Steinbeck's "East of Eden"

[Sitaram]

Sometimes we become fascinated with a particular author or book
because of something that someone casually mentions to us, or
because of something we have read in reference to that book or
author.


It was a book by rabbi Harold Kushner, which mentions Steinbeck's
"East of Eden," that first inspired me to acquire the novel and begin to
read.


Here is my favorite passage from "East of Eden". My favorite phrase
in this passage is "prancing and farting," so comical and yet strangely
appropriate in regard to many fanatical believers.

I substitute the "@" for the letter "a" to foil certain squeamish censorship
software.

http://sulekha.com/chpost.asp?forum=...ow=0&cid=73196


Excerpt from "East of Eden"
by John Steinbeck (1902-2002)
Penguin Books

ISBN 0-14-200423-5

Chapter 19, pg. 216


A new country seems to follow a pattern. First come the openers,
strong and brave and rather childlike. They can take care of
themselves in a wilderness, but they are naive and helpless against
men, and perhaps that is why they went out in the first place. When
the rough edges are worn off the new land, businessmen and lawyers
come in to help with the development - to solve problems of
ownership, usually by removing the temptations to themselves. And
finally comes culture, which is entertainment, relaxation, transport out
of the pain of living. And culture can be on any level, and is.


The church and the wh@rehouse arrived in the Far West
simultaneously. And each would have been horrified to think it was a
different facet of the same thing. But surely they were both intended
to accomplish the same thing: the singing, the devotion, the poetry of
the churches took a man out of his bleakness for a time, and so did
the brothels. The sectarian churches came in swinging, cocky and loud
and confident. Ignoring the laws of debt and repayment, they built
churches which couldn't be paid for in a hundred years. The sects
fought evil, true enough, but they also fought each other with a fine
lustiness. They fought at the turn of a doctrine. Each happily believed
all the others were bound for hell in a basket. And each for all its
bumptiousness brought with it the same thing: the Scripture on which
our ethics, our art and poetry and our relationships are built. It took a
smart man to know where the difference lay between the sects, but
anyone could see what they had in common. And they brought music -
maybe not the best, but the form and sense of it. And they brought
conscience, or, rather, nudged the dozing conscience. They were not
pure, but they had a potential of purity, like a soiled white shirt. And
any man could make something pretty fine of it within himself. True
enough, the Reverend Billing, when they caught up with him, turned
out to be a thief, an adulterer, a libertine, and a zoophilist, but that
didn't change the fact that he had communicated some good things to
a great number of receptive people. Billing went to jail, but no one
ever arrested the good things he had released. And it doesn't matter
much that his motive was impure. He used good material and some of
it stuck. I use Billing only as an outrageous example. The honest
preachers had energy and go. They fought the devil, no holds barred,
boots and eye-gouging permitted. You might get the idea that they
howled truth and beauty the way a seal bites out the National Anthem
on a row of circus horns. But some of the truth and beauty remained,
and the anthem was recognizable. The sects did more than this,
though. They built the structure of social life in the Salinas Valley. The
church supper is the grandfather of the country club, just as the
Thursday poetry reading in the basement under the vestry sired the
little theatre.


While the churches, bringing the sweet smell of piety for the soul,
came in prancing and farting like brewery horses in bock-beer time,
the sister evangelism, with release and joy for the body, crept in
silently and greyly, with its head bowed and its face covered.


You may have seen the spangled palaces of sin and fancy dancing in
the false West of the movies, and maybe some of them existed -- but
not in the Salinas Valley. The brothels were quiet, orderly, and
circumspect. Indeed, if after hearing the ecstatic shrieks of climactic
conversation against the thumping beat of the melodeon you had
stood under the window of a wh@rehouse and listened to the low
decorous voices, you would have been likely to confuse the identities
of the two ministries. The brothel was accepted while it was not
admitted.




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http://www.sulekha.com/chpost.asp?fo...ophy&cid=84659

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How Good Do We Have to Be?

