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Shabbat Shalom Friends,

Here is my video d'var Torah for this week, Noah: Revolution and Moral Vision, In Honor of Tikva Frymer-Kensky, z"l.  Frymer-Kensky, who died in 2006, was a towering scholar of the Bible and the Ancient Near East, and I draw from her book, In the Wake of the Goddesses.  I also highly recommend her book, Reading the Women of the Bible, which I will draw on again in a couple of weeks.

For more information on this great teacher and thinker, here is a biographical sketch by Dr. Jane Kanarek, Professor of Talmud at Hebrew College in Boston.

I also draw on a comment about the story from the scholar Carol Ochs, the author of a number of books on Judiasm and feminism.  The comment is actually found in the The Torah: A Women's Commentary, published by URJ Press.

Of course, I highly recommend David Seidenberg's book, Kabbalah and Ecology.

Follow this link to some of the classic Talmudic reflections on Noah and his generation.

Hebrew readers, this midrash on the phrase from Psalms, "Deep calls to deep" is quite amazing as well.

As always, I would love to hear your feedback, particularly if there is something you'd wish I'd done differently.  In the meantime, wishing you a Shabbat Shalom,

B'vracha,

Rabbi Justin David