Passover 2022

Michael Weber
April 15, 2022

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✍🏼Story | 🎙️ Podcast | 🤯 Pyramids

The Fourth Son

The smoke slithering through the air smelled like rotten eggs, and each of the four sons covered their noses at different proximities as they approached what was once their home.

"Is it any surprise that this didn't happen sooner?" asked the wise son. "The electric should've been replaced years ago."

"They can buy an even bigger house with the insurance, can't they?" asked the evil son. "We haven't lived here in years, anyway. Mom and dad will be better off."

"How could this have happened?" asked the simple son. "We're good people, aren't we?"

The fourth son looked at the charred wood of the staircase banister, remembering how him and his brothers used to crowd behind it, trying to hear what their parents were discussing in the kitchen while they were supposed to be asleep. He looked at his brothers now and remembered why it had been so long since he'd last seen them.

What was there to say?

What'd you think of this story? ⭐⭐⭐ -⭐⭐ -🧐

▶️ Avivah Zornberg makes the Exodus story come alive. Too often, I feel, Biblical stories are misunderstood as childish, primarily because the last time we encountered them we were children (or teenagers) and they were taught to us as such. The great scholar and teacher Avivah Zornberg has a gift for ushering us into a world where the Bible is not only sophisticated, but instructional as well. Great prep if you're going to find yourself at a seder this Passover.

Avivah Zornberg — Human Becoming, Between Biblical Lines

Listen to this episode from On Being with Krista Tippett on Spotify. You probably know the outline of the Exodus story and its main characters: Moses, the Pharaoh, the burning bush, the plagues, the parting of the sea. And, in another realm of the power of story, the words “let my people go” and the arc of liberation from slavery have inspired people in crisis and catharsis across time and cultures. Call it “myth” if you will — as the Greek Statesman Solon said, myth is not something that never happened. It’s something that happens over and over and over again. Avivah Zornberg walks us through the Exodus story that is relived in the Jewish Passover and resonates through Easter. She is a modern-day master of midrash — the ancient Jewish art of inquiry for discovering the deepest of meaning in and between the biblical lines. What can look simple on the surface, as she reveals, is a cargo of hidden stories that tell the messy, strange, redemptive truth of us as we are and life as it is. Krista and Avivah Zornberg had this lovely, intimate conversation in the early days of this show, in 2005.Avivah Zornberg is a scholar of the Torah and a modern-day master of midrash. She lives in Israel but grew up in Scotland, the daughter and granddaughter of East European rabbis. And before she taught the Bible, she taught English literature. She is the author of many books, including The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers, and most recently, The Hidden Order of Intimacy: Reflections on the Book of Leviticus.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.This show originally aired in April, 2005.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6Xc6QkMnIuZobRlQ5ELo8m?si=3c49d33df7324aae

🤯 The Pyramids are INSANE. There's a lot of smart people (and crazy ones) who make a good argument that the ancient Egyptians used the pyramids to represent the exact size of the planet and to generate electricity. Graham Hancock is a great place to start if you're interested in going through the wormhole.

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