Marcia Falk: Passover and The Song of Songs
- Pacific Time Virtual Program
“All the world is not worth the day on which the Song of Songs was given to the people of Israel.” So proclaimed Rabbi Akiba 2,000 years ago, in defense of a little book of poems about which raged a big rabbinic controversy: Did this slender book of love poetry deserve a place in the canon alongside “weightier” books of psalms and prophecy, creation stories and liberation tales? In the end, Rabbi Akiba prevailed, and since that time, Jews from many cultures have been reciting Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, every Pesach. We’ll read and discuss passages from this sensual, erotic, lyric text in Hebrew and English translation.
