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Elliott Rabin, "The Biblical Hero: Portraits in Nobility and Fallibility" (Jewish Publication Society, 2020)
00:58:18
An interview with Elliott Rabin
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Hello everybody, this is Marshall Poe. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form, and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Hello everybody and welcome back to New Books and Jewish Studies, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. I'M Matthew Miller, the host of the channel. Today we'll be speaking to Eliot Rabin about his new book, the Biblical Portraits of Nobility and Fallibility, published by Jewish publication society in 2020. Approaching the Bible in an original way, Comparing biblical heroes to heroes in world literature, Eliot Rabin addresses a core biblical question. What is the Bible telling us about what it means to be a hero? Focusing on the lives of six major biblical characters. Moses, Samson, David, Esther, Abraham and Jacob, Raven examines their resemblance to hero types found in and perhaps drawn from other literatures. And analyzes why the Bible depicts its heroes less gloriously than do the texts of other cultures. Elliot, welcome to the show.
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I'm so glad to be here. Thank you, Matt.
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C
Elliot, I wonder if you could tell us a bit about yourself.
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Absolutely. So my day job is at an organization called Prisma center for Jewish Day Schools. We're an organization that supports Jewish schools throughout North America, in particular some overseas as well. And we look to help schools. However they are looking to help and network them. And it's really a pleasure and an honor to work with these schools to help them help hundreds of thousands of students develop Jewish base of knowledge and Jewish identity. In terms of my academic background, I have a PhD in Comparative Literature, which really comes through in my book. And I studied Jewish studies and Hebrew literature within the framework of comparative literature, so that's kind of the way I see the world.
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C
And how did you come to write this book?
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That's a great question. Well, there are two answers. The first answer is that somebody asked me to give a talk about heroes in the Bible after I had written my first book, which was a literary introduction to the Bible. Looking at the Bible through its various genres. How does the Bible tell a story? How does the Bible approach law, wisdom, literature, etc. And a colleague of mine at the time asked me to give a talk to people about, you know, trying to come up with a new perspective. And she asked me to talk about heroes. And I agreed because I thought it was intriguing. And then once I started thinking about it, I thought, wow, this is really actually quite a complicated subject and worth diving into. So that kind of spurred my, my interest and researches. The, the longer story is that it's a subject that has always been kind of problematic and intriguing and difficult and I wanted to be able to find an answer. It was a subject that came up, I would say, at Shabbat table, you know, because I, I'm sure like many people who are listening, I like to talk about the parsha at a Shabbat table and I would find myself speaking about different characters in the Bible. And often my, my father or my father in law would, especially when we got to characters like Jacob, which would become, you know, would provoke me and say, you know, how could you, how could you accept that Jacob is, you know, a patriarch, somebody who's worthy of being emulated. Why is he, why is he? What's great about him? And, you know, it's not an easy question to answer. So I, I wanted to kind of take a step back and look at how the Bible, you know, portrays characters in a larger sense. What makes them heroic? Does this term hero really apply to, to the Bible? And also I would say that the way that we discuss characters and the text in Jewish tradition doesn't always help. That was kind of my conclusion because we like to zoom in. There's a movie called powers of 10 that I often talk about in relation to this book. It was produced, it came out like the early 70s, and it was produced by the Ames Brothers. E A M E S. The Ames Brothers were famous for making furniture, but they also made some wonderful movies. And this movie, Power of 10, starts with a couple on a beach having a picnic. And then it goes backwards, as it were, goes up and looks at them from a power of 10. So what it looks like when they're 100ft from, from a height of 100ft, from a height of a thousand feet, etc. To the edge of the universe, and then it narrows in, goes back to the couple, and then looks at them 10 times magnified, 100 times magnified, until you're looking at just one molecule of them. And this is, I think, a wonderful metaphor for the way that Jewish interpretation looks at the Torah, approaches, the study of the Torah. It's often a matter of looking really up close, looking at one word, and what makes that one word so important or one pasuk. But it's much rarer in a Jewish tradition to take a step back and look at a wider context. So that's what I was trying to do in this.
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That's great background. And so I want to pick up on something you just mentioned, that there's a question whether or not there actually is a notion of the hero within the Bible. Is there a notion of a hero within the Bible?
