With All Thine Heart: Love and the Bible 9780813550343

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With All Thine Heart

Also by Ilan Stavans FICTION

The One-Handed Pianist The Disappearance NONFICTION

A Critic’s Journey Gabriel García Márquez: The Early Years The Hispanic Condition Art and Anger The Riddle of Cantinflas Knowledge and Censorship (with Verónica Albin) Imagining Columbus The Inveterate Dreamer Octavio Paz: A Meditation Bandido On Borrowed Words Spanglish ¡Lotería! (with Teresa Villegas) Dictionary Days Resurrecting Hebrew Love and Language (with Verónica Albin) ANTHOLOGIES

Norton Anthology of Latino Literature Growing Up Latino (with Harold Augenbraum) Tropical Synagogues The Oxford Book of Latin American Essays The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories Mutual Impressions Wáchale! Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing The Scroll and the Cross The Schocken Book of Modern Sephardic Literature Lengua Fresca (with Harold Augenbraum)

CARTOONS

Latino USA (with Lalo Alcaráz) Mr. Spic Goes to Washington (with Roberto Weil) TRANSLATIONS

Sentimental Songs by Felipe Alfau EDITIONS

The Collected Stories by Calvert Casey The Poetry of Pablo Neruda Collected Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer (three volumes) Encyclopedia Latina (four volumes) Selected Writings by Rubén Darío I Explain a Few Things by Pablo Neruda Cesar Chavez: An Organizer’s Tale Spain, Take This Chalice from Me by César Vallejo GENERAL

The Essential Ilan Stavans Ilan Stavans: Eight Conversations (with Neal Sokol) Conversations with Ilan Stavans Collins Q&A: Latino History and Culture

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ith All Thine Heart

love a n d t h e b i bl e Ilan Stavans with Mordecai Drache

Ru t g e r s U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s N e w B r u n s w i c k , N e w Je r s e y, a n d L o n d o n

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stavans, Ilan. With all thine heart : love and the Bible / Ilan Stavans with Mordecai Drache. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978–0–8135–4797–8 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Love—Biblical teaching. 2. Bible. O.T.—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Drache, Mordecai. II. Title. BS1199.L66S73 2010 221.6—dc22 2009043153 A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2010 by Ilan Stavans and Mordecai Drache All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 100 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854–8099. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. Design by Karolina Harris Visit our Web site: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu Manufactured in the United States of America

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Contents

Shema Ysrael! I Adam’s Partners “It is not good for man to be alone”

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II The Mission of Abraham “And I will bless them”

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III The Birth of Israel “Thou shalt serve thy brother”

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IV Moses’ Guidance “If I have found favor in your sight”

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V The National Self “To teach them war” VI Song of Songs “Let him kiss me”

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VII Job’s Perplexity “A perfect and an upright man”

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Love and Stupidity

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Acknowledgments

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Index

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Illustrations follow page 94

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mordecai drache: Although the prayer Shema Ysrael isn’t part of scripture in the exact form as Jews recite it, it might be a suitable place to start a discussion on love in Jewish life, and, more concretely, on love in the Bible—or perhaps love and the Bible— which will be, I propose, the central, recurrent theme of these conversations. First, a word about their origin. The conversations, shaped electronically, began when I invited you to reflect on the topic for an interview published in 2007 in the online magazine Zeek (www.jewcy.com/zeek). Once we finished, it was obvious to me that there was much more to discuss. Thus, I proposed a sustained discussion, over a period of twelve months, from July 2008 to June 2009, using various technological devices, principally e-mail and phone. Second, let us establish the way you and I will use the term “Bible.”

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ilan stavans: For the purpose of our discussion, the Bible—from the Greek biblion or biblios, after the Phoenician port from which papyrus was shipped, and later adopted into Latin as biblia—is the canonical compendium of the books that make the Torah. That is, not only the five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, but the accumulation of other books accepted by Jewish tradition, such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Kings 1 and 2, Daniel, Ecclesiastes, and Job. Thus, unless otherwise stated, whenever I use the word Bible I’ll refer to the Hebrew Bible, what Christians call the Old Testament, and not to the New Testament. Nor will I be talking of the Apocrypha and Seudo-Epygrapha. On occasion, I might use the term “Torah,” again not only referring to the Pentateuch or five books of Moses but to the foundational religious texts. Likewise, when quoting from the Bible, and, once again, unless otherwise noted, my source will be the King James Version. md: About which I’ll ask you to reflect in due time. I have another preparatory question. In the past few years, you’ve devoted much energy to conversations with others on a variety of topics: rabbinical responsa, dictionaries, translation, the acquisition of knowledge, and the multiple ways we apply the word “love” to define the empathy that humans feel among themselves and toward God and the universe. Now you’ve agreed to discuss the Bible. is: My understanding of these topics is that of a layman making connections. md: This material has been collected in volumes such as Ilan Stavans: Eight Conversations (2004) by Neal Sokol, as well as Love and Language (2007) and Knowledge and Censorship (2008) by Verónica Albin. There is also a plethora of interviews on the Internet. I have the feeling you have reinvigorated an old literary form. is: Plato uses the form for a variety of purposes, philosophical inquiry chief among them. He also allows his mentor, Socrates, to come alive. Plato isn’t writing theater, though. Nor is he offering Socrates’ and other dialoguers’ words verbatim. The

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passages attributed to Socrates in the Symposium, for instance, are Plato’s concoctions based on memory (although there is no record that these encounters ever took place, meaning that they might well be fictitious) and, equally important, on literary economy: What does he need Socrates to say on love for Plato to make his point? Plato isn’t the first to use the dialogue as a literary form. My own models are more recent. They belong to the medieval period: Juan de Valdés’s Diálogo de la lengua (Dialogue on Language), written in 1533 but not published until the eighteenth century; and Leo Ebreo (a.k.a Judah Leon Abravanel, the son of the statesman Isaac Abravanel), whose Dialoghi d’amore (Dialogues of Love) was a popular item at the beginning of the sixteenth century. As in the case of Plato (the two considered themselves neo-Platonists), the characters in the conversation are fictitious. They serve as conduits to meditate on large themes. The contemporary newspaper interview is a cheapening of that tradition. Unquestionably ephemeral, its size is small and its function to inform, but not necessarily to make the reader think. Its target is always the present tense, whereas Plato and his successors dream on a considerably longer shelf life. I’m a devoted reader of volumes of interviews, which in the United States are manufactured with ease: an Edward Said compendium, for example, is an extraordinary opportunity to witness the thinker’s intellectual development. md: Why did you agree to delve into the Bible with me? is: The Bible has been with me—or is it I who has been with the Bible?—since my early childhood. The biblical stories were ubiquitous in my Mexico City home and at the Yiddish Shule in Mexique, the Jewish school I attended from kindergarten to high school. They were also recycled in comic strips, picture books, movies, and TV shows. At some point, I felt as if the characters in Genesis and Exodus were my friends. md: The academic world is increasingly specialized. Scholars know more and more about less and less. Yet you enjoy delving into a whole variety of topics. Don’t you fear being attacked for not

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being specialized enough in those areas you haven’t spent years researching? is: People are applauded in academia for being particularists. But I enjoy thinking deeply and broadly about a wide array of topics. I often depend on the guidance of specialists to understand those things. I would hold my mind hostage if I didn’t allow it to wander. I don’t like making mistakes on facts and avoid them as much as possible. But erring is human. Much worse is making the mistake of not daring. md: What do you think of the so-called new atheists, thinkers like Richard Dawkins, whose book The God Delusion argues that a supernatural deity doesn’t exist, and Christopher Hitchens, who in God Is Not Great portrays religion as the source of all evil? is: Atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens are probably more obsessed with God than the average believer. I frequently remember a saying a college teacher of mine in Mexico, who was a nonbeliever, often repeated, tongue in cheek: “Soy ateo—gracias a Dios” (Thank God I’m an atheist)! md: Do you remember when you read the Bible for the first time? is: I don’t. It was interwoven into our daily life. There were almost no autochthonous picture books when I was a child, certainly nothing remotely comparable to the plethora that exists today in the English-speaking world. These picture books recycle stories from all sorts of traditions, the Bible among them. Years ago I developed a passion to collect these types of books and have in my personal library copies of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s How Noah Chose the Dove, Mordecai Gerstein’s The White Ram, Jonah and the Two Great Fish, and The Shadow of a Flying Bird, as well as Elie Wiesel’s King Solomon and His Magic Ring. All of them are based on biblical episodes. I didn’t grow up with such material. Instead, my mother, when putting my brother, my sister, and me to bed, would retell folktales like “Hansel and Gretel” and “The Three Little Pigs” but invariably inserted an extemporaneous Jewish ingredient into them. One of the three pigs, for instance, the last and triumphant one, was Jewish. Plus, every so often my mother would also use the time to tell us a story from the Bible, but if

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memory serves me well these were few and far between. And, of course, in school I became acquainted with the biblical archetypes. md: Did you grow up religious? is: Not at all. My attraction to the Bible, then and more so now, is as a literary book and as a treasury of myths. Or better, as an extraordinary source of storytelling. I left these friends behind in my twenties, as I became concerned with other things: finding a path of my own, defining my political views, etcetera. It was only when I had my own children that I—almost mechanically—returned to them and the Bible, again as a source of storytelling. But not until my first son, Joshua, did his Bar Mitzvah, in 2004, that I decided to read my way through from the Adam and Eve chapter to Deuteronomy, the major and minor Prophets, the Song of Songs, and the Book of Job. Believe it or not, except for passages here and there I had never read the Bible as a book. I’m sure I’m no exception. The Bible is the book par excellence. In Western civilization, one doesn’t need to read it in order to know it by heart. It comes to us by osmosis. Again, I’m neither an archeologist nor a biblical scholar. I’m just a student of literature with an interest in that old-fashioned discipline called philology. What attracts me to the Bible is how stories are told and characters developed. By characters I mean everything: man, Nature, and God. For as you know, not only is there a cast of millions in the Bible—the perfect inspiration for a Cecil B. DeMille blockbuster—but the flora and fauna are perceived in dramatically different fashion from the Eden episode to the destruction of the First Temple. Needless to say, the divine undergoes a similar transformation. md: In what sense? is: The world of biblical scholarship, defined by founding figures such as Robert Lowth (1710–1787), W.M.L. de Wette (1780– 1849), Charles Augustus Briggs (1841–1913), and Julius Welhausen (1844–1918), and the full genealogical trees of successors they developed, brims with a hypothesis on when the five books of Moses and other Bible narratives were composed. It

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is called the Documentary Hypothesis. As James L. Kugel states in his book How to Read the Bible, even though some elements suggested by these theorists have fallen out of favor, the basic idea of the hypothesis has survived the scrutiny of scholars. Often the distinction between sections in the Bible has to do with the role God plays: a more personal entity roaming the Earth, involved in the daily affairs of his creatures, in contrast with a more absent, uninvolved one. There is the author called J, who uses the Tetragrammaton (YHWH), and E, who uses the word Elohim. There is also the author of Deuteronomy, described as D, who is different from P, a priestly author who, according to some scholars, was the earliest of all and is responsible for composing the more legalistic material about rituals, sacrifices, dietary matters, and so forth. It is an exercise in detective work to locate the fingerprints of each of these authors. What is more, I’m fascinated by how our own emotional life as readers of the Bible is defined by what we find in these narratives. md: Isn’t it the other way around? is: Yes, but that is predictable, since readers always bring to a text their own expectations. No book is read the same way or form twice. But I’m attracted to another dimension altogether. When I delve into Moby Dick, the description of the quest to kill the white whale carries my attention. Herman Melville lets us follow the plot through a portrait of the internal and external universes: Captain Ahab’s psychological motivations and the complex world of whale hunting in the mid-nineteenth century. The authors of the Bible aren’t only descriptive, allowing the reader to understand the motivation behind Abel’s murder, for instance, or King David’s lust for Bathsheba. They’re also prescriptive, suggesting through role models what is morally acceptable and what isn’t. In Western civilization, that prescription is a kit that allows people to frame their emotional life. Take death as an example. Outside of religion, death is sheer nothingness. md: I will return to this emotional frame later on. Finally, by way of preamble, let’s agree on what the parameters of our discussions will be. For the entire Bible is, obviously, beyond reach.

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is: On any given book of the five books of Moses, the depth and complexity could, arguably, take a season’s time and energy. As a matter of preference, I want to concentrate on certain sections that are, for me, endlessly interesting. These include the most famous parts of Genesis as well as Moses’ rise as a leader and the way his story concludes. The temptation to turn him into an idol and the ensuing hero worshiping by the Israelites (in the sense of Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus), in the context of the struggle against paganism, is, in my mind, one of the most powerful aspects of Exodus and the other sections where the Mosaic odyssey is detailed. I also want to discuss the shaping of Israel as a nation in biblical times, through the crowning of the second king, David, and maybe some discussion about Solomon’s wisdom. Plus, because of the interest that Maimonides nurtured on the prophets, it will be thought provoking to discuss at least Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. In other words, from the beginning of time through the Davidic kingdom onward to the destruction of the First Temple in 586 b.c.e. and the ensuing Babylonian exile. md: There might not be room for much more. How about Ecclesiastes? is: If there is room, I prefer Job. And, given the history of shifting interpretations, the Song of Songs. Unlike the Qur’an, which cannot be translated (thus, the renditions in English often state in the title page: “An English translation of the Qur’an”), with the Gutenberg revolution the Bible became a best-seller thanks to the printing press but, more importantly, as a result of the efforts at making the Hebrew (and Aramaic) of the original available in virtually every human language. How is that for democratizing Scripture? Yet the Song of Songs, perhaps more than any other section, resists translation. md: Because of its erotic component? is: Translation is interpretation. An alternative approach is to suggest an allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs, although it isn’t always easy. md: I will look to economize in order to give a fair share of attention to the sections you’ve listed. As a way in, in this preliminary

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conversation I want to discuss the manifestations of biblical love in a nonbiblical text: Shema Ysrael, often simply called the Shema. I want you to approach it as a narrative. The prayer recited in English starts thus: Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, And with all thy soul, and with all thy might . . .

You’re a scholar of language. Etymology, in your own words, is “my favorite sport.” Among your books are Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language (2003), Dictionary Days: A Defining Passion (2005), and Resurrecting Hebrew (2008). Hearing these words, which I’m sure have defined your life as much as they’ve defined mine, I would like you to reflect on the prayer. is: “Prayer” is the use of words, often in melodious fashion, to communicate with the divine. That communication has various purposes, among them the need to build a bridge between this world and a more spiritual realm. md: Clearly, the language of Shema Ysrael is phrased as a commandment. Question: Are Jews commanded to love God? Is it realistic to command a person to love anyone or anything? is: The Shema is a pillar in Jewish life in that it emphasizes the preeminence of God in all matters. Originally, the words came from one verse in the Bible: Deuteronomy 6:4, meaning—in accordance with the King James Version—“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” As time went by, more text was added: Deuteronomy 6:4–9, 11:13–21, and Numbers 15:37–41. The language stresses crucial elements in Judaism as a monotheistic religion: the unity of the divine and his supreme power over everything. Your assessment is accurate: the prayer orders us to love. It goes even further: not only are we required to love him, but to do it fully, without reservations, with all our heart, all our soul, and

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all our might. What is the difference between the heart, the soul, and the might? The heart is what keeps us alive, the soul is what distinguishes us from other living creatures and what survives after death, and the might is our power to endure. I find it symptomatic that the mind (episteme) isn’t included in this list. Faith, it stresses, doesn’t come from the intellect. md: You’ve hit upon an important issue that is often misunderstood: the divorce of faith and intellect. This misunderstanding is beyond whatever the faith happens to be. As Jews, we have the Talmud, which includes both the “oral Torah,” the torah she-ve’al-pe,’ also known as Gemara, and a compendium of discussion and debate on various issues Jews dealt with post-exile. If the Shema requires us to love God with heart, soul, and might, does that mean intellect doesn’t have a place with, and in relation to, faith? I have a strong feeling you don’t believe that to be the case. is: There isn’t one type of love but many: emotional love, physical love, and intellectual (that is, rational) love. I’m referring to love that emanates from the individual. One doesn’t love another person in the same way as one loves one’s community. These types of love are all an essential part of a person’s profile. They are taught to us since an early stage. Baruch Spinoza talked of amor Dei intellectualis, the intellectual love of God, as the highest form of love. By it he meant love of Nature. md: Judging by the frequency with which Spinoza appears in your work, explicitly or otherwise (for instance, in the story “The Disappearance”), he’s an important influence on you. is: For the Dutch philosopher, who lived a modest life beyond early vanity, that supreme type of love is expressed through reason, not through emotion. For Spinoza, emotions are important but are not meant to supersede reason, which in the end is the most important way to connect with the world. Spinoza is the thinker who invented modernity. His main objective was to debunk theologians who use God as a way to keep the masses under tyranny by using faith as the only strategy

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to legitimize an ethical life. Spinoza was accused of being an atheist. It isn’t accurate! Friedrich Nietzsche was closer to the truth when he described Spinoza as overwhelmed by the divinity. Since he didn’t believe in the biblical God, Spinoza was also said to be immoral: a sexual pervert. This is absurd! He led an admirably pious life. He lived what he preached and vice versa. Furthermore, the author of the Theological-Political Treatise taught us that reason and emotion are two different ways to express love. md: Reason and emotion are two different ways to express love. That’s an intriguing idea! is: For Spinoza, the human mind is our most precious instrument. To cultivate it, to explore its possibilities, ought to be life’s task. But the mind might be active or passive, depending on the ideas it contains. An active mind is the one ruled by adequate ideas. He also discusses emotions, by which he understands “the affections of the body by which the body’s power of activity is increased or diminished, assisted or checked.” In The Ethics, he offers a catalog of emotions, such as endeavor, will, desire, appetite, pleasure, pain, hate, antipathy, fear, confidence, despair, disappointment, pity, approval, envy, pride, over-esteem, distain, compassion, emulation, shame, repentance, jealousy, bashfulness, consternation, and anger. Love, is one of these emotions. Spinoza describes it as “pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause.” In Spinoza’s system of thought, emotional love is different from rational love. Rational love is the attempt to comprehend as well as the search for perfection through knowledge. Emotional love, in contrast, is the emotional manifestation of the body, and thus of lesser worth. Not accidentally, Spinoza calls part 4 of The Ethics “Of Human Bondage, or the Strength of the Emotions.” For him emotions, love among them, make us vulnerable unless we manage to control them. In other words, a purely emotional life for Spinoza is a life of slavery. md: You say that Spinoza invented modernity. What do you mean? is: Simply that the Dutch philosopher, in his work, announced that religion, as perpetuated until the seventeenth century by

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institutions like the synagogue and the church, kept the masses in a state of ignorance. In his Theological-Political Treatise, he suggests that “anyone who accepts everything in Scripture indifferently as God’s universal and absolute doctrine and cannot correctly identify what is adapted to the notion of the common people will be incapable of separating their opinions from divine doctrine.” The statement might appear innocent today, but in 1670, when the book was published, it was heretical. In it Spinoza invited readers of the Bible to discriminate, to have their own views, to consider the official doctrine as designed for “the fickle and capricious common people.” His was a call for rebellion and, simultaneously, an embrace of individualism. In other words, thanks to Spinoza, a break from religion takes place that will legitimatize the emergence of free, enlightened thought as an essential component of civil society. One might even argue that the consolidation of a bourgeois class in Amsterdam during Spinoza’s time, and the insertion of the Sephardic Jews who settled there after the expulsion from Spain of 1492, was instrumental in his sharpening of the view of individuality. md: How do you define “belief ”? is: As an act of trust. That act might be emotional or rational. They are two different realms. Through the intellect we process (for example, organize) the information our sense received. We develop ideas, arguments, and, in the end, a comprehensive view of who we are and what the world that envelops us is about. An act of trust is related to the Hebrew word vaya’aminu (Exodus 14:31), which is often translated as “belief,” but scholar Richard Elliot Friedman, author of The Bible with Sources Revealed, translates it as “trust.” md: Friedman’s commentary, in which he notes the reason for his unconventional choice in a footnote: “[Vaya’aminu] is often translated as ‘believed.’ It doesn’t have the meaning here that it does in later religious concepts. That is, it does not function in the sense of believing that a God exists. The notion of belief in does not occur in biblical Hebrew (nor in other ancient near eastern languages). . . . [So] in the conception of YHWH in Exodus, God

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becomes known; God’s existence and power are a matter of knowledge, not belief.” is: Therein, once again, is the concept of knowledge, which in biblical Hebrew also has erotic connotations. md: The concept is deep in emotional intimacy. In Love and Language, Verónica Albin asks you if love is freedom. You are inconclusive. is: They aren’t synonyms. Again, let me invoke Spinoza, who, along with Socrates, is, in my view, the most admirable of Western thinkers. The Dutch philosopher believed that through amor Dei intellectualis we might achieve freedom. But human freedom is limited by the confines of Nature. God’s freedom, on the other hand, is infinite. When discussing the varieties of human love, the impression is that choice is unlimited. But our selection of a partner, for instance, is limited by time, space, culture, and compatibility. There’s also the view that love itself, particularly adolescent love, has no barriers. Again, this is a misconception. Think of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In the end, it is precisely the confines of Nature (time, space, culture, and compatibility) that result in the lovers’ demise. Certainly, the Shema isn’t about choice. The mandate is to love only one God. It is a refutation of idolatry. Given the plethora of idols available in ancient times, the biblical God emerges as a proud authority without any intention of sharing. md: “The Lord is our God, the Lord is One.” The English translation is tricky because the verb “to be” is rarely used in Hebrew, and is not used in this prayer. is: In Hebrew a verb might be implied through syntax. md: How about the word “Lord”? is: It’s ubiquitous in the King James Version because it was part of English royal terminology in England at the dawn of the seventeenth century. The Hebrew word that the cadre of King James’s translators refer to as Lord is Adonai. To my knowledge, no Jewish king was ever called Adonai, and the thou’s and thy’s are used to give the English reader a sense of old-fashioned grandeur.

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md: How so? is: The sentence is built like a mirror, although with a slight deviation: God is said to be the sole authority and the Lord is described as a unity. Unity and authority. The word “Lord” does come from the medieval rhetorical lexicon in vogue before and during the time of the King James translation of the Bible. It is a term derived from feudal, monarchical English where “Lord” is described as a territorial magnate, a proprietor, or as the ruler. Fittingly, in the English version of the Shema God is the king of the universe. md: In a dialogue with Verónica Albin called “God’s Translators” (accurapid.com/journal/46religion.htm), you discuss the King James Version as an instrument of economic change. is: It was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, during the reign of King James I, who succeeded Elizabeth I. The beauty of the translation is unquestionable yet it didn’t come to us without controversy. It was attacked as unappealing by its contemporaries. It is said that some 90 percent of the King James Version was copied from an earlier translation of the Bible into English done in 1525 by William Tyndale. Yet it allowed the Church of England to minimize the role of the papacy. And it became an engine of national pride and, indirectly, of imperial identity as Protestantism was being formed. md: Yet the word “Lord” has retained its currency in prayer. Isn’t there something limiting about using the word “Lord,” a wholly worldly term whose purpose is to evoke fear and humility to wholly worldly power? Suppose you were translating the Bible for Indians. Would you use the word raj instead of “Lord,” or better yet, zamindar, a territorial magnate who, in the role of administrator for the mughals, collected taxes? is: English speakers are used to the word “Lord” to such an extent they don’t think about its relations to seventeenth-century British feudalism. The rhetoric of prayer is about the grandiosity of God and the insignificance of the individual. One needs to remember that the Bible in its original version used only 8,674 different Hebrew words, whereas the King James Version employs almost a

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third more: 12,143 different words. In other words, it uses synonyms in English to refer to a single Hebrew term. The translators involved in the effort made their editorial strategy clear in a preface seldom reprinted in contemporary reissues. The preface states that, as a matter of policy, the translators have been as florid in Shakespeare’s tongue as possible. The King James Version was produced while Shakespeare was writing Othello, King Lear, and The Tempest. md: What translation of the Bible did Shakespeare likely use? is: Shakespeare used the Geneva translation of 1560 and, by the way, so did John Bunyan in The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Donne, and the Puritans who ran away from persecution across the Atlantic. Also called “The Breeches Bible,” the Geneva translation is the fifth Protestant version, in chronological order, after the Tyndale, Coverdale (1535, the first complete version, commissioned by King Henry VIII’s secretary of state, Oliver Cromwell), Matthew’s Bible (1537, done by John Rogers), and the so-called Great Bible (1539, the first official Church of England Bible, done by Miles Coverdale, which enjoyed enormous success). md: What is the Spanish translation of the first sentence of the Shema? is: “Oye, O Israel, el Señor es nuestro Dios, el Señor es Uno.” md: Do you think its tone differs from the English? is: It does. Each language has its own cadence, its own rhythm. Somehow, after I have been more than two decades in an Englishlanguage environment, the Spanish version of the Shema feels foreign to me. md: As you state in your memoir, On Borrowed Words (2001), your first language was Yiddish. is: The Bible itself was translated into Yiddish. Still, I’ve never come across a Yiddish version of the Shema, even though it still rings in my ear as a rendition of the Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew, making it sound as if the prayer were written in the mame loshn, the mother tongue, as Yiddish is known. Jewish languages—for example, the vehicles of communication manufactured by Jews at different historical times: Spanioli, Judeo-Persian, Judeo-Italian, and so on—are, by definition, linguistic hodgepodges. Just as

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Aramaic lives in biblical Hebrew, Hebrew lives in Yiddish. From the thirteenth century onward (its exact origins are uncertain), Yiddish speakers in the Pale of Settlement used the tongue to differentiate themselves from the gentiles. But the majority was acquainted with the Hebrew prayers in the original. md: You’ve talked about modernity when referring to Baruch Spinoza. What kind of love might one have for God if it comes as a command? is: The concept clashes with our contemporary views of the individual. Our society stresses a person’s power to choose his or her own fate, to embrace the qualities that make him or her unique. However, monotheism, at its roots, wasn’t about freedom of choice. It was about rejecting idolatry as a pattern of behavior. In Exodus 20:3–4, the second and third commandments are unequivocal: “Thou shall have no other gods before me”; and “Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” The God of the Bible is jealous. He has no intention of sharing anything with other deities. md: Let’s move on with the Shema. Herein the second verse: “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and thou shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou risest up, and thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes, and thou shalt write them on the posts of thy house, thy gates.” Personally, I have fond memories of this prayer because it was what my parents recited to me every night before I went to bed, so for me the Shema feels like a lullaby, though it doesn’t carry any of the universal lullaby themes. The prayer is also said upon waking up. “The words which I command thee on this day,” within the cultural context of the period in which it is written, relates to all the commandments of the Torah, many of which are impossible to follow today even for the most observant due to the fact that biblical society was agrarian. All this

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is to say that the Shema, to my mind at least, equates love with obedience. is: It does. Institutionalized religion is about strict rules. That is, about obedience and reward. MS: The capital crimes of the Bible, ranging from breaking the Sabbath to committing adultery to disobeying your parents, are undesirable, to say the least. Later Jewish philosophy made capital punishment almost impossible to carry out. Yet this prayer remains essential even though no Jew follows all the commandments. What do modern Jews, and gentiles, make of it, given that the Bible can’t be followed literally? is: It is a statement of belief that, in a modern world that is confused at its core, offers enviable certainty. To know that through the love of only one God we shall find security and conviction is enviable. md: One of the Hebrew words for love is hesed. In English, we like to say to “make love.” is: Hesed might also mean mercy, compassion, and loving-kindness, as in Isaiah 63:7: “I will mention the loving-kindness of the Lord.” It might be seen as a one-way affection but also as a reciprocal one. However, in the sense that you suggest it, it is absent from the Bible. md: This is the third verse of the Shema, which comes from Deuteronomy 11:13–17 in the New American Bible: “If, then, you truly heed my commandments which I enjoin on you today, loving and serving the Lord, your God, with all your heart and all your soul, I will give the seasonal rain to your land, the early and the late rain, that you may have your grain, wine, and oil to gather in; and I will bring forth grass in your fields for your animals. Thus you may eat your fill. But be careful lest your heart be so lured away that you serve other gods and worship them. For then the wrath of the Lord will flare up against you and he will close up the heavens, so that no rain will fall, and the soil will not yield its crops, and you will soon perish from the good land he is giving you.” People read this paragraph as proof that the Hebrew God is unforgiving. is: The biblical God is indeed an avenger.

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md: This makes me uncomfortable. is: Yet how else to understand the divinity when his acts are motivated by anger, even impatience, as expressed, for instance, through the Angel of Death, who smites the firstborn in Egypt? Or by simple cruelty, as in the episode of the Flood? md: Among the most interesting attributes of God is that of lawgiver. God demands refuge cities for accused and alleged criminals to receive fair trials instead of becoming victims of clan violence. He also enacts rules around debt forgiveness and formulates an ingenious definition of private property that allows passersby to take fruit from a field but not a whole plant, and not in a basket, thus respecting landowners and beggars alike. In my view, this is a progressive definition of property, in essence suggesting that no one should be hungry. is: But he is a furious God, and often times erratic. Not to say jealous . . . md: If there are no other gods in the Bible, why should he be jealous? is: But there are other deities: Baal adored by Jezabel, the idols adored by Terach and destroyed by his son Abram, the Golden Calf. Still, one doesn’t need a competitor to want your lover’s full and undivided attention. It is part and parcel of human desire: to be the sole one in love, to possess the lover entirely. md: Do you think the rejection of God is seen in the Torah as the rejection of his ideologies and the ethics he teaches, the most positive of which I’ve outlined above? is: No, it isn’t a rejection of his ethics. The relationship between God and the people of Israel, much like love, is defined by ambivalence. md: I don’t agree. Throughout the stories of the prophets, idolatry is mentioned alongside other crimes like exploitation of the poor or working on the Sabbath—which is a break for the land as well as its inhabitants. Bowing to a statue, as Hindus, Buddhists, and Catholics do, is completely harmless, whereas exploitation of the poor and the earth is not. is: Bowing to a statue in biblical times wasn’t harmless. The Bible chronicles the shaping of monotheism as an organized religion. Idolatry is a sin.

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md: Since they are both sins in the Bible and are both condemned by the prophets, my interpretation is that the Bible views them as coming together, as in the story of the Golden Calf whose expensive material is dazzling to the Israelites’ eye but makes them forget God’s transcendental nature. I believe the Bible treats God’s transcendence as a tool for understanding ethics. is: No doubt. The contract with God is based on the acceptance of his morality. Even though Moses and others seek to see God, he remains invisible, for example, transcendent. md: My point is that to understand ethics one must see beyond material gain. is: Yours is a modern interpretation. Surely valid, yet altogether modern. The Hebrew Bible doesn’t caution us against material possessions, whereas the Christian Bible does. md: This is a provocative idea, Ilan. Judaism isn’t an ascetic religion. Not that there haven’t been Jewish ascetics historically, like the Essenes who lived communally; but for the most part, Judaism does not have a negative view of wealth. In the Bible, wealth was something to be tempered through laws such as leaving a portion of your field’s produce for the poor, not working or making slaves work on the Sabbath, providing debt forgiveness every seven years, and allowing passersby to take enough fruit to be held in their hands. is: The suggestion, I believe, is based on balance. md: Let’s get back to the Shema. It talks about reward and punishment. There is no hell in the original Hebrew. There is sheol under the earth, that, like the Hades of Greek myth, is where all the dead went. According to Ezekiel 31, Isaiah 14, and Job 30, all people, good or evil, Jewish or gentile, rich or poor, are allowed in it. Sheol is often mistranslated as hell, including within the King James Version. This meant that loosely there was an afterlife in the Bible, but that it wasn’t given prime importance. How one lived his or her life didn’t have a bearing on what would happen after death. As such, how would ancient Hebrews have been brought into order, to follow rules, to practice justice? Do you think love and justice have a relationship in the Torah?

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is: Therein the essence of biblical Judaism. Reward for good deeds isn’t postponed, as it will become in Jesus Christ’s preaching chronicled in the four gospels that constitute the New Testament. md: What do you think the consequences are to having sheol instead of heaven or hell? is: The stress in the here and now. md: When did the rabbis move away from a belief in sheol? is: It was, I believe, a response from rabbinical Judaism to the development of Christianity. Christianity stresses the achievement of an afterlife through love and good deeds. That’s Jesus’ primary message. md: I’d like you to examine two translations of Isaiah 14:9–10 where the Hebrew word sheol acquires different meanings: King James Version: Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their stones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak and say unto thee: Art thou also become as weak as we? Art thou become unlike to us?” New Revised Standard Version: Sheol beneath is stirred up to meet you when you come; it rouses the shades to greet you, all of whom were leaders of the earth; it raises from their thrones all who were kings of the nations. All of them will speak and say to you: “You have become as weak as we. You have become like us.”

is: The NRSV edition was published in 1989 by the National Council of Churches. It replaced the Revised Standard Version of 1952, which in turn revised the American Standard Version of 1901. It places the Hebrew original, sheol, at the outset. It’s an ingenious device designed to distinguish between the Jewish and the Christian version of hell. For sheol and hell aren’t the same. The latter is infinitely richer, as a result of centuries in which it was mapped out with astonishing precision, as in Dante’s The Divine Comedy. md: How then to understand the term tzedek in Jewish life?

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is: It might be translated either as “justice” or “righteousness.” It is a mandate to do good on this earth. In Deuteronomy 16:20, it is said: “Justice, justice, thou shall pursue.” What is righteousness exclusively about living a fair, moral life? Our duty as Jews is also to bring that moral approach to society at large. Selflessness leads to redemption. md: The next two paragraphs from the Shema are emblematic: Take these My words to your hearts and to your souls, and bind them for a sign on your hands and for frontlets between your eyes. Teach them to your children: to speak them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the road, when you lie down and when you rise up. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. So that your days and the days of your children may be prolonged upon the land, which God swore to give to your forefathers, as the days of the heavens [are prolonged] upon the earth.

