Carasik, Michael

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I'm a biblicist by training, with secondary interests throughout Jewish studies of the pre-modern era. I teach Biblical Hebrew at the University of Pennsylvania and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. My current publication for a general audience is The Bible's Many Voices, forthcoming in 2014 but available now for pre-order: http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Bibles-Many-Voices,675820.aspx My major project is "The Commentators' Bible," an English-language edition of the Jewish commentaries on the Bible traditionally published as the "Miqra'ot Gedolot." Currently available volumes: Exodus — http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Commentators-Bible-Exodus,675297.aspx Leviticus — http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Commentators-Bible-Leviticus,675296.aspx Numbers — http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Commentators-Bible-Numbers,675295.aspx Deuteronomy — forthcoming Genesis — in preparation

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 23
  • Publication
    Exegetical Implications of the Masoretic Cantillation Marks in Ecclesiastes
    (2001-01-01) Carasik, Michael
    A rabbinic tradition preserved in b. Yoma 52a-b suggests that five biblical verses are "undecidable"--that is, it is not clear how they ought to be punctuated. This makes evident a fact that is not often noticed: the Masoretic punctuation of the Bible is sometimes exegetical in character. Simcha Kogut, in his recent book Correlations between Biblical Accentuation and Traditional Jewish Exegesis, has shown that the biblical text is sometimes punctuated "against" the peshat, the meaning which a "reasonable" reader would assume to have been intended by the author. Such punctuation is a silent commentary. The reason for it is not explained; but it would seem to be prompted by a desire to shape the meaning of the text, often to match it in an interpretation found in rabbinic literature. Choon-Leong Seow's recent Anchor Bible commentary on Ecclesiastes notes over a dozen probable or possible places in that book where biblical scholars have suggested that the Masoretic punctuation does not match the intended meaning of the text. The purpose of this paper is to analyze these cases to determine whether any of these examples were indeed prompted by exegetical concerns. In several cases, the Targum to Ecclesiastes translates the same word twice--that is, they translated simultaneously in accordance with two different decisions about how the verse should be punctuated. I suggest that, in many cases, the Masoretic decision to place a pause in a location that seems to contradict the peshat was similarly made not to contradict it, but to add a second possibility. Despite the restrictive quality of the vowels and punctuation marks which the Masoretes added to the traditional consonants, they may, paradoxically, have been actuated by a desire to preserve the indeterminability of the text.
  • Publication
    Response to Aryeh Cohen "Notes Towards an Erotics of Martyrdom"
    (1997) Carasik, Michael
    I would like to thank Aryeh for his reading of b. Sanh. 74a-75a. The mark of a good reading, to my mind, is that it does not merely explain a text, but suggests further creative interaction with it; and Aryeh's reading has done this for me. I will focus my remarks on the chief line to which Aryeh drew our attention (his line #25, in my translation): "so also must (s)he be slain rather than he transgress." Just as the textual crux of *t/yehareg* provided Aryeh with the kind of uncertainty into which a wedge that opens the text for interpretation can be fit, lines 24 and 25 both share a grammatical indeterminacy that prompts further reflection. But bear with me a moment on my way to the Sanhedrin text; as a student primarily of the Tanakh, not the Talmud, I have a biblical errand to run before I can get there.
  • Publication
    Review of Joel M. Hoffman, And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible's Original Meaning
    (2012-01-01) Carasik, Michael
    A little learning, they say, is a dangerous thing. Joel Hoffman's background would seem to have left him with more than just a little learning, but a reading of his book And God Said demonstrates that he still falls well within the danger area. It's too bad, because his topic is one that deserves a good book for a general readership; and Hoffman himself has a few worthwhile things to say.
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    Ruth 2,7: Why the Overseer Was Embarrassed
    (1995) Carasik, Michael
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    Qohelet's Twists and Turns
    (2003-12-01) Carasik, Michael
    When Elias Bickerman wrote a little volume called Four Strange Books of the Bible, Ecclesiastes was an easy choice for inclusion. As he remarks, "Ecclesiastes has no known antecedents or spiritual posterity in Jewish thought."¹ This is an exaggeration,² but even Qohelet's successors, the Jewish sages of the rabbinic period, found Ecclesiastes questionably biblical. Thus in Leviticus Rabbah 28:1, R. Benjamin B. Levi remarks, "They sought to suppress Ecclesiastes, for they found in it matters that tend toward the heretical."³ The purpose of this article is to highlight what I think is a particularly significant facet of Ecclesiastes' distinctive, and at first glance heretical, stance vis-á-vis the rest of biblical literature. This is Qohelet's emphasis on the imagery of turning.
  • Publication
    Midrash: The Story Behind the Story
    (2003-01-01) Carasik, Michael
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    Three Biblical Beginnings
    (2002-01-01) Carasik, Michael
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    To See a Sound: A Deuteronomic Re-Reading of Exodus 20:15
    (1999-09-01) Carasik, Michael
    In his chapter on inner-biblical exegesis in The Garments of Torah, Michael Fishbane says that his purpose is "to suggest some of the ways by which the foundation document of Judaism, the Hebrew Bible, not only sponsored a monumental culture of textual exegesis, but was itself its own first product." I believe that this assertion, surprising as it sounds, is indeed correct. In what follows, I intend to sharpen it in two ways: first, by pointing out the locus of the Bible's invention of itself, Deuteronomy 4; second, by pointing to the act of exegesis--a Deuteronomic midrash on the phrase from Exodus 20 that describes the Israelites as "seeing" the thunder--that provided the creative spark that transformed theological energy into textual matter and (ultimately) gave us the Bible.
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