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The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus
Avivah Zornberg grew up in a world of rabbinic tradition and scholarship and received a Ph.D. in English literature from Cambridge University. The Particulars of Rapture , the sequel to her award-winning study of the Book of Genesis, takes its title from a line by the American poet Wallace Stevens about the interdependence of opposite things, such as male and female, and conscious and unconscious. To her reading of the familiar story of the Israelites and their flight from slavery in Egypt, Avivah Zornberg has brought a vast range of classical Jewish interpretations and Midrashic sources, literary allusions, and ideas from philosophy and psychology. Her quest in this book, as she writes in the introduction, is "to find those who will hear with me a particular idiom of redemption," who will hear "within the particulars of rapture . . . what cannot be expressed."
Zornberg's previous book, The Beginning of Desire : Reflections on Genesis , won the National Jewish Book Award for nonfiction in 1995 and has become a classic among readers of all religions. The Particulars of Rapture will enhance Zornberg's reputation as one of today's most original and compelling interpreters of the biblical and rabbinic traditions.
From the Hardcover edition.
Zornberg's previous book, The Beginning of Desire : Reflections on Genesis , won the National Jewish Book Award for nonfiction in 1995 and has become a classic among readers of all religions. The Particulars of Rapture will enhance Zornberg's reputation as one of today's most original and compelling interpreters of the biblical and rabbinic traditions.
From the Hardcover edition.
592 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
April 15, 2022
What does it take, mentally, emotionally, and libidinally, to be ready to be free?
How can a person or a society imagine themselves into a future they've never seen?
In contrast, what is it that hardens the heart, locks people into past patterns, and makes them seek for golden certainties instead of opening to new visions and new relationships?
These are some of the overarching questions you'll find that Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg returns to again and again throughout her exploration of the biblical book of Exodus. But she doesn't approach them philosophically, or even directly (most of the time). Instead, she exemplifies the playful approach she thinks is both a tool and a characteristic of freedom. She free-associates between the Torah text, the midrash upon it, and psychoanalytic and literary texts that she thinks throw light on what it means.
This is a challenging approach. It's why, I think, the first time I attempted to read this book I bogged down a couple of chapters in. (Reading and discussing it with buddies this time helped me finish the book.) And even now, when I find her approach too idiosyncratic or too hard to follow, I am grateful to her for teaching me rabbinic interpretations I never read before.
Overarching questions only get you so far when you're examining Exodus a weekly portion at a time. She is exquisitely attuned to other themes that show up: Moses' relationships with God, and with language; sibling rivalry and complementarity; the meaning of gold and fire, in the Golden Calf and the making of the mishkan (traveling sanctuary); sexuality and pleasure as related to redemption from slavery; how to be a leader without becoming an idol.
More often than I bogged down, I had moments when I was arrested by a beautiful insight. That, to me, is rapture.
How can a person or a society imagine themselves into a future they've never seen?
In contrast, what is it that hardens the heart, locks people into past patterns, and makes them seek for golden certainties instead of opening to new visions and new relationships?
These are some of the overarching questions you'll find that Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg returns to again and again throughout her exploration of the biblical book of Exodus. But she doesn't approach them philosophically, or even directly (most of the time). Instead, she exemplifies the playful approach she thinks is both a tool and a characteristic of freedom. She free-associates between the Torah text, the midrash upon it, and psychoanalytic and literary texts that she thinks throw light on what it means.
This is a challenging approach. It's why, I think, the first time I attempted to read this book I bogged down a couple of chapters in. (Reading and discussing it with buddies this time helped me finish the book.) And even now, when I find her approach too idiosyncratic or too hard to follow, I am grateful to her for teaching me rabbinic interpretations I never read before.
Overarching questions only get you so far when you're examining Exodus a weekly portion at a time. She is exquisitely attuned to other themes that show up: Moses' relationships with God, and with language; sibling rivalry and complementarity; the meaning of gold and fire, in the Golden Calf and the making of the mishkan (traveling sanctuary); sexuality and pleasure as related to redemption from slavery; how to be a leader without becoming an idol.
More often than I bogged down, I had moments when I was arrested by a beautiful insight. That, to me, is rapture.
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November 8, 2023Somehow even more challenging than the first one? I don't doubt that Zornberg is cooking here, but I do doubt my ability to keep up. I will say, this has pretty much single-handedly motivated me to brush up on my literary/cultural theory. Love the spirit of what she's doing and I think it serves as an excellent model for what biblical commentary should look like in our day and age... I just struggle to wrap my head around much of the actual content. One day!