And, The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel and tell them to make for themselves tzitzit (i.e., fringes) on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, putting a thread of blue upon the corner tzitzit. They will be for you tzitzit, you will see them and be reminded of all the Lord’s commandments, and do them, and not turn aside toward your hearts and your eyes and stray after them. So that you remember and do all My commandments and be holy to your God. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God; I am the Lord your God. Truth.

is: The request is made to place the words of the Shema everywhere, to turn them into a talisman. I find this mandate powerful: to remember. The Shema elevates memory to an obligation. We must remember to be ethical at all times, with our body and soul, by ourselves and with others, at all points of the day, in public and in front of others. We must become a role model, teach it to our

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children and students. And the only way to achieve it is to make the past our road map. I’ve struggled with this element throughout my life. Why do Jews repeat, year after year, every single detail of the Bible? Why retell during Passover the story of bondage in Egypt and the subsequent liberation? And Queen Esther’s ordeal in Purim? An answer is that only by learning from the past we’re we able to overcome it. But there’s something more. Each and every one of us Jews, past, present, and future, is said to have been present on Mount Sinai when Moses made the covenant with God. All the unborn generations witnessed the event, too. The idea is astonishing: there is really no difference between the dead and the living. We’re all one and the same: a Platonic archetype. Ours is a world that stresses individuality. The shaping of identity comes as we understand what distinguished us from our parents, our siblings, our neighbors. Yet our differences are minuscule, insignificant. We’re really all one single individual: the first and last human in the Garden of Eden. md: Do you have personal memories of the Shema? is: When I was little, I remember religious Jews in Mexico, where I grew up, repeating it to exhaustion in synagogue. I also knew it was in art, books, and other artifacts. I didn’t understand its meaning but was mesmerized by its repetition. Why so frequently? What is the ultimate value of prayer? Can a series of lines organized in verses have healing power? That, after all, is the idea of the mantra in Eastern religions. I’m the product of converging traditions. My father comes from an assimilated family with little connection to God. My paternal grandfather died when I was four. The only thing I remember about him is that he gave me a bicycle as a birthday present. I don’t believe my paternal grandmother attended synagogue even during the High Holidays. My mother’s side was far more devout. Her own grandfather was a learned man and a book peddler. Several of my cousins are orthodox Jews. One of them is a rabbi in the Mexican Jewish community. In my twenties,

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I loosely contemplated the idea of joining the rabbinate. From my mother I inherited an intellectual tradition and from my father I learned to be a skeptic. Attending synagogue for me is a private affair. I follow the service gregariously. I recite the prayers. I read the Torah. I stand up and sit down, just like everyone else. As I perform these duties, I ask myself if they are empty and mechanical. Not really, I conclude. I could easily avoid the whole performance, but I always find myself coming back. What I’m looking for is intellectual enlightenment as well as spiritual contemplation. For me praying has less to do with a specific text than with a personalized channel to the divine. That channel opens up when I’m engaged in debates about sacred texts and while in synagogue when I am part of a large community of believers. The feeling of strength and comfort I encounter are essential to me. Every time I read the Shema, I think of the historical context in which it was written and, similarly, of the millions of Jews who converge in the prayer in different parts of the world. And of the story “The Aleph” by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. md: “The Aleph” figures prominently in your book Resurrecting Hebrew. is: Borges uses the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet to describe a mysterious object he finds in the basement of someone’s house. The aleph is a small circumference, smaller in size than my fist, through which he is able to see the whole universe. The Shema is exactly the same: a kaleidoscope. One could recount all of Jewish history using the prayer as its leitmotif. Or maybe as its true protagonist. md: And, again as you suggest in Resurrecting Hebrew, Hebrew letters are based on pictographs. Translating the letters into original pictographs is an exercise that brings into view how ancient Hebrews saw the world in a conceptual way. The aleph is an ox. The Hebrew word el begins with aleph (ox) and ends with lamed (a staff). Jews, the stiff-necked people, are stubborn. It is God’s staff that puts them in order. This approach has infinite possibilities. One could convert all the letters in the Torah into such symbols. This is curious because

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Judaism, as a monotheistic religion in open war against idolatry, that is, against visual representations, still uses Hebrew letters as images. For instance, in some versions the ayin, the final letter of the Shema, “Hear,” is made purposely larger. So is the dalet at the end of echad, One. Ayin’s original pictogram was an eye, while the dalet was a door. Together they make ed, “witness,” because a life lived with justice meant witnessing God’s way. is: They also make ad, “eternity.” Another exegesis states that the dalet rabatit is to avoid confusion with acher instead of echad. In the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, their vicissitudes through history, one finds the DNA of the Jewish people: who we are, why we live the way we do, what we believe in. md: It’s your central argument in Resurrecting Hebrew. is: What is the Bible if not the almost infinite variation of the twenty-two Hebrew letters of the alphabet? md: Almost infinite . . . is: One of the Kabbalistic terms for the divine is Ein Sof, which in Hebrew means “without end.” Yet the Bible has a beginning, a middle, and an end, the same cyclical pattern all living creatures, and the stories they foster, are trapped in.

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Adam’s Partners “It is not good for man to be alone”

mordecai drache: I want us to focus on the first chapters of Genesis, from the myth of Creation to the Tower of Babel. First, let me ponder. You’ve said elsewhere that if the Bible ended up today on the desk of a New York editor, it would get edited. Let’s start off then with a role play. Imagine for a second that I’m the literary agent who represents Philip Roth, Erica Jong, Woody Allen, and Cynthia Ozick. We’ve had lunch several times, gone to all the same parties, schmoozed and networked with all the same people. I’ve called you up on a Monday morning and said, “The Bible is destined to be a best seller, something that is sure to be read even more than Shakespeare, destined to be a classic. It’s a bit long, a bit confusing. It’s heavy in sex and violence, but somehow I have the feeling that it will make it past the religious censors. Feminists will hate it. They’ll say it’s sexist. Most gays will hate it, too. They’ll call it homophobic.” How will you answer?

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ilan stavans: You’re selling me the Bible? As an editor, I would buy it in an instant. But I’m sure some colleagues at the New York office of the publishing house where I presumably work would want it cut. My argument to them is that classics are always imperfect. But the Bible is not only imperfect, it is also infinite. Every generation reads it differently. Our qualms with it aren’t those of previous readers. It survives because it pays no attention to qualms. It just is. Plus, the Bible, in my opinion, is literature at its rawest. By this I mean a literature that delivers the story at its most essential, that is, its most mythical. Myth is a story based on legend, often with questionable historical roots, concerning one or more heroic figures whose behavior is showcased in order to establish how nature works. It’s the opposite of a novel, at least in the modern sense of the term, where the author offers a description—replete with detail—about psychological, social, political, and religious mores. md: Although I haven’t thought about the Bible in those terms, I find your proposal enlightening. The Bible is almost completely action centered. There’s no scene-setting through adjectives that appeal to smell, touch, or other senses, no depictions of body language that communicate the nonverbal meanings, and although there are lengthy descriptions of the temple, priestly garments, and rituals, they are in the form of how-tos. is: In contrast, in a novel by William Faulkner—As I Lay Dying, for example—the reader is given a plethora of details to allow the stream of consciousness of fifteen different narrators establish their own distinct personalities. All these perspectives, and the details they entail, allow the reader to get a Rashomon-like picture of a family’s quest to bury the mother figure, Addie Bundren. Or a novel by Henry James, The Bostonians, offers a portrait of political figures through the traits of three characters: Basil Ransom, Olive Chancellor, and Verena Tarrant. Since James wants the reader to believe his cast is real, he infuses it with a variety of minutiae on life in Boston in the 1880s. The novelist makes his description compelling through the particulars: being a carpenter, carrying a

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cast, having extrasensory perception, drinking tea, or talking about feminism, reform, and newspapers in New England in the late nineteenth century. It might be argued, obviously, that one shouldn’t compare an item written three thousand years ago with a contemporary narrative. A modern author is, indeed, influenced by elements he knows but were unknown then. The descriptive depth of traits of the Bible should be compared with other texts such as the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Popol Vuh, not with Faulkner, Henry James, or F. Scott Fitzgerald. We know more about Oedipus thanks to Sigmund Freud, not to Aeschylus. Or Julius Caesar thanks to Shakespeare, rather than Suetonius. Still, the Bible consistently goes to the bare bones of the story. Descriptions about how a character might look are almost nonexistent. The narrator is always succinct and straightforward. The less is said, the better the outcome. And the reader doesn’t have an entrance into a character’s soul. No stream of consciousness, for instance. Even in the book of Job, the protagonist’s ambivalence toward the divine is acknowledged not in order to understand his psychological frailties. In other words, Job’s dilemma is prescriptive, not descriptive. md: Right, because Job communicates his anguish verbally. There’s no description of the pain he is feeling. Does this mean that biblical characters don’t have inner lives? is: What is “inner life” in literature? A sense the reader has that a character has doubts. Inner life, therefore, is a feature of modernity. It wasn’t around in classical time. What makes Odysseus in the Odyssey appealing is that his actions, and his dialogue, speak for him. But Homer doesn’t explain what his character is thinking and how thought is the traction he uses for his actions. Don Quixote, on the other hand, in his conversations with Sancho Panza, allows us to appreciate his dreamlike nature. He tells the reader what he hopes and fears. Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, and other Shakespearean creations, through their engagement with others, and especially by means of monologues, offer a parallel between the internal and external realms. One

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might argue that the biblical characters aren’t designed for the reader but for God, but that is a solipsistic approach. The Bible isn’t meant for the divine but for humans. md: Let me orient our dialogue toward Adam and Eve. is: Even though the national cycle chronicled in the Bible goes from a spontaneous, unforeseen start (Abraham being chosen by God), to the rise and collapse of the Davidic dynasty, onward to the debacle—internal and external—the various prophets go through as carriers of the divine message. This cycle isn’t the equivalent of a person’s life from infancy to old age but, instead, the encounter between responsible partners who, in the span of their relationship, experience all sorts of contradictory feelings toward one another. Indeed, the relationship between God and his people, Jacob’s descendants, is one of the most tortured love stories ever told. For what is the Bible if not a romance that alternates between terms of endearment and explosions of hate, oscillating from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other, as in an intense romantic relationship? That relationship includes moments of erotic attraction, described in the biblical narrative in concrete as well as in metaphorical ways, but also moments of rational engagement. md: Yet throughout the Torah there are several references to God as father. is: An instance is Isaiah 64:8: “But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter, and we all are the works of thy hand.” But it goes without saying that these references are metaphorical, at least for contemporary readers. The Bible might be read in numerous ways. Indeed, another one of them is the relationship between God and the people of Israel not as lovers but as father and child, Lord and servant, etcetera. In other words, as a relationship of authority in which God is in control and the Israelites are subalterns. md: So there’s a flux. is: Religion offers a narrative through which to understand one’s suffering, and for those relating to it to conceptualize that suffering. Human drama, in and of itself, has no meaning.

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Things happen without an explanation. But the absence of an explanation is too much to bear. Religion offers a rationale to our emotions. For instance, the randomness of an automobile accident in which an eighteen-year-old dies. Such a death is unbearable. By suggestion that God has a master plan, there is an afterlife, religion allows for a degree of solace. Plus, religion is about control, about setting limits to human behavior. Or, in different terms, about defining freedom not as the capacity to do anything I want, but as the capacity to discern between what is good and what isn’t. The capacity and the responsibility. md: When I go to synagogue, I ask the same questions as you do about whether or not I believe in what I’m doing, as I stand when everyone stands, sit when everyone sits, and recite prayers whose words I don’t necessarily believe. Yet, I feel the need to hear them and to sing them occasionally. Judging by your comments about all Jews having been at Sinai, including those as yet unborn—speaking metaphorically—you feel the kin connection that Judaism requires. Would you ever give up that connection? is: No, because religion is about community. md: If I understand you correctly, religion is about community and control. A person can’t enter a community without adjusting to its expectations. is: To its rules and regulations. One might be able to test that code of behavior, but if the push is too strong the result might be banishment. Think of Spinoza’s herem, for example. At first he was described by the Jewish community in Amsterdam as a wunderkind, but when his ideas became clear, to him and others, his presence became untenable. Rebellion has its limits. md: In another part of your conversation with Verónica Albin called “God’s Translators” you discuss this view from the perspective of language. is: Take the use of terms connected with monarchy to refer to God: king, palace, crown. . . . The relationship between God and humans is not one of equals.

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md: Let’s talk about Marc Chagall’s painting La Création de l’Homme. Does Chagall see God as an artist? is: Painted between 1956 and 1958, it is housed at the Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall in Nice, France. Chagall’s surrealist bent is apparent in the dramlike approach; the red sun has a rotating quality, and the history of humankind, and the Jewish people in particular, evolves around it. The yellow in the upper left corner is in sharp contrast with the large portions of oceanic blue. The Torah is handed down from behind a cloud, but Jesus Christ on the cross is already present in the foreground. (For Chagall, Jesus was a symbol of martyrdom.) The most striking image is the angel, holding on to a victim: Is it Isaac? The fact that, with the horses inserted in the water and a fish flying in the air, the victim is unidentified suggests that indiscriminate suffering is what history is all about—suffering and redemption. md: The early chapters of Genesis, which are among my favorite books in the Bible, have nothing to do with Jews. I would like to quote Richard Friedman’s translation of the Pentateuch: The five books of Moses are “so focused on the people of Israel,” Friedman argues, “that one can underestimate the overwhelming significance of its opening section. The first eleven chapters . . . are about the relationship between God and the entire human community. The relationship doesn’t go well and after ten generations the deity decides to destroy the mass and start over with a single virtuous man’s family. But it turns out choosing a virtuous individual does not turn out that this individual’s descendents will be virtuous as well. Another ten generations pass, and humans in general are not a planet full of Noahs, so once again the focus narrows to a single virtuous person: Abraham . . . an individual who will produce a family that will ultimately bring blessing to all the families of the earth.” Non-Israelites aren’t any more or less important than Jews, or Hebrews, or Israelites in the Pentateuch, even if Jewish fundamentalists and anti-Semites, reading the Bible in a remarkably similar way, believe otherwise.

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is: Up until the episode of Abraham, the Bible isn’t the story of a nation. It is the story of a handful of cataclysmic events. md: Is there a connection between God’s love and the creation of the world? is: Nowhere is the word love used in the early chapters of Genesis. md: And yet, in the words of Isaiah, we are clay being molded in God’s hands. Presumably, there is some care in the process. Adam, the first man, comes from the earth, or rather “dust from the earth.” Adam means “earth.” Clay is also made from earth. is: True, there is an intrinsic, irrevocable connection between humans and the earth. You’ve already established the semantic link between Adam and adama. We are the soil and the soil is us. The implications of this are clear: God makes us from soil and also makes us be in control of our environment. The image of the medieval Golem created in Prague by the Maharal uses the same motif: the magician uses the secrets of the alphabet to make a dummy from the soil outside the synagogue. And in Adam there’s also the semantic root of dam, “blood,” the liquid of life. Fernando Botero, the Colombian painter famous for portraying fat characters, has a delightful image showing Adam and Eve in a domestic encounter. What I like about it is the earthly nature of the depiction: the couple is in a room, he’s sitting in bed, and both he and Eve are enjoying apples. Sinful? Perhaps, but certainly not shameful. md: Speaking of Adam, there are two stories about him. In the first, God creates Adam and his wife, with no mention of materials, and commands Adam to subdue the earth and the animals. In the second, God creates Adam from the dust and proclaims, “It is not good for man to be alone,” and forms woman from Adam’s rib, or side, depending on the translation. Adam the second names the animals. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik formulated a thesis based on the two Adams, with the first representing the natural work community and Adam the second representing the covenantal community. The act of naming arguably plays into this. Naming means familiarity. He names the animals.

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is: And Adam not only names his wife, Eve, but also knows (yadah) her. In the Torah, most sexual encounters are about “knowledge.” From the story of Adam and Eve onward, to engage in sex is to physically know your partner, unless the reference is to fornication, in which case the text usually chooses a more demeaning terminology. The modern conception of love not as legally binding but as a turbulent romantic encounter between two people is a later cultural development. Not that it wasn’t experienced in biblical times. It just isn’t represented textually the way it would be in Abélard and Héloïse’s correspondence (think of Historia Calamitatum), and the Romantic poets, for instance. As I state in Love and Language, romantic love is a fairly recent concept. Etymologically, it is linked to Romanticism, the nineteenth-century aesthetic movement that stressed the connection between the individual and nature, the vulnerability of human personality, and the capriciousness of human relationships. But its roots date back to medieval troubadour poetry, chivalry novels, and Petrarch’s oeuvre. In other words, the concept is alien to the Bible and Plato’s idea of love, neither of which viewed love as a teleological quest for personal fulfillment. The only exception, as I’ve suggested to you, is the relationship between God and the people of Israel. I’m not saying that a man and a woman aren’t suddenly attracted to each other in the biblical narrative. md: Suddenly Adam and Eve are attracted to each other. Is their story a romance? is: It’s a relationship based on companionship. And it is equally unbalanced, Adam being at the center and Eve appearing in order to cure his loneliness. This is clear from Genesis 2:18: “And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.” The next lines are about beasts of the field and fowl of the air. In Genesis 2:20, Adam is still unsatisfied. This prompts God once again to take action. Genesis 2:21–23: “And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed

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up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” The passage concludes with a forceful statement in Genesis 2:24: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” In other words, not love but companionship. md: Even if the word “love” isn’t part of the narrative, should we infer it? is: I don’t see why we should. md: Is companionship part of love? is: Yes, but love is much more: an emotion that denotes not only need to be with someone else but a desire to possess that other person. md: Yet, at Jews we are supposed to love God with all our soul, our heart, and our might. Can we truly possess him? If so, what does it mean to possess him, he who is transcendent? is: The answer to your question is embedded in centuries of theological discussion, from Yehuda Halevi and Maimonides to views of the divine after the Holocaust. The God of Genesis, it seems to me, is transcendent. He creates the world at his will and interacts in it by keeping a distance. That distance eventually gave room to gnosticism, in which a demiurge, a proxy for God, rules the universe and humans are divine souls trapped in a material world. Furthermore, it results in mystical visions, modeled from the Zohar to Lurianic Kabbalah, in which there is reciprocity in the relationship between God and man: man seeks God as much as God seeks man. This view was eventually adapted in the existential philosophy of Martin Buber, Franz Rozensweig, and Abraham Joshua Heschel. Moreover, the search for possession is only available when reciprocity between the two realms, the heavens and the earth, is available. This isn’t the case in Genesis. md: Another important issue brings forth a moral dimension. In the beginning, God doesn’t just create the heaven and the earth. He

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also creates good and evil. When Adam and Eve get banished from the Garden of Eden, for eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, it sets in place a theme that remains for the rest of the narrative: banishment. But before being banished, the following curse is offered: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” is: Tashuv, in Hebrew, means either “return” or “repent.” Banishment and return are mirror images in the Bible. To be expelled and to be embraced. Ours is a God of mixed messages. md: Is banishment part of God’s action, then? is: Not only of God’s action but of God’s plan. The biblical God enjoys handing down punishments. md: But how can exile be a manifestation of God’s action? is: The lesson is clear: if you don’t do what I say, I don’t want to be near you. But it’s better represented in the maxim: I can’t be with you, I can’t be without you. md: “I can’t be with you. I can’t be without you.” You can almost hear Tom Waits singing these very words. Does the covenant between Israel and God represent tashuv, “return”? Is tashuv God’s attempt to replicate the relationship he had with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? is: Yes, the covenant is defined by a relationship of expansion and contraction, apparent already in the episode of Adam and Eve. Another interpretation famously appears in John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667, revised 1674). md: You’ve written about Milton’s poem. is: It is intriguing to see the role Milton, in the seventeenth century (Milton was a contemporary of Spinoza, who was his junior by almost twenty-five years) calls for Satan to play. In Paradise Lost, an epic using past mythology and high rhetoric structurally resembling Virgil’s Aeneid, Satan is an ambitious being, an angel but one with superior talents, capable of probing his creator. Indeed, when I read Milton’s epic poem I can’t but think of the book of Job, where Satan performs a similar role: tempting God, almost usurping his power. Not accidentally, William Blake,

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another British deist, once described Milton as “a true Poet, and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.” md: How does Milton look at Adam and Eve? is: As vulnerable creatures at Satan’s expense. For him the Fall, the ultimate Christian concept, is the result of Satan’s temptation. Adam and Eve are part of a typical couple: they need each other. Blake’s illustrations of Paradise Lost, for instance “The Temptation and Fall of Eve,” make their dilemma graphic. In it both Adam and Eve are anatomically perfect. While Adam looks at the heavens, the snake, with the head of a dragon, surrounds Eve and gives her the apple. Blake did the piece in 1808. He nurtured a heretical view, conceiving Satan as an admirably rebellious spirit. This heretical stand reminds me of a heterodox artist much closer to us: R. Crumb (a.k.a. Robert Dennis Crumb), the subversive cartoonist known for the characters of Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, and Devil Girl. In 2009, Crumb published a delightful rendition of Genesis that forces popular culture and biblical narrative into a head-on collision. The sequence on the creation of the world has a grotesque quality to it. It gives me the impression of watching a porno movie. Not surprisingly, Crumb’s book comes with a warning on the cover: “Adult supervision recommended for minors.” This is a version of the Bible for LSD users. md: Is Adam and Eve’s plight God-made? is: Not necessarily, in my opinion. In Milton’s poem, God seems almost impotent, a mere spectator. md: One of the punishments against Adam and his descendants is the growth of thorns and thistles on fruit, making it harder to access for humans and animals alike. Here the earth emerges as a difficult and inhospitable place. This meant care had to be taken when working with it, as suggested in Leviticus 25:2–4: “When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a Sabbath unto the Lord. Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather the fruit thereof. But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the Lord: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune

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thy vineyard.” There’s a simplistic argument going around suggesting that because Adam, the first human, is granted “dominion” over the earth, that “Judeo-Christian thought” is anti-environment. But the line from Leviticus is an agricultural convention that spans across cultures and periods. This is an extremely effective way to ensure that the earth regenerates itself. is: The land also needs the Sabbath. md: In modern-day Israel, ultra-Orthodox Jews, wanting to follow the word of the law but not its spirit, have resorted to doing such things like selling their land to Israeli Arabs, which misses the point of the law and speaks to a certain kind of intellectually hair-splitting nonsense that occurs with interpretation when the word of the Bible conflicts with modern circumstances. From an ecological standpoint, allowing specific tracts of land every seven years to fallow (all at once would be unrealistic) would be a very good idea at a time in which the earth is suffering. It would also be more in keeping with the spirit of Leviticus 25:1–7 than simply selling to Arabs, all the while using chemical pesticides and genetically modified seeds. (Now that’s unkosher.) Interestingly, during the jubilee every fifty years in the Bible, land is given back to a person in debt, and Israelites forced to become slaves can be released. (Slavery in the Bible is unpalatable and offensive to the modern mindset, but this was more than two thousand years before the modern idea about workers’ rights.) Thus good, sound, “organic” ecological farming was practiced in tandem with even distribution of wealth. The moral of the story is that with love comes responsibility. Love as an emotion is all well and good, but without solid rules outlining how to treat each other it isn’t enough. Even people who love each other don’t always know how to treat each other correctly. Another human connection comes in the tale of Cain and Abel. Cain and Abel are Adam and Eve’s sons. One day when they make sacrifices, God prefers Abel’s sacrifice of a first-born calf over Cain’s offering of fruit. God doesn’t really say what’s wrong with his sacrifice but, because of it, Cain kills Abel. God’s silence

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as to the reasons for his preference must play a role in the anger Cain feels, which leads to his crime. What’s the subtext? is: The story of Cain and Abel is sorrowful. md: You have a younger brother about whom you wrote an entire chapter in On Borrowed Words. is: Yes, and I hear the reverberations of the biblical tale with my own ears. The tension between siblings comes just after the disgrace that falls on their parents, Adam and Eve, who have been unable to keep the simplest of commands: keep away from the Tree of Knowledge. God, in response, has expelled them from the Garden of Eden. And now, in the second generation, comes a story of fratricide. It contains in itself another form of shame. md: Family shame. is: It starts with the first line in Genesis 4: “And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord.” Eve gets pregnant not in the Garden of Eden but outside. In other words, the intercourse between man and woman doesn’t take place after eating from the Tree of Knowledge. It occurs later, in exile. The product of that intercourse is Cain, who in Hebrew is described as a “man.” The word used in the original is ish, which is strange because it denotes an adult, not a baby. Nowhere else in the Bible is such a word used to describe a child. It is as if the authors were suggesting that Cain was already an adult when he came into this world. In ancient sources, on the other hand, the use of ish meant that Cain was not a human but an angel. This was interpreted at times as a synonym of the devil: Cain as the son of the devil. Every civilization has folk tales about rival siblings. As you imply, this one doesn’t have two players but three: Cain, Abel, and God. For God is the force that comes between them, dividing them. He prefers one sibling to another and makes that preference clear. He then punishes the killing sibling, not recognizing that it was his interference that pulled the siblings apart. But his punishment also shows a form of preference, since Cain was, we are told in Genesis 4:11–12: “cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy

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hand. When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.” To which Cain replies in Genesis 4:13–14: “My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me.” God responds emblematically: “Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.” That is, the divine stigmatizes Cain but he also protects him from others. md: Why? is: One simple answer is that Cain is the last representative of the second generation of humans that God has made. Destroying him implies bringing his creation to an end. md: I want you to track down a bit. When God asks Cain where his brother is, he hesitates. is: God asks: “Where is Abel thy brother?” And Cain answers: “I know not. Am I my brother’s keeper?” md: Of course, God knows what has happened. is: Yet he asks, and in so doing, places the burden on Cain. God’s question is puzzling because from the first chapter of Genesis onward the portrait of the divine is that of an all-knowing entity. Shouldn’t he know where Abel is? md: I believe that God’s protection of Cain shows his love for justice. In protecting him from vengeance at the hands of others, Cain is actually forced to come to terms with what he did, to feel regret and guilt, but also to live to get past this and have a family and know the joy of family life. is: You’re right. Punishment has its limits. It is not meant to doom the criminal but to separate him temporarily from society in order for redemption to take place. md: Punishment is an important mechanism for the biblical God to make his message come across. is: For some commentators, including Saint Augustine, the story of Cain and Abel is about jealousy. In Civitatis Dei, which was

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written in the early fifth century, he states: “As the sin of jealousy grew overpowering within [Cain], he murdered his brother with malice aforethought. Such was the one who founded the earthly city. However, he symbolized the Jews, by whom Christ, shepherd of the flock of men, was killed. [It is Christ] whom Abel, shepherd of the flock of sheep, prefigures.” Clearly, Saint Augustine models Cain after Judas and Abel after Jesus. md: I can’t resist a little anecdote here. Once, when I was a child, after I read about Cain and Abel in a children’s version of the story, my father was looking for my brother. He asked me, “Have you seen Josh?” And I answered like Cain, in a rather snotty tone, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” My dad looked at me and said, “You know what the answer was when Cain said it?” I became quiet. “Yes,” he said emphatically. is: The Bible is our mirror. md: Let’s move to Noah and the Flood. is: The story is proof, if any was needed, of God’s wrath. md: In the story God makes a clean sweep of the human race with which he was disgusted. However, it was he, God, who placed the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden in the first place. It was he who created the serpent. is: It’s a theological quagmire Saint Augustine, Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas, Averroës, and others addressed. Is evil part of God? md: The implication is that it is. is: I’m not sure. In various parts of the Bible, it is angels such as Gabriel who serve as proxy, performing unpleasant acts devised by God. This strategy is present in the Christian gospels as well as in the Qur’an, which supposedly was dictated by the angel Gabriel to Mohammed. md: Why does God destroy the world in this story? is: Again, almost every civilization has its tale of a natural disaster that sets a misguided world in the right direction. There is, for example, the epic of Gilgamesh, where a flood is also present. Genesis 6:3–5 reads: “And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those

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days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” It seems that God is eager to prove that just as he is able to create out of nothing, he can also dismantle his creation. I am puzzled by the line “every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” After all, he is responsible for what is before him. But, as Maimonides would ponder centuries later, God doesn’t necessarily have control over the imagination of his creation, over dreams, over artistic visions. Those are a manifestation of human choices and, as such, capable of mischief. md: The description of the Flood is powerful. is: And beautiful, too. God prepares Noah for the natural disaster about to sweep the earth. Genesis 7:6–12 reads: “And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth. And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth. There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah. And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.” md: Forty days and forty nights. is: A precise mathematical number. It makes me think of Gabriel García Márquez’s depictions in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Time in the Bible doesn’t apply to the measures we use at the present times. md: Ilan, would you discuss the Hebrew word nish’chata, translated into English as “corrupted”?

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is: Genesis 6:12 reads: “And God looked upon the earth, and it was corrupt (nish’chata), for all flesh had corrupted (hish-cheet) his way upon the earth.” The concept of corruption is curious. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary describes it thus: “impairment of integrity, virtue or moral principle; depravity, decay, and/or an inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means, a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct, and/ or an agency or influence that corrupts.” The implication is that humans have gone astray. They have become depraved, unworthy of their own talents. md: The Flood not only refers to the human fall. It also has strong environmental symbolism. is: Quite pertinent nowadays. Whenever a natural disaster takes place—think of the tsunami in Thailand in December 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in August 2005—it is described as having “biblical proportions.” The climate changes, a result of industrialization and overpopulation, give the Noah story a cautionary quality. md: Let’s talk about the animals, which are brought in two by two, one pair of each, except for the “pure animals” of which seven pairs are brought so that Noah and his family can properly make sacrifices. is: God kills off the rest of the animals, minus, it implies, sea creatures. Fish and sea creatures are not mentioned. This implies that God has no issue with them, though he does with other animals. For instance, there’s a lovely description of Leviathan, a sea creature popularly pictured as a whale, though not necessarily so, who later swallows Jonah, in Psalm 104:24–26: O Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom thou have made them all: The earth is full of thy riches. So is this great and wide sea, Wherein are things creeping things innumerable, Both small and great beasts. There go the ships:

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There is that leviathan, whom thou hast made To play therein.

However, later on, in Isaiah, the description of Leviathan is more foreboding, and is cursed by him. Still, he features in Jonah as a kind of protector, swallowed but kept safe. md: Do you think it significant that creatures of the sea go unmentioned in the story? is: An interesting question. Should it be seen as an oversight? Taking that approach automatically views the Bible as imperfect, which goes against the institutional interpretation that it is the word of God and, therefore, impeccable. I don’t have an answer. md: Another question: how to explain the massive killing of animals in the story? Is it necessary given that it’s humans with whom God is disgusted? is: Animals don’t have the capacity to discern. They don’t make moral decisions. This means that, no matter their actions, they cannot be damned in God’s eyes. The Noah story results from the Adam and Eve story and is its direct corollary. That is, just as Adam is presented as the orchestrator of his environment, animals and all, Noah represents the leader of his habitat. Each of them rises and perishes with it. md: If so, Noah doesn’t choose virtuous animals for his ark. Or does he? is: No, he doesn’t. In fact, it isn’t Noah’s choice but God’s. In Genesis 7:1–5, it says: “And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth. For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. And Noah did according unto all that the Lord commanded him.” God’s plan, as delivered to Noah, is concise: animal pairs through multiples of seven.

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md: Then can you talk about the connection between Noah and Adam? is: Adam is the first man, the organizer, the coordinator of life. But he isn’t a model of goodness. Noah, instead, represents righteousness. He is the last man, the survivor, the seer whose mission leads him to renew the earth through human selection (as opposed to Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection). md: In this particular episode, God sees Noah as the vessel through which his progeny will live up to the moral standards, and yet there isn’t actually any great deal of detail in Genesis explaining what it was precisely that made Noah an attractive choice for humanity’s continued existence. It merely says (in Friedman’s translation): “Noah was a virtuous man. He was unblemished in his generation. Noah walked with God.” As readers, we can imagine what made him “unblemished” and virtuous, but textually, there is no explanation of how Noah lived his life pre-Flood, or how that marked him distinct from others. So why does God favor him? is: The text is silent about it, just as it is silent about Cain’s inner feelings toward Abel when God doesn’t interfere between them. md: What vision of love is being promoted here? is: I’m not sure it’s love. In only eight chapters the reader has gone from birth to death, from chaos to order and back to chaos, from God’s decision to create the world to his conclusion that it has run amok in rapid succession and that, in consequence, it needs rectifying. It’s important to stress the type of narrative the first chapters of the Bible deliver; they center on individual characters facing moral dilemmas: Who am I? What relationship do I have with others? What’s the right choice? And how do I connect with the world entire? md: After the Flood, God makes his covenant never to make a clean sweep of humanity again. is: The word assigned to God is briti, “my covenant.” It’s the first time the word is used in the Bible. God will come to regret his pact. md: How so?

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is: By witnessing, time and again, human corruption. For instance, in Sodom and Gomorrah. And, in repeated fashion, at the time of the prophets. md: God also chooses Noah’s progeny under the impression that it will yield virtuous individuals. is: Noah, the reader is told, went into the ark along with his wife, his sons, and their wives. md: But it doesn’t turn out to be the case. After the flood, Ham, Noah’s youngest son, laughs and mocks his father after the father drinks too much one night. He then falls asleep naked in his home. The good sons Shem and Japheth cover up their father, so that they don’t see him. is: You ask: Does God misjudge? Answer: Of course. md: As a punishment for Ham’s mockery, Noah, in Genesis 9:20–23, curses Ham’s descendants, the Canaanites, saying that they will be Shem’s servants—the future Israelites. is: The biblical narrative is about human imperfection. It is also about God’s miscalculations. md: The Talmud interpreted Noah’s curse in several disturbing ways. Some treated it as a euphemism for Ham’s sodomizing his own father, perhaps because it is such a harsh punishment. Others said that the punishment for Ham’s descendants, the future Cushites or Ethiopians, is their “smitten skin,” the darkening of skin. is: Ah, race and the Bible! Or better, race in the Bible. There is much discussion among sociologists today of how Jews, especially in Europe and the United States (for example, Ashkenazi Jews), became white. Whiteness, in this sense, is a metaphor for success. But it brings forth a controversial question: What skin color do the characters in the early chapters of Genesis have? The text, once again, is silent. Yet the curse you’ve invoked, as announced by the rabbinical exegetes of the Talmud, implies that blackness is a form of punishment. This view is at once partial and misguided. There are plenty of examples in the Bible where blackness is approached through a positive lens, from Ebed Melech, who saved Jeremiah, to Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, to the Queen of Sheba. However,

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it is important to remember that as rabbinical interpretation unravels in Jewish history, from the destruction of the First Temple, in 586 b.c.e., to the present, whiteness has been a tacit, if unacknowledged, motif. md: You argue that blackness is treated through a positive lens in the Bible, using several characters, Ebed Melech and Jethro among them, as proof. However, in my eyes it isn’t a question of how blackness is viewed but whether these authors cared one way or another. You’ve already established that the Bible doesn’t provide description of people’s appearance. These stories date to before 586 b.c.e. Race, as a pseudoscientific category, doesn’t show up until later. Sadly, by the destruction of the First Temple some form of proto-racism was already forming, despite race not having been shaped as a concept until later. Jews as a race, and Judaism as a race-specific religion, is what anti-Semites often claim it to be. Do you believe this concept comes from the Bible? is: Not in the modern sense of the term. Even though contempt on the basis of skin color appears to be ancient, “race” as an extrinsic theme that has defined Jewishness has been extant only since the eighteenth century. Sander L. Gilman, the author of Jewish SelfHatred, has produced incisive studies on the history of the Jewish body, and the theme of race is one Gilman pays attention to. md: Most sections in the Bible seem utterly unconcerned with skin color. Can you discuss the word “Semite”? is: The Oxford English Dictionary defines Semite as a member of the Semite-speaking people of the Near East and Northern Africa. Those people included the Arabs, Aramaeans, Babylonians, Carthaginians, Ethiopians, Hebrews, and Phoenicians. In the Bible, it refers to the descendants of Shem, one of Noah’s sons, from whom the biblical genealogy is supposed to have evolved. His sons were Elam, Asshur, Aram, Arpachshad, and Lud, and he also had a number of daughters. Abram was one of Arpachshad’s descendants. However, the term “Semite,” more often than not, is a synonym of Jew, even though it should also address, at least, Arabs.

