God's Echo: Exploring Scripture with Midrash »

Join award-winning author and rabbi, Sandy Sasso, as she explains the origins and beauty of midrash.

Publishers Weekly

Between 400 and 1200 C.E., a group of rabbis expounded on the text of the Bible, making it relevant to their times and to subsequent readers. This extensive collection of explanations and interpretations is known collectively as Midrash. Sasso, the second woman ever ordained as a rabbi, considers Midrash "both a product, a body of literature... and a process... that continues to the present day" and has assembled a themed collection of text, extrapolations and guided self-evaluation in the hopes that more people will see not only how the ancients still speak to us but how our own experiences make us writers of Midrash as well. Her brief history of the practice and depiction of the four-fold method used for approaching a particular text provides a good starting point for newcomers. However, while she admits to choosing certain portions regarding rejection, anger and repentance because they're "part of [her] story" and advocates taking ownership of the narratives as they apply in present times, she, for the most part, shares very little of herself or her reasons for selecting these themes. Despite her best efforts to excite a new audience to this tradition, the finished product feels disappointingly more like a series of lessons or sermons cobbled together. (June)

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Part 1
Is God Speaking to Me?: Listening to God's Echo     3
What Is Midrash?: Reading the Bible with Question Marks     6
Part 2
How Does Midrash Speak to Us?: Listening to Your Story     35
Revelation Takes Place All the Time: Looking into God's Mirror     37
Should Humans Have Been Created?: Shaping the World out of Compassion     52
What Makes Us Angry?: Eavesdropping on the First Argument     66
Who Is Responsible?: Blaming God for our Shortcomings     75
What if the Angels Should Come Too Late?: Getting On With It, When You Can't Get Over It     83
God Is in This Place, but I Did Not Know It: Finding Holiness in Unexpected Places     94
Who Is the First to Cross the Sea?: Taking Risks for Freedom     108
I Will Call You Batya, Daughter of God: Loving the Stranger     117
God Teaches Adam to Make Fire: Getting Through the Night     131
What Made Miriam Dance and Akiba Laugh?: Making the Sound of Hope     138
Conclusion: What Can Midrash Do?: Learning to Dance While Standing Still     150
Acknowledgments     155
A Beginner's Bibliography on Midrash     157
Glossary: Definitions of Possibly Unfamiliar Words     159
Afterword   Sister Joan Chittister     163
Notes     168