FOREWORD The Resonances and Registers of Jewish Myth by Elliot K. Ginsburg


Notes

     1Ff. Pesiqta Rabbati, chap. 28 et al.
      2By this I mean the various streams of Judaism that are shaped by, and owe allegiance to, Rabbinic authority as it evolves.
     3For other examples of this phenomenon, see Michael Fishbane, The Exegetical Imagination(Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1998), esp. chapters 3 and 6.
     4A short list of recent scholarship on Jewish myth might include the works of Michael Fishbane,
Yehuda Liebes’ two volumes for SUNY Press, Arthur Green’s Keter (Princeton, 1997), and the two
issues of the Journal of Jewish Philosophy and Thought devoted to myth and ritual, vol. 6:12 (1997).
The Hebrew reader might also consider Ha-Mitos be-Yahadut [Myths in Judaism], edited by Moshe
Idel and Ithamar Gruenwald (Jerusalem: Z. Shazar, 2004). Broadly speaking, most Judaic scholars
through the 1970’s tended to define myth narrowly and negatively, linking it with so-called “pagan”
religions. They therefore tended to see Judaism as a demythologizing tradition, broken only
by the “mythic resurgence” of kabbalah. Most recent scholars understand myth more broadly, as
a fundamental human impulse (found in virtually all cultures) to structure life around orienting
Stories. These scholars find rich myths in all strata of Judaism: not only in kabbalistic ritual but in
Biblical imagery and Rabbinic aggadah. They extend the mythic arc to contemporary Judaism, to
the Zionist marking of “wilderness as mythic space” to give one potent example. My fundamental
sympathies, and those of Howard Schwartz, clearly lie with these “myth-friendly” scholars. For a
spirited debate over the place of myth in Judaism, see Yehuda Liebes’ and Shalom Rosenberg’s
pieces in Mada’ei ha-Yahadut 39 (1998). For two nowclassic studies of the Jewish mythic imagination
(especially in mystical tradition) see Gershom Scholem’s On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism
(NY: Schocken, 1965) and The Mystical Shape of the Godhead (ibid., 1991). Finally, for the ways in
which diverse cultures make use of their central stories, see Wendy Doniger’s splendid Other
People’s Myths: The Cave of Echoes (NY: Macmillan, 1988).
     5Canonization lead to the possibility of grasping Scripture all at once, as a totality, in an almost
holographic fashion. In rabbinic midrash, for example, one could read a given verse intertextually:
in light of a pasuq rahoq, a verse taken from a wholly different literary context with which, however,
ingenious associations could be made.
     6The slippage from past tense to present tense here is intentional, exemplifying the mythic
tendency to collapse orders of time, i.e., to blur the distinctions between then and now.
     7For Scholem, see his “Revelation and Tradition as Religious Categories” in The Messianic Idea
in Judaism (NY: Schocken, 1971; for the Fishbane, see The Exegetical Imagination, p. 94.
     8This is not to say that everyone is equally empowered to interpret; rather, it is the religious
virtuosi, the Rabbis, who assume that central role. Clearly, Howard Schwartz goes beyond the
traditional Rabbinic models of authority in this book. On the three quotations cited here, see Ps.
62:12, quoted in sundry rabbinic sources; the rendering of Jer. 23:29 in TB Sanhedrin 34a; and TB
Eruvin 13b et al.
     9On seventy faces, a shorthand for the inexhaustible fount of meaning, see Nahmanides to Gen.
8:4; Bahyya ben Asher to Ex. 24:12, et al. On 600,000 faces, one for every soul at Sinai, see Hayyim
Vital, Sha’ar ha-Kavvanot 53b; Moshe Cordovero, Derishah be-inyanei Mal’akhim; and the discussion
in Scholem’s “The Meaning of Torah in Jewish Mysticism” in his On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism
(NY: Schocken, 1965). On the white spaces, see Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev in Imrei Tzaddikim (cited
in Scholem, “Meaning of Torah,” 81ff.) and the Noam Elimelekh cited in the Slonimer Rebbe’s Netivot
Shalom: Mo’adim “Shavuot” s.v. “hag ha-‘azeret”.
     10My rendering is drawn from Hayyei Moharan pp. 3:3 ff. Likutei Moharan 1:20 See also the
translation and discussion in Arthur Green, Tormented Master, esp. pp. 198-200.
     11In the Idrot section of the Zohar, the source for Nahman’s riff, this gesture itself is replete with
meaning. But that matter lies beyond the scope of this essay!
     12Of course, there are exceptions to this model. Gods and heroes can act in ways in which
ordinary folks cannot. Thus, King David’s sexual behavior is not simply valorized; and Moses is
variously seen as exemplary (a model that can be asymptotically approached by the spiritual
virtuoso) and exceptional, the figure who is sui generis and cannot be emulated. The Arthur Green
quotation is taken from his “Jewish Studies, Jewish Faith,” Tikkun 1:1, p. 87; the Geertz citation
comes from his The Interpretation of Cultures (NY: Basic Books, 1973).
     13The genius of our last reading, from a midrashic standpoint, is that it was able to be justified
scripturally. The ram, Gen. 22:13 relates, was offeredtahat b’no, in place of Isaac. But by choosing
a secondary meaning of tahat, the interpreter astonishingly reads: after Isaac! The classical discussion
of the Binding, as well as its midrashic, textual anchorings, can be found in Shalom Spiegel’s
The Last Trial (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights reprint, 1993).
     14This formulation was inspired by a long-ago conversation with my teacher, Arthur Green.
     15These notions have been developed by James Kugel in his “Two Introductions to Midrash” in
Hartman and Budick, eds. Midrash and Literature (New Haven: Yale, 1986) and by Michael Fishbane
in his various writings on Jewish hermeneutics.
     16The Hebrew YSF can be read either as “to add” or via a homonym “to end” or cease.
     17See Scholem’s magisterial essay, “Revelation and Tradition as Religious Categories in Judaism”
in his The Messianic Idea in Judaism. This particular chain of readings is drawn from the 16th
century kabbalist Meir ibn Gabbai’s Avodat ha-Qodesh 3:23.
     18From his The Texture of Memory (New Haven, Yale: 1994)
     19Myth 109 on the Primordial Light.
     20Oral communication from Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, from whom I first heard this saying.
And cf. Heschel’s The Earth is the Lord’s (NY: Schuman, 1950), p. 15, where we find the variant:
“story where soul surprises the mind.”
     21See Pesikta Rabbati, chap. 21.
     22For a recent discussion of the anthological imagination in Judaism, and its various sub-genres,
see the three issues of the journal Prooftexts, vol. 17:1-2 and 19:1 (1997/99). Of special use is David
Stern’s prefatory comments in 17:1.
     23Bialik and Ravnitzky focussed on relatively well-known Rabbinic works; while Ginzberg’s
terminus ad quem was prior to the Safed Revival in the 16th century.
     24Likutei Moharan 1:65. For a translation of this text, see Lawrence Kushner, The Way into Jewish
Mysticism (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2001) 147-149.
Elliot K. Ginsburg is Associate Professor of Jewish Thought in the Department of Near Eastern
Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is the author of The Sabbath in the Classical
Kabbalah and translator (with a critical commentary) of Sod ha-Shabbat: The Mystery of the Sabbath
by Rabbi Meir ibn Gabbai.