Midrash

Midrash (/ˈmɪdrɑːʃ/;^[1] Hebrew: מִדְרָשׁ; pl. מִדְרָשִׁים midrashim or מִדְרָשׁוֹת‎ midrashot) is expansive Jewish Biblical exegesis^[2] using a rabbinic mode of interpretation prominent in the Talmud. The word itself means "textual interpretation", "study", or "exegesis",^[3] derived from the root verb darash (דָּרַשׁ‎), which means "resort to, seek, seek with care, enquire, require".

Midrash and rabbinic readings "discern value in texts, words, and letters, as potential revelatory spaces", writes the Hebrew scholar Wilda Gafney. "They reimagine dominant narratival readings while crafting new ones to stand alongside—not replace—former readings. Midrash also asks questions of the text; sometimes it provides answers, sometimes it leaves the reader to answer the questions".^[4] Vanessa Lovelace defines midrash as "a Jewish mode of interpretation that not only engages the words of the text, behind the text, and beyond the text, but also focuses on each letter, and the words left unsaid by each line".^[5]

An example of a midrashic interpretation:

"And God saw all that He had made, and found it very good. And there was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day." (Genesis 1:31)—Midrash: Rabbi Nahman said in Rabbi Samuel's name: "Behold, it was very good" refers to the Good Desire; "AND behold, it was very good" refers to the Evil Desire. Can then the Evil Desire be very good? That would be extraordinary! But without the Evil Desire, however, no man would build a house, take a wife and beget children; and thus said Solomon: "Again, I considered all labour and all excelling in work, that it is a man's rivalry with his neighbour." (Kohelet IV, 4).^[6]

The term Midrash is also used of a rabbinic work that interprets Scripture in that manner.^[7][8] Such works contain early interpretations and commentaries on the Written Torah and Oral Torah (spoken law and sermons), as well as non-legalistic rabbinic literature (aggadah) and occasionally Jewish religious laws (halakha), which usually form a running commentary on specific passages in the Hebrew Scripture (Tanakh).^[9]

The word Midrash, especially if capitalized, can refer to a specific compilation of these rabbinic writings composed between 400 and 1200 CE.^[1][10] According to Gary Porton and Jacob Neusner, midrash has three technical meanings:

1. Judaic biblical interpretation;
2. the method used in interpreting;
3. a collection of such interpretations.^[11]