Vox Populi
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Todd Friedman: The World is Filled with Learning
—in response to Yehuda Amichai’s “I Want to Mix Up the Bible”
You say the world is filled with learning?
Right now I’m watching mass murders
ping pong across my country
committed by civilians using weapons of war.
Is this really happening again?
When my children were young I’d take them to see
the knights in shining armor at the museum.
I’m sure they wore state of the art,
but they couldn’t have imagined Hiroshima—
what kind of learning are we talking about?
Yes, good and evil are on the table like salt and pepper shakers.
It’s easy to reach for the wrong one.
You want to mix up the Bible?
I want to run it through a high-powered sifter,
drain out the blood,
empty the enemies,
and lock up the God of Retribution in a vault.
I’m tired of singing psalms
to a God who settles scores.
Let’s learn something.
Not long ago I learned that Abraham helped Ishmael
build the Kaaba.
I thought once he cast out Hagar and Ishmael
he never saw his son again.
I felt like I’d entered another dimension
and discovered Abraham’s secret life.
I didn’t know there was a different story.
So I take it back, Yehuda.
My grandfather grew up in a shtetl near Minsk in the 1890s
and he had a hard time believing there were
“at-tum bombs” as he would pronounce it,
and more that anyone would actually drop them.
He liked to say, “The longer you live the less you know.”
He was right.
The world is filled with learning.
~
~~~~
Copyright 2026 Todd Friedman
Todd Friedman is a retired NYC high school English teacher who now revels in having time to write. His poems have been published in Tikkun, The Reform Jewish Quarterly, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Blue Collar Review, and Haight Ashbury Literary Journal.
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This is my stanza:
“You want to mix up the Bible? I want to run it through a high-powered sifter, drain out the blood, empty the enemies, and lock up the God of Retribution in a vault. I’m tired of singing psalms to a God who settles scores. Let’s learn something.”
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It’s clear that there is a quasi-god being worshipped for its (or his) ruthlessness and merciless glorification of power. It’s not the god of reciprocity that raises the gates to flourishing, to Keats’ Vale of soul-making. The lesson for me, is that we have choices to make around this dichotomy, and in William Stafford’s words:
….We live in an occupied country, misunderstood;
justice will take us millions of intricate moves….
(Thinking or Berky)
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Thank you, Todd and Michael–both for the fine poem and for lightening it up with the walk into the bar. I needed it very much this morning.
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Thank you, Todd Friedman, and Michael Simms–for the wise poem and for lightening it up a bit in the bar. I needed them both very much this morning,.
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Thanks, Maddie.
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Me, too
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I love the salt and pepper analogy, which applies to words, as well. It’s not so much the rhetoric but who’s writing and/or speaking it, and who’s taking either/or too literal. Let’s see if we can’t lighten it up some; “Abraham and Aristotle walk into a bar….”
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HA! Aristotle and Abraham walked into a bar…. and then what?
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Aristotle and Abraham walk into a bar.
The bartender says, Hey guys what’s it gonna be?
Aristotle says, To know is to be.
Abraham says, To be is to know.
The bartender says, No, really guys, what’s it gonna be?
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In reply to Mike Simms’s little ditty above:
Karl Marx walks into a bar, and says, Capitalism is why these drinks cost so much.
Groucho Marx walks into a bar, grimaces, and says, Ouch.
As to Friedman’s poem, it’s a highlight of irony’s power in our darkness. He raises the bar high.
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Thanks, Jim!
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“I’m tired of singing psalmsto a God who settles scores.Let’s learn something.”Amen.and “Yes, good and evil are on the table like salt and pepper shakers.” As they always are. Although “good” seems to have got separated on our cluttered table, maybe it’s under a pile of reading matter?
Thanks Todd. And Michael for publishing this.
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Thank you, Richard. I agree. The Good has been lost in all the blather.
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I love the God who after having evicted Adam and Eve, sat down and grudgingly sewed them clothes to put on so they’d no longer be naked to a world they were about to enter. God knew exactly where they were headed. Its actually quite sweet, a true instance of love on display we might’ve taken and run with had we paid better attention. The “Vale of soul-making”—“I’ll show you the use of the world,” Keats declared, who yet, only got to spend 25 years in it. Let’s all, like this poem, try to have a perfect ending!
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Sean, your comments are poems in themselves. Thank you!
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