Editor's Pick ·
The Origins and Meaning of Shabbat
Israel’s day of light and joy.
Jon D. Levenson
Jon D. Levenson is the Albert A. List Professor of Jewish Studies at Harvard Divinity School and the author, most recently, of Israel’s Day of Light and Joy: The Origin, Development, and Enduring Meaning of the Jewish Sabbath (Eisenbrauns).
Latest Content
Observation ·
Podcast: Jon Levenson on Understanding the Binding of Isaac as the Bible Understands It (Rebroadcast)
By Jon D. Levenson, Tikvah Podcast at MosaicCommitted to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Observation ·
Marilynne Robinson Promises Her Reading of Genesis Is Faithful to the Text. Is It?
By Jon D. LevensonCommitted to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Editor's Pick ·
Anti-Semitism, Philo-Semitism, and Anti-Paganism in the Jewish and Christian Bibles
Divine Doppelgängers.
Editor's Pick ·
Abraham in Three Religions
The making of a biblical hero.
Editor's Pick ·
What It Means for Abraham to Sacrifice His Son
And what it has to do with Passover.
Editor's Pick ·
How a Group of Christian Thinkers Argued That the Poor Are the New Jews
Liberation theology, the Exodus, and divine love.
Observation ·
Podcast: Jon Levenson on Understanding the Binding of Isaac as the Bible Understands It
By Jon D. Levenson, Tikvah Podcast at MosaicCommitted to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Editor's Pick ·
Abraham Didn’t Found the Abrahamic Religions
Instead, he founded a family.
Editor's Pick ·
Making Sense of the Book of Job
How not to read the text through a modern lens.
Editor's Pick ·
What Does It Mean to Say That “God Is One”? And How Are We Supposed to Love Him?
The ambiguities of the sh’ma.
Observation ·
When Did Judaism Begin?
By Jon D. LevensonCommitted to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Editor's Pick ·
Death, Resurrection, and the Afterlife in Judaism and Christianity
Similarities, differences, and common origins.
Editor's Pick ·
God Doesn’t Command Abraham to Kill His Son, but to Sacrifice Him
Why not throw out troubling parts of the Bible?
Editor's Pick ·
Understanding Abraham
The tenth anniversary of a seminal book on the patriarch’s legacy.
Observation ·
All Diversities But One: Why American Universities Put Religion Aside
By Jon D. LevensonCommitted to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Editor's Pick ·
Resurrection in the Bible and Talmud, and Its Implications for God and Man
A professor speaks with a pastor.
Observation ·
Did Jews Really Believe There Were Two Gods in Heaven?
By Jon D. LevensonCommitted to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Response ·
Does the New Testament Support Christian Zionism?
By Jon D. LevensonSeeking a basis for reconciliation between Jews and Christians has been a much-pursued enterprise over the past few centuries. For the most part, the quest has been founded upon a mutual willingness t...
Response ·
On Confusing One’s Own Views with the Bible’s
By Jon D. LevensonIn “The People-Forming Passover,” his essay on chapters 12 and 13 of Exodus , Leon Kass subjects the biblical account of the first Passover to a searching examination in order to discover and expound...
Observation ·
A Tale of Two Soloveitchiks
By Jon D. LevensonCommitted to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Editor's Pick ·
The Hebrew Bible on Death and Resurrection
Plus: the crisis of academic Bible scholarship.
Editor's Pick ·
The Ancient Christian Roots of Some Modern Anti-Zionism
Whoever the “new Jews” are, they’re not the ones living in Israel.
Editor's Pick ·
Can Belief in the Divinity of the Torah Be Reconciled with Biblical Criticism?
An impressive but flawed new book tries to do so.
Response ·
What It Means to Read the Bible as Nothing More than Great Literature
By Jon D. LevensonIn his enlightening essay on Robert Alter’s new translation of the Hebrew Bible, Hillel Halkin identifies Alter as “a leading advocate of the view, rarely voiced before the mid-20th century, that th...
Editor's Pick ·
How Jewish Studies Came to Harvard, with Anti-Semitism Hovering Nearby
A “view of Judaism on its own terms.”
Response ·
The Contrast Between the Bible’s Idea of History and the Modern Idea
By Jon D. LevensonEric Mechoulan’s essay, “ What Is the Meaning of Jewish History? ,” is a wide-ranging, learned, and challenging exploration of the modes and purposes of historiography, or the writing of history, espe...
Response ·
Comparing (and Contrasting) Catholic and Jewish Reactions to the Modern Liberal Order
By Jon D. LevensonNathan Shields’s essay on the misguided review in First Things of a book on the Mortara affair brilliantly places not only the affair itself but also the recent controversy about it in a larger an...
Response ·
A Museum for the Bible in a Religiously Diverse Land
By Jon D. LevensonIt was inevitable that a Museum of the Bible (MOTB) located only steps away from the Capitol would come under intense attack, much of it even while its building was still under construction. For the p...
Response ·
Deeper Reasons for the Bias in Biblical Studies
By Jon D. LevensonJoshua Berman’s essay , “The Corruption of Biblical Studies,” is an insightful and eloquent discussion of some of the outstanding problems in the discipline of which we are both members, and it offer...
