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Author: Admiel Kosman
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 311021864X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Book Description
The author applies the fields of gender studies, psychoanalysis, and literature to Talmudic texts. In opposition to the perception of Judaism as a legal system, he argues that the Talmud demands inner spiritual effort, to which the trait of humility and the refinement of the ego are central. This leads to the question of the attitude to the Other, in general, and especially to women. The author shows that the Talmud places the woman (who represents humility and good-heartedness in the Talmudic narratives) above the character of the male depicted in these narratives as a scholar with an inflated sense of self-importance. In the last chapter (that in terms of its scope and content could be a freestanding monograph) the author employs the insights that emerged from the preceding chapters to present a new reading of the Creation narrative in the Bible and the Rabbinic commentaries. The divine act of creation is presented as a primal sexual act, a sort of dialogic model of the consummate sanctity that takes its place in man’s spiritual life when the option of opening one’s heart to the other in a male-female dialogue is realized.
Author: Admiel Kosman
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 311021864X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Book Description
The author applies the fields of gender studies, psychoanalysis, and literature to Talmudic texts. In opposition to the perception of Judaism as a legal system, he argues that the Talmud demands inner spiritual effort, to which the trait of humility and the refinement of the ego are central. This leads to the question of the attitude to the Other, in general, and especially to women. The author shows that the Talmud places the woman (who represents humility and good-heartedness in the Talmudic narratives) above the character of the male depicted in these narratives as a scholar with an inflated sense of self-importance. In the last chapter (that in terms of its scope and content could be a freestanding monograph) the author employs the insights that emerged from the preceding chapters to present a new reading of the Creation narrative in the Bible and the Rabbinic commentaries. The divine act of creation is presented as a primal sexual act, a sort of dialogic model of the consummate sanctity that takes its place in man’s spiritual life when the option of opening one’s heart to the other in a male-female dialogue is realized.
Author: Elad Lapidot
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1786604736
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
Once a prophet of critical, “other” thought, Heidegger has now for many become the epitome of the unthinkable, in the light of the Black Notebooks controversy. The unthinkable here is anti-Semitism. The encounter between Heidegger and the Jews has thus come to signify – very much in the spirit of Heidegger’s own anti-Judaism – the end of thought. The present volume resists this view by positing not only Heidegger but also the Jewish people as representing thought. The encounter between Heidegger and various traditions of Jewish thought is conceived here as a conversation inter alia, an exchange between real or perceived “others”: others to the philosophical tradition, to mainstream modernity, to Western Christian metaphysics, to each other, and even to themselves. The conversation takes shape in this volume as a symposium of seventeen essays by leading scholars both of Heidegger’s philosophy and of Jewish Studies.
Author: Reuven Kiperwasser
Publisher: SBL Press
ISBN: 1951498909
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
This new book by Reuven Kiperwasser examines the social, cultural, and religious aspects of third- to sixth-century narratives involving rabbinic figures migrating between Babylonia and Palestine. Kiperwasser draws on migration and mobility studies, comparative literature, humor and satire studies, as well as social history to reveal how border-crossing rabbis were seen as exporting features of their previous eastern context into their new western homes and vice versa. Through their writing, rabbinic authors articulated the nature and legitimacy of their own scholastic practices, knowledge, and authority in relationship to their internal others.
Author: Alexander Samely
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199684324
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 476
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Book Description
This book presents a new methodology for the study of ancient Jewish literature extant in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. It arises from empirical investigation into the literary structures of many anonymous and pseudepigraphic sources, including Pseudepigrapha and Apocrypha of the Old Testament, the larger Dead Sea Scrolls, Midrash, and the Talmuds.
