Three years ago, my mum passed away in her early 50s. She was kind, light-hearted, caring and sociable. She liked people, listened to them, and spent much of her life helping others. She would never have described herself as a scholar.
Yet, quietly, almost on the side of everything else, she studied Nach, the Hebrew acronym for Nevi’im and Ketuvim – the Prophets and Writings. Each morning, after praying, she would sit at our glass kitchen table with a big mug of milky tea and a green ArtScroll Tanach (Bible). She worked through one chapter a day, listening to an online class and filling notebooks with notes. Then she got on with her day. She continued through a treacherous illness and tremendous, almost paralysing pain.
That is why I wrote about these biblical personalities for her third yahrzeit. The more I returned to them, the more remarkable and relatable they seemed.
The Five Books of Moses – the Torah – end with the Jewish People on the border of the Land of Israel. The Prophets begin as they cross into it. What follows is what happened as the nation settled its land, fighting wars, establishing a monarchy, flourishing and floundering as a society, with prophets to challenge the kings and the people. It depicts how they then suffered in exile and yearned for return. Nach contains politics, prophecy, poetry and a unique form of biblical philosophy.
Its stories travelled far, conquering the West and far beyond. Its verses also resonated with individuals throughout the ages. When Ernest Shackleton’s ship was crushed by Antarctic ice in 1915, one page he tore from his Bible and kept contained God’s questions to Job about ice and frost.
King David’s grief over his mutinous son Absalom so moved Rabbi Chaim Shmulevitz, a Lithuanian Talmudic scholar born in the early 20th century, that he would descend into the valley below Jerusalem’s Old City and pray beside Absalom’s tomb, despite how culturally different his own world seemed from the violent intrigues of the ancient royal Israelite court. If King David was so close to his mutinous son, surely God should be kind to His people.
Esther, concealing her Jewish identity in the colourful Persian court, became a resonant figure for Sephardic Jews forced to convert in Spain and Portugal. Inquisition records, meticulously kept, show that some observed the Fast of Esther at unimaginable risk.
Jeremiah, imprisoned as Jerusalem lay under Babylonian siege, nevertheless bought a field and sealed the deed, an act of faith that houses and fields would yet again be bought in the land, and echoed in the constant building projects and agricultural cultivation one witnesses there today.
These are ancient stories, but not remote ones. They are filled with fear and courage, bereavement and hope, responsibility and pain. Their figures govern kingdoms, fight battles, lose loved ones, make mistakes, write poetry and pray. Since the horrors and heroism of October 7, those verses have acquired a heart-wrenching resonance.
Yet, there is so much more to ask. Why were Ezekiel’s prophecies so vivid and imaginative, his language, as Elie Wiesel put it, “disturbing and enchanting” all at once? Elijah and Elisha, unusually among biblical prophets, roamed the Northern Kingdom as miracle-workers. What was that job? What character trait propelled Ruth, through bereavement, migration and poverty, along the path that ultimately led to King David? How could the strange Book of Job, whose meaning baffled even great thinkers, offer comfort to people in pain?
Those are the questions I explore in Snapshots of the Spirit, eight short essays, each only two pages long, written in my mum’s memory. More than anything, it is a fresh window into these towering, albeit understudied, biblical personalities.
My mum would not have made much of her own learning. She studied her chapter, filled her notebooks, drank her tea and carried on caring for everyone around her. I miss her terribly. This is my small tribute to her. As King Solomon asked: “A noble, battling woman, who can find her?”
For a PDF copy of the booklet, please email:
gavrielcohndt@gmail.com
Gav works is senior consultant at Roath PR. He also writes regularly on Jewish thought and history
To get more from community, click here to sign up for our free community newsletter.