Latest Essays

Traditional and Critical Approaches

Generally translated as “do not steal,” the Rabbis make a compelling case for understanding lo tignov in the Decalogue to be a prohibition against the more serious offense of kidnapping, or, in modern terms, human trafficking.

YHWH commissions Isaiah to distract the people of Judah so that they continue to sin and then YHWH can punish them harshly. In contrast to other biblical figures such as Abraham and Moses, Isaiah is silent at this injustice.

Ten observations about the Song of the Sea and what it is really about.

The opening of the wilderness-wandering story in Exodus uses the Leitwort נ-ס-ה to underline the process of reciprocal testing between Israel and God as preparation for the Sinai event. This testing parallels that of the wilderness-wandering story in Numbers, which uses the Leitworter נ-ס-ע and נ-ש-א to underline the process of preparation Israel goes through before entering the land.

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

Exodus narrates three distinct conceptions of God’s relationship to Pharaoh’s stubbornness: God was surprised, God knew beforehand, and God was the direct cause.  The final conception reflects the Priestly redaction of the Torah, whose authors were unwilling to leave the destiny of the plagues up to Pharaoh’s own heart.

Exodus 12:40 declares that the Israelites were in Egypt for 430 years, yet evidence from other biblical texts suggests a much shorter sojourn.

Moses’ first set of laws in Deuteronomy (11:31–12:28) requires the Israelites to destroy Canaanite sites of worship and to centralize sacrifice for Yahweh at the site of His choosing. It also allows them to eat meat without sacrificing the animal, under particular conditions. A close look at the terms of Moses’ speech shows that the text has been supplemented no less than three times.

Reading the plagues of locust, darkness, and firstborn in their ancient Egyptian context.

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.

The plague story expanded over time in three main stages: The oldest stage (E) has Moses perform 3 plagues on his own; this was revised to create a story of an all-powerful God performing 8 plagues (J), utilizing Moses as a mouthpiece. Finally, the Priestly redactor revised this into our familiar narrative of 10 plagues, in which God uses the miracles to announce himself to Egypt and the world.

An introduction to a series in conjunction with the University of Haifa’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research of the Cairo Genizah

Who were the midwives who risked their lives to save male Hebrew babies—Israelites or Egyptians? A text discovered at the Cairo Genizah sheds new light on this exegetical conundrum.

Do the rabbis believe that the scribes changed the wording of some verses in the Bible? A look at how the great medieval rabbi, Rashi, reacted to one “correction” sheds light on the history of the Jewish belief in the inviolability of the Torah text.

The names and numbers of Jacob’s descendants differ between the Masoretic Text (MT) and the Septuagint (LXX). Which tradition is more original, and what prompted the change?

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.

2 Maccabees tells the story of a mother whose seven sons are killed before her eyes because they refuse to violate Jewish mores. The mother recalls the woman of seven sons and her bereft counterpart found in Hannah’s prayer (1 Samuel 2), and perhaps also the mother in Jerusalem described in Jeremiah 15, but offers a new theological twist on Jewish suffering: the promise of resurrection.

The Book of Daniel describes in apocalyptic visions, the history of the conflict between Judea and Antiochus Epiphanes, but fails to dream that the Maccabees, a political group of guerrilla fighters, will win.

Judith is a beautiful, clever, and righteous Jewish woman who saves her people by enticing and then beheading the enemy commander who threatens Jerusalem and its Temple. What is her connection to Chanukah?

Clothing functions both as a marker of distinction and as the source of undoing in the Joseph story. A midrash suggests that Joseph’s coat is the same garment made from the sloughed skin of the serpent that God gave to Adam and Eve, which was then worn by Nimrod, Esau, and Jacob. Another midrash claims it to be the (future) High Priest’s tunic.

A background fraught with favoritism