Tag Archives: Exodus

Drawn Forth to Eat the History Feast

By Robin Bates | Published: April 19, 2019

Saturday – Passover I asked my poet friend Norman Finkelstein for a good Passover poem and he alerted me to this one by Harvey Shapiro, found in Mountain, Fire, Thornbush (Swallow, 1961). The Passover seder, of course, revolves around remembering, and Shapiro’s poem points out that remembering was already part of the initial Exodus events. […]

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A Positive Spin on the Golden Calf

By Robin Bates | Published: October 15, 2017

Rabbi Jacob Staub’s account of the golden calf is much different, and a lot more fun, than the Exodus version.

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A Cradle Yet Shall Save the Earth

By Robin Bates | Published: August 27, 2017

Mark Twain has fun in “Huckleberry Finn” with today’s New Testament reading, which is about Moses being discovered in “the bushrushers.” Victor Hugo also has a charming poem about the incident.

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Must I Dwell in Slavery’s Night?

By Robin Bates | Published: April 8, 2017

In anticipation of Passover, I share a poem composed by the African American slave George Moses Horton.

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Lift Every Voice and Sing

By Robin Bates | Published: January 14, 2017

Both Martin Luther King and James Weldon Johnson, in “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” drew strength and courage from the Book of Exodus.

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Death & Miracles & Stars without Number

By Robin Bates | Published: April 23, 2016

In Norman Finkelstein’s account of the Passover, death and miracles are bound up together. It is an uneasy combination, calling upon us to look at our own complicity in the world’s evils.

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The Joads & Steinbeck’s Lenten Message

By Robin Bates | Published: February 27, 2016

“The Grapes of Wrath” has a Lenten message with the Joad family lost in the wilderness, led by the Moses/Jesus figure Jim Casy. After Casy is killed, Tom Joad becomes the apostle who takes his vision of a transcendent humankind to the wider world.

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The Bush of Faith Resists the Flames

By Robin Bates | Published: March 3, 2013

Yakov Azriel’s poem on Moses and the burning bush contrasts scorching fire with nourishing faith.

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