Latest Essays

Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine equate kingship with tyranny and corruption. How can we who embrace modern democracy relate to Rosh Hashanah’s focus on God’s enthronement as King?

In biblical texts, the span of forty days or forty years is rarely a measure of precise time. Instead, it holds symbolic significance, shaping narratives in ways that transcend a literal interpretation.

In the Bible, God’s appearance is a blessing, while God’s hidden face is a punishment. But does that mean we've been punished for millennia? Chasidic masters offer a profound reinterpretation: God’s absence is a divine invitation—calling those who are willing to seek God out, to forge a deeper connection.

Unlike human kings, YHWH does not need witnesses and enforcers. However, Moses in Deuteronomy draws on formulations found in ancient Near Eastern treaties.

Is the prohibition about animal compassion, keeping species separate, or does it hold symbolic and metaphorical meanings? Beyond its surface, the law against “plowing” with an ox and a donkey also conveys a double entendre.

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus challenges the talion law of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” instructing his followers to turn the other cheek. While this may be admirable as a personal practice, society requires a policy for protecting its people. Positioned between the extremes of total annihilation of the enemy and passive acceptance of aggression, the principle of talion law advocates for measured justice.

Hate in ancient Near Eastern law, the Torah, and Elephantine ketubot is a legal term. If a man demotes his wife to second in rank for no fault, merely because he “hates” her, he cannot also take away her firstborn son’s right to inherit a double portion.

The cuneiform Laws of Hazor, from the first half of the 2^nd millennium B.C.E., suggest that biblical laws had roots in Canaanite law. This challenges, for example, the idea that the Bible’s lex talionis was borrowed from Hammurabi’s laws. While some ancient Near Eastern laws draw distinctions between social classes, Leviticus later makes clear that all human lives are equally valuable.

Up until recent times, throughout the Near East, communities and their leaders were held responsible for crimes committed in their vicinity.

The Bible often provides explicit motivations for adhering to its laws, raising the question: How do these motivations align with contemporary psychological theories of moral reasoning?

Hezekiah’s centralizing worship in Jerusalem, one altar for one God, failed in part because it created a spiritual vacuum for the average Judahite villager living far from the capital. Less than a century later, Deuteronomy revives the law, adding new provisions—a stipend for unemployed Levites, permission to slaughter animals outside the sacred precinct, and a requirement to make pilgrimage to the holy site three times a year—to address the law’s challenges.

​Even before the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E., the Jews of the Greco-Roman Diaspora successfully created Judaic systems that provided them with identity, purpose, new ways of thinking, and alternative points of access to the divine, independent of the Temple rituals in far-off Jerusalem.

Look and see! A sexually assaulted Jerusalem resists being blamed and shamed by Lamentations’ male narrator and demands that YHWH recognize her suffering.

We first meet Bat Tzion as YHWH’s defiant virgin daughter in Isaiah’s prophecy against the Assyrian king Sennacherib. The metaphor turns dark when Jerusalem is ravaged by the Babylonians.

“What need have I of all your sacrifices?” says YHWH. “Devote yourselves to justice; aid the wronged. Uphold the rights of the orphan; defend the cause of the widow” (Isaiah 1:11, 17). By placing a reminiscence of the Assyrian invasion of Judah right before this rebuke (1:7–8), the opening chapter of Isaiah sends the message that Judah can survive only when society takes care of its most vulnerable members.

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.

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 most powerful Jew in antiquity, Tiberius Julius Alexander, served as procurator of Judea, governor of Egypt, and general in the Roman army. Without his support, Vespasian wouldn’t have become emperor, and his son Titus wouldn’t have led the siege of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. Though his uncle Philo and Josephus Flavius may have disapproved of some of his choices, Tiberius acted out of loyalty to Rome, not apostasy from Judaism.

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?

Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones did not assume personal resurrection, a belief that entered Judaism in a later period. In its original context, the imagery of bones rearticulating and coming back to life draws upon the ancient burial practices of Judahite family tombs, offering a message of hope to the exiles in Babylon that YHWH will return them to their land.

Do miracles enhance faith? Rashi and Maimonides’ diametrically opposed positions on this question lead them to very different explanations for Moses’ sin. In between them is Ibn Ezra, who has a secret as to how miracles work and why Moses failed to perform his correctly. Avvat Nephesh, in the 14^th century, rejects his predecessors’ explanations, and instead critiques Moses and Aaron’s passivity and lack of leadership; they waited for God to provide answers instead of taking initiative.

Saul’s failure to see and be seen when the Bible first introduces him signals his dismal prospects for a successful reign. Afraid of his soldiers, Saul listens to the wrong voices instead of YHWH.

Jephthah is compelled by a vow to sacrifice his daughter. Why is YHWH silent? Biblical Antiquities, ca. 1^st century C.E., expands the story, giving Jephthah’s daughter a name and agency, and presenting her sacrifice as God’s punishment of Jephthah.

Is editing and writing in the guise of Moses, Solomon, or Daniel a legitimate literary convention, justified because of the author’s inspired state? Or is this practice a form of deceit, even forgery?

The only named character in the story of the spies whom Joshua sends to Jericho holds the key to the story’s message.