A Concept

[debka_notion]

I've been thinking, on and off for a while, about setting up a reading list of stories and novels that fit conceptually with different parshiot of the Torah. I get a lot of inspiration out of reading regular old fiction, and I figure that this is another way of exploring Torah- rather like some of the theological reflection techniques that I learned in CPE- one of which involved taking an encounter, and coming up with related physical images, biblical stories/images, cultural images, and one more which I'm not remembering right now, and then using those to go back and think about the encounter. So, playing off the cultural and the biblical images- here's another little side project. The book that sparked it was Ursula K. LeGuin's "Four Ways to Forgiveness", relating to any of the parshiot in the desert as B'nei Yisrael start exploring freedom after being slaves.

Anyone else want to play with this idea with me?

Comments

[taylweaver.livejournal.com]

Not thinking of any particular stories at the moment - aside from the few very obvious ones like Card's books about the Imahot. But you just made me think of this week's parsha in particular, which talks about how one of the reasons God did some of the stuff that God did was, "and in order that you shall tell your children..." (can't recall where in the parsha it is, but gave a dvar torah on it a year or two ago). So I guess for this week's parsha, stories about telling/sharing stories. Actually, this week's parsha is so full of ideas and concepts that it's almost overwhelming (time being our own - or not, miracles and plagues, transmission of stories, slavery and freedom, transitions, things that happen in the middle of the night...)

Anyway, even though no stories come to mind at the moment, it's a very cool idea.

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

You see, that's exactly why I'd love other people's ideas for this as well- I don't know that I would have thought of that one (not to mention that my tastes in books tend to fall into a fairly small range of genres most of the time). And I think it would make for a pretty awesome book club program, eventually...