Copyright (c) 1994 Postmodern Jewish Philosophy Network.
All rights reserved.

Office of Jewish Studies, Drew University, Madison, NJ 07940
Peter Ochs, Editor
Patricia Glucksman, System Manager
Email Address: POCHS@DREW. DREW. EDU
Telephone: (201) 408-3222

NETWORK MEMBERS:
CORRESPONDING MEMBERS:
FORWARD/Contents/Subscription Info
NEW MEMBERS INTRODUCTIONS:
Talmud and Postmodern Jewish Philosophy:

Further Responses to “Framing
Women/Constructing Exile”, by Aryeh Cohen (BITNETWORK VOL 3.1)

David Weiss Halivni, Columbia
University
Alan Brill, Boston
Rabbi Ed Feld, Society for the
Advancement of Judaism

A Response to the Responses Presented
in NETWORK Vol 3.2: Aryeh Cohen
A Response to the Response to the
Responses: by Jacob Meskin, Williams College

MATERIAL CULTURE AND POSTMODERN JEWISH
PHILOSOPHY

Cooking: “Brisket, New Style,” by
Ruth Ochs
Film: John Sayles’ “City of Hope”, by
Norbert Samuelson, Temple University

FUTURES

NETWORK MEMBERS:

“V5345E@TEMPLEVM.BITNET” Sid Axxinn, Temple U.
“YFPY0060@VM1.YORKU.CA” David Bakan, Willowdale, Ontario
“LBARTH@BCF.USC.EDU” Lewis Barth, HUC-LA
“BAUER917@RAVEN.CSRV.UIDAHO.EDU” Dustin Bauer, U. Idaho
“NB2@EVANSVILLE.EDU” Edward A. Beach, U. of Evansville
“KRAUT@BCVMS.BITNET” Avi Bernstein, Stanford Univ
“RELBT551@EMORYU1.CC.EMORY.EDU” Timothy Beul, Emory University
“PYRAP@CSV.WARWICK.AC.UK” Andrew E. Benjamin, U. of Warwick
“KPB@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU” Kalman Bland, Duke U.
“BRIDGES@APOLLO.MONTCLAIR.EDU” Tom Bridges, Montclair Cllg
“MSMARCO@PLUTO.CC.HUJI.AC.IL” Marc Bregman, Hebrew Un Cllg (Jersl)
“BRESDAN@UKANVAX” Daniel Breslauer, U. of Kansas
“DHB2@MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU” Don Breslauer, U. of Michigan
“HB003B@UHURA.CC.ROCHESTER.EDU” Haim Yigal Bodek, Rochester U.
“BOROWITZ@NYUACF.BITNET” Eugene Borowitz, HUC/JIR, New York
“TLKAMI@UTA.FI” Aviva Bower
“BOYARIN@GARNET.BERKELEY.EDU” Daniel Boyarin, UC Berkeley
“BOYARIN@CSSC.NEWSCHOOL.EDU” Jonathan Boyarin, The New School
“BELIAKB@CGS.EDU” Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak, Claremont Grad
“CARR@EMX.CC.UTEXAS.EDU” Steve Carr, U. of Texas
“CHARME@ELBERETH.RUTGERS.EDU” Stuart Charme, Rutgers U.
“JHCHAJES@MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU” JH Chajes, Yale U.
“ACOHEN@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU” Aryeh Cohen, Brandeis
“75320.2253@COMPUSERV.COM” Phil Cohen, Brandeis
“BDICKEY@UA1VM” Richard Cohen, U. of Alabama
“PHILIPC@STJOHNS.AUCKLAND.AC.NZ” Philip Culbertson, St. Johns, Auckland
“B6933873@MAIL.WSU.EDU” Gilad Ehven
“TESKENA@EIS.CALSTATE.EDU” Tamara Eskenazi, Heb Un Cllg (LA)
“EFELD@DELPHI.COM” Rabbi Edward Feld, NYC
“HARVEY.FORMAN@TIGERTEAM.ORG” Harvey Forman, Tigerteam
“FRASTED@YALEVM.BITNET” Steven Fraade, Yale U.
“HEIM@VAX2.CONCORDIA.CA” Barbara Galli, McGill U.
“MGARBER@DHVX20.CSUDH.EDU” Marilyn Garber, Cal State
“ALEVINE1@CC.SWARTHMORE.EDU” Jay Geller, Rutgers U.
“RBGIBBS@PHOENIX.PRINCETON.EDU” Robert Gibbs, Princeton U.
“MIGOTTSEGEN@JTSA.EDU” Michael Gottsegen, CLAL
“WMSG@MACMAIL.CC.ROCHESTER.EDU” William S. Green, SUNY Buffalo
“YGREEN@ROLLINS.BITNET” Yudit Greenberg, Rollins Cllg
“HAASXXPJ@VUCTRVAX.BITNET” Peter Haas, Vanderbilt U.
“SUSAN_A_HANDELMAN@UMAIL.UMD.EDU” Susan Handelman, U. of Maryland
“FSH4R@FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU” Scott Hennesy, U of Va.
“JAFFEE@WASHINGTON.EDU” Martin Jaffee, U. of Washington
“KAGAN@LEMOYNE.BITNET” Michael A. Kagan, Le Moyne Cllg
“MKATZ@EAGLE.WESLEYAN.EDU” Marilyn Katz, Wesleyan
“MSSTEVEN@PLUTO.MSCC.HUJI.AC.IL” Steve Kepnes, Colgate U.
“KNOBEL@MERLE.ACNS.NWU.EDU” Peter Knobel, Beth Emet, Evanston, IL
“LANCE@FREELANCE.COM” Lance Fletcher, Free Lance Academy, NJ
“GALABOVITZ@JTSA.EDU” Rabbi Gail Labovitz, JTS
“RHH1902@HAIFAUBVM” Ze’ey Levy, U. of Haifa
“KRLINDBECK@THEO.JTSA.EDU” Kris Lindbeck, Jewish Theol. Sem.
“LUSTHAUS@MACALSTR.EDU” Dan Lusthaus, Macalester Cllg
“MSJUDDMA@PLUTO.MSCC.HUJI.AC.IL” Judd Maltin, Slacker U.
“JNATHANS@LRC.MED.UWO.CA” Jay Nathanson, U. of Western Ontario
“MENDES@HUM.HUJI.AC.IL” Paul Mendes-Flohr, Hebrew U.
“JACOB.E.MESKIN@WILLIAMS.EDU” Jacob Meskin, Williams College
“KLEYZEMER@AOL.COM” Marty Morgenbesser
“FOLIVE@CC.FC.UL.PT” Immanuel Duarte de Oliveira, Lisbon Portugal
“HEIM@VAX2.CONCORDIA.CA” Michael Oppenheim, Concordia U.
“POCHS@DREW.DREW.EDU” Peter Ochs, Drew U.
“MP10@CUNIXF.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU” Michael Paley, Columbia U.
“PLANINCZ@MCMAIL.CIS.MCMASTER.CA” Oona Ajzenstat, McMaster U.
“JPONET@MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU” James Ponet, Yale U.
“HILLEL@UMAXC.WEEG.UIOWA.EDU” Jeff Portman, U. of Iowa
“USERGF0J@UMICHUM.BITNET” Sara Rappe, U. of Michigan
“JLRIDLEY@NETCOM.COM” Jimmy Ridley
“V5118E@TEMPLEVM.BITNET” Norbert Samuelson, Temple U.
“DANIELS@PHOENIX.PRINCETON.EDU” Daniel Schwartz, Princeton U.
“MMSBC@CUNYVM.BITNET” Mel Scult, Brooklyn Cllg
“DASEIDENBERG@JTSA.EDU” David Seidenberg, JTS
“LJS2@LEHIGH.EDU” Larry Silberstein, Lehigh U.
“RSILAK@CCLU.LV” Regnars Silakalns, Lativa U.
“JSMNTMPL@TEMPLEVM” Julius Simon, Temple U.
“MICHAEL.A.SIGNER.1@ND.EDU” Michael Signer, Norte Dame
“MSRAJEK@PRAIRIENET.ORG” Martin Srajek
“6500OS@UCSBUXA.UCSB.EDU” Oren Stier, UC Santa Barbara
“73122.1413@COMPUSERVE.COM” Rabbi Ira Stone, Tmpl Zion-Beth Israel
“TEMES@HUSC.HARVARD.EDU” Peter Temes, Harvard U.
“LTHOMAS@SUVM.BITNET” Laurence Thomas, Syracuse U.
“PERICLES@TEMPLEVM.BITNET” Dan Thompkins, Temple U.
“GURFEL@UMBC” Alan Udoff, Baltimore Hebrew U.
“VDLINGPL@ALPHA.UNISA.AC.ZA” Gerhard van der Linde, U. of South Africa
“WALLERSTEIN@AESOP.RUTGERS.EDU” Bernard Wallerstein, New Jersey
“WEINBERT@SERVAX.FIU.EDU” Theodore Weinberger, Florida Int. U.
“STEDITH@RUF.RICE.EDU” Edith Wyschograd, Rice U.
“BERNIE@VM2.YOURKU.CA” Bernie Zelechow, York U.
“STEVENS397@AOL.COM” Steven Schwartz, New Jersey
“B6933873@MAIL.WSU.EDU”
“RABBISTEVE@AOL.COM”

CORRESPONDING MEMBERS:

