Midrash Masterclass: How to Learn Midrash
Course Details
Avraham smashing the idols, Vashti sprouting a tail, and the very fact that the Torah was created 974 generations before creation. Many of the stories Jews (and other readers of scripture) tell about the characters in Tanakh are not found there, but are contained in a large body of literature called Midrash.
How did Midrash come to be, and how old is it? How do practitioners of midrash decide what stories to tell, and did they actually think they were part of scripture?
In this course, we learn the tools of learning midrash as a sophisticated and rich method of reading scripture, from its beginnings to the eighth century, but mostly through conversations on and close readings of "classical midrash," redacted in 4th century Palestina/Eretz Israel.
This course is going to take an academic look at how midrash is structured. If you have experience learning midrash and have always wondered how it "works," this is the course for you.
Amit Gvaryahu, currently an Associate Research Scholar in the Program in Judaic Studies at Princeton University, is a cultural historian of ancient Judaism. He studies money and its significance in antiquity, mostly among ancient Jews, but also in other contexts. He also has side interests in Roman Law, Biblical interpretation, textual criticism, and book history. His first book, "Usury: Moneylending, Money and Society in Rabbinic Literature," is in print with the Hebrew University Magnes Press. He is currently working on an anthology of early rabbinic Midrash in translation (under contract with Yale University Press). His work has appeared in numerous journals, such as the Harvard Theological Review, Studies in Late Antiquity, and the Jewish Quarterly Review. A past fellow of the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Gvaryahu received his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2019.
