In Midrash--commentaries on the Old Testament--the biblical text represents the whole of reality, equivalent to all experience and knowledge. Midrash actively engages the reader as a participant in the interpretation of the text, allowing him to play with it, recreate it, improvise on it and add personal comments and stories. Initially a purely oral form, meant to be memorized and recited, midrash encompasses every thought or event that can and does occur. Continually recreating itself, it is is timeless, incorporating the past, the present and the future. Even after it was set down in written form, probably around 200 B.C., it retained its poetic quality. Midrashic activity was traditionally the reserve of men. There is no written record of women engaged in this activity. With Lovers: A Midrash, Ravel brings midrash to the present in a richly metaphorical and satisfying imaginative work.
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Editorial Reviews
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".characters who proffer poignant, humourous views that often express their own bewilderment on an eternal theme." -- The Montreal Gazette
"Lovers: A Midrash is an intriguing experiment, part myth, part aphorism, laced through with recurrent cries and episodes of private emotion. In drawing on her own passions, Edeet Ravel evokes passionate echoes from the reader." -- Elizabeth Spencer
"Reading Lovers: A Midrash has given me immense pleasure. Now that we can finally hope for peace in the Middle East, perhaps the time has come to enrich our secular sensibilities with the riches to be found in our religious heritage. Edeet Ravel has succeeded in assimilating the midrashim of the past and in transforming them into a unique spiritual apprehension of the modern world. This is a remarkable accomplishment. Even more remarkable is that Ravel's midrash is written with humour and compassion." -- A.B. Yehoshua
"Lovers: A Midrash is an intriguing experiment, part myth, part aphorism, laced through with recurrent cries and episodes of private emotion. In drawing on her own passions, Edeet Ravel evokes passionate echoes from the reader." -- Elizabeth Spencer
"Reading Lovers: A Midrash has given me immense pleasure. Now that we can finally hope for peace in the Middle East, perhaps the time has come to enrich our secular sensibilities with the riches to be found in our religious heritage. Edeet Ravel has succeeded in assimilating the midrashim of the past and in transforming them into a unique spiritual apprehension of the modern world. This is a remarkable accomplishment. Even more remarkable is that Ravel's midrash is written with humour and compassion." -- A.B. Yehoshua
From the Back Cover
In New York, a woman becomes obsessed with a musician in her husband's orchestra; in London, various men reply to an ad offering sexual favours in exchange for wining and dining; in Jerusalem, a Jewish woman falls passionately in love with an Arab student. Meanwhile, in the House of Study, Rav Huna's son drifts away from his father's pursuit of midrash, and sets his eyes on other objects of desire, including his handsome friend Resh Laqish.
Edeet Ravel's Lovers: A Midrash is both a deeply traditional and a postmodern text, a contemporary woman's voice taking up her ancient forefathers' quest for meaning and appropriating the metaphors they read in the Scriptures. Through her midrash, with its attempt to apprehend an elusive world, we come to see that love is the ultimate act of interpretation.
Lovers: A Midrash has already been translated into Hebrew and published in Israel. It also won first prize in the National Epstein Writing Competition, and various sections of it have appeared in literary journals.
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