Latest Essays

Four Aramaic targumim (ancient translations) have God, and not just cherubim, taking up residence east of the garden. This is based on a slightly different vocalization of the Hebrew text, which is likely a more original reading than our current biblical text (MT).

The end of Deuteronomy recounts that at an age of one hundred and twenty Moses says he is no longer able/allowed to lead the people’s journey and will therefore not be carrying them on to cross the Jordan (Deuteronomy 31:2). According to other places in the Torah, however, Moses dies because of a sin – his or of the people.

Jesus is famously associated with the holiday of Passover. However, according to the Gospel of John, Jesus makes his debut and final visit at the temple on Sukkot, while the Book of Revelation uses Sukkot imagery to describe Jesus’ future appearance on earth. These repurposings of Sukkot and its rituals highlight Sukkot’s eschatological significance for Jews in Second Temple times (Zechariah 14).

We sit in the sukkah to remind us that “I (God) made the Israelites live in sukkot when I brought them out of the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 23:43). Accordingly, why isn’t Sukkot celebrated in the month of Nissan, when we left Egypt?

Sukkot was a festival of paramount importance to Jews in Greco-Roman antiquity, and was well-known to non-Jews. In fact, its processions with festive palm branches (lulavim) reminded pagans of Bacchic rituals with the thyrsos carried by the votaries of Dionysus/Bacchus and used in his festivals.

Several poetic verses in Deuteronomy were used in Second Temple times to support the belief in multiple characters in the divine realm. Thus, the scribes of the early Masoretic text, who opposed this belief, sometimes went so far as to revise or excise these references.

Close reading of the relevant biblical texts uncovers friction, maybe momentous historical reform.

Seeking truth and thinking critically are spiritual endeavors that, like mitzvot and other deeds, require reflection and self-correction.

It seems obvious that the song referred to in God’s speech in Deuteronomy 31 is Ha’azinu, though some verses in this chapter imply that it might be the Torah itself. A redaction critical look at God’s speech suggests that neither of these was the original referent.

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?

Several biblical passages imply that God was ritually enthroned as king during the new year celebrations. In the Torah itself, however, this is suppressed. God as king appears only in three ancient poetic passages, never in the Torah’s prose or laws, including in its description of Rosh Hashanah.

The rabbis translate the phrase ארמי אובד אבי in Deuteronomy 26:5 “an Aramean tried to destroy my father” and understand it as a reference to Laban, who they claim was worse than Pharaoh. But whereas the biblical Laban can be read either sympathetically or unsympathetically, he is hardly a Pharaoh-like villain, so why demonize him?

Deuteronomy’s description of the circumstances of divorce is ambiguous. Thus, the Mishnah (m. Gittin 9:10) records three different opinions on when a man is allowed to divorce his wife. What can we infer from the biblical text?

Men and women are prohibited from wearing each other’s clothes (Deuteronomy 22:5). What is the motivation behind this law, and why is this behavior “abhorrent to YHWH”?

A man with two wives is required to recognize the birthright of his firstborn son, even if his mother is the less favored wife (Deuteronomy 21:15-17). This law is intertextually linked to Jacob’s giving Reuben’s firstborn rights to Joseph in Genesis, but it can also be read as a response to Abraham’s disinheriting Ishmael in favor of his younger son, Isaac.

The agricultural allocations for the poor outlined in Leviticus and Deuteronomy are a series of negative commandments, in which God forbids Israelite householders from gathering some of their produce and requires them to leave it for the poor. The rabbis took these laws a step further, granting the poor property rights over the allocations even before they are gathered.

If a corpse is found in a field, and the killer is unknown, the enders of the closest city to break a heifer’s neck by a stream and declare that they did not spill “this blood” (Deuteronomy 21). How does this ritual of eglah arufah, “broken-necked heifer,” atone for Israel’s bloodguilt?

Copper has been mined in the Timna Valley since the 5th millennium B.C.E. Recent excavations reveal that the height of activity in the region dates to the 10th century B.C.E. and thus domination of this remote region during this period would have meant control of the lucrative copper industry. Could this be the unwritten backdrop to the Bible’s account of David’s conquest of Edom and Solomon’s great wealth?

According to Deuteronomy, a false prophet who has no message from God, and advocates worshiping other gods, can still successfully perform miracles and predict the future.

...but who inspired whom?

Deuteronomy 11 repeats, reworks, and supplements the core phrases and themes of the Shema paragraph in Deuteronomy 6 in order to teach the Israelites how to deal with one of their major future challenges: the temptations that accompany wealth, comfort, and affluence. 

The second paragraph of Shema (Deuteronomy 11:13-21) has significant overlaps with the first (Deuteronomy 6:4-9), including some identical phrases and core concepts. It was likely written as a later elaboration of the first, a process that may reflect the earliest stages of the Shema becoming a central text.

Deuteronomy has Moses receiving a revelation at Horeb, but only teaching the Israelites its contents decades later in the Land of Moab. This two-step revelatory process, which is presented as two covenants (Deuteronomy 28:69), masks an earlier form of Deuteronomy that had no record of a Horeb revelation.

Moses promises that if Israel forsakes the covenant, God will destroy them permanently (Deut 4:25-26). Drawing on a midrash, Rashi explains that God exiled Israel early to avoid having to wipe them out; thus, God never actualized this threat. Considering Rashi’s responses to Christian ideas in other biblical texts, Rashi's comment on Deut 4:25 may well be an apologetic effort to prove that God’s covenant with the Jews remains intact.

The First Temple was destroyed either on the 10^th of Av (Jeremiah 52:12) or the 7^th (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?