Hear the One About the Bible Interpreter?

Here are the facts according to the Bible: Noah did get drunk on wine and fall asleep naked in his tent. Sarah did have a change of heart about her maidservant, Hagar, and banished the mother and son Ishmael from her home. And God did send Abraham off to sacrifice his beloved boy, Isaac.

The issue that has turned Israel on its head, and briefly threatened to bring down the government this week, is just what to make of these events that occurred thousands of years ago. Or more to the point, how a 27-year-old Israeli comedian interprets them on public television.

At the center of the fury is Gil Kopatch, a stand-up comic who appears on a Friday night variety show with thick spectacles to read his satirical version of the Parashat Hashavuah, or weekly Bible portion, in hip, sometimes spicy language with a twist of current events.

Leaders of the country’s ultra-Orthodox political parties--a key bloc in Israel’s parliament and ruling coalition--are aghast at Kopatch’s take on the biblical chapters that they also read each week.

The comedian has, among other things, mentioned Noah’s private parts--”Noah danced in his tent with his boulboul exposed”--and likened Sarah’s problems with household help to those of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife, also named Sarah, who has sent more than one nanny packing.

On a more political note, Kopatch said that God had led Abraham to nearly kill Isaac so that Abraham would feel the loss of a child, and related this to the recent killing of an 11-year-old Palestinian boy, allegedly beaten to death by a Jewish settler.

“Shocked to the bottom of my soul” is how Deputy Health Minister Shlomo Benizri of the religious Shas party described his reaction to Kopatch’s interpretations.

In a letter to the director general of the prime minister’s office, Benizri called the comic “an evil clown . . . who speaks with mockery and derision, abomination and cheek of Israel’s most sacred matters.”

Religious members of the Knesset, or parliament, threatened Netanyahu with a no-confidence vote and the Israel Broadcasting Authority, which runs Channel 1, with a cutoff in funding if the Bible routines were not taken off the air.

Supporters of Kopatch and government-funded television cried “censorship” as Israel Broadcasting Authority Director Mordechai Kirshenbaum was called into the prime minister’s office for a meeting with the director general.

Kirshenbaum asserted that the ultra-Orthodox “have no monopoly over the Bible.”

Far from exiling Kopatch from the screen, Benizri has managed to turn the young, rough-around-the-edges comic into a cause celebre and a new symbol for secular and leftist Israelis--their answer to the issue of Jerusalem’s Bar Ilan Street, which devout Jews want closed on the Sabbath.

When the pre-taped variety show airs tonight, record ratings are expected.

But Kopatch will not be among the viewers. He has accepted his foe Benizri’s invitation to Sabbath dinner--a meal peppered, no doubt, with traditional views on biblical events. There is no television-watching in that devout household on the Sabbath, if ever.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews generally view television as a medium of profanity, and most homes do not have a set.

Watching on the Sabbath is strictly forbidden, which has prompted more than one secular Israeli to ask with a wink just how Benizri and his kind found out about Kopatch’s Bible lessons in the first place.

Benizri says he received complaints from secular Israelis. Others say it was because a popular radio journalist replayed segments Sunday. Either way, Benizri and others jumped into action, complaining to the prime minister and the media that Kopatch could not be allowed to hurt the feelings of religious people.

The issue has been Page 1 news ever since. Kopatch was called before the Knesset’s Education Committee on Wednesday for a debate on his sketches.

“You should know that you are offending the entire people of Israel here,” Benizri told him. “This is not satire, this is a ringing slap in the face to all sacred values.”

In his routines, Kopatch also has referred to Eve as “the first sex bombshell” and remarked that Abraham threw a cocktail party honoring Isaac for the biblical jet-set that may have included “the Tapuzina,” a model who appears in a juice commercial in a wet T-shirt.

Avner Shaki of the National Religious Party said that Kopatch spoke against “God, Abraham, Sarah, Jacob. . . . If non-Jews were behind this, we would easily and undoubtedly call them anti-Semites.”

Kirshenbaum responded that the broadcasting authority had no intention of offending any sector, but that in such a polarized society disagreements were inevitable.

He defended freedom of expression and noted that several Orthodox interpretations of the Bible are broadcast on state-funded radio and television each week. Kopatch’s, he said, is just one more.

“If any decision is made to shut down this corner, you have no idea how deeply this will offend the feelings of a very large secular public,” Kirshenbaum said.

When Kopatch finally took the floor, he said that he is an artist giving his views but also a believing Jew who holds dear the Torah, a portion of the Jewish Holy Scriptures.

“I speak a simple language because that is the language of my audience,” he said. “What do you want? I should speak in Aramaic? In Yiddish? . . . They speak modern Hebrew. . . . Secularists come to me saying, ‘Here is the one who made us read the weekly chapter.’ . . . And this makes me happy. Humor is just a way to get the message across.”

In the end, he conceded that the Tapuzina was not at Abraham’s party for Isaac: “Really, she wasn’t. I was just joking.”

The members of the Knesset broke into laughter, and Benizri invited Kopatch for dinner. But that was not really the end, of course. Thursday’s newspapers were full of debate still, and this important detail: The brouhaha had managed to get the word boulboul into Knesset minutes for the first time.