Author: Noam Sachs Zion
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0827614667
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 655
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Book Description
Sanctified Sex draws on two thousand years of rabbinic debates addressing competing aspirations for loving intimacy, passionate sexual union, and sanctity in marriage. What can Judaism contribute to our struggles to nurture love relationships? What halakhic precedents are relevant, and how are rulings changing? The rabbis, of course, seldom agree. Underlying their arguments are perennial debates: What kind of marital sex qualifies as ideal—sacred self-control of sexual desire or the holiness found in emotional and erotic intimacy? Is intercourse degrading in its physicality or the highest act of spiritual/mystical union? And should women or men (or both) wield ultimate say about what transpires in bed? Noam Sachs Zion guides us chronologically and steadily through fraught terrain: seminal biblical texts and their Talmudic interpretations; Talmud tales of three unusual rabbis and their marital bedrooms; medieval codifiers and mystical commentators; ultra-Orthodox rabbis clashing with one another over radically divergent ideals; and, finally, contemporary rabbis of varied denominations wrestling with modern transformations in erotic lifestyles and values. Invited into these sanctified and often sexually explicit discussions with our ancestors and contemporaries, we encounter innovative Jewish teachings on marital intimacy, ardent lovemaking techniques, and the art of couple communication vital for matrimonial success.
Author: David Birnbaum
Publisher: New Paradigm Matrix
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 486
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Book Description
The beating heart of all religious enterprise undertaken in the spiritof intellectual integrity is a riddle: how can a God who exists beyondthe ken of human beings—and outside of the spatial and temporalcoordinates that are the most basic of all factors that we bring to bearin our perception and evaluation of the world—how can such a Godbe known at all, let alone worshiped meaningfully?Classical Jewish sources approach the matter in different ways.The Bible, for example, takes a two-pronged approach, describingin some passages a God whom none can survive the experience ofseeing directly (Exodus 33:20) and with whom too close contact canphysically disfigure (Exodus 34:29), maim (Genesis 32:32), or evenkill (Leviticus 10:2), yet in others describing a God who appearsto individuals in a way that is neither terrifying nor inherentlydangerous. How to reconcile these contradictory approaches feelslike a serious desideratum, yet one left unaddressed by any biblicalauthor or text.But perhaps there is another way to approach the issue: couldthe contradiction be its own lesson, one intended to suggest thedifficulty—or even the near impossibility—that inheres in anyeffort at all to know God, or even to know of God? And, indeed,that lesson has an interesting concrete parallel in the description ofthe Holy of Holies, the inmost sanctum of the desert sanctuary in2 Martin S. Cohenwhich rested the Ark of the Covenant that held the tablets Mosesbrought down from Sinai (Deuteronomy 10:5, cf. 1 Kings 8:9). Thatspace was understood to be more intensely suffused with the presenceof the Almighty than any place on earth, but was also depicted as achamber without illumination of any sort other than the dim glowof the censor carried into it by the High Priest one single day of theyear. Could the resultant paradox—that the light of God’s presencein the world is imagined to exist most palpably in a room devoid oflight—be intended to suggest the challenge that inheres in the deephuman desire to know a God who cannot logically be known?In a certain sense, this very conundrum hides behind the oracularnature of the Bible itself: every single book of Scripture has the stampof prophecy imprinted on its text either explicitly or implicitly. Andthis is so despite the inherent impossibility of imagining how, if Godexists outside the limits of human perceptive consciousness, anythingabout God at all, let alone God’s own words, could ever successfullybe transmitted in any language rooted in human experience. Yet theBible, fully realized in human language, exists!And then there are the names of God themselves. The God ofIsrael appears throughout Scripture under many different names,which themselves also suggest this paradox of divine knowability andunknowability. Some of these names are widely known, while othersare obscure. Some appear to be built on Hebrew roots, while othersresist being analyzed linguistically. Some seem related to some specifickind of communion with the Divine, while others seem more alignedwith how people use their names to distinguish themselves from otherpeople—but without anyone supposing that the