Gershom Scholem came of age in a world bursting with contradictions. He was prepared by life, as much as by his studies, to grasp the heterodoxy that animated Judaism. He could pioneer the academic study of Jewish mysticism because he did not recoil in anger or disgust when it would not fit into the normative frameworks. That is not to say that he thought all forms of Judaism were of equal merit. His memoir reveals that some indeed are better.

The 200-year love-affair between Jews and Germany was at times a one-sided and never without cruelty. But it was stimulating and often glorious. Were the seeds of its end always there? Amos Elon believes they were, though I'm not as sure.

The Russian-American rabbi Chaim Tchernowitz once called Bialik the “Rashi of Zionism.” What did he mean? As Avner Holtzman demonstrates in his 2017 biography, who or what Bialik was is an existential question, bearing on the past and future of nations and peoplehood.

What if Jewish law (halakhah) isn't law as Westerners typically understand it? That is the premise of Saiman's book, which explores how halakhah fits and doesn't fit our idea of law.

Is there a relationship between creativity and social collapse? David Aberbach makes the case in a study of Hebrew literature, but his avoidance of halakhic creativity undermines his argument.

A brilliant account of how the West became secular through twenty centuries of rereading the Roman trial of Jesus.