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In what sense is Judaism racist? Does it in general recognize the “holiness” of race and if so, what practical deductions have Jews made from such a theory?
In connection with the Nazi racist…
To Section I, which deals with the Haggadah itself, I have added six other sections.
Section II, entitled “Moses, our Teacher,” is a collation of midrashim, which discuss his attributes…
The ancient Judaic midrash paved the way for a certain type of biblical hermeneutics while also using the master pre-Text as a pretext for creating a new tale. The midrash is the prototype of creative…
What is the testimony that proves my guilt? The punishment itself. Although Naomi says that she must have been guilty, it’s as if she doesn’t really know what she is guilty of. It’s only when things…
There is an old talmudic saying: “A Jew who has sinned still remains a Jew.” My own thinking is, of course, beyond the idea of “sin” or “no sin”; but this saying has brought to my mind a memory from…
Midrash [ . . . ] is not mere reference to the past: it is the enlistment of the past in the service of the present. Even more specifically, it is a reinsertion into the present of the original divine…
Rabbinic literature is replete with valuable information about the life, manners and customs of the ancients. Many passages in it can be properly understood only in the general frame of its…
Shulḥan ‘Aruk, a term taken over from early rabbinic exegesis in the Midrash and applied to one of the most influential, truly epochal literary creations of Jewish history, has a double or even triple…
Is the Jewish tradition inherently liberal or inherently conservative? The answer to this much-debated question is quite simple: yes.
Which is to say that if by “the Jewish tradition” we mean what is…
It was one of the stories from Genesis that most frightened me as a child: the story of Lot’s wife.
She was told not to look, and she looked; and her punishment came swift and horrible. Frozen in…