These questions that are bothering you, Larry

We're still on the approach in the Job course - the Book of Job is assigned for next (third) week. Today's assigned materials were the Coen Brothers' "A Serious Man" and the text of a talk-meditation given by Alice Walker at a meeting of African American Buddhists. I used these already last time, but that was in person. Today, on zoom, I decided to forgo screening clips from the movie and instead read from the screenplay, hoping it would bring back the images of the film. The scene was the end of protagonist Larry Gopnik's conversation with Rabbi Nachtner, the second of the three rabbis he consults, a sort of film within the film which might be called "The Goy's Teeth." Much gets lost without the cinematography, the jagged electric guitar soundtrack, and bravura scenes mixing shuffling voices and faces - but that's all to the good. Next week we confront the Book of Job as a text, and I'd like students to come at it with a sense that there's much that even this superlative piece of writing cannot convey.