Having finished The Slave a few days ago, I can now post on the remainder of the book. I was suprised that throughout the book, Isaac Singer uses a number of paradoxes. Consider:

(1) Singer seems to indite his own Jewish faith for enslaving its followers in excessive legalism, yet he also celebrates Jacob's faith and shows this through Jacob's consistant commitment to the rituals of Judiasm.

(2) The people of Pilitz are often seen as extremely faithful, yet at the same time superstitious.

(3) Jacob fights a constant battle between chastising himself for his unrighteousness in marrying outside of the faith and justifying the act.

(4) The Jews in Pilitz show little compassion for Jacob, Sarah and her child when she dies and she is found out to be a convert, yet when Jacob returns he is welcomed, and when he dies, he and Sarah are celebrated with their own shared tombstone and buried together. In death, Jacob is labeled as "a saint" and Sarah is recognized as not only a "daughter of Israel", but "a virtuous woman."

(5) The ferryman comes across as both wise and compassionate, yet a godless heathen; the emissary from the holy land is also seen as kind and faithfully instructs Jacob to rescue his son, yet is later discovered to be a heretic.

(6) Sarah's father is portrayed as a decent man, whom Sarah believes she will meet in the afterlife - yet if her and Jacob's faith is to be believed, her Christian father will end up in hell.

Finally, the most obvious paradox, one which Singer spends a great deal of time discussing:

(7) Jewish believers in Pilitz practice faithfully the rituals and ceremonies pertaining to Jewish customs, yet the community is full of gossip and slander, and the Jews steal from one another and fight amongst themselves - following God's commandment to obey him, while betraying the commandment to treat others with kindness.

The last example clearly parallels Jesus's inditement of the Pharisees in Matthew 23:3 when Jesus exclaims, "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former."

It seems to me that Singer's use of paradox can be seen as portraying the complex nature of faith and human nature, and is also used to lend the book a sense of realism and credibility, as it helps to present a fair, well-balanced picture of life and faith in 17th Century Poland.

READING THE SLAVE

I am currently reading through the Slave (I am on page 110). A couple of things about the book have struck me as interesting. The first is Jacob's constant questioning of the justice of God - which, if you've read Malachi, often ends up warranting some kind of punishment from Him. This is also a concept that we have talked about in class - as Sexon reminded us, the term is "Theodicy".

The second point thing I have to say is a criticism of the book. I like the story, and the relationship between Jacob and Wanda helps pull the slow parts along, but I have been dissappointed with the stereotypes that seem to abound in the book. Over and over again we have to hear about how every single (with very very few exeptions) Cossack and Protestant is a filthy, degenerate, ugly, evil person. And I'm not saying that he is discriminating, he makes many of the Jews seem selfish and self-absored as well. I'm just getting a little bored with the whole thing, it's like Singer just won't stop beating me over the head with it. Other than that, I find his observations interesting, and the tracing of Jacob's slowly degenerating spiritual life seems very realistic.

Another point I found interesting was Singer's description of rich Jews in Josefov, who "would rather have died than break the smallest of [the] ritualistic laws, slandered and gossiped openly, and treated the poor with contempt. Scholars lorded it over the ignorant; the elders divided privilages and preferments among themselves and their relatives and exploited people generally." Compare that to what Jesus says in Matthew 23: "The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them...Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness." Essentially, Christ and Singer are making the same point. I think Singer does a good job of setting this up, and perhaps that is why he insists on the over-characterization that I talked about earlier. But I think we can all agree that we got the picture.

Some notes from class:

Frye says a couple of interesting things. Firstly, I remember reading this too, that all of the "great religions" don't really answer anything definitively, because once you get an answer, you stop asking question, thus forward progress if effectively halted. He also says that if you or I saw the Crucifixion, we would simply see a mentally unstable political agitator getting what he deserved. His point is that we need to open our eyes and ears, and sense things with metaphorical contexts in mind. When Paul talks about "spiritual" we should think "metaphorical" according to Sexon via Frye.

Sexon says that the gospels are not biographical or really historical for that matter, that they are just (I'm kidding) metaphorical in nature. Can I say merely though? Anyway I won't. He says that they don't bother with historical evidence or testimony, that an understanding of them is intended to most compatible with the faithful, because (this is my understanding) that the specific history of the Bible is not the important dynamic, it is the message, always the message. It seems to me that the Bible isn't trying to get you to know that Nebuchadrezzar ruled the Chaldeans in 605 B.C., rather that there is a God, He is real and made the world and did so for a reason, that you have a choice and that choice is salvation. Now, you could argue that the Bible is simply an elaborate system of myths put together to regulate society efficiently and has held on in our consciousness because it is effective at that objective, but that is a wholly different debate. The point here is that the Bible isn't The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich or The History of the World, it is a spiritual book (and yes, I do know Frye would say metaphorical but I'm not Frye) not a history book.

Sexon finished up by talking about Eschatology, a Greek word which literally means a "study of the end." His point was that you could look Revelation literally or (as is becoming a pretty obvious theme) metaphorically. In other words, Jesus isn't really coming back because the end of the world already happened, it happens every moment and every moment could be your last. Personally, I think this is getting a little too cute for my taste, its almost funny and you couldn't pay me enough to buy this, but everyone is entitled to their own opinions and I have to respect this point of view. It is interesting if nothing else, though to me this stretch undermines the good points Frye makes and it makes all the valid points he makes a little wobbly, kind of like when Mel Gibson got pulled over and started screaming about Jews - it took all the good stuff he did and made them seem out of character.

Anyway, that's about it.

Reading through Frye, I found it interesting to read his description of the difference between the myths of the "earth-mother" account of creation and the "sky-father" account. The former is often associated with a sexual creation story, while the latter, at least in the case of the Bible, focuses on a historical process - which Frye says goes against a sense of "all cyclical conceptions of reality."

Frye goes on to note, however, that in J's original account, there actually was a kind of a mother, which is seen through examining the figure of the garden of Eden. The sexual representation of "watering the garden" and the Hebrew word "adamah" - which means dust, though is also feminine - suggests to Frye that originally they was a Mrs. God, as Professor Sexton likes to put it. An interesting idea.