Tonight was the first night of my Me'ah class at Temple Tiferent Israel
Our instructor is Rabbi Everett Fox.. a very scholarly looking man, but with a very dry wit. He has written a translation of the bible and apparently he is quite well known.
So it was all logistics and we went around the room and everyone said why they were there -- apparently, we are all a bunch of hebrew school dropouts who now want to further our jewish education.... except for that one young mother who is just happy to be out of the house. LOL.
Then during break, I said to the instructor - you must be so tired of hearing the same stuff over and over - from everyone. He said he'd actually prefer to hear about people's lives- what do you do for a living, are you an artist, what are your hobbies..etc. then just why we are taking the class.
I thought that was funny.... he looks very scholarly, but kept using art and theater analogies.
Then we did a quick discussion of the passage in the bible where god asks abraham to sacrifice Isaac to him, and Abraham is willing to do so without any question. The bible pasages do not give us any indication of abraham's frame of mind, or the situation - where was Abraham when god told him to do this?- how old was Isaac? Why didn't Abraham question God? No one knows..
And he talked about different bibles and how they've evolved through the ages and how there isn't "one" bible - there's just many different interpretations. (we are going to be reading HIS bible interpretation)... all stuff that I never really thought about before.
I think
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