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Click the links below to access the material for each week's class.

Week One: The Search for the Phantom Akeidah

Week Two: The Binding of Ishmael

Week Three: Point, Counterpoint

Week Four: Man's Hineini; God's Hineini

Week Five: The Shunamite Woman and the Shadow of Ishmael

Week Six: The Ram, the Pit and the Coat: Joseph's Ordeal and the Binding of Isaac

Lecture Seven: All in the Family

Week Eight: Every Good Akeidah Story Comes with An Angel

Class Description:

The Arab-Israeli conflict has been aptly described as a family feud – a contest over who counts as the legitimate heir of a common father, Abraham. As part of that feud, Arabs have long made the dubious claim that it was Ishmael, not Isaac, who was taken to the top of a mountain that fateful day when father was called upon to sacrifice a child. Clearly, the Bible says otherwise. But could there be more to this outrageous claim than meets the eye?  

The possibility that a phantom “Akeidah” story lurks in the Book of Genesis is one of several “Biblical surprises” that we’ll explore in these classes. The common denominator in all these surprises? They all flow from an elegant literary structure known as a “chiasm” – a series of inverted parallels, all converging towards a core. If you’ve never heard of chiasms, don’t fret – you’ll understand the idea quite well by the end of the first class. And when you do, you’ll be in a position to more deeply understand not just the “phantom Akeidah”, but the meaning of the Sabbath, the Tabernacle and perhaps the very concept of “the sacred” itself.