SUNY series in Contemporary Jewish Thought

A Phenomenological Approach

Richard I. Sugarman

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781438475745
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Jüdische Theologie

The French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906–95) was one of the most original Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century. This book interprets the Hebrew Bible through the lens of Levinas's religious philosophy. Richard I. Sugarman examines the Pentateuch using a phenomenological approach, drawing on both Levinas's philosophical and Jewish writings. Sugarman puts Levinas in conversation with biblical commentators both classical and modern, including Rashi, Maimonides, Sforno, Hirsch, and Soloveitchik. He particularly highlights Levinas's work on the Talmud and the Holocaust. Levinas's reading is situated against the background of a renewed understanding of such phenomena as covenant, promise, different modalities of time, and justice. The volume is organized to reflect the fifty-four portions of the Torah read during the Jewish liturgical year. A preface provides an overview of Levinas's life, approach, and place in contemporary Jewish thought. The reader emerges with a deeper understanding of both the Torah and the philosophy of a key Jewish thinker.

Appendix One

GLOSSARY OF TALMUDIC AND BIBLICAL TERMS

Aggadah: Portions of the Talmud and the Torah dealing with the nonlegal sections of the text. The emphasis is upon the moral and ethical teachings.

D’rosh: Refers to the moral or what is sometimes called the “homiletical” dimension of the text. In other words, what lessons can be learned from the text. The emphasis is usually on the ethical dimension of the text.

Gemara: The gemara is the commentary on the mishhah, written down between the second and fifth centuries by the Amoraim—that is, “the masters of the gemara living in Babylonia or in Israel between the first and fifth centuries CE” (The Burnt Book, 309). “The Babylonian Talmud was completed on 37 of the 63 tracts of the Mishnah. Its main purpose was to clarify the Mishnah, establish which opinions are binding, provide derivations of the laws … and provide … stories to enhance the discussions. … All subsequent codifications of Torah laws are binding only in so far as they are based on the (Babylonian tradition) also referred to as Talmud Bavli” (Kaplan The Handbook of Jewish Thought, 191).

Halakah: The legal portions of the text of the Talmud and the Torah. The halakah is more restrictive and therefore less open to interpretation than the aggadah. Such laws involve the practical application of the biblical commandments, or mitzvot.

Jewish Bible: As used in the book, Levinas and the Torah, refers to the Pentateuch. What I am calling the Jewish Bible, or what is more often referred to as the Hebrew Scriptures refers here to the Pentateuch as understood by the oral tradition, or rabbinic commentary tradition, subsequently written down in the Mishnah, Talmud, and Midrash.

Mesorah: Commonly and idiomatically used to refer to the rabbinic transmission of the biblical-Talmudic tradition. It can also be used interchangeably with the word “tradition.” Technically, it refers to notes that were written down by scribes from the seventh to the tenth centuries.

Midrash: A dimension of the biblical text that focuses on the moral or philosophic meaning. As such, it is one of the four major levels of reading the biblical text and/or the Talmud. It may be further subdivided into midrash aggadah, which deals with the nonlegal or “narrative” portion of the text, and midrash halakah, which elucidates the legal aspects of Scripture and/or Talmud.

Midrash Tanchuma: “Genre of Rabbinical literature, selections from Halachic and/or Aggadic teachings of the Tannaim and Amoraim arranged according to the verses of the Torah (Stone 1300). … An aggadic midrash on the Pentateuch” (Stone, 1302).

Midrash Rabbah: (MR) First printed in 1512 in Constantinople. Subsequently, emendations were interpolated in the Cracow 1587 edition, upon which all further editions of the text were based.

Mishnah: The codification of Jewish law written down and redacted at the end of the second century CE. The Mishnah contains six volumes dealing with every legal facet of Jewish life.

Mitzvot: Refers to the 613 commandments that according to the Talmud are found in the first five books of the Hebraic Bible. Of these, 248 are affirmative—do this do that—365 are prohibited—don’t do this don’t do that. According to the Chafetz Chaim in The Concise Book of the Mitvot, there are seventy-seven positive mitzvot and 194 prohibitive mitvot that presently pertain to the realm of action in the contemporary world. In addition, there are twenty-six mitzvot that are contingent upon the land of Israel. An alternative view is that 369 apply today, of these 126 affirmative and 243 are prohibitive (Kaplan The Handbook of Jewish Thought, vol. 1, 360).

PaRDes: From the Hebrew for “orchard,” an acronym that pertains to the four levels of the reading of the Torah. The four levels are usually understood to be the plain meaning of the text—that is, its surface or apparent meaning—not its so-called literal meaning, which is thought, by the rabbinic common tradition, to be impossible; in other words, there is no literal meaning. The plain meaning of the text in Hebrew is referred to as the P’shat. These four levels often interpenetrate one another.

P’shat: Refers to the plain meaning of the text. The major commentator dealing with the plain meaning of the text, its language, and the reference is Rashi. Remez pertains to the allusive or allegorical meaning of the text.

Remez: Refers to the elusive or allegorical portion of the text. The remez helps give the reader insight into intimations of events, figures and passages in the text.

Drosh: Refers to moral and philosophic meaning of the text.

Sod: Refers to the “mysterium” of the text. The mystery is discussed and often found in the Zohar, the main work of the Kabbalah.

Tanakh: Refers to the Hebrew Bible in its entirety, including the Pentateuch, the prophets, and the writings.

Torah: In its most restricted sense, the term “Torah” (derived from the Hebrew Ho’orah—meaning teaching or way) refers to the Pentateuch, or first five books of the Hebrew bible.

Appendix Two

GLOSSARY OF SOME KEY PHILOSOPHICAL TERMS AND PHRASES USED BY LEVINAS

A-Dieu: “Bad Conscience and the Inexorable.” Literally “to-God.” As used by Levinas, it may mean “God Bless” as well as the more common unhyphenated “adieu” in the sense of leave-taking.

