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 164 B.C.E., Judah Maccabee defeats the Seleucid army and purifies the Temple. The fighting continues, and Judah is killed in 160 B.C.E. Only in 142 B.C.E. do the Seleucids finally make peace with Simon, Judah’s last surviving brother, who founds the Hasmonean dynasty of high priests that rule Judea for a century. Who established Chanukah as a holiday?

YHWH instructs Moses to sound a teruah blast to get the eastern camp to travel, and a second for the southern camp. What about the western and northern camps? The answer can be found by comparing the Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Septuagint: It was a parablepsis.

Song of Songs opens with: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for דֹּדֶיךָ (MT “your loving”) or mastoi sou (LXX “your breasts”) are better than wine.” Why does the LXX translate this way and which version is correct?

When YHWH tells Abraham that Sodom and Gomorrah are to be destroyed, Abraham pleads for their lives without mentioning Lot. Why? The answer is in the sources describing Lot's accompanying of Abram to Canaan and their eventual separation.

The Torah is often used to highlight various ethical values while its many ethically problematic commandments are ignored or explained away. Is there a way to treat the Torah as a moral authority while honestly confronting the ethical issues it raises?

After giving birth to a male, the mother is impure for 7 days, followed by 33 days of purification. However, with a female, the mother is impure for 14 days, followed by 66 days of purification.

R. Eleazar of Worms in the 12^th century, defended the practice of spilling wine when reciting the plagues against detractors who disparaged it, by offering a mystical, numerological rationale. This, however, was a post-facto attempt to explain a folk custom, whose origins lie in the human fear of being struck by these very plagues.

Genesis 36:31 introduces a list of kings who ruled “before a king ruled in Israel,” ostensibly a reference to Saul. Traditional commentators, committed to the Mosaic authorship of the Torah, have long struggled to reinterpret this phrase against its plain meaning, though some accepted its implications.

In four passages, the Torah has a father explaining different commandments to a son by referencing the exodus from Egypt. Comparing the wording in these biblical passages, the rabbis reinterpreted—and even revised—them to reflect a father explaining Pesach to four different sons: wise, stupid, wicked, and one who doesn’t ask.

Statements that express our feelings are often confused with factual assertions.

From God’s first command to Moses, through the story of Israel’s escape, the demand for a three-day festival in the wilderness plays a prominent role in the exodus narrative. Part of this ruse was Israel’s request to “borrow” Egyptian finery for the festival. Why does God want the Israelites to use deception?

Joseph, sold by two different groups (Midianites and Ishmaelites), seems to have been bought by two different men (Potiphar, captain of the guard, and an unnamed Egyptian man), leading to two discrete storylines, each of which place Joseph in a different position when he meets the cupbearer and the baker.

A 2000-year-old question on how to read a single word in the Torah has generated different opinions on how a custodian for someone’s animal should go about proving that the animal was killed by a beast and not stolen.

Bringing Parashat Vayechi to Life

After Sarah dies, Abraham marries Keturah. Who is she?

Did Caleb receive the Negev or Hebron? Is he a Judahite, a Calebite or a Kenizzite? The redacted account of Caleb in the Bible reflects the developing realities of southern Judah in the First and Second Temple periods.

Set in between two stories that describe Sarah as old and withered is the episode of Abimelech taking Sarah. Why does he desire her?

The missing links

When God reveals the name YHWH to Moses in Exodus, he says that not even the patriarchs knew this name, yet they all use it in Genesis. Critical scholarship’s solution to this problem led to one of the most important academic innovations in biblical studies in the last three hundred years: the Documentary Hypothesis.

Ezekiel challenges the divine (in)justice of intergenerational punishment, even though it appears in the Decalogue.

A New Insight into an Old Question

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 final phrase of Haazinu (Deut 32:1-43) in the MT, וכפר אדמתו עמו, “and he will atone for his land, his people,” is difficult to parse. The textual variants from Qumran, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Septuagint offer a clearer, if more dismal, understanding of the phrase.

