René Girard and Jewish Ritual

Jewish Vaccines Against Mimetic Desire: René Girard and Jewish Ritual Submitted by Vanessa Jane Avery to the University of Exeter as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Theology October 2013 This dissertation is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this dissertation which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature: ……Vanessa J. Avery……….. 1 ABSTRACT In 1972, with the publication of Violence and the Sacred, René Girard makes the stunning assertion that violence is the foundation of culture. Humanity’s innate urges for competition and rivalry entrap us in cycles of violence, which left alone would find no resolution. Girard calls the cause of this rivalry “mimetic desire”, and the only way out of this deeply embedded vengeance is to create a scapegoat to take the blame, reconciling the conflicting parties. Girard asserts that the biblical texts uniquely reveal the mechanisms of mimetic rivalry and scapegoating, and even demystify sacrificial rituals as nothing more than sacrilized “good” violence to keep a fragile peace. This revelation, according to Girard, can finally allow us to remove violence from the sacred. Much scholarship has been devoted to Girard’s theory, in particular how it offers a viable alternative to the still-dominant sacrificial theology of the cross. But there is little scholarship on the connection between Girard and Judaism; and Girard’s own work leaves us with a picture of Judaism that is at best incomplete, and at worst unable to find an answer to disturbing violence permeating the scriptures. This dissertation brings the Hebrew Bible into dialogue with Girard’s ideas in a systematic fashion to assert, contra Girard, that the Jewish revelation is a full, effective and even practical expression of his theory. After an overview of Girard’s work in the first chapter, the dissertation examines three Jewish “vaccines” to the mimetic disease as follows: the Birkhat ha-Banim (“The Blessing of the Children”); the reading of the Book of Esther on Purim; and the reading of Jonah on Yom Kippur. The conclusion to the dissertation asserts, drawing on these three demonstrations, the following points: 1) Rene Girard gives an important and clarifying lens to aid us in finding a new way to talk about, understand, and unify Jewish scripture and ritual; 2) a Jewish perspective can help flesh out what a different “revelation” of Girard’s mimetic desire looks like—even providing prescriptions to curtail this desire; and 3) positive mimesis is possible, and there are Hebrew examples of it free of originary violence. The final chapter addresses certain challenges in reconciling Girard with Judaism, moving toward a sincere Jewish Girardianism that will harmonize with the central views of the tradition. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 4 1. Girard’s Mimetic Theory and Scapegoating Mechanism 17 2. The First Vaccine: Jacob’s Birkhat ha-Banim and the Jewish Sabbath 68 3. The Second Vaccine: The Book of Esther and the Vicious Cycle of Scapegoating 105 4. The Third Vaccine: The Reading of Jonah on Yom Kippur 164 5. Simple “Scripts” and Positive Mimesis: Girard’s Shaky Foundation of the World? 229 6. Conclusion: Vaccinations from the Torah: Building Immunity to Habitual Violence and Founding a New Order of Peace 253 7. Afterword: Towards a Hebraicizing of Girard 261 3 INTRODUCTION On June 20th, 2013, I attended a conference called “Sacred Texts, Human Contexts”—an interfaith conference devoted to research and reflection upon how sacred texts both unite and divide humanity. At the conference, Rachel Mikva, former Rabbi and Professor of Jewish Studies at Chicago Theological Seminary, commented on one principle of interfaith studies that she finds of crucial importance. This principle was the need for each religion involved in dialogue to not only bring their standard texts into the conversation, but also those that they found troublesome—the texts, let’s say, that have been the thorns of one’s tradition—the ones the people, and even history has found impossible to fully affirm. The importance of exposing one’s textual vulnerability in dialogue makes an enormous difference in human relations in general; it displays our willingness to step out of our comfort zone. Bringing our troublesome texts into dialogue may expose our tradition, and even us, to criticism. Sharing from these places of vulnerability, and across faith lines, though, typically has an opposite effect. It allows all of us together to acknowledge the lingering questions about the universe and ourselves that evade our wisdom. The multiple voices of faith, together, searching out these troublesome texts from varied points of view, bring a spectrum of light into our understanding. In