Conatus Essendi: Otherwise than Being. Term borrowed from Spinoza, indicating the way that the self arises and maintains itself in order to preserve itself. The term, for Levinas, represents the Hobbesian view of each struggling against each for its life and identity. This term encapsulates a train of thinking that reappears in various guises in Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. Levinas contrasts the Conatus Essendi with each for-the-other expressed as responsibility and “substitution.” See below.

Desire: Totality and Infinity. Contrasted with need. While need fills a lack within totality, desire is bestirred by its relation to the Infinite, and is, therefore, inherently metaphysical.

Diachrony: Time and the Other, Otherwise than Being. The phenomenon of “lived-time” (temporality) arising in relation to the other. Time and alterity are described in relation to each other. For Levinas, the diachronic character of temporality is irreducible.

Egology: Time and the Other. Egology refers everything subject back to itself. This is an encrypted term employed by Levinas for philosophy and its inability to escape existential autobiography. This is close to what Levinas diagnoses as the collective colloquy of the soul with itself, beginning in Plato and continuing to dominate Western philosophy to the present.

The Face: (le visage) “Is Ontology Fundamental?” Totality and Infinity. The countenance that serves as the origin of expression. For Levinas, the face of the other is the inviolable limit imposing restraint on my spontaneity in advance of its being exercised. The mobility of the countenance of the other calls forth continuing response from the “I.” The face reveals itself through expression, as much through absence as through presence, and its visibility is glimpsed in turning toward someone rather than in the state of being gazed at. Prior to thermatizing, it is a necessary condition for making expression meaningful.

Here I Am: (me voici) Otherwise than Being. Corresponds to the Hebrew, Heneini (i.e., “Here I am to answer, Here I am ready to respond”). This is phenomenology, assuming not a simple spatial location (as in the natural attitude), but a sense of readiness to respond to what is demanded of me. (See Genesis 22.)

Illeity: Otherwise than Being. A Latinism, coined by Levinas, to refer to the radical alterity of the absolutely other, which is “transcendent to the point of absence.”

Il y a: Existence and Existents. Literally “there is”—impersonal being, raw existence. The il y a unfolds as separate instants temporally, without orientation, direction, or purpose. Biblically, it corresponds to tohu v’vohu, the chaos and void prior to creation.

Ipseity: Totality and Infinity. Levinas describes this as “a passive folding back on onself.” This term denotes the self-sameness of personal identity.

Maieutics: Totality and Infinity. An encoded term used by Levinas for Plato’s model of knowledge as recollection (anamnesis). Refers specifically to midwivery employed by the philosopher as teacher to deliver the interlocutor, as student, of the ideas with which he or she is already pregnant. Levinas positions maieutics within egology.

Obsession: Otherwise than Being. Obsession indicates a complete passivity, rendering the subject into the mode of the accusative. Obsession renders the subject responsible, beyond its own intentions, even for what it does not will. In the concrete sense, this means, for Levinas, a responsibility for what others do, even against me in the persecution I am forced to undergo. In its recurring character, obsession breaks open the limits of identity and opens the subject to responsibility for the other.

Ontology: “Is Ontology Fundamental?” A study of Being. In Heidegger, ontology means that which is common to all beings, or Being in general. Levinas associates ontology with an absence of transcendence. For Levinas, “[O]ntology” is a coded term that begins with Parmenides and culminates in Heidegger. Fundamental ontology ends, for Levinas, in a totality.

Otherwise than Greek: Otherwise than Being (i.e., the Hebraic tradition containing prephilosophical experiences and subjects that Levinas elevates to the level of the philosophical).

Proximity: Otherwise than Being. Levinas describes proximity as “extending the subject in its very subjectivity, which is both a relationship and a term of that relationship” (86). Proximity, beyond simple location, makes the approach to the neighbor or third person possible by orienting subjectivity toward the other.

Responsibility: Otherwise than Being. A meta-ethical category endowed with a significance, centrality, and irreducibility not previously known in the history of philosophy. For Levinas, it is the very orientation of consciousness towards the other, for the other. In this way responsibility is prior to consciousness, which it founds. Levinas affirms, “It is this responsibility for the creature that constitutes ‘the self.’ ”

Said: (le dit). Otherwise than Being. In its simplest sense, the said involves the contents of language. This includes propositions, statements, and the syntax of ordered discourse. The said belongs to the realm of totality and ontology. Grammatically, it appears in the declarative mode.

Saying: (le dire) The saying involves what is intended or expressed prior to the said. It aims to and beyond the other to the third person. It belongs to the domain of ethics and infinity. Grammatically, it may appear in the imperative or interrogative, evocative modes.

Substitution: “Otherwise than Being: Beyond Essence.” In substitution, the “I” becomes non-interchangeable in relation to the other. In this way, the “I” can substitute for the other. The phenomenon of substitution thus inverts the ontological “essence” of being. By this Levinas means that inverts the conatus essendi.

Trace: “Meaning and Sense.” Levinas characterizes the trace in the following way: “[T]he trace is the insertion of space in time.” The trace is analogous to the “fingerprints,” which make it possible to identify the event after it has passed. Levinas indicates that it i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Note to the Reader
• Key to Abbreviations of Works Cited by Levinas
• Genesis: Bereishis
• Exodus: Shemos
• Leviticus: Vayikra
• Numbers: Bamidbar
• Deuteronomy: Devarim
• Epilogue
• Appendix 1: Glossary of Talmudic and Biblical Terms
• Appendix 2: Glossary of Some Key Philosophical Terms and Phrases Used by Levinas
• Biblical Translations and Commentaries
• Works Cited
• Index
• Back Cover