Torah Told Different: Stories for a Pan/Poly/Post-Denominational World

What Dorothy discovered in Oz and Alice discovered in Wonderland youll discover here: a parallel reality where a third temple rose and fell in antiquity women were ordained in the fifth century CE and alternate sages and texts ripple in and out of the ones we know from history. This work of midrash interpretive stories opens with: Before God began to create anything before there was heaven or earth night or day good or bad in or out up or down God said I must create Myself. and heads toward its conclusion with: It was late afternoon. Tirzah the designated messiah for our planet was sitting in her study up in sixth heaven. These are two of the ways in which this book is different. Liturgist and midrash writer Andrew Ramer not only reinvents Jewish history. He also reinvents his own family the Talmud and the Hebrew Bible adding excerpts from texts by some of our ancient women sages inviting you to ask yourself What does it mean to be a Jew in the twenty-first century? What grounds me and guides me in our tradition? And what gives me hope and dreams in a troubled world of trembling possibilities? Andrew Ramer has opened doors of the heart to words and worlds of Torah that have been waiting for our discovery and exploration. This masterful work invites each of us to discover dream dance and sing new Torah new truth revealing new sources of strength for living in our magnificent complex challenging heartbreaking beautiful world. --Sue Levi Elwell Rabbi Scholar in Residence Washington Hebrew Congregation Part memoir part deep dive into text and part wild invention Andrew Ramers stories captivate instruct and always always delight. --David Wolpe Rabbi; Author of David: The Divided Heart Andrew Ramer has produced a lucid beautifully crafted work of extraordinary imagination and learning. Reading in-between the lines of biblical and post-biblical texts he opens these up in ways whimsical and earnest and consistently compelling. --Steven J. Zipperstein Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History Stanford University In this book biblical figures find themselves clothed in new daring stories. And figures who should have been there to begin with now leap forth to greet and invite us into their life; thanks to them and to Andrew we find ourselves traversing new worlds. These are journeys not to be missed. --Tamara Cohn Eskenazi Rabbi The Effie Wise Ochs Professor of Biblical Literature and History Hebrew Union College--Jewish Institute of Religion Andrew Ramer is the author of Queering the Text: Biblical Medieval and Modern Jewish Stories and a co-author of the international best seller Ask Your Angels. The worlds first ordained interfaith maggid (sacred storyteller) he teaches in the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice at the University of San Francisco.