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

Bad Rabbi Media

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!'"