The Life Story of Adam and Havah: A New Targum of Genesis 1:26-5:5

by Shira Halevi

Book Overview

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0765759624
• ISBN13: 9780765759627
• Release Date: June 1997
• Publisher: Jason Aronson
• Length: 315 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Beginnings.........

I just am overwhelmed by the mind-pictures which are possible while studying this book! It's a great study to expand your imagination concerning the topic of creation/gan eden.

Interesting, informative, frustrating

This book is constructed in a format in which each chapter consists of a stridently feminist targum (translation and commentary) on a pericope and a conversation critiquing the targum by the woman offering the targum, a rabbi, and a stridently traditional/male chauvinist ... The support for the targum comes from traditional means of manipulating the original text, the offering of multiple alternative readings, and traditional support from targums, midrash, Philo, pseudepigrapha, kabbala ...The two students were so broadly sterotyped that I came to not trust what they quoted or argued ... especially since the arguments were often personal and sexist rather than to the point of the targum. Therefore, I found what I'd expected to be the strength of the book - showing of the study partner relationship - to be rather its weakness.The actual strength of the book is in the innovative interpretation of the original text - the garden as temple, the injunction to not eat of the fruit to apply only to Adam not to Eve ... For this, the book is sufficient to drive one to original source material - a sign of excellence in books such as this.