Podcast: Jon Levenson on Understanding the Binding of Isaac as the Bible Understands It (Rebroadcast)

By Jon D. Levenson, Tikvah Podcast at Mosaic

The temptation is overwhelming to excuse or soften the drama of Genesis 22. A leading professor of Jewish thought explains how to get past that, and what meaning lies beyond it.

Podcast: Jon D. Levenson

This week, in their liturgical recitation and study of the Hebrew Bible, Jewish communities all over the world will relive the terrifying moment when God commands Abraham to take his son, his beloved son, who was to be his heir and fulfill his deepest dreams for family transmission and ancestry, Isaac, and sacrifice him.

What is this passage all about? What does it mean? What can be learned about Abraham, about Isaac, or about God by reading it carefully? Joining Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver to discuss these questions on this week’s podcast (originally broadcast in 2023) is Jon D. Levenson, a professor of Jewish studies at Harvard Divinity School and frequent Mosaic contributor. Levenson has written about this episode in several books, including The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son published in 1993 by Yale University Press, and also in Inheriting Abraham, published in 2012 by Princeton University Press.

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