Ep. 49: Ha'azinu - Biblical Poetry feat. Robert Alter

The Study

Robert Alter, Professor in the Graduate School and Emeritus Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley, and award winning translator of the Torah joins Rabbi Adam and Raviv to discuss why the Torah ends in a poem. We’ll discuss what clues this poem gives us about the ways in which people communicated and how they used language at the time the torah was written, and even their views on monotheism and the way judaism was practiced.
Professor Alter is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Council of Scholars of the Library of Congress, and is past president of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. Professor Alter has published 24 books unpacking the poetry and prose of ancient literature.