Ilit Ferber - Lament in Jewish Thought

Edited by
Vivian Liska

Editorial Board
Robert Alter, Steven Aschheim, Richard I. Cohen, Mark H. Gelber, Moshe Halbertal, Geoffrey Hartman, Moshe Idel, Samuel Moyn, Ada Rapoport-Albert, Alvin Rosenfeld, David Ruderman, Bernd Witte

Volume 2

ISBN 978-3-11-033382-4
e-ISBN (EPUB) 9783110395310

e-ISBN (PDF) (PDF) 978-3-11-033996-3
e-ISBN (PDF) (EPUB) 978-3-11-039531-0
ISSN 2199-6962

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de .

2014 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Cover image: Les Lamentations de Jrmie (Lamentations, III, 1-9);
Copyright: Chagall SABAM BELGIUM 2014

www.degruyter.com

Epub-production: Jouve, www.jouve.com

This volume results from a fruitful collaboration, not only between us, the editors, but among numerous friends and colleagues without whom the publication of this book would not have been possible. First and foremost, we would like to thank Vivian Liska, who has been the benefactor and supporter of this project from the very beginning. It was Vivian who first introduced us to one another, sparking a longstanding correspondence, which led to the organization of a conference on lament in Jewish thought, hosted by Vivian at the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp in 2012. Vivian also presided over the production of this volume as general editor of the book series Perspectives on Jewish Texts and Contexts. Above all, she is for us an invaluable interlocutor and friend. We thank the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp for providing support for the preparation of this volume. We also thank the participants of the Antwerp conference for a lively discussion, and for their contributions to this volume. We are grateful to Leora Batnitzky, who gave the closing remarks at the Antwerp conference, and who generously contributed the thoughtful Preface to this volume. Lina Barouch is not only the co-translator of Scholems texts on lament, included in this volume, but she is also a dear friend, with whom we have had many valuable conversations on lament. For his exquisite attentiveness to language, his efficiency and good cheer, we thank Jim Gibbons. Last but not least, we are grateful to Ulrike Krauss and Katja Lehming of De Gruyter for their support and guidance throughout the production of this book. We hope that the enthusiasm we feel for the ideas contained in this volume will be transmitted to its readers.

Ilit Ferber and Paula Schwebel

The list below contains references for frequently cited works keyed to abbreviations. For the readers convenience, the works from this list cited in each essay are also included in the individual bibliographies that are provided at the end of each chapter. For multivolume works, the abbreviation in the text is immediately followed by a numeral to indicate which volume is being referenced (e.g., SW 1, Tb 2, etc.).

In his essay of 19171918, On Lament and Lamentation, newly published in English in this volume, Gershom Scholem writes: Every lament can be expressed as poetry, since its particular liminality between the linguistic realms, its tragic paradox, makes it so. (This is also why Hebrew has only one word both for lament [ Klage ] and lamentation [ Klagelied ]: Kinah ) ( Lament , 317). As an anguished cry, lament, as Scholem notes, stands between language and silence, between expression and annihilation. As an expression of crippling pain in the face of an almost unspeakable reality, lament also asks but does not answer a philosophical and theological question: how can this be? Laments poetic expression performs its own inexpressibility. Can such torment have any meaning save its expression of meanings destruction? Laments present moment stands on the threshold of its past. But this threshold is an abyss: there is no passing between what was history and what is now the memory of historys annihilation.

Scholem pointedly describes the meeting between the self-annihilation of language and expression as a border: For whereas every language is always a positive expression of a being, and [laments] infinity resides in the two bordering lands of the revealed and the silenced [ Verschwiegenen ], such that it actually stretches out over both realms, this language is different from any other language in that it remains throughout on the border [ Grenze ], exactly on the border between these two realms ( Lament , 313). From an intellectual perspective, to consider lament is to stand on the multiple borders of laments liminality, its in-betweeness. But we cannot stand on more than one border at a time. So it is that this volumes essays approach the topic of lament from multiple borders, but also by necessity from one border at a time.