Latest Essays

After being swallowed by a fish, Jonah prays to God in its belly. Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer reads this prayer midrashically, as a description of an alternative mission for Jonah in the underworld, in which he saves the fish from the Leviathan and promises to bring it (the Leviathan) as a sacrifice for the righteous in the end of days.

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.

Praying for God’s shekhinah, Divine presence, in heaven to radiate on earth.

The nature of prophecy is perhaps one of the most overlooked questions, but it was critically important to the medieval Jewish philosophers Sa’adia Gaon, Judah Halevi, Ibn Ezra, and Maimonides.

Channah and Elkanah’s yearly feast resembles a Mesopotamian fertility ritual; when year after year God doesn’t respond, Channah turns to God directly and enters the Tabernacle.

The inscrutable story of the Akedah, can be better understood in light of its subversive sequel, the equally morally complex book of Job.

Ben Sorer u-Moreh as a Test Case