I was fortunate enough not to grow up in the generation that was taught to picture God as peering down at us, waiting for us to slip up, make a mistake, fail to do a good deed, so he could then shake his finger at us and give us a good scolding. My parents told me stories of coming to Sabbath School when they were young, listing the good deeds they had done, and then having them GRAPHED from week to week! The kind of God who demands that isn’t likely to smile a lot, much less laugh.

“The other reality is that my parents don’t want to eat non-Korean food; they want to hold on to what they know. What else do they have but the taste of those familiar dishes”, writes Korean-American novelist Chang-Rae Lee in “Magical Dinners: An Immigrant Thanksgiving”, in The New Yorker (69). Lee explores in this personal essay how the deep memories associated with food informed his family’s immigrant experience. With little money for luxuries, the family could not afford to eat out often [“We dine out maybe four times a year,” recalls Lee (69)].

At the heart of a story about keeping and breaking covenants, revenge, and ritual execution is the poignant action of a heartbroken, noble mother. That Rizpah and her two sons are named (whereas the five grandsons also slaughtered are not) suggests that who she is and what she does is of utmost importance to the story as a whole.

Literary critics, not least the one to whom I am married, remind me that a popular theory within literary criticism is the notion that all stories fall under the rubric of a group of larger meta-narratives. Several well-known genres include that of the journey (epitomized by The Odyssey), the coming of age or maturation, the tragedy, the romance, as well as several others depending on which school of thought you lean toward. In this week’s lesson Abiathar, one of the lesser-known biblical characters, is highlighted.