Exodus in the Jewish Experience

Echoes and Reverberations

Pamela Barmash, W. David Nelson

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781498502931
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Biography

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.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Out of the Mists of History
• Chapter 2: Discontinuity and Dissonance
• Chapter 3: The Past as Paradigm
• Chapter 4: The Impact of the Exodus on Halakhah (Jewish Law)
• Chapter 5: Passover and Thanatos in Medieval Jewish Consciousness
• Chapter 6: Observations on the Biblical Miniatures in Spanish Haggadot
• Chapter 7: From Myth to Memory
• Chapter 8: The Desert Comes to Zion
• About the Contributors