Bad Rabbi Media - POETRY BONUS EPISODE! "Do They Sing, or Repeat a Song?": Laws vs. Miracles & the "Jewish Voices Missing from the Gospels," with Poet Atar Hadari

POETRY BONUS EPISODE! "Do They Sing, or Repeat a Song?": Laws vs. Miracles & the "Jewish Voices Missing from the Gospels," with Poet Atar Hadari

12/01/23 • 57 min

Poetry, right?

I don't know about you but I'm feeling like I could use some poetry right about now. To that end! Right before the High Holidays started I had a conversation with one of my favorite Jewish writers, poet and translator Atar Hadari. The episode was slated for release on Monday 10/9, and of course intervening world events made it nearly impossible to think about poetry, much less listen to it read aloud, much less claim a moment of open-ended reflection to contemplate, assimilate, absorb.

But at this point, I feel like we could all use a bit of poetry in our lives.

And Atar's new book Gethsemane transports readers to a setting that is chronologically remote but cluturally ever-present: Israel during the time of Jesus, the people and events narrated in the New Testament. Atar does us the honor of reading three poems I requested from Gethsemane . From wildly illuminating and entertaining angles, the poems explore some of the fundamental differences between Judaism and Christianity as communal spiritual value systems -- and does so from a place of profound empathy, sensitivity, and understanding.

Jewish characters, some of whose names still reverberate into our modern "Judeo-Christian" culture, some 'background characters' whose names were never known, observe the events of Jesus's life with emotions we are not used to associating them, given the New Testament's flat characterization of them as either stone-hearted legalists or zealous converts. In the landscape of Gethsemane, ancient Israelites view Jesus with a wide range of attitudes: curiosity, bemusement, annoyance, pity, indignation, indifference, respect. (“There are many kings of Israel that come off a lot worse than Jesus does.")

They wonder things like, How did Jesus make a living? How is this a paying gig?

Through these homey, local voices, a value system emerges organically that pokes and prods at some of the fundamental premises of the New Testament's theological challenge to Judaism. Miracles, in this view, are both freely acknowledged and deprioritized. And taking responsibility for a commmnity's 'mundane' spiritual needs -- via the Temple rituals so mocked in New Testament, via adherence to the legal minutae of Jewish Law -- is the highest stature a person can attain.

"They *needed* the money lenders...it’s just a whole system of commerce they doesn’t work without money lenders...it’s like, Jesus went and threw all the clerks out of city hall. 'Well that’s great Jesus, but how am I going to pay my taxes!'"

Poetry, right?

But at this point, I feel like we could all use a bit of poetry in our lives.

They wonder things like, How did Jesus make a living? How is this a paying gig?

Previous Episode

undefined - "I Just Couldn't Accept That That Was Something That Was Being Said": Contemplating Humanity & Inhumanity from "A Weird Place," with Joshua Leifer

"I Just Couldn't Accept That That Was Something That Was Being Said": Contemplating Humanity & Inhumanity from "A Weird Place," with Joshua Leifer

"So now I'm in a weird place" is a sentiment many can relate to these days. Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, following the latter's barbaric 10/7 torture-rape-massacre of 1400 Israelis, and kidnapping of 240 more, has provoked some of the most acute fissures of my generation, with implications that can't be fully predicted except to say we will be living with them for generations more. Joshua Leifer experienced what he describes as an acute awakening about the nature of left-politics in the wake of the massacre. "I reacted very personally to people I knew personally from the left-journalism milieu, reacting excitedly, triumphantly -- or just justifying the Hamas attacks."

"I was surprised by the controversy of the humane left piece...and even more surprised and kind of appalled by the published response to it."

"These were things that I thought were basically uncontroversial ideas."

"I don't think my fundamental analysis of what's happening has changed. but my sense of where i fit into the american political scene...has changed a little bit."

"That argument incensed me...I just couldn't accept that that was something that was being said. and it turned out to be the case that his sentiment was pretty widely shared among progressive Jews."

Toward a Humane Left - Dissent Magazine

Inhumane Times | Joshua Leifer | The New York Review of Books (nybooks.com)

Next Episode

undefined - "It’s Not a Time for Dialogue. It’s Just a Time for Checking Up on Each Other": The Tragedy of Victim-ism and Other Casualties of War with Coexistence Activist Rabbi Shaul Judelman

"It’s Not a Time for Dialogue. It’s Just a Time for Checking Up on Each Other": The Tragedy of Victim-ism and Other Casualties of War with Coexistence Activist Rabbi Shaul Judelman

"One of my Palestinian friends said, Everybody’s pro-Hamas right now. Cause they did something! On an internal level, hamas’ bid to take over leadership of the Palestinian struggle is very strong. On the other hand, I have another Palestinian friend saying, what do you mean — Hamas is a disaster for our people. It’s always been a disaster for our people. We’re all sitting around not working for a month now..."

Whenever anything happens in Israel, the person I want to hear from the most is Rabbi Shaul Judelman, Israeli resident of the West Bank town Tekoa, coexistence activist and co-founder/co-director of the non-profit Roots-Shorashim-Judur. That's why he is BAD RABBI's first 3rd-time guest, and why I'm so excited to stop typing right now and get this episode up so you can listen to it already. I basically just dumped out all of my current observations, anxieties, analyses, and critiques on the (metaphorical) table in front of Shaul and asked him to poke, prod, add, subtract, organize, and shed his own considerable light on it. We didn't agree about everything, but imo it would be silly not to take everything he sees and says very seriously.

Here are some salient excerpts from our conversation:

"Society is overflowing with purpose. Because it’s The Home. The Home has been shattered... So there’s this incredible sense of unity...The army failed us. The government is inept in many ways. In general we’ve been on a long slide of losing faith in our national institutions that are supposed to take care of us. But the Israeli society has just stepped up in the most emotive, amazing way, to take care of each other...

"[Prior to 10/7,] the reservists were threatening not to serve. The pilots were threatening not to fly. The leaders on both sides were just fanning all they vitriol. So it looked pretty bad. So when the attack came, I imagine Iran and hezbollah thought we were a society that was falling apart. But we were already enlisted. You had 300,000 people who were already enlisted to show up every Saturday night to fight for the Israeli they believed in. For the values they believe in. For the home they want to live in...By the next day [i.e. 10/8], the big protest movement had organized a control room and were evacuating people under fire from all the border towns, setting up places for people to go, already doing the food package in...it was a matter of sending out a WhatsApp on the channel. Because the network was there...the army at the end of the day turned to them for inspiration."

Why is Bibi still in office?

"The entire north of the country is worries about hiznollah commandos storming in through a tunnel...That day of reckoning is going to come. But the sense of right now, the most important thing to do is that our people in the south can’t go home until Hamas is out of power, until their ability to fight is done. Until that’s done, there’s a big swath of our country that is empty. And we owe it to those people who we’ve already failed to give them the security that they can live their lives within the established borders of the state of Israel."

"Imagine you’re a Palestinian committed to peace, and your Israeli partner says, 'I think we have to hit Gaza, we have to hit Hamas, I don’t see another way out.' The cost of that, whet it means on the Palestinian civilian life is tremendous and how can you possibly say that. But I think that most Israelis have come to that feeling."

"On the Israeli side, people were triggered by Palestinians saying, I don’t think any children were killed, Hamas only attacks military targets, your media is lying to you. And you have someone in our WhatsApp group who just buried her niece."

"For a lot of people, the question of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, who is the victim? & both sides have a pretty good case. But if you’re a Palestinian and you’ve been watching the world ignore you more and more, and looking at Occupation get worse, and Israel doing this, and the world's not paying attention, and all of a sudden the world is coming out and saying that the Israelis are the victim?...[And at the same time,] if you’re going to look at what happened on Oct 7, and you’re NOT able say that Israelis are the victim??...

"So right there is a very challenging moment.

"People hold onto their victimhood, because they’re some kind of weird thought in the world that whoever is the victim is right. And it’s really a very detrimental perspective on the world. Because it just leads people to claim victimhood."