What is the right balance between work, play, and the pursuit of meaning? Between individual excellence, family, and community? These questions are distinctly acute under contemporary economic and cultural conditions, but they are also ancient questions. In this two-part series we will analyze the rabbinic construction of the mitzvah of Torah study as an effort to shape a wholesome and worthwhile human life in face of life’s manifold pressures.
Alex S. Ozar is rabbi and co-director of the OU-JLIC program at Yale University, where he completed a doctorate in philosophy and religious studies with a dissertation entitled “Some Are Guilty, All Are Responsible: A Theory and Ethics of Prophetic Citizenship.” He holds a BA, MA, and rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva University. His writing has appeared in Harvard Theological Review, Journal of Religious Ethics, Dine Israel, Jewish Quarterly Review, Torah U-Madda Journal, and Tradition, and TheLehrhaus.com.
