Latest Essays

If you could invite any figure from the past — biblical, rabbinic, medieval, or modern — to your seder, whom would you invite and why?

Through her public appearances and widely circulated gilyonot (study sheets), Nehama Leibowitz engaged thousands in the study of Torah, becoming a respected and beloved figure within the religious-Zionist community and beyond.

The curtains and screens for the innermost spaces of the tabernacle are made from expensive materials, and their instructions are described in elevated prose. In contrast, the courtyard enclosure is constructed with more common materials and described in more economical prose.

Muslim scholars like Qadi Abd al-Jabbar, Ibn Hazm (11th c.), and Salih b. al-Husayn al-Gafari (13th c.), and Jewish scholars like Ibn Ezra, Joseph Kimchi (12th c.), Hasdai Crescas, and Profiat Duran (14th c.) viewed the Trinity as a troubling departure from pure monotheism. Spurred by religious competition that was often intertwined with political competition or coercion, they sought to refute it, drawing on philosophy, the Hebrew Bible, and even the New Testament.

In the earliest texts from Jerusalem, dating to the 14th century B.C.E., the royal scribe peppers his Akkadian letters with Canaanite forms and expressions to defend Abdi-Heba against accusations of disloyal to the pharoah

As king of an important port city, Rib-Hadda employed at least ten scribes, who were trained in a certain rhetorical style, some of whom travelled with him north to Ṣumer and south to Beirut.

The Amarna letters are presented in the voice of various kings, but they are actually literary creations crafted by professional scribes who employ wordplay, parallelism, and other rhetorical techniques to make their patrons' messages as persuasive as possible.

Abdi–Ḫeba of Jerusalem, among other Canaanite rules, appeal to Pharaoh for help against the ‘Apiru, who are destroying towns. Some local rulers are even accused of being in league with the ‘Apiru, the most colorful and notorious of which was Labʾayu of Shechem.

Canaanite kings, such as Abimilki of Tyre, write to Pharaoh to ask for help and complain about rivals. Notable is Aziru, king of Amurru, who abandons his loyalty to Egypt in favor of the Hittites.

The Kassite king of Babylonia accuses the pharaoh of insulting his sister, whom he had taken as a wife, and of sending him diluted gold.

Located in eastern Turkey, the kingdom of the Hittites competed with Egypt for control of Amurru and Mittani in modern-day Lebanon and Syria.

A cache of over 380 cuneiform tablets, written in Akkadian, the ancient international language, sheds light on the political realities of the Levant in late 14th century, more than 100 years before the appearance of Israel.

“I YHWH am your healer”—Exodus 15:26

Why are the Books of Ruth and Esther so much alike?

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YHWH also reveals to Moses His goodness, glory, and name, but are knowing these the same as knowing YHWH?

To consecrate a sacred space, the inclusion of a critical object is reserved for last. In the case of the Tabernacle—which we construct in meditatio, through the recitation of the biblical text—it is the gold altar for burning incense. Its proper use keeps the high priest alive on Yom Kippur, while its misuse leads to the death of Nadab and Abihu.

Why are the instructions for the incense altar given only after those for the tabernacle and its other furnishings? The answer highlights the altar’s distinctive roles in relation to the tabernacle.

Long before the discovery of Hammurabi’s laws—whose stated purpose is to protect the weak from abuses of power—Ibn Ezra intuited a similar principle underlying the Covenant Collection.

In biblical times, scraps of writing were stored together in jars, likely based on theme or topic, and these collections were combined and edited into our biblical books. Similarly, Talmudic pericopae began with collections of legal or wise sayings written on pitqi, “scraps,” and stored together in jars, or on a pinqas, wooden slats bound together.

...but about the Israelites distinguishing their identity from the Egyptians.

The Bible never numbers the plagues of Egypt, but the number ten has been canonized in tradition, and a canonical list of the ten plagues appears in the Passover Haggadah. The 18^th century enlightenment commentator Naftali Herz Wessely breaks free from the number ten, offering a more persuasive structure of twelve miracles.

The biblical authors polemicize against the Mesopotamian Atrahasis epic, not only in Noah’s flood story, but in the account of the exodus as well.

Moses and Horus are hidden in thickets on the Nile by their mothers; Sargon is placed in a wicker basket and cast away on the Euphrates by his. Yet each survives to become a ruler of their people. The Akkadian legend tells of Sargon of Akkad, 3rd millennium B.C.E., but it serves as an allegory for Sargon II the 8th-century king of Assyria. Similarly, Exodus narrates the story of Moses, who freed Israel from Egypt, but serves as an allegory for King Hezekiah of Judah 8th century B.C.E., who struggled to navigate between Egypt and Assyria.

​​In late 2nd century Carthage, Tertullian, the first church father to write in Latin, composed Adversus Iudaeos to argue that Christianity’s interpretation of the Hebrew Bible was better than that of the Jews. While his depictions of Jews deal only with biblical verses, from his comments elsewhere about veiled women, Nazarenes, fasting, etc., he was clearly familiar with Jewish practice of his day.