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Great question. So I would say yes and no. The answer to most Jewish questions is yes and no, and certainly this one as well. So the term hero is related to. It's thought to be related to the Greek goddess Hera and means something like guardian. And you can see from that connection that the Greek notion of hero is divine, that it's a character who is in some sense divine. And so that already is a red flag for the Bible, because in the biblical world, in the biblical perspective, there is only one God and people cannot become part God. And so if a hero is by definition in the ancient world, part God, that means that the Bible doesn't have heroes, right? And you can see that in the fact that there's not really a term for hero in biblical Hebrew. There's a term gibbor, which in later, more recent Hebrew has become the term for hero. But in the Bible, that term is reserved simply for people who are strong. A strong man, strong person, a warrior, be a gibor. And it says explicitly in the Proverbs that somebody who conquers their own inclination, inclination to do evil, to control themselves, is stronger than a gibor. So there's already within biblical context, a questioning of whether the gibor is actually heroic and kind of demotion of physical strength as a sign of heroism. And yet, on the other hand, right, we read the Bible for models for our lives and we look at these characters and wonder, what can we learn from them and how can we emulate them? Or what about them is worthy of emulation, right? So that is already the way we read the Bible, is we're reading it for heroes. That's the way we people have always looked at heroes, as how can we emulate ourselves? What about them can inform our lives? So it's not an easy question to answer. The Bible demotes the or is suspicious of the ancient world's view of heroes. And at the same time, the Bible puts forward characters who are we are supposed to admire and emulate in some fashion.
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C
So if we think about that discussion that you're having at the Shabbat table about these characters and their fallibility, and even if we go to your title of the book, which is the Biblical Hero Portraits and Nobility and Fallibility, so how exactly does fallibility relate to heroism? Does one become a hero or is a hero because of their fallibility, despite their fallibility, somewhere in between?
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Great question. So my contention is that the characters I bring forth and discuss in detail in the book, ranging from Moses to Samson and Esther, David, Jacob and Abraham, portray the fullest view of how the Bible wants us to understand heroes. In other words, there are many characters in the Bible who act in ways that we would consider heroic. They step up to the plate and, and save the day, and they show their courage and they help people in numerous ways. And you can think of characters such as Yael, who drives a tent peg into the enemy general's head and in that way wins the battle, the Israelites win the war because of her courage. That is certainly heroic. But the biblical view in its fullest is that people are heroes, are not to be just characters whom we put on a pedestal. Right. And so the Bible, for its most complex and interesting and detailed characters, the Bible shows them in what. What the Renaissance called chiaroscura, right. Both light and dark. The way that character, the way that the artists would show, show people, draw people with a dark background so that they can kind of jump out. Right. And so that's the way biblical the Bible depicts its greatest heroes, that it shows that despite lives that are incredibly messy and characters that are complex and by far, in many ways not admirable, or it's not easy to pin them with moral tags, that they're simply great or good or kind or whatever, that they, they. They do many things that trouble us. And yet at the same time, these characters do rise up at certain moments to become heroes and to overcome fear, to show bravery and to save the day in various ways.
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C
If we look at the complexity of these biblical characters, I think to some degree there's an added layer or level of complexity in as much as the rabbinic layer of interpretation perhaps changes or focuses in different ways on the characters. So in your book, how exactly did you handle this layers and levels of interpretation of these characters?
