GOD'S MASTERPIECE MATER

Bountiful Offerings

I

is high season for Genesis-related books, with
more than a baker's dozen of tomes now on the
shelves, or available from publishers — some new
and some reissued to coincide with the Bill Moyers
series.
Some of the titles are directly related to the show,
including the Moyers companion book that includes
,—?the unabridged conversations from the series, and
the resource guide for those looking to establish their
own study groups, co-edited by Christopher M.
Leighton, of the Institute for Christian and Jewish
Studies.
If the nation's appetite for spirituality is as sharply
honed as Bill Moyers believes, there'll be plenty at
the table for the literary feast.
• Genesis: A Living Conversation, by Bill Moy-
ers
ers (Doubleday, $29.95)

• Talking About Genesis: A Resource Guide

(Doubleday, $5.95)

• The Genesis of Ethics: How the Tormented
Family of Genesis Leads Us to Moral Develop-
ment, by Burton L. Visotzky (Crown, $20)
• Reading the Book: Making the Bible a Time-
less Text, by Burton L. Visotzky (Schocken, $13)
• Wrestling with the Angels: What Genesis
Teaches Us About Our Spiritual Identity, Sex-
,- uality and Personal Relationships, by Naomi H.

Rosenblatt and Joshua Horwitz (Delta, $12.95)

• Our Fathers' Wells: A Personal Encounter
With The Myths of Genesis, by Peter Pitzele

(HarperSanFrancisco, $12)

"One does not march into the America of 1996 with an
interfaith aspiration ... without realizing that there are
going to be elements that are not going to agree with this
approach," said the former Johnson White House col-
league of Mr. Moyers. He was talking about those who
feel they hold a monopoly on God's word.
Mr. Evans, who grew up Jewish in the South, is no
stranger to issues of religious tolerance. "I remember [my
grandmother] said to me, 'At some point you're going to be
asked, "Do you believe in Jesus?" and, 'What church do
you attend?' And she said, 'You'll have to be ready to teach,
because you'll be one of the few Jews they'll encounter.'
"So you could say that this has resonated with me my
whole life," said Mr. Evans, the author of The Provin-
cials: A Personal History of Jews in the South, among
other books.
Revson agreed to pitch in $500,000 toward the $1.6
million cost of the series. The other fenders — s11 from
the private sector — included the Mutual of America T He
Insurance Co., the Samuel Bronfrnan Foundation, the
Joseph Meyerhoff Memorial Trusts, the Nathan Cum-
mings Foundation, and several others.
Part of Revson's money went toward the companion
piece, the 175-page Talking About Genesis resource guide
that Mr. Leighton co-edited with writer Sandee
Brawarsky. The guide is filled with essays from noted
theologians of varied faiths, discussion questions and ex-
ercises for groups. Mr. Leighton wanted it to take a tal-
mudic approach that forced readers to butt up against
different perspectives on each section under debate. "We
wanted the text to literally jump off the page," he said.
"For a variety of reasons, I think what we configured
is a very disappointing approximation of what we imag-
ined," partly because of the size of the book, said Mr.
Leighton, who doesn't mince words.

• Genesis: As It Is Written,

(essays by novelists and poets),
edited by David Rosenberg
(HarperCollins, $20)
• Biblical Women Un

\

bound: New Counter Tales,

by Norma Rosen (Jewish Pub-
lication Society, $29.95)

• The Beginning of De-
sire: Reflections on Genesis,

by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg (Doubleday/Image,
$15.95)

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• Self; Struggle and Change: Family Conflict
Stories in Genesis and their Healing Insights
for our Lives, by Norman J. Cohen (Jewish Lights,

The progenitor:
Rabbi Burton L. Visolzky's
original Genesis study group inspired
Bill Moyers to film the TV series.

Still, WNET-TV in New York, which is presenting the
series, already has received about 85,000 requests for the
guide, which will retail for a subsidized price of $5.95,
with discounts or complimentary copies made available
to some groups.
In Baltimore, 27 churches and synagogues have agreed
to use the guide to conduct six-week discussion groups
among their members, according to Mr. Leighton. The
10-year-old Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies
that he heads is working with organizations around the
country to achieve similar results.
With the original group of religious leaders who
watched some of the episodes this spring, "We wanted to
test what had been a claim made for the series itself,"
said Mr. Leighton. "Namely, that the series was going to
model the possibilities for interfaith, interracial dialogue."
Here's what he heard when his clergy started hash-
ing out Genesis: "At first, they talked about it by show-
ing that they knew what, for example, Augustine had to
say about the story."
Then, they got more personal, and began to reveal how
they struggle with the stories, and are unnerved by them,
said Mr. Leighton, himself a Protestant minister.
Similarly, when Washington psychologist Naomi
Rosenblatt first organized a Bible discussion group among
a bunch of U.S. senators more than a dozen years ago,
she found them "a lot more cautious before exposing in-
ner thoughts and feelings."
A friend of Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), Ms. Rosenblatt
commended him for having the guts to bring Christians
and Jews together to talk about the Bible. "Naomi, why
don't you come up to my office?" the lawmaker told the
psychologist, an Israeli native who appears in Mr. Moy-
ers' series. "PE supply the senators; you supply the Bible."
"What to me is interesting," said Ms. Rosenblatt, au-
thor of the recently released Wrestling With Angels, "is
that in a year of politics in which there's so much strife,
this is one place where Democrats and Republicans can
come together."
Asked about her highest hopes for the Moyers project,
she has a ready answer. "I hope that this series will bring
Jews back to the book — the greatest contribution they've
ever given to the world, and to themselves."
Mr. Leighton looks even higher, to the possibility that
"it gives rise to a vast assortment of experiments around
this country in which people of very different economic, re-
ligious and racial backgrounds converge on the text, and
discover the exciting possibility of learning more about
themselves ... which then gives rise to a demand for more."
GOD'S THEATER page 52

$16.95)

• In the Beginning: A
New Interpretation of
Genesis, by Karen Arm-

strong (Knopf, $20)

• Genesis —Transla-
tion and Commentary,

by Robert Alter (W.W.
Norton, $25)

• The Old Testa-
ment: The King James
Version, introduced by George Steiner (Knopf, $35)
• The Five Books of Miriam: A Woman's
Commentary on the Torah, by Ellen Frankel

C.0
CD,

(Putnam/Grosset, $30)

• Ancient Secrets: Using the Stories of the
Bible to Improve Our Everyday Lives, by Rab-

bi Levi Meier (Villard, $20)

• Noah's Flood: The Genesis Story in West-
ern Thought, by Noi man Cohn (Yale University

.

CC
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Press, $25)

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Compiled by Judith Bolton-Fasman and the
Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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