Jeremy Rosen
Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Exodus 32:5
Summary
Study the text of the Bible weekly with Jeremy Rosen through a combination of traditional, critical, and personal perspectives. No knowledge of Hebrew or the Bible is necessary. You may use any Bible text you may have. Or you can go to sefaria.org. This week’s class will begin with Exodus 32:5.
Jeremy Rosen
Manchester-born Jeremy Rosen was educated at Cambridge University England and Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He has practiced as an orthodox rabbi, as principal of Carmel College in the UK, and as professor at the Faculty for Comparative Religion in Antwerp, Belgium. He has written and lectured extensively in the UK and the US, where he now resides and was the rabbi of the Persian-Jewish community in Manhattan.
That’s an excellent question. The trouble was that the brothers killing the men of Shechem was against the will of their father, was considered to be a bad thing. Whereas this is considered to be a good thing. So, you know, in one sense they were both reactions to a bad act to start off with. I mean, after all the rape of Dinah was a bad act. But nevertheless, in the case of Simeon and Levi, they were considered to be wrong. And why Jacob, when he on his deathbed, in fact doesn’t actually curse them, but he says, “I need to separate them.” And one became religious fanatics, if you like, and Simeon became, if you like, the political fanatics. So it’s an interesting point.
That’s an excellent question. It doesn’t say so. It doesn’t tell us what alphabet it was written in. We assume it was written in Hebrew, but we don’t know. And there’s no evidence of the script that we have now then, so it’s an open question.