Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on January 20, 2022

But the principal interest of The Book of All Books lies not in its fictional embellishments but in the stories themselves. Most of us have lost the practice of daily Bible reading that characterized earlier generations, just as we have lost the deep dive into ancient Greece that was once a standard part of secondary school education. I think of myself as reasonably familiar with the Bible, and yet I found myself checking again and again to be sure that Calasso was not making it all up: When he climbed up to Bethel a swarm of boys surrounded him, jeering: Climb on up, baldie! Climb on up, baldie! Elisha looked up, sent them a withering look, and cursed them. Then two she-bears came out of the forest and tore apart 42 of the boys. The withering is a tiny invention in Hebrew, as far as I can tell, Elisha just gives them a look but otherwise it is all there in II Kings 2:23-24.

Apart from remarking that not everyone considered him a benefactor, Calasso relates this little story about the prophet Elisha without comment. It appears, along with other anecdotes, to convey both the power and weirdness of the Hebrew prophets. These men, he remarks, shared a certain spitefulness, spoke with great vehemence and as a matter of principle deployed only two registers: condemnation and consolation, vast deserts of condemnation, that is, relieved by rare oases of inconceivable sweetness. Their character traits reach a climax in the weirdest of all the prophets, Ezekiel, and it is with Ezekiels supremely strange visions that Calassos book approaches its end.

Ezekiel brings fully into focus the key principles that, in Calassos view, weave together all the diverse stories that he retells and that define the destiny and the identity of the Jews. (Notably, it is as Jews not as Hebrews or Israelites in their historical and geographical particularity that he identifies the figures in his book.) The first of these principles is separation. Yahweh insists that his people be different, and zealously maintain this difference, from all the surrounding peoples, just as he insists that he, Yahweh, be their only god. All manifestations of the desire to be like others for example, to have kings, the way the surrounding peoples do arouse his blinding wrath.

In a chapter-length digression, Calasso gives an account of Freuds late essay Moses and Monotheism as a tormented attempt to undo this founding separation, Freud argued that Moses was himself a foreigner, an Egyptian marked in the ancient custom of Egypt by circumcision. What had seemed like the defining Abrahamic sign of tribal distinction for all males was in fact a sign of assimilation. Assimilation came before separation, as Calasso sums up Freuds argument, and that separation had been introduced by an Egyptian, hence the Jew had no real nature of his own. But try telling that to Ezekiel.

See more here:

Before He Died, the Writer Roberto Calasso Had the Old Testament on His Mind - The New York Times

Category: Hebrew
Tags: