Video: List Lecture: What is Midrash? with Ishay Rosen-Zvi

The nature of Midrash has perplexed scholars since the very inception of Jewish Studies as an academic discipline. This systematic analysis of midrashic terminology presented by Ishay Rosen-Zvi, offers a perspective that stands in sharp contrast to the conventional view, which regarded derashot as unpredictable and freewheeling interpretations of the Torah. Just as microhistory offered narratives that diverged from the sweeping portrayals of social and political historiographies, a terminological inquiry sheds entirely new light on midrashic hermeneutics, revealing a depth and structure that often go unnoticed. 

ISHAY ROSEN-ZVI, teaches rabbinic literature at the Department of Jewish Philosophy and Talmud at Tel-Aviv University. He is currently Gerard Weinstock Visiting Professor and a Harry Starr Fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies, Harvard University. He has taught in many universities among them 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. Among his publications are: Goy: Israel’s Others and the Birth of the Gentile (with Adi Ophir) (OUP: Oxford 2018) and Between Mishnah and Midrash: The Birth of Rabbinic Literature (Open University 2019).

View the full recording of the List Lecture: “What is Midrash?” with Ishay Rosen-Zvi.