Prof. Annette Aronowicz, Franklin and Marshall College
Dr. Almut Bruckstein, Jerusalem ISRAEL
Dr. Jose Faur, Brooklyn, NY
Prof. Michael Fishbane, U of Chicago
Prof. Neil Gilman, Jewish Theological Seminary
Barry Hammer
Andrew Hahn, New York City
Prof. Hannan Hever, Tel Aviv Univ.
Rabbi Steven Jacobs, Temple Bnai Shalom
Prof. Sandra Lubarsky, Norther Arizona Univ
Aaron Mackler, Duquesne U.
Prof. David Novak, U. of Virginia
Prof. Thomas Ogletree, Yale University
Prof. Adi Ophir, Tel Aviv Univ.
Prof. Michael Rosenak, The Hebrew University
Prof. Richard Sarason, Hebrew Union College
Prof. Avraham Shapira, Tel Aviv U.
Prof. Kenneth Seeskin, Northwestern U.
Prof. Elliot Wolfson, New York U.
Prof. Michael Wyschogrod, U. of Houston
Prof. Martin Yaffee, U. of Texas

FORWARD
“Imaginal Bodies” heads the title of the paper Elliot
Wolfson is scheduled to offer at a session on “Incarnation in
Judaism and Christianity” at this year’s American Academy of
Religion conference in Chicago (November 18-22). If you place
that headline alongside the careful, critical textual reading you
would expect to find in Wolfson’s work, then you may have an icon
of the activity that characterizes some our members’ recent work
in postmodern Jewish philosophy. It is an activity of reading
foundational Jewish texts in a way that is informed, at once, by
reasoned, disciplined criticism and by some presence (or
presences) that somehow hovers over the reader, awakening this
perception or that, urging this concern or that, and providing a
relationship with respect to which criticism also upholds and
imagining also discerns. One could redescribe the metaphysical,
methodeutic, or grammatological descriptions offered by a variety
of thinkers as offering different descriptions of this presence:
Plato’s ideas; Philo’s principles or archetypes; the real signs
or symbols emerging in the work of Augustine then Poinsot then
Charles Peirce; Martin Buber’s basic word-pairs; Max Kadushin’s
“value-concepts”; Garrett Green’s notion of the “paradigms” of
the imagination that inform scriptural hermeneutics; Michael
Fishbane’s notion of the mythopoesis that informs rabbinic
midrash; Peirce’s notion, again, of the “leading principles” that
inform acts of interpretation. Any of these might work to
identify the presence that leads the critical but engaged or
faithful reader, provided we imagine them embodied in the kind
of presence that also merits the term “imaginal body” or,
perhaps, spiritual body? The point may be restated this way.
To account for the way some of our contributors write, it may not
be enough to appeal, on the one hand, to some “method of
reasoning” even a “postmodern” one nor, on the other hand,
to some “emotive or personal engagement.” It might prove more
convincing to refer to some relationship between an identifiable
method of rational criticism and a less visible being that
behaves at once like a concept (or, rather, a logos) and like a
person.

This issue features the following sections:

NEW MEMBERS INTRODUCTIONS.

TALMUD AND POSTMODERN JEWISH PHILOSOPHY:
1. Further Responses to Aryeh Cohen’s paper
a. by David Weiss Halivni
b. by Alan Brill
c. by Edward Feld
2. Response to the Responses, by Aryeh Cohen.
3. Response to the Response to the Responses, by Jacob
Meskin

MATERIAL CULTURE AND POSTMODERN JEWISH PHILOSOPHY (a new section)
1. Cooking, By Ruth Ochs
2. Film, By Norbert Samuelson

FUTURES

Copyright notice: Individual authors whose words appear in the
Description, Response, or Essay sections of this Network retain
all rights for hard copy redistribution or electronic
retransmission of their words outside the Network. For words not
authored by individual contributors, rights are retained by the
editor of this Network.

Subscription: The NETWORK is sent free of charge to electronic
mail addrresses. For present or back issues, send requests to:
pochs@drew.drew.edu. Harcopies cost $5/issue; $12 per volume (3-4
issues). Send requests and payment to Jewish Studies
Program/Network c/o Peter Ochs, Drew University, Madison, NJ
07940.

Submissions: Electronic mail to: pochs@drew.drew.edu. Disks (Mac
or IBM) to: Peter Ochs, Drew University, Madison, NJ 07940.

NEW MEMBERS INTRODUCTIONS:

Oona Ajzenstat: “I am a doctoral student at McMaster University
in Ontario in the department of Religious Studies. I have been
trained mainly by Political Theorists, Straussians and
Voegelinians. My allegiance remains with the latter camp, but
this is now somewhat irrelevant; I find myself working mostly
with pedantic Christians of the British style. I am interested
in theories of relation in text and life; thus midrashic
hermeneutics and dialogical ethics and ontologies. My
dissertation will be on Buber; I suspect that his work on
hermeneutics will provide the ground on which he can be reclaimed
for philosophy from the guru-seekers.”

