Jewish Commentaries Research Articles

On the Haunting of Hospitality

Marcabru noted that Jaufré Rudel calls ‘inn of the afar / alberc de lohn’ both the remote place where his beloved lady of Tripoli resides, and the locus where the poets situates himself: an ideal place that Giorgio Agamben calls topos outopos. In the N voice or difficult voice of the trobar, this figures the contradiction on which the troubadour lives: at once the desire for the inaccessible body of his beloved, and the desire never to reach it. This issue is addressed here as a medieval instance of Derrida’s ‘hostipitality’, with the ungraspable as the most precious good ever hosted in the rooms or stanze of the poem, and it is argued that this is primarily a question of translation. As a case in point, this article presents the Magna Curia of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen as a magisterial example of the alberc de lohn topos, where the Emperor became his guests’ guest in a deliberate cultural transference policy that translated Aristotle and his Muslim and Jewish commentators, thus setting in motion a process of reciprocal acclimatization. The article further argues with Walter Benjamin and Antoine Berman, that translation as hostipitality or ‘auberge de loin’ inscribes itself in futurity and reaches beyond the linguistic being of man.

An Historical Overview of Jewish Theological Responses to Evolution

ABSTRACT While a systematic comparison of the similarities and differences between Jewish and Muslim approaches to evolution is beyond the scope of this study, it is possible to note some of the most striking observations. Among the key differences highlighted by an historical perspective on Jewish approaches in the late-nineteenth to present day are the phenomenon of panentheistic tendences among Jewish commentators and the practice of defining the position of Judaism against that of Christianity. In response to Malik’s theological approach, which attempted to identify medieval traditions as potential resources for contemporary Muslim evolutionists, it proved to be an interesting counter-factual exercise to generate a comparable list of pre-modern theological resources for Jewish evolutionists.

The Position of Jewish Art and Exegesis in an Illustrated Christian Biblical Commentary: Ezekiel’s Vision of the Tetramorph in Fourteenth-and Fifteenth-Century Manuscripts and Printed Copies of Nicholas of Lyra’s Postilla litteralis

In the Postilla litteralis (Literal Commentary) (1322-1333), Nicholas of Lyra, a Franciscan biblical scholar at the University of Paris, compared Jewish and Christian commentaries on the Old Testament and designed illustrations and diagrams to augment those comparisons. The Postilla litteralis was copied with such an astounding frequency that it can be considered a medieval best seller. These manuscript and printed copies often included copies of Nicholas’ illustrations. This article uses a singular case study of Nicholas of Lyra’s visual comparisons between Latin and Hebrew exegesis regarding the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel’s vision of four winged creatures to shed light on how copies of Nicholas of Lyra’s illustrations represent Jewish visual and textual exegetical traditions. The goal of this article is to provide a nuanced exploration of fourteenth and fifteenth-century copies of Postilla litteralis manuscripts that display Nicholas’ illustrations of Ezekiel’s first vision. These images reveal a reliance on rabbinic commentary regarding literal meanings of scripture yet ultimately reject Jewish visual traditions of representing the divine, a strategy that supports Nicholas’ messianic interpretation of Ezekiel 1. This article uses illuminations and woodcuts in manuscript and printed copies of the Postilla litteralis, illuminations in Hebrew bible and prayer manuscripts, and illuminations in other Christian biblical commentaries to consider Nicholas’ multifaceted and varied perceptions of Jewish commentary on Ezekiel 1. I end by claiming that the copies of the Postilla litteralis’ visual comparisons between Jewish and Christian commentary operate to clarify inconsistencies within Christian iconography regarding Ezekiel 1.

Secrets of Qohelet: Toward an Exegetical History of a Biblical Text during the Middle Ages

Abstract During the middle ages and early modern period, dozens of Jewish commentaries were written on Qohelet, in Arabic and Hebrew, and representing a very full range of methods and approaches, from Karaite to Rabbanite, grammatical to pietistic, Neoplatonic, Aristotelian, and anti-Aristotelian, even kabbalistic. The purpose of this article – dedicated to the memory of Kalman Bland – is to present some experiments related to the telling of the history of medieval Jewish exegesis of Qohelet in hermeneutical context.

