The Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School invites you to its List Lecture:
“What is Midrash?” | Ishay Rosen-Zvi
Thursday, March 27, 2025 5:30-7 PM
Common Room, CSWR & Zoom
The nature of Midrash has perplexed scholars since the inception of Jewish Studies as an academic discipline. A systematic analysis of midrashic terminology offers a perspective that contrasts sharply with the conventional view, which regards derashot as unpredictable
and freewheeling interpretations of the Torah. Just as microhistory offers narratives that diverge from the sweeping portrayals of social and political historiographies, a terminological inquiry can shed new light on midrashic hermeneutics, revealing a depth and structure that often go unnoticed.
Prof. ISHAY ROSEN-ZVI teaches rabbinic literature at the Department of Jewish Philosophy and Talmud at Tel-Aviv University. He is Gerard Weinstock Visiting Professor and a Harry Starr Fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies, Harvard University. He has taught at many universities,
including Princeton, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He has written on issues of Hermeneutics, self-formation, and collective identity in Second-Temple Judaism and rabbinic literature. His publications include Goy: Israel’s Others and the Birth of the Gentile, with Adi Ophir (Oxford University Press, 2018) and Between Mishnah and Midrash: The Birth of Rabbinic Literature (Open University, 2019).
This event is funded by Albert & Vera List Fund for Jewish Studies.
