|
Written on: 14. 09. 2011 [16:05]
|
|
d.pruiksma
Dick Pruiksma
FORUM ADMINISTRATOR
Topic creator
registered since: 17.08.2010
Posts: 10
|
Introduction: The Shared Testament
A Jewish-Christian Reading
PLEASE, ADD YOUR COMMENTS TO THE POSTED TOPICS OR ADD A NEW TOPIC
Two feminist scholars, Dalia Marx, a liberal rabbi and Ursula Rudnick, an ordained Lutheran minister, in dialogue about the Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible, called in Hebrew the TaNaKh, known to Christians as the Old Testament -- this has been called "the shared testament" or shared scriptural heritage of Jews and Christians. Two feminist scholars, a liberal rabbi and an ordained Lutheran minister, both well-versed in inter-religious dialogue, will from time to time conduct a conversation about their interpretations of shared texts. Dalia Marx of Israel and Ursula Rudnick of Germany invite you to participate with them in an on-line conversation about theology, feminism, and interpretation. As soon as we will have activated our discussion forums you will be able to make your own remarks and get into dialogue with the authors and each other.
The authors
Rabbi Dalia Marx (PhD.), tenth generation in Jerusalem. Marx has earned her doctorate at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and her rabbinic ordination at HUC-JIR, the Reform seminary, in Jerusalem and Cincinnati (2003).
Marx is an assistant professor for Liturgy and Midrash at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem. She teaches in various academic institutions in Israel and Europe. She is involved in various research groups and is active in voicing progressive Judaism in Israel. She writes for academic journals as well as in the Israeli press and is engaged in creating new liturgies.
Ursula Rudnick (PhD.), is a Lutheran Theologian. She studied Protestant Theology at the Universities of Tübingen and Göttingen where she earned an M.A. She received a second M.A. and a Ph.D. from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York. After her ordination as a Lutheran minister in the Evangelical Church of Hanover, she taught at the Universities of Aachen and Hanover where she is a professor at the Institute of Theology and Comparative Religion. Furthermore, she serves as a consultant for Jewish-Christian Relations of the Evangelical Church of Hanover. Ursula Rudnick has worked in Jewish-Christian relations for many years: locally, in the region of Lower Saxony, national as well as international. She has published extensively in the field of Jewish-Christian relations.
|
|
Written on: 07. 11. 2011 [14:44]
|
|
bstahl
Branko Stahl
registered since: 08.04.2011
Posts: 1
|
Dear Friends,
I was always amazed by the "Begegnungen" in Martin Buber's house. Since my earliest childhood I know that name, told to me by my father. Just nowadays, his unique name is filled more and more by word. Language is the sense of consciousness. Is there a people that worked on that sense harder than the jewish?
There are exactly two translations of the hebrew Bible into German: Martin Luther's and Martin Buber + Franz Rosenzweig's. (Funny, that both are Martins). The first big difference is style: Luther is prose. Buber-Rosenzweig is life on stage (theater), including God (life is the stage of God's revelations). Dramaturgy makes the world of hebrew Bible real, even after these thousands of years! We easily could identify ourselves with these dramatic figures on stage, which is the character of theatre play alone.
... Bearing this in mind, I have thought and felt about the at first sight strange issue attributed to Zipporah in that night, some thousands of years ago ...
Moshe’s Dream
…
Exhausted and terrified, Moshe fell asleep. Moshe had a dream:
“The Lord said to Moshe:
As you go to return to Egypt,
see:
All the wonders that I lay into your hand, you will perform before Pharaoh,
but I will strengthen his heart so that he will not set the people free.
Then you’ll say to Pharaoh:
This is what the Lord says:
My firstborn son, Israel it is,
I told you: Set my son free, so that he may serve me,
and you refused to set him free.
now, I will kill your firstborn son.
On the way, though, at the place for the night, it happens
that the Lord encounters him and was about to kill him.
Zipporah took a flint and tears her son's foreskin off,
that she wipes onto his legs and says:
bridegroom of blood to me!
Thus, he let him go.
Bridegroom of blood, that’s what she said at that time
on the circumcisions.”
…
(Translated from Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig.)
Moshe awakens out of his nightmare. As is the nature of dreaming, the bewilderment of feelings have merged all those important things that the dreaming spirit was about to do in real life. Terrified by the appearance in the thorn, the hidden logic of dreaming mixes up locations, times, issues, tasks, instructions, good and evil. It’s not that Moshe argues against the visual and vocal appearance of the Lord, he is just afraid, overwhelmed (Herding the sheep, Moshe innocently stumbled into the experience of the burning thorn.) and feels unable to cope with the obvious instructions. Moshe is not disobedient, he is just weak (Like us?).
The inclusion of Moshe’s dream exactly in-between his return to Egypt and the reunification of Moshe with his people, has one major purpose: to make the real real. Why that?
Imagine, you are walking in the desert and you become aware of a burning thorn. Approaching the phenomenon, you’ll see a ghost and you’ll hear a voice. A voice that addresses you in an unquestionable way, to return to your people and become their leader. Now, what do you believe would people think, when you just tell them that “story”? Now, imagine, you are just a reader of that story, several thousand years later? Would you believe?
To incorporate that dream, Moshe’s dream, makes the whole narrative intuitively convincing, as we all know too well the real magic of a real nightmare.
Think of Paulus. Try to realize his inhuman efforts to build up a church out of merely nothing. Why? Wasn’t he comfortable as Saulus? It is his “dream” that sets him off to walk!
There is even a dark and tragic parallel between the two patriarchs, Moshe („I will kill your firstborn son” Where did the Lord tell him such? Is it Moshe’s remembrance to his own act of violence so many years ago? Or “just” prophecy? Does Moshe feel that his ominous vision of violence against Egyptian people might fall back onto himself, his firstborn son?) and Paulus: both, they were brutal, cold-blooded murderers in their beginnings. Both of them, the Lord took by surprise. (Should we learn this: The Lord is not with heroes, but with simple people like us, such as every human being.)
Isn’t it the mystery of their change in heart that all the bible is about? Doesn’t it start with Kain’s tragedy? Certainly, Judas was not the same person, when he took the 30 silver coins compared to the moment, when he threw them away. Jesus’ voice had touched him in-between. (Isn't it that "power" of voice that relates Jesus to God, and, maybe, us to both of them?)
Moshe, a weak spirit and simple person, got an impossible mission by a mind boggling appearance. This we feel in his whole writings. In 2 Mose 5,3 Moshe adds: “… or he may strike us with plagues or with the sword.” (With respect to the overall narrative, the careful reader might sense the difference in language in these words and his dream. Now he is awake!) The Lord never told him to speak like that. It is his own fright that adds these words. Moshe is still terrified and uneasy.
To witness Moshe as a real human being, day and night, awake and dreaming, with all the feelings, thoughts and dreams that are too familiar to us, makes his narration real! That is the great magic of biblical language and fate.
Thank you for leading my eye to that issue! Isn't it like magic that Martin Buber by instinct senses all these "strange" things with precise words? His words are like a divining rod to us all.
Thank you.
branko stahl, heppenheim
|
|
Written on: 18. 01. 2012 [14:43]
|
|
debbiew
Debbie Weissman
registered since: 25.01.2011
Posts: 4
|
I had always felt that the Rabbis were unkind to Esau. He really isn't so bad in the Torah. But when Dalia asks about contemporary Israel, I think Israel's image in the world is very negative. The reality leaves a lot to be desired,but it certainly isn't as negative as it's sometimes protrayed. We really must work on striking an apporpriate balance between the voice of Jacob and the hands of Esau.
Debbie Weissman, Jerusalem
|
