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Kaii Higashiyama

Casper David Friedrich

M.A. Ouaknin: The Burnt Book. Reading the Talmud.

Hebrew: the Man and his Language (pag. 73-74)

There are two relations to the Hebrew language. On the one hand, Hebrew is a language that adheres extremely closely to matter, space, and time; "its words, sounds, die materiality of the shape of its letters follow the contours and the rhythms of the world and creation. Hebrew is the geo-graphy (die writing of the earth) and die geo-metry (the measuring of die earth) of the created."

Hebrew brings the world before our eyes, frees the world from itself in order for us to apprehend it, understand and take hold of it. For the Hebrew mind, the Hebrew language is the most immediate of realities. "The Hebrew mind knows of a profound secret, that all reality - the densest and most physical - is constituted by language, by its words, by the infinite vibrations of its voices and echoes." In Hebrew tradition, language is first of all a spectacle. Revelation is, above all, seeing! " And all die people saw die voices…" (Exod. 20:18). The visible is the voices made writing.

That being the case, die world is revealed, shows itself; we can grasp it because language has offered it to us. But is the world there? Is it not, in act, a projected being, a reality that passes by in movement? Does not the world made visible run the risk like the text and through the text, of becoming an idol?

These questions imply a second function of the Hebrew language that, contrastingly, does not freeze the world and the whole of reality in the present, but that, on the contrary, forges a path toward absence; it is a function of this language, which has the ability to burst open, to pulverize itself in a thousand pieces, to work a derealization of reality "by which the proud self-assurance of all the realities of this world, the clear conscience of idolatry, fall in ruins into die emptiness of their vanity ."

It is important to stop here a moment to examine die Hebrew word for "Hebrew," die man and his language: 'Ivri and 'Ivrit. The Hebrew, in his etymological meaning, is a passer-through (la'avor), a breaker-off ('avera), a transgressor ('avera), a passer-on, a producer and a creator (ubar, me'uberet, ibur hahodesh); he is also someone who takes into account that which is outside of himself (Ba'avur she…)

These are all words from die root I, V, R.

The Hebrew tears himself away, protests, passes through… 

The Hebrew-passer-through "not only invites us to go from one riverbank to the other [passeur, lit. "ferryman"], but to head every- where where there is a passage to be achieved, while maintaining this between-two-banks that is the truth of the passing." For the Hebrew, existing is becoming. The Hebrew is not something that is, but something that will be. It is a matter of creation. So, the Hebrew will be in a perpetual becoming, in a becoming that is yet to come (à-venir). The Hebrew is messianic! inasmuch as "messianism is not the certainty of the corning of a man who will bring history to a halt," but a way of being of every man in time. The Hebrew-messiah lives in the temporality of the yet-to-come (à-venir; avenir: "future"), of the ever yet-to-come. The Hebrew is not in time; he produces time. Time is what emerges from the "caress" between the hand that approaches and the body of the text (and of the world) that slips away. In this messianic temporality, it is “as if the world existed and did not exist at the same time, perpetually slipping away, re-creating each instant."

The Hebrew language, 'Ivrit, should reflect this passing, this "in the process of being" (en-train-d'etre)-the essence-of man and of the world…

The contradition between the two functions of language cannot be resolved in an artificial synthesis or by giving more importance to one of the two terms. The Hebrew language gives and takes at the same time, fixes and dissolves, builds and destroys, states and retracts.

That is why it has been said that Hebrew is metaphorical. We would prefer-from the point of view of contemporary philosophical research-to say that Hebrew is a trace.

And if "the trace is not a presence but the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates itself, displaces itself, postpones itself, it properly speaking does not take place" because the effacing is part of its structure, then we now have to describe all the strategic means that have been set up to make the effacing, the breaking up of Hebrew possible.

"In the beginning was the Book!" But is the book of the beginning the same as the one we can read in our libraries? Is there not the Book and, simply, books? Is the Torah we have identical to "God's Torah"?

Rabbi Simeon ben Lakish teaches: The Torah that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave to Moses is a white fire, engraved on a black fire; it is of fire, graven by fire, given by fire, as it is said: "Written with his right hand, a law of fire (Esh-dat) for them."

Nahmanides comments this text in the following manner: “We possess an authentic tradition, according to which the whole Torah is made up of all the Names of God. So the words that we read can also be distributed in quite another manner. The Torah written “black fire on white fire” means that the text was written without any breaks, in an interrupted sequence from the first to the last letter. This writing makes up a Name that can be divided into Names.”  

The “Caress”: Experiencing (pag. 62-65)

Perfect signs,

for never does the meaning of these symbols completely dismiss the materiality of the symbols that suggest it and that always preserve an undreamed-of power to renew this meaning; never does the mind dismiss the letter that reveals it to itself. On the contrary, the mind awakens in the letter new possibilities of suggestion (E. Levinas)

As a collection of perfect signs, the Text can never be attained. One say that it is caressed. So in spite of the analysis undertaken, it spite of the research, the bursting open, the laying bare, the text slips out of our grasp, remains inaccessible, always yet to come. It reveals itself only to withdraw immediately. The text is both "visible and in-visible" at the same time; ambiguous, its meaning twinkles, it remains an enigma: "Transcendence owes it to itself to interrupt its own demonsttation. Its voice has to be silent as soon as one listens for its message.”

But the Text withdraws only if we let it; the interruption of the demonstrationof transcendence,  the movement of necessary withdrawal depends, above all, on the interpreter, on his way of being as he reads the text, on his approach. We call this way of being the "caress": the caress is a modality of the subject, where the subject in his relation with the Text goes beyond the relation, for "that which is caressed is not actually touched"; "the caress is the non-coinciding proper to contact, a denuding never naked enough."

The caress consists in seizing upon nothing, in soliciting what unceaselessly escapes its form toward a future never future enough, in soliciting what slips away as though it were not yet. (E. Levinas)

In short, the caress is research. In this research the caress does not what it is seeking. This "not knowing," this "fundamental disorder," is central to this way of being. The relation to the Text authorizing the transcendence of the voices of the Text will therefore be like" a game utterly without project or plan."

Study, considered as research, allows one to experience. In this respect we can contrast the expressions "to have an experience" and actually "to experience." "To have" refers to possession, to knowing, to settling back with satisfaction, to the confidence that acquisition confers; in the "having," the experience is confirmed by repetition. But since the experience is repeated and confirmed, it cannot be something that renews itself. Consequently, that which originally was unforeseen is now foreseen. "To have" an experience of the Text is to understand it, grasp it, possess it, because it is its repetition that gives it substance. But once it becomes visible, graspable, the Text takes on the shape and status of an idol. Its language becomes totalitarian: "stereotyped, remaining frozen in meanings set and imposed once and for all without consideration for situations and experiences that may have changed." The idol-text is "set out and crushes because of both its weight and its unchangingness."  

There is no longer any question of "having" an experience with the Text. Studying no longer means knowing in advance the results of one's research. Nothing should fulfill our expectations. "Experiencing is always, at first, an experience of negativity: the thing is not such as we thought. Our knowledge and its object are both altered with the experience of another object."

"To experience" means to participate in opening. The "man of experience" - in our context, the interpreter - is not only the one who has become such as a result of his experiences (already acquired}, but the one who is open to experiences.

The fullness of experience, the fullness of being of the person we call experienced, does not consist in the fact that he already knows everything and knows it better. The man of experience turns out to be radically foreign to all dogmatism. (Gadamer)

The interpreter experiences things by caressing: never seizing anything, he allows himself to be carried, negatively and infinitely, from one meaning to another, so that if one had to locate (in the Text) a center, an origin of meaning, a god that gives the meaning, one would find it only in the void, empty of language, the "blanks of writing."

We can then understand why study is symbolized by the written form of the letter Lamed, the only one of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet to go over the line, to trans-gress, to thrust itself "beyond the verse." Lamed, the last letter of the Torah…

So the Text should be elusive, impregnable, and should never take on the form of an idol. The Cabalists explain that the Text, the Torah, and God are one (Rahamana vekudsha beirikh hu, had hu). In refusing to lay one's hand on the Text, one also refuses to lay one's hand on the divinity. The relationship with the text and with God is paradoxical: one must move away, create a distance, if the relation with God is not going to be idolatrous. This is what Henri Atlan calls the "atheism of writing":

The primary preoccupation of biblical teaching is not the existence of God, theism as contrasted with atheism, but the fight against idolatry. In all theism there is the danger of idolatry. All theism is idolatry, since expression signifies it, thereby freezing it; except if, somehow, its discourse refutes itself and so becomes atheistic. In other words, the paradoxes of language and its meanings are such that the only discourse possible about God which is not idolatrous is an atheistic discourse. Or: in any discourse the only God that is not an idol is a God who is not God.'

