Book Reviews for Judy Klitsner's book: Subversive Sequels in the Bible

Do yourself a favor. Don't bother with the rest of my review; just buy this book and start reading it. While it is tempting to make the inevitable comparisons to the work of Nechama Leibowitz and Aviva Zornberg, Judy Klitsner's approach to studying Tanakh deserves to be examined on its own merits. Klitsner sees certain biblical narratives as sequels to other biblical texts and shows how conclusions drawn from one story might be refuted with another. The first chapter, comparing the book of Jonah with the story of Noah, overflows with insights that seem so rediculously obvious once someone else has pointed them out, it seems impossible not to have noticed them before. A large portion of the book deals with attitudes towards women in the Bible, playing the book of Judges off of the stories of the Matriarchs in Genesis. Subversive Sequels is very readable and Klitsner takes great care to write in a way that respects both traditional and academic approaches to the biblical text. Buy this book for your library, get yourself a copy and buy one for a friend. If you don't have a friend, make one.

In weaving together traditional exegesis, modern scholarship, and her own original interpretatations, Klitsner has created an enormously enjoyable and rewarding book... Klitsner draws parallels utilizing her command of both ancient and modern exegesis and the subtle nuances of Biblical language. The result is a series of original understandings of familiar popular narratives that may forever transform the way in which the reader examines biblical texts.

This new commentary exhibits biblical scholarship at its finest. Judy Klitsner has chosen six familiar stories from the bible and, using critical literary techniques, delved deeply into the texts to explore the imagery, structure, grammar, and context of these stories both in relationship to each other and as single stories. Klitsner draws upon her many years as a student and teacher of biblical texts and as a student of the great Nehama Leibowitz. She demonstrates a level of understanding and depth that will make us turn to the stories once again to draw lessons for a modern reading. She mines the Hebrew of the text for traditional and new readings. The result is a confirmation that the ancient stories reflect the humanity that endures in all of us regardless of time or place. This book is an excellent companion to weekly Torah study to challenge our thinking and perception of the characters of the Bible. Subversive Sequels in the Bible is the 2009 National Jewish Book Award winner in Scholarship.

The book's introduction gives a good sense of the author's approach: “As if aware of its own problematics, the Bible contains a lively interaction between its passages that allows for a widening of perspective and a sense of dynamic development throughout the canon. As we will see in the six chapters of this book, if certain gnawing theological or philosophical questions remain after studying one narrative, a later passage may revisit those questions, subjecting them to a complex process of inquiry, revision, and examination of alternative possibilities. I call these reworkings 'subversive sequels.' Like all sequels, they continue and complete earlier stories. But they do so in ways that often undermine the very assumptions upon which the earlier stories were built as well as the conclusions these stories have reached” (p.xvi). Klitsner's approach is a literary one and may seem very much in keeping with the postmodern outlook often associated with that perspective. Yet it is also firmly rooted in the historic Jewish rabbinic tradition of interpretation. Moreover, the recognition of sequels and intertextual interconnectedness in the Biblical corpus leads not only to interesting interpretations of texts, but also an interesting perspective on the place of the interpreter in relation to those texts. “As careful readers of the text, we add our own interpretative voices to this multi-tonal concert that began in the pages of the Bible itself” (p.xvii). After looking at some brief examples of “subversive sequels,” Klitsner argues that this approach “adds a dimension of exegesis that is inaccessible through close readings and ordinary intertextual comparisons alone,” since it seeks to measure the creative revision process that takes place between stories (p.xxiii). This leads not only to a hermeneutical embracing of change and revision, but also a view of God as “evolving” (at least on a literary level). Klitsner suggests that this stance may be treated not only as descriptive but as prescriptive, and she paraphrases a famous dictum to make the point: “Just as He is dynamic so should you be dynamic” (p.xxv). Flexibility and adaptability are not problematic aspects of the text crying out for harmonization or some other resolution. They are a model for readers to follow.

Before moving on, Klitsner notes the danger of parallelomania, and asks how a sequel is to be identified (p.xxxi). In each case throughout the remainder of the book, the author draws attention to Hebrew word plays, phrases unique in the Bible to the narratives in question, and other features that provide a genuine justification for comparing and contrasting them. Already in this introductory chapter, important terminology and concepts from the rabbinic interpretative tradition are explained.

The first chapter compares the stories of Noah and Jonah. Plays on words that are important to each story, or to the connection between them, are presented. For instance, we are confronted with the irony that Noah is so named because of a desire for comfort (n-h-m), and yet we soon encounter the same root used in its other sense, when we are told that God regretted (n-h-m) having made humanity (p.4; Genesis 5:29; 6:6-7).

