female cited repeatedly as a religious authority, and rarely shown in the roles the Talmud generally associates with women. Who was she?

Some end-of-year remarks on the path of life, spoken in honor of those who do end-of-life work.

The Tomb has become a shrine for thousands of pilgrims, just as Rachel herself has become the religion’s ultimate matriarch. Why?

One Soloveitchik warned about the dangers of Jewish-Christian dialogue. Another, his forebear, tried to intensify such dialogue, or so a third member of the family now argues. Is he right?

Josiah left a permanent stamp on Judaism, leading, for the first time in generations, an all-out battle against idolatry.

And what you need to know in case you ever encounter him.

The story of the three yods and other religious and aesthetic innovations.

Jonah is the anti-Moses: a prophet who wants to persuade the Lord that some people are that bad and should be made to pay for their sins.

In a worship service almost defined by its eloquence, Judaism mandates an unintelligible noise.

Why the words for both are so similar in so many languages, and why Hebrew has turned out to be the rare exception.

No judge is so great as to be exempt from showing deference to the judicial hierarchy at large.

The rabbi and public intellectual comes by our studio to discuss the meaning of kashrut, with the help of some unusual examples.

Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox look much different from the way they appeared fifty years ago. In part two of our conversation, we look at what’s changed.