Welcome to Judaism, Demystified, a podcast for the perplexed.
We are rejoined by Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman.
Dr. Berman is a professor of Bible at Barilan University.
He is known for his views on the history of Jewish belief and on
Biblical source criticism, arguing that knowledge of the
cultural context of the ancient Near East is required in
understanding the Scriptures. He earned his A/B at Princeton
University in 1987 and his PhD at Barilan University in 2002.
He's also an Orthodox Rabbi and studied at Ushivar Tarizon for
eight years and taught Bible at the Nishmat Midra Shah for
several years. He's a frequent contributor to
The Times of Israel, and his articles on Biblical theology
and contemporary society have appeared in the pages of Mosaic
magazine and the Wall Street Journal.
Rabbi Dr. Berman served as a member of the International
Advisory Board for the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC
Without further ado, Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman, thank you for
rejoining the Judaism Demystified podcast.
Professor Berman, we just want to say thank you because you
were one of the people who started out our podcast.
You know, you took a risk with these guys who are no names, and
you really, you know, it's one of our most talked about
episodes. So we really want to thank you.
Well, you know, you see big hearts and then you know,
tremendous desire to do things with Shamshemayam.
It's it's very hard to say no. So it was a real pleasure and
I'm, I'm thrilled to be back. Thank you so much.
And so I want to get into the topic of today, which is
Lamentations, your new book. But mainly I want to understand
why you chose to write this book.
Okay. So I'll give you, I'll give you
two types of answers. Okay.
So this this book. It's got a very kind of, very
part of title, the book of Lamentations.
It's part of the of an academic series.
In other words, publishers have series on the on the entirety of
Tanaf and each volume is another book of Tanaf.
So this is the AHA volume, Lamentations volume of a series
called the New Cambridge Bible Commentary put out by Cambridge
University Press. But it's entirely accessible to
anybody listening to this, to this program.
Some you know, might discuss some issues or footnotes that
you're not, you know, accustomed to necessarily.
But nobody would have any difficulty following the
argumentation, the use of language, etcetera.
So one answer is that I was approached by the series editor
and he asked me if I would write the volume for the series on
Ezra Nakamya. But I'm afraid I don't fully
understand Ezra Nakamya. So with real hoods by said to
him, how about Aiha? And he said, okay, you can write
on Ethan. So that that's one answer.
That's not the answer you were looking for though.
So I'll say to you, Ben, it's for for almost 30 years.
I've had a dream of writing a commentary on Ethan because I I
remember about 30 years ago trying to just learn the safer
for myself, you know, not just one sitting on the floor on Tish
above night, but like let's go through this.
What is going on here? And it occurred to me that
there's something far richer than what we normally assume,
which we'll get into into in a moment.
You know, what are assumptions. When we're reading a hub about
what this is about and that this is like really, really cool.
And if I could have one day the opportunity to write up a whole
commentary with the whole mahalo, the whole approach to
what is a hub, what is it trying to do, what are its different
parts, how does it hold together?
So this is kind of a dream come true.
Fantastic. And we're so happy to be having
this conversation right now, so I want to get right into it.
What is Lamentations? Who is its audience and what is
its purpose according to scholars and Hazal?
OK, good. So let's start with what I think
is probably the most intuitive answer to people who are
listening to this podcast who probably, you know, are intrual
tissue above night and sitting on the floor and and reading it
Hazal, whenever they speak about AKA, they don't call it AKA,
they call it T notes. That's that's the name for this,
this, this, safer this book. In Kazaa, it's not even a
Mcgillis. It's keynote.
Keynote. Now what does that mean?
Keynote. Well, when we think that it's
keynote, so then we think, oh, so it's basically of the same
genre, the same type, same sort of writing as the rest of the
keynote that we have on Fish Above.
That is to say, what we have here is someone or some
community that is expressing its woe and its sorrow following
terrible, you know, communal calamity.
If in the rest of keynotes we get a little bit of that, let's
say about, you know, the Middle Ages and then the Crusades.
So these are keynotes, undifferentiated,
undifferentiated, exactly the same as the later keynote.
Just these are like the first five of all the keynotes that
we're going to be reading on on Tishaba, an expression of woe
and sorrow. A little bit of tefila, maybe a
little bit of protest here and there, but that's basically
that's how that's how Hazal understood it.
And you can see even the you know the the non Jewish name for
the book Lamentations A lament oy oy oy expressing you know
just like many of us maybe perhaps if we've undergone
something terribly difficult sometimes we will write poetry
to like get it out and that's that's kind of that's how that's
I think how how most traditional Jews have have apprehended this
and we are as it were joining in the expression of woe and and
and and and despair. Even though we weren't there.
