Seekingferrett asked what I enjoyed about Liv's Talmud stories.
Several things, which I've noticed before I hadn't consciously thought through until I started making this list :)
I love the process of taking a story and considering possible interpretations, different messages, etc, etc. I'm naturally cautious of the idea that there's a "right" answer I'm supposed to agree with but might not, but with Talmud stories, Liv has always encouraged me to plunge in, and shared her interpretations, and many standard interpretations, but emphasised that they're supposed to be a starting point, not an ending point.
My background is vaguely CoE-y, and I am also interested in the ways Talmud stories differ in basic background assumptions to Christian stories I'm vaguely familiar with, at least as they were presented to me when I was young. Like in Liv's story about hiding in the furnace, there's an assumption that Mrs Ookba was given a miracle because of her good works. In a Christian story, the miracles would usually come to someone who had faith in God, in various ways. But in Talmud stories it can be completely different -- through scholarship, as essentially morally-neutral magic; through God's will or whim; through deserving it.
And I love that Liv is always interested when explaining them, that she is so eager to share things with me when I want.
And maybe, that's it's just impressive that there's a chain of scholarship from a very long time ago when these stories first started being studied, to me, now.
Several things, which I've noticed before I hadn't consciously thought through until I started making this list :)
I love the process of taking a story and considering possible interpretations, different messages, etc, etc. I'm naturally cautious of the idea that there's a "right" answer I'm supposed to agree with but might not, but with Talmud stories, Liv has always encouraged me to plunge in, and shared her interpretations, and many standard interpretations, but emphasised that they're supposed to be a starting point, not an ending point.
My background is vaguely CoE-y, and I am also interested in the ways Talmud stories differ in basic background assumptions to Christian stories I'm vaguely familiar with, at least as they were presented to me when I was young. Like in Liv's story about hiding in the furnace, there's an assumption that Mrs Ookba was given a miracle because of her good works. In a Christian story, the miracles would usually come to someone who had faith in God, in various ways. But in Talmud stories it can be completely different -- through scholarship, as essentially morally-neutral magic; through God's will or whim; through deserving it.
And I love that Liv is always interested when explaining them, that she is so eager to share things with me when I want.
And maybe, that's it's just impressive that there's a chain of scholarship from a very long time ago when these stories first started being studied, to me, now.