Can Old Testament Stories About Women Sing to Us Today? A Review of Manna in the Morning by Jacqueline Jules
By Naomi Thiers
I think it’s fair to say the Old Testament itself is a character in Jacqueline Jules’ recent poetry collection Manna in the Morning. Bible stories and personages, including those lesser known, are the central element in so many poems that the Old Testament becomes a presence as we read—not oppressively, but in a way that probes freshly what’s going on with those old tales and weird, flawed characters.
This includes female characters beyond the usual Eve and Esther: Dinah*, Miriam*, Jochebed* and more (just for fun, throughout this review I’ve marked lesser-known female Biblical characters Jules write about with a * and there’s a key at the end!). Even poems that don’t focus on Old Testament stories or characters swirl around the author’s spirituality as a Jewish woman. They bring into Jules’ thinking about her life in the 21st-century metaphors or life lessons from people and situations in Genesis, Exodus, the prophets, etc.
Jules’s poems are built with straightforward statements and elemental images that lift from the ordinary through pithy lines and repetition. Her best poems use a touch light enough for the energy she’s drawing from old stories to come wrapped in mystery. Consider the entangling of modern marriage with Adam and Eve in “Prenuptials”:
Vows exchanged. Papers signed.
Will they bind me back to Adam’s rib?
To move from that day on
in synchrony, for fear
of ripping apart the flesh we share.
Eve was a bulge beneath the armpit
whittled when the first wife, Lilith,*
ran away. Must I leave the garden,
become a demon,
to preserve the person
who precedes the wedding?
Wonderful are those poems in which Jules lets in the darkness (which does flood many Old Testament stories) and probes deeper into tales of Biblical women who go almost unnamed even when they’re essential to a story. As “Wondering about Dinah and Leah” says, “Bible stories are skeletal, bones/fleshed out through exegesis--/ words, sentences, translations/ scrutinized, interpreted./ And most dwell on the men, on actions, not emotions.” Jules speculates on aspects of lives that are tiny footnotes in the Old Testament, such as (in the same poem), Dinah, whose rape sets off family vengeance:
. . . we don’t hear from Dinah
herself, only what was done to her.
And we hear nothing from Leah,
her mother, who should have been waiting,
worrying, ready to comfort.
Did Dinah find solace with Leah?
The woman remembered
as the unloved wife, the one forced on
Jacob instead of the sister he favored.
I wonder as I read the exploits of men.
Perhaps because I’ve chosen a faith (Quakerism) which holds to continuing revelation—that anything we know about God or our connection with God is forever evolving, being newly revealed. I love what Jules does in “Hannah’s Heart.” She shows the significance—in the journey of Jewish spirituality and Jewish people’s sense of how they relate to God—of a personal act, Hannah* crying out to God because she’s barren. A woman who can’t have children weeping—nothing to see there, right? But “Hannah’s Heart” implies that this ordinary woman’s tears were a turning point:
Before Hannah wept
in the sanctuary at Shiloh,
we didn’t believe it possible
to beseech the One above
without blood.
We burned bulls to please.
Men measured portions.
More for the fertile wife.
less for the barren one.
Unfortunately, some poems don’t let the implications a Biblical story may have for folks today float through the language and images—they stick up a signpost. Phrases point firmly to the “lesson.” “Esau’s Choice” considers why Esau forgave Jacob, who conspired to steal his inheritance, saying simply: “The Bible reveals no details, no reason/ why Esau kissed his brother and wept. // We can only imagine. . .” Before the reader has time to let that language lead them to ponder their own family betrayals, the poem preaches: “Hope that Esau’s choice/ will be the one we choose.” “Facing the Wilderness” follows a subtle description of two Israelites who were rewarded for having great faith with “An instructive tale for me,” and a poem musing about how much toil went into building a tabernacle, as told in Exodus 25, closes with “Inspiration for me/as I struggle to build/ a space inside my heart/ where holiness can dwell.”
As a person who takes a spiritual life seriously, I appreciate what Jules is doing. Bible stories, chewed on, can give us strength to build a space inside “where holiness can dwell.” Jules dedicates the book to “my Mussar group at Temple Rodef Shalom, Virginia” (Mussar is an ancient Jewish spiritual practice that explores how to live an ethical inner life, not just follow rules). She’s writing out of a deep-rooted tradition dedicated to exploring how contemplation of scripture brings us closer to our heart, to holiness. And many poems—like “Queen Esther”—do invite us to explore, without stressing a “lesson”:
“If I if I perish, I perish
The young woman tells the mirror.
Donning jewels and perfume,
she strides in silk gown toward her fate.
“If I perish, I perish.”
Is it really courage that lifts her chin?
A noble choice to swing from the gallows
rather than hide in silence?
“If I perish, I perish.”
Or does action offer its own rewards
when you’re likely to hang
by the neck either way?
I’ll end with my favorite poem, “Dialogue with the Devine”—a woman finding her way toward joy in the work of keeping the faith:
When I petition,
I’m on my knees, bruised,
by the hardness of the floor.
. . . obsessed by the squish
of mud under my sandals,
ignoring the Red Sea,
miraculously parted.
When I praise,
I’m on my feet, billowing
like clouds in the sapphire sky.
I’m Miriam*
holding a tambourine,
dancing in the desert, grateful
for the smallest excuse
to sing.
KEY: Dinah, daughter of Leah and Jacob was (the text implies) raped by a Hivite; her brothers took revenge on all the Hivites. Miriam, Moses’ sister and a prophetess, sang when Pharoah’s army was destroyed. Jochebed, Moses’ mother, placed him in a basket in the river to save him from Pharoah’s command to kill Jewish male babies. Lilith was Adam’s wife before Eve. Hannah gave birth late in life to Samuel, who became a Hebrew judge.
Jules, Jacqueline. 2021. Manna in the Morning. Kelsay Books. kelsaybooks.com.
Naomi Thiers (naomihope@comcast.net) grew up in California and Pittsburgh, but her chosen home is Washington D.C./northern Virginia. She is the author of four poetry collections: Only the Raw Hands Are Heaven, In Yolo County, She Was a Cathedral, and Made of Air. Her poems, book reviews, and essays have been published in Virginia Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Grist, Sojourners, and other magazines. Former editor of the journal Phoebe, she works as an editor for Educational Leadership magazine and lives on the banks of Four Mile Run in Arlington, Virginia.
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