What do you think?
Rate this book
Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, 2 volume set
Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael is a classic collection of midrash. It contains commentary on a large part of the Book of Exodus (chapters 12 to 23) and represents the two main modes of the halakhah (legal doctrine), and the aggadah (moral and religious teachings). The work also contains allusions to historical events and ancient legends not found elsewhere. A new introduction by noted scholar David Stern highlights the work, now published in a convenient two-volume set. It retains the original text from the JPS 1933 edition, reset in a modern, readable typeface, with Hebrew and English on facing pages and the original indexes. This classic work is widely recognized as a model of meticulous and thorough scholarship. Its translation is accurate, straightforward, and usable by scholars, students, and lay readers. Out of print for many years, it will be heralded as an important reissue that should belong to every rabbi, rabbinical school, and Jewish Studies professor, and will be an important addition to synagogue libraries and public libraries with Judaica collections.
1200 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 1976
10 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 30, 2018
Volume One:
It is not my usual habit to read multi-volume books in reverse order, but that is precisely what happened here. To be sure, this was not due in any way to desiring to read in the manner of Caroline Bingley, but rather because the first volume of this collection of midrashic materials (mostly haggadic in nature, moreover) that I received was the third and final volume first, and then the second volume, and finally the first, which was in a different binding and includes some annotations and markings itself from the book's first owner, who bought the book in 1941 and appeared to take issue with some of the author's translations and interpretations of the biblical law being discussed. As Lauterbach was a liberal Jewish strongly influenced by bogus critical scholarship, this is not too surprising that the more orthodox owner would take umbrage at Lauterbach's lack of fidelity to the biblical text and its clear meanings. Indeed, I found myself feeling the same way myself, appreciating the text that was translated but viewing the translator's bias with some degree of skepticism and doubt. Even so, this is an immensely worthwhile if deeply obscure work in Jewish biblical interpretation.
The contents of this book consist of three parts. The first part is a lengthy introduction of more than sixty pages by the translator, who discusses the complex textual history of the Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael (and presumably implying that the biblical material itself is equally complex in its textual history) and commenting on the mix of materials from the school of Rabbi Ishmael and that of Rabbi Akiba, a rival teacher. These materials are largely of interest to readers who have an interest in early Jewish history. After that, the bulk of this book is taken up by the Tractate Pisha, which looks at the law relating to the Passover and discusses and interprets this story in considerable detail, discussing issues like circumcision and calendar matters like intercalinary days. Finally, the book consists of the Tractate Beshallah, which looks at the exodus of Israel out of slavery until they get to the Red Sea, and which is considerably shorter than the material about the Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread. The particularly book I have for this volume includes a few notes by the author where he demonstrates his piety in writing about G-d in an indirect fashion and corrects some of the interpretations and readings of the translator.
I am unsure of how interesting this book would be to a majority of readers. The book, like the others in this series, is a diglot between a critical Hebrew transcription that is biased towards the received versions rather than what is contained in the manuscript itself and an English version that has considerable interpretation from its somewhat unreliable translator. Likewise, the interpretations given in these pages are themselves based on Jewish tradition of a complex nature, and as a Christian nature the interpreters seem to miss obvious messianic implications of the material being discussed, which is fairly common when one deals with the Hebrew scriptures and their understanding. Despite all of this, though, this book is definitely of interest if one has an interest in the Hebrew scriptures and in the midrashic as opposed to mishnaic approach to biblical law. While I am aware that this may be a very small selection of potential readers, those who appreciate having a critical text of an obscure book with some noteworthy and deeply interesting interpretations of the biblical law would do very well to check out all three volumes of this text for themselves.
Volume Two:
Admittedly, I am approaching this obscure midrashic text in a somewhat backward fashion. Having first received and read the third volume of this work, I was prompted to obtain the other two volumes of the work and since the second volume arrived first, I read it first. Ultimately, though, this is not a text that suffers from being read out of order because each volume contains rather self-contained materials that do not depend on the context of the other volumes in order to be well-understood. Indeed, and perhaps somewhat humorously, the book itself defends the reading of material out of order, pointing out over and over again that numerous books of the Bible are arranged out of order with the insistent reminder that the Bible doesn't care about chronological order, and as that is the case, then neither should I be bothered about reading a deeply worthwhile book like this one out of order either. Admittedly, this volume is not the sort of volume that is likely to ever be a popular one to read, but if you like midrashic materials that write about the law and give some deeply interesting interpretations of it, this book is definitely a worthwhile one.
The contents of this book consist of four different tractates of the early Midrashic tradition that, combined, make up about 300 pages in both English and Hebrew. The pages have a bit inconsistent of formatting, but it's not a huge issue as the book is easy to read (although the Hebrew is lacking vowel points). The first text, Tractate Shirata, looks at the Song of Moses that consists of most of Exodus 15 and takes up about 80 pages in both languages. The second text, the Tracate Vayassa', looks at the rest of Exodus 15 and 16 and the first part of Exodus 17, taking up about 70 pages or so. The third text, the Tractate Amalek, covers the conflict between Israel and Amalek at Rephidim and the material just after that to the end of Exodus 18 and takes up a bit less than 60 pages of material. The fourth and final text, the Tractate Bahodesh, covers the text from Exodus 19 and 20, including the ten commandments, and takes up a bit more than 100 pages worth of material, giving some in-depth discussion about the family situation of Jethro and Moses as well as the ten commandments, all of which adds up to some deeply worthwhile material.
Indeed, this material is worthwhile in a variety of ways. The content includes some thoughtful understanding of various puns, including a reference to Israel's time in the Wilderness of Sin. It was refreshing to know that I wasn't the only or the first person to connect the problems of Israel with sin in the wilderness to their sojourn in a wilderness with that location. Likewise, the authors showed themselves to be deeply interested in all kinds of aspects of words, including the tense of various words like song that indicated a difference between the feminine and masculine with prophetic implications. To be sure, some of the material was speculative in nature, but there were many different interpretations provided for different texts and passages, all of which meant that the writing provided for a great deal of flexibility in approach that allows for a lot of different possibilities, many of which may end up being true about a given meaning of a passage. And that flexibility of meaning and the allowance for various possibilities makes this book more meaningful and interesting to read, and more useful as a way of understanding some traditional understandings of the law.
Volume Three:
Unfortunately, when I first saw this book online I did not realize that there were three volumes to the work, and so this was the first one I ordered and reviewed, and so I will be reading this work out of order, not something I generally prefer to do. Fortunately, it appears as if this book (which also includes some of the supplemental material for the three volume set as a whole at the end) can be read on its own and is a self-contained unit, and so it appears as if it is not a bad thing to read this work on its own. As someone whose familiarity with the translator is somewhat slight, it was interesting to read the author's translation work before taking on his commentaries on Jewish law and practice. At any rate, this book is worthwhile if someone is interest in the importance of the Midrash and in having a book on traditional Jewish interpretation of the law in one's library. I happen to be someone who engages in midrashing from time to time on the Torah [1], and so this book is one I found to be pretty congenial in terms of its contents and some of its approaches.
The contents of this book are distinctive and the book appears a lot larger than it reads. The vast majority of the book consists of three ancient midrashic texts from Rabbi Ishmael, with the English on the left side of the page and ancient Hebrew on the right side of the page without vowel points. Most of the book is taken up with the Tractate Nezikin along with its translation, and this particular text focuses on the law of the covenant, containing eighteen chapters that cover the material in Exodus 21 and 22. After that is the shorter Tractate Kaspa, which looks at the material from Exodus 22:24 to Exodus 23:19 in five chapters. The third and final text in this book is the Tractate Shabbata, which has one chapter on the Sabbath covenant in Exodus 31:12-17 and one chapter on the material in Exodus 35:1-3. These three texts contain slightly over 200 pages of material in both English and Hebrew, and the rest of the book is taken up with indices and a concordance that demonstrate the excellence of this critical text and its value for researchers.
Overall, I would say that this book is of chief interest to those who are researchers in the interpretation of Hebrew law. Specifically, Lauterbach's work as a whole (at least as far as I understand it) was markedly in favor of the midrash approach of interpreting the law in light of the whole text of the Tanakh rather than the Mishnaic approach of going outside of the Bible and looking to create or endorse unscriptural practices through human reasoning. That is not to say that there is no reasoning going on in these texts--not only in the critical comments but also in the way that Rabbi Ishmael sometimes argues things via proof by contradiction. Nevertheless, even if some of the conclusions of the author on these various laws and their implications are not the same as I would draw, they have the benefit of coming from the Bible itself, and are interpretations that I can certainly understand and in many cases agree with. For those readers whose interest in the interpretation of the law is not great, there is likely to be little of interest in this very dry and technical and scholarly work, but for the small number of people who have a deep interest in these matters, this book is definitely a worthy volume.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2010...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2012...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...
