Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences(JHSS)

Dominican University, Borra College of Health Sciences, United States

Publications

• Research Article   
  Semen Through Fingernails: The Somatic Crisis of Free Will in Midrash
  Author(s): Julian Ungar-Sargon*
  
  This study examines the Babylonian Talmud’s account (Sotah 36b) of Joseph’s temptation in Potiphar’s house, wherein Joseph “thrust his fingers into the earth” until “his semen issued forth from between his fingernails.” Through close textual analysis of the Talmudic passage, Rashi’s philological commentary, comparative mythology, and Chassidic elaborations, we demonstrate that this narrative preserves an understanding of moral agency fundamentally incompatible with medieval Jewish rationalist theology. The rabbinic account presents free will not as autonomous rational capacity—the model dominant in Maimonidean philosophy and Orthodox theological discourse—but rather as embodied dialectical struggle requiring divine collaboration. Drawing upon frameworks of embodied theology and therapeutic tzimtzum developed in contemporary m.. Read More»
  

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