WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.100 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:07.100 --> 00:00:08.150 align:middle line:90% Thanks, very much Gail. 00:00:08.150 --> 00:00:09.560 align:middle line:90% Thank you all. 00:00:09.560 --> 00:00:12.680 align:middle line:84% I'm glad to know that some were here yesterday. 00:00:12.680 --> 00:00:14.750 align:middle line:84% I will try to avoid telling the same jokes 00:00:14.750 --> 00:00:17.660 align:middle line:90% as I told them yesterday. 00:00:17.660 --> 00:00:20.840 align:middle line:84% It does feel very homey to me to be back here, 00:00:20.840 --> 00:00:23.300 align:middle line:84% not least because just in the last one minute, 00:00:23.300 --> 00:00:25.580 align:middle line:84% I met somebody I graduated high school with 00:00:25.580 --> 00:00:27.920 align:middle line:84% and somebody I was at college with. 00:00:27.920 --> 00:00:30.410 align:middle line:84% Arizona, it's one of those places that people wind up, 00:00:30.410 --> 00:00:34.040 align:middle line:84% I think because your weather or something. 00:00:34.040 --> 00:00:35.480 align:middle line:90% I have no agenda. 00:00:35.480 --> 00:00:38.180 align:middle line:84% I don't have any particular lecture 00:00:38.180 --> 00:00:42.140 align:middle line:84% to give you I truly and honestly promise you 00:00:42.140 --> 00:00:43.533 align:middle line:90% that I would like to be useful. 00:00:43.533 --> 00:00:45.200 align:middle line:84% If there is anything you want to ask me, 00:00:45.200 --> 00:00:47.450 align:middle line:90% I'll be happy to respond to it. 00:00:47.450 --> 00:00:50.420 align:middle line:84% And I promise you that anything you ask me, 00:00:50.420 --> 00:00:55.100 align:middle line:84% I will try my best to answer respectfully 00:00:55.100 --> 00:00:58.040 align:middle line:90% and I'll try to project to. 00:00:58.040 --> 00:01:00.980 align:middle line:84% If you have trouble hearing, there 00:01:00.980 --> 00:01:06.650 align:middle line:84% is a seat here where you could move up closer if you want to. 00:01:06.650 --> 00:01:14.390 align:middle line:84% So we will now have questions from the audience or a prolonged 00:01:14.390 --> 00:01:15.710 align:middle line:90% embarrassing silence. 00:01:15.710 --> 00:01:19.518 align:middle line:90% 00:01:19.518 --> 00:01:21.940 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:01:21.940 --> 00:01:23.500 align:middle line:90% What drew me to David? 00:01:23.500 --> 00:01:27.670 align:middle line:84% A silly answer would be I had a contract to write the book. 00:01:27.670 --> 00:01:30.400 align:middle line:84% It is the only book I have ever written 00:01:30.400 --> 00:01:32.830 align:middle line:90% that was someone else's idea. 00:01:32.830 --> 00:01:36.130 align:middle line:84% A wonderful editor at Random House-Schocken 00:01:36.130 --> 00:01:40.060 align:middle line:84% Jonathan Rosen, a terrific writer himself, 00:01:40.060 --> 00:01:43.600 align:middle line:84% said they were starting a series of Jewish lives, 00:01:43.600 --> 00:01:46.690 align:middle line:84% and he offered me the greatest life. 00:01:46.690 --> 00:01:48.940 align:middle line:84% I think probably, the greatest life 00:01:48.940 --> 00:01:53.620 align:middle line:84% that has ever been attributed to anyone, real or fictional. 00:01:53.620 --> 00:01:58.740 align:middle line:84% And to express what drew me to David, 00:01:58.740 --> 00:02:01.140 align:middle line:84% I'll give you a little personal information. 00:02:01.140 --> 00:02:03.930 align:middle line:84% I grew up in a small town where my family-- 00:02:03.930 --> 00:02:06.870 align:middle line:84% a resort town where my family had been for a few generations. 00:02:06.870 --> 00:02:08.699 align:middle line:84% My grandfather had a very well-known bar 00:02:08.699 --> 00:02:11.340 align:middle line:84% in the town, the Broadway Tavern. 00:02:11.340 --> 00:02:15.927 align:middle line:84% And before that, in the 20s, he had been a bootlegger. 00:02:15.927 --> 00:02:17.760 align:middle line:84% When I say he was a gangster, my aunt Thelma 00:02:17.760 --> 00:02:21.660 align:middle line:84% says, Robert, he was in the liquor business, 00:02:21.660 --> 00:02:25.320 align:middle line:90% and it happened to be prohibition. 