After contrasting Noah's acceptance of the predicted doom for his contemporaries with Abraham's pleading for Sodom and Gomorrah, Klitsner turns to exploring the contrasts between the stories of Noah and Jonah. In the latter God also regrets (n-h-m), but this time it is regret concerning a planned judgment (p.11; Jonah 3:10). And while in both stories God sends messengers, in Jonah it is for the most part the prophet who is the recipient of messages from God via emissaries such as the wind and the worm, as well as the ship's captain, who echoes God's call to Jonah to “get up an call” (Jonah 1:2,6). Discussion is offered of contrasting characters in these and other stories, some of whom are able to envisage the possibility that God may relent from bringing destruction, others of whom are not.

Chapter 2 looks at the story of the midwives of Israel as a sequel to the story of the tower of Babel. Klitsner turns to earlier Jewish interpreters such as Rashi (Rabbi Shelomo Yitzhaki, the famous medieval commentator from France) and Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin (a 19th century Lithuanian exegete) in an attempt to discern precisely what it was about the action of humanity at Babel that incurred the punishment of diversification of languages. Consulting also the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, Klitsner suggests that the loss of individuality is a key element. “An individual, even a rebellious one, is more godly than a mindless member of a human herd” (p.45). The fact that the Babel story occurs amidst lists of names, and yet itself is a story of unnamed builders, helps make this point, and highlights the contrast with the story of the midwives in Egypt.

The two stories are connected by, among other things, the focus on building of cities and the references (found only here in the Bible) to bricks and mortar. Details which are often overlooked by readers are highlighted - for instance, the implausibility of a Pharaoh not being aware of the story of how Egypt was saved from disaster a generation earlier. As a result, it is best to view the “forgetting” of Joseph as an attempt to rewrite history, as totalitarian states so often do (p.52). Likewise Pharaoh's illogical and self-contradictory statements about the Israelites are discussed, with the insightful observation that “often the first casualty of rabble-rousing is consistency” (p.54).

In contrast to the nameless Pharaoh provoking Egyptians en masse to view the Israelites as a group xenophobically, and in contrast to the Babel story with its lack of named characters, two named individuals strikingly take center stage at this crucial moment: Shifra and Puah, the midwives. “At every stage, the midwives' innate morality, their fear of God, bests Pharaoh” (p.60). In a powerful irony, as Pharaoh's command presumes that only male sons among the Israelites pose a threat to him, these two daughters subvert his plan.

Chapter 3 looks at the foreign priests Melchizedek and Jethro and the patriarchs whom they influence. Here it is suggested that the subversive sequel model needs to be qualified, since both Abraham and Moses as leaders are at times in need of a challenge to cast off external influences, while at other times their need is to eschew a solitary existence and accept the advice and assistance of others. The relationship between the stories is dialectical, rather than one undermining the other.

Chapter 4 turns attention to Eve, and while this chapter focuses on subversive elements within the Genesis story itself, chapter 5 turns attention to the story of Sarah as a sequel. In startling echoes of the account in Genesis 3, Sarah becomes the forbidden fruit, while Pharaoh is ironically made to echo the language God uses in that story, with Abraham's failings highlighted as a result. Abraham's character is further problematized in the story involving Abimelech, in which Abraham can apparently intercede for the fertility of others, and yet we are never told that he did so in the case of his wife Sarah (p.130).And while Adam was punished for heeding his wife, Abraham is explicitly commanded to do so. The chapter concludes by noting the subversive recasting of language from the Eden narrative: there an ever-turning sword guards the path to the tree of life, while in Genesis 18:17-19, Abraham will instruct his offspring to “guard the path” of the LORD, perhaps suggesting that this represents the way back to Eden, as it were (p.133).

Chapter 6 continues the focus on female characters. In discussing Rebekah it is drawn to the reader's attention that we here witness the first explicit statement that a woman is the object of a man's affection, being explicitly told that Isaac loves Rebekah (Genesis 24:67; p.143). Also highlighted in this chapter are subversive sequels to the stories of submissive, passive women, Deborah somewhat obviously (although with many details and word-plays that are easily missed), and also the wife of Manoah, who in contrast with earlier precedent is herself the recipient of a revelation through an angelic messenger, and Hannah, who is the first to address God directly herself with a request to conceive (p.166).

The book's afterword ties together key threads and emphases, presenting the Bible as a book full of conversations rather than declarations, being “oriented much more toward process than toward conclusions” (p.171). And in contrast to the school of thought that focuses exclusively on “faithful recovery of the elusive original intent” of the texts or their authors, “the vibrant discourse begun by the text suggests that the conversation is meant to continue” (p.172). The book thus offers not only a wonderful model of exegesis, but also a hermeneutic for application and appropriation of the Bible's narratives in our time through a dynamic process that recognizes the conversations taking place within Scripture, and joins in the conversation.

A section with information about classical Jewish sources is included in between the bibliography and the index, and only those with a high degree of familiarity with historic Jewish interpreters and the texts that preserve their insights can perhaps afford to miss this part of the book (pp.179-182).

I recommend Judy Klitsner's book with unqualified enthusiasm. Even those with some proficiency in Hebrew are liable to miss many of the word-plays in the Hebrew text, some of which involve inversion of letters and other forms of what are perhaps best described as “puns.” Such details connect stories and represent an often-overlooked form of intertextual echo. Anyone who reads this book will find their appreciation of the beautiful tapestry of Biblical narrative enriched and their understanding enhanced. And those interested in bridging the gulf between these texts and contemporary readers will find Klitsner's approach not merely helpful or illuminating but exciting, as her combination of classic and fresh perspectives allows the Bible's diverse voices to be encountered not merely as something to be analyzed or dissected, but as full of life, vigor and possibility.

This book originally appeared on the blog Exploring Our Matrix ([...]). James F. McGrath is the author of The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context and John's Apologetic Christology: Legitimation and Development in Johannine Christology (Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series).

It ain’t necessarily so:
Sidestepping questions of authorship and timing, Judy Klitsner finds a moral evolution in the Bible that should warm the heart of many progressive readers

“How is a modern sensibility to relate to a text in which God responds to a sinful world by destroying it wholesale? What are we to make of a narrative … that has God and man marginalizing the female characters within its pages?” The questions posed by Judy Klitsner in her book’s introduction are common, perhaps by now even cliched, but despite all their familiarity, they continue to nag at the sensibility of the contemporary Bible reader. In the new, vital discourse that has emerged around the study of biblical narratives in recent years, many teachers of great passion and intelligence have grappled with these issues. Women in particular have been spurred on to seek new perspectives, hoping to transcend the narrow image readers over the centuries have naturally had of the Bible’s approach to a wide range of topics.

Klitsner, an American-born teacher at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, makes a valuable contribution to this broadening discourse in her book “Subversive Sequels in the Bible.” Abjuring apologetics, Klitsner compares and contrasts texts, creating large conceptual frameworks to help the reader perceive biblical narratives differently. Her work has the exhilarating effect of allowing us to suddenly see well-known stories in a more comprehensive way. A student of the late Nechama Leibowitz, the renowned biblical teacher who juxtaposed texts in order to analyze them, and reached tens of thousands of students with her lessons, Klitsner too applies a critical literary approach to Torah study.

Relating to the Bible as a “coherent literary structure,” Klitsner unapologetically declares that, “I ask not when or how the Bible was written, but what are the meanings contained in its pages.” To do this, she employs literary intertextuality, a method that compares different passages to point out the tensions between them. Viewing the whole Hebrew Bible as one progressive, evolving text, Klitsner shows how one tale echoes another, and at the same time, how the latter can also “rework” the earlier text, often generating a larger, more nuanced message. In this way, she attains a broader Biblical perspective more congruent with universal and feminist values. She also arrives at some surprising conclusions.

“The Bible contains a lively interaction between its passages,” writes Klitsner, later in the introduction, “that allows for … a sense of dynamic development throughout the canon … If certain gnawing theological or philosophical questions remain after studying one narrative, a latter passage may revisit those questions.” It is these re-examinations that Klitsner refers to as “subversive sequels.”

“Like all sequels,” she writes, “they continue and complete earlier stories. But they often undermine the very assumptions upon which the earlier stories were built as well as the conclusions these stories have reached.”

A clear example of this intertextual literary method can be found in her pairing of the tales of Noah and Jonah. According to Klitsner, Jonah resonates with elements of the Noah story — with dangerous waters, and the question of destroying an evil society. But ultimately Jonah’s story serves to qualify the earlier tale, eliciting a different message about mankind than the original. Noah is seen as “blameless in his age … walking with God” (Genesis 6:9). But when God reveals to him that he is going to bring a flood upon the earth to destroy it, and that only he and his family will be saved, Noah diligently builds the ark. He does not protest. Perhaps, Klitsner suggests, Noah walks too closely to God. He’s too congruent with him to step back and question God’s decision to destroy the world. Abraham, on the other hand, pleads for the people of Sodom. He uses the Hebrew word “oolai” (“perhaps” ) — “perhaps, there are 50 men” — suggesting there might be alternatives to destruction.

“In the Noah narrative, humanity’s annihilation was neither negotiable nor avoidable,” says Klitsner. And the prophet Jonah initially echoes this. He is not only passive to the oncoming destruction of the people of Nineveh, he actively opposes the possibility that people might repent or change. He believes human nature is static and determined.

But in Klitsner’s description of an evolving moral vision, God is not the same God that despaired of mankind in the Noah story. In Jonah, God empathizes with his Creation and shows it mercy. Mankind too has changed. If God now tries to direct Jonah toward compassion for humanity, it is because people are now capable of mending their ways.

