The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis

This book develops an insightful and intellectually satisfying discussion of Genesis, using insights from the midrash, psychoanalysis and literature. The depth of the discussion leads the reader far beyond Christian exegesis and demonstrates the playfulness and creativity of interpretation that frees biblical study from narrow-mindedness and literalism, making the text far more relevant to people living in the 21st century. As a protestant Christian, I would like to see this book used for study in the church I attend because I believe in would broaden everyone's experience of their religion and deepen their faith.

I bought this book on a recommendation by a rabbi through an ecumenical reading group studying Genesis. Two of us worked together to read it discussing it section by section. We both learned a lot about midrash and how bits of Genesis have been evaluated over the centuries and found ourselves led to new appreciations of some of the major themes. Not for the faint of heart but worth the work. Academic in nature and psychological--reading it opens up new lines of thought about familiar material.

This is the definitive contemporary exegesis of Genesis. Zornberg is unique in her ability to integrate the insights of Rabbinic Midrash, critical literary analysis, and psychoanalytic Research. For me the result has been a plethora of 'I can't believe I never understood before' insights, that have blessed me with a deeper and more nuanced understanding of Genesis.

We are reading this in a prayer/study group I attend and finding it to be challenging, but very good. The introduction helps understand the style and intent of the author.

Avivah Gottleib Zornberg opened my eyes to the scholarly literature on contemporary thought about the Torah and the rich rewards discussing its meanings can bring even to one who, like me, is fully non-religious.Douglas Uzzell, Author of From Meaning to Desire

She find sissies that i would never of though of and looks at them in modern psych terms. a good read but long

this is the most dense book i ever tried to read short of a philosophy tome. I finally gave up

To read about the Parshas of the Chumach

Zornberg has been described as provocative, challenging and illuminating, and in this reflective exegesis on Genesis, this is effectively demonstrated. What she calls upon is not just literary analysis; a perspective on the psychology represented by both events and characters; linguistic insights; biblical history; but perhaps more on the traditions of Biblical exegesis based on the insights of the 10th.c Rashi, and the Midrash. She does not tell us what to think, or even, like Plato, that we need to change our thinking, she presents different viewpoints in a manner that is both eclectic and free of a directive agenda; ‘This is what is said, examine it.’ Why someone writing in a tradition which she is clearly steeped in, should gain the attention of a wider audience, is that possibly, for me, she represents a breath of fresh air in the relative non-accessibility of neo-evangelical Christian exegesis, something which I find frustrating and almost trivializing, which is both welcome and illuminating. I had read Sarna’s book on Genesis and was delighted; while Zornberg I found challenging virtually everything I thought I understood; new doors were opened, and a fresh light was shone on a lot of other things, and old unanswered questions are in need of reformulation, such as: What happens to the waters above the waters?; How does the Genesis account square with the quite emphatic statement that Wisdom (Sophia) was created before all things? A group of psychologists headed by Emma Jung quite some time ago came up with the conclusion that the reason the Greek Myths have lasted so long in their retelling, is because of their psychological veracity. I kept finding myself saying, what you can’t say that, but she did, and it made me look at things in a different way; a re-framing perhaps, but then psychologists know all about our need to re-frame.The first chapter is ‘Bereshit’ (which means ‘to begin’), the pivoting point. Insights that come to mind are a complete re-evaluation of what is meant by the ‘Fall’. Adam lost his prerogative, or power, to stand upright. From the Midrash, Adam named all the animals as pairs – male and female, and realised that he had no partner; G-d seeing the problem, resolved it. What I found really difficult to comprehend was the view that G-d felt sorry for the fall, but it was predestined – possibly why the angels were not very keen on the idea of making man – an idea alluded to in Qur’anic exegesis, and that the good arises with the bad. The ‘pivoting point’ is thus the place of balance, the point of rest between what seem to be opposites. She cites Goodman in that ‘what we call the world is a product of some mind whose symbolic procedures construct the world.’ But what she comes close to is the assertion by the Sufis, for example, that the world as we see it, is not the real as created by G-d, but one of our own construction, superimposed upon a reflection of a divine model – perhaps in the manner of Plato’s Timeaus. It reminds me of Traherne’s dictum of the need ‘to see the world aright.’The second chapter is on Noah, and begins with an overview of the punning evident in the actual name of Noah. Sarna makes it very clear that the writers of Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch and the Psalms, were very aware of what we now call semantic associations, that while a word can still be said to mean what it does, it carries associated meanings derived from other places where it is used which will have an influence on its understanding in a given context; Zornberg perhaps takes this principle a little further in its application because the original Hebrew is always in the background. This is not simply a kind of etymology, like finding out that the original meaning of the word ‘nice’ meant ‘silly’ – almost frivolous, because it will act as a brake on our use to the word to express disinterested commendation. In a section discussing the relationship between speech and silence – water is speechless, one is aware of a number of different things on different levels being understood, or at least having light thrown upon them, at the same time. It is almost as if speech, and hence thought, has become liquefied. It is not so much that the expression has power and beauty, but a participation of comprehension begins to operate in a new way.The third chapter focuses on Abraham, and thus she proceeds through Genesis, and at the end there are full notes, the sources for all the quotes, a bibliography and a glossary. I have never quite read anything like this. It is not a quick read, it is a read that promotes reflection, because the familiar can become in a sense, unfamiliar. In fact I would suggest avoid trying to read the book as a whole, as it were, in one go, and if the story has been forgotten, Zornberg adroitly reminds us of it. While its first audience is clearly a Jewish one, that does not mean that anyone else is excluded, and indeed its clarity stands in sharp contrast to expositions by some theologians who only seem to be talking to a select group, and the Book of Genesis is part of a common cultural inheritance.