Tag Archives: talmud-midrash

(Mishnah) Corpse Defilement (Happy Halloween)

Posted on October 31, 2022 by zjb

The rabbis’ task in their reconstruction of the biblical laws of corpse impurity is to determine at which point a dead body in its fragmented and ruined state is still a “corpse” that can convey impurity, and at which point … Continue reading →

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(Modular Body) Mishnah Hands Tumah

Posted on September 21, 2022 by zjb

“This perceived modularity of the human body is what enables, I suggest, one of the most perplexing rabbinic (or protorabbinic) innovations, namely, the ruling that one’s hands are constantly impure (in a low degree) regardless of the impurity status of … Continue reading →

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(Christianity) The Trial of the Talmud (Documents)

Posted on June 20, 2022 by zjb

What were the actual talmudic texts that Christians found so irksome? What do we actually learn about Talmud from its most caustic critics, the elite Christian accusers from the High Medieval Age? The Trial of the Talmud Paris 1240 is … Continue reading →

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Monstrous Talmud & Christian Simulacra (Peter The Venerable)

Posted on June 10, 2022 by zjb

Abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Cluny, Peter the Venerable (1092-1156) was a master hermeneut. He is generally recognized as one of the great Christian thinkers of the High Middle Ages. Also recognized is how he marks a new Church … Continue reading →

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(Christianity) Talmud and the Impotence of God (Petrus Alfonsi)

Posted on May 24, 2022 by zjb

Petrus Alfonsi was a Jewish convert to Christianity who grew up in an Iberian-Islamic milieu in Huesca, which became the capital of Aragon atthe time of the Christian reconquest. While it goes unnamed as such, his Dialogus contra Iudaeos (ca. … Continue reading →

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Pharisees (Matthew)

Posted on February 23, 2022 by zjb

Cutting through the imprecation, there are at least eight things that Matthew says about the Pharisees that are maybe or probably true. –They observe Shabbat punctiliously; they do not pick grain in the fields or practice healing or exorcism on … Continue reading →

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Anthropomorphism (Arthur Marmorstein & The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God)

Posted on August 6, 2021 by zjb

Reading up about God and rabbinic theology, I found this reference by Yair Lorberbaum in to the Hungarian born and forgotten Arthur Marmorstein (1882–1946), author of the two volume The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God. I: The Names and Attributes … Continue reading →

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(Bergson) (Talmud)

Posted on July 6, 2021 by zjb

Such is the primary and the most apparent operation of the perceiving mind: it marks out divisions in the continuity of the extended, simply following the suggestions of ourrequirement and the needs of practical life. But, in order to divide … Continue reading →

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Creation/Contemplation of the Virtual World (Genesis Rabbah)

Posted on April 27, 2021 by zjb

Reading in seminar with Syracuse undergrad students Naama Erez, Sam Gelfand, Giulia Kean from Genesis Rabbah 1:4. According to the rabbis here, the Torah and Throne of Glory were created before the creation of the physical world, and the contemplation … Continue reading →

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Anti-Black & White in Jewish Texts (Abraham Melamed)

Posted on April 15, 2021 by zjb

Abraham Melamed’s The Image of the Black in Judaism was first published in Hebrew in 2002 and then translated into English in 2003. While the title does little to recommend itself and the theoretical apparatus is dated, the data are … Continue reading →

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