Mishnah. Midrash

השאלות האלו נועדו ללוות לימוד 'בקיאות' במשנה סדר מועד. הן מתמקדות בענייני מבנה וסדר, והתייחסות אליהן תוך כדי לימוד עשויה להוסיף ללימוד ממד של עומק ועניין, ואף לסייע לזכרון החומר.
These study questions on the MIshnah of Seder Moed are designed to accompany a "bekiut" study ("speed" learning focusing on covering material quickly) of Mishnah. They focus on issues of arrangement and structure, adding depth and focus to "extensive" study and aiding in remembering the material

In this article it is argued that the Qiblah passages in the Qur’an, which are commonly understood as referring to the direction of the prayer, are directly engaging with and interpreting the Shema passages in Deuteronomy and their Talmudic commentaries. By defining and applying the method of intertextual polysemy, nine points of intertextuality are identified between the various Qur’anic, Biblical, and Talmudic passages. Against this background, the article implies that narrations from traditional Qur’anic commentaries are lacking in their interpretation of these passages, since they do not employ any extra-Quranic contexts to explain their meaning. Through the method of intertextual polysemy, the alternative thesis propounded here is that the historical reference for the Qiblah passages is the Shema.

The author of this paper maintains that the city name "Sychar" has its justification in the context of Jn 4:1-45, and that the alternative reading "Sychem" proposed by several manuscripts and modern commentators is not justified. The local name "Sychar" is to be related to a legal practice referred to in the Mishna according to which it would be lawful to gather there the first sheaf of the harvest to be presented in the Temple at the Feast of Weeks in case harvest were not available in Jerusalem and its neighbourhood. The mention of "Sychar" in Jn 4:5 would allude to that legal ractice in the context of legal justification of the mission in Samaria after seeing its impossibility in Jerusalem and Judea. Starting from this hypothesis the author explains some traits of the johannine narrative.

The Mishna records a number of enactments (takanot) made by Rabbi Yoachanan ben Zakkai for the purpose of commemorating the Temple.  This paper argues that far from looking backwards to the loss of the Temple, these enactments served the opposite purpose - to underscore that Judaism could be just as vibrant, if not more so, in a  post-Temple reality, where Yavneh and Torah-story replaced the Temple as the focal center of the religion.

ʿAlī b. Aḥmad b. Ḥazm devoted much of his oeuvre to polemics against Jews and Judaism. In so doing, he often based his case on what he said were Jewish sources — which, he insisted, the Jews had falsified and fabricated. How familiar was he with these sources, and how did he acquire this familiarity? The article investigates a series of references to Jewish sources by Ibn Ḥazm, attempts to determine their origin — possibly the Talmuds and other post-Biblical works that contain Midrash — analyses his treatment of them, and ventures several hypotheses about the roots of his familiarity. While scholarship to date provides no unequivocal proof of the correctness of these hypotheses, Ibn Ḥazm’s recourse to Jewish sources in his polemical writings is evidently the result of thorough research on his part.

Lecture at the Harvard Law School Mishnah conference Jan. 11, 2021.
My talk begins at 10:35.
https://harvard.zoom.us/rec/play/saCsYw5Ror9jL9x9hxLGFU9JGHFQ8_oaJ4DotNCRPEgcJVN5m5X_VaXJjtRX4XDpsfBeCoFoY-PRUcvC.TD6QqaCRFZfa1Z8l?startTime=1610381987000&_x_zm_rtaid=OD_uQO_7RqOmmvQVmsnp-A.1617213630693.42c3460e6f9c7ea78fc76a831a7a28f5&_x_zm_rhtaid=584

The following is a commentary on Genesis Chapter 18, a philosophical discussion written in the form of a midrash, an interpretive expansion of the scriptural narrative. It opens onto the question of justice, targeting the lived experience of justice in relation to its concept, when taken up into worship. The problematic of a theology of justice then is our topic, specifically, the antinomy between a god that is identical with, and a god that supersedes justice. Two biblical narratives that involve challenges to the experience of justice, are often brought to mind in discussions of a theology of justice: one, the story of Job, culminating in God’s rebuke of him, “Would you condemn me in order to justify yourself?” (Job 40:8), and the other, Abraham’s conversation with God over the coming destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and culminating in Abraham’s rebuke of God, “Will the judge of all the earth not act justly?” (Gen. 18:25). This latter conversation frames the subject of this midrash.

The third chapter of Mishnah Rosh Hashanah, concludes with an aggadic homily about Moses's hands and the the Brass Serpent, diverging from the topic of sounding the shofar, but expanding upon the topic which concluded the halakhic discussion - "directing the heart". Comparison of this homily with two parallel versions of the homily in tannaitic midrashic works provides deeper insight into the literary and theological considerations which motivated the Mishnah redactor to conclude the discussion of shofar with this homily.

We will examine texts from the Mishnah Berakhot and Bavli Berakhot whose message seems subsersive, going against the grain of the apparent overall aims of the broader context. By means of close reading I will show that the apparently subversive message of these texts is designed to lead to a more nuanced and sophisticated "reconstruction", rather than merely to "deconstruct".

