Today is Valentines Day and Ash Wednesday. Can I relate them somehow? We’ve been learning in class about social identity in Biblical times. Western culture is individualistic. I do this and that. I define who I am. The ancient Biblical world did not see it that way. The smallest unit of identity was the family, the beit av (house of the father). This is why you see people frequently identified as the son of so-and-so (possibly going back multiple generations). When the gospel of Matthew introduces Jesus, he begins with a long genealogy to show Jesus’ pedigree. A person is […]