debka_notion: (Default)
debka_notion ([personal profile] debka_notion) wrote2010-01-18 03:13 pm

A Concept

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?

[identity profile] margavriel.livejournal.com 2010-01-18 11:14 pm (UTC)(link)
Does it make sense that this reminds me of a game that a friend of mine plays with his Daf Yomi shiur, called "The Lubliner Strikes Again"?

The premise of the game is that when the Lubliner set the Daf Yomi schedule for all eternity, he thought of all the times when something on the daf would relate to the weekly parasha, the current events, the holidays which fall during the week, etc.

Today's daf contains a Rashbam which cites רבותינו שבלותיר -- our teachers in Lothair (AKA Lotharingia, Luther, Lorraine). And today was Martin *Luther* King Day. The Lubliner strikes again!

[identity profile] debka-notion.livejournal.com 2010-01-19 05:38 am (UTC)(link)
Similar concept, yeah, although I'm eventually looking for more conceptual relationships that one might use to think about various ideas and experiences in the parsha.