etymological root ofany individual’s name is a reliable indicator of that person’s characteror personality. In the end, the full collection of divine names bothilluminates and obscures, each one saying something of the God itnames but usually leaving more unstated than revealed.3 PrefaceThe title of this volume, Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, is presented inScripture as a name of God. It appears in Scripture only once,at Exodus 3:14, where it has a mysterious feel that resists easyexplication, even though the words are not at all obscure linguisticallyand, indeed, can be taken as a straightforward sentence in relativelysimple Hebrew. Adding to the mystery, it also has a shorter form towhich Scripture alludes in the same verse (simply “Ehyeh”)—but itis not obvious if the long form is to be taken as an elaboration of thebasic shorter name or if the shorter name is merely an abbreviatedversion of the longer one. Nor is it clear how the narrative context ofthe passage sheds light on the meaning of the name, if it does: theEhyeh name is one of many things revealed by God to Moses at theburning bush, but it is not clear to what extent that name is tied tothat specific one of the prophet’s encounters with the Divine. Andit also seems noteworthy that both forms of the Ehyeh name (thelonger and the shorter one) appear only one time in all of Scripture;we never read of Moses obeying God’s direct command and actuallyusing that specific name when speaking to the people—a detail thatseems important, yet is neither resolved nor even noticed within thenarrative.Furthermore, there is something deeply suggestive of the divine“I” in the Ehyeh name—a detail that is lost in translation from theoriginal. Taken as a simple Hebrew verb, ehyeh is the imperfectfirst-person singular form of a common verbal root that generallydenotes existence or being: outside this specific context, the wordehyeh appears dozens of times in Scripture with the simple meaningof “I am” or “I shall be.” It therefore feels as though the Ehyeh nameshould suggest a deep level of intimacy with the Divine—the levelon which the relationship between Creator and created takes onsomething of the intimacy Buber described with his “I and Thou”terminology. But there are no biblical passages, even those describing4 Martin S. CohenGod as deeply involved in the lives of human beings, in which theEhyeh name is used to hint at a special level of closeness with theDivine. That too sounds as though it must be deeply meaningful…but what Scripture means by revealing a name suggestive of divineintimacy and then never using it is, again, a riddle. (Readers shouldnote that, in this volume, the Hebrew expression ehyeh asher ehyehis printed in italicized lower case letters, while the divine names“Ehyeh” and “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” are printed in Roman type andwith upper case initial letters.)The authors of the essays in this volume have taken on thechallenge of explaining this unique Hebrew phrase. They are adiverse lot, who bring to their work training and backgrounds inmany different fields. But what they have in common is a singulardevotion to the written word as a powerful vehicle for the sharingof spiritual ideas. Our authors have strong opinions, but no efforthas been made to bring those opinions in line with each other or toharmonize them within this volume. I feel sure that most, perhapseven all, our authors are in agreement about many things, but themission of the Mesorah Matrix series is to demonstrate how richan experience it can be to read a whole book of essays written bythoughtful, intelligent, scholarly, and deeply spiritual people seekingto grow personally through the act of writing essays such as these…and willing to invite others into that growth experience by makingtheir work available to the reading public.Unless otherwise indicated, all translations here are the authors’own work. Biblical citations of “NJPS” refer to the completetranslation of Scripture published under the title Tanakh: The HolyScriptures by the Jewish Publication Society in Philadelphia in 1985.I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the othersenior editors of the Mesorah Matrix series, David Birnbaum andBenjamin Blech, as well as Saul J. Berman, our associate editor.5 PrefaceAs always, I must also express my gratitude to the men andwomen, and particularly to the lay leadership, of the synagogue Iserve as rabbi, the Shelter Rock Jewish Center in Roslyn, New York.Possessed of the unwavering conviction that their rabbi’s literaryprojects are part and parcel of his service to them and, through them,to the larger community of those interested in learning about Judaismthrough the medium of the well-written word, they are remarkablysupportive of my literary efforts as author and editor. I am in theirdebt and am pleased to acknowledge that debt formally here andwhenever I publish my own work or the work of others.
Author: David Birnbaum
Publisher: New Paradigm Matrix
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 586
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Book Description
The Book of Deuteronomy depicts Moses addressing Israel before hisown death as he imagines that some day in the future children willask their parents to explain the meaning of the “testimonies, statutes,and judgments” (Deuteronomy 6:20) that are the foundation of thecovenant that binds Israel to its God. He thus frames in specificallyJewish terms the same set of haunting intimations that all thoughtfulpeople bring to the contemplation of their own lives—and, indeed,to life itself: the sense that being alive can or should mean morethan merely not being dead; that the contemplation of even the mostbanal features of daily life can yield rich insight about the nature ofexistence; and the feeling that life itself can be understood as a kindof scrim that might allow us to see through it to the secrets andmysteries that lie beyond.That set of hopeful suppositions inspires moderns just as stronglyand enticingly as it did the ancients. Yet, the specific question of whatit actually means for this or that part of life to mean anything at allother than what it overtly is (or, at least, appears to be) does not seemto have exerted anywhere near as siren a call on our ancient forebearsas it does on us moderns. Still, as we seek meaning in the world andin our lives, it behooves us to ponder the meaning of meaning as well.These twin notions—that life has meaning beyond what the2 Martin S. Cohencasual observer can see easily, and that the effort to uncover anddecipher that meaning can be profound enough to be spirituallytransformational—have animated the contributors to this volume, astheir work demonstrates just how meaningful the search for meaningcan be. Some have approached this from a spiritual point of view,grounding themselves in traditional biblical, talmudic, or mysticalsources. Others have framed their efforts in political terms or in deeplypersonal ones. And still others have attempted to consider the issuethrough the lens of modern philosophical inquiry. But regardless ofthe specific perspective of any individual author, all have in commonthe deep-seated conviction that life bears meaning…and that thatmeaning can best be discovered not by spending a lifetime hoping formomentary satori but rather by standing on the shoulders of fellowtravelers from earlier eras, and from that slightly elevated vantagepoint seeing just a bit further than they could or did. For almost allof our authors, then, the search for meaning is best understood as anon-going, intergenerational effort that links the seekers of all agesto each other through the contemplation of earlier efforts to mineprofundity and significance from the quarry of human life itself. It is,at best, a slow march forward!As readers will see from the Table of Contents, the ancient Bookof Kohelet has served several of our authors as the framework for theirinterpretive work. (Kohelet is the Hebrew name of the biblical bookalso known as Ecclesiastes, which name is derived from the Greektranslation of the work.) Others have chosen to grapple with thequestion Moses imagined future Jewish children eventually puttingto their parents as they wondered what the commandments actually“mean” in terms of the larger picture of Israelite culture and Jewishlife in our own day. Still others have addressed the search for meaningin life today by taking into account the question of human suffering,considering the issue both generally as a philosophical challenge and3 Prefacemore specifically with reference to the Shoah.Taken all together, the contributors to this volume have put forththe notion that life is ennobled, not trivialized, by the contemplativeeffort to seek meaning in the ebb and flow of life’s experiences…andparticularly in those life-experiences related to the service of God.And yet, for all they are united in that conviction, our authors in thisvolume of the Mesorah Matrix series are nonetheless a diverse group:older and younger women and men, North Americans and Israelisliving at home and abroad, seasoned scholars and newly-mintedrabbis and teachers. They are teachers and researchers trained indifferent schools of thought and affiliated with different movementsand institutions within the mosaic of Jewish life that characterizesthe House of Israel as it enters, by its own reckoning, the final quarterof the fifty-eighth century. They are a varied lot, our authors. But inmany ways, they are are, all of them, cut from the same cloth.Our authors work with the original sources and generally presentthem in their own translations. Citations of “NJPS” refer to thecomplete translation of Scripture first published under the titleTanakh: The Holy Scriptures by the Jewish Publication Society inPhiladelphia in 1985. In this volume, as in all books in the MesorahMatrix series, the four-letter name of God is generally representedby “the Eternal” or “Eternal God.” Authors who are specificallydiscussing the actual four-letter name, on the other hand, mayoccasionally depart from this usage in order to more clearly makethe point of their argument. .I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the othersenior editors of the Mesorah Matrix series: David Birnbaum andRabbi Benjamin Blech, as well as Rabbi Saul J. Berman, our associateeditor. They and our able staff have all supported me as I’ve laboredto bring this volume to fruition and I am grateful to them all.As always, I must also express my gratitude to the men and4 Martin S. Cohenwomen, and particularly to the lay leadership, of the synagogueI serve as rabbi: the Shelter Rock Jewish Center in Roslyn, NewYork. Possessed of the unwavering conviction that their rabbi’s bookprojects are part and parcel of his service to them—and, throughthem, to the larger community of those interested in learning aboutJudaism through the medium of the well-written word—they areremarkably supportive of my literary efforts as author and editor. Iam in their debt, and I am therefore very pleased to acknowledgethat debt formally here and wherever I publish my own work or thework of others.
Author: David Birnbaum
Publisher: New Paradigm Matrix
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 372
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Book Description
In one of his most famous poems, Robert Frost imagines himselfstanding at a crossroads in a “yellow wood” and having to decidewhich path forward to choose. The poem turns on the fact thatneither path clearly recommends itself as the “better” one to choose:both are covered in yellow autumnal leaves, one is “just as fair” as theother, and both lead to destinations that Frost cannot see.1 In justtwenty lines, the poet thus suggests the plight of moderns who mustmake decisions in life that may eventually be perceived as mattersof great importance, but that feel hardly even to matter much whenthey are actually being made. That is surely a challenge we all face,but how exactly to deal with it is challenging to say. It surely seemsexaggerated to conclude from the poet’s reverie that our decisionsin life don’t really matter at all simply because we cannot say at theoutset where they may ultimately lead us—much less that they haveno real importance because we will end up in the same place anyway.Those conclusions both feel just a bit irrational, but neither shouldwe read the poem’s famous conclusion—that the poet’s decision totravel the path less taken has ended up making all the difference inhis life—as suggesting that the wisest choices in life are invariablythose spurned by the majority. Surely, for all the oylem may be agoylem, it can’t always be unwise to make some specific decision inlife merely because many others have previously chosen to make it!2 Martin S. Cohen(The Yiddish aphorism, one of my own father’s favorites, conveys thesame message as the one attributed, possibly spuriously, to AlexanderHamilton according to which “the masses are asses.”)The Torah offers a different take on the decision to choose onepath forward in life over another. Speaking from the edge of his ownlife, Moses begins by imagining two paths stretching forth beforethe Israelites as they contemplate their future. And he knows theirnames, too: they are the paths of blessing and of curse, “a blessingif you obey all the commandments of the Eternal, your God, thatI am commanding you this day, and a curse if you do not obey thecommandments of the Eternal, your God, and swerve off the paththat I am commanding you today…” (Deuteronomy 11:26–28).Later in his speech, Moses returns to that same trope and describesthat same choice in far greater detail:Behold, by commanding you today to love the Eternal,your God, and to walk in God’s ways and to keep God’scommandments and statutes and laws, I am placing beforeyou today, on the one hand, life and goodness, and, on theother, death and evil. And so shall you live and flourish as theEternal, your God, blesses you in the land that you are nowentering to possess. If, however, your heart should turn awayand you stop obeying—such that you actually turn to apostasyand prostrate yourself before alien gods and worship them—then I am telling you clearly today that you shall surely perish,that you will not live for long on the land that you are aboutto cross the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven andearth on this day as my witnesses that I am placing beforeyou life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, so thatyou live, you and your progeny. And love the Eternal, yourGod, by obeying God’s voice and by cleaving unto God—forit is God who grants you your life and who determines howlong shall last the days you dwell on the land that the Eternal3 Prefaceswore to grant to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob(Deuteronomy 30:15-20).The title of the volume you are holding is taken from the end ofthis very passage, where the Torah presents Moses instructing thepeople how to deal with the choice that lies before them. U-vaḥartaba-ḥayyim (“choose life”), he commands—and his meaning feelsclear and unambiguous: to secure a long life for yourself and yourprogeny, choose to live in God’s service, choose