Latest Essays

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all include accounts of women discovering Jesus’ tomb empty three days after his crucifixion that share a common structure, but vary considerably in their details. Christians reading the story at Easter experience vicariously the women’s fear and awe, just as Jews re-experience the Exodus through the Haggadah.

In Ezekiel’s graphic metaphor of a girl abandoned in the blood of her afterbirth, God sees baby Jerusalem and urges her to live (Ezekiel 16:6–7) but leaves her there until she is older. The verse’s inclusion in the Haggadah (ca. 16^th century) hinges on Mekhilta’s radical reinterpretation and regendering of the blood as representing Israel’s first mitzvot in Egypt: circumcision and the paschal offering. In response to Christian supersessionism, women’s menstrual blood was added as a third example of Israel’s blood-based mitzvot.

As a Christian, the Exodus is my story of divine liberation and hope. As an Egyptian, it casts my homeland as the oppressor of God’s people—forcing me to wrestle with faith and identity.

Pig’s blood, crushed bird heads, animal fats, and fine oils were all used to mark the doorposts and thresholds in the ancient Near East, to protect against a host of dangerous supernatural powers. The Torah repurposes this ritual as a practical sign allowing YHWH to distinguish between Israelite and Egyptian households. An anthropological lens points to yet another layer of meaning in this ritual, carried out on the very night before Israel leaves Egypt.

In what ways are we still enslaved—and what would real freedom look like today, both personally and collectively?

The Bible portrays YHWH as in control of opening and closing the womb. Yet biblical narratives and other ancient evidence show women seeking fertility through plants, rituals, amulets, and midwifery practices—revealing a world in which divine control and human agency coexist in the pursuit of conception and safe birth.

From Miriam leading the women in a tambourine-accompanied victory dance at the parting of the Sea to King David leaping and dancing before the Ark of the Covenant, the Bible celebrates dance in many forms. The whirling, ecstatic motion of dance unites the people, carrying them into a trance and bringing them closer to the divine. Yet when Moses sees Israel dancing around the golden calf in a festival dedicated by Aaron to YHWH, he erupts in anger. Why?

The biblical accounts of the Tabernacle and Solomon’s Temple reflect ancient Near Eastern ideas of divine residence. Ezra’s account of the Second Temple, however—where the altar is built first—reflects a theology closer to the Greek world, also echoed in the patriarchal stories of Genesis.

Ezekiel portrays the Levites as guilty of leading Israel into idolatry, stripping them of priestly status and reserving the priesthood in the future Temple for the sons of Zadok, בְּנֵי צָדוֹק. In response, Levitical groups preserved alternative traditions, most notably a counter-narrative in the Golden Calf story, where the Levites alone answer Moses’ call to execute the worshippers of the golden calf, and through this act of loyalty to YHWH, receive ordination.

Why does Moses’ face radiate only after receiving the second tablets of the Decalogue? Did Moses really cover his face before speaking to the people? And why does the story of the veil describe a Tent of Meeting that hasn’t even been constructed? A closer look at the story reveals that some biblical authors found Moses’ radiant face problematic.

From a shadowed queen in the third-century synagogue frescoes of Dura-Europos to a defiant heroine recast in the shadow of the Holocaust, Esther’s image has never stood still. Across centuries of Jewish art—medieval manuscripts, early modern megillot, linocuts, mosaics, and mystical modern paintings—artists have reshaped her image from demure beauty to decisive leader. Each generation paints the Esther it needs.

Saul hurls his spear in rage. David refuses to seize it. Two centuries later, David’s spear appears in the Temple at Joash’s coronation. In the ancient Near East, the king’s spear is more than a weapon—it is a symbol of royal authority and judicial responsibility.

A person who digs or opens a pit into which an animal falls is liable for damages (Exodus 21:33–34). As a result of a hyper-literal reading of the term בַּעַל הַבּוֹר (baʿal ha-bor)—literally “the owner of the pit”—combined with abstract legal codification, the Talmud ends up suggesting that, in fact, a person who digs a pit on public property is actually exempt from paying damages.

Hammurabi’s Laws and other ancient Near Eastern legal collections were sanctioned by the gods, but crafted by kings. How and why did the laws in the Torah become God’s laws?

The book of Ezra–Nehemiah records Nehemiah’s mid-fifth-century B.C.E. attempts to enforce Shabbat, and for the first time in the Bible, the name שַׁבְּתַי, Shabbethai, appears. In this period, similar names derived from Shabbat are also first attested in Babylonian cuneiform tablets, as well as ostraca and papyri from Elephantine, suggesting that Shabbat became a recognized reference within the Judean community.

For Ahad Haʿam and Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Shabbat was not about belief but about belonging. Through their Cultural Zionist vision, Shabbat emerges as the aesthetic, temporal, and cultural heart of Jewish identity—welcomed each week as a queen in a song meant to update the more traditional Shalom Aleichem.

It wasn’t until the late Second Temple period—shaped by Greek and Roman legal culture—that Torah law started to function as actual law.

Also known as מוקדם שהוא מאוחר בענין, “phrases written out of order,” Rabbi Eliezer’s 31st principle of exegesis helps solve interpretive difficulties, such as: Does Samuel really sleep in the Tabernacle next to the ark? Why is Lot’s property referred to as “Abraham’s nephew”? What does it mean that Pharaoh’s daughter washes on the Nile?

First attested to in the 10th century Chronicles of Moses, a midrash relates how Pharaoh had lions guarding the palace entrance, tearing up any unwanted visitors. Due to its popularity, it is also preserved in a 15th century mahzor, as part of its Aramaic targum to the Song of the Sea.

... and instead praise them!

Moses, an Egyptian prince who discovers he is a Hebrew, makes for a compelling movie. But is that the peshat, the straightforward meaning of the biblical story?

Philo (1st century C.E.) understands “God of Abraham and God of Isaac and God of Jacob” (LXX Exodus 3:15) as a divine name. Because the immortal nature of God cannot be directly associated with mortal human beings, and influenced by Greek principles dating back to the 6th–5th century B.C.E., Philo interprets Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as symbols of three paths to moral excellence: learning, nature, and practice.

Leah names her sons to express her longing for Jacob’s love, but eventually abandons that hope. When her daughter is born, Leah names her Dinah—from the noun דין (din), a silent cry for “justice” after being trapped in a marriage to Jacob, who did not love her. Growing up in the shadow of her mother’s marital agony, Dinah seeks a different life for herself. In the Bible’s only story to foreground a mother–daughter connection, she ventures beyond the safety of home to explore her non-Israelite neighbors.

Deemed loathsome from the very moment of her birth (Ezekiel 16), Jerusalem was unwashed, unsalted, and abandoned—left to flail in her own blood. In every sense, she grew to womanhood neglected and alone. With such a stark beginning, it is no wonder that she fails to engage lovingly and devotedly in her marriage to YHWH.

Wolves in the Bible are depicted negatively as ruthless predators. So why, in Jacob’s farewell poem (Genesis 49:27), is Benjamin described as a ravenous wolf who devours foes by day and divides the spoil by night? The answer lies in a time when the ancient Israelites lived as nomads or semi-nomads, raising flocks and carrying out surprise raids; thus, wolves were a proud symbol of strength, cunning, and success.