The biblical message has also become more universal, embracing the possibility of repentance for non-Jews as well as Jews. The captain and sailors of the ship in which Jonah tries to flee God embody this message. They display greater moral imagination than Jonah, and they resist throwing him into the sea as long as possible.

Klitsner does not grapple with the theological implications of an evolving God. Rather, she understands the story on a literary level, where God is a persona like the other figures in the Bible.

She analyzes the biblical texts through “close reading,” which puts the focus on the work itself, a hallmark of the New Criticism. She diligently points out similarities in themes, and repetition of words and phrases, but her ultimate goal is that of the teacher and modern moralist: preaching the values of universality, open-endedness and increased compassion that are there to be found in the Bible.

Klitsner explains the building of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11), for example, not only as a means of penetrating the heavens and challenging God, but in line with the commentary of the 19th-century Talmud scholar Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, she sees it as a means of imposing a totalitarian mode upon the peoples of the earth, and suppressing all differences. She compares this building enterprise with what occurred in Egypt during the Hebrews’ enslavement, the text echoing the same bricks and mortar. But here she points to the midwives who courageously break ranks by saving baby Moses, rising up against dictatorship, as the autonomous alternative to the Tower of Babel population. She claims that because man is created in God’s image, “any attempt to suppress the divine spark of individuality … constitutes a rebellion against God.”

In addition, one suspects that much of Klitsner’s motivation in using the intertextual method is to present a more complex, layered view of women.

In taking the Garden of Eden story, for example, the “foundational text” regarding the Biblical image of women, Klitsner delineates a three-part approach to Eve. In the first of the two versions of human creation, Eve is equal to Adam, God having made mankind androgenous: “And God created the human in his image … male and female He created them.” (Gen. 1:27) God addresses them equally: “Be fruitful and increase.” According to Klitsner, “neither sex has an advantage in the ability to communicate with the divine.”

But in the second version of the creation, in Gen. 2:22, woman is taken from man’s rib, making her subordinate to him. The only compensation for this drop in status might be that “man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife.” Intimacy is the value that emerges from this hierarchical situation, somewhat softening qualifying it. But at the same time, woman is excluded from direct communication with God. Klitsner interprets Eve to be frustrated by this exclusion, and in an attempt to regain power, perhaps even immortality, from the Tree of Life, she proceeds first to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, and tempts Adam to do so.

Finally, we have Adam renaming Eve as Hava, “mother of all the living.” Klitsner sees this, on one hand, as the woman being reduced to the procreational function, but at the same time, achieving through children the immortality she may have sought in eating from the Tree of Knowledge.

She traces these three aspects of womanhood through the circuitous byways of the Bible. On one hand, the issue of the barrenness of Sara, Rebecca and Rachel highlights procreation as defining biblical women. At the same time, there is a turning point in the Abraham-Sara-God triangle when God includes Sara in the covenant and renames her, asserting again the unmediated relationship between God and woman. But a distancing between Abraham and Sara becomes evident at this point.

Klitsner celebrates the signs of autonomy in the prophetess Deborah, and in Samson’s mother. They are the subversive sequels of the submissive aspects of Eve. But she finds that it is only in Hannah in 1 Samuel that all aspects of womanhood come together. She too is barren, but she is proactive. As an autonomous being, she prays directly to God, and He answers her prayer for a child. At the same time, the aspect of intimacy between Elkana and Hannah is reinforced rather than undermined by her empowerment and autonomous decision-making. Elkana bids her to do as she sees best.

Klitsner presents this deconstruction of the Adam and Eve story as a combination of the “best of all possible worlds.” She does not disparage the quest for fertility, but sees it as a catalyst for women’s development. Throughout the book, she indicates that it must be accompanied by woman’s empowerment and equal relationship with man. To be “the mother of all living beings” is to achieve a “measure of eternity,” she concludes.

Like every inspiring work, “Subversive Sequels in the Bible” itself achieves a modicum of eternity. Klitsner offers the reader a fascinating dialogue between biblical narratives, in order to present a moral vision relevant to the 21st century. As a criticism, it must be said that some points seem belabored, and Klitsner also does not always give credit to the literary and scholarly precedents that have gone into her thinking. Ultimately, though, this is irrelevant. Although based on much scholarship, the volume is not an academic work. Its lively flowing style and profound articulation make it accessible to the intelligent layman who can only delight in Klitsner’s creative analysis.

What can we learn from the story of Jonah and the whale to improve our understanding of Noah's ark? No, this isn't a quiz or a joke. It's an example of one of the operative questions at work in distinguished Jerusalem Bible teacher Judy Klitsner's first book of commentary, Subversive Sequels in the Bible: How Biblical Stories Mine and Undermine Each Other. Klitsner's forte is demonstrating how the careful reading of one related biblical narrative can alter or extend our appreciation of another, yielding rich new insights.

For 18 years, American-born Klitsner has been demystifying Torah for students at the Pardes Institute in Jerusalem and for far-flung Jewish communities and college campuses abroad. Her method begins with a meticulous examination of the language and themes of the text and an examination of the traditional commentaries.

As a teacher, she sensitizes students to word choice, to names, to cadence. She goes on to encourage students to engage the text with their own experience and thinking. In a sense, she's done the same for herself. Klitsner studied under Torah giant Nehama Leibowitz, and set out to write her own explication of her teacher's method. But her own voice kept breaking through, and several years into the writing process, she decided to give it full expression. The result is a provocative way of looking at the text, understanding how one story within the biblical opus might build on or take issue with another.

Take Noah and Jonah. Instead of looking at the stories as separate, see instead “two prophets navigating perilous waters aboard their boat, apart from the doomed populations they might have saved.” The shared language, setting and themes make these two stories organically related. But more important are the troubled prophets, recruited for divine service. In the flood narrative, points out Klitsner, the prophet floated safely in his boat, as the world around him drowned. In the Book of Jonah, the world floats as the prophet faces death by drowning when the sailors reluctantly throw him overboard.

“Taken together, the two stories will chronicle a remarkable potential for change within several fundamental relationships. In the divine-human bond, we will note God's emerging desire for human survival as He offers second chances to those who have erred. In the inter-human relationship, we will trace the prophet's struggles in facing his responsibility toward those around him. And in the sphere of intra-human relations, we will observe the hero's progress as he is called upon to begin healing his connection with himself. As he begrudgingly accedes to God's demand to help save others, Jonah will face opportunities to rescue himself as well.”

Noah survives the flood to drown himself in alcohol. Although Jonah unenthusiastically and succinctly conveys his message of warning to Nineveh, the citizens immediately heed him and repent. But when God Himself teaches Jonah a moral lesson by creating and then destroying a gourd that shades the prophet, Jonah doesn't seem to catch on. He remains silent. Says Klitsner, “Possibilities of self-transformation exist, but there is no guarantee that anyone will take advantage of them.”

After Klitsner's pairing of the stories, it would be hard to imagine one without the other. But the connection between the stories of the Tower of Babel and the midwives of Israel is less obvious. (Think for a moment - what do you come up with?) In addition to the literary devices she elucidates, Klitsner points out that both stories are centered on totalitarian city-building. In Egypt, the Israelites build cities in mortar and bricks, evoking the bricks and mortar used in Babel.

“The reversal of the order of the ingredients holds its own significances, hinting that these two stories will not merely parallel each other, but that in significant ways one will reverse the other as well.”

Although the second book of the Hebrew Bible is called Shmot, “names,” they are few in the description, reflecting the subjugation of the people. Then suddenly, “two flashes of light” appear: Shifra and Puah, the two midwives, pitted as equals of Pharaoh, and ultimately as superior to the mighty king of Egypt.

“In Babel, the individual is blotted out, and as a result, so is the entire generation. In the story's subversive sequel, the enslavement in Egypt, the individual is seriously eroded, but two distinctive women arrive in time to reverse the process. Shifra and Puah set off a chain of events that will ultimately lead to the defeat of the tyrannical Egyptian regime and to the salvation of the Israelite people.”

Ironically, Pharaoh plans to kill the sons of the Israelites and let the daughters live, but he is defeated by a series of daughters, including his own. Klitsner shows how the women's defiance not only confronts the oppressive totalitarian society but rebuilds the disintegrated Jewish families.

Klitsner likes conversation about biblical texts in her classrooms and in her commentary. She sees vibrant conversation taking place within the biblical canon, rather than viewing the Bible as a series of declarations. “If texts declare, the results may be cogent, complex and inspiring , but ultimately they may also be static, one-directional and circumscribed. If, however, texts converse, the result is an invitation to creative engagement and to a perpetual reconsideration of assumptions and conclusions.”

That is, of course, an articulate description of what living Torah means, particularly evolving in the rich environment of Jerusalem.

Klitsner's writing is carefully considered and always lucid, … providing sufficient proof texts so that beginners less familiar with the Bible and more advanced students will find the ideas and their presentation illuminating and fascinating. My only complaint is that the text, at 170 pages, is on the short side. I'm already looking forward to the next volume.