to devote yourself toobeying God’s voice, and choose to cleave unto God all the days ofyour life. And the aggregate result of all that wise choosing will leadto the greatest choice of all: the choice to embrace life at its fullestand richest, both as individuals linked personally to the Almightyin covenantal intimacy and as citizens of a nation linked to theAlmighty in exactly the same way.There are countless ways to respond to the injunction to chooselife, and each of the authors in this volume has chosen one to explorein his or her essay. Some are theoretical in nature and deal with thelarger notion of how choice and obligation interact in the context ofreligion. Others are more practical and treat of the specific ways inwhich individuals might respond to the biblical obligation to chooselife in the context of the consequential decisions that we find ourselvesfaced with in life. Still others are rooted in history and presentthe way the injunction to choose life was understood by differentthinkers at different moments in Jewish history. And some haveused the scriptural injunction to choose life as a jumping-off pointfor considering the notion of free will itself, and pondering how thetheological notion that God is all-knowing can be reconciled withthe sense people have of being able freely to make real, meaningfulchoices in life.The authors who have contributed essays to this volume address4 Martin S. Cohenall of these questions. Our authors come from a wide range ofbackgrounds: many are congregational rabbis, while others areteachers and academics, and still others work in the Jewish world indifferent capacities. They are a disparate group, our authors: men andwomen, older and younger, staunchly traditionalist and more liberallyoriented, Israelis and Diaspora-based. Yet, for all they are different,they are also united by the common belief that the written word,and particularly in the form of the essay, is a useful and satisfyingmedium in which to explore Judaism and Jewishness itself in a deepand meaningful way.This is not a book solely for Jews of any particular spiritualorientation; nor, for that matter, is it a book solely for Jewish readers.Rather, we hope that this anthology may open a door for all whopossess the kind of curiosity about Jewish religion and culture thatcannot be dealt with effectively by platitudes or even heartfelt opedpieces, but rather by thoughtful, text-based studies intended toinform, to persuade, and to inspire. I feel privileged to present thework of these authors to the reading public and I hope our readerswill likewise feel that this is a remarkable collection.Unless otherwise indicated, all translations here are the authors’own work. Biblical citations of the NJPS refer to the completetranslation of Scripture first published under the title Tanakh: TheHoly Scriptures by the Jewish Publication Society in 1985. The fourletterHebrew name of God is rendered in this volume almost alwaysas “the Eternal” or “Eternal God” (although authors have sometimesdeparted from this convention, as dictated by the constraints of theirown writing).I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the othersenior editors of the Mesorah Matrix series, David Birnbaum andBenjamin Blech, as well as Saul J. Berman, our associate editor. Theyand our able staff have all supported me as I’ve labored to bring this5 Prefacevolume together and I am grateful to them all.As always, I must also express my gratitude to the men andwomen, and particularly to the lay leadership, of the synagogueI serve as rabbi, the Shelter Rock Jewish Center in Roslyn, NewYork. Possessed of the unwavering conviction that their rabbi’s bookprojects are part and parcel of his service to them (and, throughthem, to the larger community of those interested in learning aboutJudaism through the medium of the well-written word), they areremarkably supportive of my literary efforts as author and editor. Iam in their debt, and I am pleased to acknowledge that debt formally,here and whenever I publish my own work or the work of others.
