The West Wing 'Servant Problem', Part I

Josh Lyman and Toby Ziegler are sitting in the office of Leo McGarry:
Leo: You gonna make this happen?
Josh: It's in the bag, boss. It's this one here who's doing the moaning.
Toby: I can't sell this.
Josh: You can sell it.
Toby: I can't sell this!
Leo: You can. You can sell this...
Bartlet enters the room from the Oval Office. He's rolling up his sleeves. Josh, Toby and Leo all stand.
Josh, Toby, and Leo: Good morning, Mr. President.
Bartlet: Siddown. And a blessed Holy Monday to you all. Leo, are we gonna meet about the thing?
Leo: Yessir. Did you enjoy the Easter service, sir?
Bartlet: Yes, it was very fine. And Good Friday was also beautiful, except for the usual servant problem.
Leo: Yessir.
Bartlet: So I'll see you about the thing.
Leo: Yessir.
Bartlet, exiting: Charlie! I need the folder about the thing!
Josh, Toby and Leo sit down.
Josh: What's the servant problem?
Leo, waving his hand dismissively: Isaiah.
Josh: What? Everybody loves Isaiah.
Leo: It's Isaiah 52 and 53. It gets read on Good Friday. The President doesn't like it.
Josh: He doesn't like Isaiah 52 and 53, or he doesn't like that it gets read?
Toby: He doesn't like the implication?
Leo: He hates the implication.
Josh: What's the implication?
Toby: It's one of the so-called Servant Songs. Even though Isaiah 52 clearly says Zion and Jerusalem, Christians always interpret it as Isaiah's prediction of Christ's passion. "Awake, awake, O Zion! Clothe yourself in splendor; put on your robes of majesty, Jerusalem, holy city."
Josh: Yeah. And it goes on about "How welcome on the mountain are the footsteps of the herald announcing happiness, heralding good fortune, announcing victory." And how true is that.
Toby: But you get to verse 13, "Indeed, my servant shall prosper, be exalted and raised to great heights," and all of a sudden it's Jesus.
Bartlet, re-entering: "Just as there were many who were astonished at him--so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of mortals--" sit down, gentlemen--"so he shall startle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him; for that which had not been told them they shall see, and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate!" Toby, who is the suffering servant?
Toby: The identity of the servant is subject to vigorous debate, sir.
Bartlet: Do you think it's the Messiah?
Toby: No, sir.
Bartlet: Of course you don't, because nowhere else does Deutero-Isaiah refer to the Messiah. In contrast to First Isaiah, belief in the Messiah is not one of the hallmarks of Deutero-Isaiah. But it might be Jeremiah. Do we think it might be Jeremiah, Toby?
Toby: Saadia Gaon thought it might be Jeremiah, sir...But the authors of the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John decided it meant Jesus, so I think you're stuck with that interpretation, sir.
Bartlet: I'm the President of the United States, Toby. I'm not stuck with anything.
Josh: Who's Saadia Gaon?
Toby: This is what you get from a Connecticut Jew.
Josh: Just because you're from Brooklyn doesn't mean you're more Jewish than I am--
Leo: Could we get back to the matter at hand?
Bartlet, sitting down: The suffering servant is a tensive symbol, and one of the most profoundly radical propositions of all time--that suffering is not a sign of the disfavor of God Almighty, but instead a mark of service to the one true God. In a polytheistic culture that saw sickness, failure, disfigurement, and death as signs of abandonment by one's god, or even as a sign of the defeat of that god, the assertion both that God rules and that misfortune is no sign of abandonment--this, my friends, is an assertion that brings about the end of kings and kingdoms. The very foundation of slavery as it is conceptualized in the ancient world is utterly undone.
Toby: All due respect, sir, your co-religionists would prefer to win a bet.
Bartlet: A brackish spring, my friends. We could drink the cool pure water from the fountain of the greatest of all the prophets, a man who rewrote the script of Life for all time, yet what do we prefer? What do we prefer, Leo?
Leo: Sir, we prefer to get some work done.
Bartlet, bounding to his feet: A brackish spring! You know I minored in theology at Notre Dame?
Leo: Yes, sir, we know.
Bartlet: I fought many a battle over supersessionism when I was at Notre Dame. I despise supersessionism. Our beautiful New Testament was not written to correct the Tanakh, it was written to extend the Tanakh.
Toby: No Marcionite you, sir.
Bartlet: I give supersessionism no quarter when I meet it in the highways and byways. But when I go to Good Friday service, I am constrained to be civil; I can't stand up in my pew and point out that the author is clearly referring to Zion.
Toby: People would just blame the Israel lobby, sir.
Bartlet, exiting: No kidding.
Leo: Nothing like a little hermeneutics to make policy-making go more smoothly. So, Toby, you gonna run with this?
Toby, rising: I'll get with Will and C. J.
Josh, to Toby: Just because you speak Yiddish.
Toby, exiting: Bei me bist du shayne, boychick.
Josh, to Leo: He thinks he's more Jewish than me.
Leo: I don't care. I'm a drunk; we're non-sectarian. You gonna make this happen?
Josh: Sure, boss.
Leo: Okay, so, gay avek. I gotta go meet with the President about the thing.