Latest Essays

How a provoking and problematic Aramaic prayer continues to mesmerize so many Jews every Yom Kippur.

The Book of Jonah depicts the animals being dressed in sackcloth and mourning along with the people. Are the Ninevites fools or repentants?

A biblical metaphor for God’s relationship with Israel.

Evaluating Deuteronomy’s angst about Israel’s future in light of the story of Ahiqar and modern educational research into student resistance.

Yose ben Yose’s 4^th century CE piyyut for the shofarot service, and its creative use of the Song of Songs.

The liturgical readings of Rosh Hashanah tell of Sarah, Rachel, and Hannah being “remembered” by God, making barrenness and conception the locus of divine providence.

Before the destruction of Judah in 586 BCE, Jeremiah wrote a series of oracles consoling his northern brethren. After the destruction of Judah, a supplementary layer was added to console the southern Judahites as well.

Contemporary Jewish polemics use the term “Torah mi-Sinai” to mean a doctrinal belief in the Mosaic authorship of the Torah. The Sages, however, use the term differently, to claim that all of Torah, written and oral, including their very own words, come from Sinai. But is this claim meant to be taken literally?  

Will the gentiles really say that because Israel “forsook the covenant that YHWH, God of their fathers, made with them when He freed them from the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 29:24) that YHWH is punishing them?

Deuteronomy 28 imagines the possibility of Israel disappearing, and eventually assimilating into the nations where it is exiled. Deuteronomy 30:1-10, however, predicts Israel’s future repentance and consequent restoration.

Can all social change be antedated back to Sinai?

Two places in the Bible describe God striking people with hemorrhoids (ophalim): the curses in Deuteronomy 28 and the story of the Philistines’ capture of the ark in 1 Samuel 5-6. In the latter, the Philistines make golden statues of their afflicted buttocks to propitiate the Israelite deity. Traditional readings replace these crass references with the less offensive term techorim (abscesses).

The textual remnants of a Second Temple religious polemic between Judeans and Samaritans about where God’s chosen mountain lies.

Israel had a vassal treaty with Assyria which commanded them to love King Ashurbanipal, a “love" that brought with it legal requirements and penalty clause. Deuteronomy's command that Israel “love God” is best understood in this context, but what about God's love for Israel?

Mount Gerizim appears in the Pentateuch as the mountain of blessing and plays a prominent role in Samaritan tradition, but the Jewish tradition sidelines this mountain and the Samaritans themselves in a polemic that began more than two and half thousand years ago.

A look at the Torah and Mishnah’s treatment of the mitzvah of bringing bikkurim (first fruits) to the Temple and its associated requirement to recite a historical confession through five prisms: phenomenological, historical, anthropological, feminist and liturgical.

Thoughts on Torah Min HaShamayim

Using the martial idiom “taking a mother on her young,” Deuteronomy forbids taking eggs and chicks without first shooing the mother bird. Is the concern cruelty to animals?

A Second Temple story of how Daniel used his knowledge of Torah to save a righteous woman from wicked judges who falsely accused her of adultery.

The Book of Chronicles updates and reinterprets Deuteronomy’s court system.

Deuteronomy’s legislation leaves the decision whether to appoint or not to appoint a king up to the people, and it seems to reflect negatively on the monarchy.  How did a law like this come about?

A postmodern look at Deuteronomy’s view on God’s role in politics, the challenge of monotheism in biblical times, and the relative positions of Israel and her neighbors in God’s eyes.

A biblical metaphor was reinterpreted in light of a practice of wearing amulets for bodily protection.

Philosophically inclined rabbis, such as Maimonides, attempted to understand the mitzvah to love God in Aristotelian terms, imagining God as a non-anthropomorphic abstract being. Shadal argues that this elitist approach twists both Torah and philosophy, and in its place, he offers a moralistic approach that can be achieved by all.