Unscrolled : 54 Writers and Artists Wrestle With the Torah (9780761178743)

by Bennett, Roger (EDT)

  The only reason God will not destroy the Israelites is revealed: a desire to prevent their enemies from forming the misconception that their gods have ultimately prevailed. If the Israelites are smart, they will have already realized God’s power and know it surpasses that of their enemies. Once their foes are defeated, God will goad them, demanding to know where their gods have disappeared to.

  There is one God: an eternal power with a flashing blade, who will bring forth justice and vengeance to the world.

  When Moses completes his poem, he commands the people to take his words to heart and teach them to their children, observing that the Torah is not a small thing. It is life itself.

  That same day, the Lord tells Moses to ascend the heights of Mount Nebo and look out over the land of Canaan, which will become the Israelites’ possession. God tells Moses he will die in the same fashion as his brother, Aaron, reminding him of his error in the wilderness for which he is being punished. He is doomed to view the promised land from a distance, without ever being able to enter it.

  Rick Meyerowitz

  “O happy Israel! Who is like you . . .” —Deuteronomy 33:29

  Vezot Haberakhah (“And this is the blessing”)

  Deuteronomy 33:1–34:12

  A final blessing: Moses, a man of God, says farewell to the Israelites with a somewhat cryptic blessing for every tribe.

  He begins by recapping God’s election of the Israelites and his own role as leader, then blesses the tribe of Reuben by expressing the hope that they will not become extinct due to a scarcity of members. For Judah, Moses asks for wartime protection from God. For the Levites—who carry God’s prophetic yet mysterious devices, the “Thummim and Urim,” and forsake their families to serve the Lord, teach the laws of the covenant, and place incense and offerings on the altar—he asks for favor and that they have the ability to smash their enemies.

  For Benjamin, the Lord’s friend, he requests security; for Joseph, copious quantities of dew, sun crops, and favor. Moses then compares the tribe to a firstborn bull that gores people with its horns.

  For the tribes of Zebulun and Issachar, he urges them to savor their journeys. Moses compares God to a lion savoring the prime part of the kill; Dan, to a lion’s cub. Moses urges God to favor Asher and maintain their physical security, and then he concludes the blessings by recounting God’s role in driving out Israel’s enemies and enabling them to live securely within a land of grain and wine. He asks the Israelites to consider how unparalleled a position they find themselves in, with God’s protection striking fear into their enemies.

  The End

  Moses goes up to Mount Nebo and the Lord lets him survey the land that had been promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, reminding him that he can glimpse it but never enter.

  Moses dies there and is buried in a place that has not been found. He was 120 and his energy was unabated. The Israelites mourn him for thirty days, and Joshua inherits the mantle of leadership. Yet Israel never again has a prophet like Moses, who had been face-to-face with God; confronted Pharaoh, his court, and the Egyptian nation; and displayed his immense power before Israel.

  Roger Bennett

  When New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority commissioned the illustrator Sophie Blackall to design a poster for their Arts for Transit program, she created a piece that perfectly captured the everyday theater of subway car life. In her eclectic juxtaposition of passengers crushed together by New York City’s rush hour, an old lady nods off to sleep, slumped against a plump stranger steadying a bucket overflowing with freshly caught fish; a Midwestern family of tourists glance around anxiously as two skinny-jeans-clad teens make out, their hormones practically popping off the page. But no matter the chaos depicted in the poster, the eye is drawn to its center, where a man clad in a full bear costume lolls casually against a pole as a black-hatted Hasid, engrossed in his Torah, appears oblivious to the world around him.

  Worlds collide in Sophie Blackall’s subway poster.

  There is always someone reading a Bible on a New York subway. Before I embarked on this book, I often wondered how they had the stamina to read and reread the same volume, endlessly, without ever becoming bored. In my limited imagination, few things could, quite literally, feel more like the Hebrew School I had been expelled from than plowing through pages stuffed with cloying characters acting out black-and-white depictions of saints and sinners, in comforting tales that shut out the real world and reduce life to a trite message of reward and punishment, good and evil.

  And then I worked on this project—a two-year task that necessitated taking the part of life most normal men use to train for a marathon, work on their golf short game, or brew their own craft beer, and devoting it to the Lord’s word. I found plunging into the Torah and wallowing in its stories to be a humbling experience, one that has forced me to consider the difference between what I know, and what I think I know.

  I was instantly hooked by the book’s breathless narrative. As Genesis gave way to Exodus and Moses was elected to build a nation, the time I had to spend away from the text began to feel like time wasted. Though slogging through the precise details of ritual sacrifice or vows at times felt like being back in a law school torts class, the tempo soon picked up again as Moses edged the Israelites—and the reader—toward the promised land.

  Counter to my previously held, ill-informed assumptions, the storytelling was nuanced and its portrayals human and complex. The lead characters were presented flaws and all, as each struggled, under survival conditions, to tell the difference between right and wrong, the godly and the godless, without always being able to conjure the correct decisions. And this was true with few more than with Abraham: a man who circumcised himself, aged ninety-nine, amid the desert plains no less. Kierkegaard may have elevated the moral predicament at the heart of the story of the Binding of Isaac, but the fact that the patriarch was willing to pass his wife off as his sister, and profit as she entered Pharaoh’s harem, appeared equally fascinating to me.