our shared and vulnerable space, we sit in our full humanity, and even possibly channel divinity. Mikva continued that in the many decades of dialogue with Christians in the classroom, she has asked of her students which text(s) they would bring to the table, and she reported that they always cite an Old Testament text. With a smile and a laugh, she admits that she finds it an annoyance that her own sacred texts are always the ones singled out. So she requests that her students find a text from within their own Testament, while fully accepting of the fact that many 4 texts are indeed called forth as difficult from the Hebrew Bible, and eager herself to bring the most difficult from her own lot. In reflecting on Mikva’s words near the completion of this dissertation, I must admit that there are few texts that are not troublesome in my own Hebrew Bible. Whether we speak of the blame cast in the Garden of Eden, the murder of Abel, the Binding of Isaac, the woes of Job, the Purim massacre, the casting out of Hagar and Ishmael, the resistance of Jonah, or the expulsion of Vashti, our texts depict a violence that perhaps humans might prefer not to confront. But is this violence something we can call “sacred”? Is it from God? Is it of God? In at least some cases we find the text criticizes the violence it presents, but this is not always so. What are we to make of this? Is violence a part of this world we are meant to accept? Is violence connected to the divine? These are certainly some of the questions that prompted the writing of this dissertation. Several different approaches to addressing the conspicuous violence in the biblical texts have surfaced, especially since the 1980’s. Phyllis Trible’s famous Texts of Terror is a feminist classic1—her book specifically dealing with “sacred” violence against women in the Hebrew Scriptures. She focuses on four texts that raise, in her own words, a “theological challenge” to the faith of Israel in their inhumane and at times deeply violent treatment of women from within a patriarchal structure. Her chapter on Hagar, for example, depicts Hagar as a foreshadowing of Israel “through contrast.” Trible explains that Hagar represents all that Israel may be terrified of: She experiences exodus without liberation, revelation without salvation, wilderness without covenant, wanderings without land, promise without fulfillment, and unmerited exile without return…This Egyptian slave woman is afflicted for the transgressions of Israel.2 1 Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (MN: Fortress Press, 1984). 2 Ibid., 28. 5 And yet despite her circumstances, Hagar is “a pivotal figure in biblical theology” for her receiving an annunciation and divine promise. Trible deals effectively with the darkness of human actions and choices, and the human need to integrate the “others” in our midst. Trible’s main contribution is in her ability to let the text be as it is without squeezing it into a context that might provide a less disturbing conclusion. Hagar is “the surrogate mother, the resident alien without legal recourse, the other woman, the runaway youth…the homeless woman…”3 Trible speaks loudly to remind us not to forget our victims. Hagar, in short, is right in our midst, before our eyes. Perhaps we are Hagar. She may well represent not just the greatest fear of Israel as Trible declares—of being without God’s protection and covenant—but the greatest fear of woman—single womanhood, a mother unable to quench her child’s thirst, left alone to watch her beloved son die. Trible seeks to bring comfort in the midst of these very uncomfortable stories by squaring them with the sadness that does often permeate the human experience. Trible does not offer the even more uncomfortable idea, however, that perhaps we are also Sarah. Perhaps we are the one who commits the violence. Reuven Firestone is another active voice in the movement to understand violence in the Abrahamic traditions, offering an informed historical and political perspective of the violence found in the Hebrew Bible, a good compliment to Trible’s rhetorical critical analysis. Firestone responds to the violent texts in the Tanakh by locating biblical Judaism, including its violent and vengeful texts, inside of a historical time period in which Jews held some political power. Firestone postulates that it is within this context that the Jews used violence to ensure the status quo and their position of power. In his article entitled “Judaism on Violence and Reconciliation: An Examination of Key Sources,”4 Firestone contrasts the biblical era in which Jews could be victors (and often were), with the Rabbinic period following the destruction of the Second Temple—an era 3 Ibid.

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