As part of the selichot prayer service, the rabbis cut the biblical phrase וְנַקֵּה לֹא יְנַקֶּה “[YHWH] does not remit punishment” to read only וְנַקֵּה, which yields the opposite meaning, “[YHWH] remits punishment.” Although this edit is surprising, the rabbis are responding to a serious tension in the biblical text: Is YHWH a merciful God who pardons, or a vengeful God who will never remit punishment?

Before Moses dies, he asks God for a leader who will “come and go” before the people. God’s response is unequivocal: appoint Joshua. Nevertheless, as the narrative continues, God places Joshua under Elazar the priest, a clear sign of later redaction. When was this change made and why?

Commentators have struggled with this question for centuries, but ancient cosmology offers a compelling solution.

A look at traditional attempts to make sense of a scribal error; does the LXX have the original version?

Jerusalem in the 14th century B.C.E. was a Canaanite city; by the 10th/9th century B.C.E. it was Israelite. The Bible records several different accounts of how it was conquered. What are we to make of these different traditions?

Before several plagues, God commands Moses to warn Pharaoh. Moses delivers this warning, but his actual words are not recorded. In the plague of locusts, the opposite occurs, and God’s wording is not recorded while Moses’ warning is. The SP fills in these lacunae by recording each instance.

Hoshana Rabbah, the final day of the High Holiday cycle, has a fascinating ritual service, the hoshanot, which includes the making of seven circuits around a Torah scroll and ends with the beating of willow sprigs against the ground. What is the significance of this ritual?

The historical events surrounding the holiday, Yom Nicanor, and why we should consider marking the day in our generation.

At the well, the servant asks Rebecca who her father is, and she answers, “I am the daughter of Betuel the son of Milkah, whom she bore to Nahor” (Genesis 24:24). Why the unusual genealogical description?

How ancient scribes dealt with a confusing story — a textual critical analysis

Moses tells the soldiers returning from the Midianite war that they must purify themselves from corpse impurity. Elazar then jumps in with a unique law in Moses’ name about the need to purify metal in fire. Critical and traditional scholars alike—including the scribes of the Samaritan Pentateuch—were troubled by why Elazar and not Moses teaches this law.

A classic example of source criticism applied to Torah legislation.

In Leviticus and Numbers, ma’aser (tithing) refers to a Temple tax; in Deuteronomy, however, it refers either to what must be brought and consumed on a pilgrimage festival or to charity. This dichotomy led the rabbis to design the cumbersome system of the first and second tithes (maaser rishon and maaser sheni).

The protocols of ancient Near Eastern courts shed light on the danger Mordechai faces in reporting a conspiracy. A case in point: An Assyrian official, who tried to save Sennacherib from being assassinated by his son Arda-Mullisi, ends up being killed by the assassins himself.

Kohelet begins and ends with the phrase הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים “all is futile” (1:2, 12:8). Rashbam argues that these aren’t the author’s words but an editorial framing, which includes the famous ending that the sum of the matter is to fear God and keep His commandments (12:13). If we remove this framing, the book ends on a very different note.

Fasting in contemporary Judaism is tied to specific days in the calendar. In the Bible and Second Temple texts, however, fasting—communal and individual—was primarily a response to current events.

Betuel, Rebecca’s father, mysteriously appears and disappears in the negotiations over Rebecca’s marriage.

“And this is the Torah that Moses Placed Before the Children of Israel”

The connection between the Israelite festival of Sukkot in the temple and the Ugaritic new year festival and its dwellings of branches for the gods.  

According to tradition, must we believe that the Torah is: Historical? Mosaic? Univocal? Perfect?

At stake is Ibn Ezra’s curse: “May your tongue stick to your palate… may your arm dry up and your right eye go blind.” 

The First Temple was destroyed either on the 10th of Av (Jeremiah 52:12) or the 7th (2 Kings 25:8). The Second Temple, according to Josephus, was destroyed on the 10th. How did Rabbinic Jews come to commemorate the destruction of both Temples on the 9th of Av?

