Prof. Aaron Demsky

Jacob is renamed Israel after being wounded in his struggle with a divine being. The Torah then introduces the prohibition against eating the sciatic nerve, a commandment that has played little role in shaping Jewish identity. Remarkably, in medieval China, the Kaifeng Jews elevated this otherwise marginal rule into their defining communal name.

Goren-haʿatad, at the southwestern border of Canaan, is situated near a crossing point of Abel-Mitzrayim, the Brook of Egypt. It is named Yardan/Jordan Pass, after an obscure village in this region mentioned by Pharaoh Shishak, Josephus, and the Madaba map. A Syriac text describes a battle of Arab armies against Christians, Jews, and Samaritans that took place there in 634 C.E., and which likely ended in the village’s destruction.

Today, Rachel’s tomb lies near Bethlehem, in the territory of Judah, son of Leah. However, reading the description of her burial in Genesis 35:19 and 48:7 together with the references to Rachel’s tomb in the story of Saul’s anointing (1 Samuel 10:2) and Jeremiah's prophecy of consolation (Jeremiah 31:14) directs us further north, to the territory of her son Benjamin.

Deuteronomy uses unusual parallel terms “the shegar of your herd and the ashtorot of your flock” to describe the offspring of livestock. These are names of the ancient West Semitic fertility goddess known as Ashtoret or by her less familiar bi-name Sheger. Her consort is (sometimes) the god Ashtor. What do we know about these deities and what do they have to do with livestock?

The genealogy of the tribe of Manasseh appears in Numbers 26 and again in Joshua 17 with slight differences. It appears a third time, in 1 Chronicles 7, wholly reconceived, highlighting how certain biblical genealogies represent tribal kinship patterns that shift over time.

The Samaria ostraca and a close look at biblical verses help us locate Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milkah, and Tirzah, in the territory of Manasseh.

Abimelech, Michal, Sisera’s mother, and Jezebel all look through a window, but their experience is not the same.

The rabbis claim that a “subverted” or “apostate” city, which Deuteronomy 13:13-18 condemns to destruction, “never was and never will be” (t. San. 14:1). Yet the account in Judges 19-21 of the destruction or ḥerem of Gibeah, its inhabitants, animals, and property, suggests that such “internal ḥerem” was an Israelite practice, and that Gibeah is being presented as a subverted city.

Deuteronomy’s command to publicly read the Torah on Sukkot every seven years appears in stories about King Josiah, King Agrippa, and Ezra the Scribe. The latter’s innovative ceremony served as the model for what became synagogue Torah-reading.

חכלילי עינים מיין (Genesis 49:12) is an obscure phrase. In contrast to the standard interpretation, Nachmanides offered an original interpretation, which finds support in modern linguistic analysis and an archaeological find.

The history and geography of the Judahite clan of Shelah as portrayed in the Bible and in the extra-biblical Sources.

The term לשוח is a hapax legomenon, a term that appears only once in the Bible. What does it mean?

Genealogical lists are often overlooked, and yet they represent a distinct biblical literary genre with ideological content. What messages are these lists meant to convey?

The Hebrew calendar marks multiple news year’s days to express different values: nature and history, universal and particular.