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.

  • 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?

  • Tisha b’Av: Can we still mourn? A reply to Rav Cardozo

    In Tisha B’Av by Yael Valier

    Rabbi Cardozo writes: "Maybe we should literally go out in the streets and help people, sit down with our ideological enemies and see where we can find common ground, instead of simply reciting more kinot?" And yet, there are reasons why we should continue to fast and read Eichah on Tisha b'Av. Here are just a few of those reasons

  • A Tongue-in-Cheek Tribute to Rabbi Cardozo, from the Think Tank Members, in Honor of his Recent 70th Birthday

    By Yael Unterman

    A light-hearted look at a typical DCA think tank meeting, in honor of Rabbi Cardozo's 70th Birthday. Happy Birthday Rav Cardozo!

  • The Omer: Giving Birth

    In Jewish Thought and Philosophy and Sefirat HaOmer by Nechama Atlas Lopes Cardozo

    As a woman anticipates giving birth, so the people of Israel await the redemption. The labour pains start with ten plagues. Toward the end, the people are confined to their homes: "You shall not leave your houses until morning." They await the birth.

  • Hareidi-Bashing, Modesty, and Normative Values: A response to Yael Valier

    In Halacha by E.S.

    There is a limit to how far we should accommodate Hareidi norms in the public space. A normative system doesn’t simply respond to reality; it actively shapes and influences people’s perceptions of reality. The rules followed by the Hareidi world actively encourage a perception of women as little more than dangerously arousing sexual objects. They do not encourage a perception of women as responsible members of society fully the equal of men in all matters of intelligence and competence. Hence these norms should not be indulged in the public sphere.

  • When religious arguments descend into Hareidi bashing

    In Halacha by Yael Valier

    Recently yet another opportunity for Hareidi-bashing appeared, with the news that an 81 year-old woman is suing El Al after being forced to switch seats because a Hareidi man refused to sit next to her. Rabbi Marc Angel commented on the incident in a short article, "Thoughts on the Scandal on an El Al Airplane." But Rabbi Angel's critique misses a crucial point. In fact, there's reason to applaud one aspect of the Hareidi worldview.

  • The Inescapable Obligation to Care For the Wicked

    In Jewish Thought and Philosophy by Yael Unterman

    If you were Abraham, would you have interceded for Sodom? Do you think that he was delighted at the existence of an entire city filled with evil as Sodom was? This man who the midrash describes as cursing the builders of the Tower of Babel for caring more for the loss of bricks than of human laborers? The answer is no, undoubtedly their behaviour nauseated him; yet still he tried to salvage it through the presence of ten righteous inhabitants.

  • A Thought on Tisha Be’Av

    In Tisha B’Av by Calev Ben-Dor

    A few years ago, Israeli academic Amnon Rubinstein wrote 'The Sea above us,' a fictional tale in which Tel Aviv, Israel’s first Hebrew metropolis, lies under water. In an interview with Ari Shavit, the author explained the idea behind his novel, describing his deep ‘existential anxiety that our country is hanging by a thread, that one day it may simply cease to be. I haven’t read the book, but I admire Rubenstein and share his anxiety about the future

  • Competing values and the beauty of the irrational choice

    In Jewish Thought and Philosophy by Yael Valier

    This Friday morning, I had a real-life competing values choice to make. I was making challah when I noticed a blood spot in one of the two eggs I was checking. Automatically, I made a move to throw the eggs away.

  • Wishy-Washy Judaism – Jessica – Part I

    By The Cardozo Academy

    During my year in the Cardozo Think Tank, I found myself at odds, not so much with the answers people were discussing as with the questions themselves. The friction seemed centred on the fact that my religious life over the last few years,

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