Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

As announced in April Sonoma State University Library will host a series of five readings and discussions related to Jewish literature on the theme “Between Two Worlds: Stories of Estrangement and Homecoming.” Each event will start starting at noon on Thursdays (in room 3001 of the SSU Library) with a short lecture by Professor Anne Goldman. The first of the series is happening this week, on September 25 and the topic is the book of Exodus. The library has of course lots of different copies and translation too, but I would like to recommend five books we have that are written about the book itself. Each provides a different kind of insight.

Shmuel Yosef Agnon edited a selection of commentaries on Exodus titled, “Present at Sinai: The giving of the Law.” Agnon compiled and translated and integrated a comprehensive commentary from literally hundreds of sources. (If you do not believe me check the bibliography at the end of the book, printed in small print and filling over a dozen pages.) The first 40 pages of the book (after the foreword and preface) contain commentaries on the beginning of the Torah up to the Exodus. The next 320 pages though follow Exodus verse by verse from 19:1 to 20:19, in other words covering the story of the giving of the Law.

According to Baruch E. Levine, Professor at New York University, Nahum M Sarna’s Exploring Exodus: The heritage of Biblical Israel is “an excellent companion volume to the biblical book of Exodus itself. It integrates comparative materials from cultures of the Ancient Near East, thus placing Exodus in historical context. This does not detract, however, from Sarna’s ability to pinpoint the distinctiveness of Israelite religion and culture.” Unlike Agnon’s book this explanatory volume goes over the whole of the book of Exodus. The book is broken down to 9 thematic chapters that follow the chronology of Exodus.

“All the women followed her” contains three dozen essays, poems and stories, edited by Rebecca Schwartz. It is “a collection of writings on Miriam the prophet & the women of Exodus.” The pieces are organized around these themes: prophecy and leadership, Miriam the musician, the women of Exodus, standing at Sinai, Miriam the bitter, Miriam the rebel, and Miriam’s well. The volume fills in a void left by the patriarchal nature of our ancestor’s society.

Michael Walzer writes from yet another, much more political point of view in “Exodus and revolution.” He shows how the text and history of Exodus shaped Western political thought, particularly radical politics. At the same time he critiques is most extreme and unrealistic forms. The titles of the four chapters are outlining his line of thoughts: the house of bondage: slaves in Egypt; the murmurings: slaves in the wilderness; the covenant: a free people; the Promised Land.

Finally Aaron Wildavsky approaches the text from different political angle in “The nursing father: Moses as apolitical leader.” His two thesis are (from page 1) “first, that understanding of the Mosaic Bible may be enhanced by treating it as a teaching on political leadership; second, that our understanding of leadership may be improved by considering it as an integral part of different political regimes.”