Author: Elaine Rose Glickman
Publisher: CCAR Press
ISBN: 0881236187
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
Central Conference of American Rabbis Spring 2022 Journal Published by CCAR Press, a division of the Central Conference of American Rabbis
Author: David Birnbaum
Publisher: New Paradigm Matrix
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 456
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Book Description
The Torah has two basic components: a long, complex narrative thatserves as the backstory to the covenant and its literary frame, and thespecific commandments that serve as the terms of that covenant. Thenarrative itself—the long, complex narratives relating to the creationof the world, the great flood, the adventures of the patriarchs andmatriarchs of Israel, the descent into slavery in Egypt, the exodusfrom Egypt, the events at Mount Sinai, and the subsequent journeythe edge of the Land of Israel, where the people are camped whenthe Torah narrative concludes with Moses’ death—is relativelywell-known even in the secular Western world. And some of thecommandments too are well known to the general public in Westernlands—some because they were eventually adopted by Christiantheologians and made tenets of Christianity, others because they areso overtly characteristic of Jewish life that they have become easilyrecognizable to anyone who has even casual contact with the Jewishcommunity, and others because they have come to serve as the mostbasic moral planks in Western ethics even for people who do notself-define as Jews or Christians.But however well known the commandments may be as regardstheir general content, the Hebrew text of the Torah that preservesthe commandments in their literary guise can prove surprisinglydifficult. For one thing, Biblical Hebrew is an ancient language in2 Martin S. Cohenwhich words do not necessarily mean what they eventually came tomean after millennia of linguistic development. Moreover, classicalHebrew authors regularly presuppose information on the part oftheir readers and listeners, much of which non-specialist modernssimply do not possess. (For example, Scripture references all sorts ofpublic officials and military officers by their ranks and titles withoutexplaining them because the reader is simply assumed to be familiarwith the terminology, somewhat in the same way a contemporaryAmerican journalist might refer to someone as a senator fromOklahoma without feeling any need to pause and explain what asenator is. Or what Oklahoma is!) And then there is the questionof grammar to consider. For all that modern scholars have analyzedthe language of the Bible and attempted to describe its grammaticalrules, there are still many passages that feel inconsonant with thoserules. These passages likely do not constitute errors of usage onthe part of their ancient authors, however, but rather indicate thatour understanding of biblical grammar simply does not reflect thenuanced, dynamic way ancient Hebrew was actually spoken inantiquity as a living, vibrant language. And, finally, there is the vexingquestion of the specific way Hebrew words are related to each other.Classical Hebrew, like all Semitic languages, is built on three-lettercombinations of consonants called “roots,” and most of the wordsthat constitute the language’s vocabulary are built on those roots. Yetsome words that appear to be built on the same root seem entirelyunrelated in meaning. And still others, mysterious in their own right,do not appear to have triliteral roots at all.Any study of the commandments that carefully considers suchconcerns will naturally lead to meaningful insight, and this is preciselythe kind of examination that underlies this volume, the tenth andfinal volume in the Mesorah Matrix series. Like its predecessors inthe series, this volume is devoted to the reasoned, thoughtful, and3 Prefaceinspiring analysis of specific Jewish ideas, practices, and beliefs. Infact, all of the present essays focus on a single word that lies at theintersection of law, linguistics, spirituality, faith, and modern Jewishpractice: v’shamru. And although the word will be familiar to mostfrom its liturgical use in the version of the Kiddush prayer recitedon Shabbat that cites Exodus 31:16–17, the word appears in othercontexts as well and several of the essays in this volume considerthose uses.The key passage that connects that word with Shabbat observance,Exodus 31:16–17, reads as follows, with the English words thatcorrespond to the Hebrew v’shamru printed in bold:And so shall the Israelites keep the Sabbath, safeguardingits observance throughout all their generations as evidenceof the eternal covenant that binds Me and the Israelites, forthe Sabbath is that covenant’s eternal sign in that the Eternalmade the heavens and the earth in six days and then pausedfor rest and repose on the seventh day.It is the