This book is a study of literary interconnections within the Bible. Judy Klitsner, Senior Lecturer at the Pardes Institute in Jerusalem where she has taught for the last 18 years, shows that often parallel passages serve as what she terms “subversive sequels” to texts that precede them and can be seen as “reconsidering” earlier concepts and ideas. Moving skillfully between biblical text and commentaries, Klitsner addresses passages that are often difficult for modern sensibilities. Three chapters examine the evolving role of women in the Bible. Klitsner proposes that the story of Eve should be seen as the foundation for numerous sequels that sometimes reinforce and sometimes overturn its assumptions and conclusions. These sequels are the topic of the separate chapters that follow. Among other insights, Klitsner suggests that Rebekah’s first encounter with Yitzhak leads her to fall down from her camel i.e., becoming more reactive and not as independent as she had been previously. Klitsner’s close reading of the text in the book of Judges gives us insights into the character of Devorah, who defines motherhood in radically new ways—calling herself a “mother in Israel” because of her leadership and impact, not because of having physically given birth to children. In her analysis of the story of Hannah, Klitsner shows how Hannah pleading for herself and being a full and open partner with her husband can be seen as a “subversive sequel” to many of the earlier biblical narratives involving women. According to Klitsner, the way these stories relate to one another expands the view of biblical women beyond simplistic classifications and stereotypes and leaves room for continuous new meanings and interpretations. Singularly faithful to the biblical text, which Klitsner reads closely and with great respect, this book is fascinating and radical in its implications and inspires the reader to see surprising connections in language and in themes.

Book Review, Lookstein Center for Jewish Education Announcements List, Zvi Grumet

Judy Klitsner has written an inspiring, insightful, provocative book. Her attention to text, language and nuance are inspiring and compelling.

Klitsner's great strength as a reader of the text is apparent in her sensitivity to language and to its parallels in places we would not expect to find it. Yitro's lo tov echoes God's lo tov in the second chapter of Breishit. Moshe's repeated usage of the word tov in his invitation to Yitro (Bemidbar chapter 11) is contrasted by the ra Moshe encounters in the following chapter. Rivkah's instruction of berah lekha, sending Yaakov from Canaan to Haran, is a reversal of God's lekh lekha driving Avram from Haran to Canaan. Her analysis of the song of Devorah — its language, parallels and themes — is truly delightful. There are dozens, if not hundreds of such keen observations sparkling throughout the work.

Henri Zukier, Associate Professor of Psychology and History, The New School for Social Research

In Subversive Sequels in the Bible, Judy Klitsner explores the complex relationship between various familiar Biblical tales in a manner that is at once both surprising and convincing. What is convincing is the degree to which these narratives interact with common theme and language. What is surprising is that the results of such an examination yield a subversive yet stubbornly reverent approach to Bible study. Klitsner is a masterful guide on a thrilling voyage of discovery of hidden meanings and dynamics in the classical texts. Klitsner shakes up all our old certainties about our most ancient and seemingly familiar biblical narratives, with counterintuitive, but ultimately compelling insights. She casts this familiar universe in a very different, bright light.

Written with a minimum of academic jargon, this work is accessible, enjoyable and valuable to scholar and layperson alike and may be one of a very few examples of literary close readings of Hebrew texts that brings the sophistication of ancient Hebrew literature to the English speaking public.

An easily summarized example is Klitsner’s first chapter comparing the narrative of Noah and his ark to that of Jonah (Hebrew for “dove”). Under Ms. Klitsner’s lens, these two stories are in dialogue about the dynamic nature of both human transcendence and Divine compassion. Whereas Noah is the surviving prophet in a drowning world – Jonah is the drowning prophet in a world redeemed. One story (Noah) ends with the sending of a dove and begins with the saving of many animals. The other begins with the sending of a “dove” (Jonah) and ends with a verse about saving many animals.

I won’t spoil the adventure of discovering with Klitsner the intricate inversion of theme and language that creates this theological dialogue between the stories. Yet, the whole treatment is greater than the sum of its parts. The author picks up on the way in which the Jonah story redeems the Noah story and with it the chance for human triumph with its stubborn hopeful “perhaps?” over the gravity and despair of our presumed fate.

What links the various essays in the book is the tight literary analysis and its striking methodology of reading texts as “intertextually” related. Stories are seen as sequels that mine and undermine prior tales. No longer seen as ancient statements of monolithic messages, these stories echo into other stories and eventually resound beyond the pages of the Bible. The result is a highly relevant approach to Bible reading that ultimately invites the reader into an ongoing moral and theological symposium.

Most of the book is dedicated to a rereading of various women’s narratives in the Bible –from Eve and Sarah, and Rebecca and Rachel of Genesis to Deborah and Hannah, and Mrs. Manoach. Here too, to the satisfaction of traditionalists and feminists alike, the stories are read with a respect for the original stories together with a mindfulness of the ways in which later stories subvert and elevate the status of Biblical women in an ongoing conversation about biblical woman’s relationship to self, to man, and to God. Be prepared for a ride. Very highly recommended.

