Omer 2025 Day 41

Day 40 | Day 42

Day 41: After Abel and Other Stories by Michal Lemberger
Yesod in Yesod, Connection in Foundation

The Torah is the foundational text of the Jewish people. Yet, there are points in the Torah that leave us wanting more, and that is where midrash comes in. There are many different definitions of midrash. During my fellowship at Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School in 2014 (then JPDS), a Judaics teacher I was working with explained midrash to her 5th grade class as "oral Torah" and encouraged them to treat midrash with the same weight they give to the Torah itself. More often, however, I hear midrash defined as "rabbinic stories." Either way, midrash is meant to provide more context to the Torah. For example, after Cain and Abel's sacrifices to God, "Cain said to his brother Abel … and when they were in the field, Cain set upon his brother Abel and killed him" (Genesis 4:8). The ellipses in the text has spawned a whole host of midrash attempting to answer the question of what transpired. It is a way of giving voice to voiceless moments and often missing from the Torah are the voices of women. After Abel imagines as modern midrash the voices of some of the women on the periphery of the Tanakh. Lemberger gives color and motivation to women who are otherwise only briefly mentioned. What, for example, did Eve think and feel after Cain killed Abel? The story of Eve reflecting on life and death, marriage and motherhood, in the wake of her son's death is just one profound example of how Lemberger centers women's voices in our foundational texts.