- A New Understanding of Guilt and Forgiveness

by Reform Rabbi Harold S. Kushner

ISBN 0-316-50741-5


Towards the end of this magnificent little book, Rabbi Kushner
mentions an anecdote from Steinbeck's novel "East of Eden" (to be
found on page 169 of the hard cover edition of Kushner's book).
Smack in the middle of Steinbeck's novel (and mentioned again at the
end of the novel), is some dialogue from the Chinese cook, a
character described as the "moral anchor" of the novel. The cook once
joined several other Chinese gentlemen in a two year study of Biblical
Hebrew, all so that they might properly translate ONE VERSE in
Genesis, which God says to Cain (before he kills his brother, Abel).
Should it be translated as in the King James Version, "Sin crouches at
the door, but THOU SHALT RULE over it (which is a promise or a
prediction)"? Or should it be translated as in the American Standard
Version, "DO THOU rule over it (which is a command)"?

After two years of Hebrew studies, these men decided that BOTH
translations were wrong. They decided that the true meaning of God's
word TIMSHOL was "thou MAY rule over it (i.e. you have the ability and
the free will choice)".

The cook, Mr. Lee explains, "Don't you see? The American Standard
Version ORDERS mankind to triumph over sin. The King James makes
a PROMISE that mankind will one day be victorious, in saying THOU
SHALT rule over it. But the Hebrew word TIMSHOL gives a FREE WILL
CHOICE, perhaps the most important word in the Bible!"

Rabbi Kushner mentions that he has been studying Biblical Hebrew
for 50 years, and still cannot say with authoritative certainty decide
what the precise shade of meaning is to such key words in Scripture.
Rabbi Kushner adds that his own choice for the most important word
in the Torah is TAMIM, in Genesis 17:1, where God tells Abraham
"Walk before Me and be TAMIM ". KJV version translates TAMIM as
PERFECT.

The same word TAMIM is used elsewhere to describe the type of
flawless animal which is suitable for sacrifice at the altar. Revised
Standard Version translates TAMIM as "blameless". But more
contemporary scholarship has begun to translate TAMIM as
"wholehearted". The implication of such a translation, Rabbi Kushner
explains, is that what God desires from us is NOT perfection in the
sense of INFALLIBILITY, but INTEGRITY in the midst of our flaws and
imperfections. As some people say in prayer, "I'm not much, Lord, but
I'm ALL I've got." Mother Theresa once said, "We are not here to be
SUCCESSFUL, but to be FAITHFUL", which Rabbi Kushner takes to
mean "faithful to our essential selves as well as to the essence of our
understanding of Who and What God is in God's essential Self"

(paraphrased in Sitaram's own words).

It is most curious to note, in the Old Testament account of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, that when God provides a ram for the sacrifice, in place of Isaac, that the ram is caught by it's HORNS in a bramble bush, and not caught by its fur or flesh. Were it to have been caught on the thorns by its flesh, then the flesh would have been torn, and the animal would not have been Tamim, and suitable for sacrifice, but would have been flawed, marred, and unsuitable for sacrifice. One is reminded of the first verse of the first Psalm, "Blessed is that male who has never walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of the pestilent." (I am paraphrasing here from the spirit of the Greek Septuagint version.) Modern translations, seeking to be politically correct, will say "Happy are those people" (gender inclusive.) But this is not what the Hebrew says and what the Greek Septuagint faithfully translates. The male ram caught by the horns in the thorn bush is unblemished and is sacrificed in the place of a person. The first psalm alludes to some one male who, like Abraham's ram, is unblemished.

Rabbi Kushner writes, "God wants Abraham to strive to be the true
core of who he is, even if he stumbles or strays from that path
occasionally".

I am reminded of the story of the dangerous serpent, Kaliya, who was
plaguing the cowherds. When young Lord Krishna danced on Kaliyas
many venomous heads, injuring Kaliya with each step, Kaliya began
spewing poisonous venom everywhere. Lord Krishna asked, "Why are
you doing THAT?". Kaliya answered, "Lord, I have been born as a
serpent, and all I have to offer you is venom. Where would I get sweet
nectar to offer you? So I offer to you all I have, which is the essence of
what I am at this moment."

The serpent Kaliya's answer is very much like the prayer of Mother
Theresa, above, "I'm not much, Lord, but I'm ALL I've got.".

***********added 7/29/05

See this post on Tolstoy which mentions Steinbeck

http://online-literature.com/forums/...ad.php?t=12881