00:02:25.320 --> 00:02:32.400 align:middle line:84% And in that town, my family was nominally orthodox Jews, 00:02:32.400 --> 00:02:35.070 align:middle line:84% as we belong to the Orthodox synagogue. 00:02:35.070 --> 00:02:39.390 align:middle line:84% And we had two sets of dishes and we drank the blood 00:02:39.390 --> 00:02:45.330 align:middle line:84% of the Gentile b-- out-- but we were surprising-- 00:02:45.330 --> 00:02:47.250 align:middle line:90% Only joking. 00:02:47.250 --> 00:02:51.660 align:middle line:84% We were surprisingly assimilated but we also 00:02:51.660 --> 00:02:52.620 align:middle line:90% had these other things. 00:02:52.620 --> 00:03:01.940 align:middle line:84% And the strains, the contradictions in that, 00:03:01.940 --> 00:03:06.770 align:middle line:84% gave me a very typical, not very unusual, 00:03:06.770 --> 00:03:10.910 align:middle line:84% skeptical impatient attitude toward religion. 00:03:10.910 --> 00:03:16.520 align:middle line:84% And there are these two figures in the Hebrew Bible. 00:03:16.520 --> 00:03:19.910 align:middle line:90% One is Moses. 00:03:19.910 --> 00:03:23.930 align:middle line:84% Moses carries around-- You think of these two people 00:03:23.930 --> 00:03:27.742 align:middle line:84% as like medieval Saints carrying their gridiron or their rods, 00:03:27.742 --> 00:03:28.700 align:middle line:90% or whatever they carry. 00:03:28.700 --> 00:03:31.640 align:middle line:90% 00:03:31.640 --> 00:03:35.960 align:middle line:84% Moses carries two big pieces of stone. 00:03:35.960 --> 00:03:42.700 align:middle line:84% And on those two big pieces of stone, the law. 00:03:42.700 --> 00:03:43.440 align:middle line:90% Laws. 00:03:43.440 --> 00:03:45.360 align:middle line:90% And 10 laws only begin it. 00:03:45.360 --> 00:03:47.730 align:middle line:90% Deuteronomy is all laws. 00:03:47.730 --> 00:03:49.440 align:middle line:90% And that's the Torah. 00:03:49.440 --> 00:03:51.150 align:middle line:90% That's law. 00:03:51.150 --> 00:03:57.310 align:middle line:84% The other guy has in his hands a harp. 00:03:57.310 --> 00:04:00.160 align:middle line:90% He sings, and that's the Psalms. 00:04:00.160 --> 00:04:02.720 align:middle line:84% So on the one hand, there's law, on the other hand, 00:04:02.720 --> 00:04:03.880 align:middle line:90% there's worship. 00:04:03.880 --> 00:04:05.930 align:middle line:84% One hand, there's do this, don't do that. 00:04:05.930 --> 00:04:07.540 align:middle line:84% And if you do this, you'll get acne. 00:04:07.540 --> 00:04:16.670 align:middle line:84% And on the other hand, there's, I feel worship or I feel sad, 00:04:16.670 --> 00:04:18.440 align:middle line:90% or my enemies are against me. 00:04:18.440 --> 00:04:20.899 align:middle line:84% And you sing what you're feeling. 00:04:20.899 --> 00:04:26.060 align:middle line:84% And there is no question which I respond to. 00:04:26.060 --> 00:04:31.580 align:middle line:84% So that's a more serious way of saying why-- when Jonathan 00:04:31.580 --> 00:04:37.130 align:middle line:84% suggested this to me, why my memories of the books of Samuel 00:04:37.130 --> 00:04:39.030 align:middle line:90% were so powerful for me. 00:04:39.030 --> 00:04:41.990 align:middle line:84% And I discovered through a great work of scholarship, 00:04:41.990 --> 00:04:44.000 align:middle line:84% Louis Ginsburg's Legends of the Jews, 00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:47.270 align:middle line:84% I discovered that the stories that 00:04:47.270 --> 00:04:50.690 align:middle line:84% were made up by these hundreds and hundreds of years 00:04:50.690 --> 00:04:54.980 align:middle line:84% of brilliant and demented pedants, these people who 00:04:54.980 --> 00:04:57.890 align:middle line:84% had been thinking about this material, 00:04:57.890 --> 00:04:59.970 align:middle line:90% were also great stories. 00:04:59.970 --> 00:05:02.270 align:middle line:90% So I was partly just drawn-- 00:05:02.270 --> 00:05:03.710 align:middle line:84% Like any writer, I was just drawn 00:05:03.710 --> 00:05:06.280 align:middle line:90% to really terrific material. 00:05:06.280 --> 00:05:07.000 align:middle line:90%