The Beloved

By Robin RussinNovember 8, 2014

The Beloved

David: The Divided Heart by David Wolpe

IN HIS ENGAGING new book, David: The Divided Heart, Rabbi David Wolpe states that “David is the first person in history whose tale is complete and vital, laced with passions, savagery, hesitation, betrayal, charisma, faith, family — the rich canvas of a large life,” and he quotes historian Baruch Halpern’s claim that David is “the first human being in world literature.” The former, of course, implies that David was a real person as portrayed in the Bible. (Though one could argue that Odysseus — that other wily, ruthless, complex lover-hero, whose story was committed to writing within the same century as David’s — might challenge David for either honor. Wolpe himself makes the comparison.) Whatever the case, the story of David is one of the defining narratives of Western civilization. It is the central narrative of the Hebrew Bible, and the Messiah supposedly descended (or is yet to descend) from his lineage. David has been the subject of books, movies, and drama throughout history, including recent new translations of the text with detailed commentaries; explorations of how recent research and archaeology bring us closer to who the real David may have been; and novels reimagining him altogether. Some have been polemics aimed at stripping his story of any claim to sacred or historical truth, dwelling on the inconsistencies or inaccuracies in the text, and redefining David not as a divinely inspired leader but as a ruthless and falsely glorified warlord. It seems that David, whose name means “Beloved,” engenders as many passions now as he did among his own lovers, followers, and enemies. As Wolpe writes, “His story is like the Gestalt experiment: You can choose to see David as hero or knave.”


Wolpe, who is the rabbi of the Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, the largest Conservative congregation on the West Coast, accepts that a real David did exist. (Most scholars agree on this point, especially in light of recent archaeological discoveries. The argument tends now to be more about how much of an actual king he was, whether a true ruler of empire, or just the tribal chieftain of a small territory.) While giving a nod to each of these approaches, Rabbi Wolpe’s focus is more on guiding us through the literary and psychological meaning (or meanings) of the narrative. What interests him here is not so much how real or exaggerated every claim in the text is in historical terms, but how “real” David was and remains on an emotional level, as a character. This is a story that has continued to have contemporary relevance ever since it was first written down, like Hamlet or The Odyssey, because of what it is able to say about the universal strengths, weaknesses, and contradictions in human nature. Yale University Press describes its “Jewish Lives” series as “brief, interpretive biography designed to illuminate the imprint of eminent Jewish figures upon literature, religion, philosophy, politics, cultural and economic life, and the arts and sciences.” At a lean, readable 142 pages, this new addition nicely fulfills that mandate. It is written for the interested general reader, not the scholar or specialist. (There’s only one page of suggested readings, and no footnotes).


Due in part to this format, and in part to his desire to provide a unified portrait, Wolpe does gloss over some of the more vexing inconsistencies in the text, and doesn’t adjudicate assignations of authorship. Wolpe notes that “doublets” are common in the Bible, such as the two distinct creation stories in Genesis. “Competing stories jostle one another for narrative or theological priority. Sometimes this leads to evident contradictions,” such as how and when David first meets Saul. To keep his exegesis coherent, Wolpe sometimes blends these stories into one, for instance choosing to call David a “lad” in the context of the passage where he’s clearly referred to as a grown warrior in the text, so as to make sense of David later being referred to as just a boy. He also omits mentioning the alarming fact that the second book of Samuel attributes David’s most famous act, the killing of Goliath, to a Bethlehemite named Elhanan (which the author of Chronicles later tries to paper over by claiming that Elhanan instead killed a brother of Goliath). Many scholars agree that here we see another warrior’s victory being assigned to David to burnish his legend. Similarly, Wolpe often draws from the Psalms to elucidate David’s character, although most if not all of them were composed centuries after his death. Wolpe’s aim is not to wrestle with what is problematic or contentious in the text, but to explore what the life of David, as given to us by the Bible, tells us about what is problematic in ourselves. “Here is a drama full of deeds heroic and base, a story of faith in God coupled with an equal pursuit of power and military might.”


In fact, one of the arguments for the historical reality of David’s story is that he is portrayed as such a flawed, if charismatic, person. David soothes Saul’s troubled soul with his music at the same time that he has been chosen by Samuel to usurp Saul’s throne — because, essentially, David will be ruthless enough to utterly exterminate his opponents, where Saul was not. Indeed, as Wolpe notes (though disputes), many see “the stench of conspiracy” in David’s convenient absence from the battlefield where Saul and his son Jonathan are killed. The same David who earns — or simply inspires — the love and loyalty of his men steals the wife of one of his most faithful warriors and then, in order to cover his own guilt, sends the man off to die in the forefront of battle. The same David who is anointed to be the next king of all Israel later joins forces with Israel’s bitterest enemy when the need suits him. As Wolpe writes, “An unmixed motive does not seem to exist in David’s world, or in his heart.” The lesson seems to be that none of us is perfect — as God reminds David through the vehicle of the prophet Nathan, who “punctures in parable […] not only David’s dormant conscience but his self-deceptions and rationalizations.” Even this most blessed of heroes, the chosen of God, is human, and afflicted — perhaps even more so — by the same moral faults and failures as the rest of us.


Wolpe does an excellent job highlighting the varied and crucial roles of women in this tale. David’s mother is conspicuously absent from the narrative, but the other women in his life define it: “At times it seems that when David needs a miracle, God finds a woman to enact it in an earthly manner.” David is indeed beloved by many women (in Michal’s case, both loved and despised). David is never described as loving them back — his is a self-involved journey — but without their love and assistance, he might well have amounted to nothing. Of course, the children he had with them were also a divided blessing. His relationship with them, as well as with his father-in-law, betrays what “has been called the Isaac Complex,” Wolpe writes, the Bible unearthing “the buried drive of parents to destroy their children.” This kind of deep-seated rivalry led to David’s most anguished moments, as well as — ironically — to his legacy.


Wolpe’s often-surprising asides and examples illustrate how the story echoes throughout our culture, from Shakespeare to Jung to Kierkegaard to Leonard Cohen and Mario Puzo. He occasionally regards his fellow clergy and commentators with affectionate humor. (“The Rabbis rush in with interpretations of David’s groan of anguish,” he writes, upon learning of the death of his son Absalom.) He’s not afraid to let us know what he thinks of the authors of the Bible, either. While he regards the writers of the books of Samuel as “artists of genius,” he has less use for the scribes of the book of Chronicles: “Chronicles is Samuel made boring.” And boring has no place in David’s story, or in this lively and thoughtful appreciation of that story.


¤


Robin Russin is Professor of Screenwriting at the University of California, Riverside, where he teaches in the Department of Theatre, Film & Digital Production, and the MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts.

LARB Contributor

Robin Russin is Professor of Screenwriting at the University of California, Riverside, where he teaches in the Department of Theatre, Film & Digital Production, and the MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts. He has written, produced and directed for film, TV, and the theatre, as well as publishing stories, articles and reviews. A Rhodes Scholar, he received his A.B. from Harvard, and graduate degrees from Oxford University, Rhode Island School of Design, and UCLA.

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