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Symbols of Judaism Marc Alain Ouaknin Paris 1995 Editions Assouline
MYTH AND RITUAL: THE RHYTHM I. MYTH: THE FOUNDING WORDS OF IDENTITY. The Jewish are a people of memory. More than the painful memories of the Shoah, more than the sum of Israel's many sorrows and triumphs, Jewish memory comprises both the real and imaginary events that make us who we are today. It is the root of our being, without which the tree of life would never bear fruit. The collective memory of the Jewish people is inscribed in the Bible: first, in the five books of Moses, and then in the books of the Prophets and the Holy Writings. It is also handed down from generation to generation through the oral traditions inscribed in different collections called the Midrash. These accounts construct an identity around key values which become imprinted in the consciousness of each reader and listener. The events recounted are experienced as mythical rather than historical events. Because of its mythical content, the event is no longer dated and its meaning becomes potentially infinite. The mythical tale recounts not only the meaning of the facts at the moment of their occurrence, but also the sum of meanings these facts have had for past and present generations, as well as the meanings they will have for generations to come. In this context, k makes no sense to wonder "Did this event really occur as the story tells us?" or even, "Did it actually occur?". The myth is not the "account of a true event" but the "truthful account of an event". This "truthful account", collectively accepted by the group, becomes a Part of its memory - its "narrative memory", the individual and collective words which forge the origins of a Group of people. The founding words of identity: this is the exact meaning of what we call myth. Myths are transmitted from one generation to the next, first of all, through oral traditions. Stories are told around the fire in the evening or under a shady tree, where the villagers gather to listen to the ancestor who knows the stories and passes on the tradition. In the neighbouring village, the Same story is told, but with variations. Some elements are added or cut out, the characters are uglier or more beautiful, kinder or meaner. The plot itself may follow other paths, turning the story into something quite different. There can be several, even contradictory, versions of the same event. But myth has no fear of contradictions. There are many different versions of fairy tales, for example, which in many respects, function like myths. The story of Cinderella has 345 versions (1). All these variations are distinct facets, different perceptions of the Same event. Some myths are experienced affectively, others, aesthetically, and still others retain particularly ethical, philosophical or poetic aspects. Although the work of oral narrative is neverending, at a certain moment in the evolution of each myth the oral form is given a physical form and incorporated into the written word. With the writing down of myths we witness the birth of "textual memory". The text belongs to the whole community. To write a text means to put its message at the centre of the community, at the disposition of the whole group. The strength of the great, written texts Comes from their ability to conserve the multiple tones and approaches of earlier oral versions. The genius of the dialectic of the one and the many is conferred upon the Bible. A text possesses multiple harmonics and an infinite movement of meanings. Textual memory, the second mode of myth transmission, is kept vitally linked to its oral origins through the interpretations of readers who try to recover the diversity of former variants beneath the unity of the text. In the Jewish tradition this body of interpretations, through which a Single story will give rise to several, is called the Midrash.(2) Although schematic, it can be justly said that the work of the Masters of the Midrash and the Talmud, coming several centuries after the birth of oral narratives and their biblical renditions, was an attempt to recover in the subtleties of the text itself, between its lines and letters, the multiplicity of readings that flowed out of it. The Masters were, in some sense, archaeologists of meaning, and very lucid ones at that, fully aware that the interpretations and narratives they propounded occupied the realm of possibility rather than truth, and Sprung from imaginary creation rather than historical restitution. In the Midrash, the relationship to tradition is not an obstacle to creativity. The remembrance of myth, through which the group's identity is forged, becomes in the Midrash a dynamic remembrance focussed on the future rather than the past. The Midrash is the continual renewal of myth, the continual renewal of the existential forces that forge being and enable it to reinvent itself outside itself. The Midrash is the "memory of the future", memory which reminds us of our obligation to exist fully but without ever accepting the pure passivity of tradition. As Martin Buber puts it so succinctly: "For the generation that assumes it with a clear consciousness of its meaning, tradition is the most noble of liberties, but it is the most miserable enslavery for those who inherit it through a simple laziness of spirit."(3) The Midrash is not concerned with telling the story the way it happened but with constructing a matrix of founding events which will have repercussions across the centuries. It is through the stories related in the Bible and reworked by the Midrash that the Jewish people recognise and identify themselves and receive, according to Paul Riccoeur's elegant expression, a "narrative identity". The biblical text is an expression of an ensemble of stories and narratives which we call foundation myths, the founding words of identity. The narrative dimension of the Bible, called Haggadah or Aggadah in Hebrew (like the paschal narrative which is ritually read the evening of the Passover seder), provides the fundamental link between all myth and ritual. Before examining this link, an important remark must be made. The fact that the Biblical text is in Hebrew constitutes a considerable advantage. In this purely consonantic language (consonants without written vowels) a word can signify multiple actions or objects. The Hebrew language thus dwells in the infinite realm of the incomplete, in an incompleteness that will forever remain incomplete and incompleteable. Word, therefore, becomes promise. II. THE RITUAL: A GESTURAL MEMORY The third way of transmitting myth is through ritual, which is the concrete expression and objectification of myth in the human body and gesture. Ritual is the "gestural memory" of the "narrative and textual memory" of myth.
Event ↓ Myth
Narrative memory ┌───────────────┐ Oral account → Written account → Ritual = = Textual memory Gestural memory = = Haggadah Halakhah
In the biblical text, as is also the case for the Midrash and the Talmud, myth does not exist without ritual, nor ritual without myth. The dialectic of ritual and myth constitutes the very rhythm of biblical life and subsequently of Judaism itself. Ritual and myth fertilise each other; through their reciprocal tensions and constant interferences, they assure the life of the laws and the renewal of Judaic legislation and narrative. Narrative identity becomes twofold by adding an identifying behaviour; that is, by acting out the symbolic foundations of identity. By extension, the word "ritual" in Hebrew is halakha, which literally means "law". The biblical text is not only the place in which myth is enunciated but also the exhibition of the link between myth and the ritual that expresses it. The most representative example is probably the episode in the life of Jacob, generally known as "Jacob's struggle with the angel". While crossing the river Jabbok, Jacob encounters an angel who does not allow him to pass. Jacob valiantly wrestles with the angel and overpowers him. The angel demands that Jacob let him go. Jacob answers that he will not let him go until he has received his blessing. The angel gives his blessing to Jacob: "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, as you have struggled with God and men and prevailed." Victory opens the way to a "change of identity" and teaches us that man is not, but must be and that his existence is a duty to infinitely be. The Poet Roberto Juarroz says: "Man does not live, he resuscitates. At each step, he resuscitates." And Erich Fromm teaches: "To live is to be reborn every moment." During the struggle, Jacob is touched on his hip and crippled. His lameness and the change of name are the strong points of the myth: Jacob and Israel! Jacob is Israel. The incessant movement from one to the other: this is the meaning of the word "hebrew" (4). The radical refusal of either a definitive identity or the fetishisation of the self. Crippled identity and lameness continually remind us to escape the urge to classify, to close beings and things in the prison of names and words. Crippled identity maintains in man a constant questioning of identity so that he remembers that man "makes himself from unmaking himself", that the state of being constitutes the state of being "over there" - "somewhere in the unfinished". Immediately after the angel's blessing, the biblical text states: "Because of this, the children of Israel do not eat the sinew." A dietary ritual was thus born which maintains the narrative of '(Jacob's struggle", of his victory and his lameness, in our memory. "Narrative memory" is therefore revived by "gestural memory", which is ritual. Every time we eat meat and stop ourselves from eating the sinew so as not to transgress this prohibition (that now extends to the hindquarters), we are simultaneously stating this imperative: Become! Construct yourself! Invent yourself! "Your perfection resides in your perfectability!" (Andre Neher). In the framework of the study of texts, this dialectic of myth and ritual is extraordinarily fecund and creative. The methodological rule can be stated in this way: each time we study a ritual, we must research its narrative foundation and vice versa. The biblical text then becomes formidably rich and original (…) notes (1) Bruno Bettelheim, Psychoanalyse des Contes de Fées, Laffont 1976, Page 407. (2) The Midrush is also the generic name of the collections which brought these multiple interpretations together. (3) Martin Buber, Judaisme, Verdier 1982. (4) The word "hebrew" Comes from the root word “avor” which means to go from one river bank to the other. It simultaneously means "crossing" as well as "fecundity" as the infant in the mother's womb is called "oubus". Symbols of Judaism:
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