Teaching the Hebrew Bible to Adults

Jan. 18 2023

Jews and Christians with any sort of religious upbringing first encounter Scripture and its stories as children, and often continue to understand them from a child’s perspective even as they grow older. Yet the Hebrew Bible comprises undeniably adult tales of life in all its vicissitudes. Drawing on her experience teaching the Tanakh to young American Jewish women at an Israeli religious seminary, Avital Hazony Levi explains how readers can come to see the sacred text from a mature perspective, using the tale of Abraham and Sarah as an example. (Interview by Dru Johnson. (Interview by Dru Johnson. Audio, 47 minutes.)

Read more at Biblical Mind

More about: Abraham, Genesis, Hebrew Bible, Jewish education, Sarah

Iran Gives in to Spy Mania

Oct. 11 2024

This week, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports about the fate of Esmail Qaani, who is the head of the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Benny Avni writes:

On Thursday, Sky News Arabic reported that Mr. Qaani was rushed to a hospital after suffering a heart attack. He became [the Quds Force] commander in 2020, after an American drone strike killed his predecessor, Qassem Suleimani. The unit oversees the Islamic Republic’s various Mideast proxies, as well as the exporting of the Iranian revolution to the region and beyond.

The Sky News report attempts to put to rest earlier claims that Mr. Qaani was killed at Beirut. It follows several reports asserting he has been arrested and interrogated at Tehran over suspicion that he, or a top lieutenant, leaked information to Israel. Five days ago, the Arabic-language al-Arabiya network reported that Mr. Qaani “is under surveillance and isolation, following the Israeli assassinations of prominent Iranian leaders.”

Iranians are desperately scrambling to plug possible leaks that gave Israel precise intelligence to conduct pinpoint strikes against Hizballah commanders. . . . “I find it hard to believe that Qaani was compromised,” an Iran watcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Beni Sabti, tells the Sun. Perhaps one or more of [Qaani’s] top aides have been recruited by Israel, he says, adding that “psychological warfare” could well be stoking the rumor mill.

If so, prominent Iranians seem to be exacerbating the internal turmoil by alleging that the country’s security apparatus has been infiltrated.

Read more at New York Sun

More about: Gaza War 2023, Iran, Israeli Security