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Blood

Predators Are Prohibited, Why Are Ducks Kosher?

Biblical dietary laws forbid consuming animals that shed the blood of other animals, reflecting an ideal world without violence among humans or animals. But what counts as blood?

Dr.

Daniel H. Weiss

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Tzaraʿat Purification: A Vestige of Demonic Exorcism

In Priestly law, impurity is stripped of its mythic origins in the demonic realm but still retains its dangerous, physical presence, and must be mitigated by specific acts of ritual cleansing and banishing, depending on the type of impurity. Purification from the skin disease tzaraʿat (Leviticus 13–14) offers the starkest example of such a ritual.

David Bar-Cohn

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Can We Pass Moral Judgment on Torah?

I don’t defend the Torah’s ostensibly immoral laws, but I do try to understand what motivated them.

Dr. Rabbi

Eliezer Finkelman

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Is Atonement Possible Without Blood? A Jewish-Christian Divide

Blood has a significant role in many biblical stories and rituals, most prominently in the atonement sacrifices of Leviticus. With the destruction of the Temple and the loss of sacrifices, Judaism and Christianity took very different paths to achieving atonement.

Prof.

Marc Zvi Brettler

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Prof.

Amy-Jill Levine

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Blood, Frogs, and Impurity

Three curious details in the plagues of blood and frogs show the hand of a post-priestly editor and his concern about purity laws.

Prof.

Christoph Berner

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Hunting: How It Became Un-Jewish

In the Torah, Nimrod and Esau are hunters, Isaac enjoys game, and the legal collections take it for granted that hunting for food is common and permissible. Once Judaism decided that even wild animals must be ritually slaughtered, the Jewish attitude towards hunting took a sharp negative turn.

Dr. Rabbi

Marcus Mordecai Schwartz

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The Egyptian “Magicians”

Is the Bible’s portrayal of the magicians (Ḥarṭummīm) in accord with Egyptian literature and ritual practice? How did the Israelite writers obtain this knowledge?

Prof.

Scott B. Noegel

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Meat or Murder?

The Torah first describes a world that is created to be vegetarian. It is only after the Flood that humans were allowed to eat meat. Leviticus restricts meat consumption to the sacrificial offerings only, whereas Deuteronomy permits even non-consecrated meat. How do we understand the tension between these approaches?

Dr.

Yitzhaq Feder

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Expiating with Blood

Is the book of Leviticus primitive? I believe so, though an analysis of the meaning of the word kipper suggests that these sacrificial laws may be more relevant than we often realize.

Dr.

Yitzhaq Feder

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Breaking the Heifer’s Neck: A Bloodless Ritual for an Unsolved Murder

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

Dr.

Yitzhaq Feder

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The Mitzvah of Covering the Blood of Wild Animals

Leviticus requires covering the blood of undomesticated animals; Deuteronomy requires pouring out the blood of slaughtered domesticated animals onto the ground. How do these laws jibe with each other? The Essenes have one answer, the rabbis another, the academics a third.

Dr. Rabbi

Zev Farber

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