"Have you ever," he inquired hesitantly of Yossarian ... "been in a situation which you felt you had been in before, even though you knew you were experiencing it for the first time?" Yossarian nodded perfunctorily, and the chaplain's breath quickened in anticipation as he made ready to join his … [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...]
Journal of an Eibeschuetz Translator – The Kabbalist and the Genocide (Part 2)
Once upon a time, according to the Jewish mystics known as Kabbalists, there existed a system of worlds--shall we call it a universe?--very much like our own, yet not the one we know today. One day--but back then there were no "days," no time as we know it, because sun and moon and everything … [Read more...]
Journal of an Eibeschuetz Translator – The Kabbalist and the Genocide (Part 1)
"And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites: afterward shalt thou be gathered unto thy people" (Numbers 31:1-2). I don't want to write this blog post. I think I'm probably going to hate it once it's written. But at a panel at a science-fiction … [Read more...]