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Great question. So I primarily focus on the Bible's depiction in itself, because that is so complex and so layered, as you put it. And also people who. There are many people who read the Bible don't necessarily read the rabbinic interpretations. And I didn't want them to be. I want this book to be for them as well, whether it's Christians or Jews who aren't fluent in biblical. In rabbinic interpretation. At the same time, the Midrash especially can really shed light on aspects of the text that are. That are not spelled out, that are often kind of left to the reader's imagination. So I bring in Midrashim especially, and other interpretations as a way to kind of fill out our understanding of these characters. For example, when I talk about Jacob back to Jacob, I call him a trickster, and I compare him to other trickster characters, and the comparisons are really quite clear and multifaceted. So whether it's Odysseus or Reynard the Fox, a medieval. The most popular medieval character from literature and many others, and tricksters are characters that are surrounded by other tricksters. The most famous one that people might know is the Native American trickster Coyote, who's constantly struggling with his friend and nemesis Rabbit. And they each out trick each other. And it's a lot of fun to read those stories. And those stories influence Roadrunner and Coyote, famous cartoons. Anyway, so there's the scene where Jacob goes into the marriage tent, right? And it's dark and he can't see who he's with. He thinks it's Rachel, he comes out of the tent and behold, it's Leia, right? And he like, what happened? And the reader is also like, what happened? So the midrash really fills out that story and said and says that Lavan and Leia work together to trick Jacob, just as Jacob worked with his mother Rebekah to trick his father Isaac. So the midrash often really helps to bring out the character, the full character of these stories in a way that the Bible, the biblical text, is reticent.
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C
You mentioned before that you have a background in comparative literature and we just started discussing a little bit about how you've brought some of the comparative literature to the book. But I wonder if you can give us a bit more detail about how you actually brought the texts as well as methodologies to this book.
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Right. So for each of the characters, except for Moses. Moses, I start with Moses and I say Moses is a character who doesn't have clear parallels with other characters because the Bible with him, my contention is really trying to create the archetype for a biblical hero. But with subsequent heroes, I compare each of them to figures from other literature. And often that's a way of highlighting what's interesting and what's troubling sometimes about these characters. So Samson doesn't seem like most other characters in the Bible. For example, perhaps the most troubling character in the entire Tanakh. He just has supernatural strength. He single handedly kills thousands, he lifts the gates of a city and carries them across the country. And he has these bizarrely erotic encounters with several women, like out of an old French movie, compared, but so far from the model of human character that we see in the Torah, which obviously kind of sets the model for what the way that the Bible understands character and relationships. So he really begs to be, to be understood somehow in relationship to other characters. So there's a clear. It certainly hasn't been, it wasn't my invention. But he has been compared, was compared even in ancient times to Hercules, Heracles, who also was a supernaturally strong character who killed a lion in one of his famous tests. He undertook various tests and also died because of his love and betrayal by a woman, in this case his wife. So there are many other aspects that you can compare. But by comparing characters often to figures from other stories, other literatures, we actually kind of gain a greater appreciation for how the Bible treats them. So, you know, a characteristic such as supernatural strength, which was kind of a given in the Greek context, is problematized within the Bible. Right. So I call him and Esther also kind of a foreign character, kind of washed up in the Bible. And the Bible, you know, shows them as kind of problem characters in many ways.
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C
You begin the book with a quote from John Bunyan's Pilgrim Progress. Why did you begin with that quote? And can you tell us a little bit about what it means?
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Yes, absolutely. Let me read it, if I may. Pilgrim Progress, written in the 17th century, is a story of. It's really kind of meant to be a kind of archetypal story of a spiritual quest by a Christian who leaves his city and goes on a pilgrimage, leaves his family, goes on a pilgrimage to find God. And here is. Here's an encounter between someone named Great Heart and another person called Honest. It's clearly an allegory. And as often in allegories, the characters have very abstract names.
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Great heart.
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Prithee, Mr. Honest present us with a few particulars. Honest. So I will. He's talking about someone named Mr. Self Will. In other words, the egotist Mr. Self Will, said to have to do with other men's wives, had been practiced by David, God's beloved, and therefore he could do it. He said to have more women than one was a thing that Solomon practiced, and therefore he could do it. He said that Sarah and the godly midwives of Egypt lied, and so did Rahav, and therefore he could do it. He said that Jacob got the inheritance of his father in a way of guile and dissimulation, and therefore he could do so too. So first of all, I think it's kind of a funny quote that describes someone the way that this person, Mr. Self Will, who's just concerned about trying to get the most for himself, reads the Bible. And he reads it as stories about how he's allowed because all these great characters do things that are ethically very dubious, he himself is allowed to do those too, for his own benefit. And John Bunyan obviously portrays this as a false way, a bad way of reading the Bible. But the point is that the Bible kind of lends itself to that, if one is so inclined, because these characters are complicated and problematic and not Perfect and not 100% ethical role models the way that they're often portrayed, or we would maybe like them to be. So I thought it provided a good kind of touchstone for. An amusing touchstone for the rest of the book.
