The Last Trial

Shalom Spiegel, Judah Goldin

Description

“We find that the story of Abraham and Isaac rises almost spontaneously in the mind of one generation after another.... Constantly past and present react to and upon each other, and life is given an order, a coherence, by the themes which govern the Holy Scriptures and the reinterpretations of those themes.”
—from the Introduction by Judah Goldin

Shalom Spiegel’s classic examines the total body of texts, legends, and traditions referring to the Binding of Isaac and weaves them together into a definitive study of the Akedah as one of the central events in all of human history.

Spiegel here provides the model for showing how legend and history interact, how the past may be made comprehensible by present events, and how the present may be understood as a renewal of revelation.

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Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Jewish mythology
• Jewish studies
• Jewish history
• Judaism
• History of Christianity
• Religion

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 08 août 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781580236522
• Langue: English

Extrait

FRONTISPIECE: The Sacrifice of Isaac (Isma il), a single miniature from a manuscript of the Majma al-t warikh by Hafiz-i Abr , prepared ca. A. D. 1425 for the library of B ysunghur, son of Shahrukh. School of Herat, Persia. See further below, pp. 40f., and cf. Introduction, p. xi, n.*.
CONTENTS
Preface
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
The Last Trial
The Akedah
Index of Biblical References
Index of Midrashic-Talmudic Sages