  I was also thrilled by the panoply of minor characters and their experiences: Hagar’s suffering, Rebekah’s nobility, Esau’s anguish, Laban’s greed, the doomed ambition of Nadab and Abihu, Miriam’s frustration, the Daughters of Zelophehad’s courage, and after the exodus, the incessantly demanding Israelite people, an emotional Greek chorus before such a concept had been invented. As I discovered, the Torah is home to a complex universe that rivals anything found in a Star Wars cantina.

  Above all, I was struck by the complexity of God. The omnipotent creator is heralded as being slow to anger and quick to forgive, yet, as the Torah concludes with Moses’ death scene, it is hard not to be struck by the lack of sentimentality on display. Mustache-twirling villains in silent movies at times exhibited more.

  At the outset of their partnership, the Lord had appeared so aware of, and even tender toward, Moses’ leadership limitations. The Egyptian prince turned Israelite prophet directed an untrusting people through decades of grueling military campaigning in the wilderness, managing to write the Torah along the way. And then, a single moment of human fallibility undermined every one of those achievements. Antagonized by the thirst of his followers, and under conditions of wilderness hysteria, Moses had taken his anger out on a rock God had commanded him merely to speak to—a symbolic lack of faith for which he pays dearly, as he is permitted to glimpse yet not enter the promised land.

  The end of the Torah marks a new beginning. Moses dies. Joshua assumes the role of leader for a new era. And though we are assured there will never again be “in Israel a prophet like Moses,” Moses’ burial place is immediately cloaked in mystery so it cannot be worshipped. Amid change, God is the only constant. And as Moses discovered, not even he could rise above the shock of divine justice.

  Yet it is more than just the surprise of this cruel conclusion that keeps people reading as the weekly rhythm of the Torah now st
arts again from the beginning on an endless loop, like the seasons, against which readers can mark time. The Mishnah quotes a mysterious, yet fantastically named rabbi, Ben Bag Bag, who enthuses about the subtle layers of the Torah, declaring, “Turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it, pore over it and wax gray and old over it.”

  I think of Rabbi Ben Bag Bag now whenever I see someone on the 3 train reading the Bible, be it a church lady or a black-hatted Orthodox Jew. Before, I had thought they were attempting to shut out real life. Now I imagine they are engrossed as Jacob’s vengeance-seeking sons brutally massacre the men who had raped their sister, or marveling when Bezalel is miraculously able to procure the dolphin skins necessary to complete the Tabernacle in the middle of the wilderness, or stunned as the earth opens up to swallow the leaders of Korah’s rebellion whole: realities that are even more chaotic, complicated, and engrossing than the most colorful rush hour subway car in New York City could possibly be.

  Contributors

  Eli Attie is an Emmy-winning television writer and recovering political operative. His credits include The West Wing and House, M.D., and he served as chief White House speechwriter for former vice president Al Gore. He has always preferred Ess-a-Bagel to H&H.

  David Auburn is a playwright (The Columnist, Proof), filmmaker (The Girl in the Park), and theater director. He lives in New York City.

  Rachel Axler is a playwright and Emmy-winning TV writer. She’s written for a number of wonderful shows, including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Parks and Recreation, and How I Met Your Mother. Her play Smudge has been published in English and German, one of which she speaks.

  Aimee Bender is the author of four books, including The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, and her latest short story collection, The Color Master. She has been published in Granta, Harper’s, the Paris Review, Tin House, McSweeney’s, and more, as well as heard on This American Life and Selected Shorts. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches creative writing at the University of Southern California.

  Roger Bennett is a writer, broadcaster, and cofounder of Reboot.

  Shoshana Berger worships at the same altar as Professor Robert Alter, the famed biblical scholar, and stole everything she knows about the Bible from him. Berger is editorial director of IDEO and was director of special projects at Wired and the founding editor of ReadyMade magazine. She lives in Berkeley, California, with all the other deli-starved Jews.

  Dennis Berman is an editor and columnist at the Wall Street Journal. He grew up in Kentucky and lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and son.

  Steve Bodow is coexecutive producer and former head writer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which he has plagued since 2002. He has also directed theater (Elevator Repair Service), written for magazines, and played a lot of Werewolf. He lives with his wife and two daughters in New York.

  Rebecca Bortman is a visual designer, living in colorful San Francisco and working on Snapguide, an app for making how-to guides. Before venturing into the start-up world, she spent three years at YouTube, leading design on the site’s first visual refresh. Rebecca is also the art director for the Disposable Film Festival, sings in the punk band Happy Fangs, and formerly sang in the indie pop band My First Earthquake. She was bat mitzvahed two days before turning fourteen at Temple Emanuel in Pittsburgh.

  Jesse Aaron Cohen spent ten years working at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, mostly as a photo and film archivist. His work now is writing, producing, and performing music as one half of the group Tanlines. He lives in New York City.