But these are events that are part of our collective identity
and collective memory. And so we too are going to join
in the morning and the and the anguish over the loss, the
destruction of the Mick dash, the destruction of Ruchalayam by
sitting on the floor and us as well saying these same keynotes.
And this is the traditional way of looking at things together
with the rest of clay Israel across all of all of the
generations. That's the that's the classical
way of looking at. Now what?
That is how Hazar looked at it. Probably also many early
figures. Again, if we have the name
Lamentations, we didn't give that name to it.
That's, you know, that's what maybe the church Bob is also
called. They also understood it in that
way. But modern scholars, and this
has nothing to do with thera or sources or the origin.
Is it divine or not? Just they're just reading a
story and they're saying, you know, it doesn't all look
entirely like lament. In fact, what we find is that
Akha has like seems to have many different, many different
opinions and voices and they don't all seem to really hold
together. Let me let me give an example of
what I mean. We have a puzzle in in perric,
in in in perric Olive, where the the the Mcgillo will support for
that. For the meantime, the Mcgillo
says in Perric Olive, in Pucet Youth Head.
Sadiq who Hashem Efihu Mariti Hashem is righteous because I
have rebelled against his word. That sounds pretty, pretty
piatistic. Sounds like you know someone
whoever's saying this has recognized person.
If it's you know, Bacion, the collective representation of
Amistra, maybe it's the community as a whole.
That sounds pretty pious. And then you come to to parrot
bet. And we have a voice that says to
Hashem about the children of Bassion, basically the residents
of Urusa lion who perished A ragtab, the Yo Ma peja.
You killed them in the day of your anger.
Tavata Locha Malta. You slaughtered them.
You had no pity. Oh, wait a minute.
Didn't we just say And Paracalif said Hiku Hashem if he whom I
read to God is righteous. For I have, I have rebelled
against his words. So which is it?
What's going on here? It seems a little schizophrenic.
And the truth is, is that you have many different seemingly
voices and opinions. There are other things that are
that are problematic. Here you have like in Parric
Gimmel, which is the longest parrot in a cub, at least by by
verse numbers. It's the 66 verses there.
And you have this guy. It starts off on me how get
there. I am the man who?
Who are you? What what man is this?
In fact, if you were to read through all of Parrot Gimel, you
would be hard. But.
To identify Parakeem was having anything to do with the hormone
per se. There's almost no mention of
anything you can say. Yes, you can see right here he's
talking about the hormone he wanted to soak in, but most of
it seems to be some just guy talking about personal troubles
that he's had. So what is all this doing here?
And So what what what what many scholars have said?
It's also extremely difficult to see.
Does the Mcgiller have a beginning, a middle?
An end. You know, there's maybe a puzzle
or two of Nekhama at the end of Parikh Dalid when when, when we
read Tama Bonaire Basion your your, your your iniquity or
maybe your punishment has ended. But that's that's Emperic Dalid
not not what we were expected. You know.
Usually if there's going to be even one verse of the Hama, no
one should be at the end. And Parikh Gha.
What is AFA then? Aha, by almost all modern
scholars, I'm saying in the last 30 years that have tried to make
sense of this book has said, look, the The destruction of you
shall I or the inhabitants of you shall I?
Was clearly a cataclysmic event and many different people came
to many different conclusions. Just like we might say, you
know, we know after the show off.
I'm not even talking about the people that left, you know?
From kite or or, you know, dropped all belief without, you
know, obviously rendering any judgment on such people.
But even if you were to speak to 10 Jews who after the Shah
remains, you know Shoma Chavez and Shoma Casnus and you ask
them, So what do you do with all this?
How do you process it theologically?
You're likely to get 10 different answers.
And So what scholars say is what we have here in Eka is just one
cacophony. Of many different viewpoints and
many, many voices that are speaking, each one with their
own thoughts about what has happened and where is God and
and and and and what how we supposed to understand what has
just happened to us. That is the prevailing view
today, certainly in scholarship. And I think that was all totally
off base. I think it's why I think the
primary reason why I think that it's off base.
I don't think that any safer works that way where the author
doesn't have an opinion his of himself.
But also you can see it is clear that Ekha is an extremely well
structured work. All of us have probably noticed
that the first two products first, the first the first floor
parking actually are approstics. That means the first possible
begins with Alice, right? Ekhai Ashava Dad.
The second puzzle begins with the beds right the whole teeth
care. The third puzzle begins with the
gummo dial to you who the only and there's 2022 so can can I
get to you know the whole all of space that's paragal if and
parrot that's that way and Paragmmo is a triple and paragal
is that way as well. Well that certainly suggests
that the author seems to see order and I'll say something
even more even deeper than that. I don't think I mentioned this
in the introduction and that is that that that the first two
profing of the base. Makes an enormously beautiful
and precise chiastic structure. What do I mean by that?
