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Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers
The newest book in Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg’s award-winning series of commentaries on the hebrew bible.
The book of Numbers is the narrative of a great failure. What should have been for the Israelites a brief journey from Mount Sinai to the Holy Land becomes a forty-year death march. Both before and after the devastating report of the Spies, the narrative centers on the people’s desire to return to Egypt, to undo the miraculous work of the Exodus. At its heart are speeches of complaint and lament, expressing a profound existential skepticism. But by contrast, in the narrative of the book of Numbers that is found in mystical and Hasidic sources, the generation of the wilderness emerges as one of extraordinary spiritual experience, receivers of the Torah to the fullest extent, fed on miracles and nurtured directly by a generation of ecstatic faith, human partners in an unprecedented conversation with the Deity. Drawing on kabbalistic sources, the Hasidic commentators on the book of Numbers depict a people who transcend prudent considerations in order to follow God into the wilderness, where their spiritual yearning comes to full expression.
This view of the wilderness history invites us into a different kind of listening to the many cries of distrust, lament, and resentment that issue from the Israelites throughout the book of Numbers. Is there a way to integrate this narrative of dark murmurings, of obsessive fantasies of return to Egypt, with the celebration of a love-intoxicated wilderness discourse? The question touches not only on the language the Israelites speak but also on the very nature of human utterance. Who are these people? Who are we who listen to them? What effect does the cumulative trauma of slavery, the miracles of Exodus, the revelation at Sinai, have on a nation that is beginning to speak? In Bewilderments, one of the most admired biblical commentators at work today posits fascinating answers to these questions through the magnificent literary, scholarly, and psychological analysis of the text that is her trademark.
The book of Numbers is the narrative of a great failure. What should have been for the Israelites a brief journey from Mount Sinai to the Holy Land becomes a forty-year death march. Both before and after the devastating report of the Spies, the narrative centers on the people’s desire to return to Egypt, to undo the miraculous work of the Exodus. At its heart are speeches of complaint and lament, expressing a profound existential skepticism. But by contrast, in the narrative of the book of Numbers that is found in mystical and Hasidic sources, the generation of the wilderness emerges as one of extraordinary spiritual experience, receivers of the Torah to the fullest extent, fed on miracles and nurtured directly by a generation of ecstatic faith, human partners in an unprecedented conversation with the Deity. Drawing on kabbalistic sources, the Hasidic commentators on the book of Numbers depict a people who transcend prudent considerations in order to follow God into the wilderness, where their spiritual yearning comes to full expression.
This view of the wilderness history invites us into a different kind of listening to the many cries of distrust, lament, and resentment that issue from the Israelites throughout the book of Numbers. Is there a way to integrate this narrative of dark murmurings, of obsessive fantasies of return to Egypt, with the celebration of a love-intoxicated wilderness discourse? The question touches not only on the language the Israelites speak but also on the very nature of human utterance. Who are these people? Who are we who listen to them? What effect does the cumulative trauma of slavery, the miracles of Exodus, the revelation at Sinai, have on a nation that is beginning to speak? In Bewilderments, one of the most admired biblical commentators at work today posits fascinating answers to these questions through the magnificent literary, scholarly, and psychological analysis of the text that is her trademark.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published February 24, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 26, 2015
As usual, amazing Zornberg who combines midrashic, psychological, and literary references to provide a fresh and eye-opening interpretation of Torah. Worth reading again and again.
May 10, 2022
"The kind of faith G*d waits for is not a dogmatic belief in His power but rather faith in His love for them... To trust means to acknowledge the enigmatic messages of the other who is truly unknowable, who is absent in His very presence. G*d's enigmatic 'signs' ask to be translated by human desire... In the final analysis, to trust is ... to be 'drawn in desire' after the other."
"Good and evil are mixed together. And the midbar, the wilderness, represents the elements of destructiveness in each individual... In this sense, the life of the individual is fundamentally a midbar, awaiting the evolutions and integrations of human work."
"One reads, or speaks, in order to arouse potential selves, pregnant voids."
_Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg
My 1st read of Zornberg's , these 'reflections' engage the 'wildnerness wanderer' at her deepest. Not to be my last of hers, and will certainly revisit this one again and again.
"Good and evil are mixed together. And the midbar, the wilderness, represents the elements of destructiveness in each individual... In this sense, the life of the individual is fundamentally a midbar, awaiting the evolutions and integrations of human work."
"One reads, or speaks, in order to arouse potential selves, pregnant voids."
_Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg
My 1st read of Zornberg's , these 'reflections' engage the 'wildnerness wanderer' at her deepest. Not to be my last of hers, and will certainly revisit this one again and again.