Haim Dov Beliak: “I am a rabbi and presently completing a PhD in
Higher Education at the Claremont Graduate school on oppositional
discourses and their impact on three universities. In a addition,
a number of us in what is loosely called critical pedagogy are
interested in letting people know about a conference we are
planning for New York in March: Mifgash: An On-Going
Conversation Among Jewish Intellectuals. In the Spring of 1993
and 1994, a community of Jewish intellectuals within and outside
the academy assembled to discuss issues of shared concern
affecting our own lives and the Jewish future. The following
questions were among those that emerged from our conversations.
1. Jews in the academy. What is the relationship of Jews
and Judaism toemerging multicultural and pluralistic university
settings? How do Jewish students and teachers understand their
relationship to the academy? In what ways do institutions of
higher education acknowledge and de/legitimate Jewish
identification?
2. Campus milieu. What is the impact of being Jewish on
academics’intellectual pursuits? What is the relationship of
Jews, Judaism, and Jewish Studies to “oppositional discourses” in
gender studies, minority studies, literary theory, film studies,
and other multi-discipline or anti-discipline areas of inquiry?
3. Intra-Jewish concerns. How do intra-Jewish issues–such
as difference in gender, modes of observance, and degrees of
alienation–affect dialogue among Jewish academics?
4. Jewish learning. How can Mifgash most effectively
function as an adult Jewish learning setting with impact on our
personal and professional lives? In what ways can Mifgash support
the projects of Jewish academics interested in studying Judaism
or Jewish life for their professional enrichment? What barriers
do Jewish adults including academics find to Jewish learning?
5. Jews and Social Responsibility. Do Jews working in the
academy conceive ofour scholarship as pertinent to the direction
of North American culture? Whatrelationship exists between Jewish
values and broader social concerns? We invite your letter of
application, your suggestions for our mailing list, and your
ideas for any of our planned formats. Please send a brief
statement about how the Mifgash Conversation interests you, a
brief c.v. outline, andbiographical sketch to Mifgash, 9715
Lockford Street, Los Angeles, CA 90035.

“An East Coast Mifgash retreat is planned for March 24-26,
1995 in Pauling, NY. Some subsidy is available for both
conferences. For information, contact Haim Dov Beliak: Phone:
(310) 286-9991, Fax (310) 286-7109, Email: “BeliakB@
CGSVAX.Claremont. Edu” Mifgash Planning Committee: Miriyam Glazer
(Lee College), David Purpel (University of North
Carolina-Greensboro) Maeera Schreiber (University of Southern
California), Diane Schuster (Cal State Fullerton), and Roger
Simon (Ontario Institute for the Study of Education at University
of Toronto.) “

Avi Bernstein: ” . . . . I am a doctoral candidate in
Jewish/Religious Studies at Stanford University. I am at work on
a dissertation on “modern Jewish identity” in the philosophical
and Jewish writings of Hermann Cohen. I also follow contemporary
debates in modern thought that bear on post modernism. I spent
last year as a Lady Davis Fellow at Hebrew University where I
enjoyed conversations with Richard Cohen and several others who
mentioned this group. I am being advised by Arnie Eisen and Lee
Yearley . . . . “

Philip Culbertson: “I’ve been involved in Jewish Studies for
eleven years. My guide and mentor is Rabbi Zev Gotthold in
Jerusalem, though I also spent several years part-time on the
staff of the Shalom Hartman Institute there. I am currently
teaching at St. John’s Theological College in Auckland, New
Zealand, in the fields of pastoral theology and New Testament.
St. John’s is the graduate department of theology for The
University of Auckland. I’ve just finished my fourth book, which
will be published by SUNY Press in late January, 1995. Entitled A
WORD FITLY SPOKEN: CONTEXT, TRANSMISSION AND ADOPTION OF THE
PARABLES OF JESUS, it explores the relationship between
Hellenistic and early rabbinic parables, and some of the parables
of Jesus from the gospel of Matthew. That was a huge project
(and it’s a big book!), so right now I’m resting a little in the
field of Judaica. In the meantime, I’m working on two new books
for Fortress Press: one on memory and story-telling during
counseling, and the other on patterns of pastoral care in South
Pacific cultures. Three million people live in New Zealand, but
less than 1% of them identify themselves as Jews, so Bitnetwork
is an important resource for my staying in touch with
developments in the fields of rabbinics and modern Jewish
thought. I’m here only ten months out of every year; I spend the
month of December in the US, and January at my private townhouse
near the corner of Jaffa and King George in Jerusalem.”

