“How much time in our synagogue schools has been spent on helping students cultivate their sense of the sublime?”
How much time in our synagogue schools has been spent on helping students cultivate their sense of the sublime? How much time has been spent providing an immersive and reflective experience of different mitzvot as possible responses? How much time has been spent on coaching them in the performance of those regularized practices so that […]continued…
“Magazines were expected to be magisterial registers of the passing scene”
Magazines in their great age, before they were unmoored from their spines and digitally picked apart, before perpetual blogging made them permeable packages, changing mood at every hour and up all night like colicky infants—magazines were expected to be magisterial registers of the passing scene. Yet, though they were in principle temporal, a few became […]continued…
“The comparison of parallel versions of a narrative or legal statement in different rabbinic documents may allow us to distinguish between tradition and redaction…”
The comparison of parallel versions of a narrative or legal statement in different rabbinic documents may allow us to distinguish between tradition and redaction and to determine the form of a tradition before its inclusion into the broader redactional context. It should be clear, though, that synoptic comparisons of rabbinic texts can never lead to […]continued…
“The midrashic unit consists of the quotation of a biblical verse followed by its rabbinic interpretation or comment”
The midrashic unit consists of the quotation of a biblical verse followed by its rabbinic interpretation or comment, which may consist of a short sentence only or be expanded, including various types of narratives, lists, or discussions. Catherine Hezser, “Form-Criticism of Rabbinic Literature”, in The New Testament and Rabbinic Literature, eds. Reimund Bieringer, Florentino García […]continued…
A nonliteral approach to understanding על רגל אחת
Without denying the primary literal sense of the story, therefore, can we also understand the term רגל nonliterally, or as a Latin term? There is one clear instance in which some scholars have taken רגל in a nonliteral sense, and in relation to a Latin term, but in an entirely different context, namely the talmudic […]continued…
“Rabbi Avi Weiss can be a bit of a controversial figure that very few people, I think, take seriously…”
Rabbi Avi Weiss can be a bit of a controversial figure that very few people, I think, take seriously, for two major reasons, that I think may be related. The first is by reputation. He’s not known for being a למדן – he’s not known for being a learner; not known for being a תלמיד […]continued…
Questions any student editing texts needs to ask oneself….
…the first question a student of philology should answer is whether a manuscript edition can be achieved without interpreting the text itself. …a second question to be answered by our virtual student of text editing is the following: should we construct/re-construct a text every time after having interpreted it? The question is not so far […]continued…
“the main purpose of synoptic comparisons of rabbinic texts is to determine which elements are shared and which are different”
As in the case of synoptic parallels between the gospels, the main purpose of synoptic comparisons of rabbinic texts is to determine which elements are shared and which are different. The differences may either be features of the different pre-redactional versions, or they may be editorial. They are likely to be editorial if they fit […]continued…
“…the discursiveness of the Bavli and Pahlavi legal literature can be related to their respective pedagogic environments”
…the discursiveness of the Bavli and Pahlavi legal literature can be related to their respective pedagogic environments. As we saw in Šāyest nē šāyest 1.3, the scholastic environment of the Sasanian commentators was one in which later authorities transmitted the teachings of previous generations via an act of speech. That is, Zoroastrian sages “spoke” (guft) […]continued…
Rewards and Punishments in the View of the Rabbis
In the Bible, definite rewards and punishments from on high are only in a few instances brought into correlation with definite actions or classes of actions. By the Rabbis, this process was carried much further, and a number of precepts were assigned by them a specific value in the material or the spiritual field or […]continued…