Years ago, I gained a whole new understanding of the Exodus story with the celebrated Torah

teacher of Yves Ornberg, and it was a thrill to sit down with her this year in her living

room in Jerusalem.

She doesn't so much teach the Bible as inhabited.

She participates in the ancient Jewish tradition of Midrash, of reading between the lines of

sacred texts to uncover deeper, hidden layers of meaning, and she creates an experience

of these depths intellectually, spiritually, sensually for modern people.

The whole tenor of the language is about human life, and God has to find his place,

and that's why he commands the building of the Tabernacle later on.

That is, in some sense, God dwells in this world, and it seemed to me that the human

language that God is obliged to use is actually that that's the house he lives in.

He's willing to accept a kind of lower dwelling place because of what can happen.

From APM, American Public Media, I'm Krista Tippett, today on Being the Genesis of Desire.

Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg grew up in Scotland, but has lived in Israel for the past 40 years.

She is wise about modern literature and psychology.

The daughter and granddaughter of rabbis of East European lineage, she's also steeped

in the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah and its pivotal text, The Zohar.

She connects deep and unexpected currents between the Bible and the lived situation of

the reader.

So for example, the character of Noah in Genesis.

On the surface of this story, God sees a world that has become corrupt and violent,

and resolves to flood and destroy it.

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