October 20, 2016
I started this book on Yom Kippur, and just finished now, even though, admittedly, I only skimmed the preamble. :p. This perhaps wasn't my strongest choice in biblical commentary. I'm relatively rusty on the topic, and Zornberg goes in deep with multiple allusions to poets, psychologists, philosophers and more from our human history. When it comes to Midrash and Talmudic influences, she seems particularly fond of Rashi, though I'd have to read through the book again and take more thorough notes. For this pass, I did a lot of underlining of main points or factoids that stood out to me. But really, at the very least, I should have started with her commentary on Genesis. :p
Genesis is undoubtedly a book of narration stories--more straightforward accounting of the patiarchs, (matriarchs) and other key, pre-Exodus figures. My vague accounting of the Book of Numbers before reading this book was that it contained a lot of detailed census taking--tribe by tribe, this many men, this many donkeys, etc etc. True, I picked this book up because it came on the market relatively recently, but I was also intrigued, because within the Five Books of Moses, it seemed relatively low key or secondary.
I don't really think that's the case any more, now that I've officially divvied the census into two events, separated by 38 years. In between all of that, the Children of Israel wander the wilderness, and the events that Zornberg chronicles what feels like an adolescence. They struggle to understand themselves as a community in relation to Gd, the Promised Land, and Moses himself, though he's also a flawed character.
Obviously the intent is dogmatic--they are meant to become believers. And Zornberg doesn't add extra commentary to the biblically accepted biases against women. They particularly annoyed me in the section where the sages debated what to do with "the sotah" (female--not male, of course--adulteress) and even at the end, when Moses transcended his relationship with Gd by becoming more of a "husband" than a follower "wife"--gendered truths that weren't meant to be questioned, at least in our earliest literature. At the same time, these same sources gave a lot more nuanced insight into Miriam and her motivations/relationship with her brothers, where on the surface she comes off as a jealous harpy who is struck with leprosy for being a simpering gossip. And also in the Book of Numbers, there are the Five Sisters, the daughters of Tzelofchad, who petitioned for their late father's land and Gd rewarded them.
Often Gd appears cruel--at the very least does violent things to the people--in the bible. The extra commentary might seem like making excuses for this behavior, but I believe that the point was to understand human beings and the world we live in more complexly. I loved the recurring themes of speech and silence. Even if I don't believe in an angry man on a mountain, I know that life--human motivations, and the various actions and reactions of our steps--are not simple. At the very least, analyzing these stories, from their earliest days, give tools with how to deal with the uncertainties. The metaphor of wandering the desert wilderness remains strong.
Definitely worth a reread, but probably at an even slower pace.
Genesis is undoubtedly a book of narration stories--more straightforward accounting of the patiarchs, (matriarchs) and other key, pre-Exodus figures. My vague accounting of the Book of Numbers before reading this book was that it contained a lot of detailed census taking--tribe by tribe, this many men, this many donkeys, etc etc. True, I picked this book up because it came on the market relatively recently, but I was also intrigued, because within the Five Books of Moses, it seemed relatively low key or secondary.
I don't really think that's the case any more, now that I've officially divvied the census into two events, separated by 38 years. In between all of that, the Children of Israel wander the wilderness, and the events that Zornberg chronicles what feels like an adolescence. They struggle to understand themselves as a community in relation to Gd, the Promised Land, and Moses himself, though he's also a flawed character.
Obviously the intent is dogmatic--they are meant to become believers. And Zornberg doesn't add extra commentary to the biblically accepted biases against women. They particularly annoyed me in the section where the sages debated what to do with "the sotah" (female--not male, of course--adulteress) and even at the end, when Moses transcended his relationship with Gd by becoming more of a "husband" than a follower "wife"--gendered truths that weren't meant to be questioned, at least in our earliest literature. At the same time, these same sources gave a lot more nuanced insight into Miriam and her motivations/relationship with her brothers, where on the surface she comes off as a jealous harpy who is struck with leprosy for being a simpering gossip. And also in the Book of Numbers, there are the Five Sisters, the daughters of Tzelofchad, who petitioned for their late father's land and Gd rewarded them.
Often Gd appears cruel--at the very least does violent things to the people--in the bible. The extra commentary might seem like making excuses for this behavior, but I believe that the point was to understand human beings and the world we live in more complexly. I loved the recurring themes of speech and silence. Even if I don't believe in an angry man on a mountain, I know that life--human motivations, and the various actions and reactions of our steps--are not simple. At the very least, analyzing these stories, from their earliest days, give tools with how to deal with the uncertainties. The metaphor of wandering the desert wilderness remains strong.
Definitely worth a reread, but probably at an even slower pace.
August 12, 2019
This is the first I've read by AGZ and oh, the depth of her knowledge. The connections she makes to other areas of study are brilliant. There were sections so dense with learning my brain couldn't grasp them, sailing free over my unscholarly head they awed me with her craftsmanship. I soldiered through these parts waiting for her to come back down to my level of understanding, remaining expectant, hungry and positive.
Having never read much by Jewish scholars I appreciate the mystical approach to a Biblical book often overlooked. For many Lents to come I'll draw from her ideas of "midbar", the wilderness. It occurs to me now that the wilderness experience in Numbers can be viewed as a microcosm of our human lives. No Israelite was getting out of the wilderness alive and no human is getting out of this life alive. We are all the generation who who will die in the wilderness before seeing the Promiseland. Their sadness and frustration reflects our own, connecting us all to the book of Ecclesiastes.
