Podcast
On Being with Krista Tippett
The book focuses on the details of the Exodus story, highlighting the complexity of the Israelite experience and the fact that redemption often comes with a sadness and tension.
The particulars of rapture is the title that you gave to your book about Exodus.
— Episode: Avivah Zornberg — Human Becoming, Betwee...
Episode: Avivah Zornberg — Human Becoming, Between Biblical...
The book focuses on the details of the Exodus story, highlighting the complexity of the Israelite experience and the fact that redemption often comes with a sadness and tension.
The particulars of rapture is the title that you gave to your book about Exodus.
So we'll try to touch on both.
It seems to me that it's a kind of story-book story, that Cecil B. DeMille story, in which there are the bad guys and the good guys and the bad guys get it. They get their comeuppance and the good guys rejoice.
And somehow it doesn't seem to me to be a, that's not a story for adults.
So the particulars of rapture, that wonderful line from a poem by Wallace Stevens, I had in mind the subtleties and the complexities of all the many stories, like the stories that are hidden within the apparent grand narrative.
Episode: [Unedited] Avivah Zornberg with Krista Tippett
The author likens the exodus story to a forceps birth, highlighting the suffering and pressure experienced by both the Israelites and God in the process of liberation.
And you use an image in your book. And the book is called The Particulars of Rapture. And we'll talk about that some more as we keep speaking. But you use an image there of this being kind of a forceps birth.
Yes, exactly. Yes. That's exactly what I would like to say. That there is such a thing as the body of the mother refusing to let go. That would be Egypt. And the embryo refusing to, the fetus, the child refusing to emerge from the body. And then what does the midwife do?
The particulars of rapture is the title that you gave to your book about Exodus.
It seems to me that it's a kind of storybook story, that Cecil B. DeMille story, in which there are the bad guys and the good guys, and the bad guys get it. They get their comeuppance, and the good guys rejoice. Somehow, it doesn't seem to me to be a, that's not a story for adults.
Yes, the whole purpose of, it's one of the extraordinary recursive references in the story. Over and over again, God says to Moses, Moses says to the people, all this is happening so that you shall tell the story.