Asked what subject that she wished more writers would discuss, Professor Mary Beard
said that she’d rather focus on the people whom she wishes would be less discussed.
Regarding someone being flooded by networking waves but not sentenced to be disappeared,
I in this way disparage Potus, deelected, impotent, with great disgust.
Concerning Churchill, though, about whom she’d prefer that less was written, I’m an addict.
He helped to save our most uncivil world and therefore is quite rightly tsaddiked,
in contrast to the man whom I fear might be cause of blood, toil, sweat and tears,
just like the bramblebush in Jotham’s parable, demanding from us four more years.
Tsaddik is a Hebrew term for a righteous person.
In the 10/10/21 NYT Book Review, Mary Beard was asked “Which subjects do you wish more authors would write about?” She answered:
“I’m more interested in what they might write less about! I don’t think the world needs more biographies of Winston Churchill at the moment.”
In the poem I allude to the bramblebush in a parable (Judges 14:8- 20) by Jothan, a young son of a righteous judge Gideon. He implies that the bramblebush’s dangerous bravado, which symbolized that of Abimelech, who slayed seventy of his brethren in order to rule Israel for three years, would forever entangle his subjects in its inescapable prickles.
Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored “Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel.” He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.
