Approaching A Guest for the Night from the point of view of the Book of Jeremiah––from which this novel draws its title––leads us to revisit two central components of Agnon's theology and stylized identity. First, his majestic evocation of a deity (Jeremiah's “guest”) who abandoned his “wife” (the people of Israel); and concomitantly, Agnon's lifelong preoccupation with the “‘agunah problem” as a metaphor for national rupture, in ways that for Agnon were linked to his vocational identity as a modern writer dedicated to the project of national repair. Through his conversation with the Book of Jeremiah and the Book of Lamentations traditionally attributed to this prophet, Agnon adjusts and reduces the diasporic weight assigned to the ‘agunah metaphor. In his midlife masterpiece, he enlists the midrashic concept of ‘aginut to explore, among other things, his own composite identity as a traditional Jew and modern Jerusalemite, lover of texts and absent-minded husband.

No hint of the existence of this poet was evident until Menahem Zulay discovered his poetry some forty years ago among remnants of the Cairo Geniza MSS. Because his work consists of weekly liturgical compositions written in accordance with the triennial cycle followed in Palestine in ancient times and because Byzantium is the ruling government mentioned in his poetry, Zulay considered him to be Yannai's “mate.” As shown in this study Simeon must indeed have known Yannai's work and even followed his example. However, Simeon himself introduced some structural developments in the form of the ‘Amidah composition known as Qedushta. Most interesting is the fifth poem in his Qedushta to Gen. 44:18 on the theme of Joseph and his brothers. In his dramatic exposition he even outdoes that of Yannai, his master, intended for the same week. A full critical edition of Simeon's poetry based on about fifty Geniza MSS which is now in print (Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities) will be of importance for a better understanding of ancient Palestinian poetry and spiritual life. His poems are of great significance also in that they contain the oldest known parallels to ancient Palestinian midrash literature.

In Le muséon 82 (1969): 85–86, and 89 (1976): 311–12 James Drescher, in a series entitled “Graeco-Coptica,” discussed the word (and , showing that in late Greek and in Coptic it bears the additional meaning of “alms, charity.” To his discussion should be added the remarks of Saul Lieberman, in an article entitled “, Charity, Alms,” Journal of Biblical Literature 65 (1946): 69–72. There Lieberman brings considerable evidence for in this special usage in early Christian literature. He also shows there that a similar semantic development took place in the case of the Hebrew word (and its Aramaic equivalents), which came likewise to mean “alms, charity.” (See further his note apud Leviticus Rabba, ed. Mordecai Margulies [Jerusalem, 1958], pt. 4, p. 870 to line 56.)

Ascetic systems commonly exhibit some sort of conflict between spiritual pursuits and mundane needs. This article contextualizes the particular rabbinic dilemma of study versus sustenance within the broader context of the Zoroastrian tradition and its critique of the Manichaean Elect. The rabbis shared with their Zoroastrian contemporaries not only the perception of a religious tension between agriculture and the pursuit of religious studies, but also a multifaceted array of possible solutions that attempt to harmonize, mitigate, or otherwise resolve this theological and practical tension. While the basic conflict between study and sustenance is already formulated in tannaitic works, it is argued that the unique perspective offered by the Babylonian Talmud engages, and perhaps reacts to, the Iranian tradition.

In the articles gathered here, scholars of Hebrew revisit modern literary works and cultural documents through the prism of their continuing discourse with the Hebraic master narrative, the Bible. These scholars identify twin patterns in modern Hebrew texts: one is of embedding biblical prototypes, dramatic or semantic, in modern writings, while often questioning, challenging, and reversing the ancient models; the other is recreating and foregrounding specific biblical characters, scenes, or images, yet endowing them with a contemporary consciousness or placing them within the current cultural attitudes or mindset. Several contemporary scholars understand this two-pronged pattern, revolutionary and deconstructive as it might seem, within the time-hallowed tradition of midrash. Some find the midrashic mode helpful in interpreting such texts as well as in providing a methodological framework to the critical discourse. Thus, Gershon Shaked suggests in his article that all modern texts displaying this pattern may be viewed as modern midrashim.

Marc Gopin believes that religion can play an important role in forming a global society committed to peace and moral principles. He bases his belief on the fact that in most religions there is a “commitment to peace and elimination of violence” (p. 30) expressed in a broad range of values. Through the “internal hermeneutic dynamics of the tradition” (p. 60)—that is, through a textual investigation of how traditions have changed—he believes that Muslims, Christians, Jews, and others can contribute to promoting peace.

Writing back in 1888, Adolf Neubauer, the father of modern scholarship on the Lost Tribes, warned that “It would be lost time . . . to trouble ourselves about the identification of this stream.” Neubauer was referring, of course, to the Sambatyon River, the mythical waterway that, according to common understanding, rests each Sabbath and separates missing Jews—the ten lost tribes or others—from their brethren, and indeed from the known world. Six days each week, according to the legend, the river runs so powerfully that neither these tribes nor their seekers can cross it; on the Sabbath, either natural wonders or halakhic restrictions prevent them from doing so as well. Thus, whether showcasing the sheer power and solemnity of the seventh day or the piety of the isolated (or general) community, the Sambatyon legend certifies that only in the messianic age will this lost population be restored to the rest of the Jewish people.

The opening scene of Joel and Ethan Coen's A Serious Man has baffled many. What does an unsettling tale of an encounter with what may or may not be a dybbuk, set in the mid-nineteenth century in a Polish shtetl, and played out entirely in Yiddish, have to do with the story of a Jewish professor of physics and his family in suburban Minnesota in the summer of 1967, related in English? Is the scene to be viewed as a warm-up of sorts before the main attraction, akin, if you will, to the short-subject films—newsreels, animated cartoons, and live-action comedies and documentaries—that movie houses of old used to play before the main feature? If so, what is the significance of presenting an odd Yiddish scene to an American audience notorious for turning a cold shoulder to non-English-speaking cinema? Or is the scene to be viewed as a prologue to the movie? If so, in what sense could it be said to impart to the audience either the “state of suspense of the plot produced by the previous history” or, alternatively, the argument of the drama?

Rabbinic literature offers competing images of embryology and the relationship between mother and fetus. The Palestinian midrashic collection Leviticus Rabbah 14 marginalizes the active role of the mother and depicts the process of gestation as a dangerous time for the fetus. God is in charge of the care and birth of the child, and the father is the lone source of physical material. Passages in the third chapter of Bavli tractate Niddah, in contrast, reference the biological contributions of the mother and portray an idyllic image of the womb. This study explores how cultural differences, variances in representations of women, and sources of authoritative medical knowledge in Sasanian Persia and Roman Palestine contributed to the formation of these texts with markedly different understandings of the relationship between mother and fetus. I will argue that the study of the Sasanian Persian context is key to understanding the Bavli motifs, but that the Palestinian sources can best be understood with references not only to contemporaneous Greco-Roman sources, but also to ancient Iranian and Mesopotamian works, which have been generally overlooked by scholars.

The maskilic characterization of the nineteenth century as a period of decline and ossification for Hasidism is increasingly eschewed by scholars, yet continues to mark current research in significant ways. As a case study, this article takes up Rabbi Shmuel Schneersohn of Lubavitch (“Maharash,” 1834–1882), rescrutinizing (1) the controversy surrounding the onset of his leadership, (2) his personality and charisma, (3) his methodological approach to the teachings and texts that he inherited from his predecessors, and (4) his theological contributions and their place in the broader trajectory of Chabad's intellectual history. His tenure emerges as a false twilight, in which a new foundation was laid for the perpetuation and expansion of Chabad-Lubavitch, as both an intellectual and activist movement, in the century that followed.