The Hidden Order of Intimacy: Reflections on the Book of Leviticus

by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg

Overview

A masterly analysis of the Book of Leviticus, the newest volume in the award-winning series of commentaries on the Hebrew Bible by “a celebrated biblical scholar, keen on weaving together traditional Jewish exegesis, psychoanalysis, and postmodern criticism” (The New York Times Book Review)

The image of the Golden Calf haunts the commentaries that thread through Leviticus. This catastrophic episode, in which the Israelites (freed from Egyptian slavery and forty days after their momentous encounter with God at Mount Sinai) worship a pagan idol while Moses is receiving the Torah from God on the mountaintop, gives the mostly legalistic text a unique depth and resonance. According to midrashic tradition, the post-traumatic effects of the sin of the Golden Calf linger through the generations, the sin to be “paid off” in small increments through time. Post-biblical perspectives view this as the diffusion of punishment, as well as a way of addressing the on-going phenomenon of idolatry itself.

These after-effects of the Golden Calf incident are imaginatively explored in Avivah Zornberg’s magnificent textual analysis. She brings the rabbis of the Talmud, medieval commentators, Hasidic scholars, philosophers, psychoanalysts, and literary masters—from Aristotle and Rashi to the Baal Shem Tov, Franz Rosenzweig, Sigmund Freud, and George Eliot—into her pathbreaking discussion of the nature of reward and punishment, good and evil, Eros and Thanatos, and humankind’s intricate and ever-fascinating encounter with the divine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805243574
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/29/2022
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	344,670
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

AVIVAH GOTTLIEB ZORNBERG is the author of The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis (a National Jewish Book Award-winner), The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus, Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers, and The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious (a National Jewish Book Award finalist). She lectures widely in Israel, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Haunted by the Golden Calf xi

1 Vayikra: Hearing the Grass Grow: Guilt, Atonement, Intimacy 3

2 Tzav: Golden Calf, Clouds of Glory 41

3 Shmini: The Desire for Desire 80

4 Tazria/Metzora: Isolation and Compassion 110

5 Acharei Mot/Kedoshim: Commanded to Aspire 144

6 Emor: An Anatomy of Hatred 182

7 Behar/Bechukotai: The Order of Intimacy 217

Notes 245

Bibliography 265

Index 269

Editorial Reviews

★ 01/17/2022

National Jewish Book Award winner Zornberg (Moses: A Human Life) follows her volumes on Genesis, Exodus, and the book of Numbers with a stirring examination of Leviticus. Excavating the moral meaning from the “largely legalistic text,” Zornberg identifies the narrative of the Golden Calf as the book’s underlying theme. In it, the Israelites’ worship of the Golden Calf while Moses received the Ten Commandments led to mass executions of the worshippers. Zornberg views this tragedy as illustrative of the book’s central moral insight: “periods of impoverishment as the crisis of the Golden Calf... allow the people to encounter their own depths,” making room for spiritual reinvention out of the disorder of error. Zornberg’s nuanced interpretations reward close study, particularly her observation that “stumbling” is essential to the process of understanding God’s words and “failure is the process by which the Torah becomes real.” This outstanding exegesis builds on its penetrating analysis of the Golden Calf and a surprising roster of sources—including Aristotle, George Eliot, and Sigmund Freud—to arrive at an original and persuasive take on Leviticus. Admirers of Karen Armstrong’s The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts will be richly rewarded. Agent: Sharon Friedman, Sharon Friedman Literary. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"Zornberg masterfully uncovers the subterranean threads and tension that underlie the written text of the myriad laws and rituals encompassed within the third book of the Bible . . . Although her thinking is complex, Zornberg's prose is fluid and poetic, enabling readers to follow her arguments with a sense of coherence and pleasure."
—Beth Kissileff, The Christian Century

“A new book by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg is not just another work wrestling with the often obscure meanings of the Hebrew Bible. It is a seismic event. Her books—this latest is her sixth—are profound reflections."
—Mordechai Beck, The Jerusalem Report

“Zornberg follows her volumes on Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers with a stirring examination of Leviticus. Her nuanced interpretations reward close study, particularly her observation that ‘stumbling’ is essential to the process of understanding God’s words and that ‘failure is the process by which the Torah becomes real.’ This outstanding exegesis builds on its penetrating analysis of the Golden Calf and a surprising roster of sources—including Aristotle, George Eliot, and Sigmund Freud—to arrive at an original and persuasive take on Leviticus. Admirers of Karen Armstrong’s The Lost Art of Scripture will be richly rewarded.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

From the Publisher

02/01/2022

As a commentary that mulls over and spirals through the content of Leviticus, this work is reflective, not a critical analysis or a line-by-line study. Instead, Torah scholar Zornberg (The Beginning of Desire) moves through themes in Leviticus, interplaying the texts from the Torah with passages from rabbinic commentary. Her textual conversation is interspersed with forays into psychology, philosophy, and literature. Zornberg creates a revolving world of texts that often flashes with new insight on the biblical material. At times, though, this interpretive process could benefit from engaging more directly the difficulties readers have when encountering these sources from the past. While Zornberg is erudite within her circle of texts, there are places where it would have been appropriate to slow down and deal more directly with the gaps between the historical authors and the contemporary readers, on issues of disability, race, sexuality, and violence. VERDICT Although readers might be occasionally disappointed by an infelicitous approach to a delicate topic or a missed opportunity for a critical conversation with pre-modern quotations, reading Leviticus alongside Zornberg still manages to be a thoughtful, informative experience.—Zachariah Motts

Library Journal

2022-01-12
A broad review of the biblical book of Leviticus.

Noted Torah scholar Zornberg, who won the National Jewish Book Award for The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, takes readers on a densely detailed, challenging tour of the traditional and mystical readings of Leviticus, drawing especially from the Midrash and other Jewish writings and interpretations through history. This is not a linear review of Leviticus nor a text-based commentary. Instead, the author “reads Leviticus through the prism of midrashic narratives that connect the surface with the depths of this text.” This approach allows readers to interface with Leviticus through the thoughtful and timeless opinions of rabbis and Torah scholars of the distant past. Simultaneously, Zornberg brings in more modern and secular voices as well, including Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Freud, Foucault, George Eliot, Keats, Franz Rosenzweig, Kafka, Borges, and Louise Glück. Assuming that her readers are familiar with the scriptural background, Zornberg spends very little time on reviewing the text itself. In lieu of a line-by-line analysis, she uses specific liturgical readings from Leviticus as springboards for exploring later commentary. One of the common themes the author identifies is the continued guilt caused by the Golden Calf rebellion. As she ably conveys, most of Leviticus stems from this unatonable moment of idolatry. “The national experience of shame is related to the memory of the Golden Calf,” which “haunts the people, in the way that something neither dead nor alive haunts the present moment.” The trauma of rebellion leads to a communal commitment to holiness, marked by such characteristics as an abhorrence of blasphemy, an emphasis on caring for the poor, and an obsession with cleanliness of the body and home. Though this book is an impressive scholarly reference, it will be confusingly inaccessible to readers without a prior working knowledge of midrashic scholarship and Hebrew.

A work of depth and cultural value that will have limited appeal beyond religious scholars.

Kirkus Reviews