specific question of what v’shamru means in this context towhich our authors who have chosen to write about Shabbat turntheir attention.As noted, the word is not used exclusively with respect toShabbat observance and it appears elsewhere in the Torah text todesignate what Israelites are commanded to “do” with respect tothe commandments, or some specific commandment. But it is theShabbat connection that interests most of our authors, possiblybecause Moses himself is cited (at Deuteronomy 5:12) as recalling thefourth of the Ten Commandments as beginning with an imperativebuilt on that very root of shin-mem-resh, even though the “actual” textpresented in Exodus begins with a different word entirely.Words built on the three-letter root shin-mem-resh generally have4 Martin S. Cohensomething to do with guarding, protecting, or keeping safe, but whatit is exactly about these specific contexts, and the Shabbat contextforemost among them, that requires so much guarding or protectingis left unsaid. Is there some specific fragility that inheres in theobservance of that specific commandment which makes reasonablethe use of some version of a word based on shim-mem-resh to qualifyits observance? Or is Shabbat simply of such cardinal importancethat Scripture uses that specific verb to describe its observance solelyto say that that nation must exert itself maximally to guarantee itscareful and punctilious observance? Or does this usage hint insteadat some specific danger that might be lurking within the details ofShabbat observance, some plausible ideational, doctrinal, dogmatic,or even physical peril against which the people must be commandedscrupulously to guard themselves? To none of these questions doesScripture nod even in passing. Yet the essays in this volume thatfocus on Shabbat are all attempts, one way or another, to addressthose specific questions and others that derive from them directly. Ihope our readers will find all our authors’ efforts both intriguing anduplifting.The authors who have contributed to this volume are a varied lotdrawn from across the spectrum of organized Jewish life—Israelisand diasporan types, rabbis and academics, men and woman, olderand younger scholars, seasoned authors and relative newcomers tothe world of publishing. Some have contributed to other volumes inour series and one, the indefatigable Reuven Bulka, has contributedessays to all ten; others present their sole contribution to the seriesin this one volume. All, however, are united by their common beliefin the power of the well-written word and the sense that, even in thedigital age, the well-structured, convincingly argued essay retains itsability not just to inform but also to influence and to inspire.Unless otherwise indicated, all translations here are the authors’5 Prefaceown work. Biblical citations referenced to the NJPS derive from thecomplete translation of Scripture published under the title Tanakh:The Holy Scriptures by the Jewish Publication Society in Philadelphiain 1985.As we prepare to publish this, the tenth and final volume in theMesorah Matrix series, I would like to take this opportunity toacknowledge the other senior editors of the Mesorah Matrix series,David Birnbaum and Benjamin Blech, as well as Saul J. Berman, ourassociate editor.And I would also like to add a personal note at this junctureregarding the larger operation. This project has brought together alarge number of authors in an almost unprecedented effort to unitepeople across the spectrum of Jewish affiliation for the sake of k’lalyisrael. And despite the way that Jewish people from different parts ofthe Jewish world are regularly supposed not ever to get along, muchless to wish to work together on anything at all of consequence, allof our authors have shown themselves willing to participate in thenoble effort that underlies the Mesorah Matrix project: to revitalizethe essay form and to make of it a successful vehicle for inspiringJewish readers to take their Judaism and their Jewishness to an evenhigher level, to feel ennobled by their membership in the House ofIsrael, and potentially to feel themselves called upon to embrace amore personal role in the pursuit of Jewish destiny. It has been myprivilege and pleasure to work with them all.As always, I must also express my gratitude to the men andwomen, and particularly to the lay leadership, of the synagogue Iserve as rabbi: the Shelter Rock Jewish Center in Roslyn, New York.Possessed of the unwavering conviction that their rabbi’s literaryprojects are part and parcel of his service to them (and, throughthem, to the larger community of those interested in learning aboutJudaism), they are remarkably supportive of my literary efforts asauthor and editor. I am in their debt and am pleased to acknowledgethat debt formally here and whenever I publish my own work or thework of others. I couldn’t be me if they weren’t them.