All the masters of Jewish thought, from the prophets to the contemporary masters, have understood that…

The system of interpretation-besides its necessity for the phenomenon of understanding-is founded on the will to refuse idolatry. The Text, which is the primary relation to God, must not turn into an idol. The temptation of idolatry is strong-one need only remember the golden calf, made right after the Revelation; it is the temptation of appearances, of Presence. "The idol gives us the divine, and so does not deceive or disappoint." The idol-in this case, the Text, given up to the grasp of the hand, the manual-reassures; the idol brings things closer:

What the idol tries to reduce is the gap and the withdrawal of the divine… Filling in for the absence of the divinity, the idol brings the divine within reach, ensures its presence, and, eventually, distorts it. Its completion finishes the divine off. The idol tries to bring us closer to the divine and to put it at our disposal: because he is afraid of atheism, the worshiper lays his hand on the divine in the form of a god; but this taking in hand loses what it grasps: all that is left is a too-familiar, too tangible, too assured amulet… The idol lacks the distance that identifies and authenticates the divine as such-as that which does not belong to us, but which happens to us. (J.L.Marion)

To avoid the trap of idolatry - the illusion of possessing the meaning - Hebrew tradition has introduced the idea of levels of meaning. It is sufficient to say that four levels of reading can be found, which are called: -Pshat: the simple or literal meaning -Remez: allusive meaning -Drash: solicited (exegetical) meaning -Sod: hidden or secret meaning.  

The Preeminence of the Questioning Word (pag. 86-87)

Mahloket, the first principle of dialogue of the Talmud, is profoundly linked to a certain conception of hermeneutics and truth. The fact that a single text can offer innumerable interpretations implies that there is no "right" interpretation. This leads us to leave behind the binary logic of true and false ( of Greek logic), to enter into " what we shall call the "logic of meaning."

As Nietzsche expresses very well: "There are all sorts of eyes . . . and consequently there are all sorts of truths, and consequently, there is no truth. " To really enter Talmudic thought, each time a certainty is asserted one should seek the opposite assertion that it is related to. In this way, Talmudic thought never stops opposing itself, yet without ever contenting itself with satisfying this opposition. With this form of thought goes a speech whose modality keeps open the requirement for a dynamic approach. This is, to our mind, the "questioning word," the question.

The question is movement. In the mere grammatical structure of the question we already feel this opening of the questioning word: there is the request for something else; incomplete, the word that questions recognizes that it is only a part. Thus the question is essentially partial; it is the setting where speech offers itself as ever incomplete…

The question, if it is the unfinished word, bases itself on incompletion. It is not incomplete as a question; on the contrary it is speech that the fact of declaring itself incomplete fulfills. The question puts the sufficient assertion back into the void; it enriches it with this preexisting void. Through the question, we give ourselves the thing and also the void that allows us to not have it yet or to have it in the form of desire for thought.(M . Blanchot)

Talmudic thought is the thinking of the question, and it is no mere chance that the very first word of the Talmud is a question: Meematai (From what time?).

Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav explains that the interrelational space of  Mahloket issues from the hallal hapanui, necessary for creation. God withdraws; he leaves an "empty space" (hallat hapanui) that is essentially the original space of all questions, because it contains the question of questions: the Enigma! God withdraws: so he is absent! But can something exist cut off from the vitality that the divinity breathes into it? No! So God is present. Yesh-ve-ayin, "Being and nothingness" coexist. When two masters discuss together, the relation originates in this paradox: that is what is called the Bina. It is not a matter of intellectual capacity or quality, but of a relational attitude, of dialogue, that must be maintained. What is there between the two masters who confront each other? A nothingness more essential than the Nothingness itself, the emptiness of the in-between, an interval that is ever deepened and, as it deepens, swells up, the nothing as work and movernent!(M.Blanchot)

"All my life I have grown up between the masters." According to Rabbi Nahman, this maxim means: I have grown up "between" (beyn}, that is to say, in the space of nothingness, in the empty space that separates and joins the masters in the situation of Mahloket.

To maintain the paradoxical relationship at stake in the Mahloket, the question should not await the answer: "The answer is fatal for the question." Through the question, things are taken and transformed into possibilities, uplifted "dramatically to their possibility, beyond being. "

To answer would be to allow that which was reaching beyond to subside into being. The answer suppresses the "opening," the richness of possibility; whereas the role of the question is to open up. The question "heralds a type of relationship characterized by opening and free movement. "

Within the context of the hermeneutic problem, the question has of place and takes on the meaning of "calling into question." that is to say, the an of interpreting and not of repeat- implies the fundamental suspending of our own prejudices.

Anselm Kiefer

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