Jewish Hermeneutics

“Before the Law” (“Vor dem Gesetz”) is one of the most if not the single most commented upon of Kafka’s texts : “Helplessness seizes one face to face with this page and a half,” notes George Steiner. Has everything not already been said, been written, been thought, about this text? Like a detective, the commentator searches for the key that will once and for all resolve the enigma, unveil the mystery that hides so secretively within its depths. A mystery which we know everything depends upon. One might skeptically wonder at the discovery of yet another interpretation of “Before the Law”: “What more can be added?” he asks himself. And he may be right.  Perhaps the gates of interpretation are henceforth sealed. We may have arrived too late.
But before this text, do we not always already come too late? Has not the doorkeeper always already shut the door? The moment one realizes there is nothing to add to this text might be the very moment one realizes that, from the start, this text, though soliciting interpretation, in fact defies interpretation. We are indeed seized by helplessness. Equally impotent before this text, the first reading equals the last reading, because strictly speaking there is no first and no last here. Before this text, as before the law, we find ourselves equally exposed, equally empty, without resources. Before this text, we find ourselves, exactly like the story’s protagonist, the countryman, the Mann vom Lande: ignorant. And from this position the text inspires us infinitely. Ignorance serves therefore as my starting point in the interpretation of "Before the Law" proposed in the following study.

Not unlike the much more famous ‘Jewish heretic hermeneutics’ studied by Susan Handelman, such as those of Freud, Derrida, Bloom and others, painter and philosopher Norman Raeben has formulated his own new method for artistic creation embedded in rabbinic hermeneutics. We hereby present a comprehensive – although introductory – analysis of his creative as well as teaching methods. We also briefly focus on his influence on the poetics of his former student Bob Dylan, offering some preliminary clues for a better comprehension of the interrelations between the creative processes and theories of both authors.

Presentation delivered at "The 59th Annual Convention of the Midwest Modern Language Association", in Cincinnati, November 9-12, 2017, organized by Loyola University Chicago

New upload. The paper is an attempt to read the OG version of Isa 7:14 in a wider context than Matt 1.23. By using a "semiotic" reading model, with its discernment between a production and a reception oriented reading, I try to investigate if a possible connection with the Rebekah story in Gen 24 may shed light on the OG translation of Isaiah 7 (production oriented perspective) as well as its later history of interpretation.

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah detail the return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon. These books feature Ezra the Scribe as a religious leader of the fledging Jewish community in Jerusalem. He is introduced in the Tanakh with the following genealogical lineage: Now after these things, in the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia, Ezra the son of Seraiah, the son of Azariah, the son of Hilkiah, the son of Shallum, the son of Zadok, the son of Ahitub, the son of Amariah, the son of Azariah, the son of Meraioth, the son of Zerahiah, the son of Uzzi, the son of Bukki, the son of Abishua, the son of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the chief priest (1) ... (Ezra 7:1-5). This passage traces Ezra's descent all the way back to Aaron, the first high priest (kohen gadol). Nonetheless, rabbinic tradition teaches that Ezra himself was not a high priest. Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7 list all those exiles who returned to Jerusalem with Zerubbabel. Ezra's name is conspicuously absent fr...

This article discusses various Rabbinic positions regarding whether Ezra the Scribe—who was a Kohen—served as the High Priest in the Holy Temple after returning to Jerusalem from the Babylonian Exile. In doing so, the article explains the relationship between Ezra and Joshua ben Jehozedek and traces the history of the returnees from Babylonian Exile. Several proofs from Mishnaic and Midrashic sources are considered and some are rejected. Special attention is given to the stance of Maimonides on this issue. In attempting to reconcile these sources, the article proposes a difference between the terms “High Priest” and “Chief Priest”.

"Maimonides and his Religious Rationalism in an Aristotelian Key: An Attempt at Harmonization"

Abstract: Moses Maimonides’ philosophy is Aristotelian both in its essence and in its intention to achieve the greatest truth for human beings who are both religious and learned. This intellectual framework serves as the basis for understanding the truths of the Sacred Scriptures of Judaism, which are animated by the spirit of prophecy and by a profound religiosity that is steeped in mysticism, and that allows us to complete the picture of reality that we can reach as human beings. In this paper, the authors seek to shed light into the theoretical and ideological foundations of his argument, as well as his use of rhetorical, allegorical, and exegetical resources in general, to harmonize his religious discourse, in which he participated as a rabbi, combined with his philosophical frame of mind in an Arabic Aristotelian vein.

Keywords: Aristotelianism, Rhetoric of Concealment, Moderate Rationalism, Biblical Exegesis, Philosophy of Religion.

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Resumen La naturaleza de la filosofía de Moisés ben Maimón es aristotélica tanto de fondo como en su intención de alcanzar la mayor verdad para el hombre religioso e iniciado que se aplica a ello. Este marco intelectual sirve de base para entender las verdades que guardan las Sagradas Escrituras del judaísmo, mismas que están animadas por el espíritu de profecía y por una profunda religiosidad que se hunde en el misticismo, y que permite completar el cuadro de la realidad que podemos alcanzar como hombres. En este trabajo se buscan aclarar los fundamentos teóricos e ideológicos que guardan el complejo intento de su argumentación, así como el empleo de recursos retóricos, alegóricos y exegéticos en general, para armonizar su discurso religioso del que como rabino forma parte, combinado con su talante filosófico de cuño aristotélico árabe.

Palabras clave: Aristotelismo, retórica del ocultamiento, racionalismo moderado, exégesis bíblica, filosofía de la religión.

Gravestones with Hebrew inscriptions are the most common class of Jewish monuments still present in such regions as Ukraine or Belarus. Epitaphs are related to various Biblical, Rabbinical, and liturgical texts. Despite that, the genre of Hebrew epitaphs seldom becomes an object of cultural or literary studies. In this paper, I show that a function of Hebrew epitaphs is to connect the ideal world of Hebrew sacred texts to the world of everyday life of a Jewish community. This is achieved at several levels. First, the necessary elements of an epitaph – name, date, and location marker – place the deceased person into a specific absolute context. Second, the epitaphs quote Biblical verses with the name of the person thus stressing his/her similarity to a Biblical character. Third, there is Hebrew/Yiddish orthography code-switching between the concepts found in the sacred books and those from the everyday world. Fourth, the epitaphs occupy an intermediate position between the professional and folk literature. Fifth, the epitaphs are also in between the canonical and folk religion. I analyze complex hermeneutic mechanisms of indirect quotations in the epitaphs and show that the methods of actualization of the sacred texts are similar to those of the Rabbinical literature. Furthermore, the dichotomy between the sacred and profane in the epitaphs is based upon the Rabbinical concept of the 'Internal Jewish Bilingualism' (Hebrew/Aramaic or Hebrew/Yiddish), which is parallel to the juxtaposition of the Written and Oral Torah.

Ausgehend von den Kontroversen zwischen Rabbi Aqiva und Rabbi Jishmael geht der vorliegende Beitrag anhand von zwei Textbeispielen auf verschiedene die Genderfrage betreffende exegetische Prinzipien ein. Dem Aufsatz liegt damit die Auffassung zugrunde, dass durch die Analyse der rabbinischen Hermeneutik ein unmittelbares Verständnis des rabbinischen Gender-Diskurses möglich ist. Das erste Textbeispiel diskutiert ein Kommentar von Rabbi Aqiva zum sogenannten Sota-Ritus (Num 5,11–31, hier Vers 5,28), der Frauen im Vergleich zur exegetischen Auslegung von Rabbi Jishmael eine aktivere Rolle zuschreibt. Während Rabbi Jishmael faktische Argumente mit exegetischen Erwägungen kombiniert, lässt Rabbi Aqiva nur exegetische Argumente gelten. Rabbi Jishmaels Zugang wirkt sich in dieser Exegese im Vergleich zur Position Aqivas negativ auf den Genderdiskurs aus. Das zweite Textbeispiel setzt sich mit einer Aussage Rabbi Aqivas auseinander, die Frauen von kultischen Aktivitäten während der Herstellung von Reinigungswasser aus der Asche der roten Kuh ausschließt (Num 19). Dabei soll gezeigt werden, wie die Rabbinen, aufbauend auf den exegetischen Prämissen Rabbi Aqivas, in der Entwicklung dieser Tradition Frauen in diese rituellen Aktivitäten partiell integrieren.