Tag Archives: Bible

(Hebron) Hayyei Sarah Pogroms (Religious Zionism)

Posted on November 19, 2022 by zjb

Hebron in the occupied West Bank is the traditional site of the first hold of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel according to the Bible. Read once a year, this week’s parsha, Hayyei Sarah, tells how Abraham bought … Continue reading →

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First Temple Period Ivory (Ornament)

Posted on September 12, 2022 by zjb

Recent lovely little finds from the First Temple Period (8th or 7th C. BCE) are made out of ivory. These materiele suggests something about luxury and decoration, the power and influence of ancient Judea, at the time a vassal to … Continue reading →

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Monstrous Talmud & Christian Simulacra (Peter The Venerable)

Posted on June 10, 2022 by zjb

Abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Cluny, Peter the Venerable (1092-1156) was a master hermeneut. He is generally recognized as one of the great Christian thinkers of the High Middle Ages. Also recognized is how he marks a new Church … Continue reading →

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Jewish Suffering Human Suffering The Suffering Jesus (Nitzahon Yashan)

Posted on March 22, 2022 by zjb

I don’t want to dispute David Berger who in his introduction to his translation of the critical edition of the Nizzahon Vetus calls this Old Book of Polemic a “striking example of Jewish disputation in its most aggressive mode.”  Others … Continue reading →

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(Esther) Rashi (Aesthetic Judaism)

Posted on March 17, 2022 by zjb

This might be my misimpression, but what seems to have most caught Rashi’s eye in his commentary to the book of Esther was not so much the vindication of Israel and the political violence that close the text, but rather … Continue reading →

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Sefat Emet (A Rough Digest)

Posted on December 17, 2021 by zjb

This blogpost tracking Hasidic thought in the commentary to the Torah, the Sefas Emes (Sefat Emet) (english: Language of Truth) is going to be a running project that I will update and complete, volume by volume, more or less in … Continue reading →

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(Star of Redemption) Spaceship

Posted on August 3, 2021 by zjb

Into life? Franz Rosenzweig was a futurist. Consciousness steps into a spaceship that spins around the axis of its own blood and time, lifts of from the historical time of planet earth singing Psalm 115, and flies straight into the … Continue reading →

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You Saw An Image (Surrealist God)

Posted on July 29, 2021 by zjb

The Bahir plays with that biblical icon of the modern iconoclastic tradition that is sometimes translated into English as “you saw no manner of image” (kal-temunah) (Deut. 4:15). The Bahir says, “You saw an image, not an entire image” (temunah … Continue reading →

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(Rashi) Anti-theodicy (Tisha B’Av)

Posted on July 19, 2021 by zjb

The through-line in Rashi’s commentary to Lamenations is that, yes, the people sin, but that God is responsible for the calamity, for what we today call anti-Semitism, for the human inclination to sin, for setting up a barrier between God … Continue reading →

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His Head, His legs, Your legs, Your head (Rashi Song of Songs)

Posted on April 9, 2021 by zjb

Commenting on Song of Songs (7:2), this is a most refined physicality and supple anthropomorphism brought by Rashi to the close drawing together between God and Israel. His head, his legs, your legs, your head. Again it’s the case, with … Continue reading →

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