Last week's recommendation.
Week 10 recommendation.
Week 9 recommendation.
Week 8 recommendation.
Week 7 recommendation.
Week 6 recommendation.
Week 5 recommendation.
Week 4 recommendation.
Week 3 recommendation.
Week 2 recommendation.
Introduction to the series and first recommendation.
And now, a break from reading, but not a break from text. Aviva Zornberg has written two books interpreting Torah in the tradition of rabbinical exegesis. I haven't read them and they are reputed to be somewhat dense and scholarly.
However, I have seen her lecture several times, and I strongly recommend sitting in on a class of hers if you are in Israel, or in a city in the US or England when she visits. She speaks well, but is not flashy or entertaining, nor does she create a participatory experience. She sits at a table and talks for about an hour and a half, and the attendees usually have a handout with the texts on which she is commenting, in the original and English translation if necessary. In other words, a traditional shiur, or lesson in Torah or Talmud.
However, I know of no other Torah scholar who combines Torah, Talmud, Jacques Lacan, The Little Prince, Rashi, and Jane Austen in one lecture, and produces an interpretation that is intricately reasoned, psychologically nuanced, emotionally moving, and original yet solidly based on traditional exegetical methods.
. . . she doesn't hesitate to bring texts from Nietzsche to Freud to Foucault to bear on her interpretations of the Torah. . . . Recently, Zornberg has been delving more deeply into psychoanalysis and is using what she is discovering to analyze Torah. "I believe that the Midrash can be compared to the unconscious side of the Torah," explains Zornberg. "The slips that come through the pshat, the basic understanding of the words of the text, indicates that there's more beneath the surface than meets the eye." . . .Most people who attend her lectures have some experience studying Jewish text, but they are conducted in English and don't presume any pre-knowledge. She usually comes to the US in the spring.
In line with her attempts to "crack the unconscious codes" in the Torah, Zornberg has been particularly attracted to chasidic commentaries on the Torah, like the "Sfat Emet," the commentary of Judah Aryeh Leib Alter, the Gerer Rebbe, as well as the "Mei HaShiloah," the Ishbitzer Rebbe's commentary. "They take the unconscious for granted," she explains. "They'll start from the midrash, and ask how one can interpret it as a dream work. It's quite creative," she beams with pleasure. "It's often so different from the schoolbook versions of the Torah."
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