Part II Medinah (1:1 and elsewhere): province, region. This word does not appear in the Torah but it appears in Nach, starting with I Kings

This is a fascinating book that was written in 1981, shortly after Ezer Weizman served as defense minister. Why the strange title? Battles are usually

I had always wondered what view of dreams was reflected in biblical Hebrew. My initial thought was that Ḥ-L-M might have derived from Ḥ-L-H (sick).

We have all been bothered for decades by the following fundamental question. If the root K-D-Sh means “holy,” how could “kedeshah” mean “prostitute”? Note that

We do something very unusual in Kiddush Levana. After reciting the first half of Exodus 15:16 three times, “tipol aleihem eimatah va-fachad, bigdol zeroacha yidmu

As we all know, the Ten Commandments are found in Parshat Yitro and again in Parshat VaEtchanan. But there are differences. One major difference is

The word “chidah” (chet-yod-dalet-heh) appears 17 times in Tanach in various forms. The basic meaning of “chidah” seems to be a riddling question. (But sometimes

Published in 2002, Arthur Herzberg wrote “A Jew in America: My Life and A People’s Struggle for Identity.” Ordinarily, I would not review a book

In Exodus Chapter 3, God sees that Moses went to look at the burning bush. Then God instructs Moses: “Do not come near. Remove your

I base this column on “Shimon Peres: The Biography,” by Michael Bar-Zohar (2007), parts I and II. Bar-Zohar writes in the introduction: “To many, Shimon

I wrote a column about this word before. But I thought about it again when I wrote my new book “Roots and Rituals,” and there

The term “Chashmonai” is widely used in the rabbinic literature about Chanukah. But nowhere in I Maccabees and II Maccabees is the term used, and