“Tradition” is perhaps one of the most misunderstood and maligned words in our contemporary vocabulary. It has been misconstrued by some as the very antithesis of “progress” and as a synonym for the tyranny that a rigid past blindly imposes upon the present. For others the word evokes different associations. Tradition becomes for them the object of sentimental adoration, the kind of nostalgic affection which renders it ineffective and inconsequential, like the love for an old and naive grandmother — possessing great charm, but exercising little power or influence. What then do we mean by “tradition,” and why have we decided to publish a journal by that name in an age when man has broken the shackles of gravity and is on the verge of the conquest of the heavens themselves, an age which seems to have broken completely with the past which nurtured it?By “tradition” we mean neither a slavish adherence to old formulas, nor a romantic veneration of “the good old days” which strips the past of all meaningfulness for the present. In our conception of “tradition” we do not concentrate exclusively on the past at all. The word itself comes from the Latin tradere which means to hand down, to transmit, to bequeath. Similarly, its Hebrew equivalent masorah derives from the root מסר which means “to give over.” The focus of Tradition is, then, the future and not the past. “Tradition” is thus a commitment by the past to the future, the promise of roots, the precondition of a healthy continuity of that which is worthy of being preserved, the affirmation that the human predicament in general, and the Jewish situation in particular, are not frighteningly new, but that they grow out of a soil which we can know and analyze and use to great benefit.What, exactly, does this “tradition” consist of, this “tradition” we want to “give over” to our readers, to our future? It is the cumulative historical experience and wisdom of the people of Israel and the totality of its divinely revealed ins…