Particulars of Rapture : Reflections on Exodus

by Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb

• ISBN13: 9780385491525
• ISBN10: 0385491522
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-01-01
• Publisher: Doubleday

Summary

Avivah Zornberg grew up in a world of rabbinic tradition and scholarship and received a Ph.D. in English literature from Cambridge University.The Particulars of Rapture, the sequel to her award-winning study of the Book of Genesis, takes its title from a line by the American poet Wallace Stevens about the interdependence of opposite things, such as male and female, and conscious and unconscious. To her reading of the familiar story of the Israelites and their flight from slavery in Egypt, Avivah Zornberg has brought a vast range of classical Jewish interpretations and Midrashic sources, literary allusions, and ideas from philosophy and psychology. Her quest in this book, as she writes in the introduction, is "to find those who will hear with me a particular idiom of redemption," who will hear "within the particulars of rapture . . . what cannot be expressed." Zornberg's previous book,The Beginning of Desire:Reflections on Genesis, won the National Jewish Book Award for nonfiction in 1995 and has become a classic among readers of all religions.The Particulars of Rapturewill enhance Zornberg's reputation as one of today's most original and compelling interpreters of the biblical and rabbinic traditions.

Author Biography

Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg earned a Ph.D. in English literature from Cambridge University, and worked as a lecturer in the English Department at Hebrew University before turning to the teaching of religion. She has conducted classes in Torah for thousands of students at several different institutions in Israel. She also lectures widely in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, and holds a visiting lectureship at the London School of Jewish Studies, an affiliate of the University of London.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(16)
Shemoth The Mirror of Redemption	17	(64)
Vaera The Exile of the Word	81	(51)
Bo The Narrative of the Night	132	(67)
Beshallach Songline Through the Wilderness	199	(48)
Yithro ``If a Lion Roars...''	247	(41)
Mishpatim Before Revelation: The Hearing Heart	288	(27)
Teruma The Sanctuary in Fire: Comedy and Tragedy	315	(36)
Tetzaveh Loss and Gain	351	(47)
Ki Tissa The Golden Calf: Fire in the Bones	398	(63)
Va-Yakhel---Pekudei The Fiery Imagination	461	(38)
Notes	499	(42)
List of Texts Cited	541	(2)
Bibliography	543	(6)
Acknowledgments	549	(2)
Index of Sources	551	(12)
General Index	563