Before his death, David commands Solomon to kill two men: Joab, his loyal general, and Shimei, his enemy, whom he had sworn not to kill.
Dr.
David Glatt-Gilad
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If an Israelite wishes to marry a woman taken captive in war, she becomes part of the Israelite polity and is protected from future re-enslavement. Uncomfortable with the Torah’s permitting this marriage, the rabbis declare it to be a compromise to man’s “evil impulse,” an idea reminiscent of Jesus’ claim that the Torah allows divorce as a compromise to humanity’s “hard heart.”
Prof. Rabbi
Shaye J. D. Cohen
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Dr. Rabbi
Zev Farber
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As the Israelites are being freed from slavery in Egypt, God gives Moses and Aaron a law pertaining to Israelite-owned slaves.
Dr. Hacham
Isaac S. D. Sassoon
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Using Source Criticism to Disentangle a Moral Problem in the Torah
Dr. Hacham
Isaac S. D. Sassoon
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The rabbis claim that a “subverted” or “apostate” city, which Deuteronomy (13:13-18) condemns to destruction, “never was and never will be” (t. San. 14:1). Yet the account in Judges 19-21 of the destruction or ḥerem of Gibeah, its inhabitants, animals, and property, suggests that such “internal ḥerem” was an Israelite practice, and that Gibeah is being presented as a subverted city.
Prof.
Aaron Demsky
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Morally problematic halachot remain on the books despite rabbinic attempts to transform or reinterpret them. How do we relate to these texts as Torah from Sinai, coming from God?
Dr. Rabbi
Norman Solomon
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The biblical law makes use of a martial idiom to forbid Israel from being cruel to a mother bird.
Dr.
Tzvi Novick
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The Bible already expresses ambivalence about Hebrew slavery, the rabbis expand upon it and Maimonides takes the next step, applying the negative evaluation of slavery even to non-Israelites.
Prof.
James A. Diamond
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The Torah and Bavli vs. the Prophets and Yerushalmi
Dr.
Jonathan Ben-Dov
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The anomalous and paradoxical nature of the twelfth curse (Deuteronomy 27:26).
Rabbi
Uzi Weingarten
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The Torah describes a practice of declaring people cherem, which means that the person, and—in some cases—his family, would be annihilated, and his possessions donated to the Temple. The rabbis were unhappy with this law and used their homiletical approach to “obliterate” it.
Dr. Hacham
Isaac S. D. Sassoon
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Tanakh as Beyond the Sum of Its Parts
Prof.
Tamar Ross
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Confronting the description in Megillat Esther of the Jews killing 75,000 including women and children
Prof.
Meylekh (PV) Viswanath
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Are the Torah’s laws perfect or do they reflect biblical times and can adapt as society develops? The punishment of a rapist is a good test case for thinking about morally problematic biblical laws.
Dr. Rabbi
Zev Farber
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