Prof. Rabbi Mordechai Z. Cohen is Professor of Bible and Associate Dean of the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies and Director of the Chinese-Jewish Conversation at Yeshiva University. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Bible from Yeshiva University, an M.A. in comparative literature from Columbia University, and Rabbinic Ordination from YU's Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. He is the author of Rashi, Biblical Interpretation, and Latin Learning in Medieval Europe: A New Perspective on an Exegetical Revolution (Cambridge, 2021), The Rule of Peshat: Jewish Constructions of the Plain Sense of Scripture and Their Christian and Muslim Contexts, 900–1270 (UPenn, 2020); Opening the Gates of Interpretation: Maimonides’ Biblical Hermeneutics in Light of His Geonic Andalusian Heritage and Muslim Milieu (Brill, 2011), and Three Approaches to Biblical Metaphor: From Abraham Ibn Ezra and Maimonides to David Kimhi (Brill 2003), and co-editor of Semitic, Biblical and Jewish Studies in Honor of Richard C. Steiner (Bialik, 2020) and Interpreting Scriptures in Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Overlapping Inquiries (Cambridge, 2016). Cohen has been granted many research fellowships, including a Lady Davis (2011).
Last Updated
July 25, 2024
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In medieval Latin Christendom, the Psalms were highly beloved, with commentators interpreting them as prophecies about Christ and the Church. Aware of this prevailing interpretation, Rashi often deviates from the plain meaning of the text to read the Psalms as a reflection of the Jewish people’s experience and suffering in his own time.
In medieval Latin Christendom, the Psalms were highly beloved, with commentators interpreting them as prophecies about Christ and the Church. Aware of this prevailing interpretation, Rashi often deviates from the plain meaning of the text to read the Psalms as a reflection of the Jewish people’s experience and suffering in his own time.
Saint Bruno the Carthusian’s (1030–1101) method of biblical interpretation took literary structure and grammar into consideration in applying select Christological readings. Rashi, a younger contemporary, created a similar methodology by incorporating only midrashim that conform to peshuto shel miqra, “the plain sense of Scripture.” Was this Rashi’s response to the threat of Bruno’s influential work?
Saint Bruno the Carthusian’s (1030–1101) method of biblical interpretation took literary structure and grammar into consideration in applying select Christological readings. Rashi, a younger contemporary, created a similar methodology by incorporating only midrashim that conform to peshuto shel miqra, “the plain sense of Scripture.” Was this Rashi’s response to the threat of Bruno’s influential work?
