Vol. 50:4

Reading the Abraham-Isaac narratives through the lens of clinical trauma theory, this article argues that Isaac's lifelong passivity, neediness, blindness, and avoidance of his father are literary symptoms of psychological injury inflicted by the near-sacrifice at Moriah. Comparing Isaac's behavior to diagnostic features associated with PTSD — reliving, avoidance, emotional numbing, and retraumatization — the author traces how the trauma of the Akedah resurfaces when Isaac is later deceived by Rebekah and Jacob. The article situates this reading within Genesis's broader tendency to portray the patriarchs as flawed, fallible human beings rather than idealized heroes, and suggests that this candor about suffering, followed eventually by reconciliation, distinguishes the ancestral narratives from Greek tragedy.

Moses' review of the appointment of judges in Deuteronomy 1 is oddly placed immediately before his review of the episode of the spies, and this article argues that the juxtaposition is deliberate rather than a seam left by careless editing. Tracing verbal and thematic parallels between the two passages — the injunction not to fear, the selection of representatives, and the language of matters 'too difficult' to resolve — the author proposes that the courage and independence demanded of the judge is offered as a model for the courage the Israelites failed to show when faced with the report of the spies. The judiciary, chosen by and from the people rather than imposed by pedigree, becomes a symbol of the former slaves' transition to an autonomous, self-governing nation, a transition the spies episode shows they were not yet ready to complete.

Deuteronomy uniquely commands Israel not to abhor Edom or Egypt, despite their history of hostility toward the Israelites, and this article uncovers a shared narrative pattern behind both prohibitions: a lost birthright, a plea for a blessing, and a 'great cry' of loss (Esau's cry in Genesis 27 and Egypt's cry after the death of the firstborn in Exodus 11-12). Because Israel bore some responsibility for each loss — Jacob's deception of Esau, Joseph's economic subjugation of the Egyptians — the Torah pairs grievance with mandated empathy rather than simple vindication. The article extends the same template to Moab, arguing that the puzzling verses about Sihon's conquest of Moabite land in Numbers 21 are meant to preserve the Moabite perspective on a loss Israel benefited from, and closes by connecting this pattern to Jonathan Sacks' argument that biblical narrative consistently directs sympathy toward the unchosen sibling.

Source criticism finds strong evidence of composite authorship in the Gideon narrative of Judges 6 — repeated theophanies, two divine names, and a hero with two names — and Mark Smith and Elizabeth Bloch-Smith's recent commentary lays out that case in exhaustive detail. This article reads the same chapter as a single, deliberately unified story, arguing that its apparent repetitions instead trace a coherent progression: God patiently escalating the forms of reassurance he offers a fearful, doubting Gideon, from a human prophet to a physical angel to direct speech to two further signs on demand. The author situates this pattern of divine patience alongside similar 'doubling' scenes elsewhere in the Bible (Abraham and Sarah's laughter, the two calls of Moses) and suggests that Judges 6, read this way, dramatizes a distinctly biblical theology in which even Israel's greatest leaders are permitted their doubts.

Surveying biblical and rabbinic law alongside archaeological and comparative Near Eastern evidence, this article examines how ancient Israel understood and regulated miscarriage — spontaneous, accidental, and intentional. It analyzes the two competing interpretive traditions of the Exodus 21:22-25 injury law, one reading the described harm as harm to the fetus, the other as harm to the pregnant woman, and surveys medical, magical, and liturgical practices used to protect pregnancies. The article traces rabbinic rulings on abortion and the purity laws of miscarriage, concluding that the fetus was generally treated as part of the mother's body rather than as a separate legal person until birth, and closes by setting these Israelite sources against comparable Mesopotamian, Hittite, Greek, and Roman traditions, several of which treated abortion far more punitively, or far more permissively, than rabbinic law did.

Bir'kat HaMazon, the Grace After Meals, concludes with biblical verses affirming that the righteous never go hungry — a claim that seems to contradict lived experience. This article examines the two most troubling of these verses, Psalms 37:25 and 34:11, offering both a theological reading (in which the righteous do not feel their deprivation, or will be vindicated in God's own time) and a literary reading (in which the verses are personal poetic reflection rather than binding doctrine). Drawing on Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Radak, Samson Raphael Hirsch, and modern scholars including Jonathan Sacks and Benjamin Segal, the article concludes that readers need not be scandalized by verses that are opinion rather than dogma, even as it takes seriously why so many prayer books quietly soften their wording.

The first contest held in person since the pandemic, in Jerusalem on Israel's Independence Day: some 45 contestants from 20 countries, 16 of them in the teenage final, gathered at the Jewish Agency building after two years of running virtually.