«Лучшее в поэзии – ложь»: Песнь песней в еврейской философско-теологической мысли Средневековья в свете подхода арабских аристотеликов к поэтике

This article deals with the question of how the Jewish Aristotelians, followers of Maimonides, combined the exclusive status of the Song of Songs with the no­tion of the falsity of poetry. According to Aristotle’s Arabic commentators, poet­ics is part of the logical organon. The poetic syllogisms are based on deliberately false premises and rules of inference, and thus poetic discourse is the lowest in the hierarchy of the logical corpus. At the same time, the following Talmudic maxim is known: “If all Scripture is holy, then the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies”. Thus, Jewish theologians, having assimilated the Arab Aristotelian approach to poetics, were faced with a difficult task: how to explain the supreme status of the Song of Songs in the biblical canon if this book is written in the lan­guage of lies? In the works of medieval Jewish theologians we do not find a clearly formulated solution to this problem, which may be due to the fact that the Song of Songs was often associated with an undisclosed esoteric theme. This article will describe the range of views of medieval Jewish thinkers on the role of poetic speech in the Song of Songs and provide an overview of researchers’ attempts to formulate a solution to the above problem. An analysis of a number of texts by medieval Jewish commentators will offer a response not found in the research literature to the question of combining the high status of the Song of Songs with the deliberate falsity of poetic discourse. According to our reading of Moshe Ibn-Tibbon’s commentary on the Song of Songs, the false language of poetry helps to avoid the illusion of comprehension where positively formulated knowledge is impossible.

The Influence of Mendelssohn's Commentary on Qohelet on Nineteenth-Century Orthodox Jewish Commentators in Eastern and Western Europe

The importance of Mendelssohn’s commentary to Qohelet lies, inter alia, in its influence on nineteenth-century Jewish commentators and more precisely in its reception among eastern and western Europe’s Orthodox commentators, who adopted, explicitly or implicitly, his unique form of scriptural interpretation. In this article, I demonstrate unique characteristics in Mendelssohn’s commentary on Qohelet and the ways in which these were adopted by later biblical commentators, shedding light on features of Mendelssohn’s writings, reputation, and influence.

Weaning Away from Idolatry: Maimonides on the Purpose of Ritual Sacrifices

This essay explores Maimonides’ explanation of the Bible’s rationale behind the ritual sacrifices, namely to help wean the Jews away from idolatrous rites. After clearly elucidating Maimonides’ stance on the topic, this essay examines his view from different angles with various possible precedents in earlier rabbinic literature for such an understanding. The essay also shows why various other Jewish commentators objected to Maimonides’ understanding and how Maimonides might respond to those critiques. Additionally, this essay also situates Maimonides’ view on sacrifices within his broader worldview of the Bible’s commandments in general as serving as a counterweight to idolatrous rituals.

The sources of knowledge of two medieval Jewish commentators in nature issues: The case of gathering the musk (Song of Songs 5:1)

Musk, which is produced from the glands of several species of deer, was a well-known perfume throughout the Mediterranean Basin in the Middle Ages. The current article examines the meaning of the gathering operation of myrrh mentioned in Song of Songs 5:1, according to R. Joseph Ibn Aknin and Naḥmanides. The two commentators argue that the phrase ariiti mori can be interpreted as the unique manner of gathering the perfume of the musk deer in its lands of origin in the Far East. They contend that harvesting the perfume refers to gathering the perfume that the deer spreads on the rocks naturally, which is a higher quality product. The two medieval rabbis were exposed to contemporary scholars or oral traditions on the way of gathering the musk. Ibn Aknin took the information from Arabic writings, such as of al-Sirāfī and al-Masʿūdī and Ibn JulJuly With regard to Naḥmanides, his source of information on gathering musk is not clear. Contribution: This article contributes to the understanding of the issue of the sources of knowledge of scholars in medieval times and how the achieved information influenced their commentaries on the Biblical Text. The current study expounds the commentators’ interpretations from a multidisplinary perspective, such as the medieval zoology and perfume industry.

