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Save "Links to Robert Alter  Sheets on Sefaria - Parashat Hashavua In Process"
Links to Robert Alter Sheets on Sefaria - Parashat Hashavua In Process
NOTE: This is the link to several dozen Sefaria Sheets about the work and lectures of Robert Alter:
[MS: Complete with 28 Introductory essays and Notes, in addition to landmark translation word by word. The 2024 Price of about $75 is quite reasonable . Copyright Material. Emphasis, additions and editing are supplied.]
On Sefaria there is a collection of Sheets explaining:
*Robert Alters methods of reading the Bible, its literary style and religious meanings;
*how you can listen to lectures by Alter ( the best way to get inside of his ways of thinking);
*introductions to his books and translations and comments on Alter's work by other public intellectuals;
*the 28 essays introducing each book or major work;
*and, of course, his masterful Translation with Notes on all of Tanach.
Parshat Hashavua - Links to Robert Alter Sheets on Sefaria
EXODUS
GENESIS
*Alter's Introduction Essay for Genesis:
[MS: In the story of the rape of Dinah there is violence, deception murder and mayhem. Who is at fault? It's complicated and subtle - and therefore a gripping tale about humans and their troubles - and the Divine.
Alter's Essay and Notes focus on:
- Moral blindness, why do people do what they do and why don't they fear the consequences?
In Alter's Note on verse 47:9, he discusses the human dilemma of living in a world where very little seems reliably clear or within our real control; nor undone by ignorance, error, tyrants or bad people; nor in the confusing hands of God or Fate - like doing the right thing but apparently overruled mysteriously by the Divine Plan. These themes of "Narration and Knowledge" are explored in Chapter 8 of Alter's The Art of Biblical Narrative. Alter unpacks how the Bible's literary style is a precious medium for making "this sort of difficult sense."
Robert Alter - Parshat Vayakhel Exodus 35:1-38:20 - Alter's Correct Translation of One Word Upholds Women, Their Mirrors and Love of Their Husbands - and Rashi's Affections
Bridegroom of Love by the circumcising (Shemot 4:26)
I am uncircumcised of lips? (Vaera 6:12)
And I live among a people of unclean lips (Isaiah 5.)
"This upward displacement of a genital image ... "
Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible - A Translation with Commentary
[MS: A Metaphor? This Biblical literary device can take some explaining. Alter unspools the circumcision metaphor in his Notes. As the old joke goes: "What's a meadow for anyway? A Cow?"]
BaMidbar - Numbers
"It is painfully evident that this is an instance in which the biblical outlook sadly failed to transcend its historical contexts."
Devarim - Deuteronomy
For example in this Parsha: On 6:20, Alter's Note is:
"20. Justice, justice. Though much ingenuity has been exercised by exegetes to explain the repetition, its function as a verbal gesture of sheer emphasis is self-evident: justice, and justice alone, shall you pursue."
Similarly, see Numbers 31:17, where Alter's Note finds the attempted justification for killing children during a war is just "strained apologetics."
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