Election and Rejection in the Midrash

Abstract

The Midrash interprets and sometimes re-imagines biblical events, often re-shaping those memories according to the ideological inclinations of the author or editor of the particular interpretation. In a profound way, the student of rabbinic thought in late antiquity must pay scrupulous attention to this phenomenon because it is midrash that served as the main expression of non-legal rabbinic thought. Below, I will exemplify this need to be particularly attuned to how the midrash expresses its ideologies. I would like to begin with a passage in Songs Rabbah (1, 2) in which four events are singled out by various Sages as the historical setting in which the Song of Songs was chanted. These four events are the salvation at the sea, the revelation at Sinai, God's settling into the Tabernacle in the desert, and finally God's dwelling in the Temple.1 The proponents of each view, it would seem, saw that particular event as the apogee of the love between God and Israel. It was, then, the single most appropriate moment when this love song, cherished by the Sages for its mutual and reciprocal love between God and Israel, was chanted. Were people other than Jews given entry to these most intimate moments of Revelation? In a previous work, I attempted to answer this question regarding the revelation at Sinai.2 There, I point to what I considered the School of Yishmael's unique position, that portrayed the revelation at Sinai as accessible to all who come into the world. This, in fact, was the reason, according to that school, that the Torah was revealed in the desert, rather than on Israel's home turf. Here, we will turn to another one of these four formative events the salvation at the sea and focus again on the extent to which the Jewish