Textual Mirrors: Reflexivity, Midrash, and the Rabbinic Self (Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion) - Hardcover

Stein, Dina

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0812244362 ISBN 13: 9780812244366

Verlag: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

As they were entering Egypt, Abram glimpsed Sarai's reflection in the Nile River. Though he had been married to her for years, this moment is positioned in a rabbinic narrative as a revelation. "Now I know you are a beautiful woman," he says; at that moment he also knows himself as a desiring subject, and knows too to become afraid for his own life due to the desiring gazes of others.

There are few scenes in rabbinic literature that so explicitly stage a character's apprehension of his or her own or another's literal reflection. Still, Dina Stein argues, the association of knowledge and reflection operates as a central element in rabbinic texts. Midrash explicitly refers to other texts; biblical texts are both reconstructed and taken apart in exegesis, and midrashic narrators are situated liminally with respect to the tales they tell. This inherent structural quality underlies the propensity of rabbinic literature to reflect or refer to itself, and the "self" that is the object of reflection is not just the narrator of a tale but a larger rabbinic identity, a coherent if polyphonous entity that emerges from this body of texts.

Textual Mirrors draws on literary theory, folklore studies, and semiotics to examine stories in which self-reflexivity operates particularly strongly to constitute rabbinic identity through the voices of Simon the Just and a handsome shepherd, the daughter of Asher, the Queen of Sheba, and an unnamed maidservant. In Stein's readings, these self-reflexive stories allow us to go through the looking glass: where the text comments upon itself, it both compromises the unity of its underlying principles—textual, religious, and ideological—and confirms it.

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Dina Stein teaches in the department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of Haifa. She is also the author of Maxims, Magic, and Myth: A Folkloristic Perspective of Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer.

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Introduction

The Book of Genesis tells us that soon after Abraham (then still called Abram) arrived in Canaan, the land to which God had sent him, famine forced him to leave the Promised Land for Egypt. But his trials and tribulations were not over. Crossing a geographical line, Abraham confronted another set of boundaries, those delineating his sovereign masculinity. According to the biblical narrative, Abraham fears that Pharaoh will kill him in order to obtain Sarai (later Sarah), his beautiful wife. He therefore instructs Sarah to declare that she is his sister, not his mate—meaning that she is unattached and available to Pharaoh. Unsurprisingly, the Sages of the early centuries of the Common Era, the authors of the corpus of rabbinic writings that includes works of midrash (rabbinic exegetical reading of scripture), were troubled by this episode in the life of the Jewish people's founder. They retold the story placing reflection, or self-reflexivity, at the center:[Abram and Sarai] went. As they arrived at the pillars of Egypt and stood at the Nile, Abraham saw the reflection of Sarai in the river and she was like a radiant sun. From this our Sages learned that all women compared to Sarah are like monkeys compared to human beings. [Abram] said to her: "Now I know what a beautiful woman you are" (Gen. 12:11). From here one learns that prior to that, he had not known her as a woman. He said to her: "The Egyptians are immersed in lewdness as it is written 'whose flesh was like that of asses' [Ezek. 23:11]. Therefore I will put you in a casket and lock it, since I am frightened for myself that the Egyptians might see you."
This short narrative, from Midrash Tan?uma, explicates Gen. 12:11, "As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife, Sarai, 'Now I know what a beautiful woman you are.'" Since by this time, they had been married for many years, Abram would certainly have noticed by this point that his wife was beautiful. The anecdote addresses this apparent quandary by adducing a reflective episode in which Abram gains a new insight, one that changes the nature of the biblical narrative. According to this midrashic tale, the pious Abram had never actually looked at his wife prior to this event and thus had not had intimate relations with her. Struck by her radiance, he "knows" her for the first time (perhaps implying that he not only sees her face but actually knows her in the biblical sense). At this very instant, he realizes that her radiant beauty may be a danger to him. If they know that Sarai is his wife, the Egyptians are likely to kill him in order to obtain Sarai for themselves. Clearly, the tale seeks not only to gloss the odd phrasing of the biblical verse ("Now I know what a beautiful woman you are") but also to mitigate the dubiety of Abram's decision to conceal Sarai's relationship with him.

