Tag Archives: Bible

(Isaiah) Place of Consolation (7 Weeks)

Posted on August 20, 2024 by zjb

(Isaiah) What is Consolation (7 Weeks) In the prophetic imagination, consolation is a super violent and theopolitical counter-reality. Other-worldly without being otherworldly is the liturgical view drawn from the 7 haftaroth of consolation recited in the synagogue on Shabbat between … Continue reading →

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(Against Divine Violence) 9 Av (Lamentations)

Posted on August 13, 2024 by zjb

Read on the fast day of Tisha B’Av, the lament in the book of Lamentations (in Hebrew Eicha or Alas, named after the first word of the text) is a rebuke. But who is the object of recrimination? Only on … Continue reading →

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(Social Rot) 9 Av (Self-Destruction)

Posted on August 12, 2024 by zjb

Tisha B’Av is sometimes referred to as the “saddest” day on the Jewish calendar, but its impetus is political. Tisha B’Av is a unique mirror of national mourning and collective self-recrimination marked by neither reconciliation nor atonement. Read at synagogue … Continue reading →

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(S1) Sassoon Codex (Sephardic Jewish Cultural Memory)

Posted on May 17, 2023 by zjb

S1 is one of the names of the Sassoon Codex, one of the oldest biblical codex. This precious object made of sheepskin and ink was just bought at Soetheby’s for some $38,000,000 by a purchaser acting on behalf of the … Continue reading →

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Spinoza Passover Hebrew Republic

Posted on April 5, 2023 by zjb

This Passover at a time of global and religious reaction, let’s be done with political theology. And let’s remember Spinoza, the exodus from tyranny, and the blueprint of a Hebrew commonwealth, based on the Bible, in which religion and state … Continue reading →

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(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) (Purim)

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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