June 27, 2019
In the Margins of Catastrophe: The Prequel and Postscript to the Book of Eicha
In this class, our character of choice is the city of Jerusalem. Rather than studying Megillat Eicha, the classic text of destruction, we instead look at the before and after. We begin with the historical background and context to the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E., examining the ‘Jerusalem myth’, the notion that had taken hold over the previous centuries that the city could never fall, and then move to the post-script, studying the midrashic commentary to Eicha, which subverts, undermines, and rewrites the Megilla to replace themes of destruction and despair with ones of comfort and continuity.
