[.ca] Five Books Of Miriam (ISBN 0399141952)

Wonderful resource:
This book is a wonderful resource to examine how women in the Bible may have thought and felt. I keep a copy on my shelf right next to my Bible and prayer books. It is a great thing to give to a girl on her Bat Mitzvah.

Well done!!:
I enjoyed every page of this book of commentary on the 5 books of Moses. I even tried the recipe for red lentils that was offered as the meal that Jacob might have fed to Esau in exchange for his father's birthright. Ms. Frankel is a noted Jewish scholar, and this book should not be taken lightly, or as a pure exercise of fiction. She is trying to find the voices of Jewish women that were lost in history, whether sad, bitter, or even humorous. Reading this book, which is broken out into the individual Torah portions, with encapsulations of the Biblical texts, was a wonderful treat. It not only gives its own differing perspectives, but encourages one to think for onesself, to go a different road if that's where your thoughts take you. This book is well written and lots of fun. I recommend it to everyone with an interest in Torah (or Old Testament!) studies.

Five Books of Miriam:
While this is an entertaining book, I found it to be disappointing as a commentory on the Torah. Questions asked seemed to be rhetorical, because they were certainly not answered, especially the questions (asked several times) "why does God treat us this way, why is He an unforgiving God?" Some grave instances in the book seemed to be schlepped over, for instance, why does God kill two of Aaron's sons for offering fire? The fire was given in offering for the love of God? So why would God kill His children for offering love? Yes, I understand that this book offers insight to the amazing women in our Torah, but I felt we could have been far more rewarded with a more critical view of the Torah.