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C
So you're not only an author, but you're also a pedagogue. You're an educator by trade. And I'm curious about how you've taken either the book itself or ideas from the book and used it within your educational program framework, teaching itself.
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That's a great question. So I'll tell you about one session I did. I gave a session at a conference discussing these characters. And I focused specifically on the chapter of Abraham as whom I compare with pilgrims and especially pilgrim progress, and also Aeneas, Virgil's Aeneas, who's also a pilgrim. And I call them kind of Abraham's literary grandchildren. And it's not, you know, we normally think of a pilgrim as someone who, you know, goes on this great pilgrimage. They leave their home to go to a site of a shrine to encounter God. Right. Abraham's story maybe doesn't seem like a pilgrimage story at first glance, but the more you look at it, the more you see the resemblances. First of all, he's told by God to leave his home to go on a kind of lifelong pilgrimage to a place where he doesn't even know where he's going to go or what he's going to find, but he knows it's a place where God wants him to go and where he's going to have a relationship with God. And then at the pivotal moment of his story, when he's told to sacrifice Isaac, the beginnings of those stories are very clearly in parallel. Go forth from your native land, blah, blah, blah. And then God gives a similar kind of command, you know, take Isaac, your son, your favorite son, and go to this place and this place where he doesn't necessarily know. He doesn't necessarily know where it is. It turns out to be Mount Moriah. And it's a place where we're told in the story, Hashem Yeraah, God is seen, right? So again, it's a kind of encounter, and he goes on a kind of pilgrimage. So the two kind of most dramatic moments that are clearly in parallel, that kind of bookends most of his career, as it were, are pilgrimage stories. And then even in between, Abraham also is going from place to place. He's never allowed to really stand still. So you know, I talked about this story as a kind of encouragement for people to think about their own lives as pilgrimages. You know, how do you know? We don't necessarily think of ourselves. Many of us, I mean, some people, I suppose, go on pilgrimages, but most of us don't. Maybe as Jews we do because we make trips to Israel, which are kind of pilgrimages in a way. So I invited people to kind of reflect on their own spiritual journeys as pilgrimages, whether it's, you know, simply pilgrimages, not necessarily inward as a matter of traveling in space, but traveling inwardly or a place that they've gone. Some people I know, for me, when I go on a vacation, I look for some kind of something spiritual, usually in nature. Sometimes it could be in something cultural that I've been longing to see my whole life, and how those kind of spiritual journeys have shaped who they are and where their spiritual journeys might take them next. So that's just one example.
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C
And could this or should this book be brought to younger children in order to help them understand the biblical characters? Or perhaps is it something which only comes later once they understand the text at a more basic level?
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That's a great question. The truth is, I don't think it's ever too early to discuss complicated features of the text because the text itself is complicated. And people at every age, and especially young people, are so attuned to things that don't make sense, that things that aren't the way that the teacher says that they are, or children are just. They're just very sensitive and very perceptive, and in different ways they perceive. We all read these texts and pick up on different things. But the students aren't going to just because you tell them, oh, you know, everything Moses does is perfect. You know, they're not going to believe you once they start reading it. You know, why does God, you know, get angry at him? And Zipporah saves his life with this weird circumcision story? Right. Why does God chastise him for striking the rock and not allow him to go into the land of Israel? Right. There are many problematic aspects that are impossible to entirely hide by any teacher. And you can justify them however you want, but kids are going to pick up on it. And, you know, a good educator will elicit student responses and encourage their curiosity, their interest, their belief in their own ability to understand the text, to question the text, to come up with their own answers by themselves and in relationship to each other and other kids in the class. When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pinned messages so no one forgets mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn more at WhatsApp.com upgrade your laundry routine with a durable and reliable Maytag.
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C
We've discussed a couple times and you're just mentioning about God in the Bible. Of course God has a big part in the Bible. He's there from the beginning and he's there at the end as well. And you have a chapter in the book about God. I found that very interesting and something which I wasn't expecting in a book about biblical heroes. How did you come to write a chapter about God? And is God a hero?
