Audiobook · read by volunteers
Legends of the Jews, Volume 2
Louis Ginzberg (1873–1953)
Read by Scott Sherris, Ellie Trachtenberg, Angleet, Sibella Denton, Kirsten Ferreri, Elanor, Stephen Escalera, Rhonda Federman, Just listen, hearhis · 42 chapters · 11 h 16
About the book
Louis Ginzberg’s Legends of the Jews gathers a vast tradition of stories drawn from the Talmud, the Midrash and other ancient sources, and weaves them into a single narrative that follows the Bible. In this second volume, the story moves from Joseph and his brothers to Moses and the Exodus of the people of Israel from Egypt. Familiar scenes are enriched with tales, sayings and legends that fill in what the Bible leaves unsaid: what people were thinking, how they argued, what wonders accompanied them. The English translation is by Henrietta Szold. A team of LibriVox volunteers shares the reading over forty-two chapters. It is a fascinating guide for anyone curious about the stories that grew around the scriptures, and about the imagination of a living tradition. It is a rich storehouse of tales, sayings and wonders.
Introduction
Louis Ginzberg was born on 28 November 1873 in Kovno, Lithuania, and died on 11 November 1953 in New York. He was one of the great Talmudic scholars of the twentieth century, and taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary from 1903 to 1953, training two generations of Conservative rabbis. The Legends of the Jews was his best-known work for a general readership, and it was first published in English between 1909 and 1938, in seven volumes.
Ginzberg’s project was to bring together the rich legendary material of ancient Jewish writings, which is scattered across many books and languages, and to arrange it in the order of the biblical story. The result is not a commentary but a continuous narrative, with notes in other volumes for those who wish to follow the sources. The translator, Henrietta Szold, was an American Jewish scholar and a writer who is also remembered as the founder of the women’s Zionist organization Hadassah.
The second volume, recorded here, was published in 1910. It covers the story from the days of Joseph to the Exodus from Egypt. The recording has 42 chapters, beginning with the preface, and lasts about eleven hours and twenty minutes. A team of LibriVox volunteers reads it. Today it is still a valuable resource for anyone who wants to understand how these great biblical stories were retold and expanded, and it can also be enjoyed simply as a collection of striking tales. The chapters are easy to take one at a time, and the book offers a way into a literary tradition that has influenced writers, artists and thinkers for centuries. It will interest readers of the Bible, as well as anyone who enjoys folklore and the long history of storytelling.
Public domain
Louis Ginzberg died in 1953: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text