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The following articles are available for download:

Understand the issues that divide the people of the State of Israel:

David Hoffman, “Halakhic Man in Gaza: A Practical Rejoinder.”

How has our understanding of hashgaha pratit (Divine Providence) changed:

Michoel Rotenfeld, “The Baal Shem Tov’s Expanded View of Hashgaḥah Pratit and its Impact on the Minds and Hearts of the Jewish People.”

A rav with the Golani Brigade discusses the sudden demand for tzitzot by both religious and otherwise non-observant soldiers:

יהושע גרשטיין, "האם מצוות ציצית צריכה כוונה".

Ḥakirah 36 deals with a host of wide-ranging issues and is rife with creative new ideas, solutions, and methodologies. In addition to our standard sections on Jewish Thought, History of Halakhah, Talmud Torah, and History, there are special sections on Contemporary Issues in Halakhah and Hashkafah, on Aggadah and on Tanakh.

We lead with our Tanakh section. In the first article, “The Prince of Egypt: Moses’ Conflicted Identity,” the author looks to a twenty-five-year-old animated biblical adaptation to gain “a deeper and fuller appreciation of one aspect of the Biblical character of Moses that the film brings to light.” The next essay, “Miqra as Oral Torah, Written Torah, and Digital Torah,” introduces us to the recent encoding of the Masoretic Text as a dataset called Miqra According to the Masorah (MAM) and explains that only through an effective dataset can the mature product of the masoretes be fully expressed. Moreover, the author claims that “the masoretic project is best understood by viewing it in retrospect as a kind of dataset.” In “Hakhel: An Alternative Interpretation,” the author posits that “In addition to calling for renewed commitment to Torah, Hakhel might also have served as a renewal of the kingdom.” Two other articles in the section—“Who or What Is Argov? A Philological Survey of a Difficult Lexeme” and “The Meaning of the words חורף and נחרפת”—explore the meaning and etymology of two difficult words in Tanakh.

In our special section Contemporary Issues in Halakhah and Hashkafah we return to the complex issues facing the people of Eretz Yisrael. In reactions to Ḥakirah 35’s “Halakhic Man in Gaza” which posits that the ideological divides in Israel can be breached with the adoption of Rav Joseph Dov Soloveitchik’s philosophy, readers argue that the divide in Israel is not primarily ideological. Some Orthodox Jews oppose Judicial reform, and there are sociological factors that divide the different factions. The author responds that nevertheless the root cause of division is the failure “to live with the Majestic and Covenantal imperatives set before the Jewish people.”  In “Treatment of Hunger-Striking Prisoners,” an Israeli physician discusses the halakhic and ethical issues involved with dealing with enemy prisoners. He concludes that “The imposition of the primacy of autonomy over human life on a society which feels otherwise may be called ‘ethical imperialism.’” In “Israel: Title Matters,” a lawyer demonstrates that when reckoning with universal legal principles “the Jewish People are vested with paramount legal title to the Land of Israel.” The last article turns to a problem that continues to plague Klal Yisrael, that of the agunah. In an essay titled “The Giving of a Get and the Resolution of End-of-Marriage Matters: Which Precedes the Other?” the author argues for the issuance of a get before financial matters are resolved—in contrast to normal rabbinic practice.

Methodology in the study of Talmud is a major focus in this edition. In our Talmud Torah section, “Talmud Reclaimed and a Battle over the Methodologies of the Rishonim,” an author responds to a critique in our previous edition. The two scholars argue over the degree of difference in the methodologies of Rambam and Tosafot. In our special Aggadah section, the authors interpret Aggados Ha-Talmud in a non-literal fashion to understand their underlying meaning. In “The Struggle of Rav Elazar ben Shimon and His Colleagues,” the author uses symbolism and the metaphor of male and female to explain that the Talmud’s three-page exposition is discussing the single topic of how to bring the Geulah, Redemption. In “Rabbi Meir and Nimos the Weaver: Contrasting Views of the Feminine Aspect of Creation,” the author contends that the Talmudic story teaches that “only through merging with the feminine side of existence” could Rabbi Meir understand the full power of teshuvah. The final essay of the section, “Of a Prophet, a Prostitute, and Pesaḥ” uses the Talmudic Aggadah to decipher the strange instructions given to the prophet Hosea.

In our Jewish Thought section, “The Mystical Medicinal Power of the Jewish Book” explores why a belief that many would consider ancient superstition continues in the Jewish world and might even be viewed in a positive light. The second article in the section, “The Baal Shem Tov’s Expanded View of Hashgaḥah Pratit and Its Fundamental Impact on the Minds and Hearts of the Jewish People,” shows that a hashkafah that is central to many if not most of Orthodoxy only became popular after the rise of Ḥassidism. In another article, “Dancing on High,” the author seeks to discover “a broader cultural context in which the structure and function of dance were intuitively obvious” by showing a connection between dance and Divine inspiration.

In the History of Halakhah section, the author of “The Development of Washing Hands Before Eating Bread” shows how Ḥazal took “a common matter of etiquette” and “recast it as a ritual of purification and holiness.” The other article, “Taḥanun after Sukkot,” describes a different type of phenomenon, showing how a minhag uprooted a halakhah implied in the Shulḥan Arukh.

Our History section begins with an article titled “The Sticks and Stones of Athens and Jerusalem: Re-Examining the Evolution of the Jeremiah-Plato Encounter in its Modern Context,” that examines the evolution of a story that goes back to the age of the prophets. The other article jumps forward in time to the well-documented contributions of 18^th-Century financier Haym Salomon and argues that it is “modern anti-Semitic sentiment that has kept him from much of the American Revolution’s written history.”

In our Hebrew section “Heskamim Kodem Nisu’in Domim, b-Yisrael u-b-America” we have yet another article addressing the agunah problem, refuting much of what has been argued to discredit pre-nuptial agreements. “Ha-im Mitzvat Tzitzit Tzerikhah Kavanah” returns us to the Land of Israel and its battlefield to discuss the recent phenomenon of non-religious soldiers requesting and wearing garments with tzitzot.