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Ari Lamm Profile picture
Ari Lamm
@AriLamm
Host of Good Faith Effort, a podcast on the Bible and society @gfaitheffort. CEO, BZ Media. "Why Read The Bible In Hebrew?"
37 subscribers
May 9 • 37 tweets • 14 min read
Why Read The Bible In Hebrew?

Let's talk about how to read all those names and stats in the Book of Numbers. Is it ACTUALLY important to read any of those?

Why exactly does the Bible even tell us that stuff?

A thread (for non-Hebrew readers too!) 🧵 1 Image Why does the Bible have all those endless lists?

Why not just give us some good stories (like in Genesis), or political philosophy (like in Exodus or Deuteronomy)?

Why, for instance, do we need to know the numbers of each tribe, or where all the tribes camped in the desert? 2 Image
Jan 3 • 49 tweets • 19 min read
Why Read The Bible In Hebrew?

Let's talk about Rahab in the Book of Joshua.

How does a Canaanite harlot end up as the hero of the Israelites’ journey into the Promised Land?

A thread (for non-Hebrew readers too!) 🧵1 Image Here's a quick review of Rahab's story:

The Book of Joshua begins with the Israelites about to enter the Promised Land. In advance, Joshua dispatches two spies to scope out the city of Jericho. They're almost captured and killed by Jericho's king, but Rahab hides them. 2 Image
Dec 20, 2024 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Noticed something while reading the Book of Samuel today:

In his farewell address Samuel exhorts the Israelites to “serve God in truth (be’emet)” (1 Sam 12:24).

That specific phrase—“serve Him in truth”—appears one other place in the Bible. Also in a final address.

Know where? The answer: in the Book of Joshua, in his very last speech to the Israelites!

“Serve God in perfect truth (be’emet)” (Joshua 24:14).

I don’t know yet what to make of this.
Dec 13, 2024 • 51 tweets • 19 min read
Why Read The Bible In Hebrew?

So, remember how Joseph gets sold into slavery in Egypt and eventually rises to become Pharaoh's second-in-command?

Well...why doesn't Joseph ever write home to his father to tell him that he's alive?

A thread (for non-Hebrew readers too!) 🧵1 Image Okay, so quick recap:

Jacob has four wives—Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah. His favorite (and the only he'd originally intended to marry), was Rachel. He has a bunch of children—the oldest few with Leah—but his favorite son is Rachel's eldest: Joseph.

And Jacob shows it. 2 Image
Nov 12, 2024 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Actually in the only letter Benjamin Franklin ever wrote advocating ratification of the US Constitution as the law of the land, he specifically quoted the Talmud in support!

From the Baltimore Maryland Gazette, April 11th, 1788: Image The Constitution is already, and was understood by its framers to be, Talmudic! Image
Aug 16, 2024 • 17 tweets • 7 min read
One of my favorite parts about preparing "Why Read the Bible in Hebrew?" threads is finding the artwork that accompanies them. I love seeing how people across space, time and culture have imagined the most important book in all of history.

So here's a 🧵 on Biblical art! Image How have some of the most creative people who ever lived envisioned Scripture? The answer might lead anywhere from Baroque painting, to Japanese stencil prints, to ancient mosaics, to children's book art!

(I'll use my most recent thread—about Abraham and Sarah—as an example) 2
May 17, 2024 • 21 tweets • 7 min read
Why Read the Bible in Hebrew?

In the Bible, Noah's nudity is a consequence of drunkenness—a thing two of his sons need to shield from the gaze of the third (Gen 9)

So why, in the Sistine Chapel, does Michelangelo paint them ALL naked?

A thread (for non-Hebrew readers too!)🧵 Image Maybe the answer lies in Michelangelo's reverence for classical artistic ideas about the human body. The Sistine Chapel's ceiling and altar wall, after all, are positively saturated with nakedness...prompting Pope Adrian VI to refer to the chapel as "a bathroom full of nudes". 2 Image
Sep 22, 2023 • 47 tweets • 13 min read
Why Read The Bible In Hebrew?

Ever wondered why the Bible spends so much time mentioning tons of names? All those "begats"?

What if I told you reading those names in Hebrew can hold the key to understanding entire Biblical stories?

A thread (for non-Hebrew readers too!) 🧵1 Image Let's look at the Book of Genesis. It starts off with some crazy amazing set pieces: Creation! Garden of Eden! The first sin! Murder! And tons more action is still to come (The Flood! Tower of Babel!).

But smack in the middle, in Genesis 4-5, is a boring list of names. Why?! 2 Image
Aug 18, 2023 • 50 tweets • 13 min read
Why Read the Bible in Hebrew?

Let's talk about one of the most common questions I get about the Bible: Why does God care about a particular land?

If God is everywhere and created the whole world, why is there a "holy land"?

A thread (for non-Hebrew readers too!) 🧵 1 Image The best way to answer the question is to look out for the very first time that the land appears in the Bible. And that brings us to Genesis 12.

God tells Abram: "Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land (eretz) that I will show you" (12:1). 2 Image
Jul 28, 2023 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Here’s a video going around that moved me to tears:

A bunch of kids gathered yesterday to sing in Hebrew around some arch. “Who cares?”, you might ask.

Well, that’s the Arch of Titus in Rome

And yesterday was the anniversary of the events it was constructed to commemorate. 🧵 The Arch of Titus was built by the Roman emperor Domitian to honor his older brother and predecessor, Titus.

It portrays the central achievement of Titus’s life—his suppression of the 1st century Jewish revolt against Rome, and his destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem. 2 Image
Jun 16, 2023 • 46 tweets • 12 min read
Why Read The Bible In Hebrew?

Let's talk about the most famous murder in human history—the story of Cain and Abel.

In order to understand it, we'll need to unpack one of the most mysterious words in the entire Bible.

A thread (for non-Hebrew readers too!) 🧵 1 Image Just a refresher:

We have two brothers—Cain, the older, and Abel, the younger. They each bring an offering to God.

But while Abel brings his best stuff, Cain does not. And when God favors Abel's, Cain gets jealous and kills his brother. He tries and fails to hide his crime. 2 Image
Apr 3, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Preparing a shiur on the impact of Jewish scholarship on the debate over Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon.

Convinced that literally no one has yet appreciated the importance of the fact that Henry's most crucial Jewish source was...a grandson of the Maharik! Scholars have noted the genealogical connection as a curiosity and moved on. No one really makes a thing out of it.
Mar 24, 2023 • 20 tweets • 6 min read
Compare Abraham and Sarah's expulsion from Egypt...

"And they sent away [va'yeshalechu] him and his wife and all that he had"

...with Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden:

"The Lord God sent them away [va'yeshalechehu]...to till the ground from which they were taken."

Short 🧵 This is part of a larger theory I have about the Bible directly modeling Abraham's origins in God's land upon humanity's origins in God's creation. But we'll save that for a longer thread.

For now, just note the parallels between the Eden (Gen 1-2) and Egypt (Gen 12) stories! 2
Feb 10, 2023 • 19 tweets • 6 min read
Bob Dylan is one of the most celebrated artists in the history of popular music.

He was also an incredibly perceptive reader of the Bible.

A 🧵 of Dylan's 5 best uses of the Bible: 1. Talkin’ World War III Blues

Dylan's describing a post-apocalyptic dreamworld in which cynicism and suspicion rule. The world's been bombed back to pre-Creation chaos.

For Dylan, the question humanity faces at that point is: should we try again?
Feb 3, 2023 • 51 tweets • 13 min read
Why Read The Bible In Hebrew?

Let's talk about one of the most iconic villains in world history—the Serpent from the Book of Genesis.

Why exactly was the Serpent out to get Adam and Eve?

A thread (for non-Hebrew readers too!) 🧵 1 I know what you're gonna ask. Isn't the serpent just Satan—or the inclination to do evil—given flesh?

I do think there's truth to this!

But.

The Bible doesn't say this. In the text itself, the snake is just...a snake. So why does it bother trying to get Adam and Eve to sin? 2
Dec 9, 2022 • 19 tweets • 15 min read
Why Read The Bible In Hebrew?

Let's do a thread on Noah's Ark, unpacking this important @elonmusk tweet.

A thread (for non-Hebrew readers too!) 🧵 1 @elonmusk Everyone knows the story:

God brings a mighty flood to punish humanity's corruption. He then recreates the world through Noah, whose family God preserved—along with all the animals—by having them ride out the flood on a massive ark. 2
Dec 2, 2022 • 37 tweets • 9 min read
Why Read The Bible In Hebrew?

Let's talk about the most important work of political philosophy you've never considered:

The Book of Leviticus.

A thread (for non-Hebrew readers too!) 🧵 1 If you pop open Leviticus for a second, you'll see that the whole fourth chapter is about what happens when a person—or even all of society—commits a sin.

We'll get into the details in a bit...but the short of it is: if you sin, you need to offer a sacrifice in the Temple. 2
Nov 30, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
New @gfaitheffort episode out with Rabbi David Fohrman, one of the best contemporary readers of the Bible!

This was like 10 different “Why Read The Bible In Hebrew?” threads packed into a single episode.

Too much to even summarize, just give it a listen! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/goo… Here’s a fact: I do these episodes to make my dad proud, and if the rest of you like them that’s just house money ❤️❤️❤️
Nov 1, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Can the Book of Leviticus make for great art?

A short 🧵 on George Herbert (1593-1633), perhaps the finest English poet to grapple with Leviticus and its themes. /1 Herbert was a rare genius and a deeply pious man. He was also extraordinarily accomplished for a man who died at 39.

Among the best-known—along with John Donne—of the so-called metaphysical poets, Herbert's work found deep beauty in the power of mundane ritual. /2
Sep 13, 2022 • 8 tweets • 6 min read
@mattyglesias @ArminRosen @StevenGlinert ...And this is even leaving aside the annoying pseudo-literate take on Hasidism as so modern and novel it's basically like an Orthodox version of Reform Judaism.

I mean, sure, Hasidism is revolutionary...but not in the way you all mean, sorry. 29 @mattyglesias @ArminRosen @StevenGlinert But that actually brings me to my closing thought:

This whole episode has, most of all, been deeply depressing to me on several levels.

First, of course, I'm sad for kids (and parents!) whose schools don't give them the basic skills they deserve. 30
Sep 13, 2022 • 35 tweets • 17 min read
A thread of still-evolving thoughts in response to the NY Times report on Hasidic schools: 1

nytimes.com/2022/09/11/nyr… Some initial throat-clearing:

I'm an Orthodox Jew. While I'm what you might call Modern Orthodox (a term I don't like, nor did my grandfather who might be the best known thinker nevertheless associated with it), I see Hasidic Jews as part of the "us" to which I also belong. 2