The Dialectic of Tradition

Principal Researcher: Prof. Galili Shahar

Research Assistant: Mr. Gal Herz

 

Abstract

The project deals with transformations of theological knowledge in 20th century Jewish literature and thought. It looks at various cases in which religious traditions have been translated, interpreted and implied in new contexts of poetics and political thinking. The project, however, studies not only how traditions shape the world of modern Judaism, but also looks at modernist interpretations as creating new experiences of tradition. We are thus dealing with the “dialectic of tradition”- the process through which tradition itself gain new meanings. The project looks at tradition as a process of “delivery,” which also implies opening and renewal. In the modernist frames of Jewish literature, theological knowledge is not eliminated, but rather gains new and different forms of expression. The project should lead to a better understanding of tradition beyond the familiar binary thinking about religiosity and secularism, myth and science, faith and skepticism. Most of the project’s case studies deal with German-Jewish and Hebrew cultures in the 20th century. The methods to be used are multidisciplinary and are based on literary theory and criticism, intellectual and cultural history, rabbinical studies and Jewish philosophy.

The project will focus on five major issues:

1. The unsacred language: The New Hebrew and its theological challenge

The project deals with different reflections on the notion of Hebrew and the implications of the secularization of language during the 19th and 20th centuries. The research discusses the tensions that modern Jewish thinkers and writers, among them H. N. Bialik, S. Y. Agnon, F. Rosenzweig, Martin Buber and G. Scholem, found in the process of transforming Hebrew from the sacred realm to that of profane representation. This chapter deals also with anxieties and hopes regarding the possibilities of transforming the mystical depth of the Hebrew words - its “Holy names” - into poetics of justice and frames of critical political discourse.

2. The Akeda and the riddle of literature

The biblical story of the Akeda (the binding of Isaac) is one of the major issues of Jewish tradition that has been transformed into questions of philosophical and literary representation. This chapter deals with modernist interpretations of the Akeda and shows how they reveal new dimensions in the tradition itself - in Talmud, Midrash Rabba, and Kabala - regarding the problems of sacrifice, silence, representation and gender difference. The major readings will be E. Auerbach, S.Y. Agnon, S. Hareven, E. Levinas and J. Derrida.

3. Poetry and prayer - Jewish literature and the liturgical tradition

This chapter of the research looks at the way in which the liturgical poem - the Hebrew Piut - became a source and an element in the creation of new textures of representation in Jewish literature and thought. We look at G. Scholem’s and F. Rosenzweig’s enterprises of translating traditional Hebrew poems of prayer, the poetry of Yehuda Halevi, the lamentation of Job and other sources) into German, and discuss their philological and theological considerations. In this context we also discuss S.Y. Agnon’s stories and H.N. Bialik's poems, and the way of reading the liturgical poem as a sign of the lost world of European Judaism, and thus as a memory that is delivered and preserved in the world of modern Hebrew literature.

4. The angel and the demon - Figures of revelation in modern Jewish literature

The figure of the angel and its ambiguous appearance in modernist Jewish literature is the subject matter of the third chapter. Here we discuss the double face of the angel as a messenger and a divine poet (and a vocalist), but also as a demon - an evil creature that embodies destruction. The writings of W. Benjamin, F. Kafka, G. Scholem, M. Buber, S.Y. Agnon and Y. Hoffmann reveal their relationship to the Talmudic literature, the Midrash and the mystical representation of angels and demons.

5. Messianism and literature: Theology, poetics and modern political thought

The transformation of messianic figures of knowledge into political concepts and poetical expression in German and Hebrew writing of the 20th century is a significant issue that should be examined with renewed attention to the literary element (“Messiah” becoming a literary principle of hope for the correction of the world). Modernist interpretations of the messianic horizon as a poetical revelation (the open text, the political aesthetics, literature as engagement), however, also hint at the original literary qualities of messianism. In this chapter the research deals with G. Landauer, E. Toller, M. Buber, M. Brod, F. Werfel, W. Benjamin, G. Scholem and H. Arendt.

Published research: