Latest Essays

In Leviticus 15, the laws of niddah are about purity; Lev 18 and 20, however, prohibit sex during menstruation. The rabbis, who inherited both of these texts, create a new, hybrid concept: the prohibition of sex while a woman has the status of menstrual impurity.

Leviticus 15 describes two types of impure bleeding for women: menstruation (niddah), and bleeding that is “not during her menstrual period (zavah).” The Rabbis attempt to define the difference in an abstract manner, and in so doing, elide the two.

In the wake of the Hasidic aliyah in the 18th and 19th centuries, Hasidic masters reflected on the positive experience the local Jews had with their Muslim neighbors, as well as the importance of loving the land’s inhabitants as part of loving the land itself. 

Israel’s Declaration of Independence defends the Jews’ right to establish a state by invoking their connection to the land going back to biblical times. Does this declaration conform to biblical thought?

A fire comes forth from God and devours Nadav and Avihu but God does not actually say anything. It is Moses who infers what God was communicating through this act and even formulates a law based on his understanding of God’s message.

What do the terms “holocaust” and “shoah” mean, and what do they reveal about how we view the respective roles of God and the Nazis in the Jewish genocide?

Originally an allegorical vision about the future return of Judeans to their land, Ezekiel’s vision (ch. 37) becomes one of the cornerstones for the Jewish belief in the resurrection of the dead. The early stages of this development are made clear in a little-known Qumran scroll called Pseudo-Ezekiel.

“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is better than wine” (Song 1:2). The Song of Songs opens with this sudden shift in person, an ungrammatical syntactic substitution called enallage. How common is this literary device, and why is it used?

At the Seder we commemorate our ancestors’ departure from Egyptian bondage and express gratitude for the inestimable gift of freedom. And yet, some ancient rabbis, and  prophets before them, could not ignore the affliction and hardship that befell Egyptians as well as Israelites at various stages of the story. And so for the future they envisioned a kinder redemption.

The Song of Songs is a collection of love poetry. The Rabbis read it as an allegory of the relationship between God and the Jewish people. Only in the Middle Ages, in Spain and Northern France, did scholars begin to pay attention to the plain (Peshat) meaning of the text. Some went as far as dropping the allegory altogether and treating it as love poetry, as it was originally intended.

Before circumcision was a mitzvah, it was a cultural marker: Thus Joshua introduces circumcision to Israel at Gilgal (Joshua 5:2-9), Jacob’s sons insist that the Shechemites circumcise before Shechem marries their sister (Genesis 34), and the Israelites scorn the Philistines for being uncircumcised (Judges 14:3).

Egyptian records and archaeological findings shed light on the toponyms (place names) that appear in the exodus account: Ramesses, Pithom, Pi-Hahiroth, Baal-Zephon, Migdol, Sukkot, and Yam Suf.

To mark the new year of grain and ensure the bountiful wheat harvest to come. But why do we remove all our chametz (leaven)?

Originally the Festival of Matzot was an agricultural holiday but through its association with the Pesach sacrifice, it became historicized and connected to the exodus story. This shift prompted the redaction of several biblical passages and the question “how indeed does eating matzah commemorate the exodus?”

Egyptian sources shed light on the nature of the work described in the Torah.

Maimonides, in his Guide of the Perplexed, portrays sacrifices as a ruse to repudiate idolatrous practices prevalent at the time. In Mishneh Torah, however, Maimonides states that the messiah will rebuild the Temple and restore sacrifices just as they once were. How are Maimonides’ two works reconcilable?

The Torah’s program to democratize knowledge and create an educated laity.

The parallels between the Tabernacle and ANE structures such as Rameses II’s military tent shed light on the meaning and function of this ancient structure.

Who were these women and what were these mirrors used for? Reconstructing the narrative: the historical-critical method vs. midrash. 

The Talmud has God congratulating Moses for shattering the Tablets, however, a midrash criticizes him for venting his anger, quoting the verse, “Anger resides in the bosom of fools” (Ecclesiastes 7:9). Was his act commendable or lamentable? 

The discovery upends decades of research addressing the question of why the Book of Esther is missing from Qumran.^[1] 

TheTorah.com launches its new premier dating service.

In the book of Esther, the name for the holiday Purim derives from Haman’s pūr (פּוּר, “lot”) to determine what day to attack the Jews. The name Purim predates the story of Haman’s lot, and may originate in a forgotten Assyrian calendrical celebration, when the new year was named with a pūru.

In the Prophets, Israelite leaders such as Joshua, Saul, David, and Ahab use divination to help them make decisions, just as their ancient Near Eastern counterparts did. The Torah sidesteps the divinatory character of these objects and practices, and instead, emphasizes their ritual and religious character.