Genizah within the Genizah

Abstract This paper deals with passages from works by Muslim authors embedded within works of Jewish Law (Halakha) and biblical commentary; some passages are quoted verbatim, while others were reworked to fit the Jewish context by replacing references to the Qurʾān with references to the Jewish Bible. The Jewish works were written in Judeo-Arabic, making it easy to seamlessly adapt and integrate passages written in Arabic. Neither of the Jewish authors note that they are borrowing from earlier sources: sometimes one can recognize the embedded passage through a change in the linguistic register, but in other cases only familiarity with the borrowed texts can bring them to the reader’s attention. While scholars have noted this phenomenon in fields outside the Jewish legal context, such as philology and philosophy, it has not been recognized within judicial works. The sources discussed here survived only in the Cairo Genizah and have not previously been published.

Problematic Terminology of the Manna Pericope (Exod 16:14-15) in the Light of Medieval Jewish Commentators and Biblical Hebrew Philology

In this article, I shall discuss the adjective מחוספס and the word מן in the phrase מן-הוא, which both appear in the manna pericope in Exod 16:1415. I will present the different interpretations suggested by medieval Jewish commentators as well as modern scholars and dictionaries, and I shall attempt to show which one of the medieval interpretations is the most appropriate in the light of modern biblical philology. Medieval Jewish commentators suggested four different interpretations of the word מחוספס, two of which, "rounded" and "uncovered", have also been supported by the findings of modern biblical philology. Two medieval commentators rightly interpreted the word מן in the phrase מן-הוא as an interrogative pronoun. This is also the commonly accepted interpretation in contemporary modern biblical philology. Keywords: Exod 16:14-15; Manna pericope; Jewish medieval commentators; Jewish medieval grammarians; modern biblical Hebrew philology; etymological equivalent; semantic equivalent; interrogative pronoun

Jewish commentaries on Star Wars: theology, history, and debate

ABSTRACTThis paper examines how pop culture commentators, rabbis, bloggers, and others create commentaries on the implicit Jewish dimensions of Star Wars movies. These midrashic commentaries fundamentally challenge the conceptual divide between pop culture and religious life, and online religion and religion online. Commentaries examined here are grouped into three categories, including those created by commentators who link a range of points from Jewish theology to the Star Wars universe, events, and characters; see in Star Wars traces of Jewish historical experiences, from biblical episodes, Second Temple times, the Enlightenment, and the Nazi period, to the present day; and believe that aspects of the Star Wars story, particularly key scenes and characters from Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), facilitate critical debate on Jewish movements today.

The Commentator’s Bible: Genesis

The Commentator’s Bible: Genesis

Sounds of War: What Brought the Walls of Jericho Down?

Abstract The destruction of Jericho’s city walls (Joshua 6) is commonly attributed to the blowing of trumpets. After examining similar stories from ancient Greece, the article addresses various imprecisions of this notion. First, the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin versions of the biblical text suggest several possible instruments, but eventually the ram horn (shofar) remains the only reasonable option. Secondly, regarding the actual cause of the walls’ fall, textual analysis, again across languages, reveals a rather complex picture. Further insights are gained from the interpretations of both Jewish and early Christian commentators and contemporary scholarship. After considering a variety of possibilities, ranging from an earthquake to the ‘magic’ number seven, the solution proposed here is rooted in the soteriological hermeneutics of Sacred Scripture as a whole. In a way, none and all of the people’s actions are relevant, because only faith and obedience to God’s commandment elicit the divine ratification of salvation.

The Place of Josephus in Abravanel's Writings

Don Isaac Abravanel, the famous Jewish commentator who lived in Portugal, Spain, and Italy during the transition from the medieval times to the Renaissance (1437–1508), draws several times to Josephus's writing in his commentary on the Bible. While the Book of Josippon was known to other Medieval Jewish commentators, the same cannot be said of Josephus, whose writings were available in Greek and Latin only. In this paper I will point to references to Josippon and Josephus throughout Abravanel's writings. I will demonstrate the ways that Abravanel made use of these authors in his writings.