Edward Feld: ” I am currently serving as Rabbi of the Society for
the Advancement of Judaism (New York), after having been the
Hillel Director at Princeton University for the last nineteen
years. My book, “The Spirit of Renewal,” was recently published
by Jewish Lights Press, and I will be teaching a seminar on
Martin Buber at the Jewish Theological Seminary this fall. Along
with my ongoing interest in Jewish theology, I have recently been
pondering the nature of Talmudic thinking and have been writing
up an approach to several Talmudic sugyot.”

Gail Labovitz: “I am [a Rabbi and] a doctoral candidate at the
Jewish Theological Seminary in the department of Talmud and
Rabbinics. I hope to take my first comprehensive exam in
November. I come to post-modern theory largely through feminist
theory and women’s history – Joan Wallach Scott, Denise Riley,
Judith Butler, etc. I am particularly interested in questions of
how gender is constructed and represented in literary texts
(since that’s what I work with), but also how postmodern theory
can illuminate those texts in areas other than gender and gender
relations. I would like to know more about “general” postmodern
theory and its applications to religious texts.”

Jim Ponet: “I am a Hillel Rabbi at Yale University. A student of
David Hartman’s, I am deeply engaged by Political Philosophy,
Moral Philosophy and Halakha. The task of working out the
philosophical implications of Halakha in this age of landed and
diasporic Jewry challenges me constantly. I continue to be
enchanted by the work the late Joseph Soloveitchik.”

Gerhard van der Linde: “I have a PhD in Theory of Literature and
a Masters degree in Italian. I work as Subject Librarian for
Semitics at the University of South Africa. Our Semitics
Department teaches inter alia Judaica and Modern Hebrew. I
thought `tuning in’ to your list would help me to stay informed
about developments in contemporary Jewish philosophy and that I
could pass on what I pick up to various people here. I am also
interested in postmodern(ist) philosophy as such, and am
therefore curious to know more about the intersection between
Jewish philosophy and postmodernism.”

Talmud and Postmodern Jewish Philosophy:

1. Further Responses to “Framing Women/Constructing Exile”
by Aryeh Cohen (BITNETWORK VOL 3.1)

a. David Weiss Halivni, Columbia University

[Ed. Note: Here is a transcription of Prof. Halivni’s
response to Aryeh Cohen’s paper, offered in an oral interview
in October, 1994. Paraphrased discussion is placed in square
brackets.]

Ed: Aryeh has framed the `maasyot’ [ of `Gittin’] with
regard to the issue of the danger of women swearing. Are you [in
`Mekorot umesorot’] framing it with regard to the yerushalmi’s idea
that swearing is unnecessary?

Halivni: or at least insignificant. I still believe that
the major motivation that energized this particular `sugya’ is its
assumption that the person should not be punished if she swears
truthfully. The only way they could find a reason that that woman
was punished is that she indirectly replaced that portion of flour
. . . .The Bavli is uncomfortable with the Palestinian tradition
that swearing truthfully is in itself unacceptable. However, I
still allow for the possibility that, in this particular text,
although it is not a major factor, the author also was also
motivated by a kind of anti-woman bias, which may have been a
reason for the fact that the story is formulated in terms of
women, rather than men. For, if I am right that the major
motivation [was about the issue of truthful swearing], then . . .
they could have told another story about a man. In order to
understand this fully, we have to go elsewhere and look up other
texts.

First and foremost we should examine the problem of
`neder’ (“vow taking”), which is so close to `shevuah’ (“oath
taking”); in fact, `neder’ and `shevuah’ are considered as one.
The Talmud says, in `Nedarim’ (9a, Mishnah) `nadar b’nazir
uv’korban uv’shevuah’ (“he has vowed as in a Nazir’s vow, an
offering, and an oath”). Among many other places where `neder’ and
`shevuah’ are almost interchangeable, we may think of the `kol
nidrei’ [we just performed this week]. . . . Furthermore, in
`Nedarim’ 9a, the `gemara’ cites `Kohelet’ : `tov asher lo tidor
mishetidor v’lo tshalem’ (“it is better not to vow at all than to
vow and not pay”). This this would suggest that, if you pay, it is
fine: that is Rabbi Yehudah’s view (and, as the commentators say,
this is the `peshat’). But Rabbi Meir says `tov mizeh umizeh she’
eyno noder “kol ikar”: that it is better not to be `neder’ at
all. This recalls the notion that if you vow and pay it is not
that different than if you swear and fulfill. Here [vowing and
swearing are almost interchangeable; both are dangerous, and ] it
is totally in a male context.

