Reading Exodus with Leon Kass

In April 2020, Mosaic published an essay by Leon R. Kass on the book of Exodus. “The People-Forming Passover” focused on the events of the night before and the morning of the Israelites’ departure from Egypt—the events rehearsed each year at the Passover table—and on their significance in the formation of the Jewish people.

The essay was an excerpt of a forthcoming book, Founding God’s Nation: Reading Exodus, that has now been published. In honor of that event, and because we find Kass’s wisdom-seeking reading of the biblical text so stimulating, we’ll be publishing brief excerpts of Founding God’s Nation for each of the weekly Torah readings dedicated to Exodus, once each week, for the next many weeks.

In this initial installment we start with how Kass came to approach the biblical text and then move on to an episode in this week’s reading. Curious about one of the foundational texts of the Jewish tradition? Read along with us.