- [34:08]
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So I wasn't necessarily expecting to write a chapter about God when I started out, but the more I as I wrote the book, the more I started thinking about how does God fit in to this picture? Because, you know, these characters are so complicated and often really so problematic that you wonder what is the message that the biblical authors have about about the hero? Is the message that really God is the only hero? That's really the question that I explore in the chapter Our people, as I say in the introduction, I talk about how there's this gap, this gap between God and humanity that can't be breached and that fundamentally distinguishes between the biblical perspective and the ancient Near Eastern perspective of its neighbors of the Israelites. Neighbors? And does that mean that because people can't be a hero in the way that other heroes are, that really God is the hero of the Bible? So I asked that question and I weigh it. I weigh the idea that God is a hero. And certainly in some, in some parts of some ways that God is portrayed in the Bible as a king and in the ways that especially the rabbinic tradition portrays God, you could say, yes, that God is the hero. God is considered an ethical model for humanity. God is considered the one who ultimately has power. And humans don't really have power even when they think they do. Right? And God is Ultimately, the one who saves the Jewish people. We don't have the strength, you know, when we think we have the strength, we're deluding ourselves. But you know, at the same time, you can argue, you can argue that the depicting God as a hero really goes against any kind of definition of what a hero is. Because a hero is a person who confronts their own limitations, their own fears. They confront, whatever forces are facing them, are arrayed against them to take action. Right? And take action in a way where they might die or they might be put down, or they might suffer in some way. Right? And by definition, God is not able to do that. So then I weigh those two and I come up with a third option, that God is necessary as a partner for people to become a hero. People can't become heroes by themselves, but through their relationship with God. And that relationship isn't always comforting and it isn't always supportive by any means. Sometimes it's challenging. Sometimes God challenges people, tests people, put stumbling blocks before them. And still without God, they would not be able to rise to achieve the heroic acts that they do.
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C
Do you think that the view that you're presenting here in the book could be seen as an anti Maimonidean view? Because I think in my reading of Maimonides, perhaps God is, is very much not human like. And there's a whole notion of negative theology and anthropomorphism being in some ways problematic. So how do you relate to Maimonides conception and how does it differ from yours, if at all?
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A
That's a great question. And certainly our understanding of God as Jews is thoroughly shaped by Maimonides. However, as any biblical scholar will tell you, the Maimonidean view, as beautiful and brilliant as it is, is not at all the biblical view. The way the Bible portrays God and these terms, you know, Maimonides in the guide spends the first third of the book showing how all of the, the depictions of God's body, God's parts, God's hand, God's anger, God's nose, etc. Emotions are all really just metaphors or something else. But you know, they're not just metaphors. They weren't just metaphors to the biblical authors. And so we have to unlearn, we have to unlearn a lot in order to try to see the Bible as it was, as it was written, and as the authors and contemporaries of the Bible in no time probably understood God. Yeah. And some scholars, you know, try, have difficulty or they try to walk a fine line between the more Jewish, classically Jewish traditional view as we've come to understand it and the views of biblical scholarship. I've been in lectures where biblical scholars who are also religious Jews, you know, try to try to balance. Try to kind of walk a fine line, and the audience often doesn't. Won't have it. So it's not easy.
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C
But if we want to dig into the biblical text itself, one of the things we'll find is that there's not too much in regards to the inner life of the characters. And that's something which has been discussed to be a difference between biblical texts and other texts, such as Greek texts. So was this something that you found to be challenging, something which you found to influence the way that you discuss these characters? How do you relate to this problem?
