Slow Burn: Quarantine Edition

The Bible is long and the length of our self-isolation uncertain, so we decided to read the Book of Exodus.

What if, through this crack in the text, older gods return?

For Freud, “chosenness” was a psychopathological fantasy in need of explanation.

How do you read a plague?

For the enslaved, the formerly enslaved, and the otherwise surveilled, wandering is not simply unproductive movement; it is self-possessed, erratic, wayward action.

What does it mean that we do not consent to our ethical obligations?

Terrible violence will unfold while the Israelites are kept busy with lines and lines of civic code.

Does the Tabernacle represent God’s effort to institutionalize the energy of a riot?

What are sacred objects for?

For Jews, divine forgiveness is a hard bargain.

After a political rupture, rituals of repetition can attempt to restore normalcy—or throw it into question.