Exodus in the Jewish Experience

Echoes and Reverberations

Contributions by Pamela Barmash, Kalman P. Bland, Abigail E. Gillman, Reuven Hammer, Vivian B. Mann, W. David Nelson, Richard S. Sarason, Arieh Saposnik Edited by Pamela Barmash, W. David Nelson

Publication date:

14 May 2015

Length of book:

270 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9781498502924

Exodus in the Jewish Experience: Echoes and Reverberations investigates how the Exodus has been, and continues to be, a crucial source of identity for both Jews and Judaism. It explores how the Exodus has functioned as the primary model from which Jews have created theological meaning and historical self-understanding. It probes how and why the Exodus has continued to be vital to Jews throughout the unfolding of the Jewish experience. As an interdisciplinary work, it incorporates contributions from a range of Jewish Studies scholars in order to explore the Exodus from a variety of vantage points. It addresses such topics as: the Jewish reception of the biblical text of Exodus; the progressive unfolding of the Exodus in the Jewish interpretive tradition; the religious expression of the Exodus as ritual in Judaism; and the Exodus as an ongoing lens of self-understanding for both the State of Israel and contemporary Judaism. The essays are guided by a common goal: to render comprehensible how the re-envisioning of Exodus throughout the unfolding of the Jewish experience has enabled it to function for thousands of years as the central motif for the Jewish people.

Introduction: The Exodus: Central, Enduring, and Generative, Pamela Barmash
Chapter 1: Out of the Mists of History: The Exaltation of the Exodus in the Bible, Pamela Barmash
Chapter 2: Discontinuity and Dissonance: Torah, Textuality, and Early Rabbinic Hermeneutics of Exodus, W. David Nelson
Chapter 3: The Past as Paradigm: Enactments of the Exodus Motif in Jewish Liturgy, Richard S. Sarason
Chapter 4: The Impact of the Exodus on Halakhah (Jewish Law), Reuven Hammer
Chapter 5: Passover and Thanatos in Medieval Jewish Consciousness, Kalman P. Bland
Chapter 6: Observations on the Biblical Miniatures in Spanish Haggadot, Vivian B. Mann
Chapter 7: From Myth to Memory: German Jewish Translations of Exodus 12-13, Abigail E. Gillman
Chapter 8: The Desert Comes to Zion: A Narrative Ends its Wandering, Arieh Saposnik

The essays in this volume collectively provide an admirable overview of the diverse ways in which the exodus, as the fundamental and formative concept of the biblical past, simultaneously shaped and was shaped by the exigencies of subsequent generations, beginning already in the biblical period. Both academic and general readers will find much of value in these well-written and well-documented studies.