Latest Essays

Genesis Rabbah surprisingly portrays Lot’s daughters and their choices in a decidedly positive light, while exacerbating Lot’s culpability.

The biblical track record suggests that blessings often come with competition, resentment and strife. What kind of blessings are, indeed, blessings?

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

A Source Sheet listing R’ Avraham ibn Ezra’s Six Non-Mosaic Biblical Passages plus his One Counter-Example, with the Complete Text of ibn Ezra’s Comments and Bonfils’ Glosses on these comments in English and Hebrew

An analysis of the Rabbinic interpretation that the covenant of the pieces predates the Lech Lecha command.

The Tower of Babel story is a marvelous tale about the ambition and hubris of primal humanity, with a biting political message and dark insights into the human condition.

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.

Rabbi Eliezer says that the sukkah is meant to remind us of the real booths from the wilderness period. Rabbi Akiba (surprisingly) suggests that it reminds us of the clouds of glory. What is at the heart of this debate?

The Torah and Bavli vs. the Prophets and Yerushalmi

Israelite-Samaritan Sukkot

The Aleinu prayer begins, עלינו לשבח לאדון הכל, “It is for us to praise the Master of all,” which creates theological tension: If God is presented here as the Master of all, why is it only Jews who are to praise God?

Why God repeats his command to Jonah a second time

Leviticus 16 – ויקרא טז

The missing links

The earliest version of the birth and sacrifice of Isaac account questioned the identity of the boy’s father and concluded with Abraham sacrificing him to God.

Deuteronomy 32 imagines God as a father, an eyelid, an eagle, a nursing mother, and a protective rock. Why so many metaphors?

A linguistic analysis of וּתְשׁוּבָה וּתְפִלָּה וּצְדָקָה מַעֲבִירִין אֶת רֹעַ הַגְּזֵרָה, “But repentance, prayer and charity cancel the harsh decree.”

Bringing “different voices” from the margin to the center of religious life.

The study of biblical criticism cuts to the very meaning of the value system of Modern Orthodoxy, i.e. forging a distinctive synthesis of modern culture with traditional values.