I have new appreciation also for Moses, for the way he is like a mother to God's people, the way he loses patience and grows weary of the divine children, the way his human provision and leadership don't seem like near enough. Having read Truly Our Sister by Elizabeth Johnson last year I'm also making connections to Moses-as-mother in relation to Mary the Godbearer. And then there is Moses' sister Miriam and her connections to Mary the Godbearer. They are united not only in name but in their prophetic songs.
This is a dense and rich book that will leave you with an appreciation of Torah as a living, holy, and mysterious and will give you new reasons to return again and again to the stories of God's people, to their individual stories and their quests to love and honor God.
My favorite quote is actually her quoting of Kafka about Moses which is one of her strengths. She digs and digs and she finds the truth in what others say.
"He is on the track of Canaan all his life; it is incredible that he should see the land only when on the verge of death. The dying vision of it can only be intended to illustrate how incomplete a moment is human life, incomplete because a life like this could last forever and still be nothing but a moment. Moses fails to enter Canaan not because his life is too short but because it is a human life." --Kafka, Diaries, 1914-1923
Wow.
Having never read much by Jewish scholars I appreciate the mystical approach to a Biblical book often overlooked. For many Lents to come I'll draw from her ideas of "midbar", the wilderness. It occurs to me now that the wilderness experience in Numbers can be viewed as a microcosm of our human lives. No Israelite was getting out of the wilderness alive and no human is getting out of this life alive. We are all the generation who who will die in the wilderness before seeing the Promiseland. Their sadness and frustration reflects our own, connecting us all to the book of Ecclesiastes.
I have new appreciation also for Moses, for the way he is like a mother to God's people, the way he loses patience and grows weary of the divine children, the way his human provision and leadership don't seem like near enough. Having read Truly Our Sister by Elizabeth Johnson last year I'm also making connections to Moses-as-mother in relation to Mary the Godbearer. And then there is Moses' sister Miriam and her connections to Mary the Godbearer. They are united not only in name but in their prophetic songs.
This is a dense and rich book that will leave you with an appreciation of Torah as a living, holy, and mysterious and will give you new reasons to return again and again to the stories of God's people, to their individual stories and their quests to love and honor God.
My favorite quote is actually her quoting of Kafka about Moses which is one of her strengths. She digs and digs and she finds the truth in what others say.
"He is on the track of Canaan all his life; it is incredible that he should see the land only when on the verge of death. The dying vision of it can only be intended to illustrate how incomplete a moment is human life, incomplete because a life like this could last forever and still be nothing but a moment. Moses fails to enter Canaan not because his life is too short but because it is a human life." --Kafka, Diaries, 1914-1923
Wow.
September 6, 2022
Super thought provoking, albeit dense and circuitous at times. I am eager to put the psychoanalytic perspective in conversation with some queer readings of the Torah. I was more interested in the midrash commentary than the psychoanalysis commentary.
August 3, 2016
This is not a book one reads cover to cover and says, "Done!" This text is so rich, so layered, that I will be returning to it each year as we read B'Midbar (Numbers) in the annual cycle of weekly Torah readings. Like Dr. Zornberg's studies of Genesis and Exodus, it delves deeply into the philosophy, underpinnings and meanings of a complex tome. Even the title--Bewilderments--reflects the wanderings in the wilderness (B'midbar) of the generation that will die between the Exodus and crossing into the Promised Land, the story at the heart of the Book of Numbers.
In addition, Zornberg brings stunning insights into the stories of the women who bracket Numbers, the Daughters of Tzelofchad at the end and the woman accused of adultery (Sotah) at the beginning. Modern readers are searching for deeper meanings of the role women play in the Biblical narrative and Zornberg offers a study text to be savored with each re-reading.
I look forward to re-reading this book many times, and I hope Dr. Zornberg will continue her explorations and Biblical exegesis with Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Her writing is a treasure.
In addition, Zornberg brings stunning insights into the stories of the women who bracket Numbers, the Daughters of Tzelofchad at the end and the woman accused of adultery (Sotah) at the beginning. Modern readers are searching for deeper meanings of the role women play in the Biblical narrative and Zornberg offers a study text to be savored with each re-reading.
I look forward to re-reading this book many times, and I hope Dr. Zornberg will continue her explorations and Biblical exegesis with Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Her writing is a treasure.
November 26, 2015
This book is full of weird Jewish stuff. I loved it!
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June 28, 2016Review by Rachel Sara Rosenthal for the Jewish Book Council.
July 11, 2021
wonderful commentary as in her other books her commentary on the psychology of benei yisrael and the importance of the wording of efes in the spies story is particularly enlightening.
Read
October 4, 2017I gave this book no rating because I don't feel I gave it enough of a fair shake, abandoning it after only two chapters. The book is over my head and the prose seems repetitive. If there had been more correlations to modern writers I might have stuck with it.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews