"This fall, in third grade, We live in Ancient Egypt Not North Carolina, says Mrs. Long, just back From the 1964 World's Fair in New York City. She saw a little gold coffin for a king called Tut." --Catherine Woodard, Opening the Mouth of the Dead Mrs. Long is one of the world's great … [Read more...]
Books That Horrify – Ezekiel, “1984,” “The Island of Dr. Moreau”
There was a chapter of the Bible that people were afraid to read, I told the little girl. I want to know why they were afraid to read it. Her name was Rebecca, and she was eight years old and the daughter of a friend and colleague of mine, a scholar of Islam who taught at a nearby university. … [Read more...]
Journal of an Eibeschuetz Translator – The Kabbalist and the Genocide (Part 4)
Start, perhaps, with Hansel and Gretel. "Start," that is, on the undertaking I promised at the end of the last segment of this post, of making Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschuetz's reading of the Bible as the secret history of God feel plausible, or at least something other than arbitrary and … [Read more...]
Journal of an Eibeschuetz Translator – The Kabbalist and the Genocide (Part 3)
(Continuation of my post two weeks ago.) It's a challenge--to make Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschuetz's Bible, Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschuetz's God, intelligible and even relevant to a secular world where God as an active force is hardly detectable. Where "nobody ever reads the Bible"--as a speaker in a … [Read more...]
UFO Moon, “Miracle of the Sun” – When the Sky Turns Strange
"He says the sun came out last night. He says it sang to him." --"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977) Of course it wasn't really the sun. The sun, considered as an astronomical body, doesn't do that kind of thing. So when the nodding, grinning, half-crazy old man announces at the end … [Read more...]
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