This dissertation is a study of the usury prohibition in rabbinic literature. It focuses on the usury laws in Tannaitic literature, the first formulation of the usury prohibition as a complex and multifaceted judicial norm. I place the Tannaitic usury laws against the backdrop of the economic and cultural norms of the wider world which the Tannaim…[Read more]

Amit Gvaryahu Reviews Eve Krakowski’s Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt

Jewish Girls in Medieval Egypt

Both in terms of its content and its methodology, Pious Irreverence is a pioneering work. Weiss artfully employs all the tools of textual analysis developed over the last four decades of rabbinic scholarship and brings them to bear on TY, a largely neglected corpus. Tanhuma-Yelammedenu has never been studied as a work of theology, nor from a…[Read more]

Every place is accompanied by its own set of etiologies, origin-stories, local
histories, urban myths, folklore, rumors, and gossip. A story about a journey is
also about transitioning between different narratives and modes of being. In
this essay I discuss one such story, about a lonely disciple from Ashkelon, a
rabbinic figure named Shimʿon…[Read more]

“And Both are Equal”: Exegesis Creating Values in Ancient Jewish Texts

Amit Gvaryahu

There are many gaps between the primary or literal interpretation of what is written in the Torah and the way the Sages interpreted it in midrashim, the Mishnah, and the Talmud. Many scholars see these gaps as a result of the Sages’ imposition of exter…[Read more]

במאמר קצר זה ביקשתי לעמוד על משמעותם המילולית והמעשית של שני מונחי
הלוואה. בפרק הראשון של המאמר בחנתי שתי מילים שאולות הדומות זו לזו — קליטו
של ים וקליטון דימא — והראיתי שמדובר בשתי מילים שונות בלא קשר ביניהן.
בפרק השני עמדתי על המונחים הטרשה וטרשא והראיתי שהמשמעות המילולית
הבסיסית של המילה מאפשרת לנו להבין גם את אופי העסקה שהיא מתארת: ע…[Read more]

This paper is an attempt to understand the construction and redaction
of tractate Avodah Zarah through the study of these dialogue-stories and their
context. It will demonstrate sensitivity to genre and aesthetics in exploring
questions of higher criticism. Additionally, I explicate the role of the
dialogues as a stylistic and rhetorical…[Read more]