Vixens Disturbing Vineyards

Embarrassment and embracement are two moments in the reading, misreading and re-reading of scriptures, defined broadly to include both canonical and non-canonical texts. Despite what Harold Bloom calls our "belatedness" in this process, every reading community has its way of confronting that moment of embarrassment so as to re-embrace or reject its implications. These implications are especially strong in religious cultures with a nomian tradition. By entering into that very tension between what Fox calls embarrassment and re-embracement, every reader recognizes the anxiety of a narrative's influence upon a community. Papers dealing with different aspects of this phenomenon are part of a festschrift honoring Professor Harry Fox (LeBeit Yoreh) the originator of this seminal idea in the transmission of texts. Contributors include such scholars as Yaakov Elman, Simcha Fishbane, the late Chana Safrai and Tirzah Meacham as well as many students, colleagues and friends of Professor Fox.

Glazer Aubrey :

Aubrey L. Glazer is senior rabbi of Congregation Shaare Zion and director of Panui, an incubator for contemplative practice and conscious community building. Aubrey’s most recent books include Mystical Vertigo (Academic Studies Press, 2013) and Tangle of Matter & Ghost: Leonard Cohen’s Post-Secular Songbook of Mysticism(s) Jewish & Beyond (Academic Studies Press, 2017).Tzemah Yoreh (PhD, Hebrew University) was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Albright Institute Jerusalem (2006) and Ben-Gurion University (2006-2008). He is currently Assistant Professor of Bible at the American Jewish University.

Harry Fox, Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto:
“Every reading community has ways of confronting moments of embarrassment in its reading of scriptures. Scripture may be the holy books of religious communities or the foundational texts of civilizations. Contemporary readers of Aristotle who see his writing as foundational for Western philosophy, for example, must confront his views on slavery. This kind of confrontation, whether with religious, philosophical or canonical books of other kinds, may lead readers to reject scripture’s claims — or it may motivate them to re-read or misread scripture so as to eliminate, ameliorate or apologize for the problematic passages. Once this misprision has taken place, the formerly offending scriptures may be re-embraced. A community may also re-embrace scripture by rejecting traditional readings in favor of more originary readings.”

Annotation ©2010 Book News Inc. Portland, OR:
"Embarrassment in all its varieties, but also related emotions it shades into at the borders are explored in the Bible, in talmud and midrash, and in medieval and modern interpretation. Fox himself contributes an essay on the Judaism and genocide: the embarrassment of Jewish jihad. Other topics include a pride of depletion and the ambiguity of address, establishing a sacred church in the New Testament, embarrassment and re-embracement of a midrash on Genesis 2:23, a few interesting cases of rabbinic mindsets within the universal mythic structures of sacred history, making fish for Shabbat, the two layers of thinking and the twofold nature of knowledge in the work of Saadya Gaon, mapping alternate texts of gender difference, and environmental embarrassment in Genesis 1:26-28 versus Genesis 2:15. There are also four Hebrew contributions. No index is provided."