- [41:16]
A
That's a great question. Yes. And Eric Auerbach famously talked about it in his chapter on the Bible in Mimesis that the biblical text is, in his words, fraught with background. That. So even though there is not a great deal of discussion of people's inner characters, there is something rippling underneath the surface of the text that invites the reader to project, imagine, understand that things are going on that we're not seeing. Right. So I think that's. That. That is one of the things that makes the Bible so pleasurable, so valuable and worth rereading. Why we enjoy reading it and rereading it because there are these things underneath the text that we know are happening and that we grasp something else behind the scenes, as it were, every time we read it. So. And that made it so much fun to write, makes it so much fun to write about the biblical text as well, because it's like a puzzle in some ways that you. That the reader has to put together. It doesn't totally add up or make sense unless you bring to it your own understanding about the world, about human character, about and about how literary texts operate. And so, I mean, I definitely, you know, that was definitely part of the fun of writing it. And part of the way that I approached all of these characters is to look, to try to see where the text gives us, like a portal into who is this character behind or opens up. Sometimes it's not even a direct portal, but it opens up questions because it doesn't tell you exactly how to think about these characters. It opens up different possibilities of how you can understand these characters. And we see that, for example, with Esther, right? Because Esther in the very beginning, in the opening chapters of the text, Esther is totally opaque to the reader. Esther is someone who is acted upon, but we never see a glimpse inside of her mind or heart. She is taken from Mordecai, she's brought to the king's beauty contest. She is made up by the, the eunuchs who usher her. And then she wins and the king accepts her as a queen. And we hear nothing about who she is or what she thinks about all of this. And then later on, at the pivotal moment when Mordechai confronts her and says, look, you know, this guy Haman wants passed a decree to kill us all, and you're the only person who has any ability to do anything about it. And if you don't, then we're going to need help from somewhere else, right? And traditionally somewhere else is interpreted as God. But right there, they're in trouble. And then finally we see her, she steps out and we see her agency. But I, you know what, how do we make sense of the Esther before that moment, right? What can we. And so I try to tease that out from different possibilities lying behind the text of what she might be thinking and grappling with during those moments.
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C
We said at the beginning that you cover six characters, seven if we include God. And I'm curious, why did you choose these particular characters? Were there other ones which are perhaps, you know, in the long list, which didn't make the short list?
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That's a great question. So as I mentioned this term chiaroscorum, right? That light and dark, that these characters, I believe, are the most interesting biblical characters and therefore the most. And the heroes who are, who get the most real estate in the book. And because of that, I think the Bible is holding these characters up as the greatest heroes in some way even. And because they're the most interesting and often looked at as some of them as the greatest heroes, they are most worthy of attention. And the fact that the Bible focuses on their problematic aspects at such length really shows us the way that the Bible understands people, right? That people are. That there aren't people who are heroes who are above common humanity, right? The idea of a hero, even if you take away the God aspect, right? That person is half a God. The idea, if you look at a character like Odysseus, he is not a person whom an ordinary person can become, right? He is, he's on a different level of reality or Achilles, right? He's just super strong, super brave. He. All of his, the people he hangs out with are at the upper echelons of society, right? And that is a total opposite of the way that biblical heroes, biblical characters are portrayed. There are no people who are 2.0, we're all 1.0. We're all. It's a very democratic view of humanity in that respect. And because of that, even those people who are most worthy of study of emulation, whom the Bible puts forth, are also just as complex and problematic as we are. And because they are so such difficult and complicated figures, they give us hope. Because people like you and me, maybe I should just say me, I don't know you. But we are able to step up and be heroes. Even if we've done plenty of bad things in our lives, even if we have emotions that weigh us down, that depress us, that even if we're gripped by fears, whatever it is that's holding us back inside, we also have that capacity to step up when the times call for it. And I really think that's the Bible's message. And we don't get that picture quite as fully and deeply with other characters, because these are the characters that the Bible really portrays in all of their humanity.
- [49:27]
C
The title of the book is the Biblical Portraits and Nobility and Fallibility. I think that fallibility, we've discussed what that means and how that relates to being a hero and how it gives us the chance to strive to be a hero and to in some ways emulate the biblical characters, realizing that they have these flaws. What exactly is the notion that you have here of nobility and how does that connect to the biblical heroes?
