Moses
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
From the prizewinning Jewish Lives series, an unprecedented portrait of Moses's inner world and perplexing character, by a distinguished biblical scholar
No figure looms larger in Jewish culture than Moses, and few have stories more enigmatic. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, acclaimed for her many books on Jewish thought, turns her attention to Moses in this remarkably rich, evocative book.
Drawing on a broad range of sources—literary as well as psychoanalytic, a wealth of classical Jewish texts alongside George Eliot, W. G. Sebald, and Werner Herzog—Zornberg offers a vivid and original portrait of the biblical Moses. Moses's vexing personality, his uncertain origins, and his turbulent relations with his own people are acutely explored by Zornberg, who sees this story, told and retold, as crucial not only to the biblical past but also to the future of Jewish history.
About Jewish Lives:
Jewish Lives is a prizewinning series of interpretative biography designed to explore the many facets of Jewish identity. Individual volumes illuminate the imprint of Jewish figures upon literature, religion, philosophy, politics, cultural and economic life, and the arts and sciences. Subjects are paired with authors to elicit lively, deeply informed books that explore the range and depth of the Jewish experience from antiquity to the present.
In 2014, the Jewish Book Council named Jewish Lives the winner of its Jewish Book of the Year Award, the first series ever to receive this award.
More praise for Jewish Lives:
"Excellent." –New York Times
"Exemplary." –Wall Street Journal
"Distinguished." –New Yorker
"Superb." –The Guardian
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this slim volume, acclaimed scholar and lecturer Zornberg (Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers) offers another richly textured and nuanced biblical study. Early on she sets an academic tone, writing of Moses that "he exists in a metonymic relation to the relation to the people who are, at first, both his and not his." That kind of language will be a barrier to some, but those who persist will find Zornberg's illuminating use of both midrash and literary sources, such as George Eliot's Daniel Deronda and W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz, worth the effort. She gives her commentary immediacy not usually found in similar titles by opening with an anecdote about her affecting experience during a rabbinical retreat, where she envisioned Moses pleading with God to allow him to enter the promised land. That blend of the personal and scholarly supports her ultimate argument about the biblical figure's enduring significance: "Veiled and unveiled, he remains lodged in the Jewish imagination where in his uncompleted humanity he comes to represent the yet-unattained but attainable messianic future." For those wishing to engage the legacy of Moses more deeply, this is a must-read.