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md: Is “anti-Semitism” a misnomer, then? Radical leftists, usually in an anti-Zionist context, claim that it unfairly focuses on Jews. Are they correct, or maybe partially correct? is: As I said before, etymology isn’t a science but a sport. md: It’s also highly politicized. Let’s talk about the dove. is: If the snake in the Bible symbolizes temptation, the dove represents hope. The dove is ubiquitous in Jewish art and literature, from Marc Chagall to Isaac Bashevis Singer. Nowadays the dove with an olive branch announces peace. After the fowl, it is the first bird mentioned in the narrative. But it has other functions as well, as in Leviticus 5:7 and 12:8, where the dove replaces the lamb as a sacrificial animal. md: Let’s now talk about the Tower of Babel. is: Etymologically, Babel is the root of the English word “babble.” Both terms, in turn, come from the name Babylon. md: In the story, humans start thinking they’re too powerful, and so they create a tower that reaches the heavens. Wanting to put them in their place, God gives each individual who helped build the tower a different language so that they can’t understand one another. As a result, they begin to fight and are eventually sent to live away from one another. The moral is that as humans we can’t get too arrogant. is: It also suggests that a single human language might bring people together, but it also makes them compete with the divine. md: In Resurrecting Hebrew, you talk about the Tower of Babel as a cautionary tale about universalism. is: In light of the Jewish talent for acquiring languages, I find the chapter at once inspiring and perplexing. On one side, it suggests that, indeed, if God doesn’t favor a single tongue, our duty is to learn as many as possible. On the other side, it implies that the dream of a universal language like Esperanto, for instance, is doomed. Eliezer Zamenhoff, its creator, sought, in the middle of the nineteenth century, to produce a laboratory tongue that would bring people together, fostering global peace. It was, like the resurrection of Hebrew by Eliezer Ben Yehuda (another Eliezer), a by-product of the nationalistic fever of the epoch.

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md: So is this episode then about God’s love for polyglotism? is: No, I don’t believe the Tower of Babel displays God’s love of languages. md: How important is the Babel story to the biblical narrative? is: It’s essential. Just like the story of the deluge, it showcases God’s fury. Just as he is able to create the world, he is capable of destroying it. It inspires fear. MS: Gustave Doré envisions the episode in epic terms. is: He had a French Romantic sensibility, ad hoc to the nineteenth century in which the artist lived. In my personal library I have a large collection of Doré’s reproductions: his renditions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Dante’s The Divine Comedy, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel, and my favorite, Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote of La Mancha. Doré did his Bible images in 1866. They were an enormous success. These lithographs are populated by humans in humbling positions. A feeling of movement prevails. The one of the Tower of Babel has a half-naked man with his arms up to heaven. Humans have just descended from the tower. Chaos is everywhere. No one understands the other. Curiously, the proportion of the tower isn’t right: it’s too small for the human figures in the picture. Is Doré suggesting that the architecture wasn’t as magnificent as the biblical episode makes us believe? Doré’s piece on the Deluge is equally hypnotic. A mermaidlike mother protects her children and a cat on a rock in the middle of the water as she weathers the rainstorm. There are different versions of the same image by Doré, and this one—for a change— is in color. In all of them, the approach is the same: rather than seeing Noah and his ark, we are invited to witness the tragic demise of the victims condemned by the divine. In The Deluge, a threatening coyote (or is it a wolf?) lurks imposingly in the background with a prey in its mouth. Clearly the creatures of the night have taken over the earth. Those creatures, in Doré’s universe, symbolize confusion. md: You’ve worked with Barry Moser, who did the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible.

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is: Moser is an extraordinary illustrator from Chattanooga, Tennessee, whose work fits in Doré’s tradition. Aside from his images for Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Frankenstein, and Huckleberry Finn, he did—and it’s the climax of his career— the Pennyroyal, a project on which he embarked on his own accord, without a publisher’s support. If I have any regrets about that Bible it is that few people have seen it. Moser produced only five hundred copies. It includes some 250 engravings in a material called Resingrave, a synthetic medium invented by Richard Woodman in Redwood City, California, that approximates the qualities of boxwood for engraving. Moser teaches at Smith College, not far from where I live. He used human models for his engravings. For instance, for Jesus Christ he used a local Italian chef. He asked him to come to his studio, dressed him with a tunic and a crown of thorns, and spilled Hershey’s chocolate on his torso. He then took a number of photographs. The result is outstanding! For the image of Jonah in the story about the whale, he did a self-portrait. His depiction of Adam and Eve is enchanting. They’re walking naked down a lush garden (it could be the Amazon), but their physiques are the opposite of sexual. They look old, their protruding bellies signaling the autumn of life. Just the opposite view of what Adam and Eve have come to symbolize: youth, freshness . . . md: Did Borges base “The Library of Babel” in the biblical story? is: Borges wrote it in the forties, during his most inspired period, at a time he was conceiving “Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote,” “The Aleph,” “Funes the Memorious,“ and “Emma Zunz.” Strictly speaking, “The Library of Babel” isn’t a story, although it’s fiction. By the way, the art piece about the Tower of Babel that is closest to Borges’s vision is Pieter Brueghel’s Turmbau zu Babel, made in 1563 and housed at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The architectonic detail in it is astounding. Some scholars suggest it was inspired by the Roman Coliseum. Brueghel’s construction is as wide as it is tall—an immense beehive. It has the form of an ascending spiral, which might be the most recurrent geometrical form to depict the search for the divine.

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md: What’s the difference between a story and a fiction? is: For one thing, the piece doesn’t have a plot. Borges simply describes an imaginary library, which, we’re told in the first sentence, is a metaphor for the universe entire. md: Let’s discuss Genesis 2:18. God says: “It is not good that the man should be alone.” Is loneliness the absence of love? is: I believe it is. There’s self-love. But one can love oneself some of the time but cannot love oneself as the only expression of affection in life.

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d II

The Mission of Abraham “And I will bless them”

mordecai drache: I want to make Abraham’s journey the core of this chapter. Abraham is the seminal biblical character. He begets Isaac and Ishmael, through Sarai and Hagar. Both sons are blessed, their descendants made into great nations. Thematically, the Bible’s concern is with lineage, primarily Abraham’s lineage. Can you talk about lineage in the Bible? ilan stavans: Abraham is first Abram, an individual like any other. Nothing unique is mentioned about him, at least not in Genesis 12 through 15. In fact, it’s just the opposite. In the famous Lech-Lecha section, Genesis 12:1, it reads: “Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee.” md: There may not be any set of verses anywhere else in any other text that is as simultaneously beautiful and terrifying, comforting and foreboding, thought provoking and disturbing. Why is Abram chosen by God and not anyone else? What makes him stand out?

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is: The Bible is silent about this aspect, which, ironically, is crucial to the understanding of the entire biblical narrative. If, as you say, the tale is about lineage, and if it’s Abram who will become the first and most important patriarch, the one from whom the Jewish people will descend, and if Abram will be the central character unifying the three major Western religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, it should be clearer why he, and only he, is selected by God. But it isn’t, for whatever reason. Exegetes have suggested that since God’s ways are unexplainable, he, and he alone, knows why he chose Abram. Interestingly, in Joshua 24:2–3, it is said: “And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods. And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed, and gave him Isaac.” This passage adds some information unavailable in Genesis 12–15; it explains that Abram’s father, Terah, and Nachor’s father were idol worshipers: they “served other gods.” Their geographical location in the narrative is important. They lived on the other side of the Euphrates, in what is Iraq today, which means they were Chaldeans. The Chaldeans were known in the ancient world for their knowledge of the stars, that is, astrologers. And it was the Babylonians—especially the Chaldeans, a designation for people of the neo-Babylonian empire—who developed the art of divination until it became a quasi-scientific discipline. Eventually, the Talmud would decree that Jews cannot trust the stars, meaning that life isn’t ruled by randomness but by an all-powerful God. And God chose him, asking him to depart. Again, the passage doesn’t offer a tangible explanation for why Abram is the chosen one, even though it adds to what is related in Genesis: Abram came from Canaanite idolaters. You’re right: the concept of lineage is crucial. In selecting Abram, God requests that he become a migrant.

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md: Was he a migrant or a nomad? Did the same concept of borders exist then as it does now? The biblical story of Abraham says little about borders. is: I beg to differ. It’s mainly about borders, for instance when Abraham leaves Shkhem because of the Canaanites and goes to Bet El. His departure isn’t casual. It is part of a contract—in Hebrew, brit, meaning “covenant,” a word seldom used nowadays beyond the Bible. God tells his chosen one to pick up his belongings, leave his house, his family, his country, and travel to a new site. It’s a command: “Get up and go!” md: How often do immigrants have that clear a motivation? is: I’m not sure. Some immigrants—and I’m one of them—hear an internal voice telling them to leave. They come to the realization of their departure by other means when economic, political, and cultural forces converge to make their current status untenable. Theirs is a sacrifice: to leave behind everything one loves, to opt for the unknown. md: God promised to compensate Abram for his sacrifice. is: And generously. He tells Abram in Genesis 12:2–3: “And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” In return for the misery, he’ll turn his chosen follower into the head of a great nation. md: Initially, Abram is as a childless man. is: Having children will be God’s gift and part of his covenant. md: Are blessing and cursing opposites? is: They often are, I believe. md: The Hebrew alliteration is gorgeous, if not a little difficult for English speakers not used to the guttural CH to say: v’avarchecha m’varchecha. “And I will bless them that bless thee.” There’s no alliteration in the Hebrew verse umkalelcha a’or, which translates as, “And curse him that curseth thee.” With the blessing, the same root is used. Not so with the curse. Instead, two different words are used. Only in the English translation is the same word used twice.

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is: The command in Hebrew makes for inspired tonalities. md: Is this where the love story begins, between Abram and God, the two enamored with each other in the same way two people are in the first stage of a relationship? is: A love often too difficult to bear. md: Ilan, at this stage of the narrative, we’ve come across a few different exiles: the first exile from Eden; and Cain’s exile from his unnamed home. Maybe Noah’s journey is also a form of exile. In any event, you’ve called Abram’s departure a form of emigration. Isn’t it exile, though? He departs from Ur to the Negev, in southern Israel, and then to Egypt. is: We’re talking about a nomadic civilization. People were often on the move. However, the effort God asks Abram to make is far bigger than anything people were used to. He doesn’t ask him to move a few miles, to cross to the other side of a river. The mandate is to abandon everything, to start anew. In my eyes, it isn’t exile because exile implies a forced departure and an eventual return. Or at least it suggests that, through nostalgia, the person forced to depart never severs his liaison with the place once called home. But Abram doesn’t dwell on his past. He moves on to the place designed for him by God and starts afresh in it. He doesn’t think about his parents, his family, his country. This is the most emblematic aspect of his journey: Abram does as he is asked, without suffering too much. md: For Talmudic commentators, and probably for most Jews of all stripes who engage with the Bible, the episode of Abram and Sarai in Egypt, chronicled in Genesis 12 through 22, is troubling. The Pharaoh finds Sarai attractive. Fearing for his life, Abram lies, saying she’s his sister. Sarai joins Pharaoh’s harem. In return, Abram gets livestock. Then the house of Pharaoh is afflicted with unnamed illnesses. The episode ends with Abram, Sarai, their family, and newly acquired wealth (livestock and slaves) leaving the place. Abram, if I might suggest it, looks like a pimp. is: As a biblical character, Abram is constantly put to the test. After leaving his native Ur, he travels to Mesopotamia, and then to the land God has set for him: Canaan. But at the time Canaan was

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suffering from famine, so Abram departed for Egypt, where the episode with Sarai takes place. Even though there is, indeed, a pimp quality to his actions, I read this segment as another facet of Abram’s trial. That, it seems to be, is what the biblical authors, in their disparate efforts, want the reader to get: a vulnerable protagonist, at God’s mercy; and, perhaps more important, God as an omnipotent force eager to show his chosen servant the extent to which he’s ready to protect him, even if that protection results in a tarnished reputation among the Egyptians. md: Up until this stage in the narrative, Lot has a peripheral role. This changes when his servants and Abram’s fight over grazing space. After Abram and Lot break up the fight, the two separate amicably. Lot goes to Sodom, the region gets caught in a territorial dispute, and Lot, his family, and slaves are kidnapped. One of the servants escapes, making it to where Abram is. Abram gathers up his men to rescue Lot. is: A narrative device to build the reader’s sympathy. The more the plot unfolds, the clearer it becomes that God’s choice isn’t arbitrary: Abram builds his stamina, while God proves his commitment. md: Then comes the theme of progeny. is: Unquestionably, the central motif in the entire biblical tale: genealogy as fate. Remember: God’s promise—the brit—to Abram is that his name will be remembered forever, and that God will always protect his family. md: Abram decried not having children. is: Genesis 15:1–4: “After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward. And Abram said, Lord God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless. . . . And Abram said, Behold, to me thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir. And, behold, the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir.” God assured Abram he’ll procreate. But he also tells him that his progeny will be slaves in Egypt, the same place where Abram got in trouble

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with Pharaoh. This is followed by the episode in Genesis 16 about Hagar, Abram’s servant. md: An angel comes to Hagar—never to Sarai—and blesses her with the following verses in Genesis 16:11–13: “And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Behold, thou art with child and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because the Lord hath heard thy affliction. And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren. And she called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, Thou God seest me: for she said, Have I also here looked after him that seeth me?” The passage has generated enormous animosity. is: As it is about an out-of-wedlock child Abram has with his Egyptian maid. Indeed, it reads like a Mexican soap opera, even though its implications aren’t as entertaining. The Qur’an suggests that Islam is connected to Abraham through the genealogical branch resulting from this illegitimate union: the children of Ishmael, Hagar’s son. The situation gets complicated because Sarai herself invites her husband, who is “fourscore and six years old,” to engage in the liaison with the maid, believing she’ll never be a mother herself. There’s a class clash expounded in this section: the master and the servant make love, except that it’s done with the matron’s blessing. Yet, as Sarai sees the result of her action, she becomes envious and attacks Hagar. Ishmael is described, in Genesis 16:12, in the future tense: he “will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him: and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.” md: When Hagar gets pregnant, she looks down on Sarai. They fight, and Sarai, in the words of King James, “dealt hardly with her.” Does Sarai become physically abusive? is: Perhaps . . . the text is elusive. md: God’s empathy with Hagar, “the mistress,” over Sarai suggests that God might indulge in witnessing his creatures’ conflicted emotions.

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is: A bit like the Greek pantheon of deities, to me he is profiled as a spectator who enjoys a good melodrama. md: That makes sense. The links between ancient Jewish and Greek culture are undeniable. Observe the words kydos and kiddush, which both mean “praise.” Is there a covenant with Ishmael? is: The Qur’an mentions one but not the Bible. md: In the Qur’an, the Kabah is built by Abraham and Ishmael. I like this aspect of the Qur’an because it establishes the importance of Abraham’s relationship with Ishmael’s mother, who is the underdog but also the mother of a nation. I once asked a Muslim colleague about whether or not Ishmael was circumcised before Isaac. I paraphrase his answer: “Well, that’s part of the ongoing theological conflict between your people and mine.” Me and my big mouth! Be that as it may, Sarai finally becomes a mother in Genesis 17. is: He’s ninety-nine years old. “And Abram fell on his face: and God talked with him, saying, As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations.” In return, God asks that every boy should be circumcised. Genesis 17:11–12: “And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you. And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed.” md: Why is circumcision “a token of the covenant”? is: It is important to see this in context. Much has been said about the hygienic—that is, medical—aspect of it. The foreskin, at the time, was prone to infection. But the implications are larger: for a deity to show up unrequested and demand a sacrifice of such magnitude, the cutting of a portion of the male sexual organ in a child, and to request it from an individual who hasn’t been able to procreate until now, is a radical act. md: Is the lack of foreskin, the physical evidence of the cut, connected with lineage? is: Lineage happens through sex.

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md: Three strangers, who turn out to be angels, come to Abram and Sarai. They inform the couple that they’ll be parents. Genesis 18:12 announces that Sarai laughed within herself, saying, “After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?” is: Pleasure as a euphemism for sex. Intriguingly, it is at this point that Abram’s name is changed to Abraham and Sarai to Sarah. md: What do you make of this change? is: The covenant is a complete identity reconfiguration: Abraham, through his engagement with God, becomes a new individual. The name game is crucial in the Bible, as it is in life in general. In browsing through a series of lexicons, I stumbled upon these uses of the word: to call names; clear one’s name; drop names; give a bad name; go by (the name of); handle to one’s name; in name only; in the name of; make a name for oneself; on a first-name basis; take someone’s name in vain; to one’s name; worthy of the name; you name it. . . . Since early in the biblical narrative, God’s name becomes a paradigm. But so do people’s names. God names the first man Adam; Adam names the objects around him; Abraham and Sarah have new names; and Jacob also changes names. Naming things is having these items under control and under one’s power. Thus, a name is a form of currency. Genesis 17:5–9 reads: “Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham. And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God. And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations.” md: What about the people who lived in those territories? Genesis 15:18–21 states: “In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates. The Kenites, and

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the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaim, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.” Clearly, this section is about dispossession. is: I agree. Yet isn’t this what all creation stories do, establishing a sense of legitimacy where there is none? Every nation has its own creation story, used to validate its past. md: Though the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is highly complex, it’s all too clear how such “validation” gets Jews into trouble. is: You and I have been exploring the narrative economy in the Bible. But the text is much more: a source book to justify an ideology, a nationality, an ethical disposition, a way of life. Needless to say, it is infinitely twistable. md: Let’s get back to Isaac. Can you talk about his name? is: Isaac’s mother laughed when told she was about to get pregnant at such an advanced age. The meaning of the name, “laughing one,” is an affirmation of life’s joy amid the sorrows. md: The same two angels who give the news to Sarah of her motherhood go to Sodom. The reader is invited to a rare moment: God pondering over an ethical quandary: “Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?” the text announces, which is to destroy Sodom. God gives comfort to Abraham by pretending he might relent in the decision. Abraham then starts bargaining and negotiating with God—something that never occurs anywhere else—about him sparing the city if fifty good people could be found, followed by forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, and eventually five. The only people worth saving are Lot, his wife, and his daughters: a total of four. What follows is an incredible chain of events: the angels take refuge in Lot’s house, the Sodomites demand that they be allowed “to know” these strangers; Lot comes out, and in an attempt to pacify them, offers his daughters who have never “known men”; the Sodomites want to commit rape; and the “one good man” in Sodom offers his daughters to be raped. is: Another descent to destruction, as in the assassination of Abel and Noah’s ark.

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md: When did the word “sodomy” come into existence? is: The etymology makes a link between Middle English, Old French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. The Oxford English Dictionary defines sodomy thus: “Any of various forms of sexual intercourse held to be unnatural or abnormal, especially anal intercourse or bestiality.” The Bible pushes a contradictory view of sexuality: it endorses the marriage of Abraham and Sarah; but it also encourages Hagar to have Abraham’s first child. Yet the Bible is straightforward when it comes to promiscuity and concupiscence as abstract activities. md: The story had also been labeled misogynistic because Lot’s wife turns to salt. is: That’s a modern interpretation. The Bible isn’t eager to defend women. I don’t believe Lot’s wife is punished because she’s a woman. She’s punished because she’s incapable of controlling her curiosity. md: Is that bad? is: In this context, it certainly is. md: I thought of Lot’s wife when there was an apartment fire across from my building in Toronto, where I live. People stood and watched. One person was even taping it, which I thought was disgraceful. is: Rudyard Kipling wrote this stanza: I keep six honest serving-men, They taught me all I knew; Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.

md: Are you endorsing Lot’s wife’s attitude? is: She’s punished unfairly, as far as I’m concerned. Curiosity isn’t a sin, as Blaise Pascal believed when he stated that curiosity is only vanity and that frequently we wish not to know, but to talk. In contrast, I agree with Albert Einstein: “I have no special talents,” he said. “I am only passionately curious.” The fate of Lot’s wife was an alluring story when I was growing up. Unlike other

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episodes in the Bible, I remember with frightening precision the school class in which I read it for the first time and the dismay I felt upon finding out her fate. I looked at it as a cautionary tale: I thought it was about snooping. But the tale didn’t stop my inquisitiveness. I asked the teacher why Lot’s wife was punished. I don’t remember the answer but I remember it wasn’t satisfying to me. Later on, when I read Flavius Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities, I realized there was an on-site reminder of the tale. Josephus talks about a rock formation that resembled a woman. md: Next comes the episode of Lot’s daughters. Once again, lineage trumps morality. Lot and his daughters are forced to hide in the wilderness. Their fiancés have been killed in Sodom. Lot needs progeny. Unfortunately, he and his daughters are wanted people. His daughters get him drunk and sleep with him. is: Incest is a central theme of the Bible. md: Yet no punishment is handed down against Lot’s daughters. The progeny of the elder becomes a neighboring nation. Later, after being in Egypt, when the Israelites reclaim their land, they are instructed to respect Moab’s autonomy because the nation is kin, along with the Edomites. is: What’s more, Ruth, a Moabite, becomes the great-grandmother of David, Israel’s most important king. md: Why is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah so powerful? is: Among scholars, it is known as an etiological tale, that is, an after-the-fact explanation of why these ruined cities had vanished before much of the biblical narrative took place. In some sense, it’s like the tale that circulates in a neighborhood about an abandoned house whose original owners no one is able to remember. However, the ongoing allure has to do with the apocalyptic vision that emanates from it: greed, wickedness, materialistic excess, corruption, and sexual perversity—a site for endless sin, thus representing the intolerable in God’s moral scale. md: Why is the Christian Right enamored with it? is: Simple: because of its overemphasis on the sin of sexual deviance in America. It uses not only the Bible but Josephus, who states in Jewish Antiquities (1:194–195): “Now, about this time the

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Sodomites, overwhelmingly proud of their numbers and the extent of their wealth, showed themselves insolent to men and impious to the divinity, insomuch that they no more remembered the benefits that they had received from him, hated foreigners and avoided any contact with others. Indignant at this conduct, God accordingly resolved to chastise them for their arrogance, and not only to uproot their city, but to blast their land so completely that it should yield neither plant nor fruit whatsoever from that time forward.” md: Have conservative Latin American Catholics taken the same approach to the story as the evangelical Protestants in the United States? is: Sodom and Gomorrah has a universal appeal. The words “sodomy” and “sodomize,” for instance, are available in scores of languages. In the Hispanic world, “sodomy,” aside from meaning “to have anal or oral copulation,” is, on occasion, also used for “to usurp.” md: How is Sodom viewed in the Talmud? is: The tractate Sanhedrin 109a has a Midrash about the infamy of Sodom. It describes an incident in which one of Lot’s daughters, Paltith, engages in an act of kindness. The Sodomites, in response, punish her. They burn her. Then they hang her body, which they cover with honey for the bees to devour her. The emphasis is unquestionable among Talmudists: evil reigned in Sodom. md: In Genesis 20, it is revealed that Sarah is Abraham’s half sister from his father. is: The taboo against incest again. md: How different is Abraham’s love for Isaac and Ishmael? is: Quite different, the Bible suggests. One is legitimate, the other misconceived. md: Let’s talk about the Hakedah, the binding of Isaac. is: As a father, I can’t think of a more painful, demanding biblical tale. md: God demands that Abraham sacrifice his son. is: It’s part of their agreement. At this point, Abraham might be wondering if the covenant he agreed to follow is too much to

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bear. Yet he doesn’t feel capable of breaching it. From a literary point of view, the ascent of father and son to the mountain is an admirable example of suspense. md: The reader doesn’t believe God will actually kill Isaac. is: Yet God is omnipotent, isn’t he? And capricious, too. Haven’t we seen one example after another of God’s impulsive behavior? md: At the crucial point . . . is: An angel stops Abraham just before the knife is about to plunge. My heart sinks just to imagine, once again, the scene. God informs Abraham his loyalty is being tested. md: It’s a condemnation of human sacrifice, a practice common in that region. is: It doesn’t make the story any nicer. To me there’s a peculiar relationship between the story of the Hakedah and the book of Job. Both are about a righteous man who is put to test by God. Their endurance is put in question, and in the end God rewards them. md: You and I will discuss Job’s plight later on. What’s the Hakedah story saying about parental responsibilities? is: On the surface, it suggests that faith comes before family. But the opposition isn’t that simple. In the end, God rewards Abraham’s determination. And Isaac doesn’t appear to have been bruised by the incident. Again, God simply wants to make sure he’s made the right choice. md: How many proofs does he need? is: A good question. Maimonides, upon being asked the same, responded by restating that God’s ways are inexplicable. md: That sounds like a cop-out. is: By the way, a counternarrative in Jewish tradition, collected in book form by Shalom Spiegel in The Last Trial: On the Legends and Lore of the Command to Abraham to Offer Isaac as a Sacrifice: “The Hakedah,” insinuates that Isaac was not rescued at the last moment by an emissary from God. Instead, he died at his father’s hand. But—and herein the controversial aspect—he resurrected. md: The first Christians were Jews. It makes sense that some overlapping lore would develop.

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is: As you’re able to surmise, the episode, seen through this lens, reads like an announcement of Jesus Christ. So dangerous was this approach that the medieval exegete Abraham ibn Ezra stated that “he who asserts that Abraham slew Isaac and abandoned him and that afterward Isaac came to life again, is speaking contrary to Writ.” Shalom Spiegel believed that disparate versions of the same tale competed for canonization. The triumph of the prevailing one not only defined the way father-son relationships are understood but modeled our understanding of sacrifice. What do we take from the Bible to be sacrificed in its multiple meanings: sacrifice as a parent, sacrifice as a friend, sacrifice to God, to higher concepts such as our country? Judaism, in shaping its five books of Moses, modeled itself against the pagan societies that existed at the time these stories were endorsed by the status quo. According to Spiegel, there were ancient religions displaying gods who died and resurrected. Jews pushed away this idea, which was later brought back by Christianity. md: How does the Qur’anic depiction differ from the one portrayed in the Bible? is: The Qur’an established ambiguously that the protagonist of the Hakedah isn’t Isaac but Ishmael. This statement is based on the assumption that it was Abraham’s first son, Ishmael, who is taken to sacrifice. Herein suras 37:99–105 in the English translation by Rashad Khalifa: “He said, ‘I am going to my Lord; He will guide me. My Lord, grant me righteous children.’ We gave him good news of a good child. When he grew enough to work with him, he said, ‘My son, I see in a dream that I am sacrificing you. What do you think?’ He said, ‘O my father, do what you are commanded to do. You will find me, GOD willing, patient.’ They both submitted, and he put his forehead down [to sacrifice him]. We called him: ‘O Abraham. You have believed the dream.’ We thus reward the righteous.” Thus, the Qur’an argues that Ishmael was the recipient of God’s blessing. However, Islam does consider Isaac to be a prophet, albeit a minor one.

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md: Let’s talk about Isaac’s character. is: To me, he seems like a weakling, a go-between. md: Isaac is arguably the dullest of all the patriarchs. Obviously passive, Isaac is willing to be sacrificed once Abraham tells him that he is the ram to be slaughtered. As a literary character, fear and protestations would make him more believable. He accepts the wife who is brought to him without question. The longest chapter regarding Isaac is his continual talent for finding wells that get overtaken by Abimelech’s Philistines. He’s never even mentioned fighting for them or defending himself. In other words, Isaac always seems to surrender. Don’t you think he’s bland? is: Isaac is a tribal leader, the torch bearer connecting Abraham and Jacob. Twenty-three times is the sentence “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” mentioned in the Bible. Isaac alone is referred to seventy times in Genesis, but only thirty-three elsewhere in the Bible. In other words, he doesn’t have a protagonist role. Still, according to rabbinical tradition, his mother Sarah died when she received the news of the Hakedah. md: Rebekah, who becomes his wife, in contrast, is more active and complex. She is asked whether or not she will go with Eliezer, Abraham’s servant, to marry Isaac. The Bible explores her feelings more deeply than Isaac’s upon their first meeting. This is Genesis 24:63–67: “And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide and he lifted up his eyes, and saw, and, behold, the camels were coming. And Rebekah lifted her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she lighted off the camel. For she had said unto the servant, what man is this that walketh in the field to meet us? And the servant had said, It is my master. Therefore she took a veil, and covered herself. And the servant told Isaac all things that he had done. And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent, and took Rebekah and she became his wife; and he loved her and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.” is: Nothing too romantic, too inspiring. But remember: the mechanics of any purposeful narrative requires supporting characters that make the protagonist shine.

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md: Does “lighting off a camel” work as a euphemism for falling in love? is: It sounds like a cigarette ad! md: So you would describe Isaac as a supporting character? is: Isaac isn’t like Terah, for instance. Yet he pales in comparison to his own father as well as his sons, Esau and Jacob. He’s a supporting character in comparison with Joseph. Or with King David. For the narrative structure, he’s closest in terms of usefulness to King Saul, about whom the reader also knows little other than that he established the monastic dynasty in Jerusalem. md: When I was in Hebrew school, Abraham was presented to me and the other students as coming closest to godly perfection. As an adult reader, however, I see a much more complex character. Abraham’s hospitality to the angels and his attempts to avert the destruction of Sodom are set beside the “pimping” of Sarah to get property, but also for his own (and her) protection, his near murder of his own son for God, and his banishment of Hagar at Sarah’s urging. I don’t see these qualities as contradictory. If anything it illustrates how as humans we make decisions based on specific circumstances, and how relative morality can be. is: Oscar Wilde said: “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.” Humor and moral judgments aren’t part of the text per se. They are added by the reader. md: So why does God choose Abraham and his progeny? Is it Abraham’s “morally upright” character, or does he choose Abraham merely because he loves him? is: I’m not sure. Should the answer be that God selects Abraham because God’s ways are impenetrable? Is there an explanation understandable to us? To me, Abraham’s morality makes him distinct and, thus, capable of carrying on the task the divine has set for him. md: Let’s return momentarily to Genesis 2:18: “It is not good for man to be alone.” Perhaps it’s God who doesn’t want to be alone. He therefore creates “man,” later designating Abraham and his progeny as companions, so that they will both be partners in this

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covenant or brit. Therein the chosenness factor: chosenness is an expression of love. Love is an expression of chosenness, but with that love and chosenness is a set of higher expectations. is: I agree with you. The God of Genesis is a lonely character seeking companionship. Maybe he creates the universe to have someone to be with: Adam, whose lineage produces Abraham, who in turn is followed by Jacob. All of us, the people of Israel, are Jacob’s descendants. Yes, choosing means one is ready to embark on a relationship defined by love. The counterpart to Genesis 2:18 is that it isn’t good for God to be alone, either. md: Yet people don’t always choose whom they love, particularly in romantic terms. Romantic love can almost seem irrational in this context. Yet, when we love romantically, we “choose” that person, or perhaps it seems that person is “chosen” for us. But sometimes, as humans, we love badly. We choose immoral people, or people who sometimes act morally and sometimes don’t. Does God make the same mistake? is: Is any one of us capable of total moral perfection? No. Morality is an ongoing task. Although sometimes we pass the test and sometimes we don’t, it’s an imperative of morality-driven religions to have followers embrace the code in spite of the difficulties presented by it.

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d III

The Birth of Israel “Thou shalt serve thy brother”

mordecai drache: Let’s talk about Jacob and his children, in particular Joseph. ilan stavans: Jacob is the third biblical patriarch, a character of more introspection than the previous two. md: Rebekah comes to understand God’s plans for her and Jacob’s lineage. The description of her pregnancy with twins, Jacob and Esau, is tragicomic. The siblings hate each other so much they physically fight in the womb. is: The narrative about Jacob might be the introduction of the doppelgänger in literature. From the intrauterine fight with Esau to the debacle with the angel, he is presented as having a shadowy side. This attracts me to him. md: In On Borrowed Words, the chapter about your brother reads like a struggle with yourself. is: It might be.

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md: The memoir also has a final section in which the Ilan Stavans who left Mexico returns, years later, to find the Ilan Stavans who never departed. is: All of us exist by peeling off unused selves. md: A lovely image. is: Except that the selves of Jacob and Esau metastasize into two nations. md: The translation of this episode in the King James Version, albeit beautiful to the ear, is in my opinion somewhat flat. Genesis 25:22–23: “And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to enquire of the Lord. And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.” Instead, herein the NRSV: “The children struggled together within her; and she said, ‘If this be the way, why do I live?’ So she went to inquire of the Lord. And the Lord said to her: “Two nations are in your womb, And two peoples shall be divided; The one shall be stronger than the other; The elder shall serve the younger.” is: The description is not meant to be humorous. (Humor and the Bible: therein a fascinatingly limited topic!) Instead, it’s an expression of desperation: Why is this burden on me? What makes me the recipient of such misery? Jacob and Esau represent alternative sides of the same self. In Hebrew “Why do I live?” is emblematic. Robert Alter translated it as “Then why me?” He states: “Rebekah’s cry of perplexity and anguish over this difficult pregnancy is terse to the point of being elliptical. Her words might even be construed as a broken-off sentence: Then why am I . . . ?” md: Later Rebekah concocts the plan that enables her favorite son, Jacob, to get the blessing that will make his progeny dominant over her other son, Esau, who is Isaac’s favorite. is: Yes, it’s a blatant portrayal of favoritism. Rebekah favors one of her twins, Jacob the other. Rebekah takes advantage of Isaac’s blindness to unapologetically benefit her favorite child. As a

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father of two boys, the episode is discomforting to me. Parents are meant to be fair and equitable to their children, each of which has unique talents. Yet pretending that favoritism doesn’t exist is naïve. Every parent knows that, in a certain circumstance, a son’s qualities make him deserving of a reward, a privilege. But in spite of that, equality is possible. md: I’m not a parent, you are. I’m guessing that you can’t treat your sons the same. You have to modify consequences and rewards to suit their personalities. Equality and sameness are not the same, are they? is: Both are abstract categories that are in the mind of the beholder. Equality, as such, is utopian: one seeks it, but it’s also infeasible. In any given juncture, each of us benefits or suffers as a result of talent, chance, and the support of those around us. md: To what extent is it important that Jacob is a twin? is: In my view, it’s fundamental. More than anyone else, twins are born with a sense of what Plato called “the other half ”: their life is shaped as a team, in which their individual role depends on its counterpart. To some extent, every sibling nurtures a similar feeling, but not to the same degree. A twin whose counterpart dies or gets separated feels eternally incomplete. Jacob’s weltanschauung is marked in birth. His struggle with the angel, in my view, is a debacle with his other self. md: You have a short story called “Twins” (2006). is: It’s an essential theme for me. Perhaps more than anything else, my relationship with my younger brother Darián, a musician, defined me. md: So Jacob is the favorite. is: But he isn’t the good brother, at least not in the early segments about him in the Bible. For instance, he’s shrewd to the point of being a conniver. Yet what we know of him, for better or worse, needs always to be seen in comparison with Esau, who became an important foundational figure, although, in biblical terms, a less worthy one. After all, being the cornerstone for the creation of Edom is, in the view of the biblical authors, less worthy an achievement than being a patriarch to the Israelites.