July 14, 2015
Explore with Zornberg the implications of the ambiguous reports in Exodus on the meaning of human and religious connection today. Forming a mature give-and-take relationship with God is comparable to forming one with a parent, a teacher, or any other human being. And the Golden Calf provides lessons in how to deal with the parts of ourselves that get in the way of our growth and acceptance of life’s uncertainty. As always, Zornberg matches her prodigious knowledge of ancient rabbinic literature with insights from the medieval commentators such as Rashi, Chasidic sources, psychoanalysis, and modern literature and philosophy to come up with unique interpretations of very subtle events. I must say that occasionally she indulges in pedantry or preciousness, and the book requires a slow, thoughtful attention, but the ensuing rewards can’t be found anywhere else. I also think this book is less gripping than her book on Genesis, because the source material is less personal (we are often dealing with the whole Israelite people or the practices of the Levites) but perhaps the importance of the observations are all the more important because of that.
April 12, 2014
Excellent rabbinical commentary - but difficult for non-scholars to follow - on the Book of Exodus. I am not Jewish, so I started at a disadvantage. Nevertheless, I had never had exposure to such detailed analysis - Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg culls from from several previous rabbinical commentators. Not a sit-down-and-read book -- one to turn to a few pages at a times for about a year, highlighting passages. an excellent, EXCELLENT inspiration for any creative person, especially writers.
January 6, 2010
This is an amazing and wonderfully complex read. I can read about a page or two at a time and have been reading for two years at least off and on. The book is about the story of Exodus and what it meant for the people of that time spiritually, psychologically and how the story is alive and can be of use to us now as well.
January 7, 2010
Amazing book about the psychological and spiritual meaning of the story of exodus. What happened then and how the story can still be pertinent now. I've been reading for over a year...read about a page at a time and take time to digest. Very deep and complex. I've found it very rewarding.
December 11, 2008
Incredible writing!
January 25, 2025
It's not often you come across someone who combines an encyclopedic knowledge of centuries of midrash (Rabbinical exegesis) with insights from secular luminaries like Freud, Vaclav Havel, Foucault, and Yeats (to list just a few off the top of my head).
Zornberg is that rare person -- able to jump quickly and easily from a 13th century rabbinical commentary to a discussion about Yeats' negative capability.
The world of midrash is completely ahistorical, which honestly isn't a mode that sits that well with me; you just have to accept, for the time you're reading the book, that, say, an extra vowel in a word can mean a whole hidden story in the text. But that's not really a fault in the book; she's not writing a history of midrash, but trying to show the interplay of these different interpretations and how they play into secular sources on the nature of, say, play or authoritarianism, and what we can learn about ourselves from them.
It's actually quite a compact book, despite its length; she packs a lot of material into each chapter, and I feel like I should re-read it in the not too distant future. On the other hand, she also has more books I'm eager to explore -- always a dilemma :-).
Zornberg is that rare person -- able to jump quickly and easily from a 13th century rabbinical commentary to a discussion about Yeats' negative capability.
The world of midrash is completely ahistorical, which honestly isn't a mode that sits that well with me; you just have to accept, for the time you're reading the book, that, say, an extra vowel in a word can mean a whole hidden story in the text. But that's not really a fault in the book; she's not writing a history of midrash, but trying to show the interplay of these different interpretations and how they play into secular sources on the nature of, say, play or authoritarianism, and what we can learn about ourselves from them.
It's actually quite a compact book, despite its length; she packs a lot of material into each chapter, and I feel like I should re-read it in the not too distant future. On the other hand, she also has more books I'm eager to explore -- always a dilemma :-).
November 2, 2017
Okay i read 50% of it, but that's all I'm going to read. It wasn't what I expected but was good for what it was. An exploration of midrash and rabbinical imagination on the well-known story of the Exodus.
March 14, 2021
Exemplary parsha commentary on Exodus. An example of what a true melding and torah u'maddah could look like, especially if the writer did not want to apply a 'high or low critical' lens to the chmuash.
January 27, 2023
Very difficult read. Took me forever. The story of the Exodus’s
March 2, 2024
This is one of the best biographies ever written and much more entertaining than the movie.
April 19, 2023
I read this leading up to Passover after reading a rave review from Tyler Cowen of Zornberg’s book on Numbers. Her approach definitely fits in the Midrashic mold, but is altogether a little too psychoanalytic for my taste
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews