One of the most celebrated aspects of rabbinic literature is its adducing of multiple interpretations of scriptural verses and its valorizing of multiple legal opinions as expressed in debate among the rabbinic sages. This celebration has come from several quarters, with each finding in the purported rabbinic polysemy and pluralism support for agendas that could not possibly have been those of the ancient rabbis. For example, in the 1980s, some literary critics and philosophers found support in rabbinic midrash for their theories of indeterminacy of textual meaning in literature and language in general. Likewise, moving from the linguistic to the social domain, those seeking more harmonious relations among modern Judaism's competing denominations have found a pluralistic model to emulate in ancient Judaism, following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, when sectarian rivalry is thought to have been replaced by the “big tent” inclusiveness, marked by respectful debate among multiple opinions, of the rabbis at Yavneh.

In the study of medieval biblical interpretation, the tension between commentators' fidelity to rabbinic midrash and their independent quest for peshat continues to command serious attention. The place of the important Provençal exegete R. David Kimhִi (Radak, ca. 1160–ca. 1235) in the history of peshat commentary is of particular interest, influenced as he was by an especially wide range of traditions. On one hand, Radak's family, which was of Spanish origin, produced grammatical works and commentaries that exemplify the strict text-based approach of the Andalusian exegetes. Indeed, R. Abraham Ibn Ezra, the most prominent representative of this school, influenced Radak considerably. Furthermore, Radak's dedication to Maimonidean rationalism, which has been amply demonstrated by scholars, would only have sharpened his resistance to fanciful midrashic speculation.

The omission of Moses' name from the entire Haggadah is both well known and puzzling. Why has the main character of the Exodus drama vanished without a trace? Moreover, the mere omission of Israel's supreme prophet does not suffice for the redactor of the Haggadah. At the end of the “fugitive Aramean” exegesis, which is central to the Haggadah as a whole, Moses' involvement in the Exodus is expressly denied. The Haggadah comments on Deuteronomy 26:8: “The Lord brought us forth from Egypt”—not by an angel, not by a seraph, nor by an agent, but the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself. Not only did no heavenly angel or seraph take part in the Exodus; not even a flesh-and-blood agent was involved. And “agent” in this context can mean only Moses.

For more than a century, his story has regularly exercised historical and literary imaginations alike. How could it be otherwise? Diplomat, playwright, journalist, politician, and visionary, Mordecai Manuel Noah (1785–1851) was an extraordinary individual. In the course of his life, he wrote and produced successful plays, fought a duel, established himself as a popular newspaper columnist, rescued enslaved American sailors during his tenure as U.S. consul in Tunis, published an important book on his travels in Europe and North Africa, influenced presidential elections through his editorship of major newspapers, and served as judge and port surveyor of New York City. He was easily the most prominent and influential Jew in the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century. Moreover, he has been described as the first public figure “to demand continuous recognition as both a devoted American and as a devoted Jew.”

Mordecai Kaplan's journals from 1913 to 1934 offer a window into the mind of a tormented and lonely Jewish thinker. As a pioneering theologian, sociologist, and teacher of American Judaism in the twentieth century, Kaplan (1881–1983) stood as a towering figure at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, where he worked for a good deal of his very long life. Yet even with the publication of his groundbreaking work Judaism as a Civilization (1934) and his popular following, he felt marginalized and embattled throughout his life. To help manage and defend those professional conflicts, Kaplan turned to his journal to record his personal struggles and anxieties. These diary entries offer important clues to the ways he discovered and created an American Jewish identity through the art of journal writing.

Emil Fackenheim's philosophical response to the Holocaust is permeated by the worry that Auschwitz marks a rupture so severe that it compels any attempt to philosophize in its wake either to ignore the magnitude of this rupture or to lose itself in radical nihilism. “Perhaps no thought can exist in the same space as the Holocaust,” Fackenheim writes in To Mend the World. “Perhaps all thought, to assure its own survival, must be elsewhere.”

Studies of textual traditions about menstruation in Judaism are seldom without an agenda. Perhaps they cannot be. The polemical history of the literature is simply too entrenched by now. This is also the case with Evyatar Marienberg's series of studies, recently published in France, about the place of menstruation in Jewish culture.