Judah Relieved Tamar Episode Won’t Be Taught In Day Schools

Tamar was unavailable for comment; a member of the household chastised reporters for disturbing her recovery from a difficult birth of twins.

Adullam, Canaan, December 18 – Jacob’s fourth son and a leader of the emerging people of Israel expressed the alleviation of some stress today at the realization that when Jewish schoolchildren study their sacred texts, their teachers will omit the part of Genesis in which his dalliance with a prostitute is discussed.

The patriarch of the eponymous tribe confessed relief that the prudishness of educators through the generations will prevent widespread exploration of his questionable behavior, and offered a silent prayer of thanks that the embarrassment of the episode will be limited to those who were present, those who are awake enough to pay attention when the passage is read in synagogue, and those whose devotion to study is so great that they see the incident in the larger and more mitigating context of all of Scripture and history.

“I have to say it’s still shameful, but not as bad as it would be if everybody knew about it from the time they were in fourth or fifth grade,” he admitted. “The more nuanced views of the episode, which of course I welcome, are those that children of such an age don’t tend to grasp very well, so, yeah, it’s a good thing most of them will never learn about it.” He welcomed the commentators’ focus on Tamar’s willingness to be burned to death rather than embarrass him by naming him outright as the father of her out-of-wedlock child, as well as their observation that his nature, as indicated by his name, was expressed in his willingness to confess she was in the right the whole time rather than let her take his shameful secret to the grave. Nevertheless, sparing himself the awkwardness of the preteen ick factor looms large in Judah’s experience of the incident’s aftermath.

Tamar was unavailable for comment; a member of the household chastised reporters for disturbing her recovery from a difficult birth of twins.

“I understand that in those congregations where the Torah text is simultaneously translated into the vernacular there is also a practice of eliding this whole thing for the masses,” observed the father of Peretz and Zerah, the boys born of his illicit liaison. “No problem there, let me tell you. I bet my brother Reuben would agree,” he added, referring to an earlier instance in which the eldest of Jacob’s sons is described as sleeping with Bilhah, the maidservant of his father’s late, favorite wife Rachel. That episode is similarly omitted in real-time synagogue translation.

Please support our work through Patreon.