Fun in the Yeshiva

This morning, Coretta took us to class with her.  She's learning the Hebrew language and studying the Tanakh.  We skipped the Hebrew grammar class, but joined her for her very interesting Tanakh interpretation class.

We were studying Genesis 20 and 21.  Gen. 20 tells of Abraham claiming that Sarah is his sister, and then King Abimelech takes her for his wife.  God intervenes and keeps Abimilech from violating any rules, and Sarah gets returned to Abraham, but it's a rather icky story. In class, we got to discuss the details of how exactly God kept Abimelech from consorting with Sarah; midrash suggests it might be an STD!  Who knew such things were sometimes God-given?

After class discussion, we got sent out for Beit Midrash (house of Midrash, or interpretation; also known as the biblical library).  It was not like the seminary library, where everyone was silent and you got dirty looks for sneezing too loudly.  This was a truly Jewish library, with groups of people arguing (sometimes loudly) over interpretations.  It was fun!  We all got to participate.

We were studying Gen. 21, where Sarah, who has now given birth to the long-desired Isaac, sees Ishmael "playing" and casts him and his mother, Hagar, into the wilderness, with God's approval, despite Abraham's dismay.  Some of the interesting interpretive questions that came up were how it is that Sarah (a woman) has her voice honored over that of a man; how Sarah's decisiveness seems to be honored more than Abraham's emotional indecisiveness; and how the word "playing" might actually mean a very violent type of playing, like maybe Ishmael was "playing" by shooting arrows at Isaac(!).

We went out to lunch at a great vegetarian restaurant, and then returned for Coretta's acapella group rehearsal.  They were pretty good!  Here's a clip!

The words are Hebrew (of course!), and the chorus, which you hear below, is from Isaiah 40.  The translation is:

"Comfort, comfort my people,
Comfort, comfort, says your God" 

It was so fun to be back in this kind of environment, with everyone studying and interpreting biblical texts.  It helped me remember why I love bible study!  Perhaps we'll get a good argumentative bible study going at Scarsdale... :)