Although recent scholarship on the biblical studies survey course has sought to bring in a wide array of new methods and ways to incorporate the Bible into the broader liberal arts curriculum, a dearth of tactics for employing biblical manuscripts in the classroom remains. This article details one experience crafting two class sessions for an introductory Hebrew Bible course, employing manuscripts and rare books to spark students' insights into the questions of textual transmission, scribal practices, the materiality of sacred texts, and the significance of manuscripts as windows into the people and cultures which create, use, and own them. This lesson plan successfully facilitated firsthand learning about the importance of embodied texts as witnesses to the complex, messy transmission of the Hebrew Bible and its role in diverse cultures and times.
This article focuses on how the material form of the Esther scroll and the ritualized practices of copying it reflect changes in how Jews remember the events of Purim. I demonstrate how Purim and writing intersect with contemporary changes in women’s roles in Jewish ritual, as well as new interpretations of the Book of Esther informed by feminist readings and heightened awareness of the relationship between gender and agency. I examine Esther scrolls made by contemporary female ritual scribes (soferot) who add their own creative marks to the scrolls they copy: Nava Levine-Coren, Avielah Barclay, Jen Taylor Friedman, and Rachel Jackson. These creative touches convey their readings of the biblical text, which magnify women’s perspective and agency.
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