Category: Tanakh (Hebrew Bible)

Naso: A Path to Follow

This portion closes (Bamidbar/Numbers 7:89) with a note about God speaking to Moses from between the Cherubim on the cover of the Ark.

There are cherubim set up to block the entrance to Eden at Breishit/Genesis 3:24. We first learn of the cherubim on the Ark cover in the Exodus chapter 25. The Ark and its cover are mentioned again in First Kings (cf chapter 6), 1 Chronicles 13, 2 Chronicles (cf. chapter 5) and in Psalms 80:2.
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The Moabite, College and Sourdough

In honor of the festival of Shavuot, which begins this evening, I was re-reading “Law and Narrative in the Book of Ruth,” in Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg‘s The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious. There’s not much point in trying to synthesize Zornberg’s work, because it’s too rich to survive such condensing. But ideas that I took from this essay are that narrative is complex and messy — despite apparent “happy endings” — and that law, on its own, can’t capture the unknown qualities of individuals and their relationships….
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Alone in the Sukkah

Alone in the sukkah, Kohelet* and me

“Havel, havalim,” he tells my coffee’s rising steam.

Yes, “vapor, all is vapor,” I’m willing to agree.

Lifebreath can’t remain for long

and the future can’t be told.

But does that make life “futile”

or just make it hard to hold.
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