It is not my usual habit to read multi-volume books in reverse order, but that is precisely what happened here. To be sure, this was not due in any way to desiring to read in the manner of Caroline Bingley, but rather because the first volume of this collection of midrashic materials (mostly haggadic in nature, moreover) that I received was the third and final volume first, and then the second volume, and finally the first, which was in a different binding and includes some annotations and markings itself from the book's first owner, who bought the book in 1941 and appeared to take issue with some of the author's translations and interpretations of the biblical law being discussed. As Lauterbach was a liberal Jewish strongly influenced by bogus critical scholarship, this is not too surprising that the more orthodox owner would take umbrage at Lauterbach's lack of fidelity to the biblical text and its clear meanings. Indeed, I found myself feeling the same way myself, appreciating the text that was translated but viewing the translator's bias with some degree of skepticism and doubt. Even so, this is an immensely worthwhile if deeply obscure work in Jewish biblical interpretation.
The contents of this book consist of three parts. The first part is a lengthy introduction of more than sixty pages by the translator, who discusses the complex textual history of the Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael (and presumably implying that the biblical material itself is equally complex in its textual history) and commenting on the mix of materials from the school of Rabbi Ishmael and that of Rabbi Akiba, a rival teacher. These materials are largely of interest to readers who have an interest in early Jewish history. After that, the bulk of this book is taken up by the Tractate Pisha, which looks at the law relating to the Passover and discusses and interprets this story in considerable detail, discussing issues like circumcision and calendar matters like intercalinary days. Finally, the book consists of the Tractate Beshallah, which looks at the exodus of Israel out of slavery until they get to the Red Sea, and which is considerably shorter than the material about the Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread. The particularly book I have for this volume includes a few notes by the author where he demonstrates his piety in writing about G-d in an indirect fashion and corrects some of the interpretations and readings of the translator.
I am unsure of how interesting this book would be to a majority of readers. The book, like the others in this series, is a diglot between a critical Hebrew transcription that is biased towards the received versions rather than what is contained in the manuscript itself and an English version that has considerable interpretation from its somewhat unreliable translator. Likewise, the interpretations given in these pages are themselves based on Jewish tradition of a complex nature, and as a Christian nature the interpreters seem to miss obvious messianic implications of the material being discussed, which is fairly common when one deals with the Hebrew scriptures and their understanding. Despite all of this, though, this book is definitely of interest if one has an interest in the Hebrew scriptures and in the midrashic as opposed to mishnaic approach to biblical law. While I am aware that this may be a very small selection of potential readers, those who appreciate having a critical text of an obscure book with some noteworthy and deeply interesting interpretations of the biblical law would do very well to check out all three volumes of this text for themselves.
Volume Two:
Admittedly, I am approaching this obscure midrashic text in a somewhat backward fashion. Having first received and read the third volume of this work, I was prompted to obtain the other two volumes of the work and since the second volume arrived first, I read it first. Ultimately, though, this is not a text that suffers from being read out of order because each volume contains rather self-contained materials that do not depend on the context of the other volumes in order to be well-understood. Indeed, and perhaps somewhat humorously, the book itself defends the reading of material out of order, pointing out over and over again that numerous books of the Bible are arranged out of order with the insistent reminder that the Bible doesn't care about chronological order, and as that is the case, then neither should I be bothered about reading a deeply worthwhile book like this one out of order either. Admittedly, this volume is not the sort of volume that is likely to ever be a popular one to read, but if you like midrashic materials that write about the law and give some deeply interesting interpretations of it, this book is definitely a worthwhile one.