Noah learns of the sin of his youngest son, (Ham), and yet curses Canaan (his grandson); is Canaan Noah's youngest son? Contrasting traditional and critical approaches.

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?”

God instructs Moses to tell the Israelites two different names, Ehyeh and YHWH.

Weighing the historicity of the exodus story entails more than addressing the lack of archaeological evidence.

How do they differ? What are their respective goals? And why the two should not be confused.

Jacob’s ancient scientific trick.

An overview of Persian history starting from Cyrus the Great’s conquest of Media (549 B.C.E.) until Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia (334-329 B.C.E.), including related biblical references and Jewish texts.

The Rabbis describe how the ritual of ניסוך המים (water libation), which they believed was to have occurred every Sukkot in the Temple, was a point of contention between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, but why was it so contentious and what was at stake in its performance?

Babies, birds, angels, even Torah scholars, tradition has interpreted cherubs in various ways, but what was their function on the ark?

Numbers 21:16–18 speaks about the Song of the Well, but only records a short snippet. Whereas most commentators assume that the song was simply very short, R. Yehudah HeChasid offers the radical suggestion that the song was actually cut from the Torah and placed in the book of Psalms by none other than King David.

How the conflation of Kiryat-arba and Hebron created a new mythic character, Arba, father of the giants.

In the ancient world, genealogy was not about family relations but about political alliances.

Expanding upon R. David Zvi Hoffmann’s insight that Parashat Tzav (Lev 6-7) was originally connected directly with the laws of the miluim (ordination) sacrifice in Exodus 29, with a second sacrificial unit (Lev 1-5) spliced in the middle.

And Ibn Ezra's Secret

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?

Leviticus requires covering the blood of undomesticated animals; Deuteronomy requires pouring out the blood of slaughtered domesticated animals onto the ground. How do these laws jibe with each other? The Essenes have one answer, the rabbis another, the academics a third.

A literary strategy used by pre-modern editors and authors that works in a similar way to the classic cinematographic catch-phrase, “Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch.” (With an addendum by Prof. Marc Brettler)

In reference to the parturient, the Torah speaks of a 33 or 66 day period of דמי טהרה “blood of her purity” as distinguished from a 7 or 14 day period “like menstruation.” What is the difference between these two periods according to Leviticus and how did later groups such as rabbinic Jews, Karaites, Samaritans, and Beta Israel understand it?

“When morning came, there was Leah!” (Genesis 29:25). Could Jacob not tell the difference between Rachel, his beloved of seven years, and her sister Leah—for a whole night? Commentators have long tried to make sense of the story by adding extra details, but perhaps we need to rethink the nature of Jacob and Rachel’s relationship during those years.

Traditional and Academic Insights

Jewish law requires a menstruant woman to purify herself by immersing in water. A schematic look at Leviticus 15 actually implies this is not a Torah requirement.

The Torah states “do not cook a kid in its mother's milk.” What does this phrase mean, and how did it develop into the prohibition of mixing meat and milk?

The Torah prohibits a mourning ritual called tonsuring, i.e., the pulling out or cutting of hair to express sorrow. Rabbinic interpretation understood these verses as a prohibition for men to shave their beards or temples with a razor. Ibn Ezra, however, uncharacteristically rejects the rabbinic interpretation of these verses, and Shadal, who accepts ibn Ezra's reading, goes as far as to say that he himself shaves with a razor.

Traditional and critical scholars agree that the Ohel Moed “Tent of Meeting” Moses erects in Exodus 33 is not the same as the Ohel Moed Tabernacle referenced in other biblical texts. But what is it?

Before Noah became the protagonist of the Israelite flood story, his original place in Israelite historiography was as the ancient farmer who discovered wine, bringing the world relief from the toil of work caused by God’s cursing the soil.

Are the Torah’s laws perfect or do they reflect biblical times and can adapt as society develops? The punishment of a rapist is a good test case for thinking about morally problematic biblical laws.