Below is the podcast of the talk I presented for Tisha b’Av at Beth Israel.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (11.0MB)
Tish b’Av
Tisha b’Av lecture in Philly area
I will be giving a lecture this Wednesday evening enitled “Have you forgotten us completely?” Crying Out to a Loving God. I will be exploring how the rabbis responded to the destruction of the Temple, how they responded to the text of Lamentations, and what that in turn can teach a community of faith about responding to our own times of crisis. From the Beth Israel website:
Wednesday, July 29: Beth Israel will be hosting a county wide Tisha B’Av service at 8:00 p.m. in the Holocaust Memorial Garden. Our guest presenter will be Professor Brady from Penn State. Professor Brady has degrees in Judaic Studies and Hebrew Literature. Attendees are asked to bring a flashlight. Open attached flyer.
Lamentations and Tisha b’Av
This past weekend was spent doing various work around that house that required lots of hours and very little thought. Good for the soul, perhaps, but I feel like I lost two days in a wormhole. I missed offering my best wishes for a good observance on Tisha b’Av, so today I will offer instead my presentation from last week’s Catholic Biblical Association. This paper was part of the working group for the Bible in Its Traditions project. It is a very rough introduction to who the midrash and targum of Lamentations deal with this challenging text. I am keenly aware that there is much more material on and relating to Lamentations spread throughout the rabbinic corpus. So, as meagre as it is, here is something in honor of Tisha b’Av.
Rabbinic Reception of Lamentations
I am very grateful for this opportunity to contribute in some small way to the work of this seminar. My work on Lamentations began 14 years ago as I cast about for a subject for my doctoral thesis. My primary interest is in exegesis and so I was directed to consider the rabbis and how they interpreted (and transformed) the biblical text. Specifically, I worked on the Targum of Lamentations. I intend for this to be a discussion of some sample texts but feel I should start by placing us within the context of both Lamentations itself and then within the corpus of rabbinic commentaries.