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md: Before moving on to Jacob, let’s remember that Rebekah is told while pregnant that her younger twin, Jacob, is meant to be dominant. is: And the better one, if the reader follows the favoritism of the biblical authors. md: So, in your view, not only is God favoring Jacob, but so is the author of the Bible. is: Of course. The reader is told that one of the twins will be stronger than the other. In what sense should the word “stronger” be understood? Not as more physically salient but as more savvy and astute. md: Do you believe Jacob is a more feminine figure than Esau? This might be a modern prejudice on my part. A nomadic woman in that period, with no birth control and children being the key to one’s survival, would have needed to stay home to nurse her infants. It would be a fair division of labor for the period for the man to hunt and bring back meat while the woman stayed back and took care of children and the elderly. is: Yes, strength in this episode isn’t about body power but about intelligence. Genesis 25:23 states: “the One people shall be stronger than the other—people; and the elder shall seem the younger.” If the first part of the passage is understood to mean that Esau will overwhelm Jacob with physical power, the second part is unequivocal about Jacob’s dominance, not as a physical but as a mental condition. In that sense Jacob is more feminine: he is more sensitive. md: We see the cunning in Jacob’s character first when he blackmails Esau into giving him his birthright for lentils, and the context of their relationship, in Genesis 25:19–34. is: To me Jacob, in this passage, sounds like a lawyer: Esau is at the point of death when Jacob persuades him to give up this most precious property. md: Esau is starving after an unproductive hunt, demands food, and Jacob feeds him only on condition that Esau hands over his birthright. Is the Bible making a moral judgment against Esau, who is willing to forgo something as important as birthright for

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beans? Or is it judging Jacob, whose inhumanity and envy lead him to blackmail his brother at a time when Esau is starving? is: But is it possible to know what the author’s narrative intentions are? It’s clear that Jacob, from whom the Israelites will come, isn’t only good. To make him a believable character, the Bible depicts him as possessing good qualities as well as failings. Yet the most important lesson to be learned, from Jacob’s tale as well as from others in Genesis, is that morality is never a right-and-wrong situation. md: I agree. As a child, when bored at synagogue, I would entertain myself by reading Genesis. The immorality in the stories, the blatant injustice, the sense that justice was often so warped, made for good reading during the long three-hour service. is: Morality, as a biblical lesson, is less integral to Genesis than to Exodus and onward. The reader is exposed to characters choosing between right and wrong, but there is yet a manual—call it the Decalogue—to articulate the difference between the options in an easy-to-handle fashion. md: Jacob inherited his cunning from his mother. Didn’t he? is: While Isaac lies dying, he summons his son Esau and asks him to bring him venison, after which he will be blessed. Rebekah, getting wind of the plan, says, as a precaution, that any curse Isaac gives to Jacob will be against her for what she’s about to do. Esau is a hunter, just like Cain. Jacob, the reader is told, is a simpler man. The word in Hebrew is tam. Isaac Bashevis Singer has a famous story, “Gimpel Tam,” translated into English by Saul Bellow as “Gimpel the Fool.” But tam doesn’t mean fool. It means simple, innocent, naïve, maybe even integral. Jacob is far from being simple, innocent, and naïve. md: What do you mean? is: What I mean is that the wording might be meant to be ironic. md: Fascinating. is: While it’s indeed ironic, it’s also foreboding, for the biblical story, at this point, is less complicated, in the mythical sense of the term, than it will become a little later. By this I imply that its initial quality is that of a fable.

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md: Rebekah has Jacob kill a goat and places the skins over Jacob so that he feels hairy. is: A Jewish mother through and through. md: She prepares the goat the way Isaac likes it. Jacob, wearing Esau’s clothes, brings it to him. Goat tastes differently from deer. Isaac, who is blind, suspects, by the sound of the voice, that it’s Jacob who’s speaking to him. is: Isaac’s blindness is important, not only because Jacob is able to see and he isn’t. But because blindness, in the Bible, means vulnerability, for example, to be at the mercy of others. md: Can blindness be a metaphor? is: Have you read Jose Saramago’s novel Blindness? It shows the extent to which a metaphor might be, indeed, a metaphor. Likewise H. G. Wells’s story “In the Country of the Blind.” If everyone is blind, isn’t the seeing person abnormal? Taking it from another perspective, there is a list of important figures who are blind—Homer, Milton, and Borges among them—for whom blindness is an asset. Sonnet 27 by Shakespeare is misguided: Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, The dear repose for limbs with travel tired; But then begins a journey in my head, To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired: For then my thoughts, from far where I abide, Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee, And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, Looking on darkness which the blind do see Save that my soul’s imaginary sight Presents thy shadow to my sightless view, Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night, Makes black night beauteous and her old face new. Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind, For thee and for myself no quiet find.

“Looking on darkness which the blind do see” assumed that the blind only see darkness. It isn’t the case, as Borges forcefully

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suggested in a lecture he gave in Buenos Aires included in his volume Seven Nights. They see different colors: yellow, green, red, depending on the individual. Isaac, on the other hand, sees darkness, understood as the absence of meaning. He uses the sense of smell and his ear as guidance. md: Are you implying that Isaac is a fool? is: Maybe. md: Is he tam? is: Rabbinical literature believes simplicity is also deep knowledge. It has a point. I’ve always envied the simple-minded. They don’t know what everyone else knows and, hence, are closer to happiness. md: Genesis 27–29: “See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed. Therefore God give thee of the dew of haven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine. Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee. Cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.” is: I’ve always wondered if Isaac is aware of the sibling switch. I don’t fully believe he’s as stupid as the narrative suggests. All fathers know their children’s tricks, don’t you think? md: I’m not a father. You can answer that better than I can. Do you know your sons’ tricks? is: To the extent that a father does, yes. And they surely know my tricks, too. md: Then comes Isaac’s blessing for Esau. Both realize that Isaac has been duped. It goes as follows in Genesis 27:39–40: “Behold, thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above. And by thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother; and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck.” is: If Isaac is indeed unaware of the switch, the consequences are enormous. For one thing, Jacob is a usurper and Israel’s legitimacy as the Chosen People is based on a misunderstanding. md: Is it?

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is: Yes, of course. md: Does this make the Jews impostors? is: Aren’t we? md: Not if Isaac knew that it was Jacob disguising himself as Esau. Let’s compare that with God’s blessing in Genesis 16:11–12 for Ishmael while Hagar is pregnant: “Behold, thou art with child and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael because the Lord hath heard thy affliction. And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.” The parallels become all too clear when, in chapter 28, Esau marries Ishmael’s daughter. is: The implications are obvious: the relatives of Israel are also its enemies and vice versa. I must add that the color red, symbolizing blood, permeates the episode: Esau is red-faced; the pottage he eats is red. And he is later called Edom, which in Hebrew means red. md: Esau, in response to the usurpation, is resentful. is: He promises that as soon as the time for mourning Isaac is over, he will kill him. Again, echoes of the rivalry between Cain and Abel are unavoidable. md: As are the echoes of the rivalry between Isaac and Ishmael. Meanwhile, Jacob needs to escape Esau’s wrath. Rebekah tells him to go to her brother, Laban, in the East. On the way there, Jacob sleeps. He does it by resting his head on an improvised pillow made of rocks. Ouch—why rocks? is: In Genesis 28, Jacob, on his way from Beersheba to Haran, falls asleep. This is a significant moment because in the narrative up to this point dreams haven’t played any role. The fact that the place—in Hebrew, maqom—is not identified is equally important. Jacob perceived the site to be dreadful. He’s frightened. The Bible suggests that Jacob sleeps along the way, although in mythical lore, Bethel, the House of God, is said to be the site. As to the stones you ask about, it’s a mysterious ingredient. There is no record of a tradition in antiquity of sleeping on stones. Rashi believed the stones to be placed not under Jacob but at his side as protection. All in all, their role is perplexing. The scholar J. P.

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Fokkelman argued that stones are, indeed, a motif in the arc of Jacob’s story, from the dream to his approach to the well and Laban’s flock of sheep, to his treaty with Laban. md: The dream is even more meaningful. is: Jacob’s dream is, arguably, one of the most famous episodes in the Bible. It’s a signature stylistic element of the Elohist author. In Genesis 28:12–15, the image of a ladder with messengers going up and down suggests that the site is Bethel. The constant movement makes it look like an office. Or maybe a construction site. “And [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” Thus, the maqom becomes consecrated. Also, the role angels are asked to play is essential: they communicate the heavens and the earth. God confirms his supreme authority, and, fulfilling his promise to Abraham, Jacob’s grandfather, talks about a seed from which the genealogical tree will evolve. By the way, etymologically Robert Alter doesn’t believe the connecting item is a ladder. Instead, he thinks it’s a ramp. He describes Jacob—and I love this image—as a border crosser. Plus, there’s also a relationship between this episode and the Tower of Babel in that both reach toward the gates of heaven. md: The dream sequence is followed by what is arguably one of the few romantic stories in the Bible: the romance between Jacob and Rachel. is: I’m not sure the term “romantic” is entirely appropriate. The word, as defined by the OED, means an attribute of ardent emotional attachment, for example, love, between people. Such

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is the relationship, for instance, between Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: beyond their obstacles posed by their Venetian families, they behave as magnets. Jacob and Rachel do as well. However, the biblical narrative is sparse, even epigrammatic. The episode is told from Jacob’s viewpoint, since it’s he who comes to Laban, his uncle and Rachel’s father, and falls in love with Rachel at first sight. Yet in romantic comedies we have become used to excessive displays of emotion, which Genesis 29 doesn’t offer. md: But Jacob has to sort out obstacles to achieve his objective. is: He does: after Laban’s promise of working seven years to get his daughter, he received Leah for betrothal. When Jacob complains that the promised bride was Rachel, Laban’s younger daughter, Laban responds that he cannot give his second daughter to marriage before giving away the first. The result is another seven years, after which Rachel finally comes to him. In other words, Jacob ends up with two wives, Leah and Rachel, who, let’s not forget, are his first cousins. md: Is Jacob’s story less about morality than karma? is: Isn’t that what love is about, even romantic love: fate? Still, Rachel is a malleable item at this point. She lacks Juliet’s pathos. I realize this is an unfair comparison because Juliet is one of the most rounded, best executed characters by Shakespeare, far superior to Romeo. Coming close to such artistic quality that many centuries in advance is impossible. . . . md: Jacob, as you portrayed him before, is a conniver. First he dupes Isaac and Esau, then he gets duped by his uncle Laban, although he manages to turn things around. is: Jacob’s relationship with Leah and Rachel is uneven. Leah is described as depressed but she bears him a child, Reuben. Then she gives birth to Simeon. And a third and fourth time, Levi and Judah. And, later on, Issahar and Zebulun. Plus a daughter: Dinah. Rachel, instead, is barren. She asks Jacob to conceive with her slave girl, Bilhah. And Bilhah conceived Dan and Nephtali. And another slave girl, Zilpah, conceived Gad and Asher. md: Jacob, upon making the decision to leave Laban, agrees with his uncle to financial terms in the form of livestock. But Laban hides

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the best livestock from Jacob. Jacob, with God’s help, performs miracles in which the remaining inferior stock give birth to good livestock, and comes out of the transaction wealthier than his uncle. is: By this time, in Jacob the Bible is able to produce a complex character. Not as sophisticated as literature would produce later, but full of talents and handicaps nonetheless. md: Next, Rachel, upon leaving her father to be with her uncles, takes his household god figurines, puts them on her saddle, and sits on them. Laban kisses his daughters and grandchildren good-bye, and discovers the gods missing. He runs after Jacob and accuses him of stealing them. A search is done. Rachel, who is sitting on them, says she can’t get up because she’s menstruating and in pain. is: An outright attack against idolatry dressed through a veil of impurity. The Hebrew word for “gods” in this case is terafim. md: Is the episode a joke? is: Some commentators find humor in it. But it has unintended consequences: not knowing it was Rachel who stole them, Jacob curses the thief who stole the goods. md: Now comes the section of Jacob’s wrestling with the angel. is: One reading is that in Genesis 32:24–31, Jacob, who is a twin, struggles with his own self: “And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. And as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh.”

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md: Does the original Hebrew use the word “angel”? is: It doesn’t. Since Jacob’s viewpoint is privileged, he perceives a man as his opponent. It has been left to folklore to add the angelic component. md: What is the spiritual significance of the name Israel? is: The narrative justifies the name thus: “For as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” Keep in mind that Abraham and Sarah also underwent name changes. But Jacob’s name change is more substantial. It isn’t a fresh pronunciation of his name that is suggested, but a new name altogether, one announcing his struggle with the divine. That this name, Israel, is used to define Jews is astonishing. For what do we do if not wrestle with God? Naming, once again, serves as a strategy for empowerment. Interestingly, Robert Alter notices that, after the incident, the biblical narrative still refers to Jacob as Jacob. Alter proposes that rather than a name, Israel might be a synonym. The idea is provocative! Among other things, it points to the accumulated editorial process through which the Bible became standardized. md: Let’s talk about Dinah, the only daughter of Jacob’s mentioned by name in the Bible. is: Dinah, in today’s terms, gets together with the girls from Shechem, but she is raped by Shechem, son of Hamor, who then wants to marry her. Jacob allows it only if all the men in the small kingdom are circumcised. Terms are agreed to and Dinah’s brothers slaughter all the men and boys. For this they are cursed by Jacob. Dinah’s is one of three biblical stories in which rape is a central theme. I don’t believe they are understood unless they are all judged together. The other one is in Judges 19 and has at its narrative center an unnamed concubine. This is several hundred years later, when the descendants of most of the brothers have been given territory. The story takes places in Benjaminite territory. Mirroring the story of Sodom, a group of rapists demand a male guest, a Levite, from a man who’s sheltering him and his concubine. He offers his virgin daughter and the concubine. The men are not satisfied but take the concubine.

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She is then gang raped. Her master then kills her and mutilates the corpse. This leads to a civil war in which the other eleven tribes attack the tribe of Benjamin, who then gets defeated. md: The third story is about Tamar, King David’s daughter, who gets raped by Amnon, her half brother. Amnon is then killed by the servants of Absalom, Tamar’s full brother. Absalom, however, tries to lead a rebellion against his father, King David. He fails. While trying to escape, his long hair gets caught in some thickets. He is then killed by a common soldier. is: On the one hand, the rape of free women—a relative term in the Bible—and a slave is enough to spark wars. This would suggest that the text is adamantly against this horrific act. The worst thing we can do is rationalize, as some apologists do, and try to make these stories out as proof of biblical proto-feminism. No doubt the tribal society depicted in the Bible was patriarchal in its conception. md: These stories place rape within the context of a tribal society in which clans fought against one another. Shechem’s father asks Jacob for her, but Jacob’s sons plot revenge. He agrees if Shechem’s father will ask everyone in his city to be circumcised. Yet even after they do, Simeon and Levi kill all the males, including Shechem and his father, and destroyed the city. Even though their actions bring trouble to Jacob, they’re unfazed by those troubles. By the way, Andrew Lloyd Weber wrote the Broadway musical Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat. Have you seen it? is: I saw a Mexican production when I was little. md: I’ve never really understood what “technicolor” is. As it happens, according to modern commentators in the NRSV and Richard Friedman, the coat of many colors is at best an approximation of the real meaning. is: The Hebrew is kethoneth passim. md: In the story, Jacob—now Israel—makes Joseph his favorite son. is: Joseph isn’t exactly the most likable character. md: Definitely not. As a child learning the story I always thought of him as a spoiled brat. Joseph’s brothers decide that they want to get rid of Joseph. They grab him, tie him up, take off his coat, and

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later dip it in sheep’s blood to make it look like he’s been attacked. They had talked about killing him but Reuben keeps them from doing so. Genesis 37:21–22: “And Reuben heard it, and he delivered him out of their hands; and said, Let us not kill him. And Reuben said unto them, Shed no blood, but cast him into this pit that is in the wilderness, and lay no hand upon him; that he might rid him out of their hands, to deliver him to his father again.” is: Reuben is Jacob and Leah’s firstborn son. Is the text saying something here about his maturity, the security that comes from being the oldest and having at one point been doted upon, or is that, as the eldest, the brothers are more likely to listen to him? md: Joseph is sold by his brothers to the Ishmaelites. They in turn go to Egypt and sell him to Potifar, a eunuch, who works for Pharaoh. He does this for several years. Interestingly, Potifar has a wife who, it would be assumed, is not being sexually fulfilled by her husband. She attempts to seduce Joseph but he refuses her advances. She takes hold of his robe but he runs away, leaving her with the robe. She then tells Potifar that Joseph tried to rape her, and as a result he is thrown into jail where he meets Pharoah’s butler and the baker. He interprets dreams for them in which he predicts, accurately, that the butler will be reinstated and the baker hanged. Two years pass and eventually Pharaoh has a dream. is: This episode was one of Sigmund Freud’s favorites along with the dreams in the book of Daniel. Genesis 41:1–7 states: “And it came to pass at the end of two full years, that Pharaoh dreamed: and, behold, he stood by the river. And, behold, there came up out of the river seven well favoured kine and fatfleshed; and they fed in a meadow. And, behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the river, ill favoured and leanfleshed; and stood by the other kine upon the brink of the river. And the ill favored and leanfleshed kine did eat up the seven well favoured and fat kine. So Pharaoh awoke. And he slept and dreamed the second time: and, behold, seven ears of corn came up upon one stalk, rank and good. And, behold, seven thin ears and blasted with the east wind sprung up after them. And the seven thin ears devoured the seven rank and

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full ears. And Pharaoh awoke, and, behold, it was a dream.” The magicians can’t interpret the dream. Joseph is remembered by the butler who is then brought to Pharaoh. He interprets the dreams as a message that a drought will occur and the Egyptians should store wheat for the next five years in preparation for the seven lean years that will come. md: What did Freud make of Pharaoh’s dreams? is: It isn’t what Freud made of Pharaoh’s dreams but what he made of Joseph’s interpretation of them. He liked Joseph and the prophet Daniel because they are an announcement of his own role as a psychoanalyst, using dreams (that is, the unconscious) to explain the forces that shape human behavior. md: The drought doesn’t affect only Egypt but Canaan also. Jacob sends Joseph’s brothers, with the exception of Benjamin, to buy food. Next, Joseph puts his brothers to a test. is: Like Joseph, Benjamin is Rachel’s son. In Genesis 42, Joseph, without revealing himself, reminds his siblings of what they did to him in order to find out if they remember the incident and, if they do, if guilt is part of that remembrance. Joseph accuses them while reminding them that he too has been accused by Potiphar’s wife. In other words, he shrewdly builds a symmetry between his and their condition. He asks them to bring Benjamin to Egypt and gives them time to think about his proposition. He wants the entire Jewish family to be together! Joseph gives them provisions for the way. md: Are these tests justifiably undertaken to determine whether or not his brothers have matured? is: Yes, they are. Joseph reveals himself to his brothers. Henceforth comes the following proclamation in Genesis 45:4–5: “Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life.” md: Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers: the genius of the Bible lies in its ability to take fraternal rivalry and to magnify it into compelling myth. As I mentioned earlier, I’m not a

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parent and do not guess that I ever will be one: however, I imagine that one of the major challenges of parenting is recognizing and appreciating the specific strengths of each of your children for what they are. If two sons, or daughters, are equal in intelligence and compassion or if each has different gifts but have the same level of talent in their respective interests, your job as a parent is probably made a lot easier. If, however, one child is more gifted, more intelligent, or more charismatic, you have a real challenge ahead of you since one child will inevitably do better professionally. is: Are you talking about success? md: I guess I am. is: Equality isn’t natural and neither is communism. People might be born naked and die naked too. However, there is much by way of ornament in the interim between cradle and grave. Difference starts at home, even as parents try to ameliorate it.

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d IV

Moses’ Guidance “If I have found favor in your sight”

mordecai drache: Is Moses a lonely character? ilan stavans: Power brings loneliness. Moses is a leader. Even when the leader is surrounded by others, his task requires not only concentration but a certain degree of aloofness. Or, as you call it, aloneness. md: How does his aloneness compare with Adam’s? is: Adam isn’t a leader but a man running away from God. md: What kind of leader is Moses? is: Moses is at once a politician and a shaman and, needless to say, is, arguably, the most human of leaders. Upon arriving at his story, the reader undoubtedly knows that this is the real thing. md: Is he the protagonist? is: I’m not sure, since there are scores of them. But he not only gives traction to the narrative, he justifies it in teleological terms. For the Bible is known as the five books of Moses, as if everything that comes before and after him is a preparation and a consequence.

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He, and only he, is the raison d’être of the whole ordeal. No Jewish character comes even close in standing. And none is as vulnerable. He’s one of the few characters whose “inner life,” a little like those in a nineteenth-century novel, is presented in astonishing detail: his doubts, his ambition, his physical limitations. Moses isn’t divine, and therein his relevance: he’s mortal, like you and me. In other words, he isn’t God. The statement might appear trite but the Bible, as you and I have seen, leaves no doubt about the limits of divine powers. Moses, in contrast, is limited: he is not only vulnerable but imperfect. Therein, in my view, is one of most outstanding achievements of the Bible. It would have been easy to turn Moses into a demigod: to make him larger than life. But the authors of the biblical narrative constrain themselves in that respect. Their portrait of the first and most important leader of the people of Israel is that of a flawed individual. md: Even if a real Moses existed, the depiction in the Bible can hardly be considered accurate. is: Historical accuracy in the Bible is problematic. md: That is because when we think of history, in the modern sense of the term, what we talk about is facts. is: The Bible isn’t a history book but a historical document. md: What’s the difference? is: A history book is a record of the past told with an agenda, an undeniable intention of advancing a viewpoint. A historical document contains information useful to historians but not designed as an argument. As you know, there is a wide range of accuracy in regards to the episodes described in the Bible. The text is a religious narrative: it justifies teleologically the journey of the people of Israel. But it doesn’t make a historical claim, at least not in scientific terms. md: Is the enslavement of the Hebrews in Egypt historically based? is: There is no proof of it. The search for clues among archeologists in Egypt has been fruitless. Furthermore, there doesn’t appear to be any evidence that approximately six hundred thousand men, women, and children—the amount thought to have left Pharaoh’s

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kingdom across the Red Sea—wandered through the desert for four decades. Excavations have been carried out in sites referred to in the text without coming up with anything concrete. And the architecture of Canaan, its domestic life, etcetera, doesn’t manifest a direct influence, either. md: Is this worrisome? is: For those looking for facts, it surely is. md: Does it trouble you that Moses might not have existed, Ilan? is: Not in the least. Josephus, in his history book Jewish Antiquities (2:347–348) suggests that the idealized biblical version of the exodus from Egypt generated libel in ancient times. There were counternarratives suggesting that the Hebrews in Pharaoh’s land didn’t have such an illustrious departure. They were expelled because they were unwanted, like lepers. Yet Josephus emphasizes the truthfulness of the Bible. At one point, he justified the opening of the Red Sea thus: “For indeed, it was a short while ago that the Pamphilian Sea moved backwards for those who were accompanying Alexander, king of Macedonia, thus offering them a path through it when no other way out existed.” md: However, the importance of the expulsion from Egypt in Exodus is enormous, not only in the Bible itself but in Jewish history. is: It justifies our desire for freedom. It’s at the core of the covenant that Israel establishes with the divine, for the concept of nationhood in the Bible is about self-determination. And that self-determination, in Exodus, is endorsed by the divine. Marc Chagall’s depiction of Exodus is astonishing: It is a dark depiction sprinkled with red. At the lower-right corner is Moses carrying the tables. But the central protagonist is Jesus Christ on the cross, painted in bright yellow. A bride, a chicken, a goat, a fish, and the people of Israel coming not from Egypt but from an Eastern European shtetl overpopulate the piece. At the bottom are two women, at least one of them a mother, dressed in blue and purple. Exodus, says Chagall, leads to exile, and exile is a synonym of pain. md: What if it didn’t happen in historical time? is: Does it matter? Every nation explains its origins through myth. Just as One Hundred Years of Solitude isn’t the story of Aracataca,

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Gabriel García Márquez’s hometown, but a fictionalized version of it, so is the Bible as much about myth as it is about history. The same thing goes for the Odyssey, the Icelandic sagas, and the Poem of Mío Cid. Each of these offers various degrees of dependability. Not having proof of the enslavement of the people of Israel isn’t an obstacle to identify with their quest for independence. md: The Moses tale begins in far-fetched fashion. The reader is told that Moses is Joseph’s descendant. is: He’s a descendant of Levi, one of Joseph’s brothers, established in Goshen because Pharaoh felt indebted to Joseph. md: Pharaoh, of course, doesn’t know Joseph. is: Henry James often talked about the blind spots in a plot. The editors of the Bible often need to create bridges between one section and another, thus the lineage between the previous episode about Joseph and the Moses saga. Since we’re in the realm of mythology, the connection, yet again, isn’t historically based. The message is that Joseph and Moses are from the same bloodline. That is, the narrative establishes a link between Adam and Eve and the witnesses of the revelation at Mount Sinai. md: Pharaoh decides that the Israelites are getting too rich and powerful, an all-too frequent predicament whenever minorities are deemed successful. Think of the Tutsis in Rwanda, the Indians in Uganda under General Idi Amin, and the Tamils in Sri Lanka. Is this part of the story’s long-standing appeal? is: No doubt. The book of Exodus is about national identity and self-definition. The narrative is shaped as a foundational myth. An oppressed people decide that it’s enough. They no longer want to be slaves. They want their own land, their own leaders, their own mission. md: But the minority first has to suffer. is: The authorities need to push it to an extreme. Only then is the narrative able to justify the emergence of an autochthonous leader, one who, while reluctant to take the role bestowed on him, nevertheless is able to triumph against his limitations and the hurdles placed by adversity.

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md: Pharaoh announces a decree that all the male Israelites will be killed. After making a waterproof basket, Moses’ mother Yochebed floats him down the Nile. is: Given the emphasis on mothers made in popular Jewish culture, I wished as a reader that I knew more about Yochebed. Who is she? The desire to know more is essential to the act of reading. When successful, the engagement between author and reader makes the latter have trust that the information is being dispensed for a narrative purpose. In other words, one tells a story through a series of devices designed to hold the reader’s attention. Why don’t we know more about Yochebed, given that she’s the source of our most important reader? At first she’s credited as the mother, she then gives the baby up, and ultimately becomes Moses’ wet nurse. Still, it’s probably enough for the author of the story to emphasize that, although Moses will be uprooted from his milieu, he indeed is raised by his biological mother, although only after she reconnects with him under a disguise. It’s also important to stress that the tale of a baby left on a river in a floating basket isn’t unique to the Bible. On the contrary, it seems to have been taken, maybe verbatim, from Middle Eastern folktales of the time. And Aeschylus uses it for his version of Oedipus in Thebes. At any rate, the answer is that the Bible, although about genealogy, doesn’t have our modern view of heritage. Yes, Jews are descendants from the generation of Mount Sinai. But the narrative doesn’t trust that, by offering more information about Moses’ mother, the reader will be able to better understand his actions. Each individual is responsible for his own acts. md: Followed by his sister Miriam, Moses ends up at the bathing area of the Pharaoh’s daughter. is: A sensual scene: a newborn baby arriving at an oasis where young women are bathing. The emphasis is on renewal. The question emerges: Was Pharaoh’s daughter barren? That is a possible interpretation of the tale. Otherwise, why would she adopt an infant? Plus, one might read this episode, and indeed the entire section of Moses in Egypt, as dealing with a succession to Pharaoh as leader.

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Again, Josephus, in Jewish Antiquities (2:232–236), offers an insightful version. He tells of a scene in which Pharaoh’s daughter brings Moses as a child to see her father and insinuates to him that Moses might inherit the throne. A playful Pharaoh finds the idea entertaining and puts his crown on Moses’ head. But the child throws the crown down and steps on it. An adviser to Pharaoh immediately stresses that Moses should have been killed the way other Hebrew firstborns were. But Pharaoh’s heart is tender, letting the child go. The moral of the scene is that behind Moses’ upbringing is a power struggle within Egypt’s chambers of power. md: What would have happened had Moses replaced Pharaoh? is: It’s an interesting question, one the reader already has a preview to in Joseph’s ordeal. The difference between the two biblical characters is emblematic: Joseph is a politician whose wisdom allows him to be close to Pharaoh, whereas Moses is a guerrilla fighter who refuses to compromise. md: In the bathing area, Pharaoh’s daughter decides to adopt Moses. is: She falls under the baby’s charm and is ready to raise him as a single mother. Where is the father figure in this story? In Exodus 6:20, the reader is told who Moses’ father is: Amram. But it’s a passing mention, irrelevant to the narrative structure. Miriam proposes that Pharaoh’s daughter find a wet nurse, who, through a series of maneuvers, ends up being Moses’ own mother. It’s all a setup to save the baby. The outcome of the setup is that Moses will have his natural mother nearby while being raised in an environment of power. md: Pharaoh’s daughter names the baby “Moses,” which supposedly means, in the ancient Egyptian language, “Because I drew him from the water.” is: Love is an emotion that the narrative doesn’t particularly stress. Instead, the child’s well-being, where he is, who is responsible for him seem to be stated as sheer transactions. Notice the importance of water in the Moses story. It starts with his journey away from the maternal womb, although the Nile River is also a surrogate for it. A reference to water is in Moses’ name. Later on in the

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narrative, he will make a display of his supernatural connection by parting the waters of the Red Sea. All this takes place in a dry, desert habitat. md: Given how concerned the biblical narrative usually is about lineage, why does the Bible not give us Moses’ real name? is: It’s essential to establish the foreignness of the narrative’s protagonist: a man divided, Moses is ambiguous about everything: himself, his background, the commission he received from the divine. As we have said, in the Bible names play a central role. Moses’ Egyptian name automatically makes him a hybrid, an in-between, an impostor. md: The tale jumps to Moses’ adult years in which he kills an Egyptian for whipping a Hebrew. is: By then, it’s clear that the future leader knows his true identity: he is a Hebrew. md: How does he find out about it? is: Presumably from his mother, although the story is silent about it. What makes Moses’ tale urgent is that it feels concrete. I presume he didn’t only get the truth from Yochebed but from his environment. How does a minority kid find out he’s different? Through the incessant reminders from those around him that he doesn’t fully fit in, that his profile is unlike that of others. md: Moses goes to Midian, where he saves Jethro’s seven daughters from a bunch of shepherds driving them away from a well. is: You’re going too fast, Mordecai. The killing of an Egyptian adds a fundamental ingredient to Moses’ story. md: Which is? is: Moses is now a criminal. He’s wanted by the Egyptian authorities. This is what makes him run away to Midian. I cannot overemphasize this ingredient. In today’s political sphere, such an incident would forever tarnish a leader’s career. People would describe Moses as morally flawed because he couldn’t control himself. Yet the fact that he spilled Egyptian blood doesn’t seem to bother the divine. Moses is still selected to be the leader of the people of Israel. The killing might be used as proof that he indeed has the character to be in command of thousands of followers.

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md: Are you suggesting that Moses, in contemporary eyes, is a compromised politician? is: I’m saying that the standards have changed. A political test in biblical times is dramatically different from its equivalent nowadays. md: In Midian, Moses marries Tzipporah, one of Jethro’s daughters. Tzipporah gives birth to Gershon. is: In Hebrew the word Gershon means “I was a stranger in a strange land.” The theme of exile again. Moses and his wife aren’t in Egypt. And they aren’t in their own homeland, either. md: Then, in one of the most famous scenes from the Moses story, God appears to Moses as a burning bush that was not being consumed by the flames. YHWH commands Moses to rescue his brethren in Egypt, and he is reticent to do it. is: He refuses five times, until finally God commands Moses to throw down a staff, which suddenly turns into a snake. md: Moses, like Gideon, Jonah, and many others, needs to be convinced. He requires a sign, a proof. is: Like Jonah and Elijah, Moses is the first in a long line of prophets reticent to take on a holy task. Yet, as Maimonides states in an important section of the Guide for the Perplexed, Moses isn’t an average biblical prophet. He is above all other prophets in that he has a direct line of communication with the divine. However, his reticence is unquestionable. I like this aspect because God, in choosing Moses, doesn’t seem to have opted for an easy, puppetlike partner. Instead, Moses is rebellious, he engages in criminal activity, is a lousy communicator, and hesitates to embrace God’s orders. md: Why? is: Maybe because God doesn’t like to take the easy path. He likes people who make a fuss. It’s significant, thematically, that Moses is a stutterer because he refuses God’s request by stating: “I am heavy of speech and heavy of tongue.” The statement might be interpreted in a number of ways. In Greek times, it could be taken to mean that Moses was a poor orator, a handicap difficult to overcome if you were hoping to become a leader. For oratory was

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what politicians were about: convincing others through rhetorical devices. There’s the Midrash about Pharaoh’s adviser asking that baby Moses be killed before he takes over the kingdom. The compromise was to bring a piece of gold and burning coal on a tray and watch for which he would reach: if he took the gold, he should be killed; but if it was the burning coal, he should be allowed to survive. When the tray arrived, Moses reached for the gold but at the last minute the angel Gabriel pushed his hand in the direction of the burning coal. Moses put the coal in his mouth and became a stutterer. md: How does the stuttering shape his identity? is: Moses, as I suggested earlier, is inefficient as a speaker. He needs an intermediary, a translator. This, again, might be construed as a leader’s ultimate failing. But it doesn’t stop Moses from accomplishing his tasks. md: If I remember from On Borrowed Words, your brother has a stutter, Ilan. is: Yes, a defining trait in him. md: In a stellar scene, God reveals his name. Eyheh asher ehyeh, which might mean “I am who I am.” is: Depending on who is doing the interpreting, it might also be taken to mean “I will be who I will be,” “I will be who I am,” and “I am who I will be.” As you might know, biblical scholarship has spent enormous amounts of ink sorting the line out. md: God’s name is YHWH. is: At least one of his names. In Hebrew, “Yaweh” is similar to “Ehyeh.” Essentially, the divine tells Moses: Who are you to know my name? Buzz off! md: So Moses agrees finally to the task. Perhaps the most unpalatable aspect of this story for our modern sensibilities comes from the frequency of YHWH purposely hardening Pharaoh’s heart so that he will have no choice but to set ten plagues on the Egyptians. The answer as to why is in Exodus 7:3–5: “And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, that I may

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lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth mine armies, and my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch forth mine hand upon.” In other words, God is purposely hardening Pharaoh’s heart so that the Egyptian knows that he is the Lord. is: The question is: Why does He need to do it? The answer is that the God of Exodus is still a deity proving himself. He has gone from creating the universe in Genesis to choosing his people in the episode of Abraham. The Moses saga is as much about God interviewing his people to make sure they are up to the task as it is about God finding out what he is capable of doing to prove the legitimacy of his choices. md: In other words, the divinity in Exodus isn’t omnipotent. is: He certainly is, but he is also tentative. md: What do you mean? is: God literally tests the waters in this biblical section. He ponders how far his power might reach. md: The following verse, Exodus 12:12, ratifies my henotheistic hypothesis. It favors a God over others, as opposed to there being just one God: “For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord.” Is the Hebrew Bible at war with itself over the issue of monotheism? is: The Bible captures the state of flux that the region was under in 200 to 100 b.c.e. md: Because this is the period in which the different books of the Bible were being woven together into what we have now, at least according to the Documentary Hypothesis. is: Yes. md: There’s a strange episode soon after Moses agrees to the mission in which God tries to kill him, and Tzipporah emerges as a heroine by taking a sharp stone and circumcising Gershon. She then says in Exodus 4:25–26: “Surely a bloody husband art thou to me. . . . A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision.”

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is: This is probably the only time the reader sees her personality. Tzipporah, which in Hebrew means “bird,” isn’t happy about her husband’s mission, either. She doesn’t want to leave her home, although later she does. If we look at circumcision as a sign of he covenant, is she speaking in double meanings: the blood on a literal level that comes from circumcision, but blood as in bloodline as well? In Numbers 12:1, Tzipporah is twice described as being Ethiopian. In rabbinical literature, the emphasis on her nationality suggests she was beautiful. But she isn’t portrayed as being loyal to her husband. Or, at least, the marriage is depicted as unhappy: Moses and Tzipporah, in rabbinical lore, didn’t love each other. The fact is important because the ultimate Jewish leader in the Bible might have a family, but he is really inhabited by solitude. md: Aaron, who does not stutter, becomes Moses’ mouthpiece. is: Aaron isn’t a leader. He’s just Moses’ agent and interpreter. md: Up until this point, fraternal relationships in the Bible are more about enmity than love. is: Another approach emerges in the Moses saga: siblinghood as both rivalry and partnership. md: The next episodes are visually compelling. The first of ten plagues is blood—the Nile turns to blood. The symbolism is plain. Afterward they include frogs, lice, flies—the meaning is unclear (arov in Hebrew is “swarm”), death of Egyptian livestock, boils, hail, locusts, and darkness. God softens and hardens Pharaoh’s heart, compelling him to agree to and then take back his promise to let the Israelites go. This happens three times, and, as I said before, it is bound to turn the stomachs of modern readers. is: It shouldn’t. md: Why? is: The modern reader is used to excess. md: The last plague is the most horrible: the slaughtering of the Egyptian male firstborn infants, in humans and livestock. Once again, blood as a symbol occurs. is: It’s also another form of water.

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md: Israelites must splash blood on their doorposts to make sure that the destroyer passes over them. is: The imagery has echoes in other Middle Eastern folktales of the period. md: The Israelites leave, taking livestock and jewelry with them, which as readers we can infer were given to them by their Egyptian taskmasters out of fear. Once again, as part of the divine drama, God hardens Pharaoh’s heart and chases after them. The people start complaining that they should have stayed in Egypt, that it was better to be slaves to the Egyptians than to be killed by them. Ignoring the pleas, Moses has God part the Red Sea. The Israelites escape to the other side to safety. The Egyptians follow but Moses commands the waters to return and the Egyptians drown. is: In Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 film The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston, which in today’s context is entertaining for its camp value, a former slave comes out with a line I wish were in the original text: “God opens the sea with the blast of his nostrils.” md: I’m saddened by the fact that such an image wasn’t captured by Gustave Doré. Intriguingly, few people know that DeMille also did a wonderful 1923 silent version, in black and white. It uses actual excerpts straight from Exodus and flashes them on the screen, and is accompanied with a musical score that is at once melodramatic but artistically beautiful. It’s far less pretty than the 1956 version, which befits the story. is: I haven’t seen it. The second half of Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are fascinating books for their probing examination of the nature of faith. When we talk about proof in the popular notion of religious faith, we think of miracles and punishment. Let’s talk first about miracles. A subject that enthralled Maimonides and Spinoza. md: Miracles play a vital role in Exodus. They are signs, but they are not sufficient proof for the Israelites; herein, the very quality that makes the Bible relevant today: skepticism. The first example would be the aforementioned ten plagues. The second is the drowning of the Egyptians in the Nile. Before that happens, the Israelites can’t yet grasp that they will be saved. Exodus 14:11:

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“And they said unto Moses, Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt?” is: Perhaps it’s understandable at this stage that they are nostalgic about Egypt where, even as slaves, they understood what was expected of them. Exodus 16:3 states: “And the children of Israel said unto them, Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” And Exodus 17:3–4 adds: “And the people thirsted there for water; and the people murmured against Moses, and said, Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst? And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, What shall I do unto this people? they be almost ready to stone me.” Slave psychology at its purest. md: The passages are also stating that miracles, in and of themselves, aren’t enough to cement faith and belief, let alone obedience. is: The children of Israel are adamantly ordered not to pick manna on the Sabbath, but rather to take enough for two days the day before, since the land needs a Sabbath, as well. md: The Israelites disobey and the result is that no manna is there. Exodus 16:28: “And the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws?” The inability to believe in God even where there is proof has definite resonance in our secular, skeptical age. I want to bring you back to the issue of translation. Exodus 19:5: “Now therefore, if you will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then you shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine.” The King James Version uses the phrase “above all people” whereas Friedman uses “out of all the peoples.” Is there a strong difference between above all and out of? is: It seems like a minor issue but it isn’t. After all, the discussion is about Israel being God’s jewel. md: Perhaps the key word here is “if.” What if they do not keep the covenant?

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is: The conditional is crucial. Every covenant is a contract: one party agrees to perform certain duties as long as the other one does what is expected of it. The “if ” therefore becomes crucial: if one party doesn’t fulfill the obligations, the other is allowed to consider the contractual agreement invalid. As long as Israel performs the commandments, the relationship with God is rock solid. md: In this way, it’s no different from marriage or a long-term relationship. In exchange for fidelity and the fulfillment of obligatory responsibility, there are privileges. In a traditional marriage, in which the woman is seen as or considered weaker, she needs her husband’s protection. Israelites are arguably taking that feminine role, an element we can explore later in full when we talk about the prophet Ezekiel. For now we’ll remain in Exodus. In chapter 19 when the children of Israel are brought to the foot of the mountain, God appears as “a cloud” amid “the voice of trumpets.” The people “trembled,” the mount “quaked.” Moses is then called up and given the Ten Commandments, which comprise Israel’s contractual responsibilities in the brit or “covenant.” is: The geographical coordinates are unequivocal: up is the sublime, down is perdition. And the sublime entails not only a climb but a shakeup. In between these two realms is a code of law that sets the tone for acceptable human conduct. md: Are the commandments technically ten? is: Your question makes me smile as I recall a scene from a Mel Brooks movie, History of the World, Part 1, in which Brooks, dressed up as Moses, receives three tablets with a total of fifteen commandments. But as he makes his way down Mount Sinai he stumbles and breaks one of the tablets. Oh, well! There is also a famous cartoon by T. McCracken in which Moses complains that the tablets are too heavy and reminds God that since he created the Internet on the fifth night—attention: it was a hidden creation—he could have pasted the commandments on his blog. Seriously, scholar James L. Kugel, in his book How to Read the Bible, wonders not only why ten, but why these ten. One of the

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remarkable things, Kugel argues, is the scope: God not only cares about his relationship with his subjects, but about “what they do to one another—which is why he prohibits such things as murder, adultery, and theft.” There’s a beautiful transition between the first five, dealing with God, and the second five, dealing with human affairs. The fifth commandment serves as a transition, since it deals with parents and children. Furthermore, the first five commandments are affirmative sentences (you shall), whereas the last five use the negative (you shall not). There is a Midrash about this half-and-half separation: when addressing his own connection to the people of Israel, God is sheer affirmation, whereas the cruelty inflicted among humans needs restrain in order for joy in the divine to be experienced. Not surprisingly, God emphasizes the positive first. Anyhow, the first commandment is a preface: “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” md: Why is this preface labeled a commandment? is: To command, according to the OED, is to direct with authority, to give orders. Although the verbal conjugation in Hebrew in that first sentence doesn’t use the command, it establishes the parameters of belief: I am the Lord thy God. There’s no margin of error. The commands I, thy God, are about to establish, are based on my authority as well as in my uniqueness. And that, in and of itself, is an order. md: In other words, to give an order a teacher first needs to define his authority. is: Exactly . . . md: The second commandment is also strange in that it seems to acknowledge other Gods despite the Torah being “monotheistic.” Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Orthodox Jews would probably say it is mere semantics, but to me, and I’ve brought this up before, it sounds like henotheism. is: A valid point. Henotheism is the worship of a group of deities, one of which is superior to the others. To me the appealing point

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in this commandment isn’t about the tension between unity and multiplicity of divine forces but a sequence of questions at the heart of the relationship between God and Israel: Is God choosing the Israelites? Are the Israelites choosing YHWH over others? Is there a mutual choice in this relationship? Remember: it takes two to tango. While the commandments appear to be single-sided— God saying what’s allowed—a covenant assumes the involvement of two parties. md: The next two commandments are: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” And, “Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.” is: The second and third commandments are about God’s uniqueness. Don’t waste your time with lowly idols, he states. For divine power has only one source. md: Me, Myself, and I. is: It sounds like the trinity. md: Kidding aside, I don’t understand why envisioning YHWH is a sin. The Bible tells us not to make graven images, but it never tells us the reason. is: In biblical times the reason was obvious. Look around! it suggested. “Where does idolatry lead others?” The other commandments also don’t give a reason: don’t desire your neighbor’s wife, don’t steal, don’t kill. There’s no second clause in these sentences: don’t desire your neighbor’s wife because if you do you will. . . . What the Bible is doing, I believe, is stating by example. It tells the reader: Didn’t you just hear the story of slavery in Egypt? The episode of Sodom and Gomorrah? I, thy God, am ready to forge a new relationship as long as you follow my orders. If you do, the path you’ll follow will be better. md: Is it? is: Yes.

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md: Don’t we still suffer? is: God isn’t promising to liberate us from our human bondage. He simply offers us a moral through which to understand our life. If his parameters are followed, that bondage will acquire an ulterior meaning. md: A question about the fourth commandment: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.” Why is calling him by name a way of envisioning him? is: Do you understand the scope of the theological revolution taking shape in these lines? It’s a bit like the invention of zero. How do you visualize a number that has no value? Is a valueless number still a number? By calling it zero the absence of a number already exists. Still, it’s just a hole: an empty symbol. md: But a symbol nonetheless. is: Exactly. God is absent, God has no shape, God is nameless. Yet he is the most powerful force in the universe. An astonishing thought! md: The fifth commandment, Exodus 20:8–11, is several verses long: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” is: It’s an expression of God’s love. Not only is God absent, but he is time and space. Within those spheres he allocates units for sacredness. In time, that unit is the Sabbath. md: Rest is important. is: Not only rest, but the counting of time is crucial. Not all days are the same. Every seventh day is divine. md: The spiritual becomes tangible. Let’s look at the Sabbath hymn “Lecha dodi” by Shlomo Elkabetz:

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Lecha dodi likrat kalah, p’nei Shabbat nekablah Come my Beloved to greet the bride—the Sabbath presence let us welcome! Shamor v’zachor b’dibur echad, hishmi-anu Kel hamyuchad, Hashem echad ushmo echad, l’shem ultiferet v’lit-hilah Safeguard and Remember—in a single utterance the One and Only G-d made us hear. Hashem is One and His Name is One, for renown for splendor, and for praise. Lecha dodi likrat kalah, p’nei Shabbat nekablah Come my Beloved to greet the bride—the Sabbath presence let us welcome! Likrat Shabbat l’chu v’nel’chah, ki hi m’kor hab’rachah, merosh mikedem n’suchah, sof ma-aseh, b’machashavah t’chilah To welcome the Sabbath, come let us go, for it is the source of blessing; from the beginning, from antiquity she was honored, last in deed, but first in thought.

Outside of the chorus, most of the lyrics are about redemption and the Messiah. The Sabbath is welcomed through song. Somehow, despite all my twenty-first-century queer sympathies, I’ve never stopped loving “Lecha dodi.” While I may accept the amending of genders in most Jewish prayers and songs, I would never—ever—do the same to “Lecha dodi.” Can you talk about the erotic imagery of the poem? Also, despite contemporary ideas about gender and sexual orientation, why the song has such lasting appeal? is: The love affair between God and man has cosmic implications. The Jewish calendar is evidence of it. With the destruction of the Second Temple, the male and female sides of the divine were separated. The female side, the Shekhina, follows the people of Israel in their diaspora; it will only be reunited with its male counterpart when the Messiah comes and the world is redeemed. “Lecha dodi” celebrates love in temporal terms. Its message switches from the perspective I suggested before (God and man in a convulsed relationship) to a family-oriented picture of husband,

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bride, and child. In Genesis 1–2, time itself is a divine attribute: God not only creates everything, but he creates it chronologically. The twenty-four-hour cycle is the unit chosen by God to mark the passing of time. And the seventh day is the holiest (etymologically, the word Shabbat, unlike the words of the other days of the week, doesn’t come from “seven,” shevah, but from shin bet tav, “to rest”). Not only the holiest every week but in the entire yearlong calendar. Indeed, the Sabbath is the most precious of all Jewish holidays—holier even than Yom Kippur. That it comes with such regularity, at the beginning of each week, is an opportunity to sanctify God and his creation in a constant way, to show that the universe entire is a magisterial act of love: God is the husband, the Sabbath is the bride; and man is their byproduct, but also the bridge between them. md: During Moses’ ascent up to Mount Sinai in which God reveals laws on several civic matters, the Israelites begin to beg Aaron to create a visible symbol they can worship. Yet they’ve already seen numerous miracles at this point. Aaron relents, urges everyone to give them their gold jewelry, at which point he builds the Golden Calf. This is not supposed to be happening. Have the Israelites at this point not had proof? God calls the Israelites “stiff-necked.” is: The original Hebrew term: k’shei oref. This is the episode in which Moses’ humility and righteousness shines from the page. It shows him negotiating and reasoning with God, serving as the Israelites’ intermediary and protector. In Genesis 10, God offers Moses the chance to be the new Abraham. “Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.” Moses answers in Genesis 11–12: “. . . Why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand? Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, for mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people.”

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md: So does Moses love the Jewish people, or does he merely feel responsible for them? Do the two necessarily go hand-in-hand? is: Does a leader love his people? Are love and responsibility divorced? Moses knows the fate of the people of Israel is in his hands. md: In Exodus 33:18–19, Moses is granted the privilege of seeing God’s essence. is: Moses says: “I beseech thee, show me thy glory. And He said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.” Moses is then given several more commandments including the dietary laws, the regulations on how to observe festivals such as Shavuot and Passover. As Moses ascends the mountain with the replaced tablets of the Ten Commandments, it becomes clear that he is now semidivine. His skin glows. Exodus 34:30: “And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him.” md: What do you think of the sculpture of Moses by Michelangelo? is: The ultimate portrait: a demigod and sage—old, large, and magisterial. md: Why the horns? is: They are rays of light. But horns are what anti-Semites would prefer, not in Moses per se but in Jews in general. md: Let’s talk about Leviticus. is: In narrative terms, this isn’t an easy book to read, since it is made of lists of laws. The overall purpose is established in Leviticus 10:10–11: “And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean; And that ye may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the Lord hath spoken unto them by the hand of Moses.” md: Looking at the Bible as a whole, Genesis is just a beginning, Exodus established the primacy of Moses, and to a lesser degree his brother and sister, as prophets. It also establishes the divine as a miracle maker. Leviticus, instead, is concerned with the notions of holy and unholy, whereas Numbers for the most part continues the story of Moses.

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is: A coherent progression. md: Let’s talk about Moses’ character. is: His outbursts reveal him to be psychologically tortured. It is at this point when true introspection takes place in the Bible. In Numbers 11:12–15, he ponders: “Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their fathers? Whence should I have flesh to give unto all this people? for they weep unto me, saying, Give us flesh, that we may eat. I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me. And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thou, out of hand, if I have found favour in thy sight; and let me not see my wretchedness.” Rarely is the reader invited to such treat. The narrative strategies aren’t that different in the nineteenth-century realism. Of course, this isn’t a monologue. God and Moses are in dialogue, and Moses is confessing his doubts. md: Nursing father: Can you think of a more apt metaphor? is: Father, can you provide guidance to me? I know you’re all mighty, but you must also understand that it isn’t easy to be your messenger. md: So Moses, at this moment, would rather die than serve as the go-between for YHWH and the Israelites. is: What does Don Quixote repeat to Sancho: Am I as brave as I’m presenting myself to you? And Rashkolnikov in Crime and Punishment: Am I capable of the actions I set for myself? Doubt is the engine of literature. md: As a motif, nostalgia for Egypt returns regularly. is: This is indeed a feature. Numbers 11:1–6, for instance, states: “And when the people complained, it displeased the Lord: and the Lord heard it; and his anger was kindled; and the fire of the Lord burnt among them, and consumed them that were in the uttermost parts of the camp. And the people cried unto Moses; and when Moses prayed unto the Lord, the fire was quenched. And he called the name of the place Taberah: because the fire of the Lord burnt among them. And the mixt multitude that was

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among them fell a lusting: and the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick: But our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes.” It’s easier to be a slave than to be free and powerful. Aunt May tells Peter Parker, the alter ego of Spiderman: With power comes responsibility. md: In punishment for attempting to return Egypt, the divine prohibits the Israelites from taking a straight route to Canaan. They will follow a circuitous one since their own brethren, the Edomites, descendants of Esau, won’t let them through. is: The path takes forty years. md: Earlier we talked about Freud’s interpretation of Joseph’s dreams. He also wrote a book on Moses. is: Freud, a Viennese Jew whose mother, as he acknowledged, played an important psychological role in his self-esteem, was always conflicted about his Jewish ancestry. The Future of an Illusion, published in 1927, is a rebuttal of religion from a scientific perspective. And in Moses and Monotheism, his 1939 book (it was published the year World War II broke out, a significant pointer given his ambivalence toward his own Judaism, and at the time he was forced out of Vienna for exile in London), he sought to explain the birth of Judaism as the variation of an Egyptian cult. He retells the biblical story of Moses as a counternarrative, arguing that more than a religion Moses’ leadership formed a cult. He brought his followers out of slavery in Egypt but, once in the desert, they turned against him. In fact, Freud suggests that the story is one of rebellion: the Israelites went against their leader because he had imposed on them an impossible duty—to circumcise their children. In Freud’s phallocentric theory, the exercising of the prepuce was too much for his followers to bear. I find Freud to be an extraordinary essayist but a misguided thinker. md: Can you talk about the Frida Kahlo painting of Moses and Mexico? It’s inspired by Freud’s Moses and Monotheism, but can

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you comment on what viewers might read into the painting about the intertwining of Jewish nationlessness with Mexican nationalism? is: I adore this 1945 painting. Kahlo’s father was a German Jew. However, in Fridas Vater: Der Fotograf Guillermo Kahlo, Gaby Franger and Rainer Huhle cast serious doubt on this claim. Perhaps Frida claimed Jewish roots in an effort to bolster her exoticism or perhaps to cement her ties to members of the Jewish intelligentsia, such as Trotsky. But going back to the Kahlo painting, her depiction of Moses juxtaposes biblical, preColombian, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century motifs. There’s Marx, Stalin, and Hitler, along with Aztec symbolism (that is, the huge Quetzalcoátl), the Egyptian “Eye of Providence,” and Botticelli’s Venus, which is evocative of Renaissance art. Plus, there are references to the Mexican muralistas: José Clemente Orozco; Kahlo’s husband, Diego Rivera; and David Alfaro Siqueiros. At the center, of course, is the sun, the womb, and Moses as a baby—Diego, really—in the river Nile. The structure of the piece follows an ex voto. The style is vintage Kahlo: almost cartoonish while paying tribute to history as the mother of all things. It speaks to me loudly because Jewish and Mexican elements are seldom intertwined in contemporary art. md: Is Kahlo suggesting that Mexico . . . is: That it is an expansion of the biblical terrain? I’m not sure. She’s simply bringing together her two identities, Jewish and Mexican, through a meditation on nativity. Maybe Kahlo insinuates that world history has a single source: the Moses story. md: In the Bible, Moses lets the Israelites know he won’t join them in entering the Promised Land. is: Joshua will do that instead. Moses has been punished by God for his abrasive temper. The image is superb: the journey of God’s most important partner is left incomplete. I’m in awe by this narrative turn. md: What are Moses’ last words in the Bible? is: In Deuteronomy there are three speeches Moses gives to Israel, including the Shema. To summarize, he asks his people to love

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God alone “with all thine heart” and “with all thy soul.” You and I discussed this, in part, in the prologue to this book: according to a Midrash, the first means within a moral context, and the second beyond life itself. In other words, the heart is a conduit of individual emotions, whereas the soul is part of God’s larger scheme of the universe. md: Deuteronomy 34:6 states: “And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.” There are tombs to this day, or what are said to be tombs, for all the patriarchs in Hebron, for Rachel outside Bethlehem, Joseph in Nablus, Mordecai and Esther in Iran, Ezra and Ezekiel in Iraq. But there is no tomb for Moses. is: This is fitting in a people committed to erase idolatry. Otherwise Judaism would have become “Mosesism.” md: Coming into the modern day, have Jews moved away from the covenant? is: No. Before the haskala, as the Enlightenment is known in Hebrew, all the commandments were the centerpiece of Jewish social life. As a result of the haskala, Jews negotiate what is kosher and what isn’t. That negotiation allows for all sorts of interpretation. md: Will Jews cease to be God’s treasure? is: All relationships, to consolidate themselves, go through negotiations. md: Are you suggesting that the divine is flexible at this point? is: The depiction of God in Exodus is of a nationalist zealot. He is no democrat (a foreign idea in the Bible) but he likes progress, I think. Does progress pertain exclusively to science? I don’t think so. Are today’s relationships between a man and a woman better than they were in biblical times? My response is yes. Does God approve of that change? I hope so. md: I hope so, as well. is: In the end, Mordecai, we humans are the ones who speak for him.

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d V

The National Self “To teach them war”

mordecai drache: I want to talk about Israel becoming a nation, both in the modern sense of that word through Zionism, and in the biblical sense. Let’s start with the latter. ilan stavans: Every nation starts by differentiating itself from other nations. In other words, the birth of nationhood results from the idea of foreignness. Those that aren’t alike—that is, who don’t have the same history, don’t speak the same language, don’t belong to the same land, don’t practice the same customs—aren’t us. md: Let’s talk about the arrival to the Promised Land, which takes place after Moses’ death. is: In the Book of Exodus, Joshua plays a major role as Moses’ apprentice. He’s portrayed as wise and humble. md: He leads the people of Israel to Canaan. is: The first part of the book of Joshua is about the conquest of the land, which is done after military losses and alliances. The second part is about the extent of the land and its partition.

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md: The land was impure. is: They had speweth and vomiteth, and were sick as a result. md: The disgust the reader feels at the ongoing instructions to displace the Perezites, Hivites, Hittites, Jebusites, and others is strong. is: Love for God, justice, and land go hand in hand. Unfortunately, it justifies the oppressive policies of the Israeli government today. There, again, an example of how the Bible not only frames but justifies our emotions. md: I couldn’t agree with you more, though I’d be careful with the word “justify.” Jews who blindly support Israel, particularly if they’re religious, think the Bible justifies persecution of Arabs when in fact nothing justifies it. is: Zionism is a modern recasting of the Jewish ideal of the return: tashuv in Hebrew. Return to one’s land, return to one’s heritage. These ideas are ingrained in the Bible, but Zionism twists them to serve its own purpose. md: A short time ago you and I talked about sustainable agriculture. This is an expression of love for the land. Is love for a state the same thing? is: In my view they are different. Nature, in the Bible, is God’s stage. And while the state—the Jewish state—is also created by the divine, it is a theater of human folly, as all states are. By state I’m referring to the entity bestowed (by the people, by nature, or by God) to govern its constituents through a series of rules. md: Treatment of foreigners comes up often in the Bible. is: It surely does. In Exodus 22:21: “Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” And in Exodus 23:9: “Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” md: The commandment is repeated in several different ways throughout the Bible, including in Leviticus, Jeremiah, and Zechariah. Simultaneously, in Exodus 23:28–30, it’s evident how God treats the inhabitants already living in Canaan: “And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee. I will not drive them

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out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee. By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land.” is: The art of divine cleansing . . . md: How are modern Jews supposed to reconcile such mixed messages? is: I don’t believe there is much room for reconciliation, Mordecai. The biblical world is brutal. md: Fair enough. As modern Jews, we wrestle with these contradictions because not doing so adequately, you will agree, is having life and death consequences. It’s clear from the Ten Commandments that Israel, as a community, is based on a covenant that demands strict adherence to ethical laws leading to somewhat balanced wealth distribution, as well as care for the earth and the vulnerable within society, and, as we’ve already mentioned, a great many other rules that would be horrendous to follow as we have a different set of ethics now compared to a millennium ago. Looking at the Bible in context of the time in which it was compiled, it makes clear that if Israel fails to live up to this covenant, God will punish his chosen people, but how does community become a nation? is: Through real estate. That is, only by showing that God and the people of Israel have a land where they can express their love. md: What role does the land of Israel have in this marriage between God and Israel? Is it akin to a dowry? is: Yes, I like the image. Not a ring but a dowry. There’s no way out of this: God’s love in the Bible is telluric, earthly, downward looking, connected to the ground. The verses above might be taken as a prenuptial agreement. His love is tough. md: In the book of Joshua, Israel becomes a nation, or goy. And without the book of Judges, which serves as its companion, the reader wouldn’t get the fact that a large number of peoples and tribes remain extant in the land of Israel. Their purpose is to “test” the Israelites’ faith. Perhaps that’s why Joshua is a most malleable

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and easily twisted narrative, used by anti-Semites and ultra-rightwing Zionists to justify their viewpoints. is: It starts with a command given to Joshua, after Moses’ death, to finish the job. Joshua 1:2–5: “Go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast. There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.” md: The reader is also told in Deuteronomy 9:4: “Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the Lord thy God hath cast them [the other nations] out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness the Lord hath brought me in to possess this land: but for the wickedness of these nations the Lord doth drive them out from before thee.” The message, I trust, is of such importance, it’s repeated three times. Is this God’s entreaty on a conquering nation to be humble in their victory? is: I take it more to be political propaganda. Joshua 1:6–9 continues: “Be strong and of a good courage: for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land, which I sware unto their fathers to give them. Only be thou strong and courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”

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md: Joshua wants to ambush Canaan, so he sends his spies to infiltrate it in order to gather intelligence. He first targets the city of Jericho. He sends spies who, in the process of their intelligence gathering, take a detour and visit a prostitute. As they are seen going into her house, city guards come to capture them, she hides them in the roof and tells the guards that they had already left. She explains her reasons for helping them. Joshua 2:9–11: “I know that the Lord hath given you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red sea for you, when ye came out of Egypt; and what ye did unto the two kings of the Amorites, that were on the other side Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom ye utterly destroyed. And as soon as we had heard these things, our hearts did melt, neither did there remain any more courage in any man, because of you: for the Lord your God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath.” is: Although impure, Rahab is rehabilitated because she is useful to the Israelites. md: There’s a Midrash that suggests that she even marries Joshua and becomes the ancestress to important biblical figures like the prophet Jeremiah and the prophetess Huldah. is: Rahab is a traitor to her people. But the Bible portrays her behavior as motivated by self-preservation. Intuitively, she knew how things would turn out. md: That’s just my point. In a modern secular context, people are cynical about such behavior. Yet the Bible makes no bones whatsoever about faith and self-preservation being necessarily linked. is: Mordecai, you insist on looking at the biblical narrative with the humane, progressive, cosmopolitan eyes of a modern reader, forgetting that the universe described in it is unapologetically barbaric. md: A compliment and a rebuke in one pithy statement. Only you could manage such a feat, Ilan. I’m flattered! I’m forced to ask myself if my desire not to see the Bible as a text justifying the persecution of Palestinians compels me to read and interpret

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creatively. I’ll leave that to the reader to decide. Before the attack on Jericho, circumcision comes up again. Joshua 5:1–4: “And it came to pass, when all the kings of the Amorites, which were on the side of Jordan westward, and all the kings of the Canaanites, which were by the sea, heard that the Lord had dried up the waters of Jordan from before the children of Israel, until we were passed over, that their heart melted, neither was there spirit in them any more, because of the children of Israel. At that time the Lord said unto Joshua, Make thee sharp knives, and circumcise again the children of Israel the second time. And Joshua made him sharp knives, and circumcised the children of Israel at the hill of the foreskins. And this is the cause why Joshua did circumcise: All the people that came out of Egypt, that were males, even all the men of war, died in the wilderness by the way, after they came out of Egypt.” But the reader infers that the male Israelites are indeed circumcised by now. is: Circumcision is an integral part of the covenant. Before the Israelites spill the blood of others, they must spill their own blood. md: Does the Bible consider the slaughter of people at Jericho a righteous act? is: The destruction of Jericho is terrifying. Seven priests are assigned by Joshua to blow the ram’s horn in front of the Ark of the Covenant, which holds the tablets with the Ten Commandments. Soldiers lay siege to the city by circling it for six days in a row. On the seventh, once again, the priests blow the ram’s horn and the Israelites shout continuously and the city walls fell. md: Maybe this is the right place to talk, albeit briefly, about the Ark of the Covenant itself. is: A totemic item, if the Bible is said to include one. md: In what sense? is: The Ark of the Covenant is, arguably, the most important religious object in the narrative. It is said to be the throne of God. md: Did it look like Steven Spielberg depicted it in Raiders of the Lost Ark? is: Probably. It was a box made of acacia wood, covered with gold, roughly 4 × 2½ × 2½ feet. It had golden rings through which

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poles were inserted in order for the piece to be carried. On top of it was the kipporet, the so-called mercy seat. On each side of the kipporet were cherubim with their wings open to form a canopy. md: What kind of role did it have? is: In its itinerant journey, it was instrumental in shaping the concept of identity. It is a companion in the settlement of the Promised Land. David brought it to Jerusalem, thus declaring himself the leader in control of the nation’s destiny. King Solomon placed it in the temple. md: When did it disappear? is: I believe the date is unclear but probably around 587 b.c.e. md: I apologize for jumping, but in a wide-ranging discussion like the one you and I are maintaining, a number of side topics might be placed in different locations. Anyway, let’s return to the Jericho episode. This is the first chapter in the Bible in which the concept of “ethical battles,” that is, the rules for the conduct of war, is established. is: The soldiers are instructed to kill everybody including children and slaves since they are considered booty. It’s made clear in Joshua 6:17 that “the city shall be accursed, even it, and all that are therein, to the Lord: only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all that are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent.” md: This model of an ethical war isn’t palatable today. One can only imagine how a survivor of Jericho would write the history. Still, I find Joshua 6:19 intriguing: “But all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto the Lord: they shall come into the treasury of the Lord.” Gold and silver are only monetarily valuable because as humans we deem them to be. This can be said for any item. Today, glass is not valuable yet in other periods of history it was because of the difficulties involved in making it. The verse is fascinating because on the one hand it’s part and parcel of the larger idea that soldiers should not take booty, thereby deriving financial reward from war. But it also shows that worth is relative: so long as the silver and gold are kept inside “the treasury of the Lord,” no one benefits financially from

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the war. How does the killing in Jericho square with the sixth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”? is: It doesn’t. That’s because warfare, in the Bible and beyond, doesn’t seem to be covered by the commandments, not only the sixth but also the eighth: “Thou shalt not steal.” md: Why is that? is: Simply put, because the Bible justifies war when it is performed under divine supervision. Killing to enhance God’s power is acceptable. The same approach extends to the modern state: to attack another nation proclaiming an ulterior reason—either endorsed by God or justifying the well-being of the majority of the population—is justifiable. In other words, an individual cannot take the law into his own hands, but since the law is proclaimed by the state, the state is able to approve the killing of enemies. md: Macabre. is: Sending others to their death isn’t as painful because, in the end, death is the great equalizer. It is sending others to be killed that is against God’s laws, unless he endorses the move. The Jericho episode is linked thematically with the idea of nationhood, for the Israelites are told, in no uncertain terms, that the reasons for being granted the land has nothing to do with their righteousness. Instead, it has everything to do with the wickedness of other nations. md: Five kings from various city-states, including Jerusalem, make war on the Gibeonites. During the battle, Joshua commands the sun to stand still, a hefty piece of symbolism if ever there was one. Northern tribes are then defeated. Thirty-one kings, all listed by name, are put to death. The territory is allotted to the twelve tribes of Israel, named after Jacob’s twelve children. In other words, God “justifies” the massacre in order to fulfill his promise to the descendants of Abraham. Yet in the end there are still several other tribes whom God does not allow the Israelites to kill off. Judges 3:1–2: “Now these are the nations which the Lord left, to prove Israel by them, even as many of Israel had not known all the wars of Canaan. Only that

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the generations of the children of Israel might know, to teach them war, at least such as before knew nothing thereof.” I wonder why God continues to feel the need to test the Israelites. is: In love relationships, testing the other is a common device. md: Would we call such a device dysfunctional? is: Insofar as dysfunctionality is a normal behavior. md: Tests such as these make a person want to cheat. is: Why? md: If the expectations for loyalty aren’t high, there’s no compulsion to follow them. is: God leaves some enemies intact to make Israel aware that its standing might be tested at any point. md: That’s what I mean. Why not simply grant the new kingdom absolute control over its neighbors? is: An empire rises and falls in order to leave room for another cycle. md: But isn’t Israel the chosen one? Why doesn’t God allow Israel to finish off its enemies once and for all? is: Such a situation necessarily entails the end of history. md: So the Bible endorsed the place of Israel in history. is: Absolutely. md: But to reiterate, that history is cyclical. is: It is. He not only hits Israel hard with it but punishes multiple nations, including Moab, Damascus, Egypt, and Edom. Israel is no less a sinner than its neighbors. md: The Bible’s recognition of history’s cyclical nature is precisely why I don’t believe that as a text it justifies Israeli persecution of Palestinians. The Israelites’ control over the Promised Land, by God’s own doing, is at best tentative. Right-wing Zionists and scores of anti-Zionists misinterpret the Bible to suggest that Judaism permits Jews to commit genocide. Each quotes the same sections of the Bible to justify its argument, of which the destruction of Jericho could be a perfect example. Though indeed there’s a depiction of divine justification in the destruction, the concept of divinely justified genocide is hazy in my mind. is: In my mind it isn’t hazy. It’s just atrocious. . . . Yet if the Bible, as I suggested, is a mirror in which the viewer finds what he’s looking

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for, God, by virtue of his silence, his reluctance to be heard, is all the more open to conflicting interpretations. md: I find the concept of divinely justified genocide as atrocious as you do. Let me rephrase. Since Israel was never the kind of Jewish state that right-wing Zionists imagine as ideal, and that not even the Bible depicted it as having existed, the haziness comes in whether or not Judaism justifies it. I don’t believe it does, but there are Jews who do and the results are monstrous. Is the Jewish God a God of war, a racist, a eugenicist, an ethnic-cleanser, or is he more malleable, shape-shifting to what we as humans want Him to be, including a mirror for our basest and most violent instincts? is: I wholeheartedly dislike the God of war. I prefer a literary God, a writer’s God. md: What does that mean? is: Ethicists have their own variety of God, as do philosophers, naturalists, and military men. Each chooses what he prefers. Mine is an intellectual God, not a warmonger. md: You seem to be arguing now in favor of a hygienic form of belief. In other words, people should pick and choose the type of God they want. is: Actually, I’m arguing the opposing side. I might prefer a more intellectual God, a deity committed to pacifism. Yet the Bible doesn’t allow for that version alone. The biblical God is cruel, bloodthirsty, and capricious. I object to those qualities but I can’t deny them. md: Onward to another theme, what about kings? is: They are the principal engine in the consolidation of the Jewish state in biblical times. Saul, a bit like Isaac, is a ghostlike creature. Instead, David and Solomon, the second and third kings of the united kingdom of Israel, are emblematic. md: Let us leave Solomon, at least a slice of him, for our dialogue on the Song of Songs. I want to concentrate now on David. is: His is the lineage from which the Messiah will come. The majority of information available on him comes from 1 Samuel to 1 Kings, passing through 2 Samuel, although the span of these chapters

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goes far beyond David, also covering the reluctance of Samuel to endorse the idea of a monarchy, the anointment of Saul and the succession of power to David’s hands. Robert Alter, in an introduction to his lucid translation The David Story, describes the material thus: “The story of David is probably the greatest single narrative representation in antiquity of a human life evolving in slow stages through time, shaped and altered by the pressures of political life, public institutions, family, the impulses of the body and spirit, the eventual sad decay of the flesh. It also provides the most unflinching insight into the cruel process of history and into human behavior warped by the pursuit of power.” md: As a parenthesis, you have mentioned Alter a number of times. Do you know him? is: Yes, years ago we worked together on a daunting project: making a list of the one hundred most influential books of modern times. The judges also included other scholars such as Gershon Shaked and Ruth Wisse. md: Was there one book ranked by everyone as the best of the best? is: Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep. Every judge placed it at the top of his own list. md: You admire Alter’s translations of the Bible. is: They seem to me to be designed not for believers but for intelligent readers. What I enjoy the most is the translator’s sensibility. Alter reads the Bible as a literary classic, referring in his introductions to Stendhal, Tolstoy, and Proust. For instance, in his exploration The David Story he says that “the Book of Samuel is one of those rare masterworks that, like Stendhal’s Charterhouse of Parma, evidences an unblinking and abiding instructive knowingness about man as a political animal in all his contradictions and venality and in all his susceptibility to the brutalization and the seductions of exercising power.” Or else, Alter, in his summary of what biblical scholars are able to achieve through academic analysis, ultimately sides with writers such as Faulkner who, in Absalom, Absalom!, appear to understand in a deeper way what the biblical narrative is about.

