Eternally Eve
Subtitle: images of Eve in the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, and modern Jewish poetry
By: Anne Lapidus Lerner.
Publisher: University Press of New England; Brandeis University Press
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Lebanon, NH
Language: eng
Number of pages: 238
ISBN-13: 9781584655732
Description: For both Judaism and Christianity, stories involving Eve have for centuries been entangled with the religious and social construction of gender. Eternally Eve takes as its subject the many ways these stories can be read, interpreting the biblical narratives as well as their iteration by rabbinic midrashists and modern poets. Anne Lapidus Lerner argues that we must set aside, or at least rethink, a series of assumptions about Eve that have been dominant in Jewish thought for centuries and instead return to the original texts to rediscover meanings implicit in them. Using modern poetry about Eve as a touchstone for reinterpreting older texts, Lerner discovers that Genesis is often more open to contemporary values than are later rabbinic texts. Linking sacred texts to works of the classical and modern imagination, Lerner restores to her sources meanings suppressed or neglected over many years and demonstrates their power to speak today.--from publisher's description.