There is no more persuasive a proponent of the coherence and relevance of the Bible than Judy Klitsner in her new (new-ish, I'm a little late on the review here) book, Subversive Sequels in the Bible.

The premise of the book is that when the Bible appears to repeat a story or contradict one narrative with another, it is making a point or offering a new, equally valid read of the same issue or situation.

Subversive Sequels is a remarkably lucid, clear, easy read. Despite being relatively short, it is packed with creative, original, mind-blowing reads of of stories both familiar and obscure. The book will be accessible to any reader, regardless of prior knowledge. For those familiar with the Bible, it will be a refreshing way to revisit familiar territory. For those new to Bible study, it will provide the most engrossing intro possible.

In each of the first five chapters, Klitsner explores a biblical story and in the second half of the chapter explores a second story, which serves as a subversive sequel to the first.

In my favorite example, Klitsner explores the Tower of Babel. Her conclusion, the same reached by many classical commentators, whom she consults quite a bit, is that the sin in Babel was the oppression of the nameless citizens of Babel. Closely examining narrative styles, specific words and phrases, Klitsner demonstrates pretty convincingly that the story of Israelite slavery in Egypt is a subversive sequel to Babel. In Babel, God acts to end the oppression. Through the example of the remarkably named midwives (compare with the completely unnamed citizen-slaves of Babel), the sequel encourages us to take matters into our own hands and act to end our own oppression.

The book is pretty much the greatest thing ever. So go read it. It's gonna make you say “Wow!” more times a day than you'd expect.

This is insightful, top-cabin Jewish biblical scholarship. The author, a biblical scholar and exegete, unpacks surprising and revelatory meaning when she compares various biblical stories. And she goes deep enough in an almost rabbinic sense to help readers understand her methods and conclusions. Klitsner's work is evidence that words thousands of years old continue to hold new and deep meaning for people who arrive long after they were written.

I have been privileged to study with Judy Klitsner on a number of occasions, including at Pardes, Hadar, JTS and Limmud. Every time I hear her give a lecture, I ask: how could I recreate the magic of that teaching to tell my friends about her main points? Finally, Judy has done that herself in this book. This represents an expansion of the thoughts and ideas she has been teaching for years, and it is a blessing that this exists for anyone who wants to take hold of it, anywhere in the world. You will never read the Bible in the same way once you catch a glimpse of Judy's method. I won't spoil the contents, but the juxtapositions she puts forth between Biblical narratives are simply brilliant. Enjoy this fantastic book.

Martin Lockshin, Professor of Jewish Studies, York University, Toronto, Canada

Klitsner combines classical Jewish close readings of biblical narratives with deep modern literary insights. The results are often astonishing.

Rabbi Daniel Landes, Director, Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem

Klitsner brings a new and gripping approach to the pivotal narrative of biblical women. Most compelling is how certain chapters that read as chronicles of exclusion and inequality evolve into stories of inclusion and empowerment.

Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, Professor of Bible, Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion

Subversive Sequels provocatively explores the intricate manner with which biblical texts challenge each other… [it] also examines the radical consequences of such exchanges.

In her new book, Subversive Sequels in the Bible: How Biblical Stories Mine and Undermine Each Other (Jewish Publication Society, 2009), Judy Klitsner explores how biblical stories act as sequels to one another: interpreting, continuing, and frequently subverting and undermining one another's assumptions and conclusions. In a fresh, original voice, Judy Klitsner illustrates the dynamic nature of biblical attitudes regarding issues of ongoing relevance, such as the self, gender relations, and relations between Jews and non-Jews.

In this excerpt from her book, Klitsner presents the narrative of Deborah and Jael, which in many ways acts as a “subversive sequel” to the fertility-centered stories of the early matriarchs of Genesis.

Even after our best efforts to decode the Bible’s sometimes difficult language and familiarize ourselves with its style, we may find ourselves distanced and at times offended by its ethos. For instance, how is a modern sensibility to relate to a text that has God proclaiming to woman, “to your husband is your desire and he shall rule over you?” How are we to understand man’s naming woman “the mother of all the living,” a label given in the wake of humanity’s disobedience—and of man’s resulting dominion over woman—and that seems to limit her definition to childbearing alone?

I propose a particular method of reading, which I refer to as the Bible’s “subversive sequels.” As if aware of its own problematics, the Bible engages in a lively interaction between its passages that allows for a widening of perspective and a sense of dynamic development throughout the canon. If certain gnawing theological or philosophical questions remain after studying one narrative, a later passage may revisit those questions, subjecting them to a complex process of inquiry, revision, and examination of alternative possibilities. Like all sequels, the subversive sequel continues and completes earlier stories. But it does so in ways that often undermine the very assumptions upon which the earlier stories were built as well as the conclusions these stories have reached.

