Writers’ Guild

The Cardozo Academy Think Tank opens its doors to voices that probe, question, and illuminate. These essays reflect rigorous thought, spirited debate, and deep engagement with Torah and lived experience. Readers will find essays that challenge preconceptions, explore timeless themes, and make meaning out of the complexity of faith and culture.

  • The Perfect Torah versus the Evolving Torah – part 2

    In Jewish Thought and Philosophy and The Ishbitzer by Yehuda DovBer Zirkind

    The giving of the Torah has radically altered the course of Judaism and we cannot revert to a pre-Torah age. Nevertheless, Rabbi Cardozo believes that the vision and spirit of this formative era, i.e. the vibrancy of an inchoate and incipient Judaism - or to borrow a metaphor from biology, a “stem cell” based Judaism - should be kept alive and maintained as a counterweight against the ethos of textual fixation and rigid Halachic codification which is so prevalent within the contemporary Orthodox Jewish world.

  • The Perfect Torah vs. the Evolving Torah

    In Jewish Thought and Philosophy and The Ishbitzer by Yehuda DovBer Zirkind

    Part 1 of a series discussing the ideas of the Chassidic master, Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner of Izbica, Poland (1800-1854), also known as the Mei Hashiloach, after the title of the book containing his teachings.

  • Two New Podcasts: On the Jewish Mission and the Most Difficult Mitzva

    In Jewish Thought and Philosophy by Yael Shahar

    Dear Friends, Shalom u-vracha. Although we have received several new gifts, for which we are most thankful, our financial situation has still not been resolved. The unfortunate “witch hunt” against some of my ideas seems to continue and has created much financial damage to our programs, projects and writings. As I have stated before, I […]

  • Learning to be finite

    In Jewish Thought and Philosophy by E.S.

    Spiritual experiences may represent our yearning for the “infinite”, but this yearning can only find expression in seeking to improve ourselves to the best of our ability and seeking to relate with love to the people and the world around us, while at the same time coming to an acceptance of our finiteness and separateness, overcoming the grief and outrage we feel at not being everything. Yearning for the infinite is really a way of learning how to be finite.

  • On Spiritual Experiences – A response to Yael Valier

    In Jewish Thought and Philosophy by The Cardozo Academy

    Religious experience is not necessarily any more valuable than purely spiritual experience. A vital part of the defining genius of the Jewish tradition is that it produced an intricate set of observances which, together, create an experiential space which is hospitable to spiritual experience and, to an extent, stimulates it.

  • What makes a “spiritual experience”?

    In Jewish Thought and Philosophy by Yael Valier

    What turns a spiritual experience into a religious one is the training and preparation that creates a religiously shaped receptacle for an experience or at least a religious vector for channeling the experience.

  • The Legacy of Rav Soloveitchik

    In Jewish Thought and Philosophy by Yehuda DovBer Zirkind

    In evaluating Rabbi Cardozo's critique of Rav Yoseph Dov Soloveitchik, it is important to clarify that Rabbi Cardozo criticizes Rav Soloveitchik from the perspective of the burning issues that are important to Rabbi Cardozo (i.e. changes in Halacha, daring theological approaches etc.), and it should not be seen as a general evaluation of Rav Soloveitchik's philosophical legacy as a whole.

  • An open letter to Rabbi Cardozo in response to his article on Rav Soloveitchik

    In Jewish Thought and Philosophy by The Cardozo Academy

    Tanya White responds to Rav Cardozo's critique of Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik's lack of innovation in the Halachic realm. She argues that for many reasons the Rav was halachically strait jacketed. He felt a strong obligation to the tradition of his fathers and perhaps felt it was too early to depart from or radically reinterpret thousands of years of Halachic stringencies and inertia. However, he laid the path for those after him to do the work. His insistence on women’s learning especially of Gemara was an opening of doors for the developments we see today.

  • Musings on Rav Soloveitchik’s Torah

    In Jewish Thought and Philosophy by The Cardozo Academy

    Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik thought is greatly indebted to Kantian philosophy. In contenting himself with the philosophical world of Kant, JBS shows himself to be thoroughly unmodern in his philosophical approach to halacha.

  • Innovative Halakhic solutions already exist: Do we have the courage to use them?

    In Halacha by Yael Shahar

    In the process of adapting from exile to statehood, halachah may need to be uprooted and transplanted, or even cut back to its deepest roots and regrown in a larger pot, where it can flower more freely. This will probably result in the “secularization” of some of our halachot, offset by a cultural “Judification” of our secular society. Can we use the lessons learned during the galut to survive in an increasingly decentralized and globalized world?

  • Shabbat desecration, the Olympics and the dilemmas of a Jewish State

    In Halacha, Israel and Shabbat by E.S.

    Several recent events—the Olympic Games and the proposal to work on the railway line construction on Shabbat—are excellent opportunities to start a conversation on the role of halacha in the Jewish State. The question is: what form should the conversation take? It should not, I believe, primarily take the form of a formal halachic argument.

  • Faith and Truth: A necessary trade-off?

    In Halacha and Jewish Thought and Philosophy by The Cardozo Academy

    Our relationship with God as we know it is not just about what we think or understand. There is also a faith that is not based in intellectual belief. This is a faith that is based on our own inner resonance with the practices and beliefs of our tradition. What happens to our emotional faith when our intellectual faith runs up against facts that seem to contradict that faith? How do we keep our balance?

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