Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Judaism Of or pertaining to a
Midrash or toMidrashim .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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In her classic 1981 study of Rabbinic interpretation in the context of contemporary thought, The Slayers of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory, Susan Handelman contrasts Midrashic hermeneutics to the Greek philosophical tradition:
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The Midrashic method contrasts with static historicism, known alternatively as "originalism" or as "fundamentalism," in its ability to adopt multiple perspectives and a pluralistic stance towards meaning in our lives.
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And thus in that Midrashic tradition Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac are understood as those events which once and for all establish the fact that God has promised to be with his people.
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The great scholar Max Kadushin, in his seminal 1952 work The Rabbinic Mind, sees the Midrashic method of narrative expansion that he views in "organic" terms:
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We need that Midrashic imagination of the sacrifice of Isaac as the moment when the doors have last closed on holy violence and God's commitment to the community of justice is once and for all made plain.
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Abraham certainly in some strands of the Midrashic tradition, Abraham obeys God's command to sacrifice Isaac because he knows that through it God is about to manifest once and for all decisively, irrefutably his commitment by bringing back those he has chosen from the edge of death.
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We need that Midrashic imagination of the sacrifice of Isaac as the moment when the doors have last closed on holy violence and God's commitment to the community of justice is once and for all made plain.
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Abraham certainly in some strands of the Midrashic tradition, Abraham obeys God's command to sacrifice Isaac because he knows that through it God is about to manifest once and for all decisively, irrefutably his commitment by bringing back those he has chosen from the edge of death.
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And thus in that Midrashic tradition Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac are understood as those events which once and for all establish the fact that God has promised to be with his people.
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Rather than assume that the truth is a singular, univocal idea, the attitude found in the Platonic philosophy and adopted by Western civilization, Jewish tradition leaves room for multiple truths and a seemingly infinite chain of meaning that is exemplified in the use of the Midrashic method.
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