To return to the example of the Bible’s women: the tent-dwelling matriarchs of Genesis seem to follow in Eve’s footsteps. They are almost exclusively focused on childbearing, and they are dependent on their husbands—their only conduits to God—for redemption. When they are unable to conceive, the matriarchs question their very worth as human beings, as in Rachel’s anguished cry to her husband, “Give me children or I shall die.”

In a radical revisiting of these narratives—a “subversive sequel”—the book of Judges presents a story of two women, in which there is no mention at all of infertility, childbirth, or spousal relations. Instead, we meet Deborah, religious and martial leader of Israel and Jael, political assassin.

Deborah is introduced as a woman of Lappidoth – literally, of torches. Barak, her general, has a name that means lightning. Their combined luminescence would extinguish the mighty Sisera, who had “oppressed Israel ruthlessly for twenty years” (Judg. 4:3). But sparks of irony find their way into the story as one of the flames is reluctant to shine: after Deborah conveys God’s wishes for Barak to go to battle, he agrees only on condition that Deborah will go with him. In this tale of reversals, not only are the spiritual positions of man and woman completely transposed (woman is now man’s conduit to God); man will not even take steps toward fulfilling God’s word without a reassuring feminine buffer.

After the battle is won, with the enemy Sisera still at large, a new heroine ascends the stage: Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite.

Jael’s story takes place in the tent, formerly the protected, interior space of the biblical matriarch. The Book of Judges, in its continued efforts to overhaul our assumptions about biblical woman, now takes aim at the primary symbol of woman’s narrow definition, the tent. Jael, like Sarah, is in her tent. But in a brazen rejection of earlier role delineations, Jael grabs hold of the tent’s very foundation, the tent pin. By using it as a weapon, she strikes not only at Sisera’s temple, but at the very notion of matriarchal limitation to the confines of the tent. With her action, Jael delivers a crushing blow both to the mighty general and to our stereotypes regarding biblical woman.

Together, Deborah and Jael expose a new and seemingly limitless gamut of women’s capabilities, which rings out in Deborah’s song of triumph:

“In the days of Jael pathways ceased; And wayfarers went by roundabout paths. Deliverance ceased…Till I Deborah arose…a mother in Israel!” (Judg. 5:6–7)

An oblique reference to Sarah, the woman of the tent, infuses Deborah’s poem with ironically seditious intent. The Hebrew words h-d-l orah, which literally mean a pathway that ceases, occur in only two verses in the Bible: in Deborah’s poem and in reference to Sarah’s infertility. When Sarah overheard the prediction of her pregnancy, the text informs us that “Abraham and Sarah were old… Sarah had ceased the menstrual periods, literally ‘the pathway,’ of women, hadal lihyot le-Sarah orah ka-nashim (Gen. 18:11). As a result, Sarah had scoffed at her own value (Gen. 18:12). Deborah uses the language of Sarah’s hopeless infertility, h-d-l orah, in an ironic manner, to refer to the Israelites, for whom traditional avenues of salvation have ceased. With her choice of words Deborah strongly hints that even when traditional “pathways” are closed off to both the Israelites and to women, there are new paths – unorthodox, unexpected, and previously unimagined – to pursue.

In the story of Deborah and Jael, the female protagonists do not merely speak of new paths; they embark on them as well. Despite the absence of children in the biblical record of her life, Deborah calls herself a “mother in Israel” (Judg. 5:7). She nurtures her people by prophesying, judging, and leading them to military victory. Jael, too, is a mother of sorts, using her tent to tend to the physical needs of others. But, like Deborah, she breaks all maternal molds, as Jael kills a man in order to save many others.

In this satirically subversive sequel to the early matriarchal stories, with their focus on tents and on childbearing, Deborah and Jael define motherhood in radically new ways. Different as they are from the tent-dwelling mothers, they too are blessed. Moreover, in the words of Deborah the prophetess:

Most blessed of women be Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite, more blessed than women in tents. (Judg. 5:24)

The story of Deborah and Jael provides an ironic, and extreme, counterweight to the narratives of the matriarchs of Genesis. When viewed as opposite poles of a very broad spectrum, these stories hint at a multitude of possibilities of feminine potential that lies between.

What emerges from a study of the Bible’s subversive sequels is that as the Bible repeatedly sets up its paradigms and then takes artful aim at them, woman’s story is constantly under review. In fact, no biblical woman may be labeled the definitive “biblical woman.” In the expansive gamut of her occupations and preoccupations, biblical woman is righteous and she is wicked; she is martial leader and she is chattel; she is a victim of rape and violence and she is a perpetrator of sexual harassment and violence. Woman is prophet and prostitute; midwife and murderer; maidservant and monarch. And when she so chooses and when she is able, she is, blessedly, the mother of all the living.