Lament in Jewish Thought Perspectives on Jewish Texts and Contexts 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 Lament in Jewish Thought Philosophical, Theological, and Literary Perspectives Edited by Ilit Ferber and Paula Schwebel DE GRUYTER An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libra- ries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access. More information about the initiative can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. ISBN 978-3-11-033382-4 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-033996-3 e-ISBN (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 Jérémie (Lamentations, III, 1-9); Copyright: © Chagall® – SABAM BELGIUM 2014 Typesetting: Meta Systems Publishing & Printservices GmbH, Wustermark Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com Acknowledgments This volume results from a fruitful collaboration, not only between us, the edi- tors, but among numerous friends and colleagues without whom the publica- tion 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 organiza- tion of a conference on lament in Jewish thought, hosted by Vivian at the Insti- tute 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 ‘Perspec- tives on Jewish Texts and Contexts.’ Above all, she is for us an invaluable inter- locutor 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 con- tributed the thoughtful Preface to this volume. Lina Barouch is not only the co-translator of Scholem’s 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 Contents Acknowledgments v Frequently Used Abbreviations xi Preface xiii Section One: Lament and Consolation Moshe Halbertal Eikhah and the Stance of Lamentation 3 Eli Schonfeld Ein Menachem: On Lament and Consolation 11 Section Two: Lament and Gender Galit Hasan-Rokem Bodies Performing in Ruins: The Lamenting Mother in Ancient Hebrew Texts 33 Vered Madar Women’s Oral Laments: Corpus and Text – The Body in the Text 65 Section Three: The Linguistic Form of Lament Werner Hamacher Bemerkungen zur Klage 89 Ilit Ferber “Incline thine ear unto me, and hear my speech”: Scholem, Benjamin, and Cohen on Lament 111 viii Contents Section Four: Silence and Lament Agata Bielik-Robson The Unfallen Silence: Kinah and the Other Origin of Language 133 Galili Shahar The Silent Syllable: On Franz Rosenzweig’s Translation of Yehuda Halevi’s Liturgical Poems 153 Bernd Witte Silence, Solitude, and Suicide: Gershom Scholem’s Paradoxical Theory of Lamentation 173 Section Five: The Poetry of Lament Sigrid Weigel The Role of Lamentation for Scholem’s Theory of Poetry and Language 185 Caroline Sauter The Ghost of the Poet: Lament in Walter Benjamin’s Early Poetry, Theory, and Translation 205 Adam Lipszyc Words and Corpses: Celan’s “Tenebrae” between Gadamer and Scholem 221 Daniel Weidner “Movement of Language” and Transience: Lament, Mourning, and the Tradition of Elegy in Early Scholem 237 Section Six: Mourning, Ruin and Lament Rebecca Comay Paradoxes of Lament: Benjamin and Hamlet 257 Contents ix Paula Schwebel The Tradition in Ruins: Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem on Language and Lament 277 Section Seven: Translations of Gershom Scholem’s Texts on Lament Lina Barouch and Paula Schwebel Translators’ Introduction 305 Gershom Scholem On Lament and Lamentation 313 Gershom Scholem Job’s Lament 321 Gershom Scholem Translation of Job Chapter 3: Job’s Lament 324 Gershom Scholem Ezekiel Chapter 19: A Lamentation for Israel’s Last Princes 329 Gershom Scholem Translation of Ezekiel Chapter 19: A Lamentation for Israel’s Last Princes 332 Gershom Scholem A Medieval Lamentation 337 Gershom Scholem Translation of Sha’ali Serufa: A Medieval Lamentation 340 Gershom Scholem Scholem’s postscript in the manuscript version 349 Notes on Contributors 351 Frequently Used Abbreviations The list below contains references for frequently cited works keyed to abbreviations. For the reader’s 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., SW1, Tb2, etc.). New English translations of works by Gershom Scholem Job “Job’s Lamentation.” 1918. Trans. Paula Schwebel. 321–323 in this volume. German original of Scholem’s translation is “Hiobs Klage,” Tb2 544–547. Lament “On Lament and Lamentation.” 1917–1918. Trans. Lina Barouch and Paula Schwebel. 313–319 in this volume. For German original, see Klage below. Other works Arcades Walter Benjamin. The Arcades Project. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. CC Walter Benjamin. “On the Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism.” 1919. SW1 (see below) 116–220. CSB Gershom Scholem and Walter Benjamin. The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem: 1932–1940. Trans. Gary Smith and Andre Lefevre. New York: Schocken Books, 1989. CWB Walter Benjamin. The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910–1940.Ed. Gershom Scholem and Theodor W. Adorno, trans. Manfred R. Jacobson and Evelyn M. Jacobson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. GS Walter Benjamin. Gesammelte Schriften. 7 vols. Ed. R. Tiedemann et al. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1972–1991. Klage Gershom Scholem. “Über Klage und Klagelied.” 1917–1918. Tb2 128–133. For English translation, see Lament above. Language Walter Benjamin. “On Language as Such and On the Language of Man.” Trans. Edmund Jephcott. SW1 62–74. For German original, see Sprache below. LY Gershom Scholem. Lamentations of Youth: The Diaries of Gershom Scholem, 1913–1919. Ed. and trans. Anthony David Skinner. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. OG Walter Benjamin. The Origin of German Tragic Drama. 1925, pub. 1928; trans. 1977. Trans. John Osborne. London: Verso, 1998. Sprache Walter Benjamin. “Über Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen.” 1916. GS2.1 140–157. xii Frequently Used Abbreviations SW Walter Benjamin. Selected Writings. 4 vols. Michael Jennings et al. Cambridge, MA: Belknap-Harvard University Press, 1996–2003. Tb Gershom Scholem. Tagebücher nebst Aufsätzen und Entwürfen bis 1923. 2 vols. Ed. Karlfried Gründer. Frankfurt am Main: Jüdischer Verlag im Suhrkamp Verlag, 1995–2000. WGF Gershom Scholem. Walter Benjamin: Die Geschichte einer Freundschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1975. For English translation, see WSF. WSF Gershom Scholem. Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship. Trans. Harry Zohn. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1981. Rprtd. New York: New York Review Books, 2003. For German original, see WGF. Preface In his essay of 1917–1918, “On Lament and Lamentation,” newly published in English in this volume, Gershom Scholem writes: “Every lament can be ex- pressed 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? La- ment’s poetic expression performs its own inexpressibility. Can such torment have any meaning save its expression of meaning’s destruction? Lament’s 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 history’s 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 [lament’s] infinity resides in the two bor- dering 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).