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Nevertheless, Alter, unlike me, seldom allows his own personal story to intrude in his critical meditations. The reader only infers what the translator’s passions are because they are kept under the sleeve. The autobiographical viewpoint, while occasionally present, is invariably mediated through a serious, impartial reflection of the text at hand. MA: What attracts you to David? is: He is a fascinating character in the modern sense of the term: bright, impulsive, gallant, a musician and a poet in addition to being a statesman. His story includes stylistic elements that are quite modern, among them internal monologues. There are subaltern characters, like Samuel, who is actually multifaceted, and rather unattractive. Alter, in his book, refers to a poem by Yehuda Amichai: “When Samuel was born, she said words of Torah, / ‘For this lad I prayed.’/ When he grew up and did the deeds of his life, / she asked, ‘For this lad I prayed?’” David is often portrayed in unsympathetic terms in his own narrative. His odyssey is linked to that of Saul’s, the first king. There is a thirst for knowledge as well as a desire for power. Who wrote the story of David? It isn’t clear, although it probably was someone in his court who perceived himself to be a historian of sorts. David also gets credit for seventy-three of the Psalms. David’s youthful ways—the part I enjoyed the most in the tale—are the source of endless admiration. In Michelangelo’s marble statue in Florence, made between 1501 and 1504, David strikes a remarkably virile figure. Why haven’t conservative pundits sought to dress it up? It isn’t the standard image of the future king conquering Goliath. Nor is it one of him lusting for Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, with whom the king has an extramarital affair. I repeat the adjective Michelangelo chooses: youthful. He’s a warrior who makes Jerusalem the capital of the kingdom of Israel. md: David and Jerusalem are eternally linked. is: He has a house built for himself. And he brings the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. His objective is clear: to build a temple, forever establishing the city as the center of gravity of Jewish life.

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md: He isn’t allowed to build the temple, though, establishing it as the center of gravity of his kingdom. is: Through the prophet Nathan, God lets the king know that the construction of such a grand palace to pray to him must wait. Instead, he tells David that his house, in the genealogical sense, will be the dynasty defining his people. 2 Samuel 7:16: “And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee: thy throne shall be established for ever.” From then on, King David consolidates the kingdom through imperial enterprises. He takes over, among other nations, Aram and Moab, which, roughly speaking, are modern Syria and Jordan. His reign, first in Judah and then in the united kingdom, lasted almost four decades. (In biblical time, his life is framed between c. 1037–970.) md: Let’s now talk about the depiction of history in the Bible. is: There’s an overall teleological approach to history. From Genesis to Deuteronomy, Israel is described first as a set of disparate individuals—headed by Abraham, who is chosen by the divine— then as a landless nation in formation, and ultimately as a powerful state. There are other surrounding states. Israel, like them, is at one time weak, and, at others, victorious. Being vanquished is a pattern usually justified as a sentencing from God for sinful behavior. Cycles might be an appealing geometrical image. Another one might be a wave: up and down, up and down. md: A chapter on the national self is best begun with a discussion of the word goy, which in English vernacular means “non-Jew.” is: It literally means “nation.” md: The irony behind this is startling. Jews became officially nationless near the time of Christ. There were already some exile communities, particularly in Babylon and Persia, modern Iraq and Iran, respectively. Legend has it that Abraham was born in Babylon. How do you think nationlessness defined Jews historically, that is, the period described in the Bible prior to the arrival in Canaan? is: I find that period enormously compelling, maybe because for me the concept of nation is troublesome. I don’t care for governments, flags, anthems, and the military. I don’t have an ounce in me that

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might justify the idea of sacrificing my life for a piece of land. I am a Diaspora creature, stateless. md: Yet the Jews in the Diaspora look at the land of Israel for inspiration. is: I don’t—not for inspiration. md: What about the resurrection of Hebrew? Is that an inspiration? This couldn’t have happened without Zionism, or at least it would have been more difficult. As you wrote in Resurrecting Hebrew, the land and the language are intimately connected. is: Yes, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the driving force behind the resurrection of Hebrew, was an ardent Zionist. He loved languages in general but he loved Hebrew even more. He perceived it as a conduit for the nationalist enterprise of the Jewish people in the twentieth century: to be a nation like other nations. md: To be normal. is: Normality was indeed at the core of the Zionist project. But when Jews utter the word “normal,” you have to take that utterance with a grain of salt. md: Why? is: Do Jews ever want to be normal? md: What is the etymology of the word “gentile”? is: The OED defines it as “of or pertaining to any or all of the nations other than the Jewish.” But it might also refer to “a heathen, a pagan.” The word is different from “genteel,” an adjective pertaining to the gentry, which in English points to “a rank above the commonality.” Today a gentile is a rubric pertaining nationality in the abstract sense: a gentile is a non-Jew. md: How did nationlessness define Judaism post-exile? is: The Bible talks about a hunger for roots. The books prior to Exodus are presented as a journey that culminates with the end of exile. And the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem is a return to the wandering, the longing, the desire to be whole. Unfortunately, wholeness takes a rather reductive view: it means having a land of one’s own. On the other hand, creating a nation on the ground wasn’t an easy task. Israel isn’t portrayed as a loose federation of tribes. It’s a union.

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md: I have a personal question, Ilan: Do you have dual citizenship? is: Yes. I’m a Mexican and a U.S. citizen. md: Does the duality trouble you? is: Not in the least. To me a flag is just a piece of cloth. md: Do you feel more Mexican than American? Or is it the other way around? is: Neither of them. The Los Angeles Times once ran a piece in which I was described as “an accidental Mexican.” I like the image. I can’t say the same about my American identity because I actively sought it. Still, none of these two has more weight in my view. md: How about being Jewish? is: That’s a deeper issue. md: Not long ago, there was a letter in a Toronto alternative newspaper in which a reader attacked Canadian Jews for loyalty to Israel. The reader suggested that such loyalty was a slap in the face to the country of their birth. is: Ridiculous. md: In part, the author of the letter was reacting to the human rights abuses in Israel against the Palestinians. I didn’t have a problem with that. I had a problem with his singling out Jews as worse Canadians. All you have to do is stroll into India Bazaar, Little Italy, or the Portuguese or Greek neighborhoods during a soccer game to know that Jews are not the only ones who have dual nationalistic loyalties. I’m patriotic as a Canadian, largely because I have freedoms here I have in few other countries, including the United States, Mexico, and Israel. Do you ever feel you’re cheating one of your triple identities? is: No. md: The Hispanic scholars who claim that you do not represent Hispanic reality are too intelligent to ever bring up your PolishJewish roots explicitly. Doing so would cost them their reputations, but growing up Jewish in such a predominantly Catholic culture, it seems to me, would necessarily make the Mexican-Jewish community tighter, more closed, perhaps claustrophobic. (My one close Mexican-Jewish friend in Toronto makes it clear to me she prefers being a Jew in Canada.) Your

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Hispanic reality might well be different and atypical in comparison, but it is nonetheless Hispanic. I wonder if there’s some undercurrent of anti-Semitism in these critiques, and if the legacy of Jewish nationlessness causes some Hispanic scholars to question your authenticity. is: I’ll leave the questions for others to respond to. md: All right. Getting back to the book of Joshua, after the destruction of the First Temple, God could be taken anywhere. is: Like a vade mecum. But it isn’t the divine that becomes portable but national identity. md: His invisibility and transcendence made him the perfect God for the nationless whose home environments would change over time. is: Christianity and Islam aren’t territorial religions either. md: They might be taken anywhere, though sometimes they have been imposed. is: Judaism has, too, as during the elusive episode of the Khazars. I remember being shocked when reading Arthur Koestler’s book, The Thirteenth Tribe. md: I’ve never read Koestler’s book, but I’ve read excerpts of the Kuzari, Yehuda Halevi’s imagined dialogue between the pagan king of the Khazars and a rabbi. Halevi—whose bit of work that I have read I’ve greatly admired—was engaging in the exact same form of self-deluding justification and myth making as Christians and Muslims, assuming that his own religion had to have been inherently better than whatever came before it. Poetically, and as a piece of rhetoric, it is a powerful work of art, but nonetheless it is as disturbing as any other justification for forced conversion to a foreign religion. This being said, a portable God, or a portable national identity, is the legacy of post-exile Judaism: God as a transnational deity, God as transcending borders. is: Of course. It reminds me of William Blake’s poem called “Jerusalem”: And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England’s mountains green?

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And was the holy Lamb of God On England’s pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic Mills? Bring me my Bow of burning gold: Bring me my Arrows of desire: Bring me my Spear: O clouds, unfold! Bring me my Chariot of fire! I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand Till we have built Jerusalem In England’s green and pleasant land.

Blake turns Jerusalem into a metaphor: a countenance divine. His wish is to build it at the heart of England in order to erase the satanic forces roaming around. md: We shouldn’t even analyze this hymn. It’s too beautiful. It would be like drawing a graph on a Michelangelo painting. Let’s skip to the modern period, namely Zionism. is: Zionism is the nationalist quest to establish a modern home for the Jewish people, using the Bible to justify it. I say this because at different points other locations other than Palestine were considered, then rejected: Uganda and Argentina, among them. md: After 1948, Jews are no longer nationless but, for various reasons—mostly due to the level of violence in Israel—many are staying in the Diaspora. is: And many Israelis are doing yeridah, that is, leaving Israel. New York City and Los Angeles, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, have high concentrations of Israelis, and not only secular ones. md: Jewish identity irrevocably changed since the creation of Israel, some would say for better, others for worse.

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is: I say for both. md: Like the Israel of ancient times, modern Israel isn’t purely Jewish. is: Nor should it ever be. md: What role does myth play in Israel’s national identity? is: An enormous one. Zionism, like other ideologies of its type, was driven by the mythology of the New Man. Newness was crucial. Zionists were eager to bury Diaspora life once and for all. The New Man, in their eyes, was called to replace the Wandering Jew. The Wandering Jew was itself a myth: a hunchback with a big nose, a selfish moneylender, a despicable creature, just like Shylock. md: Shylock is a fascinating character. I saw a brilliant production in Toronto in which Jani Lauzon, a brilliant Native Canadian actress, played Shylock as a middle-aged single mother. Shylock’s dual role as victim and perpetrator is universal. Most groups have been both at different ages, and many can be both at one time, simultaneously. If as Jews we decry Shylock as a symbol of the Diaspora, we’re losing out on the core of our own experience. is: This is why Zionism needs to be overcome. It created the Jewish state in Palestine but has since become an obstacle in the shaping of a peaceful, progressive country. md: Are you proposing a post-Zionist solution: a binational or onestate alternative based on secular humanistic democratic ideals? is: I’m not a politician. In fact, I thoroughly dislike politics. The Middle East, at least at the current time, isn’t suitable for secular ideals. Whatever ones one might have need to respond to the intense religious fervor in the region. A bistate solution? Attractive yet quixotic. md: What do you mean by quixotic? is: Have you ever heard the Broadway song “The Impossible Dream”? md: Ilan, you want Jews to overcome Zionism while at the same time calling binationalism an “impossible dream.” If you believe that Jews must overcome Zionism, there needs to be some hope that a one-state, binationalist solution is possible, even while the conflict is at its darkest. Otherwise the answer would be a two-state solution, in which Zionism as an ideology stays put but becomes more malleable, which, in turn, brings forth other inherent

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challenges. It’s fair to say that the conflict has eerie echoes of the biblical past, with clans fighting against one another. It is within that context that, as you suggest, the prophet as a social character appears. What is his primary task? is: The prophet speaks of social change, arguing that that change is an integral part of God’s design of the universe. He has unbendable scruples. md: That’s why we revere the prophets: for their unequivocal stance against injustice. What’s a good proper definition of a prophet? is: According to Maimonides in the Guide for the Perplexed, Moses is the supreme prophet. But there are accounts in Jewish folklore that suggest that the actual number of prophets is difficult to establish because there are visible and invisible ones. The Talmud believes there are forty-eight male prophets in the Bible, starting with Adam, as well as seven female prophets, including Sarah, Miriam, and Esther. For Rashi, for instance, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah are also prophets. So, what is a prophet, according to Judaism? An individual who sustains a special line of communication with the divine. That line of communication isn’t only started, but is directed, by God. In other words, a prophet is God’s mouthpiece. md: The prophets are a difficult bunch. Remember earlier when we talked about what would happen if the Bible ended up on a New York editor’s desk today? is: Yes. md: I picture an addendum: “Footnotes, damn it! Where are the footnotes?” The prophets are difficult in part because the narratives devoted to them are largely comprised of polemical screeds that move back and forth between condemnation of Samaria, the Israelites’ northern tribes, and Judea, the Israelites’ southern tribes. is: A defining characteristic of the prophets is a complete disregard for all political alliances, regardless of whom they happen to involve. It’s important to state that according modern biblical scholarship, prophets are also present in the scriptures of other

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Near Eastern civilizations, although the type showcased in the Bible is unique to the concept of Jewish nationhood. md: Do prophets have free will? is: As you know, a number of them, starting with Moses, are reluctant to accept the responsibility the divine bestows on them. That is, they aren’t the type that seeks office. Why me, they ask? Can’t you find someone else through whom you might deliver your message? Jonah takes that reluctance to an extreme. Ultimately, they accept the challenge. Their free will, in my view, is curtailed. This doesn’t mean that they become automatons. The message they convey often has a counterestablishment tone. They are politically naïve and, thus, irritating: only trust in God, not other humans, particularly those practicing idolatry, human sacrifice, and sacred sex with females, males, and eunuchs. The prophets are masters in avoiding consensus. They are egotists, a word that Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary, defined as “a person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.” This is a sarcastic statement that hints at the merciless individualism that drives the prophets. I’m not talking about individualism that forgets community. They always take the higher moral stand. They speak for the betterment of others. But they see themselves as martyrs: it’s their world or no world. The prophets are also rowdy. Some, like Samuel, are Nazarites (that is, ascetics) who refrained from alcohol and sex and cutting their own hair. But many of the non-Nazarites drink and rejoice while others are suffering. They are disorderly and foulmouthed. But not all of them. Isaiah is a master of abomination. md: How do prophets differ from priests: that is, the descendants of Aaron who are in charge of the temple and the sacrifices? is: The Aaronide priests (i.e., kohanim, the modern spelling of which is Cohen, and sometimes Coen) performed specific daily duties and were in charge of sacrificial offerings during festivals. Physical and mental perfection was required. For instance, certain handicaps, such as blindness or lameness, disqualified them. But the priests weren’t spokesmen for the divine.

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md: Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington, D.C., claiming that in doing so he was “praying with his feet,” did an incredibly thorough study of the prophets that has certainly influenced my views of that topic. According to him, one of the main defining features of a prophet was a complete and utter intolerance of injustice. is: Heschel, chief among modern political thinkers, embraced Judaism as a religion with strong political views against oppression. This element is at the heart of the prophets’ struggle for rectitude. But in other historical periods it hasn’t played the dominant role it does today. There is empathy, I believe, between American-style pluralism and the fight against intolerance. Heschel made a point to stress that connection. On the opposite side of the spectrum, I want to stress the connection between the biblical prophets and the Romantic view of the artists, especially the poet. For the Romantics (think of Byron, Shelley, and Coleridge) considered inspiration as a divine endowment. The artist was in touch with supernatural powers. In classical times those powers were symbolized by the muses, goddesses who inspired artistic creation. At first there were three muses, but the number eventually grew to nine. While the Romantic view doesn’t identify a particular goddess, the concept is similar: a mystical quality, a channel in the artist’s constitution that connects him with the natural realm. Not God but Nature, with a capital “N.” The connection that the biblical prophet has is also singular, separating him or her from others. John Donne, in a poem called “A Litanie,” in section 8, entitled “The Prophets,” wrote: Thy eagle-sighted prophets too, —Which were thy Church’s organs, and did sound That harmony which made of two One law, and did unite, but not confound; Those heavenly poets which did see Thy will, and it express In rhythmic feet—in common pray for me,

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That I by them excuse not my excess In seeking secrets, or poeticness.

Donne compares the biblical prophet to a heavenly poet “which did see Thy will, and it express in rhythmic feet.” The verse makes me think also of the prophet’s language. Samuel, for example, is not only a divine conduit but a translator. For the Romantics, the poet’s talent laid in his capacity to be inspired but, equally, in his processing that inspiration to make it accessible to mortals. In other words, to receive from a superior force an image isn’t enough; the poet needs to offer it to his audience, that is, to adapt it. Likewise with the biblical prophet’s language (and, again, the Guide for the Perplexed debates this idea): thanks to the prophet, God’s language is understood by mere mortals. Given that the world of biblical prophecy is incredibly labyrinthine, I recommend concentrating on two or three of the better known prophets. md: All right, let’s talk about Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. I want to start with their vision of utopia. And through utopia, heaven. is: A friend of mine joked the other day that in Christianity, everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die. Heaven as understood by Christianity, the place to which the righteous go, isn’t a part of the Hebrew Bible. md: In the book of Isaiah, readers see the prophet’s vision of a utopian world, but on the material plane. Isaiah 2:3–4: “And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” is: What is utopia? Francisco de Quevedo, the Spanish Golden Age poet, called attention to the fact that in Greek the word utopia means “there is no such place.” As a term, utopia was coined by

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Thomas More in 1516 based on the Greek terms ou + tópos (that is, no place and no good place). What characterizes More’s Utopia is, precisely, its lack of place. Ironically, Oscar Wilde once said that “a map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at.” md: You mention this in On Borrowed Words. But is Eden the biblical utopia? is: The portrait of Eden in Genesis 1–2 is that of a pristine, balanced place where the divine roams around. Prior to Eve’s eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, there appears to be—although it isn’t quite stated—a symmetry between the outer and inner world of humans. It’s paradise, the place of ultimate harmony. But disobedience leads to exile. Eden, then, is the uterus, a lost paradise, the place where happiness ruled, yet a place humans lost out on. In Christianity, that loss comes through sin. There is no such place: only the longing . . . md: What do you think of R. Crumb’s retelling of Genesis, especially of Adam and Eve? is: I love it! It’s the Bible making its debut as a graphic novel. md: A genre you’re attached to, having done Mr. Spic Goes to Washington (2008), a return to Frank Capra’s movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington with the character of Jimmy Stewart transformed into a Chicano gang member. is: Crumb doesn’t offer a fresh theological interpretation. Still, his book is a magnificent—rough, grotesque—visualization for the media-obsessed generation. md: The longing is what matters, though. For doesn’t exile from Eden have a relationship to the concept of biblical utopianism? is: Isaiah, a Judean prophet who lived in the eighth century b.c., suggests in his book—which he is considered to have authored— that catastrophe is coming in response to wearying from God by the people of Israel. He talks of a land that will be completely laid to waste. And he states in Isaiah 50:4 that God has given him a skilled tongue in order for him “to sustain the weary with the word.” The last thing he is is an apologist. In Isaiah 1:11–14, he stated: “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto

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me? Saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.” Then comes Isaiah 1:17–18: “Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” md: Does this bring into perspective Heschel’s comment about “praying with his feet” when he marched with Martin Luther King Jr., that it isn’t enough to pray and follow rituals but to convert the precepts of the Bible into action? is: Isaiah preached during a period of political turmoil, when the Assyrians invaded Israel. Predicting this, he gives his son a mouthful of a name: Maher-Shalal-hash-baz, which means “Hurrying to the spoil, he has made haste to the plunder.” md: I hope he had a nickname. is: Intriguingly, despite the admonishment against Israelites for oppressing the poor and powerless, the poor and the powerless are admonished also. Isaiah 9:17: “Therefore the Lord shall have no joy in their young men, neither shall have mercy on their fatherless and widows: for everyone is a hypocrite and an evildoer, and every mouth speaketh folly. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.” md: Another striking statement is Isaiah 40:17–20: “All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity. To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him? The workman melteth a graven image, and the goldsmith spreadeth it over with gold, and casteth silver chains.

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He that is so impoverished that he hath no oblation chooseth a tree that will not rot; he seeketh unto him a cunning workman to prepare a graven image, that shall not be moved.” While the Bible could hardly be said to be anarchist, is it implied that a nation that conducts itself without ethics is a kind of idol? is: The same double standard you and I discussed earlier applies in the book of Isaiah: those beyond God’s confines are perceived as wasted. md: My friends, Jewish and gentile alike, ask me about the concept of chosenness. Years ago, I used to reply that every religion thinks it’s chosen. “What about heaven and hell?” I’d say. “Isn’t that just a way to express chosenness in different terms?” What I would say now is that the concept of chosenness is highly ambiguous and that it’s about responsibility rather than privilege, but it isn’t hard to see how that view gets skewed through the ongoing violence in Israel and Palestine. is: I like the picture that my son Isaiah, for his bar mitzvah, on April 25, 2009, chose to depict in his talk about chosenness in his Devar Torah. With your permission I shall quote Isaiah in full: Once in my Social Studies class, my teacher said that Jews were God’s chosen people, that Jews were favored by God, as if being chosen and favored was the same thing. I didn’t want to say anything but I felt that Jews weren’t favored by God. I felt that to be the Chosen People you have many duties to fulfill. The duties range from eating kosher food to what you have to sacrifice for God to respect you, such as two lambs on Shabbat, according to my Torah portion: Numbers 28:3–11. But to be favored means to get bonuses without working for them, just as we’re seeing in the economy today with guys like Bernard Madoff, who get benefits by cheating others. That night I told my parents what had happened. They agreed with me—well, one of them did. And so, I thought I might go and speak with my teacher. But I wasn’t so sure. To be honest, I was scared of him. I don’t know why but I felt he had something against me. He’s the kind of guy who jokes around with people. But if you’re the target of his jokes you end up feeling that he’s picking on you. And for some reason, he

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always picked me as the person he “joked around with.” It got on my nerves! The next day, a different teacher, in English class, gave us sheets of paper and told us to put our names on them and say how we felt about our different teachers. She said that she wouldn’t share these comments with anyone else. So I wrote about my experience in Social Studies and asked her if I should go see my teacher. After she read my comments, she told me I should go see him right away and that if I ever disagreed with what a teacher says or does that I should go tell them. I still wasn’t sure about her recommendation. I thought about it some more. At some point, I decided I would make an appointment during my next Study Hall to talk with my Social Studies teacher. So the next day, when Social Studies was about to end, I was going to ask if I could talk to him, but, instead, for some reason, the teacher asked me to stay after class. I didn’t know why. I had a bad feeling, though. Once everybody had left, the teacher made me sit down. He sat down right next to me with two binders. One was thick with articles and the other I had no idea what it could contain. He opened the second binder. Inside was a photocopy of the comments I had written for my English teacher. I didn’t like that I had said something confidential for one teacher and she had given it to another, but I wasn’t surprised. Teachers can do almost anything they want because students can’t argue back. My Social Studies teacher opened his mouth but no words came out from it. I knew he had something aggressive to say. He was getting angrier. He finally said: “Isaiah, I’m very disappointed in you. You could have come and talked to me! But instead you just talked behind my back.” I tried to say to him that I was about to make an appointment but he just couldn’t speak. He just wouldn’t let me. He kept on screaming nonstop. He was telling me how I didn’t have any right to say he was wrong about God favoring the Jewish people and that I was putting his authority down. This was the opposite of what a conversation between a teacher and a student should have been. He went on for about thirty minutes. In the

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end, he said I was allowed to get to my next class and gave me a hall pass. I left. . . . I hadn’t seen this coming. Since I am an optimist, I didn’t think too much about what had just happened. Instead, I looked forward to gym, which was my next class. I have a lot of fun in it. As I look back, I think I didn’t have many emotions about what had happened with the Social Studies teacher, except that I felt powerless. I think students shouldn’t be treated this way. Teachers should be more considerate. They should really have a dialogue with students. The student’s opinion is as important as the teacher’s. I had Social Studies again the next day. I wasn’t nervous. I was trying not to think about it. I preferred to look at the future. There are more interesting topics to ponder. I arrived early to class. My teacher saw me and asked me to accompany him to the hallway. He wanted to have a brief talk again. “Oh, no!” I thought to myself. But this time he apologized. He said he was sorry the conversation the week before hadn’t gone the way he wanted it to go. He also told me that he did some research and that both of us were right, that our arguments were understandable. I immediately thought: “Oh God, is this a dream? Am I being favored for once . . . ?” I was glad the teacher had apologized but he was also getting the easy way out because he was a teacher. I don’t believe we can both be right because our arguments move in the opposite direction. I feel that to be God’s chosen people, the Jews have to do many things. The Torah gives us rules we have to follow, such as the Ten Commandments. But God sometimes favors the Jews and sometimes He doesn’t. For instance, He favored the Jews by getting them out of slavery in Egypt with the help of the plagues. He also split the Red Sea so that Jews would be able to escape their enemies and the splitting ends up killing those enemies. However, the Holocaust is proof that God doesn’t favor the Jews all the time. Otherwise why didn’t He save us from the Nazis? No country got involved in World War II to rescue the Jews. Their suffering was hidden, but isn’t God supposed to be everywhere and know everything? Why didn’t He awaken the rest of the world to this suffering? I have my doubts about God. Sometimes I don’t even think He exists. If He does, I think He no longer has the same powers he used to

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have, like miraculously opening a huge sea or sending plagues to convince a tyrant to change his mind. Teachers are also powerful. I think they shouldn’t use power to intimidate. They should use it to encourage students to have a broad range of opinions, to let their curiosity flourish, and to know that to disagree with someone is a good thing when it’s done respectfully.

md: Did people smile? is: They did. Isaiah said that to be chosen is challenging: you have to work at it. md: Ilan, he is your son to a T. A wonderful Devar Torah. Getting back to the other Isaiah, the biblical prophet, he conjures an image of Israel as mother and bride. Isaiah 61:9–10: “And their seed shall be known among the Gentiles, and their offspring among the people: all that see them shall acknowledge them, that they are the seed which the Lord hath blessed. I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.” Does this fit into the notion of a romance between Israel and God? is: Yes. The imagery of Israel in this section is surprisingly feminine. md: Why did you call your son Isaiah? is: After the British thinker Isaiah Berlin. md: Let’s move on to Jeremiah. is: The book of Lamentations is ascribed to Jeremiah, who lived in the seventh century b.c.e., during Josiah’s reign in Judah. Josiah was a centralizing ruler who asked his people to devote themselves to God and concentrated power in Jerusalem. His kingdom had a foe: the Babylonians, the reigning power at the time, who defeated the Assyrians and the Egyptians. The commanding figure in the Babylonian army was Nebuchadnezzar. Jeremiah was born a priest in Anathoth, not far from Jerusalem. Much of Jeremiah covers the same ground as Isaiah. He’s concerned that the Israelites aren’t looking out for the interests of the widows, the poor, and the aliens in the land. The

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middle ground doesn’t exist for him: either the people lead a righteous life, or they don’t. One of his compelling traits is his personal anguish. He predicts slaughter, looting, and exile, but doesn’t take any perverse pleasure in it. Jeremiah 10:17–19: “Gather up thy wares out of the land, O inhabitant of the fortress. For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will sling out the inhabitants of the land at this once, and will distress them, that they may find it so. Woe is me for my hurt! my wound is grievous: but I said, Truly this is a grief, and I must bear it.” In other words, Jeremiah is a seer whose own vision causes him great pain. md: The reader also sees Jeremiah’s own inner dialogue as the enemy armies of Assyria approach. Jeremiah 10:23–25: “O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. O Lord, correct me, but with judgment; not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing. Pour out thy fury upon the heathen that know thee not, and upon the families that call not on thy name: for they have eaten up Jacob, and devoured him, and consumed him, and have made his habitation desolate.” is: He recognizes God’s omnipotence but is aware, like Job, that good things happen to bad people. md: The systems of reward for the good and retribution for the bad are not visible to the naked eye. is: He predicts exile in Jeremiah 13:24–27: “Therefore will I scatter them as the stubble that passeth away by the wind of the wilderness. This is thy lot, the portion of thy measures from me, saith the Lord; because thou hast forgotten me, and trusted in falsehood. Therefore will I discover thy skirts upon thy face, that thy shame may appear. I have seen thine adulteries, and thy neighings, the lewdness of thy whoredom, and thine abominations on the hills in the fields. Woe unto thee, O Jerusalem! wilt thou not be made clean? when shall it once be?” md: How does the exile of the Israelites from Judah and Samaria compare to the exile from Eden? is: Exile, in the biblical sense, is rupture: the impossibility to continue living in one’s home, working one’s land, worshiping in one’s temple.

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md: When I told friends and acquaintances, often other Jews, that I was co-writing a book on the Bible, the frequent response I get is how negative the Bible is. Jeremiah is thrown into prison. What does he do? is: He curses his captors. In Jeremiah 18:19–22 he announces: “Give heed to me, O Lord, and hearken to the voice of them that contend with me. Shall evil be recompensed for good? for they have digged a pit for my soul. Remember that I stood before thee to speak good for them, and to turn away thy wrath from them. Therefore deliver up their children to the famine, and pour out their blood by the force of the sword; and let their wives be bereaved of their children, and be widows; and let their men be put to death; let their young men be slain by the sword in battle. Let a cry be heard from their houses, when thou shalt bring a troop suddenly upon them: for they have digged a pit to take me, and hid snares for my feet.” Good manners may demand that people eschew anger and radiate equanimity and gentleness but wishing ill of those who want to kill you is an all-too-human pastime. md: The Dalai Lama, in contrast, would never curse the Chinese government. He claims that the Chinese government officials are creating bad karma for themselves and keeping themselves in the wheel of samsara, where no one could ever be truly happy. Today what makes us so uncomfortable with Jeremiah . . . is: Is that he is sheer instinct. md: How can Isaiah’s vision in which “nation shall not lift up sword against nation” and in which “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks” become a reality if prophets curse enemies? is: But he doesn’t just curse his enemies. He curses his own life. Jeremiah 20:14–17: “Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed. Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man child is born unto thee; making him very glad. And let that man be as the cities which the Lord overthrew, and repented not: and let him hear the cry in the morning, and the shouting at noontide because he slew me not from the womb.”