Talking about Antisemitism in France Before and After Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher

This article explores tensions in French Jewish discourses about antisemitism in the post-2000 period. Drawing on commentary from French Jewish intellectuals, national Jewish organizations, and the French Jewish press from the mid-2000s until after the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher attacks, I note a complex relationship between change and continuity in discursive characterizations of French antisemitism. While empirical manifestations of antisemitism were notably transformed by the Toulouse attacks of 2012, much French Jewish discourse insisted on continuity from the early 2000s onward. At the same time, Jewish narrative practices shifted rather dramatically. In a political context where Israel was often depicted as part of a history of violent settler colonialism, early 2000s Jewish discourse divorced French antisemitism from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and (post)colonial racism in France. After 2012, some Jewish commentators linked Israel to French antisemitism by likening terrorism in Israel with Islamic antisemitism in France. These disjunctures between narratives and empirical violence suggest that the “structures of feeling” behind Jewish reactions to contemporary antisemitism cannot be reduced to empirical questions about safety and security. Social scientists thus need to move beyond an empirical analysis of antisemitism itself and attend to the cultural and affective work Jewish discourses about antisemitism do in any particular moment.

HISTORY OF THE JEWISH INTERPRETATION OF GENESIS 1:26, 3:5, 3:22 IN THE MIDDLE AGES

The present paper examines the plural forms found in Genesis 1:26, 3:5 and 3:22 which might appertain to the Divine and which acted as focal points for theological and exegetical discussion within the framework of the Jewish tradition. Thus, the paper studies the mediaeval Jewish exegesis of these plural forms as perpetuated in the representative Jewish commentaries and situates it against the early Jewish reception of these forms which was mirrored in the ancient Jewish Aramaic and Greek translations of the Scripture and reflected in the Midrashic and Talmudic literature. The mediaeval Jewish tradition, on the one hand, relied on the earlier exposition of such phenomena, on the other hand, it enriched and advanced the trajectory of the interpretations accepted within the limits of Judaism.

Two Questions—Many Answers: Making Strangers Neighbors

Two Questions—Many Answers: Making Strangers Neighbors David Kader “Where are you?” “Where is your brother?” These two questions posed by God in the first book of the Hebrew Bible, first to Adam (Gen. 3:9) and then to Cain (Gen. 4:9), are the beginning and the end of the moral conundrums faced by humanity from the beginning of time. They ask about each individual's relationship with the Ineffable and with other humans—and by extension with all creation. Each person authors the story of their lives by the behavioral response given, knowing or unknowing, to precisely these two questions. These questions reveal the fundamental truth of human existence: a reality of moral freedom, of choice. Where is one in relation to the Creator? Where is one in relation to Creation? Adam responded by saying: “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and so I hid” (Gen. 3:10). Adam's nakedness is understood in Jewish commentary on this text as “religious” nakedness and so hid in his shame—of standing exposed before the Creator of life and death. Adam had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and so chose to choose. Cain responded by saying: “I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?” (Gen. 4:9). In so doing, Cain rejected human responsibility and hid from the burden of moral freedom. In the Garden, the question/answer was life and death, and likewise, post‐Eden, the question/answer was life and death. Hiding was the response of both Adam and Cain. As Adam's choice sets the remaining biblical narrative of free will, likewise Cain's underscores consequences far beyond his murder of his brother Abel. “Your brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground” (Gen. 4:10). Jewish commentary underscores that the word “blood” is in the plural in the Hebrew, to mean the death of Abel also “kills” the possibility of all potential descendants of Abel. From this understanding comes the Talmudic teaching: “Whoever destroys a single life, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is as if he saved an entire world” (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 37a). These two questions in the beginning of Torah echo throughout the Hebrew Bible. Two primary examples can suffice here: of the first Hebrew and the first Israelite. The first response of acknowledgment, of not hiding, is by Abraham, the first Hebrew. In the Akedah, the binding of Isaac, as Abraham is about to sacrifice his bound son, the text reads: “And the angel of the Lord called out to him, saying: ‘Abraham! Abraham!’ And he said: ‘Here I am’” (Gen. 22:11); in turn, Isaac's life is spared. Being in relation, being not in hiding, spared life. The second example is the episode of Jacob becoming Israel. In anticipation of a meeting with his estranged twin brother Esau who is coming to the meeting with a mighty force of four hundred (Gen. 32:7), Jacob has a fitful night's sleep until the breaking of the day. The narrative tells of a night in which Jacob “wrestled with a man” (his conscience, for having “stolen” Esau's birthright?) without resolution (Gen. 32:25). The impasse is resolved by Jacob asking to be released and was in turn asked: “What is your name?” To which he said: “Jacob.” In turn, Jacob was told: “Your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel, for though has wrestled with God and with men, and hast prevailed” (Gen. 32:27‐29). In this singular episode, Jacob responded to both questions by engaging both God and man. The result was more than an eternal name change for all his descendants: When encountering his brother, Esau, peace came between them, not war. The text reads: “[Jacob] came near to his brother. And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him, and they wept” (Gen. 33:3‐4). Esau saw Jacob was a changed person, was now Israel; and Jacob “saw [Esau's] face as one sees the face of God” (Gen...

