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Current Issue Article Abstracts Winter 2010 Volume 100.1 • • • • • • • • The Birds and the Babes: The Structure and Meaning of Psalm 8 Judah Kraut For all its popularity and philosophical depth, Psalm 8 has long posed a number of difficult exegetical challenges. Certain words in the psalm are not easily translated, the structure of the psalm is not readily apparent, and various of its elements seem to defy any obvious explanation. Most notoriously, the infants and sucklings in verse 3a. Faced with the Psalm's many exegetical conundrums, scholars have often indulged in speculative exegesis more so than in compelling textual argument. Indeed, rare is the scholar who does not emend the text of Psalm 8 in some fashion or who dares interpret it without the necessary elucidation provided by another (or many other) biblical or extra-biblical text(s). Yet, the (sometimes valuable) efforts to interpret Psalm 8 in light of more accessible or hypothetical texts have obscured the fact that the psalm, as is, possesses its own internal structure and rhetorical logic, which properly considered go a long way toward unraveling the textual enigmas that have long bothered exegetes and readers. This paper contends that an appreciation of the very structure of Psalm 8, a painstakingly crafted chiastic arrangement, elucidates three key elements of its meaning: (a) the role of 3a (From the mouths of infants and sucklings) in the psalm; (b) the identity of the Elohim to whom man is compared in 6a (and the nature of that comparison); and (c) the rhetorical strategy and overarching message of the psalm as a whole. Esther and the Politics of Diaspora Elsie R. Stern While the biblical book of Esther is often identified as a diaspora text that addresses the experience and concerns of diaspora Jews in the late Persian or early Hellenistic periods, its diasporic identity has been assumed rather than proven. This article makes a case for reading Esther as an anti-diaspora text written in Judea for a Judean audience. According to the Hebrew version of Esther, Jewish life in the Persian heartland is portrayed as the parodic opposite of the fantasy of life in the land of Israel that is articulated in other Judean literature that became part of the biblical canon. This reading accounts both for the differences between the Hebrew and Greek versions of Esther and for the theological and ideological anomalies that necessarily arise in the more common, pro-diasporic, readings of the text. Enchanting Rabbis: Contest Narratives Between Rabbis and Magicians in Late Antiquity Joshua Levinson "Sorcerers," said R. Yochanan, "contradict the heavenly household" and oppose the divine will. So begins one of the major Talmudic discussions of magic. This conception of magic bestows tremendous power in the hands of the magician creating an autonomous realm where the human and divine vie for supremacy. How did the Rabbis imagine the realm of magic and what brought them to so empower their adversaries? This is the question I wish to address by examining some of the 'contest-narratives' between rabbis and magicians in rabbinic literature, concentrating mostly on a comparison between a discussion that appears in the Babylonian Talmud and its Palestinian parallel. I suggest that there are marked differences between how the two Talmudic discussions represent magic and its menace. While the Palestinian Talmud presents these contests through a discourse of power and identity, the Bavli constructs its view of magic by means of a discourse of knowledge. This difference has important ramifications for rabbinic self-fashioning and its strategies for imagining and negotiating identity; both their's and their others. "Why do you refuse to eat pork?": Jews, Food, and Identity in Roman Palestine Jordan Rosenblum Both Jewish and non-Jewish (particularly Roman) sources from antiquity attest to a culinary 'fact': Jews do not eat pork. The meaning of this foodway, however, depends upon one's perspective. According to some rabbinic sources, because Romans eat pig they are, as such, embodied as pigs. On the other hand, according to some Roman sources, by refusing to eat pig, Jews are never able to ingest Roman-ness and, thus, can never truly become Roman. Beginning in antiquity, the practices of pork consumption and abstention become symbolic, or metonymic, of 'Self' and 'Other' with respect to Jewish and Roman identity. This article explores how these ancient sources construct identity around a specific dietary practice. In particular, it focuses on how the same culinary item is deployed to create both 'Self' and 'Other' with respect to Rome. Spreading Secrets: Kabbalah and Esotericism in Isaac ibn Sahula's Meshal ha-kadmoni Hartley Lachter Isaac ibn Sahula's Meshal ha-kadmoni, a classic of medieval Hebrew literature, was composed in Castile during one of the most prolific periods in the development of classical Kabbalah. This article argues that while ibn Sahula chose to avoid discussion of the ten sefirot and other forms of symbolism typically associated with kabbalistic writings from this period, he nonetheless sought to promote a worldview in the Meshal ha-kadmoni that bears a distinct affinity to medieval Kabbalah. Throughout the text, ibn Sahula's articulations of matters relating to divine providence over individuals and the natural order, the origin and nature of the human soul, and the attainment of prophetic insight, all resonate deeply with kabbalistic texts from 13th century Castile. Moreover, ibn Sahula consistently emphasizes the importance of esoteric knowledge, accessible exclusively to Jews as a secret tradition or "kabalah" deriving from revelation in antiquity, which constitutes the inner core of Judaism. The Meshal ha-kadmoni thus serves as an important witness to the major concerns and values of the cultural context in which many of the classics of medieval Kabbalah, including the zoharic literature, took shape. |
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