The contents of this book consist of four different tractates of the early Midrashic tradition that, combined, make up about 300 pages in both English and Hebrew. The pages have a bit inconsistent of formatting, but it's not a huge issue as the book is easy to read (although the Hebrew is lacking vowel points). The first text, Tractate Shirata, looks at the Song of Moses that consists of most of Exodus 15 and takes up about 80 pages in both languages. The second text, the Tracate Vayassa', looks at the rest of Exodus 15 and 16 and the first part of Exodus 17, taking up about 70 pages or so. The third text, the Tractate Amalek, covers the conflict between Israel and Amalek at Rephidim and the material just after that to the end of Exodus 18 and takes up a bit less than 60 pages of material. The fourth and final text, the Tractate Bahodesh, covers the text from Exodus 19 and 20, including the ten commandments, and takes up a bit more than 100 pages worth of material, giving some in-depth discussion about the family situation of Jethro and Moses as well as the ten commandments, all of which adds up to some deeply worthwhile material.
Indeed, this material is worthwhile in a variety of ways. The content includes some thoughtful understanding of various puns, including a reference to Israel's time in the Wilderness of Sin. It was refreshing to know that I wasn't the only or the first person to connect the problems of Israel with sin in the wilderness to their sojourn in a wilderness with that location. Likewise, the authors showed themselves to be deeply interested in all kinds of aspects of words, including the tense of various words like song that indicated a difference between the feminine and masculine with prophetic implications. To be sure, some of the material was speculative in nature, but there were many different interpretations provided for different texts and passages, all of which meant that the writing provided for a great deal of flexibility in approach that allows for a lot of different possibilities, many of which may end up being true about a given meaning of a passage. And that flexibility of meaning and the allowance for various possibilities makes this book more meaningful and interesting to read, and more useful as a way of understanding some traditional understandings of the law.
Volume Three:
Unfortunately, when I first saw this book online I did not realize that there were three volumes to the work, and so this was the first one I ordered and reviewed, and so I will be reading this work out of order, not something I generally prefer to do. Fortunately, it appears as if this book (which also includes some of the supplemental material for the three volume set as a whole at the end) can be read on its own and is a self-contained unit, and so it appears as if it is not a bad thing to read this work on its own. As someone whose familiarity with the translator is somewhat slight, it was interesting to read the author's translation work before taking on his commentaries on Jewish law and practice. At any rate, this book is worthwhile if someone is interest in the importance of the Midrash and in having a book on traditional Jewish interpretation of the law in one's library. I happen to be someone who engages in midrashing from time to time on the Torah [1], and so this book is one I found to be pretty congenial in terms of its contents and some of its approaches.
The contents of this book are distinctive and the book appears a lot larger than it reads. The vast majority of the book consists of three ancient midrashic texts from Rabbi Ishmael, with the English on the left side of the page and ancient Hebrew on the right side of the page without vowel points. Most of the book is taken up with the Tractate Nezikin along with its translation, and this particular text focuses on the law of the covenant, containing eighteen chapters that cover the material in Exodus 21 and 22. After that is the shorter Tractate Kaspa, which looks at the material from Exodus 22:24 to Exodus 23:19 in five chapters. The third and final text in this book is the Tractate Shabbata, which has one chapter on the Sabbath covenant in Exodus 31:12-17 and one chapter on the material in Exodus 35:1-3. These three texts contain slightly over 200 pages of material in both English and Hebrew, and the rest of the book is taken up with indices and a concordance that demonstrate the excellence of this critical text and its value for researchers.
Overall, I would say that this book is of chief interest to those who are researchers in the interpretation of Hebrew law. Specifically, Lauterbach's work as a whole (at least as far as I understand it) was markedly in favor of the midrash approach of interpreting the law in light of the whole text of the Tanakh rather than the Mishnaic approach of going outside of the Bible and looking to create or endorse unscriptural practices through human reasoning. That is not to say that there is no reasoning going on in these texts--not only in the critical comments but also in the way that Rabbi Ishmael sometimes argues things via proof by contradiction. Nevertheless, even if some of the conclusions of the author on these various laws and their implications are not the same as I would draw, they have the benefit of coming from the Bible itself, and are interpretations that I can certainly understand and in many cases agree with. For those readers whose interest in the interpretation of the law is not great, there is likely to be little of interest in this very dry and technical and scholarly work, but for the small number of people who have a deep interest in these matters, this book is definitely a worthy volume.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2010...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2012...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...
Displaying 1 of 1 review