Vixens Disturbing Vineyards

Every reading community has ways of confronting moments of embarrassment
in its reading of scriptures. Scripture may be the holy books of religious
communities or the foundational texts of civilizations. Contemporary readers
of Aristotle who see his writing as foundational for Western philosophy,
for example, must confront his views on slavery.
This kind of confrontation, whether with religious, philosophical or canonical books of other kinds, may lead readers to reject scripture's claims-or it may motivate them to re-read or misread scripture so as to eliminate, ameliorate or apologize for the problematic passages. Once this misprision has taken place, the formerly ofending scriptures may be re-embraced. A community may also re-embrace scripture by rejecting traditional readings in favor of more originary readings.
By entering into that very tension between what Harry Fox calls embarrassment
and embracement, the reader experiences the anxiety of a narrative's
power over a community. That anxiety is most palpable in the ideological
and theological applications of these foundational works. Applications of
scriptures have included the exploitation of natural resources and their preservation; genocide and ethnic cleansing as well as the promotion of human
rights; slavery and its abolition; homophobia and the acceptance of sexual
variation.
The essays in this volume honor Professor Harry Fox (leBeit Yoreh). Written
in a variety of disciplines, they rethink canonical texts through Fox's rubric,
contributing to our understanding of historical and textual moments of embarrassment and embracement. Contributors include Yaakov Elman, Paul
Heger, Tirzah Meacham, Yosef Tubi and the late Chana Safrai as well as many
students, colleagues and friends of Professor Fox.