Jeremy Rosen
Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Leviticus 18, Ethics in the Bible
Summary
Study the text of the Bible weekly with Jeremy Rosen through a combination of traditional, critical, and personal perspectives. No knowledge of Hebrew or the Bible is necessary. You may use any Bible text you may have or you can go to sefaria.org. This week will begin with Leviticus 18, ethics in the bible.
Jeremy Rosen
Manchester-born Jeremy Rosen was educated at Cambridge University England and Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He has practiced as an orthodox rabbi, as principal of Carmel College in the UK, and as professor at the Faculty for Comparative Religion in Antwerp, Belgium. He has written and lectured extensively in the UK and the US, where he now resides and was the rabbi of the Persian-Jewish community in Manhattan.
Well, no, because in general the idea was not to try to find reasons other than those stated in the Torah. And so because the Torah states with regard to sexual practise, this is the sort of behaviour that I do not approve of that everybody is doing in Egypt and in Canaan. And the reason for not doing it is because I don’t want you to follow them. We don’t have any example of saying this is for sexual reasons, you know? Now, I mean people will say they’re not having sex at certain times or being circumcised has a sexual aspect to it and it may well be the case, but that is not the prime reason for adhering to these laws. The prime reason is to set up a society with a set of values.
Are they kept, yes, indeed. There are agricultural communities that run according to Jewish law and they adhere very strictly to Jewish law to this very day and all the biblical laws. And there are other ones about mixing seeds in fields and planting things together. These are adhered to by these religious settlements. There are non-religious settlements that don’t keep any of the laws. So it depends where you go.