By that I mean that we have in Paragala, just as an example, we
have a word in the first puzzle, and that word is repeated in the
last puzzle, so the word Rabba like ishfaya if Ishrava that.
How does she sit alone? IR Rabbati on the populist city,
Rabbati on and in the last puzzle puzzle, have bet, she
says. Rub both unfold tie.
Many are my travails really be divine and my heart is woe.
So you have there the same word in the first pussook and the
last pusook. And if you check carefully you
will see you have a word in the second pussook which you find in
the second to last pusook, and you have a word in the third
pusook which you find in the 3rd to last pusook all the way
through. And that's true.
And parking out at the bed, I don't think you have another
parrot in all of Tana, which is a perfect acrostic
alapekimovalid and. Holy chiastic in that way.
This is super structured. So to say that the form just
kind of like, you know the cutesy stuff on the side, oh,
that was all very perfectly structured but then say but the
content, it's just a mumble jumble which is really what
scholars say. No, don't buy it guys work
harder. Got to work harder.
That's. I actually wonder, like when
scholars are looking at that. I mean when you see a, I mean
did they just not see a chiastic structure?
Or do they just kind of see it but ignore it?
How does that work? Because it's like, yeah, they.
Ignore it. I think they think it's not
true. The classic structure, Yeah.
I don't know why, Blows me away. Yeah.
OK, so, so, all right, so you are pointing towards you are you
are agreeing with the fact that there's a multiplicity of
voices. Who want to?
Connect with that. But the drawback of just leaving
it as that is that they're not seeing the structure that is,
you know, inherent with. Right.
And and and there's no one coherent voice.
I'll tell you, I think a lot of a lot of scholars are drawn to
this because of the postmodern moment that we live in.
There was, yeah, there's no one truth, you know, there's lots of
opinions and. Probably the author of A, by
what they're saying was a postmodernist, but I don't think
postmodernism existed back then, so I don't.
Think I think you mentioned this in the introduction.
You mentioned the Postmodern. That's right.
OK, so if we were to come to start to understand how to read
this text properly, what is the proper departure point for
understanding The Systematic Guy?
So, so for me, the thing that we all need to to take note of,
it's not hard. You start to go through it.
You notice it right away. Is that we clearly have
different characters and voices within echo.
What do I mean? Probably your Echo just like
mine. It doesn't look like a script of
of Shakespeare doesn't tell you who's speaking.
But you can tell we have one character who who whenever that
person speaks, is speaking about Usha line of Usha line in the
third person as we have in the opening possible of the Magilla.
Hey ha Yash Babaddad. Oh, or how does she sit alone?
Here is someone Speaking of bassion of the the collective
figure of the remnants of Yuri Sholain.
He is speaking about Yuri Sholain.
OK, and then we have many other sukim which are which are
speaking about Yuri Sholain, but not in the third person, but in
the first person. So for example in Perigalis plus
of Ted Zion. I'll ale Annie Bochia that these
I am I am crying a knee a knee your my water or tears are
streaking down my my my my cheeks.
And so we have here clearly many soaking that are in the third
person that seems to be a narrator and I'll speak more
about that narrator's function in a minute And then the first
person he's speaking about your Shalayam and then we have
thought you were he's we have your Shalayam herself speaking
the figure that an amyghila is called.
Bat Sion and they are in dialogue.
The way I know that they're in dialogue is because we actually
have many soaking where someone turns to another one in second
person. So for example in Parrot Bet,
maybe the most well known Paso to us because of Shlomo Karba
she think of my Rebec no ha Nehashem you have someone
turning to Bat Sion and telling her to pour out her heart.
Or when this narrator says to her also impaired, that kigado
kayyam, she read your your your travails are as are as great as
the ocean, me, your Pala. Who could possibly heal you.
OK, So what The thing that would the the basic starting point is
that we need to understand AIHA is a running discussion between
two figures, a narrator and Batsy on herself.
So now the question is, what more can we say about these two
figures? Okay.
So I want to say the following. Let me back up a little bit to
things that happened before the Mcgillum, I E during the period
of your Meow, And then that'll help us understand, to
understand who are these two characters here in the Mcgillum.
So I'm sure all of us, whether you ever took a course in say,
for your meow or you've just read them, you know, in the
hospital, then Shabbat, we all are familiar with the notion
that your meow was not a popular guy.
In the period in the run up to the foreman that he would, you
know, try to relay his take on things as he received it from a
Finnish bar. Who, and for the most part the
populous of you shall lying, scorned him and didn't accept
the thing that he said, OK. And they were certain that
things would be otherwise. They believed in what we call
Zion theology. What does that mean?