[With regard to the danger of swearing,] we must of
course quote the `gemara’ in `ba meh madlikin’ (`Shabbat’ 31b). The
mishnah begins `al shalosh averot nashim metot b’sha’a lidata: al
she’eyno zehirot b’nidah, b’chalah, ubhadleket haner’ (“women die
in childbirth for three transgressions: for lack of attention to
the laws of impurity, to `challah,’ and to lighting shabbat
candles”). `Nidah,’ of course, concerns women, but `hadleket
haner’ (candle lighting) is only by convention yet still, it
concerns women. Then the `gamara’ imperceptibly changes and speaks
of `men.’ There are three levels [through which this change is
effected.] First, from the mishneh, `al shalosh averot nashim’
metot, concerning women. Then the intermediary stage has `beavon
nedarim ishto shel adam meta’ — (“a man’s wife dies (out of
punishment) for his neglecting vows”): concerning both men and
women. And the third stage has `beavon nedarim banim metim ki
shehen ketanim’ (“a (man’s) children die when they are young (out
of punishment) for his neglecting vows”): in which case women are
totally left out.

So you see that this element of women is not exclusive:
on the subject of `nedarim,’ the rabbis [also argue that,]
according to some, even if you fulfill a `neder,’ you can be
punished and this applies to men as well as women. There are
many other sources that could be cited, as well. Nevertheless, let
us consider the case where you offer a more atomized [analysis]
concerning the author of this particular document. (The `lo shanu’
statements, by the way, could be earlier than the rest and belong
to another issue.) These statements fall into a general pattern,
but this author in this sugya may have used such patterns [as
vehicles to deliver] this additional anti-woman theme. But such a
theme certainly cannot be generalized; and even for this author in
this `sugya,’ I do not believe that the theme of women captures the
whole issue. It may have been an additional component, but probably
not the major issue.

Ed: Finally, what about Aryeh’s hypothesis that the
structural distinction of `maasyot’ and `lo shanu’ statements may
reflect an ideological distinction?
Halivni: In theory, I am generally inclined to see the
possibility of such structures’ carrying ideological notions, but
not a `single’ ideological notion. As a matter of fact, almost
certainly not.
Ed: Are you saying that a particular redactor may make
use of the structural distinction for this or that ideological
purpose?
Halivni: I would go further. The same redactor may have
opposite ideological positions in different places, and may use
the same structure to carry the different positions. The best
example is when you have a `shekul mitsvot.’ You have a whole
series of `shekul’ mitsvot `kneged kulam’ ( “the valuation of
(certain) `mitsvot’ over all others”) applied to `tzedakah,
shabbat,’ and so on. Obviously only one `mitsvah’ could be
`shekul.’ Each one comes only in a package when for example, one
wants to emphasize the different `mitsvot’: someone may emphasize
the `mitsvah’ of `tzedakah;’ then sometimes later, somebody else
will emphasize a different `mitsvah.’ [The use of the structure
“shekul mitsvah kneged . . .”] does not have to be consistent in
its ideology, but there will in each case be an ideological use .
. . [In general, then,] there could be ideological use of such
structures, but this should not be presented as the ideology of the
Talmud itself.
Ed: That also suggests that you do not object to Aryeh’s
rhetorical approach of, for the moment, suspending merely
historical-critical reading and looking at literary-structural
devices thay may display certain ideological concerns.
Halivni: Yes, that is why I am not in principle against
[what Aryeh is doing.] But this has to be done locally and any
general statement [may refer to the structures themselves but not
to any specific meanings. The analysis should not be
over-generalized.]

b. Alan Brill, Boston
“I would always give pride of place to a strong
misreading over a weak misunderstanding.” In this statement, Aryeh
Cohen changes the stage of understanding rabbinic Judaism from
modern historicism to postmodernism. No longer should we look for
the original meanings of texts by means of form criticism or for
the primordial concept behind the text. The text itself as it
exists in its current canonical form is the source of
understanding. Even within the text, this is not to argue for a
specific view, as much as to create a narrative framework in which
the legal possibilities are all characters withinin the narrative
and not alternate positions. Here, the definition of narrative as
plot is clearly rejected. In its place narrative is defined as the
dialogue process, as part of a cultural system, and as an
associative pattern of ideas: not the linear progression of the
text, but the web of literary connections that is created. From a
literary perspective, lines of argumentation that are rejected by
the Talmud are not actually rejected. They continue to function as
“concepts under erasure,” creating literary connections that do not
create philological word associations or organic thinking, but,
rather, frame further discussion through their rhetorical function
in given texts. In a narrative, as opposed to an historicist
approach, the function counts.

Cohen’s criticism of strictly historicist and legalist
studies Talmud does more than he intended. While opening up space
for a narrative reading of the Talmud, this criticism equally opens
up space for a structural or platonic read of the text. Just as
Barthes allows for psychoanalytic, or thematic, or structural reads
of a text, so too does Cohen’s method allow for a plurality of
readings. Are all of these postmodern options? Further, is the
criticism of historicism complete? Studying the rhetorical options
of a text is not only a postmodern idea, but also a classical one.
The narrative form of dialogue in the Talmud is a platonic one
that, at the same time, brings back the question of history, but
without historicism. What was the original intent of the editor of
the Talmud? Is the Talmud a platonic document? Are the literary
structures intended by the authors? Were the Talmudic Rabbis aware
that the major theme of the text was their own power and not that
of the Mishnah?

