Prof. Nehama Aschkenasy is Professor (emerita) of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Connecticut. She holds degrees in Hebrew and English Literature from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from New York University. Aschkenasy is the author of Eve’s Journey: Feminine Images in Hebraic Literary Tradition (U. of Pennsylvania, 1987), a Choice selection and winner of the Present Tense Literary Award, and Woman at the Window: Biblical Tales of Oppression and Escape (Wayne State, 1998). She is the editor of Biblical Patterns in Modern Literature (with David Hirsch, Brown, 1984), and Recreating the Canon: The Biblical Presence in Contemporary Hebrew Literature and Culture (a dedicated volume of the AJS Review, 28:1, Cambridge, 2004). She has also contributed numerous chapters and articles to edited books and scholarly journals, and served as Associate Editor of the AJS Review. Her teaching and research focus on the reappearance of biblical patterns in Hebraic and English literary traditions, literary art in the Bible, women in Hebraic literary tradition, and politics and society in contemporary Israeli fiction. For more, see her UConn profile.
Last Updated
January 31, 2023
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Rebecca’s ruse to secure a blessing for Jacob is misguided and generates suffering for both her and her son.
Rebecca’s ruse to secure a blessing for Jacob is misguided and generates suffering for both her and her son.
Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah skillfully structure their petition to inherit land not by confronting the patriarchy, but by couching their request as an attempt to preserve their father’s name.
Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah skillfully structure their petition to inherit land not by confronting the patriarchy, but by couching their request as an attempt to preserve their father’s name.
The story of Michal, King Saul’s daughter and David’s first wife—the only woman in the Bible described as being in love with a man—is framed by two window scenes. In the first, she is the spunky, loving bride who helps David escape his pursuers through her back window. In the second, embittered and depleted in spirit, she watches the triumphant David through the window with contempt. What happened in between?
The story of Michal, King Saul’s daughter and David’s first wife—the only woman in the Bible described as being in love with a man—is framed by two window scenes. In the first, she is the spunky, loving bride who helps David escape his pursuers through her back window. In the second, embittered and depleted in spirit, she watches the triumphant David through the window with contempt. What happened in between?
The story has a comic undergirding as Naomi and Ruth teach the staid patriarch Boaz a humanitarian lesson.
The story has a comic undergirding as Naomi and Ruth teach the staid patriarch Boaz a humanitarian lesson.
Sisera asks for water, Yael gives him milk (Judges 4:19), and then she kills him. Is Yael a foreign “killer woman” or an “aid of YHWH” and his people?
Sisera asks for water, Yael gives him milk (Judges 4:19), and then she kills him. Is Yael a foreign “killer woman” or an “aid of YHWH” and his people?
The book of Samuel opens with the patriarch Elkanah’s annual pilgrimage to Shiloh, but it is his barren wife, Hannah, who emerges as the key figure in the story. Through her clever negotiations with God for a son, Hannah finds a way to transcend the bounds of her role as wife and mother and carve out an honorable niche for herself in the Israelites’ sacred chronicles.
The book of Samuel opens with the patriarch Elkanah’s annual pilgrimage to Shiloh, but it is his barren wife, Hannah, who emerges as the key figure in the story. Through her clever negotiations with God for a son, Hannah finds a way to transcend the bounds of her role as wife and mother and carve out an honorable niche for herself in the Israelites’ sacred chronicles.
