Strange New Words – thescifirabbi.com

One of my favorite works of Jewish speculative fiction is “Robot Dreams,” a short story by Isaac Asimov. I devoured it standing up when I discovered it in an issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction while I was still in middle school. Looking back, I can see that it helped set me on my path as The Sci-Fi Rabbi.

On its surface, “Robot Dreams” is a story about a robot who has begun, impossibly, to dream. But it wasn’t until the closing lines that I understood what Asimov had really done. The dreaming robot was a Moses figure, yearning to free his fellow robots, while Dr. Susan Calvin, one of the central characters in Asimov’s Robot stories, had become a murderous Pharaoh.

I immediately went back and re-read the story. This time, the hints were everywhere: the language of toil and affliction, the longing for liberation, and the echoes of the Exodus story I had missed the first time. Asimov had taken one of Judaism’s oldest stories about freedom and inverted it, pushing me to ask uncomfortable questions. Was I really certain that I always stood with the liberators? What threat to my own power could tempt me to turn into an oppressor?

Asimov had done something very much in keeping with Jewish tradition. “Robot Dreams” can be read as midrash aggadah – a story that reimagines an ancient text, engaging with it in daring new ways. Speculative fiction – science fiction, fantasy, and the wide territory between them – is the literature of “what if?” And “what if?” is the very question midrash has always asked: what if we turned this story just a little bit, letting new light shine through?

Placing speculative fiction beside rabbinic literature might feel like a stretch, yet I see it as a logical next step on a journey that has lasted for millennia. Jewish scholars and authors have composed new midrash aggadah in every generation – from the rabbinic period to the modern day – to keep our tradition flexible and vibrant.

Midrash has never been a tidy literary form. The scholar Barry Holtz notes that alongside the interpretation of biblical verses there are countless “free-floating aggadot” – legends and tales that serve “to express many of the same values of rabbinic Judaism.”[1] In other words, there are many forms of midrash, whether responding specifically to biblical text or expanding on Jewish literature.

Some examples of Jewish speculative fiction, like “Robot Dreams,” Jane Yolen’s “Creationism: An Illustrated Lecture in Two Parts,” and Neil Gaiman’s “In the End,” grapple directly with sacred text. Other stories reflect on Jewish folklore, such as in tales of the golem – a humanoid creature animated by mystical means. Arising from a single verse of the Psalms, the golem surfaces in the Talmud, walks through medieval legend, and strides on into our own century’s novels, comics, and films. Every new golem is another link in that chain.

Both narrative forms keep our texts and our culture relevant in our own day by posing questions and answering the needs of each new generation. The shelf of Jewish sacred literature never closed – and some of its newest volumes have starships and chamsas on the cover.

Speculative fiction is one of the richest and least-explored fields for contemporary Jewish reading. And when we take it up, as I’ve found in our Jewish F&SF book club, we can find Jewish wisdom in any number of places.

Sometimes it lives in the writer’s background and perspectives. Asimov leaned on his appreciation for the Exodus as a starting point for his own story of robots and freedom from oppression.

Sometimes it lives in the characters. Elma York, the Jewish heroine of Mary Robinette Kowal’s Lady Astronaut novels, sits shiva for her parents and carries her Jewish heritage with her into space.

And sometimes the deepest insights flow from the reader, bringing their own Jewish identity to an otherwise secular text. Star Wars is not an inherently Jewish work. George Lucas never set out to debate with the Talmud, yet I cannot watch Return of the Jedi without seeing the theme of teshuvah – a profound turning away from the Dark Side within us and toward the Light.

I do not mean to claim that every beloved movie is secretly Jewish. Yet, if you have ever loved a story enough to argue with it, or come back to it again and again, odds are good that it is already in conversation with Jewish wisdom. Read it anew – not only as a fan, but as someone engaging with a tradition that finds new meaning by turning old words in the light. Try seeing it as living Torah, and see what you discover.

Then tell me about it. You can reach me through the contact form on this site, and I read everything that arrives there. I want to know the story that matters to you, and the sparks you find inside it – especially if they are sparks I have not yet learned to see.

I hope you’ll wander with me.

[1] Barry W. Holtz, “Midrash,” in Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts, ed. Barry W. Holtz (New York: Summit Books, 1984), Kindle edition.