Ashem loves us. Ashem loves the people of Seaum.
He loves that they submit. Those should see him.
He loves the city of Seaum. He loves the divinity king in
seal. This is what it means to be a
firm Jew. To be a firm Jew means to
believe those things. The love that we've the
revolution has for all of us and anyone that questions the love
that the revolution has for us is a heritage and therefore your
meow is a heritage. The most shocking thing to my
mind, not only in Ciprio Meow. The most shocking thing in the
entire 10 for me personally is what I would call the chapter
that never took place. That is, that after the whole
bun, when everything that Year Meow said came true, we would
have expected that the people would then come to your meow and
say, oh year meow, you were right and we were wrong.
And I shall know the God know Gazano di Barnodolfi or
something like that, you know easily.
And it never happens. It never happens.
Worse, they come to him and they scorn him.
And then we have the the Cadalia is put into is put into place
and loyalists to the king who can't fathom the notion of
someone not from our who's based of it, come along and kill him.
But differently even after the hormone nothing has changed for
Bacio, nothing has changed for the people of Jewish are lying.
They are still ensconced in their opinion that a punished
bar who loves them and he loves Rich a lion and he loves the
base of Mccosh. Let me if that sounds but that's
crazy. How can you possibly say that,
Berman? How?
What do you mean? Didn't they have eyes?
Couldn't they see that they were going to take in place?
And here this is, Friends, Where?
What?
What we see in the world around us today is so illustrative
because think of the following, Friends.
Think of the following, the following phenomenon.
Because they're all related. They're all expressions of the
same thing. Holocaust denial Denial about
climate change. So I don't know on the day like
today, it's so hot here. I don't know how anybody could
deny climate change. From what I understand, it's
almost no different. Almost no no matter where you're
hearing this podcast from on the face of the earth.
But there are plenty of people who will deny climate change has
nothing to do with carbon emissions, etcetera, etcetera.
Anti vaxxers, people who claim that that the election in 2020
U.S. presidential elections were stolen.
What all these have in common is that people who have these
beliefs. Varnished health in is they
saying it is nothing will ever budget them from what they from
what they are believing. It isn't as though if you bring
yet you know, let me bring another proof from science.
You know about that vaccinations against the against Kovat are
not dangerous. Or let me let me just, you know,
dig up some more remains from Soviet wars they're trying to do
now. You know the kind the the
extermination camp. I I heard an archaeologist there
recently who's working there. He says here these these these
things that we have found with people's names and stuff.
This is what we'll demonstrate so that nobody will ever be able
to say it didn't happen. Sorry.
People will continue to say that it didn't happen.
What is this? What all these things?
That all, They're all described by social psychologists as
expressions of what they call belief persistence.
This is when you have a community of people that latches
on to a certain sense of reality, certain depiction of
reality that is totally cut off from any empirical truth, that
no amounts of proof will move them from where they are.
Because we're people who deny the Holocaust to have to admit
that there was such a thing, or any of the other examples that I
gave, apparently it would undermine something deeply core
to their collective identity. And so there's no seeing the
truth, no hearing the truth, no speaking the truth.
This is the problem of Batsy. Own Batsy.
Own the collective remnants of You Shall I after The Horbun has
not changed one iota because it's too easy for her to remain
where she is Either was a horrbun.
Her emotion had a bad day. He was out for lunch on that
day. The babbling was stronger.
But he loves us. He absolutely loves us and they
want to hold on to that. It's comforting.
Not only that, it makes life easy for them.
Nothing has to change. It's the country for who has to
keep up his end of the deal. They don't have to change,
right? Right.
This is where ECHA begins. Hear me out.
Can't countenance that. And so in a car we have two
figures. There is the narrator, because
he's never named. That's why I'm using that term.
K there is the narrator and we'll discuss, you know, you're
meow. We can discuss that in a second.
But I'm just working with what is within the text itself.
K There is a narrator, and this is somebody who apparently has
exactly the hush koffa that you're meow did.
This is someone who can be critical.
Lava Misra, but also supportive of a Misra.
And the role of the narrator in dialogue with Batsyone is, I
would say, almost like a counselor involved in therapy
with a client. The narrator sees his job as
taking Batsyone and awakening her from her La La Land, her
view of the Ribona Shalola as Santa Claus, as the smiling
grandfather in the sky who just loves us and loves Sea Young and
loves the base of MC Dush and loves Malco space dubbing.
The problem is going to be as often as the case in a therapy
setting when people have big delusions that they're using to
help shield them from the painful things in reality is
that when they are welcome to the reality, it is shattering.