This paper examines the macro-redaction of a tractate, Berakhot. In previous work I have shown how the conclusion of the Toseftan tractate sums up the major themes of the tractate and integrates them into a cohesive conceptual framework. In this paper I show how additional aspects of the concluding unit interact with earlier passages, providing a fuller and richer picture of the tractate's redaction and ideas.

Much of Mishnah Tractate Sotah consists of digressions from the titular topic. Going beyond the standard explanation of pre-existing collections included by the redactor for mnemotechnical reasons, this article will demonstrate the literary associations which connect the digressions to the main body of the tractate, suggesting deeper conceptual inks which we will seek to discover.

The main source in rabbinic literature for Rosh Hashanah serving as a day of judgment is a mishnah that describes this holiday and the three pilgrimage festivals as “periods of judgment.” By comparing this Mishnah with teachings attributed to R. Akiva, we can trace how this idea evolved in the tannaitic period and how this mishnah reshapes it.

מחבר המאמר הוא ד"ר לתלמוד מאוניברסיטת פוטסדאם בוגר הישיבות 'חברון' ו'מיר'. המאמר אינו מציית לכללים החברתיים-כלכליים של העולם האקדמי (בורדייה/ 'אין חבוש מתיר עצמו מבית האסורים'). המאמר מבקש לבחון את הדרך בה אנו קוראים ומפרשים את התלמוד הבבלי לאור הבנתנו את השפה והלשון (ויטגנשטיין) ולאור הזהירות הנדרשת בפירוש טקסטים מן העבר (קוונטין סקינר). בסופו של דבר המאמר בא לענות על השאלות:
מהו התלמוד הבבלי, וכיצד יש לפרש אותו.

רבים תוהים מדוע המשנה במסכת שבת מקדימה למשנה המרכזית של 39 מלאכות (פ"ז מ"ב) את ששת הפרקים הראשונים, העוסקים בחלקם בהכנות לקראת שבת ובחלקם בענייני הוצאה. במאמר זה נבחן הסברים שונים שהוצעו לסדר הפרקים כאן, ונתמקד בפתיחה 'במה' המופיעה בארבעה מתוך ששת הפרקים. פרקי 'במה' מתחלקים לשניים העוסקים בהכנות לקראת שבת ושניים העוסקים במלאכת הוצאה, והפתיחה המשותפת רומזת שעורך המשנה מבקש לקשור בין שני הנושאים האלו. ננסה לעמוד על משמעות הקשר בין שני הנושאים הללו, ונציע כי ביחד שני הנושאים מבטאים את ייחודה של השבת ומבליטים את ההבדלים העיקריים בין השבת לבין מועדים מקודשים אחרים.

survey of three recent scholarly articles which present literary analysis of Mishnah passages. One article, by Prof. Menachem Kahana, analyzes several "controversy" narratives in the MIshnah, and the other two, by Prof. Noam Zohar, analyze an aggadic mishnah in Avodah Zarah and the placement of a series of homilies in Shabbat chapter 9.

"In Bavli Nedarim 22b, R. Eliezer’s wife, Imma Shalom, describes her husband’s behavior during intercourse, mentioning his practice to “reveal a handbreadth and conceal a handbreadth.” This statement has been understood by most traditional commentators and academic scholars as an expression of extreme modesty, or as an attempt to avoid the experience of physical pleasure, as part of a comprehensive lifestyle governed by the ascetic ideal.

Based on comparison of this text with its counterpart in Tractate Kallah, as well as the analysis of sources attributed to R. Eliezer associating the attributes of a couple’s offspring to the couple’s comport during intercourse, we propose an additional explanation of R. Eliezer’s practice.

We suggest that the ultimate goal of this practice was to ensure the birth of worthy offspring, based on the assumption that achievement of this goal depends in large measure on the woman’s state of arousal during intercourse. Nevertheless, in line with the accepted understanding of the story as depicting the exemplary behavior of an ascetic personality, we suggest that R. Eliezer’s unusual practice be understood in light of other possibilities mentioned in the Talmud which were intended to engender the same result. "

Berakhot Chapter 6 is a carefully-crafted chapter of Mishnah. Close reading of the chapter reveals the keywords that divide the chapter into two equal parts and link the two sections. Examination of the structure and themes of the chapter leads us to important insights regarding the meanings that the Mishnah redactor attaches to of the system of benedictions that accompany enjoyment of food.

עבודת סמינר זאת, שנכתבה בתואר מוסמך בשנת תש"פ וזכתה בפרס מטעם ראש החוג, עוסקת בניתוח היסטוריוגרפי של כתיבתם של שניים מבכירי ההיסטוריונים היהודים: צבי גרץ ושמעון דובנוב. דרך בחינת האופן שבו הראשון הרחיב והשני המעיט בכתיבת פרקו אודות דמותו של רבי יהודה הנשיא ופועלו, נחשפים קווי הדמיון והשוני בין המגמות המחקריות-מתודולוגיות, ההשפעות הביוגרפיות ותפיסות העולם הפילוסופיות והפוליטיות של שני חוקרים אלה, שהעזו לכתוב היסטוריה כוללת של תולדות עם ישראל.