Latest Essays

Jacob and Samson celebrate their marriages for seven days. The earliest mention of marriage ​blessings, however, is in the apocryphal book of Tobit and the Dead Sea Scrolls, both from the late second Temple times. 3, 5, 6 and even 7 blessings circulated in Jewish society before the rabbis formalized the series as the “Sheva Berakhot” by early medieval times. Their recitation by guests ​​during the celebratory week was promoted by the rabbis as occasions to engage in an “act of lovingkindness” ​(gemilut ḥasadim).​

The Shavuot rebellion and consequent burning of the Temples’ porticoes during the time of Augustus Caesar made no impression on subsequent Jewish historiography, despite the later humiliating defeat of the rebellion’s suppressor, Varus, in the Battle of Teutoburg Forest. Another lost memory of Shavuot is the all-night vegetarian feast, prayer, and Torah study of the Therapeutae, an egalitarian ascetic Jewish community in Egypt.

Hosea’s depiction of the marital relations with a promiscuous woman, as a metaphor for YHWH’s relationship with Israel, is problematic in ancient and modern terms. The structure of Hosea 2, however, suggests that we have been overlooking the prophet’s message: YHWH rejects and repudiates violence in favor of gentle persuasion and courtship.

The rabbis distinguish four stages in the fetus’ development towards personhood. For the duration of the pregnancy, until the commencement of active labor, “a fetus is like its mother’s thigh” (עוּבָּר יֶרֶךְ אִמוֹ).

What we know about abortion in the ancient world from legal and medical texts.

Why the promiscuous daughter of a priest and Tamar, the widowed daughter-in-law of Judah, are sentenced to die by fire. The “poetic justice” of immolation.

The absence of an explicit prohibition in the Torah against father-daughter incest led to a debate among the talmudic-era rabbis, and eventually among medieval Rabbanites and Karaites, about whether such a prohibition should be derived from a logical a fortiori (קל וחומר) argument or from a hermeneutic (גזרה שוה) one.

Egyptian and Mesopotamian abortion-inducing recipes attest to the practice of abortion in the ancient Near East. While the Middle Assyrian Laws prohibit the practice, the Torah offers no ruling. Nevertheless, throughout the Bible, expressions like נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים, “the breath of life” (Genesis 2:7), imply that life begins at first breath.

A hoard of 406 astragali (“knucklebones”), a bone that was used for divination in the ancient world, was discovered at Tel Abel Beth Maacah. Was this city, featured in the rebellion of Sheba against King David, a center for divination?

On Yom Kippur, one goat is sacrificed to YHWH and another is sent to Azazel in the wilderness. Who is Azazel? The 12^th-century commentator Abraham ibn Ezra hints that the answer lies in reaching 33.

In Priestly law, impurity is stripped of its mythic origins in the demonic realm but still retains its dangerous, physical presence, and must be mitigated by specific acts of ritual cleansing and banishing, depending on the type of impurity. Purification from the skin disease tzaraʿat (Leviticus 13–14) offers the starkest example of such a ritual.

Deuteronomy and Leviticus drew on common Vorlage (source text) to develop their regulations about the consumption of land, marine, and winged creatures. While Deuteronomy only lightly modifies this Vorlage, the editors of Leviticus expanded the text in several stages to align it with Priestly ideology.

In verses 2–31, YHWH is a mythic warrior, with smoke coming from his nostrils, riding a cherub and wielding weapons of lightning and thunder against the enemy. In contrast, in verses 32–51, YHWH strengthens and equips the psalmist to fight his own battles. The combined psalm celebrates YHWH’s complex involvement in human affairs.

Royal lovers, a female goatherd and male shepherd, King Solomon and his bride, an urban relationship that ends violently, and a sister and her protective brothers. Is it possible to read these episodes as a single love story?

We invited our authors and friends to share practices, ideas, experiences, and analyses from their own seders that enhance their seder-night experience.

Known by the acronym Pardes, four approaches—peshat, the literal, remez, the philosophical-allegorical, derash, the midrashic-allegorical, and sod, the mystical—can be found not only in commentaries on the Song of Songs but also in a variety of musical settings.

The seventh part of the qedushta for the ancient triennial Torah reading וַיְהִי בַּחֲצִי הַלַּיְלָה, “It Came to Pass at Midnight,” was preserved in the Haggadah. This is the only poem of Yannai’s (ca. 5th/6th cent. C.E.) to be retained in the liturgy.

Abraham, Hagar, Moses, and Gideon all encounter the angel of YHWH. What is this divine being and how are we to understand its relationship to YHWH?

“You shall not abhor an Egyptian, for you were a sojourner in that land” (Deuteronomy 23:8). Many biblical references to Israel’s sojourn in Egypt do not mention slavery and oppression and describe how the Israelites worked their own fields, owned homes, were friendly with neighbors, and had delicious food.

Shalhevetyah שַׁלְהֶבֶתְיָה, Song of Songs 8:6, a word appearing only here in the Bible, expresses the power of love by evoking the fiery destructive force of YHWH.

The high priest’s colorful vestments of purples and crimson blend with the inner color scheme of the Tabernacle, making his appearance in YHWH’s abode as unobtrusive as possible. At the same time, he wears colorful, reflective stones on his breastpiece that do not match the color scheme and naturally catch the eye. Why?

Was the Tabernacle constructed only in response to the golden calf? Rashi and Nachmanides’s disagreement on this fundamental question highlights the structural problem in the second half of the book of Exodus, created when the compiler of the Torah interwove the E and P sources.

But doesn’t YHWH tell Moses that “no human can see me and live”(Exodus 33:20)?

Was the 13^th of Adar a day when the Jews successfully defended themselves against their enemies, or was it a day when they could take vengeance against their enemies? Does Mordechai’s edict offset Haman’s edict or replace it?

Artificial intelligence is taking biblical interpretation to a whole new level, enabling us to understand 13 otherworldly scenes in the Bible like never before.