In pre-exilic texts, לְהַבְדִּיל lehavdil means “to select, appoint, designate.” In the Priestly text, the term is used to refer to physical separation, while in the Holiness Text, it takes on an abstract meaning, to distinguish between objects and people in a cultic sense. The book of Ezra uses a new form of the term, לְהִבָּדֵל lehibbadel, to urge separating from non-Jews, prompting Trito-Isaiah to argue against separating (lehavdil) any faithful person from YHWH and His Temple.

Ancient Near Eastern law collections do not unequivocally prohibit a son from marrying his father's wife, and neither do modern incest laws. And yet, the Bible repeats this prohibition multiple times. Six reasons why.

The belief in the power of an angry or jealous person’s eye to damage others was pervasive in the ancient Near East, in Jewish antiquity, and medieval times. But what does the Bible say?

It is widely assumed that the Torah prohibits all tattoos. And yet, a look at the verse in context yields alternative understandings.

Job's friends piously justify God's actions and challenge Job to accept that he has done wrong. Yet God sides with Job and rebukes the friends for not “speaking about me in honesty as did my servant Job.”

Leviticus 18 and 20 condemn sexual sins using several harsh terms; toevah, zimmah, chesed, tevel. Do these terms have specific meanings and what do they tell us about the Torah’s reason for forbidding incest?

The biblical precept “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” has long been understood in Jewish and Christian circles as universal, a transcendent principle encompassing the whole Torah. However, in Leviticus, it is actually one of many action-oriented commandments focused on Israelite social cohesion.

Only two law collections in the ancient Near East discuss bestiality: the Torah and the Hittite laws. How do these laws differ, and what motivated them?

Ancient Near Eastern cultic rituals located the presence of gods and divine messages in nature.

A fresh look at the legislation in Parashat Kedoshim: Are we reading the legal details wrong? 

In the Priestly Torah and the Holiness School

Emphasizing the Holiness of Ethics over the Ritual

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.

Deuteronomy commands a man to marry the childless widow of his brother (yibbum). And yet, a close look at the Priestly text of the Torah shows that it did not have the option of yibbum.

The Hidden Message of the Opening Verses of Kedoshim

Ancient Israel had two separate customs relating to vineyards and wine that took place during the time of vintage: a fertility rite (חילול) that marked the first use of a vineyard’s produce, and an annual vintage celebration (הילולים) in which the winegrowers praised God for their harvest. As the rites seem to have been wild, the law of ‘orla and the fourth year produce (רבעי) in Lev. 19:23-25 attempts to restrict them.

A set of homilies from the Genizah connects two biblical readings (sidrot) in Leviticus by emphasizing the importance of the mitzvah of orlah as a key to inheriting and remaining on the land.

How do the laws of Leviticus 18 compare to the laws and practices of the Babylonians, Hittites, and Egyptians, and to the rest of the Bible?

Leviticus 19:13 and Deuteronomy 24:14 insist that workers be paid without delay. The Talmud, however, interprets these two verses in a way that actually delays paying the workers. Rashbam and Ramban, reassert the peshat (plain meaning), thereby preserving the intent of the law.

Three different sources in the Torah express the Israelites’ separation from their neighbors as a core ideal.