It is painful. And this is what it ultimately
what happens about Sea Young once she realizes, Oh my gosh,
there are Boneshallum is really angry with me.
He doesn't love, he doesn't love Malcolm Beta and he doesn't love
you, Shalain. Well, that's he did all this,
all this suffering, all these starving children are from him.
So it's totally shattering. And the narrator has to help her
pick up the pieces. What I see happening in AHA is a
series of dialogues around those themes, getting her to realize
the truth and then helping her pick up the pieces.
That's the opening Gabbit. So who who do you feel is the
narrator of the text? OK so so there's there's two
questions. There's who is the author of
Aikha? And who is the narrator?
OK, so there. So obviously Kazal said this was
both I guess really certainly the author was your meow.
And maybe also the narrator, the guy who is saying Ekha yash
bhava dad, you know how is how is or whoa the city sits alone
that that was your meow. So modern scholars say the
following. They say look look Aiha doesn't
say one way or the other who its author was.
It also does not identify the narrator person.
And some say look you know you have so many opinions in Aiha
that don't sound like you're meow.
That's one of the ones that I said before can we imagine,
Aiha, can we excuse me, can we imagine hear Meow saying to the
Ribona Shalom Tarakhta theomapeka, you killed my
children on the day of your wrath, Tavaka Lochamalta.
You slaughtered them. You had no mercy.
That doesn't sound like you're meow.
So a lot of scholars say, listen we have too many psukim in this
in this text that just don't sound like you're meow.
And so they are a little bit reluctant to say that it was
here Meow. They also say look when we read
the the book of Here Meow what we see is that by the end of the
book here meow is in Egypt. He goes down to me trying with
everybody else never says that he came back doesn't say doesn't
say that he died there. But you don't get the end of
your meow's life. To which I say the following Yes
it is true we have many tooking in EJA that don't sound like
your meow that we know from his safer.
But when you see when you break apart the Mcgiller the way I
said look who is speaking about your show in the third person
and look who is speaking about Ushalayan as her own self.
Then what you will notice is that all of the that don't sound
like you're meow are batsy on that's Ushalain speaking and
that all the that are the narrative, this kind of mentor,
this kind of pastoral you know communal rabbi who's trying to
you know work with someone in the community is having a
difficult time. You know, get her to wake up and
realize things, help her through her difficult crises.
All of those so can fit beautifully with your meal.
So I say the following. Because I told this is your
meal, I have no reason necessarily to deny that.
OK, But I will say that even if it was not your meal that wrote
this, it is clear that the author of Acub wants Batsyone to
see the narrator as someone who just happens to have exactly the
ashkafa of your meal. And I would say also the
gravitas and the authority that he had as well.
So if it isn't your meow, then it's a made-up figure that's
pretty close to your meow. That's what I would say.
Almost like speaking for your meow.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is what you, meow, might
have said. To a certain extent, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
All right. And towards the latter half of
your introduction, when you start to piece together the
whole picture, you speak about collective trauma theory.
Can you discuss collective trauma theory and how you apply
that into okay, Okay, okay Here, let me, let me, let me, let me.
Because that all sounds very academic.
Let me, let me, let me give a very pathless shocking example,
okay, of what I'm talking about here.
If I were to say to you and ask you a question, it's going to
sound absurd. Okay, A really absurd question.
Jews that came over from Europe after the war, let's say to the
US, who had endured the war in Europe.
When did those people become survivors?
And you say, what a silly question.
What does that mean? Even?
I don't know. I mean what answer could one
possibly give to such an absurd question?
Well, maybe when? They're recognized as such.
I mean, when they're recognized as such.
If you're not recognized as a survivor and you're.
Then you're essentially your your survivor.
Maybe within yourself, but not within the people.
Okay, okay. That's one.
That's one answer. Consider this thing, you know,
you might have thought, I don't know, maybe they became
survivors the day they weren't. Maybe they became survivors
whenever their particular area of Europe was liberated.
Maybe they became survivors when they arrived, you know, at on
safe shores. Who cares?
I mean, they're survivors, right?
That's, that's the main thing. These people are survivors.
And I will tell you, they became survivors in 1979.
They say, well, what's that mean?
So here's what I mean. People that came over after the
war, the people in the US had many different types of names
for them. Sometimes they were called
immigrants. Sometimes they were called
refugees. Sometimes they were called
displaced persons. In Yiddish, they were called
greening, you know, like greenhorns, like greenies, like
newbies, kind of. In our, in our modern parlance,
they were never called survivors, never in the 40s and
50s, never. And that's shocking to us
because if I were to ask you, what do you call someone who
endured the war, you said that that's a survivor.