- [49:52]
A
They are noble in that they are presented with situations where they are called to act and they do so they find the resources in themselves to accomplish things that the society needs them to accomplish, or that their families need them to accomplish, or that they need to accomplish. So, you know, David, you know, for all of his problematic aspects, he, you know, nobody else in that society would go and fight Goliath, right? He's the one who steps up. That's a kind of just a very simple example. Or like we talked about Esther, right? Esther, she, you know, how could she go through this, how could she put herself through, agree to be put through this crazy year long beauty contest? You know, there's something sickening about it. And then, and then what's her great prize? This king who's a drunkard, who constantly having these parties, who got rid of or possibly beheaded his wife. You know, what's going on? How could she agree to that? What was she thinking? And yet when the moment came, she stepped up. Not only did she step up, she figured out brilliantly a way to get the king on her side, right? Which was not an easy thing at all. So, you know, for all these characters, you know, they have their great moments of nobility. Of course, Moshe, for all of his drawbacks, you know, he's the one. He doesn't even want to be the ruler, right? He doesn't want to be the leader of the Jewish people. And he says, God, pick someone else. I have a stutter. I'm not interested. I've already seen, when I tried to help the people, that they despised me and they made me run away because they were going to report me to the king, to the pharaoh, right? What do I need this for? And yet God says, no, you are the one, Moses. You got to do it. And he does it, right? It's not a given. It's never a given. And they have to overcome their own reluctance, their own. They wouldn't have necessarily known that they were capable of it until the moment came. And then the moment comes. And Moses also, he's brilliant in his showdown with Pharaoh. He really rises to the occasion.
- [52:52]
C
This book came out at the beginning of March 2020. What a time. Right before the pandemic hit, and things really changed. Was there any way that you feel the book has been helpful during these pandemic times? Have you been able to use it in encouraging or inspiring ways during these times? What exactly has been the connection between this pandemic era and your book?
- [53:16]
A
I love that question, and thank you so much for recognizing. The book came out at exactly the same moment that Covid did. In fact, the pub day was March 1, and then by March 8, we were already on lockdown. My kids, schools had closed, and I was working from home, and the world was turned upside down. And so the book was very much placed on the back burner. And yet this notion of heroism that the Bible puts forth is something that we've seen confirmed over and over again. We've seen that the heroes of this time, of the COVID times, right, Are those people. First of all, as I say, heroes in the Bible can be from any walk of life. And they are, right? They're all kinds of people. There's nothing. It's men and women. It's people who are in power and people totally out of power. It's Rakhov, you know who. And you know who may be a prostitute or an innkeeper's daughter, however you understand that word, and it's shepherds and David, who is the seventh son and the one who's considered last of all of them, right? Anybody can be a hero. And really that message has come through loud and clear during COVID when we see the frontline workers. I don't know about in Chicago, but I imagine it was the same at the beginning of the pandemic in New York. We were all standing at our windows or on our balconies and banging cans and cheering on people who were saving lives during that time, even as we were forced to huddle together indoors. People who risked their lives and, you know, through nothing more than going to work, going to a supermarket to going, working in the hospital. Things that they had done previously without thinking about it were suddenly acts of tremendous heroism that were saving people in our society. And that's really the biblical view, that if anybody in the right moment, given the right circumstances, could be asked to become a hero, doesn't mean they will be, but they're given. We're all in ways smaller and larger, given opportunities in our lives to step up. And sometimes we fail and sometimes, hopefully we succeed.
- [56:11]
C
Thank you. I really appreciate that answer. And all the time that you've given us, we've taken up a lot of your time. I'd love to ask you the traditional New Books Network question. What are you working on next?
- [56:22]
A
Thank you. Well, I have a couple of projects in the fire. One has to do with Tefillah Jewish prayer. And again, kind of drawing upon my interest in comparative studies, been looking at fila under the literary concept of the sublime. How does, how does the whole concept of Tefillah Jewish prayer resonate? Or how does the idea of the sublime, of sublime experience, sublime concepts shape the way our understanding of what tefila is? So that's one project I've been working on. Another one that has been kind of a passion of mine for many years now as a kind of amateur environmental advocate, is issues of climate change. And how does climate change impact the way that we, our traditional notions of religious notions, the way we practice and understand Judaism? How might those change in an era threatened with existential challenges that are facing us now and are likely to face us greater abundance, unfortunately, in the near and far future? Thank you.
- [58:06]
C
I look forward to reading these and engaging with you again once these come out.
- [58:11]
A
Thank you.
- [58:13]
C
I really appreciate all the time we've been talking to Eliot Rabin, author of the Biblical Hero Portraits of Nobility and fallibility, published in 2020 by Jewish publication Society. Happy reading. My.
- [58:29]
A
Sam.