Frameworks - Genesis

Rating:
Summary: Astonishingly brilliant and relevant..
Review: Over the millennia, the human drive to uncover and explore the book of Genesis has never ceased. Today, the contributions keep on coming, as new approaches and perspectives are being added to this ever-expanding enterprise of Biblical exegesis. Frameworks is a novel and extraordinary addition to our corpus.

Rabbi Weinberg presents a remarkably lucid and involving exploration of these ancient texts. Wonderfully didactic and filled with a subtle and sensible appreciation for divergent approaches and methodologies, Frameworks takes nothing for granted. Always fresh yet always grounded in the traditional Jewish 'framework', this book will gently force you to encounter the deeper currents and concepts floating underneath. Weinberg steers clear from the moralizing pulpit that so many unfortunately revert to. I don't know exactly what the previous reviewer means by stating that there are no 'mekoros' in the book. Hardly a page goes by without numerous quotes and insights from across the whole gamut of Torah thought. The 'peshuto shel mikra' that he refers to is the bedrock of our understanding and involvement with the text, and Weinberg carries no illusions into his journey, staying remarkably close to the text and its' graphical texture.

This book continuously surprises me. It has been a wonderful comrade throughout the year. The writing is deft and sensitive, poetically charged yet almost never straying into romantic effusiveness. Sources are abundant and apparently Rabbi Weinberg takes great joy in presenting quotes in multicolored and varied hues, as the book is teeming with relevant metaphors. Along with a precious few other new releases in the Jewish academic world, this book is a profound treasure.

Rating:
Summary: More Questions than Answers
Review: Some have commented that Weinberg's brilliance surpasses that even of his illustrious father. This tour de force through the Humash gives us ample reason to suspect that this is true. And yet, there remains within me a fundamental uneasiness about the theses of this book. While filled with virtousity and exegesis, one wonders whether this book can really be called Torah. Where are the mekoros from chazal? Why does he expand so much on peshutto shel mikra. One wonders.....