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md: So the defining character trait of Jeremiah is his consistency. is: He holds a mirror to an essential human trait: impatience. He also foretells the Babylonian exile, which he recognizes as part of the divine plan. The destruction is recounted in painful and horrific detail in Psalm 137:1–9: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof. O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.” md: A beautiful psalm in which the reader reaches the obligatory curse at the end. When you read these chapters on the prophets, when you read Lamentations . . . is: I lament over Jerusalem. md: Just as to the biblical prophet, there doesn’t seem to be much middle ground in Middle Eastern politics either. is: Borges has a story I like: “The Secret Miracle.” It starts with a dream in which two opponents are playing chess. No one knows when the game started, nor when it will end. In other words, the animosity between the two sides is ancestral. md: Might we discuss the word “jeremiad”? is: Indeed, the OED states that the word “jeremiad” is a reference to the biblical prophet. It defines it as “a writing or speech in a strain of grief or distress.” It also portrays it as a doleful complaint, a complaining tirade, and a lugubrious effusion. It’s symptomatic, I’m convinced, that the biblical prophet whose lamentation is what defined his existence should offer his name as a rubric to

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describe the act of weeping in grief. To my knowledge, no other prophet is given a similar honor. I love Rembrandt’s depiction of Jeremiah lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem, painted in 1630. He’s a bold old man seating at the feet of gigantic columns, troubled, immersed in his own thoughts, his left hand supporting his head. He wears a gray tunic with what appears to be a green underjacket. The use of light and shadow, as is always the case in Rembrandt, is haunting: the rays of the sun illuminate his dilemma. At his left are military props and some items from the destroyed temple. Jeremiah is alone and lonely, not a keeper of the place but its last dweller. md: The tone in Jeremiah changes after the exile. is: He predicts the return of exiles, although some stay behind. He gets in trouble for buying land. He is arrested by the Chaldeans, the current occupiers of the land, and thrown into a cistern. He becomes a symbol of self-exile in his own home. md: Between Jeremiah and Ezekiel there is the book of Lamentations. Rather than describing the siege and destruction of Jerusalem in the book of Jeremiah, it has its own book, which is harrowing and disturbing, and read by Jews on Tisha B’av. Lamentations 1:1–3: “How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people how is she become as a widow she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary! She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies. Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude: she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest: all her persecutors overtook her between the straits.” How does Jerusalem as widow fit into your theory of the Bible being a romance between a deity and a people? is: The language is disturbing. Several verses recount the horrific things that happened during the siege by the Babylonians. Lamentations 2:11–12: “Mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth, for the

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destruction of the daughter of my people; because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city. They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out into their mothers’ bosom.” md: It gets even worse in Lamentations 2:20–21: “Behold, O Lord, and consider to whom thou hast done this. Shall the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long? Shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord? The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets: my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword; thou hast slain them in the day of thine anger; thou hast killed, and not pitied.” By the way, what is the etymology of Jerusalem? is: A fascinating question. This isn’t an original Hebrew word. It’s believed that a town called Salem was established where Jerusalem sits during the Bronze Age. The town is mentioned in Genesis 14:18: “And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God.” The actual word “Jerusalem” doesn’t show up in the Bible until Joshua 10:1. The word Urusalimum might mean Foundation of Shalem. The first part of the word is connected with yara, “to throw, to cast.” The second is connected with the word shalom, “peace.” A place where peace is cast. There are other etymologies of the name, such as Reign of Peace. What I’m implying, though, is that the term is of nebulous origins, geographical and etymological. md: Let’s move on to the book of Ezekiel. is: Unlike other books in the Bible devoted to prophets, Ezekiel in his is a rather shadowy figure. He is only mentioned twice, which means the reader has scant biographical information about him. Historians are skeptical about the accuracy of the content in the book of Jeremiah. Still, the material is available. The book of Ezekiel was written approximately in 500 b.c., at the time of the Babylonian exile. Indeed, Ezekiel was one of those exiled with the Israelites. He settled in a Chaldean town and his tomb is in Kifel, Iraq. The site is a destination for Jewish pilgrims. The book has

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particular meaning to Iraqi Jews, who read it in Shavuot, the Feast of Tabernacles. Shia Muslims also worship the place. Ezekiel is a prophet with a mystical bend. The book devoted to him includes the famous episode of a chariot descending from heaven and the throne of God (merkavah) that is at the core of a particular Kabbalistic modality. The episode has enormous power. It has been interpreted as a narrative description of a unio mystica. Ezekiel 1:3–10: “The word of the Lord came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and the hand of the Lord was there upon him. And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire unfolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire. Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man. And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings. And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf ’s foot: and they sparkled like the color of burnished brass. And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides; and they four had their faces and their wings. Their wings were joined one to another; they turned not when they went; they went every one straight forward. As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle.” I get a foreboding of science-fiction in this passage. Or maybe an announcement of the type of gothic literature that entertained late eighteenth-century Londoners. One should put it next to Lewis Carroll’s monsters, Bandersnatch and Jabberwock. And Franz Kafka’s Odradek. Raphael’s 1518 representation of Ezekiel’s vision is rather pale. It fails to shock! Too many cherubs for my taste. md: Leaving monsters aside, if there is a single chapter that personifies the Jewish relationship to the divine as a stormy romance, it is Ezekiel 16:2–4: “Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations, And say, Thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem;

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Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite. And as for thy nativity, in the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to supple thee; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all.” is: The personification of Israel is feminine. Though undoubtedly rooted in the misogyny of the times, it’s nonetheless compelling for its poetic rawness. md: Having started off with the image of Israel as an infant girl, she is next presented as a young woman. Ezekiel 16:7–8: “I have caused thee to multiply as the bud of the field, and thou hast increased and waxen great, and thou art come to excellent ornaments: thy breasts are fashioned, and thine hair is grown, whereas thou wast naked and bare. Now when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness: yea, I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord God, and thou becamest mine.” is: Jerusalem is now a bride. The covenant with God is a marriage contract. md: Then comes the personification as a beautifully dressed adult woman. Ezekiel 16:13–14: “Thus wast thou decked with gold and silver; and thy raiment was of fine linen, and silk, and broidered work; thou didst eat fine flour, and honey, and oil: and thou wast exceeding beautiful, and thou didst prosper into a kingdom. And thy renown went forth among the heathen for thy beauty: for it was perfect through my comeliness, which I had put upon thee, saith the Lord God.” is: The beauty bestowed upon her makes her arrogant. Ezekiel 16:15: “But thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playedst the harlot because of thy renown, and pouredst out thy fornications on every one that passed by; his it was.” Has chosenness made the Jews arrogant? is: Yes. md: The image of self-satisfaction takes the allegorical form of masturbation. And then comes the image of infanticide. Ezekiel

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16:20–21: “Moreover thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast borne unto me, and these hast thou sacrificed unto them to be devoured. Is this of thy whoredoms a small matter, that thou hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them?” Have the Israelites committed child sacrifice? is: The imagery of a fallen woman, from bride to prostitute, takes on political symbolism. md: Ezekiel 37:1–4 includes the famous dry-bones vision: “The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones, and caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry. And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest. Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.” is: The sequence, which continues for several verses, might be gruesome to some but it represents the wholeness of the people of Israel. Ezekiel is the poet of exile. In his dream, he foresees the return into the land, that is, the mending of a fractured existence. The sequence is also about the resurrection of the dead, a theme absent in the five books of Moses, which, by the time Maimonides came around in the twelfth century, is integral to rabbinical Judaism. The last of Maimonides’s Thirteen Principles is, indeed, on the belief in the resurrection of the dead. The central tenet is that when redemption occurs, the living and the dead shall march together, with Jerusalem as their capital. md: The capital of the Jewish people. is: Yes. md: But Jerusalem is no longer that. Nor should it be. I like your image of the wholeness of the Jewish people. However, the book of Lamentations, because of its poetic rawness, speaks to me, at the most profound personal level, to my anxieties. We live at a time in which the Promised Land has become, to coin the phrase by Aaron David Miller, “The Much Too Promised Land.”

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is: Will the Jewish people ever become one again? It seems implausible from our vantage point. Our worst enemy is often ourselves: the fractured nature of our identity, the desire to pull in many directions at once. Jewishness today incorporates the orthodox and the secular, the commitment to live in Israel and the endorsement of Diaspora life as an ongoing option. We are people rescued from bondage who know the meaning of freedom perhaps a little too well: urbane, cosmopolitan, endlessly active; emancipation for us was an endorsement of self-reliance. The philosopher Emile Fackenheim, author of the book To Mend the World: Foundations of Future Jewish Thought (1982), believed that the first and most important responsibility of the Jews is to survive enemies like Adolf Hitler. That we’ve done! How about surviving our own demons? md: And what are they? is: Arrogance, individualism, self-importance. Jews always exist in the thin line that goes from the self to community. Hillel’s dictum is emblematic: “If I’m not for myself, who will be for me? If I’m only for myself, what am I?” There is enormous tension in the negotiation of being for myself and being for others. Everyone engages in such a transaction, but Jews make a business out of it.

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d VI

Song of Songs “Let him kiss me”

mordecai drache: After the heaviness of the last chapter, I’m ready to dive into the Song of Songs. ilan stavans: In biblical terms, a rather short book: only 117 verses. Try imagining it as a movie. md: Hot. is: If the Exodus story is partially retold in epic terms in The Ten Commandments, the Song of Songs, were someone brave enough to adapt it, would probably be an erotic art film. md: A porno flick? is: As you said: hot. A flick that would generate much discussion. As it is, the narrative is a liturgical joy. Among some Sephardic communities, it is recited every Sabbath. Different commentators propose a reading that turns the Song of Songs into a theology of love in which God manifests his passion for the people of Israel. md: It isn’t about Solomon, is it?

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is: In 1 Kings 3:9 the reader is told that Solomon is endowed with wisdom: “Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad.” It has been noted that wisdom in English has a different connotation than it does in biblical Hebrew. For English speakers it means possessing judgment. But in the Bible being wise is being knowledgeable. Solomon is described as being a polymath: he knows how nature works (animals, birds, reptiles, and fish), what types of trees flourish in Lebanon, and so on. Thus, it’s no surprise that he is credited as the author of three books in the Bible: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Shir ha-Shirim, Hebrew for “Canticles,” “Song of Solomon,” or, as you put it, “Song of Songs.” It goes without saying that scholars don’t believe he authored them. Solomon might be said to be the editor, but even that is problematic because, as you know, there are a couple of references to him—unflattering and in the third person, I should add—in the narrative. Maybe the way to approach it is just how you and I have been discussing other biblical narratives: the Song of Songs is not the product of a single author, not even of a single editor. Its content changed over time as it was read, from weddings to other social events in which love is at the center. I should add that, even though it played a role in weddings, there isn’t any reference to a betrothal between the protagonists. Just the opposite: love is presented as passionate but beyond the strict parameters of marriage. md: Before you and I go further, Ilan, let’s talk briefly about the sexual world of the Hebrew Bible. While the narrative isn’t against sex for the sake of pleasure, sex does have strict rules and parameters through which that pleasure must be experienced. These rules include commandments against incest and bestiality, which hold true to this day. Others are still held onto by extremists, like masturbation and homosexuality, though the latter is also enforced by narrow definitions of masculinity and femininity in the secular realm. There are other rules, such as the one against adultery, which was defined differently in ancient times since men were allowed more than one wife, plus concubines. This is also a

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historic period in which cultic prostitution was common, and illustrated through different Hebrew words like zonah, the equivalent of today’s “hooker.” Or else, kadesh and kadesha, “sacred prostitutes”—male and female, respectively. At this time there were no antibiotics available for sexually transmitted diseases. The latex condom wasn’t even a thought. Childbirth could end a woman’s life. Put into different words, birth and death were all too intimately intertwined. is: And so was sexuality. Freud established the boundaries between sexual intercourse and sexuality in general. As a result, everything we do today belongs to the grammar of sexuality: politics, fashion, entertainment . . . md: Should this make us less prudish toward the biblical narrative? is: The text needs to be addressed. This is a historical document. The mores described in it belong to its time. md: Anachronisms might pop in when we apply the wisdom of the Bible to ourselves. is: No doubt. Yet that is the case with any kind of transtemporal exploration. The reader of a historical text is an archeologist. md: How much does that reader need to know about the specifics of the text? is: Ah, therein lies the key question in literary criticism. Is it important to know that Cervantes was a prisoner in Algiers in order to understand Don Quixote? The answer depends on which school of thought you subscribe to. One of these schools believes that any text is a window onto the time and space in which it was produced. An opposing view suggests that the text is autonomous: it offers its own coordinates and needs to be read only according to them, with nothing extraneous and affecting on its interpretation. md: To which school do you subscribe? is: I’m an eclectic reader. Depending on the occasion, I subscribe to both. Although if you endorse the second reading as an ideological banner, you tangibly negate the first one. md: You like compromise. is: I do. Also, there’s the fact that no interpretation, no matter how thorough it is, lasts for more than a generation. It might come

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back, since there is nothing original under the sun, as Ecclesiastes states, and, in Nietzsche’s view, human nature is ruled by the law of eternal return. Put it this way: why on earth would we read a 3,000-plus-year-old book about a national odyssey, about the aspirations and frustrations of people whom we didn’t know? The answer is rather simple: we read the Bible because for us it’s an open book. That is, readers find in it whatever they’re looking for. One could argue that, at this point in history, the author’s original intent is inconsequential. md: The Bible as a blank page? is: Not quite, Mordecai. Modern readers don’t do the writing, only the reading. But the act of reading is creative, too, a truism especially in the case of the Song of Songs. The Hebrew used in it has borrowings from the Greek and Persian languages. Yet no one knows with certainty when it was written. Arguably, separate portions took shape in different moments. Thus, what the reader has today is a composite, a sum of parts. md: So Solomon isn’t the protagonist. Nor is he the author. is: Yet his name is linked to the Song of Songs, which is enough to make it a sacred text. Rabbi Akiva once said: “The whole world altogether is not as worthy as the day in which the Song of Songs was given to Israel.” md: Let’s look at verses 1–4 of Song of Songs in the King James Version: “The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine. Because of the savour of thy good ointments thy name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee. Draw me, we will run after thee: the king hath brought me into his chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, we will remember thy love more than wine: the upright love thee.” is: As in Proverbs and other later additions to the biblical canon, not only the language but the aesthetics of the material are in sharp contrast with the five books of Moses. To begin, the material is a love song of sorts. Or better, a series of erotic poems. Not only is poetry the conduit, but there is no plot—certainly no epic plot— in the traditional sense of earlier biblical installments. More

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intriguingly even is the fact that the Song of Songs has nothing to do with wisdom understood as intellectual knowledge and much to do with carnal and emotional knowledge. I should add that in biblical times the concept of knowledge wasn’t fluid, dynamic, as it is for us now. A person didn’t accumulate knowledge as a result of reading, debates, etc. A wise leader was born wise. In other words, wisdom was seen as a natural quality. The poem, or series of poems, as there are shifting protagonists, is about love. md: There are male and female protagonists. is: Several different women: the female protagonist, in love with a man, plus a group of city women: the “daughters of Jerusalem.” And toward the end there are lines that come from what appears to be the female protagonist’s brothers. md: As you said in Love and Language, this aspect becomes tangible through the Hebrew grammar in which, for example, the gender of first- and second-person singular is identified through modifications of the verb. I want to compare the translation we just discussed with one from Marcia Falk. Is one more accurate than the other? O for your kiss! For your love More enticing than wine, For your scent and sweet name— For this, they love you. Take me away to your room, Like a King to his room— We’ll rejoice there with wine. No wonder they love you.

is: Accuracy in translation is a minefield. Accurate for whom? What kind of agenda, explicit or otherwise, is pushed by the translator? Let me add that translation, particularly in the case of the Song of Songs, is a most “juicy” topic. Given the erotic content of the material, each epoch has approached the narrative through a unique prism. For example, during the Victorian period, this

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biblical section was too risqué. As a result, the allegorical layer was stressed. The allegorical view is older, however. There are several Midrashim suggesting that the theme of the Song of Songs is the relationship between God and the people of Israel. md: After what you’ve just explained, I want if possible to keep casting light between translations. Song of Songs 1:5–6 in King James: “I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon. Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother’s children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.” And now Marcia Falk’s rendition: Yes, I am black! And radiant— O city women watching me— As black as kedar’s goathair tents Or Solomon’s fine tapestries.

My knowledge of Hebrew is extremely limited, so I can only infer certain meanings when I look at the original text, Shachorah ani v’navah. The prefix v’ means “and,” does it not? is: It does. md: So what is more accurate: “black, but comely” or “black! And radiant”? is: Accuracy in translation is an explosive issue. One might talk about the etymological root of a word as accuracy. But words change over time, as you know, and etymologies become fossilized. There is also the question of what different generations see in a book. It’s crucial to place Marcia Falk’s version in the tradition of feminist interpretation of the Song of Songs, which perceives these verses, you will gather, as liberating to women. After all, the loose storyline—no plot here, I’ve said—is the physical liaison between a man and a woman, a relationship that to the extent possible is beyond conventional restraints. Male and female protagonists are, therefore, equal. Actually, given that women were perceived as subservient, it’s arguable that they act

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more freely in this book than in life. All this to say that “radiant” might not sound as a particularly feminist adjective but because of the alluring sexual picture the author seeks to offer, in my eyes it certainly is politically motivated. Again, that political motivation is in the translation—for example, in Falk’s English version—and not in the original. You could also turn my hypothesis around to say that “radiant” makes the female character more attractive to her counterpart, in which case it isn’t a feminist but an antifeminist approach. md: Talking about skin color, the Jews at the time were Semitic. Some were likely black because of the region. is: There must have been a mixed bag. md: Moses’ wife, Tzipporah, was from Cush, modern Ethiopia, and is referred to as cusheet. In modern Hebrew, this term is sometimes used to connote “black.” When I was in Israel at sixteen on a kibbutz, there was a kibbutznik with a sick sense of humor who called his little black dog cusheet. Can shachorah ani v’navah be equated with the modern “black and beautiful”? is: The prism through which race is understood in the United States today is far away from the racial hierarchy of biblical times. Blackness for us is at once exciting and dangerous. For instance, look at the way black men are portrayed in Hollywood movies. Or else, consider rap fashion. “Black is beautiful” is a response to years of subjugation. The idea of beauty in this slogan is injected with ideology. It suggests that at any given time in history aesthetic values are shaped by issues of class and race. md: There is an episode in Deuteronomy—my bar mitzvah portion— in which Miriam, Moses’ sister, begins insulting Tzipporah for being a cusheet. As a result, she’s struck by God with leprosy, turning pale white. Some commentators believe this is a statement against racial prejudice. But race, as conceived today, wasn’t a category in biblical times. The episode might be about treatment of foreigners. Shachorah and Cusheet: what do these two words say about how Israelites viewed Africans? How can this be reconciled with later Talmud commentaries about black people that are blatantly insulting?

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is: There’s only scant evidence of what the racial landscape was at the time of Abraham, Moses, and the prophets. Were these individuals African, as the theory of Black Athena establishes? What were the racial differences? I ask because it might be possible, although not always plausible, to imagine an interracial liaison between the male and female protagonists in the Song of Songs. Although there isn’t any evidence for it, it might be argued that that reference is nonexistent because it wasn’t an issue in biblical times, hence the author(s) didn’t stress the point. md: Getting back to the Song of Songs, the male protagonist shows up in 1:10–11: “Thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels, thy neck with chains of gold. We will make thee borders of gold with studs of silver.” She answers in Song of Songs 1:12–13: “A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts. My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi.” is: The two lovers complimenting each other using the exact same words in masculine and feminine forms, a fact lost in the English translation because of the way each language is formed syntactically. md: In Hebrew, the male protagonist says to the female “hinach yafah raiytee.” The female answers; “hinchah yafeh dodi.” Hinach and hinchah, yafah and yafeh . . . is: Gender variations as well as poetic alliterations. md: Yafeh and Yafah are translated as “fair” in the King James Version, and as “fine” in Falk’s rendition. Though in a modern sense “fine” connotes male or female beauty, particularly in slang, words like “pretty” and “handsome” are definitely gendered female and male, respectively, and when used otherwise imply feminine males and masculine females. is: The gender-driven interpretation of the Song of Songs has emerged in the last couple of decades, in large part in response to the gay movement. md: I didn’t know that. is: Although the findings are inconclusive, some biblical scholars equate the Song of Songs with Egyptian love poetry. It isn’t

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known if this was circumstantial poetry or if it was designed to entice the lovers in a more domestic fashion. md: Now let’s talk food, Ilan. You’ve explored the topic at length in Love and Language. There’s plenty of it in the Song of Songs. Eating is sensual throughout this poem. Verses 2:3–6: “As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love. Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love. His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me.” is: Love and food, and, more so, sex and food, go hand in hand. After all, we’re talking about physical pleasure, which is also pleasure of the senses. The Song of Songs is beyond the narrow symbolism of the apple in Genesis. It indulges in the possibilities of flavor. I want to return to a point I’ve made before: the function of poetry. In this book probably more than in other sections of the Bible, the narrative isn’t only descriptive, that is, showing the reader a specific action. It also wants to generate desire, to arouse erotic sensations. md: I enjoy Falk’s version a little more: Sweet Fruit Tree growing wild Within the thickets. I blossom in your shade And taste your Love. He brings me to the winehall, Gazing at me with love O for his arms around me, Beneath me and above!

is: “I blossom in your shade/ and taste your Love.” Although not at the level of the Kama Sutra, these verses are an aphrodisiac. The author talks about body parts, specific flavors, sexual strategies . . . .

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md: What role does food have in expressing the sensuality of the poem? is: Food expresses intimacy, domesticity, physical knowledge. I’m not talking now of the portrait of Solomon as a wise man. I mean knowledge as a survey of body parts, the levels of desire, and the hierarchies of ecstasy. md: Song of Songs 2:7–9 use a common erotic symbol in Middle Eastern poetry: the gazelle. It states: “I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please. The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills. My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice.” is: The ghazal in Arabic (a cognate for tzvi in Hebrew) are short erotic poems. The poems use the symbol of the gazelle (that is, the fawn, the deer, the roe) as an emblem of desire. The English gazelle comes from the Arabic ghazal, which can be simplistically translated as “love poem,” although it refers to a specific kind of poem, with a specific structure, and traditionally deals with unrequited love and the ecstasy of the lover. These love poems are “passionate” in the literal sense since the word comes from the Latin pattior, meaning “to suffer.” All this reminds me of the telenovela: to love is to suffer. That, in short, is what the Song of Songs is about: love and frustration, love and pain. md: There’s a Hebrew homoerotic gazelle poem I like, translated by Norman Roth. It contains passion, in the sense of passion of “suffering.” Suffering mixed with ecstasy. The poem, quoted below in part, is by Yishaq ben Mar-Saul of the eleventh century: Gazelle desired in Spain, wondrously formed, Given rule and dominion over every living thing;

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Lovely of form like the moon with beautiful stature: Curls of purple upon shining temple. Like Joseph in his form, like Adoniah his hair, Lovely of eyes like David, he has slain me like Uriah. He has enflamed my passions and consumed my heart with fire. Because of him I have been left without understanding and wisdom. Weep with me every ostrich and every hawk and every falcon! The beloved of my soul has slain me. Is this a just sentence?

Other poems are more sexually explicit and, for example, refer to kissing another male on the lips while expounding on his beauty, though not much more than that. According to Norman Roth, there was not an extensive enough vocabulary in Hebrew to describe a variety of sexual acts since it was a liturgical language, not a conversational one. In contrast, Abu Nawas, a Muslim poet who wrote homoerotic poems in eighth-century Baghdad, spared no detail about what exactly he liked doing to whom, sometimes with the same level of violence as the Marquis de Sade. Arabic allowed more room since there were multiple words to describe plenty of sexual acts. A Hebrew poem couldn’t do the same. The most pertinent question is, how could homoerotic poems such as this have been able to be written by poets, ranging from Yehuda Halevi to Solomon ibn Gabirol, when supposedly homosexuality was forbidden according to Jewish law?

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is: Your interest is fascinating. While some of these images are indeed allegorical at a time when marriage was institutionalized as a consummation of heterosexual love, scholars have delved into the same questions. No doubt in medieval Spain, during La convivencia, there was a special dispensation for poets, philosophers, and mystics. Their engagement was seen as separate from that of society in general. md: The question of allegory is also a minefield. I’ll be the first to admit feeling sensitive about that topic myself. “Allegory” is sometimes designated a label on homoerotic poems to dismiss the reality of same-sex attraction by homophobic scholars. Simultaneously, it isn’t always an incorrect designation, but one can imagine that during many periods in history, “allegory” was the only venue for homosexual poets to express themselves. It was a code. In Love and Language you reflect on homosexuality among the Greeks, mentioning that Socrates’ relationship with younger pupils followed this paradigm. This is actually not different from the Hebrew poems above which were always addressed to adolescents, adolescents at that period being closer to the age of marriage and childbearing. This runs counter to the injunction against homosexuality in Leviticus. is: Keep in mind that the language of cleanliness throughout Leviticus is about setting strict norms of conduct. It announces what is right and wrong. Needless to say, what is right in one historical period isn’t in another. Morality, in spite of what purists argue, isn’t static. For his bar mitzvah, my thirteen-year-old Isaiah, in his Devar Torah, needed to discuss the rules that apply to leprosy and sexually transmitted diseases. As I mentioned to you, in the end he talked about chosenness. It was I who talked about hygiene. md: What did you say? is: As a reader of literature, I have the impression—impossible to prove—that the grotesque in Leviticus carved the way for Gargantua and Pantagruel.

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md: How so? is: If in the Scriptures there’s room for describing, in detail, the symptoms of leprosy, why shouldn’t farts be turned into literary artifacts? md: From a historical standpoint, the degree of anatomical ignorance is fascinating. It was precisely that paradox that gave rise to the concepts of clean and unclean. Also listed are the sexual offenses including homosexuality, as well as various forms of incest and bestiality, disgusting to the degree that the land the Israelites inherited became a cornerstone of Leviticus 18:25: “And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.” is: Because of your sexual identity, Mordecai, I understand how offensive these rules are to you. However, you need to see them in the context in which they emerged. As a parallel exercise, think of Saint Augustine’s comments on the Jews in De civitate dei (in English, City of God), book 18, chapter 46: “The Jews who slew Him, and would not believe in Him, because it behooved Him to die and rise again, were yet more miserably wasted by the Romans, and utterly rooted out from their kingdom, where aliens had already ruled over them, and were dispersed through the lands (so that indeed there is no place where they are not), and are thus by their own Scriptures a testimony to us that we have not forged the prophecies about Christ.” In other words, Christians should spit at Jews, they should beat them, but they should never kill them, for the Jews witnessed the Passion of Christ. Saint Augustine’s idea served as one of the foundations of the anti-Semitism espoused by the Catholic Church. What are we to do with it now? Abominate it, certainly, but also see it in the context in which it emerges, at a place and time (in Rome around the year 420 c.e.), in which Christianity shaped its place by vilifying Judaism. Our views of homosexuality are the result of a long process of distillation that is linked to the historical cleansing in which the synagogue, the church, and the mosque have been tools.

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md: However, not all moral rules change with the same speed. The prohibition against charging interest is one that Jews no longer follow. But the condemnation of homosexuality, at least in Orthodox circles, remains. is: Sexuality is always surrounded by taboos that are difficult to dismantle. md: Alternative interpretations of the injunction in Leviticus against homosexuality, placed along justified sexual prohibitions like incest and bestiality, are related to the word to’evah: “abomination or offensive thing.” Incidentally, theater screening of Trembling Before G-d, a documentary on Hassidic Jewish gay men and lesbians, was cancelled in Mexico City due to pressure from the Jewish community, but it was shown in a bookstore owned by a gay Mexican Jew. Knowing what you do about your native town, does it surprise you? is: Not at all. Mexico—with its Jews as happy collaborators—is Macholand. md: The view of biblical scholar Richard Elliot Friedman, the author of Who Wrote the Bible?, whose translation of the five books of Moses you have mentioned, is most instructive. “In my own view,” Friedman argues, “the present understanding of the nature of homosexuality indicates that it isn’t an ‘offensive thing’ (also translated ‘abomination’) as described in this verse. The Hebrew word for offensive thing (to’evah) is understood to be a relative term, which varies according to human perceptions. . . . In light of the evidence at present, homosexuality cannot be said to be unnatural, nor is it an illness. Its prohibition in this verse explicitly applies only so long as it is properly perceived to be offensive . . . the evidence suggests that the period which this commandment was binding has come to an end.” is: Friedman’s argument, and those of others, are a way to dismantle the taboo. md: If the Bible didn’t have the potential to bring out the best in us as humans, “praying with your feet” to paraphrase Heschel, its most unpalatable rules, be they in reference to gays, women, nonIsraelites, would not have the power to be so hurtful. But let’s

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move on. You have talked about knowledge as a way of expressing sexual intimacy. Daath Elohim, as used in Hosea, means knowledge of God. Does this have an erotic ring? is: Is the Song of Songs a book about copulating with God? Only if one takes the allegorical interpretation to an extreme. Otherwise, knowledge of God is meant to refer not only to an ethical life but to a communion between the earthly and the divine.

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d VII

Job’s Perplexity “A perfect and an upright man”

mordecai drache: The Book of Job represents a major theological split from Judaism and Christianity. ilan stavans: It’s a loose end in numerous ways. Most of the Bible is epical in tone. The early parts of Genesis focus on individuals but, as the narrative moves along, the attention shifts to the children of Jacob, that is, to the people of Israel. Always the emphasis is on the relationship between God and his chosen followers, mostly major leaders (kings, prophets, and the like). But Job is a simple man. He isn’t the protagonist of a war. He doesn’t speak directly to the divine. He’s just one among many. Therein the importance of the book as well as the reason it touches a nerve among contemporary readers. It’s a Kafkaesque existential tale, poignant and pointed, about an average Joe’s endurance and self-reliance. md: Yes, Job is a righteous and God-fearing man, and incidentally not an Israelite.

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is: As is often the case, the biblical Job isn’t altogether original. There are Near Eastern competitors like the Sumerian poetic essay “A Man and His God” and the Akkadian text known after its opening line, “Ludlul Bel Nemeqi,” in English “I will praise the Lord of Wisdom.” The structure and philosophical approach of the three, the third being the book of Job, are different. In one, suffering is emphasized, while ritual is the message of another. The structure also changes from a monologue to a narrative. md: How is the book of Job structured? is: From the contemporary perspective, in a bizarre fashion. The prologue and epilogue contain the entire plot, while the bulk of the book is a poetic dialogue among Job and his three “comforters” that hardly does anything to advance the narrative. As a straightforward book it seems to be made of patched segments. md: What do we know about the protagonist? is: He is from Uz, but nothing else is said about his provenance. The term is emblematic. There isn’t a place with that name. However, there are three mentions in the Bible of people called Uz: Genesis 10:23, 22:21, and 36:28. Probably some sort of connection is established, although its significance has been lost. A better alternative is that the word Uz is etymologically connected with Oz, Hebrew for “East.” Elsewhere in the book, Job is described as “the greatest of all the people in the East.” Finally, a relationship between Uz and Edom has been suggested by scholars. md: Might the reader infer that Job is not Jewish? is: If the reference is to Edom, the answer is yes. I find this possibility intriguing because Jewish angst is often identified with Job’s dilemma. If he isn’t a Jew, the dimensions of that angst acquire a different meaning. md: How so? is: The vast majority of protagonists in the Bible are Jewish, at least from Abraham on. Giving a non-Jew such a prominent role makes sense when one considers the possible date of composition of this narrative. md: Which is?

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is: Nothing conclusive has been said but there are suspicions— because of the language—that the book of Job was written during the Babylonian exile, when Jews, away from their land, were exposed to other cultural mores. The type of writing that shows up here and in Ecclesiastes (in Hebrew, Kohelet) has to do with what is known as the wisdom movement. Interestingly, its characteristics are similar to what is known today as New Age. md: In what sense? is: Contemporary bookstores have a prominent shelf of wisdom manuals: how to raise one’s children, how to make friends, how to cope with death. In general, this literature comes in a PowerPoint format: bullets of information that sound as maxims. Unlike the early narrative episodes of Genesis and Exodus, some of these later books in the Bible offer advice to readers. They aren’t plot driven; instead, they abound in one-sentence sayings. That’s the case in the book of Job. For that reason, readers today are attracted to the arc of the story but quickly lose interest. Historians believe that in Babylon, Jews were influenced by other types of thinking, the wisdom movement among them. md: God holds Job up as an example for humans to emulate. is: It’s also a story that runs out of steam quickly. The first and last sections are the most significant. Maybe the middle passages want the reader to be patient, too. I find the early section astonishing. Suddenly, in a volume that pushes monotheism as the right theological option, Satan appears out of nowhere. md: The word “Satan” comes from the Hebrew ha-sahtan, meaning “adversary.” is: In the book of Job, Satan is meant to play the devil’s advocate. He isn’t powerful enough to act on his own, but his influence allows him to persuade God to test Job. And he doesn’t come alone. There’s a coterie made of “the sons of God.” md: Satan tells God that the reason Job is good is because he’s never gone through any trials and tribulations to make him doubt God’s love of virtuous behavior. Job 1:10–11 reads: “Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his

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hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.” is: Job is what in Hebrew is called a tam v’yashar, “a perfect and an upright man.” As I mentioned before, tam doesn’t mean stupid— it’s just simple. There’s a difference between simple and simpleton. Job isn’t the latter. He’s a man of simple qualities, psychologically and morally. The reader isn’t given any background: what his childhood was about, his struggles as a young man, and so on. The information is straightforward in Job 1:1: Job “one that feared God, and eschewed evil.” His family is strong: he has seven sons and three daughters. His material wealth is solid. He’s a wealthy man who has seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred oxen, and five hundred asses. The family is devout, they pray and fast. And then, suddenly, “the trial” begins. God asks Satan: Where have you been? Satan replies that he’s been wandering around. He asks God in Job 1:8 and then 1:10: “Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?” And, “Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land.” In some way, this book is about God being put to the test, too. md: God gives in. He allows Satan to take it all away, to kill Job’s sons and daughters, and to give him boils all over his body. His wife encourages him to curse God and allow himself to be struck down so that his misery can be ended, while “Job’s comforters,” his friends Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, after an initial period of respectful silence, start saying that he must have sinned because clearly God only punishes sinners. For several chapters, they assail him with accusation upon accusation about the goodness of God and his judgment. It rings as false as Portia’s “quality of mercy” speech in The Merchant of Venice. Your play The Disappearance (2008) makes use of that soliloquy.