That's the only rush on that we use today, that they are
survivors. So what do I mean that it
changed in 1979. So here's, here's what changed.
OK. In 1976, those of us of a
certain age will recall 77. There was a blockbuster TV
series back in the day when there was this thing called TV,
you know, that we all watched because it was nothing else.
So everybody watched TV called Roots.
Roots was about, you know, the history of a black family from
slavery through through liberation and and and on for
the next century. It kind of traced ethnicity and
made ethnicity cool for the first time.
And then, once that was done already for blacks and black
history as slaves, we'll assume the Jews got on the boat and
said, Oh well, we have a history too.
Here we're going to make this blockbuster series called
Holocaust, which appeared in the late 70s in the United States,
Okay. As a movie, it looks like a 4-5.
You know, the whole country watched Holocaust for like 4 or
five consecutive nights. Now suddenly whoa.
This whole story of bearing witness and telling about the
events that happened took on an entirely new, new, new color.
When Jews first came over after the war, nobody wanted to hear
their stories. It was like, OK, folks, you're
here. All right, get with the program.
Become American and fast. There was no Yo Mashalan.
There was no Holocaust remembrance.
There were no Holocaust chairs in any universities.
It was just not talked about, not even within the Jewish
community. Well, by the late 70s, this was
like really important. And this is where, you know,
today the term survivor, when there's so few of them left, you
know, is charged almost like these people have like, like an
aura of to them just by virtue of what they went through, you
know, we have such, like reverence for them.
That's all something that changed over time.
This is what I mean about trauma theory, that that, you know, the
facts themselves are what people endured.
All of them gets shaped and is processed in different ways.
Early on when the people came over, when the Jewish community
in the United States wasn't as strong as it was today, it was
like, okay, just let's not talk about that and just kind of get
get Americans quickly as you can.
You are an immigrant. You're a displaced person.
You're a refugee. You know, there's nothing
special about you. And we're not gonna celebrate
you. We're not gonna put you on a
special pedestal. But by the late 70s, all of that
is now. Whoa.
No. You know, trauma is something
that the community holds onto, and it makes a story of heroism
about it. I mean just the word survivor,
you know, the words to like survivor, you know like Lahavia,
Olafa, they have dollars. You know the the the TV series
Survivor, you know gritty and determination.
You know those are all the the things that are Latin into this
term. When we say a Holocaust survivor
it was their spirit. They, they, they they had grit
determination. They had, they had the Masoro,
the faith on all those things. Those are not all given.
That was all constructs that we that we added to them from the
late 70s. So what we see from this little
lesson here about just the very language that we all use today
is that that communal catastrophe gets shaped and
molded in different ways at different times.
Elie Wiesel was the one who basically brought to the fore
the notion of bearing witness. This is important to tell these
stories. Well, his his initial book night
1960. Before 1960, nobody talked about
the Holocaust. Really.
Nobody right now. Now we come back to you know
maybe the first shalas, it were the hormone, right.
Hormone by resham. And the question is after after
the after the hormone, what do we make of what happened?
What's the narrative that we tell ourselves.
So one narrative might be just like the first time that Foxy
own speaks, you know this collective personality of you.
Shall I? The first time she speaks, The
first time we hear her, actually shows just how off her
interpretation of events really was, she says to Asham.
Something so simple, something so piatistic, something that
would be so easily part of our to hill.
And if, you know, if Rahmano is fun, something bad happened to
the Jewish people today, she says.
Where a Hashem. It's on ye oh behold the Kurdish
bar. Who my, my, my suffering.
He. He.
Oh, yeah.
Because the the enemy has triumphed.
That is her take on the hormone. You don't have to look at me.
You have not noticed me. You've been out to lunch.
They've been away. I want you to notice me.
And look what's happened here. Hey, deal again.
The enemy is triumph. That's the hormone.
The Babylonians were strong. That's how she sees it.
That is totally off. Yes, the Babylonians were
strong, but she doesn't see this is off from Shemain.
She doesn't see that. It's her own actions that let a
punish sparkle to do this. OK, So what I see Ayha as as a
remolding of what what the hormone was all about.
It is literally staged. It is a play.
It is a play with two characters, this narrator and
Bacion. And what the author of Ayha is
doing is putting on a production for the purpose, for the benefit
of the the the Tosha. They were, shall I, the
inhabitants of New Shaline after the Horbun under occupation,
reeling from destruction as to how they're supposed to view or
how they're supposed to make the move from being ensconced in
their previous La La land of Zion theology stuck in belief
persistence. I have my beliefs, and they're
always going to be true. To shatter those and then to
show models of how your meow the pastoral mentor.
