The Axis of Evil Walks into a Bar

CULTURE [HUMOR] THEAXISOFEVIL WALKSINTOABAR The AXIS OF EVIL COMEDY TOUR, Comedy Central, March2007.Commentary by Paul Lewis A ccording to Ahmed, a member of the Axis of Evil Comedy troupe, deciding which terrorist organization to join can be difficult. “There’s so many … out there—Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda. … Is it like rushing a fraternity ?” Presenting this as a question defines the spirit of this humor: why would anyone assume that an Arab or Muslim American would know anything about what it’s like to become a terrorist? By transmuting pain and insult into laughter, Ahmed, Maz Jobrani, on this question in a work as bold in concept as it is modest in manner. Torah, he points out, uses the same word, aron, for the cabinet that contains the tablets of the law—the Ark of the Covenant—as for the coffin or ossuary that contains the bones of Joseph. From the Red Sea to Mount Sinai, the Israelites carried only one ark, the Ark of Joseph’s Bones. From Mount Sinai to the Jordan, they carried two. “The presence of the two Arks,” Segal writes, “underscores the gap between the forgiving Joseph and the punishing deity; it underscores the quite different basis on which the Israelites’ relation to each Ark is founded.” Segal imagines the desertwandering Israelites asking themselves, “Are we as God sees us, or as Joseph saw us?” The Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) offers several powerful starting points for a critique of the violence of God. But neither Job nor Kohelet (Hebrew name of the book of Ecclesiastes and of its writer) is an Israelite, while Lamentations, Psalm 44, and kindred passages in prophecy constitute, on the whole, complaints against God rather than a fully reasoned critique. Genesis 22 comes closest to a genuine critique, and it lies at the heart of the heart of Torah. To be sustained, however , such a critique must not be left in isolation. Here is where Segal’s originality shows through most tellingly. Even secular, consciously literary critics rarely imagine a biblical writer or redactor consciously attributing one view to God and another to himself, much less employing this difference to sustain a critique of divinity through as extended a narrative as the Hexateuch (the first six books of the Bible, Genesis through Joshua). Through his success in finding this split perspective deep within the text of the Hexateuch , Segal formulates an exceptionally cogent answer to the problem that the violence of the God of Israel poses for the Jewish religion, past and present. Joseph, Torah’s paragon of compassion, becomes, for the ancient writer whose work Segal recovers, the vehicle for a running critique of God. To describe how this critique unfolds would take more space than this review affords. Suffice it to say that Segal’s opening insight enables an arrestingly original reading of the entire Hexateuch, followed by a rather stunning afterword entitled “The Implications of This Reading for the Jesus Story.” Jerome M. Segal is a philosopher by training and Senior Research Scholar at the University of Maryland’s Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy. For twentyfive years, he has been deeply involved in the quest for Palestinian-Israeli peace, most notably at the time of the peace initiative of 1988. His reading, at once keenly analytic and politically relevant, reflects both his intellectual training and his existential commitments. But Segal is also Torah teacher at the Fabrangen Cheder, a Silver Springs Sunday school for children and teen-agers. I can offer no higher praise for this work than to say that it speaks with perfect poise to all three of these audiences at the same time. It is, if I may put it so, a work with a great set of futures. n Jack Miles is Distinguished Professor of English and Religious Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God. 76 T I K K U N W W W. T I K K U N . O R G J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 NIGEL PARRY 9Culture_final.qxd 6/5/07 11:45 AM Page 76 J U...