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Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik, The Jewish Jesus, and the Problem of Supercessionism
Vol. 16 No. 2 (2025)Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik (~1805–1881) was an Orthodox Jew from the distinguished Soloveitchik family: the grandson of Rabbi Hayim of Volozhin (founder of the famous Volozhin yeshiva in Lithuania) and the brother of the great-great-grandfather of R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik (one of the founders of Modern Orthodoxy).1 Elijah Zvi received a traditional education in Volozhin and remained an Orthodox Jew all his life; but he also cultivated friendships with Christians and carefully studied the New Testament.
In the 1860s, Soloveitchik published a peculiar commentary on the Gospels called Qol Qore. Interpreting Jesus in light of classical rabbinic sources, he attempted to show that “the New Testament is in no manner contrary to the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) or the Talmud.”2 The commen-taries on Luke and John, if they ever existed, are lost. The commentary on Mark is extant only in a French translation. The commentary on Matthew alone has been preserved in Soloveitchik’s original Hebrew.
Thanks to the labors of translator Jordan Gayle Levy and editor Shaul Magid, Soloveitchik’s long-neglected commentaries on Matthew and Mark are now available in an excellent new English version.3 In colla-boration with Magid, the Journal of Textual Reasoning is pleased to present this exciting collection of articles engaging with Soloveitchik’s commentaries.
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Vol. 16 No. 1 (2025)
This issue of the Journal of Textual Reasoning celebrates the 2022 publication of Dirshuni: Contemporary Women’s Midrash. This book is an adaptation of a two-volume set published in Israel, known as דרשוני: מדרשי נשים. Compiled by Tamar Biala and Nehama Weingarten-Mintz, these volumes feature an extensive collection of midrashim authored by women that draw on the style and language of classical midrash.
The English publication of Dirshuni features a selection of fifty midrashim from the Hebrew volumes that have been translated by Yehuda Mirsky. Dirshuni goes beyond translation, however, by introducing a layer of commentary authored by Tamar Biala and translated by Ilana Kurshan. This commentary expands the deeply sedimented layers of meaning—so characteristic of classical midrash—that comprise these women’s midrashim, providing context, unpacking some of the hermeneutic moves of the midrashists, and articulating aspects of their hiddushim (innovative contributions).
In its translation and commentary, Dirshuni makes the rich and creative texts of women midrashists accessible to an anglophone audience. Its publication marks an opening of possibilities—for religious and academic study alike. We at the Journal of Textual Reasoning are incredibly excited to present the following journal issue in which scholars of different disciplines reflect on the value and contributions of the Dirshuni project as a whole.
