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Feed Your Head: The Book of JobFeed Your HeadIn-Person

Ian Frazier

Thursday, Apr 03, 2025

5:00-7:30 p.m.

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, located in New York City’s Morningside Heights, is one of the largest and most impressive Gothic-style cathedrals in the world. Begun in 1892, it remains unfinished but still awe-inspiring, with soaring arches, intricate stained glass windows, and a rich history of cultural and religious significance. The cathedral serves as both a place of worship and a hub for arts and education, hosting concerts, exhibitions, and community events. It is renowned for its grandeur and its role in New York's spiritual and cultural landscape.

The Book of Job, well-known as the biblical story of unearned suffering, is more like a long poem of unidentified origin inserted into Hebrew scripture. Scholars believe the work dates to 400 BCE, a time when the great tragedies of Greek drama also came into being; there may or may not be a connection. In any case, it seems that literate people of the time were looking for answers to the question of the existence of evil. The book is basically a litany of Job’s well-justified complaints about the miseries visited on him, and the answers and explanations he is given. He does not know that God has allowed the torture because of a dare from Satan, who says this pious man will curse and deny God if his material well-being is taken away.

The dare, and God’s agreeing to take it and see what happens, makes the story of Job a cruel joke, and Job’s suffering a kind of spiritual-theological slapstick comedy. We will examine the book as a poem that performs the amazing and miraculous feat of turning Job’s comically awful suffering into an affirmation of faith, with implications that extend through the Hebrew and Christian Bibles.

Cost: $25 (a $60 value)

Early Booking Exclusively for Academy Fellows*

Through February 20th, Fellows can purchase a ticket for $25. Space is very limited!

*You are a Fellow of The Academy for Teachers if you have been accepted to, and attended, an in-person master class.

Ian Frazier

Ian Frazier’s books, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, include Paradise Bronx, Great Plains, Travels in Siberia, Dating Your Mom, and many other classic works of nonfiction and humor. A frequent contributor to The New Yorker, he lives in Montclair, New Jersey.