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is: In The Disappearance, Yosee Striegler is a friend of Maarten Saetendrop, the Belgian actor said to have been kidnapped by neo-Nazis. Striegler and Saetendrop are part of the cast of The Merchant of Venice. Striegler plays Bassanio and Saetendrop Shylock. The play is about guilt and mercy. At one point, Portia impounds Shylock with a portion of her famous words. The soliloquy is astounding: “The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blest: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown. His scepter shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings. But mercy is above this sceptered sway; it is enthroned in the hearts of kings; It is an attribute of God himself; And earthly power doth then show like God’s when mercy seasons justice.” Shakespeare takes the cue from the book of Job in showing that, above everything else, God is merciful. It’s a crucial message given that in numerous places in the Bible the divine is seen acting irascibly, maybe even irrationally. md: The narrative recognizes that, in the words of Harold Kushner, bad things happen to good people, and, more importantly, that good things happen to bad people, too. Job cries out in 12:6: “The tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure; into whose hand God bringeth abundantly.” is: That, precisely, is what makes the book of Job interesting. On the surface, it is about the protagonist facing adversity. But much happens in the narrative that is disturbing. For instance, the fact that, giving in to Satan, God allows for Job’s family to die. It’s true that in the end he gained another wife and children, but none of us think of our loved ones as replaceable. War survivors, for instance, lose their immediate ones in the atrocities. Some manage to bounce back, remarrying and having other offspring, but the psychological scars are profound. It would be foolish to perceive Job as a “total” person at the end. Obviously, he’s been wounded. Likewise, there are conflicting rewards in the story, such as the ones you mention: evildoers receiving prizes. The message of the

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story—and this, in my eyes, is what makes it extraordinary—is that ours is an unjust world. This statement is quite important. Throughout the Bible, the believer is asked to blindly trust the divine. God’s means are unexplainable, yet he knows what’s right and wrong and it is essential to let oneself be in his control. But the world of the book of Job is more somber. There is room for doubt! In response, Job feels sorry for himself, cursing the day he was born. In Job 3:11, he says: “Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?” The Hebrew word for “womb,” rechem, is related to the Hebrew word for “mercy,” rachamim. In the midst of his maudlin self-pity, he wishes he had gone to sheol, the resting place for the dead. In other words, Job is ready for death. But, crucially, the reflection in Job 3:16–19 is introspective: “Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light. There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.” In other words, death isn’t a respite. md: Is it possible to infer anything about love in Job’s home? is: The writer of the book of Job is far from modern. Even though the reader gets a peek at the protagonist’s internal dilemma, this is far from Virginia Woolf ’s stream of consciousness in Mrs. Dalloway or James Joyce’s Molly Bloom monologue. The domestic scene in Job’s house is scarcely insinuated. md: Yet you’ve allowed the fact that Job’s story has a modern feel to it. is: Not only does it fit to the dot with our obsession with individualism, it also explores questions of faith and moral rectitude, which are at the forefront today, a time of ingrained skepticism and the loss of faith. Intriguingly, Jews and Christians approach the narrative differently: Jews see it as an individual test; instead, as in the case of the Song of Songs, Christians prefer to look at it as symbolic. They read it as an announcement of the coming of Jesus Christ, who is also put to the test.

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md: I want you to talk about the development of Satan as “the devil” in Christianity. How did this adversary turn into God’s enemy? is: Keep in mind that the figure of Satan in the book of Job isn’t the fully formed evil presence of Christian literature. In this narrative he’s another one of God’s children, albeit the evil one. md: Where does the word “devil” come from? is: The OED devotes almost five pages to it. It defines devil thus: “In Jewish and Christian theology, the proper appellation of the supreme spirit of evil, the tempter and spiritual enemy of mankind.” In Hebrew the term yetzer hara is “the evil force,” or, to some, “the inclination to do evil.” The climax comes in Job 38:2–6, with God’s voice in a whirlwind: “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the corner stone thereof . . . ?” It is made clear that “Job’s comforters” had sinned in assuming that he, Job, had sinned. They are forced to make the appropriate sacrifices. Up until this point, God is erratic and unpredictable. md: You spoke before of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s story “Gimpel Tam”—translated, you say erroneously, as “Gimpel the Fool”— the moral of the story is that he’s the exact opposite. Gimpel’s tam quality is characterized by his ability to see the best in people. The purity of his intentions makes it difficult for him to understand that others are different. Toward the end of Singer’s story, Satan makes an appearance and tells Gimpel, a baker, to urinate into some dough and prepare it for his customers to get back at them for all their years of meanness to him. His wife, who spent years cheating on him, visits him in a dream and tells him how wrong she and the rest of the villagers have been all these years and that they are fools. Is “Gimpel Tam” inspired by the book of Job?

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is: Singer is a Kafkaesque’s author, and Kafka was Jobian. The protagonist in “Gimpel the Fool” follows in the tradition of the average man put to a test. md: What’s your favorite artistic depiction of Job? is: I’m intrigued by William Blake’s engravings of Job’s family, in particular the image in which he as a bearded man is surrounded by his daughters. Somehow it reminds me of Lewis Carroll’s infatuation with young girls in his life. md: Why? is: I’m not sure. An adult man surrounded by attentive, innocent girls, all covered in the same tunic. By the way, Job’s plight reminds me—or maybe it’s the reverse—of a story by Isaac Leib Peretz, one of three founding fathers of Yiddish literature. (The other two are Sholem Jacob Abramovitch and Sholem Aleichem.) The story, first published in Peretz’s anthology Literatur und Leben, is titled “Bontshe Shvayg.” In English the title means “Bontche the Silent.” I read it in Yiddish while in school. And upon coming to the United States, I encountered it in Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg’s anthology A Treasury of Yiddish Stories, which had enormous influence on me. By the way, the translation in the anthology, by Hilde Abel, spells the protagonist’s name as “Bontsha.” Bontche, the reader is told, has always been silent. He’s poor, with nothing to his credit—no material possessions—except silence. On earth nobody appreciated him. In life he went by unnoticed. But in heaven he is celebrated by the angels and other celestial beings as a hero. In the final judgment, Bontche is not only granted absolution but is given absolutely everything in heaven. “Take whatever you want!” he is told. He cannot believe it. “Are you sure?” he asks. “Absolutely,” responds the judge presiding over his judgment. Bontche thinks for a minute and then says: “Well, in that case I want a fresh roll with butter every morning.” What does the man want? Just the basics. Peretz compares Bontche to Job, saying at one point that Bontche was more tormented, and that Job did not endure and that Bontche is far less fortunate.

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There’s a running debate about critics as to how to interpret the Peretz story. The standard reading, supported by Maurice Samuel, the author of The World of Sholom Aleichem, In Praise of Yiddish, and most significantly to the argument I’m developing, Prince to the Ghetto, a book on Peretz, is that it is a pietist tale of forbearance, an emulation of a certain Hasidic attitude toward life that emphasized the stoic over the epicurean. But others like Bruce Zuckerman suggest that what is actually at hand is an “ironic undercurrent,” a critique of that Hasidic weltanschauung and a denunciation of easy sainthood. Or, as Ruth Wisse described it, the story is “actually a socialist’s exposure of the grotesquerie of suffering in silence.” The Achilles’ heel on which the different approaches rest is the crucial last line of “Bontshe Shvayg”: in Hilde Abel’s translation it reads “Then the silence is shattered. The prosecutor laughs aloud, a bitter laugh.” Zuckerman, in an appendix to his book Job the Silent: A Study in Historical Counterpoint, offers his own rendition, which ends thus: “Judges and angels lowered their heads in shame; the Prosecutor burst out laughing.” The difference between the two translations is significant and points to larger issues relating to how various renditions have manipulated Peretz’s text to achieve different effects. But I’m not concerned now with the pitfalls of translation. What I want to convey is that such a line throws one’s reading into an abyss: Is this a celebration of Botche’s approach to life, or a condemnation? Sometime ago, I imagined a retelling of “Bontshe Shvayg” in the form of a fotonovela story based in Queens, New York, in which a mute Mexican immigrant called Borja who sells flowers to make a meager living, and from which he sends a portion through remesas to his family on the other side of la frontera, dies an inauspicious death. Nobody truly noticed Borja’s presence near a subway station every morning and no one notices his absence once he’s ran over by a truck. Yet when he gets to heaven he is greeted with utmost respect, for Borja was a tzaddik, one of the sages on whose shoulders the world sustains itself.

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Maybe I’ll collaborate with a photographer to make Borja the Silent. When God asks Borja what he wants now that he’s dead, he answers succinctly in slang: “Un taco como en Oaxaca, requete chid.” md: What does that mean? is: A taco like the ones made in his hometown.

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Love and Stupidity

mordecai drache: Having reached this point, let’s reflect on the various biblical conceptions of love. I also want to figure out what are the limits of love. ilan stavans: The limits of love are death. Moses’ last words, according to the midrash I referred to, require that the people of Israel commit themselves to God with all their heart and with all their soul. To love with all one’s soul is to love beyond death. md: In Love and Language you offer examples in literature where love and death are intertwined. The correspondence of Abélard and Héloïse, for instance. Or Romeo and Juliet. is: Juliet commits suicide upon seeing the dead body of her beloved Romeo. Shakespeare’s tragedy doesn’t have religious undertones. In other words, the lovers don’t expect to find each other in heaven. They choose death because life without each other is unbearable. md: Love in the Bible comes in different packages.

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is: It’s portrayed as a most conflicted emotion. I use this idea in the spirit of Spinoza’s geometrical theory. In part 3 of the Ethics, Spinoza describes emotions as “the affections of the body by which the body’s power of activity is increased or diminished, assisted or checked, together with the ideas of these affections.” The emotions, and Spinoza makes a list of them, are caused by pleasure, pain, or desire. Spinoza discusses conflicting emotions in the context of good and bad. Good emotions are those that are useful, bad emotions those that are harmful. In part 4, he states that “the mind’s highest good is the knowledge of God.” The Bible represents a gamut of possibilities in connection with love: a lover’s love, a parent’s love, a sibling’s love, a friend’s love. Yet the ultimate objective is love of God. That love is good. It is also not a transitory emotion that involves the heart. Instead, it is the mind’s quest: to seek a moral life, to be righteous, to mend the world. As you and I have discussed, the Bible isn’t only a religious book. It is also a historical document. Thus, it offers different types of truths. From the religious perspective, it suggests that truth is based in belief. What kind of belief? The belief in one God, univocal, committed to ethics. It’s clear from the biblical narrative that as humans we’re always getting into trouble. But faith is presented as light, clarity, conviction. From the historical perspective, the Bible suggests that truth is teleological: the world was made with an objective, and the passing of time is only an advancement of that objective. md: I want to discuss the uses of that love. For instance, I want you to reflect on the love of Jews for land in general and in particular for the land of Israel. You touched on the topic in Resurrecting Hebrew. is: The Zionist movement of the late nineteenth century was predicated on the concept of cyclical return. After the destruction of the Second Temple, the people of Israel went into exile. The new chapters were about restlessness: not having a land, living in temporary homes, always on the move. A nation that once had a land of its own needed to reinvent itself. That reinvention took

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place through learning. The Torah became portable, its interpretation a matter of adaptability. But the nationalist fever at the time of Theodor Herzl rekindled the sense of belonging to land. It precipitated a messianic argument presented by various biblical prophets; the argument of return. Have Jews always loved the land of Israel? No doubt. Remember Psalm 137:5: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.” md: This is the paradox. In the Middle East, particularly in Iran and Iraq, there are tombs for various biblical figures, from Ezekiel to Ezra, to Habakuk and Esther. A Persian friend of mine promised me once that if he ever goes through Hamadan in Iran, he’ll bring me pictures of the tomb of Mordecai. Assuming, for the sake of argument, these were real people whose acts and words later became the stuff of myth, it signifies the degree to which significant portions of the Bible were conceived while in exile. How is love for a land conceptualized when one is away from it? is: Your question announces the promise of the talmudic revolution. md: In what sense? is: The Talmud made the Bible a living text by endorsing the concept of a portable faith. A portable faith entails a portable God, a portable Book able to speak to people in different lands, and a portable passion toward a land that was lost but might be regained one day. The Babylonian Talmud, and even the Palestinian Talmud, fostered this type of devotion, advancing a religion designed for an itinerant—I prefer to call them migrant—people. “Next year in Jerusalem”: the statement is at the core of exilic (that is, rabbinical) Judaism. As long as you keep memory alive through the act (and art) of reading the biblical narrative, the postponement of a fulfilled earthly existence in the land of Israel is acceptable. A genial idea! md: Does it entail a different kind of love? is: It certainly does. The Talmud proposes us to put a hold on our need to be in the Holy Land, creating palliatives to maintain faith in God alive.

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md: What are those palliatives? is: For instance, the idea that redemption isn’t possible in the here and now. md: A bit stupid, if I’m honest. is: If stupidity is defined as the capacity to experience happiness through depravation, I agree. md: In contrast, how do you characterize, in a few short words, love in the Bible? is: A requirement to satisfy the divine, a compulsion to fit into his scheme of things. md: A debt? is: Love not as choice but as duty. md: In fact, I want to remain on the topic of stupidity. It seems that, in your perception, to love is to be a fool. is: What do you mean? md: Are there any biblical characters that, in your view, behave stupidly out of love? is: The question attracts me enormously. I’m not sure it is only love that prompts stupid behavior. But let’s first define what stupidity is. I should begin, Mordecai, by saying I’ve been thinking about it for quite some time. The dictionary says that stupidity is the quality or condition of being stupid. For stupid it presents a number of options: [1] slow to learn or understand, [2] tending to make poor decisions or careless mistakes, [3] marked by a lack of intelligence or care, [4] dazed, stunned, or stupefied, and [5] pointless and worthless, as in a stupid job. All these are variations of stupidity as the reverse of intelligence. And what is intelligence? A superior faculty of reason that allows us to acquire information and apply knowledge. But I’m unhappy with these definitions. I have a series of anecdotes to prove my point. The cleaning woman—I’ll call her Ernestina—who comes to my house on a biweekly basis is from Central America. I love her dearly. She only reached second grade in school. She came to the United States as an undocumented immigrant, crossing the border at night. A single mother who left her family to earn

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money abroad, over the years she has brought along her three children, although through illegal channels. A couple of weeks ago, she and I were chatting casually about a recent tragedy: the disappearance, in the middle of the night on the Atlantic Ocean, of an Air France airplane that was en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. After a few minutes of our dialogue, it became clear to me that Ernestina, who works long shifts washing dishes in a local restaurant, had heard the news on the Spanish-language radio. She was aware of the disappearance but in her mind the aircraft had simply vanished as if by magic. I wasn’t sure if Ernestina had seen photographs of the Brazilian marine patrol locating the debris. Then she asked: “Ilan, what does océano mean?” Suddenly I realized she had heard the word a number of times. She didn’t know it is a synonym for sea. The disappearance of the plane into thin air was the result of her limited vocabulary. I wonder: Is Ernestina stupid? It isn’t that she is slow to learn and understand. It’s just that she was never exposed to a large vocabulary. Does that make her unintelligent? Well, she took the right decision: she asked me to define océano for her. Does this make her brighter? Another anecdote. My father is a telenovela actor in Mexico. Ernestina knows my father well, since he and my mother visit my family on a regular basis. In fact, Ernestina sees them together all the time, as they do most things together as a couple. She also knows about my father’s profession although until recently she had never seen him on TV. One morning a couple of years ago she came to me enormously excited because she had finally spotted my father on the screen: “Ilan, he’s in the current prime-time telenovela,” she said. “I saw him yesterday!” Then she added: “But I didn’t see your mother on the show.” Clearly she couldn’t conceive that my father and mother, always together in real life, wouldn’t be so on TV. Is she dumb? Maybe she is, according to the hierarchy of intelligence you and I live by, but I have doubts. The dictionary definition is worthless to me. Ernestina, in my view, approaches the world through magical thinking, like children do. Are children stupid?

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md: Maybe the more pertinent question is what the relationship is between vocabulary and abstract reasoning. Not knowing the words “ocean” and “actor,” can Ernestina possibly understand these things conceptually before learning these actual words? Can a child, either? I don’t believe she is stupid. If she has managed to bring her children to the United States illegally, clearly she has the ability to conceptualize abstractly, to formulate plans, and if she is able to do this with fewer words at her disposal, she is arguably gifted, perhaps even brilliant since she had fewer tools to begin with—those tools being words. is: Her paradigm reminds me of the protagonist in Flaubert’s story “Un cœur simple,” known in English as “A Simple Heart,” part of the 1877 collection called Trois contes. The novella is about a servant girl called Felicité who loves those around her very much. Her boyfriend, Théodore, in order not to be drafted into the army, marries a well-to-do woman. There is a scene in which the woman for whom Felicité works as a maid points at the place where Théodore has gone. But Felicité, who doesn’t know what a map is, thinks her boyfriend is on that colorful design on the table her patron is pointing at. I like Flaubert’s use of the word “simple”: Felicité isn’t stupid, she is just simple. The meaning of simplicity is the same that Singer offers in “Gimpel the Fool,” the story we discussed in chapter 7: “Job’s Perplexity.” Again, I believe Saul Bellow’s title is mistaken in the English translation he made of the story for Partisan Review: Gimpel is simple, yes, but he isn’t stupid. If “foolish” is a synonym of stupid, then Bellow is wrong. The right title is “Gimpel the Simple,” just as Flaubert’s right title is “A Simple Heart” and not “A Stupid Heart.” Simplicity ought not to be seen as a handicap. It is the opposite of sophistication. But how many times have you, Mordecai, come across people who in their absolute sophistication are absolute fools? There are plenty of biblical characters who behave foolishly. Cain’s attack against his sibling Abel, for instance. Does he think that the Almighty will not find out? Surely that falls into the view presented by the OED of what a poor decision is. How about Lot’s wife looking back? People often act foolishly in the Bible because

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the narrative seeks to reflect human folly. Yet it also depicts the divine in questionable ways. Is Abraham’s test in the sacrifice of Isaac a sign that God is cruel? Is cruelty a form of stupidity? md: As you said earlier while mentioning Maimonides, the common perception is that God’s ways are unexplainable. is: Spinoza, indeed, argues that the divine is pure reason. But in my view reason and intelligence aren’t the same. A reasonable person is at times stupid. Yes, I have no doubt that God acts stupidly in the Bible. md: Is stupidity an ingredient of love? is: As Spinoza explains it in the Ethics, human emotions, if left unattended, bring reckless results. In particular, love makes the heart go wild. One of the multiple ways a person might be stupid is when reason is paralyzed by love. It might be an extraordinary sensation, but its consequences are dangerous. md: What character in the Bible exemplifies that extreme? is: In the Song of Songs, the narrator isn’t oblivious to the dictates of reason because the storyline isn’t about the obstacles of love. The book is simply an incantation of physical pleasures. David’s love for Bathsheba, on the other hand, in its youthful fashion, is about extremes. It is also about repentance. But the attraction between lovers isn’t a standard love story, not as the Romantics would portray it centuries later. But this isn’t to say that the consequences of love aren’t equally catastrophic. Shechem’s attraction to Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, results in the slaughter of all the Canaanite males, not to mention Jacob’s disrepute. md: Does the love that God and Israel have for each other follow along the same lines? is: It’s at once compulsive and invigorating. md: Ilan, we’ve reached the end. My heartfelt gratitude to you for allowing me to engage you in this enlightening, exhilarating dialogue. I have one last question, maybe two: Who would we be had the Bible not been invented? is: Invented? md: Or written. Can you imagine the world without it?

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is: I can’t. It reads us as much as we read it. For better or worse, almost everything we have—our sense of self, our dreams, our ethical code, our understanding of progress, our vision of death—comes from it. md: Without the Bible . . . is: . . . we are beasts. Not that we have improved that much!

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Acknowledgments

In fall 2008, Ilan Stavans delivered a series of four lectures on the Bible as narrative at the National Yiddish Book Center, in Amherst, Massachusetts. The inception of With All Thine Heart took place at that point and when, after reading Love and Language, Stavans’s dialogue with Verónica Albin, Mordecai Drache approached him for an interview in the on-line journal Zeek. Thanks to Jo Ellen Green Keiser, the editor in chief, for commissioning it. Albin as well as Eliezer Nowodworski read the manuscript with red pen, offering invaluable comments. Adi Hovav, the social science editor at Rutgers University Press, believed it should be expanded into a book. She passionately catered the manuscript through production. Our heartfelt gratitude to Leslie Mitchner, editor in chief at the press, for her gracious, unremitting support. Katie Keeran spearheaded the permission process. Alice Calaprice did a wonderful copyediting job. Neal Sokol compiled the index with his usual care. Irina Troconis, Stavans’s student assistant, was helpful in all matters relating to the project. Finally, the book benefited from a subsidy from Amherst College.

d Index

Aaron (biblical figure), 92, 100, 101, 125 Abélard, Pierre, 31, 168 Abrabanel, Judah, 3 Abraham (biblical figure), 17, 27, 29, 30, 44, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 74, 77, 91, 100, 113, 118, 150, 159, 174 Abramowich, Shalom Jacob (Mendele Mokher Sefarim), 65 Absalom (biblical figure), 78 Absalom, Absalom! (Faulkner), 116 Abu Nawas, 153 Adam (biblical figure), 5, 24, 25, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 41, 42, 43, 45, 47, 56, 65, 82, 85, 124, 128

Aeneid (Virgil), 33 Aeschylus, 26, 86 Albin, Verónica, 2, 12, 13, 28 Aleichem, Sholem, 165 Alter, Robert, 67, 74, 77, 116, 117 Amichai, Yehuda, 117 Amnon (biblical figure), 78 angels, 17, 29, 33, 36, 38, 54, 56, 57, 61, 64, 66, 68, 74, 76, 77, 90, 165, 166 anti-Semitism, 44, 121, 155 Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 38 Arabic, 152, 153 Aramaic, 7, 15 Ark of the Covenant, 111, 117 As I Lay Dying (Faulkner), 25 Ashekenazim, 14, 43

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Assyria, 129, 133, 134 Augustine, Saint, bishop of Hippo, 37, 38, 155 Averroës, 38 Babel, Tower of, 24, 45, 46, 74 Babylon and Babylonians, 44, 45, 50, 118, 133, 136, 137 Babylonian Exile, 7, 136, 138, 160 Bathsheba (biblical figure), 6, 117, 174 Bellow, Saul, 70, 173 Ben-Yehuda, Eliezer, 45, 119 Berlin, Isaiah, 133 Bible, versions of, 2, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 67, 94, 146, 150. See also King James Bible Bible with Sources Revealed, The (Friedman), 11 Bierce, Ambrose, 125 Blake, William, 33, 34, 121, 122, 165 Borges, Jorge Luis, 22, 47, 48, 71, 136 Botero, Fernando, 30 Brooks, Mel, 95 Bunyan, John, 14 Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 126 Canaan, 43, 50, 51, 52, 56, 57, 80, 84, 103, 106, 107, 110, 111, 113, 118, 140, 174 Catholicism, 17, 60, 120, 155 Cervantes, Miguel de, 46, 145 Chagall, Marc, 29, 45, 84 Christianity, 2, 18, 19, 34, 38, 50, 61, 62, 121, 127, 128, 155, 158, 163, 164 circumcision, 55, 77, 78, 91, 92, 103, 111

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Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 126 covenant, 21, 30, 33, 42, 51, 55, 56, 60, 65, 84, 92, 94, 95, 97, 105, 108, 111, 140 Crumb, Robert, 34, 128 Daniel, Book of, 2, 79, 80 Dante Alighieri, 19, 46 Darwin, Charles, 42 David (biblical figure), 6, 7, 59, 64, 78, 112, 115, 117, 118, 153, 174 Dawkins, Richard, 4 Decalogue, 95, 101, 108, 111, 132 Deuteronomy, Book of, 2, 5, 6, 8, 16, 20, 34, 35, 93, 104, 105, 109, 118, 149 Devil. See Satan Devil’s Dictionary, The (Bierce), 125 Dialoghi d’amore (Abrabanel), 3 Dialogo de la lengua (Valdes), 3 Dictionary Days: A Defining Passion (Stavans), 8 Dinah (biblical figure), 75, 77, 174 Disappearance, The (Stavans), 9, 161, 162 Don Quixote (Cervantes), 26, 46, 102, 145 Donne, John, 14, 126, 127 Doré, Gustave, 46, 93 Ecclesiastes, Book of, 2, 7, 144, 146, 160 Eden. See Garden of Eden Edom (Transjordan), 59, 68, 73, 103, 114, 136, 159 Egypt and Egyptians (ancient), 17, 20, 21, 52, 53, 54, 56, 59, 79, 80, 83, 84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94,

96, 97, 100, 102. 103, 104, 107, 110, 111, 114, 132, 133, 150 Esau (biblical figure), 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 80, 103 Esther (biblical figure), 21, 105, 124, 170 Eve (biblical figure), 5, 27, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 41, 47, 85, 128 Exodus, Book of, 2, 3, 7, 11, 15, 70, 84, 85, 87, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95, 98, 101, 105, 106, 107, 119, 143, 160 Ezekiel (biblical figure), 7, 95, 105, 127, 138, 139, 141, 170 Ezekiel, Book of, 18, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141 Ezra (biblical figure), 105, 170 Falk, Marcia, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151 Faulkner, William, 25, 26, 116 Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott), 26 Flaubert, Gustave, 173 Friedman, Richard Elliot, 11, 29, 42, 78, 94, 156 Freud, Sigmund, 26, 79, 80, 103, 145 Future of an Illusion, The (Freud), 103 Gabirol, Solomon ben Judah, ibn, 153 García Márquez, Gabriel, 39, 85 Garden of Eden, 5, 21, 33, 36, 38, 52, 128, 134 Genesis, Book of, 2, 3, 7, 24, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 60, 63, 64, 65, 67, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 79, 80, 91, 100, 101, 118, 128, 138, 151, 158, 159, 160 Gerstein, Mordecai, 4

ghazal (Arabic love poem), 152 Gilgamesh, 26, 38 Gilman, Sander L., 44 God Delusion, The (Dawkins), 4 God Is Not Great (Hitchens), 4 Goliath (biblical figure), 117 Greenberg, Eliezer, 165 guilt, 37, 80, 98, 162 Habakkuk (biblical figure), 170 Hagar (biblical figure), 49, 54, 58, 64, 73 Halevi, Yehudah. See Yehudah Halevi Ham (biblical figure), 43 Hamlet (Shakespeare), 26 Hebrew and Hebrew language usage, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 22, 23, 33, 36, 39, 45, 51, 52, 58, 67, 70, 73, 76, 77, 78, 89, 90, 92, 96, 100, 105, 107, 119, 138, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153, 156, 159, 160, 161, 163, 164 Héloïse, 331, 168 Herzl, Theodor, 170 Heschel, Abraham Joshua, 32, 126, 129, 156 History of the World, Part 1(film), 95 Hitchens, Christopher, 4 Homer, 26, 71 homosexuality, 24, 144, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156 How Noah Chose the Dove (Singer), 4 How to Read the Bible (Kugel), 95 Howe, Irving, 165 Ibn Ezra, Abraham ben Meir, 62 Ibn Gabirol, Solomon ben Judah. See Gabirol, Solomon ben Judah, ibn

Index

181

Ilan Stavans: Eight Conversations (Sokol), 2 Ishmael (biblical figure), 49, 54, 55, 60, 62, 73 Isaiah (biblical figure), 7, 30, 125, 127, 128, 133, 135 Isaiah, Book of, 2, 16, 18, 19, 27, 41, 127, 128, 129, 130, 133 Islam, 50, 54, 62, 121 Jacob (biblical figure), 27, 56, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 113, 127, 134, 158, 165, 174 James, Henry, 25, 26, 85 Jeremiah (biblical figure), 7, 43, 127, 133, 134, 135, 137 Jeremiah, Book of, 2, 107, 110, 133, 134, 135, 136, 138 Jerusalem, 64, 112, 113, 117, 119, 121, 122, 129, 133, 134, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 147, 148, 152, 170 Jesus, 19, 29, 38, 47, 62, 84, 155, 163 Jethro (biblical figure), 43, 44, 88, 89 Jewish Antiquities (Josephus), 59, 84, 87 Jewish Self-Hatred (Gilman), 44 Job (biblical figure), 26, 134, 158, 159, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165 Job, Book of, 7, 18, 26, 33, 61, 158–165 Jonah and the Two Great Fish (Gerstein), 4 Joseph (biblical figure), 66, 78, 79, 80, 85, 87, 103, 105, 153 Josephus Flavius, 59, 64, 84, 87 Joshua (biblical figure), 5, 50, 104, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 113

182

Index

Joshua, Book of, 50, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 121, 138 Judaism, 8, 18, 19, 23, 28, 44, 50, 62, 103, 105, 114, 115, 119, 121, 124, 126, 141, 155, 158, 170 Julius Caesar (Shakespeare), 26 Kabbalah, 23, 32, 139 Kahlo, Frida, 103, 104 Kama Sutra (Vatsayayana), 151 Khazars, 121 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 126, 129 King James Bible, 2, 8, 12, 13, 14, 18, 19, 54, 67, 94, 106, 148, 150 King Lear (Shakespeare), 14 King Solomon and His Magic Ring (Wiesel), 4 Kings, Book of, 2, 144 Knowledge and Censorship (Albin and Stavans), 2 Koestler, Arthur, 121 Kugel, James L., 6, 95, 96 Laban (biblical figure), 73, 74, 75, 76 Lamentations, Book of, 133, 136, 137, 138, 141 Last Trial, The (Spiegel), 61 Leah (biblical figure), 75, 79, 124 Leone Ebreo, see Abrabanel, Judah Leviticus, Book of, 2, 34, 35, 45, 101, 107, 154, 155, 156 Lot (biblical figure), 53, 57, 58, 59, 60, 173 Love and Language (Albin and Stavans), 2, 12, 31, 147, 151, 154, 168 lust, 6, 34, 103, 117

Macbeth (Shakespeare), 26 Maimonides, Moses, 7, 32, 38, 39, 61, 89, 93, 124, 141, 174 marriage, 58, 75, 92, 95, 140, 144, 154 Melville, Herman, 6 Mendele Mokher Sefarim, 165 Michelangelo Buonarroti, 101, 117, 122 Midrash, 60, 90, 96, 105, 110, 148, 168 Milton, John, 33, 34, 46, 71 Miriam (biblical figure), 86, 87, 124, 149 Moby Dick (Melville), 6 Mordecai (biblical figure), 88, 105, 170 More, Sir Thomas, 128 Moser, Barry, 46, 47 Moses (biblical figure), 7, 18, 20, 21, 43, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 109, 125, 141, 146, 149, 150, 156, 168 Moses and Monotheism (Freud), 103 Mr. Spic Goes to Washington (Stavans), 128 New Testament, 2, 19, 38 Noah (biblical figure), 4, 29, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, 52, 57 Numbers, Book of, 2, 8, 92, 93, 101, 102, 130 Odyssey (Homer), 26, 85 OED. See Oxford English Dictionary On Borrowed Words (Stavans), 14, 36, 66, 90, 128

One Hundred Years of Solitude (García Márquez), 39, 84 Orozco, José Clemente, 104 Othello (Shakespeare), 14 Oxford English Dictionary (OED), 74, 96, 119, 136, 164, 173 Paradise Lost (Milton), 33, 34, 46 Pascal, Blaise, 58 Peretz, Isaac Leib, 165 Persia, 118, 146 Petrarch (Petrarca), Francesco, 31 Pharaoh (biblical figure), 52, 54, 79, 80, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 90, 91, 92, 93 Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan), 14 Plato, 2, 3, 21, 31, 68 Poem of the Cid, The, 85 poetry, 31, 33, 34, 85, 99, 117, 121, 126, 146, 147, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154 Popul Vuh, 26 pornography, 34, 143 Potiphar (biblical figure), 80 prayer, 1, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 21, 22, 28, 99 prostitution, 110, 141, 145 Proverbs, Book of, 144, 146 Psalms, Book of, 40, 117, 136, 170 Qur’an, 7, 38, 54, 55, 62 Rabelais, François, 46 Rashi, 73, 124 Rebekah (biblical figure), 63, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 73, 124 Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, 137

Index

183

Resurrecting Hebrew (Stavans), 8, 22, 23, 45, 119, 169 Reuben (biblical figure), 75, 79 Rivera, Diego, 104 romance, 27, 31, 46, 65, 74, 75, 126, 127, 133, 137, 139, 174 Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare), 12, 26, 75, 168 Roth, Henry, 116 Roth, Norman, 152, 153 Ruth (biblical figure), 59 Sabbath, 16, 17, 18, 35, 94, 98, 99, 100, 129, 130, 143 Sade, Marquis de, 153 Samuel (biblical figure), 117, 125, 127 Samuel 1 and 2, Book of, 115, 116, 118 Sarah (biblical figure), 49, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 63, 64, 77, 124 Satan, 33, 34, 36, 122, 160, 161, 162, 164 Saul (biblical figure), 64, 115, 116, 117 Sephardim, 11, 143 sex and sexuality, 24, 31, 34, 55, 56, 58, 59, 79, 99, 125, 144, 145, 149, 151, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157 Shabbat. See Sabbath Shadow of a Flying Bird, The (Gerstein), 4 Shakespeare, William, 12, 14, 24, 26, 71, 75, 162, 168 Shechem (biblical figure), 77, 174 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 126 Shema (Jewish liturgy), 1, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 104

184

Index

sin, 17, 18, 30, 37, 58, 59, 97, 114, 118, 128, 129, 161, 164 Singer, Isaac Bashevis, 4, 45, 70, 164, 165, 173 Siqueiros, David Alfaro, 104 Socrates, 2, 3, 12, 154 Sodom and Gomorrah (ancient cities), 43, 53, 57, 59, 60, 64, 77, 97 Solomon (biblical figure), 4, 7, 112, 115, 143, 144, 146, 148, 152 Soloveitchik, Joseph Dov, 30 Song of Songs, 5, 7, 115, 143, 144, 146, 147, 148, 150, 151, 152, 157, 163, 174 Sonnets (Shakespeare), 71 Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language (Stavans), 8 Spiegel, Shalom, 61, 62 Spinoza, Baruch de, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 28, 33, 93, 169, 174 Suetonius, 26 Symposium, The (Plato), 3 Talmud, 9, 43, 50, 52, 60, 124, 149, 170 Tamar (biblical figure), 78 Tempest, The (Shakespeare), 14 temptation, 7, 34, 45 Ten Commandments. See Decalogue Ten Commandments, The (film), 93 Terah (biblical figure), 50, 64 Thirteenth Tribe, The (Koestler), 121 Treasury of Yiddish Stories, A (Howe and Greenberg), 165 Trembling Before G-d (documentary film), 156

Trotsky, Leon, 104 Tzipporah (biblical figure), 89, 91, 92, 149

Yehudah Halevi, 32, 121, 153 Yiddish, 3, 14, 15, 165 Yochebed (biblical figure), 86, 88

White Ram, The (Gerstein), 4 Who Wrote the Bible? (Friedman), 156 Wiesel, Elie, 4 Wilde, Oscar, 64, 128 Wisse, Ruth, 116, 166

Zechariah, Book of, 107 Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture, 1 Zionism, 44, 106, 107, 109, 114, 115, 119, 122, 123, 169 Zohar (Kabbalah), 32

Index

185

d

About the Authors

Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. Mordecai Drache holds a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and has studied journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto. He is a freelance writer, poet, and contributing editor to Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture.