"Language of the Limp and the Wound"
by Yael Fisch
With Yosefa’s book, we now have nuanced poetic language with which we may read this homily. The Rabbis were not prophets, nor singers or poets. They were strong readers. They saw reading as an opportunity to stretch out biblical scenes into their present.
Modern Mirrors
We gather from here that more than she wants to say something about prophecy, Raz wants to convey something about the history of its reception, about the way modern poets, and perhaps moderns, in general, think about prophets and prophecy and incorporate that thought into their poetry, utilizing poetic language or the characters of prophets.
Weak Prophecy As A Critique of Just-So Secularization Stories
In the book’s conclusion, Raz offers weak prophecy as an alternative, reparative model, offering us doubt and circumspection instead of confident certainty, whether theological or nationalist. I would also suggest a second, complementary payoff. To me, the positing of an ancient source that is dogmatic, masculine, and assertively authoritative is one of modernity’s favorite alibis for its own violence.
Listening to the Static: An Author Response
by Yosefa Raz
The white spaces on the page can be spaces both of death and breath. Both are texts of drowning, the Egyptian enemies, their horses and chariots, and the African slaves, who were thrown overboard the slave ship in an insurance scam. Somehow, I believe, through this unconscious visual echo, these enemies and victims meet in God’s lament to the angels, (though perhaps this lament is addressed to all of us who sing victory songs): “my creations are drowning in the sea, and you are singing song?”