The narrator brings Batsyone through several discussions to
see things the right way And in my mind what we have here, the
reason there are several discussions, there's several
property is because Batsyone is really not one single character.
Batsyone is always the the I would say the survivors of the
hormone. But we know from our own that
our own experience, the survivors of the Shalan, even
those that continued to to adhere to the Masora and
different views about things. And so each parrot takes a
different religious typology and shows how you meow works with
her. OK.
So that would lead into to the to the last question regarding
can you go through the structure of the of the Five Pro Kim, how
they kind of flow into each other or how it how it bounces
off each other and based on what you said so so Lamentations is
really. Contextualized to to be the the
generation after the the destruction 6th century you were
going to talk and and so just to kind of sum up what you said to
make sure I understood it. Batzion is really a
conglamorative voices that was expressed at that time and the
narrator is going to contend deal with each of those voices
and try to educate those those voices.
Yeah. So let me And yeah, instead of
maybe going through all 5 prepping which will be a little
bit difficult in the time we have.
But let me let me just show how this works within a single
parrot. OK.
So in Peric bit. In Peric bit what we have is
that the first half of the parrot only the narrator speaks.
And what he does is he shows no less than 27 ways in which a
punish girl, who bull Bam Bash destroyed, obliterated
everything having to do with crucial line.
And he does it repeatedly by using the Lechonot Hiba the kind
of the the terms of endearment with which she was lying thought
about herself. Let me explain what I mean.
For example, in Pasuk Alif of Parrot Bent, what did the Shem
do? He shlik me.
Shamaim Eretz he threw down from the heavens to the earth.
He's the Erik Israel, the glory of Israel, right?
That's in her own eyes, the glory of Israel.
For the low Zahar Hadoma glove, the Oma Po.
And he didn't remember his footstool. i.e., the base of
Miktosh. That's how Batsyone viewed the
base of Miktosh. This is the Kurdish borough
whose footstool he's not going to destroy it.
And so Yumi I was expressing himself in the ways in which
Batsyone had thought of a sham, the thought of your Shaline and
the thought of the Mikkan. The Bob Lim was stronger that
day. Everything that happened,
Ashchem was there and doing it. And it's not the Bobbi.
He doesn't mention the Bob Lim anywhere.
In fact, he says that Ashchem is the Oyev.
He says Dara Kashto K Oyev. He he pulled his bow like, like
a like like an enemy, like the Oyev.
Oyev, Bilal Israel like an enemy he swallowed up Israel.
All of this is to say the batch, the I'm grabbing you by the
hotel. I want you to understand, God
did this, and he did this to you, and he did this in spite of
all the ways in which you think that he'd loved you.
Well, Bassian hears that. I mean, imagine.
I mean, imagine how shattering that is.
I'll say here that that I, I, I, I, I recall in order to
understand how Bastille might feel about this, I was once tell
you a story. I was once at an academic
conference. I was at a dinner and there were
two Bible scholars engaged in the conversation.
One says to the other, you know, let me tell you something.
I don't believe in God. And the other Bible scholar
says, you know what? Me either.
And the first one says, tell you something else.
If I did believe in God, I would be very angry at him.
And the second guy says, yeah, me too.
And from this I learned something that I later
discovered that that psychologists of religion have
known the study once done of patients lo aleno in a hospital
ward for chronic pain. And they were discovered, they
were trying to assess the religious attitudes of patients
suffering from chronic pain all the time.
Pain, pain pain pain pain. Lo aleno.
And what they discovered was something shocking that the
patients who were the most angry at God were the patients who
most often said they didn't believe in God.
You say to me. Berman That's illogical.
And I will say to you that that logic ends where pain begins,
OK? Meaning that sometimes when
people are really angry at God, there's only two choices, to
either be angry at God or to dis God altogether.
I'm out of here. I'm finished with that.
OK, you hear me. All know that when he shatters
Botsyon's delusion about God, she's going to be very He
brought all this on me. And so he never, never in
anywhere in that parrot In parrot that he doesn't say a bad
word about Ruchelon. He didn't say, yeah well, you
know, it's your fault. No, he never says that.
Never says that. He sits down on the floor next
to her and cries with her because because she needs that.
She needs the support. She needs to see that he's not
critical of her. She needs to see that that he is
with him and he really cries genuinely And Yao is part of
army strone. And then he says there, you know
what I want you to approach to a punish problem.
This is that famous possible she can come mine.
Rebeck no company a sham. Why don't you unload your heart
to a sham? It's not clear exactly what he
means by that. Does he mean that that she
should Dobbin ask professor, Or perhaps protest?
And where she takes it to is totally a place of protest
Anger. She expresses her anger.
That's something that we read before when she ends that parent
by seeing her rock W Matefa. You killed my children.
