Adrien Janis Bledstein, "Dear Harold Bloom" LILITH Summer 1991, page 28

Dear Harold Bloom,

In your recent, sensational The Book of J (Grove Weidenfeld, 1990) you theorize that J, the "master" storyteller in Hebrew Scriptures, was a woman. [The notion of "J" arises from a well-accepted theory that the Torah is composed of several strands from different writers: J, E, P. D and finally R, the redactor who wove it all together.] It is thought that we owe to J such beautiful, astonishing biblical tales as the garden of Eden, Joseph and the coat of many colors. and Moses on Sinai.

You say that J creates as a character a Yahweh who is "an antithetical imp or sublime mischief-maker, in no way morally or spiritually superior to the builders of Babel. J's Yahweh," you contend, "is a child ... a powerful and uncanny male child, and he throws down what we build up."

You claim that J is "not a religious writer," and you do not take the biblical text seriously as religious expression. But I argue that by eliminating belief in the supernatural as a dimension of J's world view from your perception of the text, you do not realize that the butt of J's irony, the element of her style you most admire ("J essentially is a comic author," you write) is arrogant men who behave as if they are gods.

You imagine what J's creation story might have looked like before the redactor replaced it with the version we now have, and your invented cosmogony reads like the creation of a sensitive, exuberant little boy who feels overwhelmed by his mother. The child's Yahweh, a mighty projection of himself, of yourself, hurls phallic weapons, lightning and sword, subduing the feminine: the watery deeps which threaten to engulf him. A single blow and he eliminates a subservient male rival, Leviathan, while the Morning Stars sing, like women greeting a hero.

May I playfully conjecture the function of this cosmology in your life? The boy emerges as victor against what for him is the awesome, unruly feminine. This imaginative release allows the seasoned man to invent a J who is a female double of himself: a woman colleague with a wry sense of humor, part of an elite institution, somewhat alienated from the current political situation and from religion. Irreverent in her depiction of Yahweh, her deity is an imp– something like you yourself.

While readers may delight in your thesis that J is an ironic woman, part of your purpose is clearly blasphemy. You tweak the noses of biblical scholars; you tease feminists by presenting the greatest storyteller of the Bible as a woman who in her urbane sophistication cares little about issues of injustice and oppression; you bait believers. Still, I think there is value in imagining that J is a woman. I imagine that, too.

I envision her as a daughter of David, and as the Court Historian. Princesses of the ancient Near East are sometimes described as writers. As the Bible says, both Jezebel and Esther wrote (l Kings 21:8; Esther 9:29). We also have copies of letters and prayers from the hand of the princess/priestess Enheduanna who wrote a thousand years before J. In wall paintings, women in Egypt are depicted as scribes.

J's stories mock heroic types, but they also display compassion (as with Esau's grief on losing the blessing). She introduces women like Sarah, Lot's daughters, Rebekah, Tamar, Ruth and Naomi, who in order to survive under life-threatening circumstances use female trickster-means (typical of goddesses) to see that Yahweh's blessing is nourished. She features complicated men, like Joab in his relations with David.

My J's transcendent, affectionately ironic stance arises from her mature appreciation of the different perceptions of men and women in the patriarchal culture of her time. J's stories arise not from an essential, natural difference between women and men, but from the way a woman bred and schooled in a male-dominated culture might view men, especially heroic types, from the underside.

To me, J's "affectionate irony" arises from an appreciation of human vulnerability and encompasses a healing sense of ambiguities. She understands that the pursuit of justice, cooperation, compassion and peaceful resolutions takes ironic turns in a world governed by imperious men. The power of her vision arises perhaps because she' s a person who has endured suffering (maybe as a victim of rape and incest), who in recovering wrote the history of her family and nation from their beginning in Eden.

My J' s perception of Yahweh is different from that of her father, the psalm-writer, King David. My J has a subversive voice, that of a worshiper of a Yahweh who invigorates and sustains all living. From this perspective, J satirizes those who confuse charismatic David or themselves with Yahweh.

I propose that J, one of the earliest voices we hear in Hebrew Scriptures, may be Tamar, the daughter of David.

B'shalom Oovrachah, Adrien Janis Bledstein

Adrien Janis Bledstein leads Torah study in Chicago, and is completing a book: Divine Satire and the Bible's "Master" Storyteller.