By Rabbi Rachel Esserman
Close readers of the biblical text often have difficulty when those biblical characters are portrayed in fictional works. It can be jarring when a novel strays too far from the story as it appears in the biblical text or goes off on a tangent with events that aren 
By Rabbi Rachel Esserman
Some scholars believe that the ancient rabbis’ answer to the destruction of the second Temple in Jerusalem was to create a world where animal sacrifices were no longer considered necessary. In fact, there are claims that the rabbis were pleased with this turn of e…
By Rabbi Rachel Esserman
One of the joys of Torah dialogue is to have someone suggest an idea about the text that had never occurred to you. Almost everyone has something to add from their personal or professional expertise and their lived experiences. Even someone who has never studied the…
By Rabbi Rachel Esserman
When I was in rabbinical school, we read several scholarly articles about whether the ancient Jewish population had been influenced by the Greek culture of its time. The material was very easy to summarize: even though the authors used the same evidence, some said G…
By Rabbi Rachel Esserman
Fantasy novels offer their authors a number of world-building possibilities that shape and inform their plots and characters. This allows them to include a variety of supernatural elements in their works since they are not restricted to the physical rules of our uni…