Rabbinic Commentaries on Genesis 34 and the Construction of Rape Myths

Abstract This article examines the intersection of Judaism and rape culture by investigating the Jewish commentaries on a biblical rape story (Gen 34) for reflections of rape myth. The exegeses on Genesis 34 are well suited to this endeavor because, in the biblical story, the victim Dinah is mostly passive and entirely silent. She is a neutral figure, a screen upon which commentators project the thoughts or behavior they ascribe to her. Additionally, the word generally translated as “rape” (innah) can have a range of meanings, which gives the commentators greater latitude to project their own values and anxieties onto the text. As this article demonstrates, rape myth ideology enters Jewish tradition during the rabbinic era and is absent prior to that period.

Ethical Themes in Medieval Jewish Biblical Commentaries: An Opportunity in the University Classroom

AbstractThe aim of this article is twofold: to open a window on ethical themes in medieval Jewish biblical commentaries and to illustrate how such works can catalyze explorations of issues in Jewish ethics in the university classroom. The article takes its inspiration from a course taught at Bar-Ilan University in Israel bearing the title “Medieval Jewish Biblical Interpretation: Past and Present.” In addition to its investigation of the medieval commentaries, the article exemplifies one pedagogical strategy employed in the course that sees these texts put in dialogue with a range of post-medieval literary and artistic expressions from Caravaggio to John Lennon and, especially, works of Israeli art, poetry, and song. Apart from adding interest and surprise, this strategy underscores the enduring nature of the issues addressed by the medieval commentators, which include fratricide, peace, pluralism, martyrdom, military ethics, altruism, supererogation, and love of one's fellow human being.

The Lawyer Who Mocked Hitler, and Other Jewish Commentaries on the Nuremberg Laws

AbstractNazi Germany’s Nuremberg Laws of 1935 generated legal commentary by Nazi jurists who eagerly extended its antisemitic principles—but not by Jewish lawyers, for whom the discrimination was too blatant and the risks of public criticism too dangerous. In the winter of 1936-37 in Leipzig, however, one obscure lawyer named Max Hellmann made an incisive commentary about the laws. Faced with prosecution for employing a female “Aryan” cook, Hellmann, a convert and widower in despair, responded boldly: he subpoenaed Adolf Hitler to testify and even moved to imprison him pending the judge’s decision. His defense was, in fact, a satire. It mocked the so-called Führerprinzip (leadership principle), i.e., the idea of law as the Führer’s will, at the heart of the Nazi legal system. Persistently contrasting the need for legal procedures with the primacy of irrational will, Hellmann showed that the leadership principle was incoherent with regard to the separation of powers, the role of the judiciary, the process of legislation, and the very nature of law itself. He provided a detailed critique of Nazi law that insiders, such as Nazi jurists, dared not think, and that outsiders, such as Jewish lawyers, had no reason to develop.