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197 4. Synthetic Commentaries Another way to access in a single reading from one book both the riches of the Midrash and the work of the medieval commentators is to consult two parashah-by-parashah commentaries that, deservedly, are treasured by experienced readers. I call them synthetic because they each reference and integrate a wide range of sources: Rabbinic midrash, medieval commentaries, and those who continued those modes of interpretation in the early modern and modern eras. • Nehama Leibowitz (1905–97): Known to her many students in Israel and her readers the world over simply as “Nehama,” Leibowitz was in her time arguably the leading teacher of how to delve into a parashah. Leibowitz shows lucidly the different ways in which the midrash and the medieval Hebrew commentaries handle issues in each parashah and what the commentaries, major, minor, and in-between, have done over the centuries with those lines of interpretation. The years have not diminished the value of her work to anyone who wants to inquire into a weekly Torah portion. Her discussions (in Hebrew) of each one of the 54 parshiyot, originally circulated in mimeographed pages over many years. They were eventually collected and published in five Hebrew volumes. In the 1970s, they were translated and adapted from the Hebrew by Aryeh Newman and published (in many printings ) by the World Zionist Organization, Department for Torah Education and Culture in the Diaspora (Jerusalem). Each of the books features several discussions of each parashah. The titles are: 198 COMMENTARIES: A CONCISE GUIDE Studies in B’reishit (Genesis) Studies in Shemot (Exodus)—2 volumes Studies in Va-yikra’ (Leviticus) Studies in Bamidbar (Numbers) Studies in Devarim (Deuteronomy) • Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg: Though she has published only on the parshiyot of Genesis and Exodus, Zornberg’s treatment of them represents an exquisite, though at times overwhelming, elaboration of Leibowitz’s approach. In her own right a popular teacher of Humash in Jerusalem today, Zornberg brings to her reading a thorough command of midrash and commentaries , a deep grounding in English and Western literatures, culture, and literary and psychoanalytic theory, and an acute poetic and religious sensibility. But a word of caution: her discussions of each parashah are demanding. They wend their way over a vast intellectual terrain, too vast, I fear, to be absorbed week after week—unless one has a lot of time on one’s hands. They are best taken in small bites, and the division of the discussions into discernible parts makes such an approach possible. Genesis: The Beginning of Desire. Philadelphia and Jerusalem: The Jewish Publication Society, 1995. The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus. New York and London: Doubleday, 2001. ...

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