On the day of your anger, Avahta Locha, Malta.
You massacred them. You had no pity.
That's the end of the para. And it's remarkable.
Like, wait a minute, wait, this is the end of the para being
angry. God, there's no Cuba.
There's no censure of her for being angry.
And I think the answer is, is that you're meow, the author of
ASA. They know very well just what I
said before. You know about those two guys at
the conference. There are people in this world
who've had a very hard time, and the place that leaves them vis A
vis God is one of two options. I will be angry at him or I will
be finished with him. Given those two choices, your
meow wants Fat CEO to be angry with God.
Better to be angry with God. That's just God altogether.
And so your meow gives a hasher to say there are times when
you're allowed to be angry at God, and it's good.
It's good when we're able to yell at each other.
That's much better. I much prefer when my children
yell at me than when they tune me out.
Oh, that's the worst. Two me out is the worst, OK?
Because when they yell at me, then they're still engaged and
they're able to express themselves.
They're able to process their own feelings.
OK, that's what you meow wants for batsy young to express her
anger. That's why it's the end of
parapet, not the end of the Mcgillo.
Perry Gimmel is then me and gave.
There is you meow saying OKI hear your pain Batsy young.
Now let me tell you something. I've also had a hard time to
push borrow. Let me tell you about my
personal problems with the French world.
Then he tells his own story from several year meow.
You know I was scorned and thrown into a pit and and you
know people wanted to kill me and I didn't understand why I
was doing this to me because all I was doing was what he wanted
me to do. So like what the hell is this
you know and and so he shows how he was also angry at God and how
he turned it around. OK, this is how the flow begins
to work here. Amazing.
That's really amazing. One of one of the aspirations of
our podcast was to. Introduce our viewers to the
nuance and beauty of Tanaq, something that is neglected
unfortunately in some of the religious circles today and we
really appreciate you coming in and and providing us this
unbelievable introduction to Lamentations.
I'm going to be honest. Echo was one of those books of
Tanaq that it was very difficult for me to open up.
And and and sure, sure. It's one of those that you kind
of would go through it and then kind of just put it aside.
And now I really want to go through it properly.
I want to use your book as a guide.
And you know, and it's really incredible.
Thank you. Right.
Let me just say, I know the things I've been saying, you
know, yes, God can hate on this room and they can be angry.
A lot of people that's like, what do you mean?
I mean I thought a shame always wants us and there's always a
breeds. And you know it's especially
when people on Tisha Bob learn Ekharaba okay the medrich to
Ekha Ekharaba is totally a different world than Ekha itself
And Ekharaba a country bar who brings the Corbin and he's
crying and crying and my children and oh you're yoy and
oh you're yoy. But Ekharaba is written much
later. You know Ekha is written in the
heat of the moment. This is right after the Corbin.
I'm so needs to learn the lesson.
Ekharaba, written by Hazal centuries later, are like can't
be that a Kurdish bar who's angry with us forever?
And so a Kurdish bar who becomes a much more sympathetic figure
in a Carrabba than we have in A itself.
Interesting. So, So what you're really
expressing is that hazal there is there is a certain amount of
I guess I don't know if the word would be context, that meaning
the hazal have their own context, but that's right.
And and. When it's written, has its own
context. So you correct absolutely
symmetry between the two. There's going to be everyone's
own context all over into the commentary, which is fair and
Yep, amazing. Amazing.
Okay, very good. So yeah.
So again, it's commentary is called The Book of Lamentations.
Sorry, no Flowery title put out in the it's a series called The
New Cambridge Viable Commentary, and it's available online.
In paperback, it's affordable. In hardcover it's not, but
that's why it's in paperback. You can look it up, and if it's
too late for this year's reading, then maybe next year,
even though should have Google already for those that might
still be interested in learning, hey how they can.
Planning. Are you planning on writing for
any other book of Tanaka for the Cambridge, Cambridge series?
Not at the present moment. I have other points.
I have other things I'm working on right now, but that's another
That'll be fun of the pot, yes? I got all your books are
extremely insightful and just keep writing.
Keep doing what you're doing. We, you know, we you have, you
have readers that really appreciate it.
OK. Do this again with you.
Yep. God willing, God willing.
It's a sham, OK? And so the audience, you know, I
know that stimulating and and controversial ideas are raised
here. And I say I salute to all of you
for for thinking a little bit out-of-the-box and wanted to get
clear, clear and true answers. So yeah, I should talk to all of
you. And we should be sorry that this
should be the last, the last Tisha.
Love that. That we sit in mourning.
Amen. Amen.
Thank you so much. Thank you all by Berman.
Very good. Meaningful.
Fast. OK.
Thank. You.
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