According to the midrash, that moment at the Nile was one of transformative epiphany, possibly coupled with shock. Newly enlightened, Abram was impelled to take preventive measures. But, according to this retelling, his first move was not, as the biblical narrative has it, to tell Sarai to declare herself his sister. Here, the reflective moment—Abram literally sees his wife's reflection in the river—implies new awareness on Abram's part, one that informs his subsequent actions. Notably, Abram does not see his own reflection—he sees Sarai's. It is nevertheless a moment of actual reflection that transforms not only her identity (as she is perceived by her husband) but his as well. He views himself differently thereafter—as the husband of a desirable woman. Moreover, the reflective gaze recognizes desire itself. Only when Abram himself desires his wife can he realize that the Egyptians, known for their lustfulness, will desire her as well. Desire and danger become the rationale for the continuation of the midrashic narrative.

Identity, narrative, and midrash, as this example teaches us, are inextricably connected to reflection and self-reflection. Self-reflectivity, it tells us, not only informs the identity of the figures in the tale but directs the text, motivating its chain of events. In the most basic sense, the mirroring moment is a crucial point, on which the identities of the evolving figures and the text as a whole hang. Moreover, the reflective moment is directly associated with a textual practice: Abram immediately cites scripture, and thus his scriptural source of knowledge becomes in part analogous to that of the Sage, who couches this entire tale as an exegesis of the biblical narrative in Genesis 12. Abram's self-reflection is mirrored by textual self-reflexivity.

In reading the story, I used the term "self-reflectivity," since it refers to the human—animated—domain where a person becomes the object of his or her own gaze. The reflection of another (Sarai) implies, as I suggested, self-reflection, and it is clearly human reflection that is at play here. There are but few instances of explicit human reflection in rabbinic literature—stories in which characters see their own or someone else's reflection. But, as I will argue in this book, self-reflexivity—a meta-poetic aspect of a text whereby the text refers to itself—operates in, and is central to, rabbinic texts that do not necessarily involve an explicit image of reflection. However, because I address the text as a staged "self" and see it as a cultural animated "self," I use the terms "self-reflectivity" and "self-reflexivity" interchangeably.

In the chapters that follow, I will point out mirroring moments that serve as pivotal discursive underpinnings of rabbinic textual production. That is, I will suggest that when rabbinic hermeneutical and institutional discourses become the object of reflection, they become central to the formation of rabbinic cultural identities. For us, as readers, they shed light on an underlying process that may otherwise be seen only at its endpoints—be it the identity of the Sage, the hegemony of the rabbinic institution, or the authority of midrash as scriptural interpretation. These apparent endpoints constitute what we recognize as the identity of rabbinic culture(s). Mirroring, self-reflective moments bring us, as it were, backstage in rabbinic theaters, where the participants comment on the play being enacted onstage. These comments not only undermine the unity of the apparent, seemingly coherent, performance but also, paradoxically, facilitate it. Human (or textual) performance is contingent on self-reflexivity, or, as Kenneth Burke put it, it is through "the reflexive capacity to develop highly complex symbol systems about symbol systems that humans act upon themselves and others." Put differently, in the narrative about Abram discussed above, self-reflectivity involves Eros, an animating force that motivates the character and his actions. In this story, Eros determines Abram's identity and the "identity" of the entire tale. Self-reflexivity, then, when it appears in a text, can be seen as its underlying, facilitating force.

Self-reflexivity is an aspect of any text that comments on itself as a text and as language, or on its own processes of production and reception. Self-reflexivity, as I use the term here, refers to those ways by which rabbinic texts look at their own textual and discursive principles. The question of self-reflectivity, of how one sees oneself when one becomes the object of inquiry, has long since expanded beyond the realm of individual psychology. Since the notion of identity has become suspect, whether it is the identity of a text, a social identity of a given group, or an identity of an academic discipline, self-reflexivity has become part of any discussion that looks at discourse as culturally constructed. Here, it relates to rabbinic discourse as the object of...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0812244362
• ISBN 13: 9780812244366
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 202
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
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