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Preface
Shalom Spiegel s Me-Aggadot ha-Akedah, written as an introduction to a twelfth-century poem by Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn which Spiegel had decided to edit, comment on, and publish for the first time, appeared originally in 1950 as a contribution to the Jubilee Volume in honor of Alexander Marx. (Two supplements appeared in 1953 and 1964, also in Festschriften .) Spiegel generously sent me an offprint and it arrived a few days before the eve of Rosh Hashana. No holiday before or since so overpowered my limping religiosity, moods and fractured pieties as did that monograph. So in the ten days of that season I reread the work at least two more times. By Yom Kippur even the tiny shambling Iowa City synagogue no longer felt dilapidated, but like the right stage-setting for loud outcry. I think that an ornate upper-middle-class prayer house-Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, whatever-characteristic of theatre auditoriums American prosperity has led to would not have roused the emotional response produced by my first readings of Me-Aggadot ha-Akedah in that nebbich midwest shul. But that may be sentimentality, if not worse.
Of course, there was Spiegel s tiffany prose. Who in the world wrote such Hebrew? No wonder he was the envy (poorly disguised) of sundry colleagues. To be sure, in belletristic composition there was Agnon. But Spiegel s ambition was not fiction of remembrance of east-European past. It was scholarship, text analysis with detailed documentation and footnotes and variant transcriptions: the impedimenta of reading for pleasure. Since elegance of style was typical Spiegel in all his writings and habitual speech, it was no surprise, but still a delight, to encounter it again. But this time, the theme! The command to Abraham to offer up his precious son as sacrifice: altar, fire, knife. Why, it was the very Torah-reading of the second day of Rosh Hashana. Inevitably Spiegel s scholarly treatment of the beginnings of the theme through half the middle ages would lodge in the mind on that day. But it s not dislodged even when that Genesis chapter is read in the routine annual cycle.
For the Akedah story, Genesis XXII, is indeed one of the most terrifying narratives in all of Scripture. Will nothing less than an order that the father with his own hand slay his favorite son satisfy the deity of a biblical patriarch? Is that a test or a reign of terror? So profound was the effect of this account on Jewish memory and speculation, every generation of Jews invoked it as leitmotif for its own trials and tragedies. It also penetrated deep into Christianity for its own purposes.
And the poem by Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn incorporated a statement so wild, it suspends credulity: that Abraham slaughtered twice! How take it seriously? Did the poet lose control of his rhetoric? So Spiegel undertook to prove that nothing wild, nothing exaggerated led the poet to say what he did. There were indeed two slaughterings, not one, and bystanders bore witness to it. Don t be astonished, therefore, that for the poet, angels on high cried out in extremis.
During the last two decades or so, it has been interesting to note how frequently the Akedah story has become the theme of a number of teachers and public lecturers. Except for sermons, I do not recall such frequent publicity announcements on campuses and in popular magazines before approximately the 1970s.
Naturally this is not to say that no one else (especially in the nineteenth century) discussed Akedah problems critically before Spiegel. He himself reviewed the works of a number of them. But it is definitely to say that I am familiar with no discussion of the theme as thoroughgoing, as erudite, as critical, as perceptive, as discovering as Spiegel s. And, I want to add, as unhomiletical. And his identification of the original context of the eye-for-eye prescription is breathtaking.
The translation into English was undertaken when a New Haven colleague who could not read Hebrew protested bitterly, Here is obviously a very important study, and you people keep it to yourselves. So the American Council of Learned Societies sponsored its publication. Not long after the translation appeared, a copy was found lying on top of the desk of a leading art historian in Princeton. Forty-three years after its initial publication (and what years!) the book still addresses us directly, even if temporarily we postpone reflection on what the ram teaches. And since 1950, every time one recalls the Akedah , the mind translates: Shalom Spiegel on the Akedah.
J.G. Swarthmore, PA February 1993
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
B.
Babylonian Talmud.
Davidson, Thesaurus
Israel Davidson, Thesaurus of Medieval Hebrew Poetry , New York, 1924-33. 4 vols.
Ginzberg, Legends
Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews , Philadelphia, 1909 ff. 7 vols.
Habermann
A. M. Habermann, Sefer Gezerot Ashkenaz we-Sarefat , Jerusalem, 1945.
HUCA
Hebrew Union College Annual.
J.
Jerushalmi, the Palestinian Talmud.
JBL
Journal of Biblical Literature .
JQR
Jewish Quarterly Review.
M.
Mishnah.
Mann
Jacob Mann, The Bible as Read and Preached in the Old Synagogue , Cincinnati, 1940.
MGWJ
Monatschrift f r Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums.
MhG
Midrash ha-Gadol, ed. M. Margulies, Jerusalem, 1947.
Migne, P.G. and P.L.
J. P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca and Patrologia Latina (Patrologiae Cursus Completus), Paris, 1844-66.
NS
A. Neubauer and M. Stern, Hebr ische Berichte ber die Judenverfolgungen w hrend der Kreuzz ge , Berlin, 1892.
PRE
Pirke R. Eliezer.
R.
Rabbi. After the title of a biblical book: Rabba. After Pesikta: Rabbati.
REJ
Revue des tudes juives.
Salfeld
Siegmund Salfeld, Das Martyrologium des N rnberger Memorbuches , Berlin, 1898.
T.
Tosefta.
ZAW
Zeitschrift f r die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft.
Zunz,
L. Zunz, Literaturgeschichte der synagogalen Poesie ,
Literatur geschichte
Berlin, 1865.
INTRODUCTION
I
In 1950, corresponding to the year 5710 of the Hebrew calendar, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America published, under the editorship of Professor Saul Lieberman, a Jubilee Volume in celebration of Professor Alexander Marx s seventieth birthday. 1 Professor Marx had served as professor of history and librarian of the Seminary since its refounding in 1903 by Solomon Schechter. The Jubilee Volume appeared in two parts, of 667 pages in English, of 547 pages in Hebrew. There were forty-five contributors from various parts of the United States, England, Central Europe, and Israel. Some of the contributions were of major, even formidable, importance for Judaica studies, and scholars are still drawing on those learned contributions for their continuing researches. Beyond any shadow of doubt, at least on my part, the outstanding study of the Festschrift is that by Professor Shalom Spiegel, Me-Aggadot ha-Akedah.
As a rule Festschrift studies are of a technical nature and are intended almost exclusively for the professional scholar; this is especially true if the language which the scholar uses is other than English or French or German. Immediately on its appearance Spiegel s Me-Aggadot ha-Akedah attracted the attention of scholars in the field of Hebrew literature and folklore. What is noteworthy, however, is that soon thereafter many nonscholars, too, who read modern Hebrew learned about the study and were profoundly impressed by its contents and its style. So Spiegel was awarded a Louis La-Med prize for his contribution to Hebrew letters. Furthermore, in two subsequent jubilee volumes, 2 writing again in Hebrew, Spiegel supplemented his Me-Aggadot ha-Akedah with additional discussion. Spiegel on the Akedah, therefore, has been no secret. Yet it is no distortion of fact to insist that the study, because it is written in Hebrew, has remained beyond the reach of many and larger circles where it should be known and examined attentively, 3 for it is devoted to a theme and a problem central to Judaism and Christianity. Translation of Me-Aggadot ha-Akedah into English is long overdue. The resolution to undertake such an assignment I owe to a program sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies. 4
II
How is Me Aggadot ha-Akedah to be described? Theoretically it is intended to serve as a preliminary statement to a twelfth-century poem by a certain Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn, published from manuscript for the first time. 5 We may say, then, that by means of his discussion Spiegel is teaching us how to read the poem and by implication any Hebrew poem, how to recover the ensemble of ideas and images inhabiting the poet s consciousness and subconsciousness as he wrote his lines. But to characterize this discussion as no more than an introduction would be understatement verging on misrepresentation, even for a poem of 105 lines, even for the first and critical edition and publication of a poem. Sixty-seven tightly printed pages (in the Alexander Marx Jubilee Volume , pp. 471–537) introducing a poem that, together with its own introductory note, line-by-line commentary, and critical apparatus, takes up (pp. 538–547) a little more than nine generously-spaced pages! Granted that the commentator is obliged to spell out in detail what the poet expresses compactly or elliptically; but with all due appreciation of Rabbi Ephraim s Akedah , most of its lines can surely be understood without a comprehensive survey of the earlier literatur