10/25: Feast of Sukkot/Part 1: Ushpizzin

Of the three key feasts, The Feast of Sukkot (aka Feast of  Booths, Tabernacles, Ingathering) is in some ways the most important; as such as it often just called "The Feast."

Read about it in Ex 23:16, 34:22; Leviticus 23:40-43, Deuteronomy 16:13-36
You'll note it is  7-day feast of joy,  in which families build a temporary booth/sukkot/tabernacle to remind them of how they lived as nomads in the wilderness.  Special emphasis on the harvest and buying the "Four Species" of plants to offer to God:

• Lulav (לולב) – a ripe, green, closed frond from a date palm tree
• Hadass (הדס) – boughs with leaves from the myrtle tree
• Aravah (ערבה) – branches with leaves from the willow tree
• Etrog (אתרוג) – the fruit of a citron tree

  It was implied that each successive night, an "ushpizzin" (Sukkot guest) would visit and bless your booth.  The ushpizzin were the "Seven Shepherds of Izsael": Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, MOSES, Abraham, Joseph and David.  You shoild also expect other unexpedted visitors to your booth, whom you would feed and house, especially if they were poor, outcast or nomads.  They might be on the shepherds, or even the Messiah, in disguise.

"be kind to the foreigner, as you were once strangers in Egypt"

We watched the first half of the  award-winning Israeli movie " Ushpizzin,"  (about one contemporary family headed by Moshe [Moses], and what happens as they prepare for the feast,  how they acquire their etrog/citron ,and the unusual two ushpizzin who show up and will watch the second half next class.

Trailer:


excerpts:


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Read Exodus 2-40 this week and next
Remember your 2nd "Three Worlds" project due Nov 3. Don;t forget the two required sources.

10/18 Rabbi Adam/ Women and Liminality in Exodus

The rabbi is scheduled to be with us today..I will post a video here if possible after class.

In the meantime, some good resources on


Women in Exodus:

Leading Role of Women in the Exodus and in the Shirah

What role did the women play in the Exodus?

 Reading the women of the Bibl

Women at Passover

Resources on Liminality:

40 Years in Liminal Space
Exodus 4 as Liminal experience
Jethro as liminal figure

Law and liminality inExodus

The trickster revisited: deception as a motif in the Pentateuch

10/13: Moses and Elijah: passionate honesty

We watched  the VanDer Laaan video "The Whisper of God" DVD, comparing Moses and Elijah.
It is not viewable online, but the study guide is pp, 253-175 here .

"Elijah was the most passionate man in the Hebrew Bible"

Often, we think of "passionate"=
enthusiastic, committed, zeealous,  sensitive.

True enough, but in the Jewish mindset is also(mostly) connotes:

honest, real, authentic, "passion" (as in "The Passion of the Christ") includes the idea of "suffering" and "feeling"

How does it make you feel to think of key biblical heroes (Moses, Elijah) as "authentic" and vulberable, even to depression (Elijah under the broom tree: "I want to quit"."

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You are the first class that ever voted this way to my question"  I was amazed.

You coulkd make the case for either one, but most of you said "mission".

We'll pick up thus topic later, but here's some places to start.


-Read how several answered this in my Facebook poll, and add your own answer there.

  -CLICK: Which comes first: Missiology or ecclesiology?

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Nov 1: 2nd "Three Worlds" Asssignment.
This can be any passage from Exodus (or Deuteronomy) that you choose.  Video or power point acceptable, too (as long as they somehow quote the two requires sources (see syllabus)