Cover Story ERIC SULTAN SULTAN ERIC Calling for a new ethos Haviva Pedaya says the coronavirus is an ‘apocalypse’ requiring a novel code of ethics By Peggy Cidor Prof. Haviva Pedaya: I refer to the pandemic as an ‘apocalypse’ since it connotes the end and the beginning of an era PROFESSOR AND poet Haviva Pedaya, er in the history department at Ben-Gurion women. one of the most creative voices in Israeli University of the Negev, and since 2009 she Pedaya’s early research dealt with the academia, believes the novel coronavirus has headed the Elyachar Center for Studies birth of Kabbalah in Provence, France, as pandemic is “apocalyptic” and requires a in Sephardi Heritage, holding the Estelle well as Nachmanides and his students in new ethos and code of ethics. S. Frankfurter Chair in Sephardic Studies. Spain in the 12th century. She later began “I refer to the pandemic as an ‘apoca- She was a senior fellow at the Van Leer In- researching the hassidic movement of the lypse’ since it connotes the end and the be- stitute in Jerusalem, where she has led two 18th century, focusing on Rabbi Nachman ginning of an era,” Pedaya says in an exclu- research groups – Piyyut (Jewish liturgical of Breslov, the charismatic great-grandson sive interview with The Jerusalem Report. poetry) and The East Writes Itself. of the Baal Shem Tov (Rabbi Israel ben “As I see it, we are heading towards a new She is the recipient of the Gershom Eliezer) who revived the hassidic move- version of post-modernism: While many of Scholem Prize for Kabbalah Research in ment by combining Kabbalah with Torah our systems would like to return to normal, 2018, the 2012 Yehuda Amichai literary scholarship. others will be busy drawing lessons.” award, and the 2004 President’s Litera- In her book, Hashem veHamikdash (God Pedaya is married to David Sorotzkin, has ture Award for her book of poetry, Motzah and the Temple), she deals with the concepts one daughter and lives in Beersheba. She Hanefesh (Origin of the Soul). According to of heavenly Jerusalem, the apocalypse and was born in Jerusalem in 1957 to a family of Pedaya, “the condition of animals is a mir- Kabbalah. In her two books on Nachma- Kabbalists from Baghdad. Her great-grand- ror of the human condition.” nides, she discusses hermeneutics (biblical father, Rabbi Yehuda Fatiyah, and her Her first prose book, Ein HeHatul (Eye of interpretation) and the Land of Israel, the grandfather, Shaul Fatiyah, were renowned the Cat), includes stories of the animals she relationship between the symbolic and the Kabbalists. She studied Kabbalah and Jew- cares for. As a Mizrahi (descendant of local concrete, and how it applies to the categori- ish philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jewish communities in the Middle East and zation of texts and attitudes toward the Jew- Jerusalem, graduated from the Jerusalem North Africa) feminist, she has participated ish Diaspora. Currently, she is focusing on School of Visual Theater in 1991, and holds in various Mizrahi cultural events and orga- the issue of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem a doctorate in Jewish philosophy. nizations, and is a fierce critic of the way, – the site of the First and Second Temples. In 1987, Pedaya was appointed a lectur- she believes, society continues to oppress One of the ideas that sets Pedaya apart 10 THE JERUSALEM REPORT JUNE 8, 2020 ERIC SULTAN ERIC from other researchers of hassidism early in her career was her argument that it is one of the major expressions of Jewish modern- ism, as opposed to other scholars who be- lieve that the Enlightenment is the best ex- pression of Jewish modernism, while they perceive Hassidism as archaic. Pedaya is also one of the founders of what has been called “The Piyyut Revolution,” establishing “The Yonah (Dove) Ensemble” to create a renaissance of mystical and li- turgical music from the Near East, a move- Pedaya with her father, Chacham Eliyahu Ovadia, a few months before his death ment that has brought back Jewish liturgy, mostly Sephardi in origin, to the front stage. It was a dramatic move that created a sty- an emergency it was totally unprepared for. allowed to harness the collective state of listic change in Hebrew music, which some With some local variations, this involved emergency for his or her own interests. define as a revolution. Pedaya spoke to the the suspension of external public space Economically, no company or business may Report via Zoom, first addressing her views combined with stressful behavior, given the be allowed to take advantage of the state of on COVID-19. growing morbidity and mortality rates. emergency to hoard or overcharge for prod- When a single virus ignores petty human ucts in high demand such as masks, swabs Since the early days of the coronavirus distinctions between superpowers and ab- or foodstuffs; what (Canadian author and crisis, you have called for a new ethos to ject minorities, so too the new ethics we social activist) Naomi Klein called a “capi- face it. What are the guidelines of these new formulate should clearly be based on rules talism of disaster.” ethics you advocate? that fulfill our needs in these unprecedent- I called this event “the first global event,” ed times, and apply them to all nations and Are you pointing the finger of responsibil- because it is the first that unites the globe social classes. ity at Western civilization? behind a set of behaviors forced upon it by Politically speaking, no leader may be The West tends to focus on threats of a kind for which it is largely responsible, such as the migration waves following in- ternational power struggles and wars, and COURTESY the depletion of global resources. It has idolized the information revolution and ar- tificial intelligence, while geopolitical and ecological disasters destroyed the homes of millions worldwide, claiming the lives of myriads of lives. At the same time, and as the power centers of the Western world deafened their ears to the ever-louder siren approaching from ig- nored the planet’s socioeconomic margins, and the combination of the climate and en- vironment crisis change, a double-edged sword is being thrust right in the belly of the West, causing panic in its capitals. Now the West grapples with its own problems, while it disregard the rest of the world, that can be looted while ignoring its global implica- Pedaya with poet, Erez Biton, at a conference following the submission of the Biton tions on the world. It is all about the West Committee Report on ‘the empowerment of the Sephardi and Mizrahi heritage in the now, with no far-flung colony or rogue state education system,’ of which Pedaya was a member on which to lay the blame. THE JERUSALEM REPORT JUNE 8, 2020 11 Cover Story PELEG LEVY PELEG IRAD MARCIANO MARCIANO IRAD 5. Pedaya with artist Itzik Badash and singer Dikla at the premiere of ‘Hilula L’Em,’ the 6. Pedaya giving a lecture on Jewish music opera Pedaya wrote following her mother’s death at Bar-Ilan University Let’s go back to the beginning: How did lations. must immediately propose a New Deal, an you characterize the initial ethical respons- The global experience of the virus has emergency socioeconomic plan to help cit- es to the outbreak? essentially been a rare and unpredictable izens keep their heads above water, rather Some hope for or fantasize about a Dar- experience of re-territorialization: a with- than abandoning them to anonymous obliv- win-esque or a War of the Worlds-like re- drawal into the narrow boundaries of the ion like so many numbers under the guise of demption in the form of a “natural” vacci- nation state, the city and finally the home. maintaining public health. Effective imme- nation and “herd immunity.” The opposite This effect will not be soon forgotten, par- diately, such a plan must support laborers, view is held by the humanists, who perfect- ticularly as scientists warn that a second freelancers, small businesses and all those ly understand that the death of even many outbreak would increase the pressure on lacking assured income, as well as including thousands is incomparable to the disasters systems already in a state of emergency, the elderly. The same goes for the rest of the that strike our planet on a daily basis, yet whose degree of preparedness has yet to be world, and this will require global attention, remain pessimistic. Why? For the very sim- determined. particularly where the sounds of the siren ple reason that the statistician thinks of hu- Thus, we are now witnessing a simulta- have been most stubbornly ignored. Some manity in terms of nameless, alien numbers, neous back-and-forth movement, outwards blueprints for such a plan already exist. whereas the humanist, or Buddhist, sheds a in the direction of ongoing globalization, Proverbial pied pipers on both sides of the tear with and for every individual, as does and inwards as each country seeks to hide Atlantic have promised, implicitly at least, God. behind its national borders and individuals that we would survive the plague but this seek, or are forced to seek, safety in their time at the expense of the old rather than Let’s take one step further. What should be own homes. Unified to the extreme under the young. I suggest, rather, that instead of done the day after? the auspices of capitalist globalization and [US President Donald] Trump’s policy em- In a certain sense, we are already in the the wings of the imaginary, we are now bodied in the saying that “the cure can’t be beginning of a new era, and the gradual re- forced back to the real, to the body, the in- worse than the disease,” we adopt policies sumption of routine worldwide will flesh it dividual and collective body.