Midrash

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Midrash (; Hebrew: מִדְרָשׁ; pl. מִדְרָשִׁים midrashim or מִדְרָשׁוֹת midrashot) is a genre of Jewish Biblical exegesis, including Talmudic texts that use the classical rabbinic mode of homiletical interpretation (derash). The word itself means "textual interpretation", "study", or "exegesis", 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". 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...

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