Blessings of the Tanakh

Hebraica Veritas

Ken Bazyn

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9798385214204
  9798385214211
• eBook ISBN:
  9798385214228
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Religious Poetry
• Index: Literature

Ever since God called Abram from Ur, he has conveyed his revelation and displayed his splendors to the chosen Hebrew people. Bazyn's introduction incorporates fictional first-person recreations of Cain's murder of Abel and Rachel's theft of the household idols. His poems investigate such pivotal moments as Jacob's wrestling with an angel; the Israelites' faint-heartedness and desire to return to Egypt in the wilderness; the rise of monarchy and its alarming consequences; the prophet Elijah's troubled relationship with King Ahab; Jonah's futile flight from a call to preach repentance in Nineveh. Not afraid to tackle complex, difficult-to-resolve theological issues, Bazyn weighs in on faith, judgment, idolatry, free will, suffering, repentance, the coming Messiah, and resurrection. His taut, condensed style, thick with intriguing metaphors, probes the believer's conduct and motivation: Why does God at times seem so distant and hidden? What does it feel like to be persecuted? To aid in discerning each poem's meaning, Bazyn has added allusive, revelatory 35mm black-and-white photographs. Whether as a Jew, a Christian, or an unbeliever who is curious about the Tanakh's significance, you are drawn into this net of words, cut to the quick by standing naked and exposed before your maker like Job.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Rachel: Missing Clay Gods
• Faith:
• An Addendum to Psalm 53
• Hebrew Hasid
• If You Don’t Do Good
• The Art of the Snare
• So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt
• One Metropolis Spared?
• Sodom’s Hourglass
• In a Prophetic Tone
• Contrariwise
• The Selfish Gene
• Oh, for the Fleshpots of Egypt
• The Waterless Place
• The Faithless Shepherd
• Idolators
• Nonpareil: Who Can Be Compared to You?
• God Still Stands Indignant
• Here Come the Diminutive and Disfigured
• Golem
• Monarchist Pretensions
• Ahab to Elijah
• On Bonhoeffer’s Participation in the Plot against Hitler
• To Tarshish I Fly
• A Ghoulish Gift
• Fractured Dreams
• SS Mutter
• Eden
• This Hermetically-Sealed Universe
• Am I Responsible?
• The Road Is Arduous
• Transitions
• The Wind Comes
• Geometric Figures in Whimsy
• Wet vs. Dry
• Tears: Nature’s Safety Valve
• Exodus 28: Twelve Tribal Stones
• Notes from My Nervous Breakdown
• The Wart of God
• Wagging Manikin Faces
• Jacob’s Kuntz
• A Little Yiddish Humor
• Joseph
• Yahweh vs. Horus
• You Have Become My Enemy
• In Anguish: God, You Schlemiel
• What! Is the Mocking Bird Here?
• What Does God Do?
• Inspired by Zechariah’s Visions
• Messiah Coos and Mourns
• Ezekiel’s Dry Bones
• Listing of Photographs
• Bibliography