Set Apart

He was the favorite son, the dreamer in the coat of many colors.

Yet Josef rose to become the most powerful man in Egypt, rescuer of a starving world and, ultimately, the one who brought his broken family back together. His is the longest continuous narrative in Genesis and one of the most enduring stories in human history.

In Set Apart, two scholars of the Bible sit together with the ancient text of Josef and listen. Drawing on rabbinical tradition and rigorous scholarship, David Ariel-Joel and Johanna W.H. van Wijk-Bos offer a rich, layered reading of Genesis 37-50 that honors the full complexity of the story: the family rivalries, the silenced women, and the slow arc of character transformation. Where they disagree, they say so, presenting their differing interpretations side by side in the ancient Talmudic tradition.

At its heart, this is a story about change - how it is forced upon us, how we resist it, and how, in the end, it becomes the very thing that saves us. Set Apart is a guide for that journey.

Johanna W.H. van Wijk-Bos, a native of The Netherlands, was Professor of Old Testament at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary from 1977-2017. During her teaching career she taught also in Montpellier (France), Salvador (Brazil), and at the University of Lund (Sweden and Jerusalem). After retirement Johanna published commentaries on the Former Prophets and most recently on Deuteronomy in the Wisdom Commentary series.

David Ariel-Joel is the Senior Rabbi of The Temple, Louisville, KY. He is a graduate of the Hebrew University, and the Hebrew Union College. During this journey, he was one of the founding members of Kibbutz Lotan, later serving as the Rabbi of Congregation Har-El, and Director of the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism. He officiated the first same-sex marriage in Israel in 1996. He is married to Ya'ala and is the father of Haggai (Stephanie).