KTAV Publishing House
Price: $35.00
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SANDRA RAPOPORT discusses Moses' Women
Harvard Hillel is pleased to welcome SANDRA RAPOPORT for a discussion of her new nonfiction work, Moses’ Women. Rapoport is co-author of this feminist re-telling of the Bible’s Exodus saga. While the Exodus story revolves around Moses, history’s premier prophet, lawgiver and religious heroic figure, the story cannot be told without an understanding of the women in his life. The Bible tells us that Moses was born to Yocheved, daughter of Levi, third son of the Hebrew patriarch Jacob. He was watched over by his sister, Miriam, drawn from the Nile waters by Batya, daughter of the Egyptian Pharaoh, raised as Egyptian royalty, and married to Zipporah, daughter of the high priest of Midian. But there is more depth and drama to these women’s lives than what appears in the spare biblical text, and it is the Jewish biblical commentaries who unveil these layered nuances. This book draws upon these sources and recounts how the Hebrew midwives resisted carnal intimidation by the Egyptian Pharaoh; what occurred between Moses, Zipporah, and the angel of death that night in the desert inn; why Moses abandoned Zipporah; how Miriam championed her sister-in-law, Zipporah, and was punished for it; and the identity of Moses’ mysterious Kushite Woman. Moses’ Women weaves these biblical narratives and the commentaries into a stunning chronicle of the women who reared Moses, bore his children, advised him, helped him lead an unruly people, and intervened to save him time and again, when his very life was trembling in the balance.
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Sandra Rapoport is co-author, with Shera Aranoff Tuchman, of Moses' Women and The Passions of the Matriarchs (nominated for the Jewish Book Award). Rapoport is an attorney, lecturer and author, whose writing has appeared in Commentary. Blanche Wiesen Cook, biographer and television host, has said of the Passions book, “I read every single word. You can’t put it down.” Sandra lives and works in New York City.
Photo credit: Manning Gurney.
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