Latest Essays

The popular Jewish custom to remove drops of wine while listing the plagues goes back to the Middle Ages, but the ubiquitous explanation that we do this out of sadness for what happened to the Egyptians does not. When did this explanation develop and how did it become so dominant?

Psalm 114, a late psalm, is exceptional in its structure and content.  These tightly structured eight verses, which reflect several non-Torah traditions, use Egypt symbolically, to encourage the exiles to return from Babylonia.

The real reason Persia’s King Darius II sent a letter to the governor of Egypt that Judean soldiers in Elephantine should keep the festival of Matzot.

Three descriptive poems in the Song of Songs wrestle with the experience of being in the beloved’s presence. In each case, the woman’s body is described using layered landscape imagery and complex, overlapping angles of vision. These poems ask us to consider what it means to see.

Abraham, Jacob, and the Israelites in Egypt acquire wealth from foreign peoples in morally ambiguous ways. In contrast, the Judeans’ return from exile, depicted as a second exodus, is accomplished with the blessing of the gentile king, and the wealth obtained in exile is entirely untainted.

A burnt offering, must be whole (תמים), after which it is dismembered (נתוח) and offered to YHWH. In the wake of the loss of my parents, I have come to appreciate how this process mirrors the creation story and life.

Drawing on biblical and ancient Near Eastern evidence about the consequences of swearing falsely, I suggest a new understanding of the asham case (Lev 5:20-26) involving property violation and a subsequent false oath.

Who needs the Tabernacle? What is the purpose of sacrifices? Maimonides and Nahmanides have radically different answers to these questions, reflecting a core debate about the nature of Judaism and the purpose of its rituals.

Why does God need an opulent dwelling, with precious metals and jewels, and priests with lush colored outfits? According to Maimonides, God doesn’t; it is we who need it.

The evidence seems compelling.

A midrash on the phrase venikdash bikhevodi, “and it shall be sanctified by my glory” (Exod 29:43) suggests that God is unusually strict when He punishes those who are close to Him. Rashbam strenuously objected to this popular midrash.

Hidden behind the strange rabbinic definition of walled cities is a polemical response to the notorious claim of Emperor Hadrian, who rebuilt Jerusalem as the pagan city Aelia Capitolina.

A midrash imagines Queen Esther reciting Psalm 22 the moment she was about to enter Ahasuerus' inner court. Are the rabbis responding to the Passion Narrative, in which Jesus, in his final moments, recites this lament on the cross?

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Midrash Tanchuma relates how Moses didn’t understand God's instructions for how to construct the menorah. This highlights the complexity of the Torah’s instructions, which commentators from antiquity until today struggled to visualize. One approach, taken by Philo and Josephus, was to interpret the menorah symbolically.

When a man accidentally kills a pregnant woman in a brawl, Exodus requires him to pay “life for a life.” This is generally understood as either capital punishment or monetary repayment. Its legal formulation in context, however, suggests substitution, i.e., the offender has to hand over a woman from his own family.

In halakha, the 39 melachot of Mishnah Shabbat 7:2 functions as a comprehensive list of primary categories of forbidden labor. A closer look at the list in context, however, reveals that it was composed and added as a supplement, to clarify a detail in the previous mishnah.

In the Torah, Aaron, Miriam, and Moses are siblings; Aaron is the biological ancestor of all priests, Moses is the redeemer of Israel from Egypt, and Miriam, their sister, leads the Israelite women in song. But what can we reconstruct about who these ancient figures may have been?

Miriam and the Israelite women echo briefly the famous Song of the Sea sung earlier in Exodus 15… or do they? A closer examination reveals a more prominent role for Miriam and provides information about women as musical performers using song, dance, and drums in ancient Israel.

The Song of Deborah in Judges 5 is similar to both Arabic qaṣīdā poetry and ancient Egyptian epic poetry. How should we categorize it? Is it like the former, and composed orally by a bard, or like the latter, and composed by a royal scribe?

The Canaanite city of Hazor was destroyed in the Late Bronze Age. When the Israelites resettled the city in the Early Iron Age, they placed standing stones in three different places on the destroyed remains. What were these stones meant to signify?

When the Israelites left Egypt, they were accompanied by an ʿerev rav (Exodus 12:38). This obscure term has been interpreted in different ways throughout two millennia of Bible interpretation, both positively and negatively, and modern scholars still debate its exact meaning. The term survives in modern Jewish discourse as a slur against other Jews.

Traditional commentators offer various interpretations of the cryptic phrase בַּעֲבוּר זֶה in Exodus 13:8, generally translated “because of this” or “this is because.” But a well-known midrash from the Passover Haggadah holds the key to an entirely different translation which may indeed be the simple meaning of the text.

Moses and Gideon are each called upon to deliver Israel from its enemies, and each poses questions in response. And yet, a close comparison of the stories demonstrates a sharp contrast between the two characters; surprisingly, Gideon is more faithful than Moses.

The Bible presents Israel as having twelve tribes from both northern Israel and southern Judah. In older northern lists, however, the southern tribes do not appear, and the full list seems to have developed in Judah, after the destruction of Israel. Moreover, the idea that the tribes are descended from Jacob developed even later.