  Rich Cohen is the author of several books, including Tough Jews, Sweet and Low, and The Fish That Ate the Whale. His stories have appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and Vanity Fair, where he is a contributing editor. He is working on a book about the 1985 Chicago Bears.

  Sloane Crosley is the author of the New York Times bestselling books How Did You Get This Number and I Was Told There’d Be Cake. She is a frequent contributor to GQ, Elle, and the New York Times. She lives, writes, and teaches in Manhattan.

  Rebecca Dana is an author and journalist in New York. Her book, Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde, was published by Putnam in January 2013. She was a staff writer for the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek, and her writing has appeared in the New Republic, Rolling Stone, the New York Times, and elsewhere. Find her at rebeccadana.com.

  Gabe Delahaye is a writer and comedian just like everybody else. His work has appeared on Videogum, This American Life, McSweeney’s, Gawker, CNN, PBS, Comedy Central, ESPN, VH1, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

  Susan Dominus is a staff writer at the Sunday New York Times Magazine.

  Joshua Foer is the author of the international bestseller Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything.

  Jamie Glassman is a writer and performer living in merry old London. He was a writer for HBO’s Da Ali G Show, and his company, Double Gusset Productions, makes shorts for the BBC and Comedy Central. His characters and films have been entertaining tens of people all across the World Wide Interweb.

  Ben Greenman is an editor at the New Yorker and the author of several acclaimed books of fiction, including Superbad, Please Step Back, and What He’s Poised to Do. His most recent book is The Slippage, a novel.

  Eli Horowitz is the cocreator of the Silent History, a serialized, exploratory app for the iPhone and iPad. He was the managing editor and then publisher of McSweeney’s for eight years, working closely with authors including Nick Hornby, Michael Chabon, Joyce Carol Oates, William Vollmann, and Stephen King. He is the coauthor of The Clock Without a Face, a treasure-hunt mystery, and Everything You Know Is Pong, an illustrated cultural history of Ping-Pong, and his design work has been honored by I.D., Print, and the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

  A. J. Jacobs is the author of The Year of Living Biblically. He once had his wardrobe examined by an Orthodox mixed-fiber inspector, and was disturbed to learn that his wedding suit contained both wool and linen. He pledges that any and all of his future marriages will involve a kosher suit.

  Ariel Kaminer is a reporter at the New York Times. She and the Bible are fairly distant acquaintances.

  David Katznelson is a Grammy-nominated producer, independent–record label head, and problematic vinyl collector. He is the cofounder of the San Francisco Appreciation Society and the Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation. He is also director of strategy for the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation. But mainly, he is father to Kaya and Asher and husband to Barbara.

  Saki Knafo reports on a wide range of subjects for the Huffington Post. He has written about homeless kids living in a hotel outside of Disney World, the shady politics of Staten Island real-estate development before and after Hurricane Sandy, and Internet pranksters. He grew up in Brooklyn and basically never left.

  Josh Kun is a professor in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, where he directs the Popular Music Project of the Norman Lear Center. He is the author or editor of several books, including Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America, And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl (with Roger Bennett), and Songs in the Key of Los Angeles: Sheet Music and the Making of Southern California. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and many other publications.

  Marc Kushner is partner at HWKN Architects (Hollwich Kushner) and CEO of Architizer.com, the largest platform for architecture online. HWKN won the prestigious MoMA PS1 Young Architect Program in 2012 and specializes in architecture projects that communicate to the broadest population. Marc is a good yeshiva boy from northern New Jersey who is obsessed with the murky history of “Jewish Architecture.”

  Mark Lamster is an occasional humorist, sometimes even on purpose, who recently moved to Texas, a land of biblical scale and fundamentalist fervor. He is the architecture critic of the Dallas
Morning News, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, and the author of several works of nonfiction. He is at work on a biography of the late architect Philip Johnson.

  Gillian Laub is a photographer. Her practice is deeply rooted in the tradition of portraiture. Testimony, Laub’s first monograph, was published by Aperture in 2007 to critical acclaim. Laub contributes regularly to the New York Times Magazine and Time, among many other publications. She is represented by Bonni Benrubi Gallery in New York and is widely exhibited and collected. Laub is working on a project centered on the American South that will consist of a documentary film, her next book, and a traveling exhibition.

  Amichai Lau-Lavie is an Israeli-born Jewish educator and performance artist who in 1999 founded Storahtelling. He Reboots often and is enrolled in the rabbinical studies program at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City.

  Adam Levin is the author of the novel The Instructions, winner of both the 2011 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and the inaugural Indie Booksellers Choice Award. For his short stories, Levin has won the Summer Literary Seminars Fiction Contest, as well as the Joyce Carol Oates Fiction Prize. His collection of short stories, Hot Pink, was published by McSweeney’s in 2012. He lives in Chicago.

  Rachel Levin is the executive director of Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation and the head of a consulting practice that helps individuals and families of high net worth increase their philanthropic impact. She is a cofounder of Reboot.