Cohen’s criticism of historicism rests on his setting out
the narrative structure of the Talmud, but he uses the term
narrative in two distinct senses. The first sense, that the Talmud
is a literary-theological narrative and not history (Kermode),
allows insight into the use of “concepts under erasure” and
intertextuality. This sense of narrative is similar to the
postmodern return to virtue and traditional texts (MacIntyre and
Hauerwas), and the postliberal approach of using narrative to
[establish an intratextual source of . . .] cultural context
(Lindbeck, Frei, Theimann). Does Aryeh Cohen intend to reject the
rationality of modernity in order to be rid of historicism? The
second definition of narrative, displayed for example in the work
of Robert Cover or Cornell West, is that the text is a cultural
narrative that historically informs both tradition and current
options. This definition of narrative situates texts in their
historical context in order to correct the narrative of power
behind the text. If Sugyetics is about power and function, then it
is not about classical rhetoric, dialogue, or literary
deconstuction.

In both of these senses of narrative: if one makes a
postmodern commitment to personal experience (David Tracy) that
leaves one at odds with the narrative-legal approach of the Talmud;
or if one tackles the repressive social aspects of the Talmud head
on by viewing the Talmudic text as political in every line, then
one has distanced oneself from Talmudic virtues in ethical choices,
and one has returned to the rationality of modernity and liberalism
(Stout). Similarly, if one does clean the Talmud of its sexist
elements, then one submits it to a rationality outside of the
narrative text. One has then created a theological abstraction,
such as Christian Patristics without its patriarchy, in which the
narrative is lost. The cultural definition of narrative leaves us
with the most historically informed of narrative options. We can
claim to live in different historic times and thereby read the
sexism out of the text. One can view the “misreads” as
misinterpretations when one claims to know an original historic
intent.

The upshot of these two definitions of narrative in the
article is that Aryeh Cohen’s arguments are most politically
radical when they are not historically radical and most
anti-historicist when they are not politically radical. Either the
narrative structure of the Talmudic text is non-historic as a weave
of concepts and not a historic commentary; or it is an historically
situated text that reveals its political agenda in its weave.
Historical form criticism is denied but social history is revealed.
Which is the more pressing need within the Jewish community: to
correct its historicism by means of literary criticism, or to
correct its cultural biases? Alternate disciplines to literature or
law that may overcome these problems are phenomenology or
anthropology. What would Gertz or Tambiah say about the Talmud as
a cultural system? A non-historicist cultural anthropology or a
non-historical phenomenological hermeneutical approach with an
awareness of our difference cultural system allows for both a
pragmatic political change and a rejection of historicism.

While most traditional talmudic commentaries approach the
text as either dialectic or practical law, there have been some
commentaries (Meiri, Ritva, Luzzato) which discussed the rhetorical
element in the law. In the sixteenth century, the Maharal (Rabbi
Judah Loew, 1525-1609) already placed the Talmudic text in its
narrative form as the center of Jewish thought. He developed a
structural approach in which tannatic texts are seen as chiastic and
developing from potential/hypothetical (from when? how?) to
actual/definitive (cases with names). He treats the talmudic text
as providing a narrative that is not subject to the common sense
perspective of dialectic and that gives a symbolic/platonic
understanding of peoplehood. The Maharal rejected the historic
humanism of Azariah de Rossi that found talmudic misinterpretations
and errors. Instead, the Maharal argued that each tractate has
multiple cultural kernels without historic antecedents or causal
relationship. The similarity of Aryeh Cohen’s approach with that of
the Maharal illustrates the value of Andre Nehar’s suggestion that
we look for postmodern Jewish thought in the Eastern European
Jewish thinkers who were independent of both medieval rationalism
and modern western Enlightenment.

Prof. Shalom Rosenberg was quoted to me (by Aryeh Cohen)
as saying that the last century of historicism in western Judaism
should be viewed philosophically as “one hundred years of
solitude.” Aryeh Cohen’s rejection of form criticism in place of
literary theory/cultural studies, allowing a confronting of the
meaning of the text, can be considered as the start of a
non-historicist postmodern dialogue on Talmudic studies.

c. Rabbi Ed Feld, Society for the Advancement
of Judaism

This sugya (Gittin 34b-35a) is imbedded in a series of
Mishnayot dealing with `tikun olam.’ `Tikun olam’ is a wild card
claim within the legal structure allowing us to respond to issues
of justice when straight-line legal reasoning would yield
conclusions which are difficult to live with. Because of `tikun
olam,’ we recognize the humanity of the non-Jew even though the
inherited law is more provincial. Similarly, Hillel could overturn
even Biblical precedent when an increasingly capitalistic society
could no longer function with the Biblical imperative canceling
loans in the Sabbatical year.

The situation in our sugya presents a peculiar conflict
regarding `tikun olam.’ Biblically, justice is always portrayed
quintessentially as doing right by the widow and orphan. Here, the
rights of the widow and orphan conflict with each other: you can
support the widow only by taking money from the orphan. To whom
does the court owe its greatest loyalty? The sugya seeks to move
our sympathy from the mishnaic ruling, and thus from the side of
the defenseless orphan to that of the poor widow, and it is in fact
successful in raising the voice of the woman: no one can leave
this sugya without hearing the pain of the widow, something
seemingly absent from the purview of the Mishnah where the only
means of her securing her property “taking an oath” is precluded.

In this situation there are no good outcomes; justice
cannot properly be served. The stories illustrate the fact that
even when people act justly they nevertheless can be guilty. Thus,
the Rabbi who follows precedent and sees himself as having no
choice but to carry out the strictures of the law is felled by
disease. Even if he acted correctly, he is wrong. The same goes
for the pious who saved a minuscule amount of flour. In such a
world, it is impossible to act without sinning. The Rabbis are
conscious that even when they act righteously they cause grief.
Such is the terrible consequence of power. The tragedy of living
in this world is that `tikun olam’ may not be achievable.

2. A Response to the Responses Presented in NETWORK Vol 3.2:
Aryeh Cohen

Before I present these initial reactions, I want to thank
those who have taken the time and effort to respond. The responses
have been universally thoughtful, and provocative in a very
positive sense. I feel that there is an important discussion that
is beginning here, and I look forward to continuing it at the AAR
conference in Chicago. I have some brief initial comments about
Gibbs & Ochs, and Mackler’s responses, and then some more extended
remarks about Meskin’s response to sugyaetics as a whole, and the
beginning of a response to Brill’s remarks.

I look forward to the second part of Gibbs & Ochs essay
in a future issue. The first part of their essay raises an
important question about reading mishnah as a distinct activity
from reading gemara. I agree with their contention that the entire
chapter of mishnah has thematic unity and offers insight into the
concerns displayed in the sugya. I would extend this to say that
the sugyot in this chapter are reading the mishnah as a whole.
Sugyot are consistently foreshadowing concerns of upcoming
mishnayot. It would be interesting to see how widespread this
phenomena is, and how it governs the reading of the mishnah. I
think that some of the sugyot including to an extent our sugya are
generated by specific readings of the mishnah as a whole chapter.
For example, the recurring trope of they used to do something, then
something bad happened and they stopped which is explicit in the
early mishnayot is also assumed in our mishnah. Although I do not
want to embark on an extended reading of the mishnayot of chapter
4, I would just add one more remark. I think that the chapter as a
whole specifically the `tikkun olam’ question circles around
mishnah 5. It is the only mishnah in which the expression tikkun
olam also makes literal sense.

Mackler’s reading is suggestive and insightful. As he
notes, “I find more interest in the tensions and discontinuities”
than “the achievement of a significant, if imperfect resolution.”
It seems to me that part of our present “fixing” entails returning
to the original site of the discontinuities and tensions, and
then once we have recognized those discontinuities and
tensions trying to recover some of the voices we have lost to
earlier imperfect resolutions.

Meskin’s response to sugyaetics is interesting in the way
that it recapitulates one of the narrative threads that I point out
in my reading of the sugya itself. Setting up an opposition between
sugyaetics and “orthodox yeshivot,” Meskin casts the orthodox beis
medrash “in the role of the conservative guardians of tradition”
while sugyaetics is “the opposition.” Drafting Burke and Churchill
to man the ramparts of the study hall, Meskin attempts to ward off
the “modern, one-sided, enlightenment” barbarian objectification
at the gate (quoted appellations are from Meskin’s response). At
times “halakhic tradition” or “significant form of Jewish
spirituality” are substituted on the “orthodox yeshivot” side of
the binary. While I will fear that Meskin may be misreading my
paper, I think that he is pointing to an issue that very much needs
to be discussed by post-modern Jewish thinkers. That issue is
whether the (romanticized?) pre-modern Yeshiva is actually the
sanctuary for those disillusioned with the objectifying and
totalizing project of modernity the modern academy being a
vanguard of that project. But first some comments about the
specific issues that Meskin raises in my reading and about
sugyaetics.

If sugyaetics were only drawing our attention to the
differences among layers of successive Talmudic activity that is, by
distinguishing the layer of ma’asim from the layer of the stammaim then
there would be little with which to quibble. At least in the sample
presented to us, sugyaetics seems to isolate the ma’aseh as problematic
in general. In the specific context of the sugya from Gittin, the
particular ma’asim in question embody certain troubling conceptions from
which we need to be “saved” by later delimiting stammaitic statements of
the form lo shanu ele. (Meskin par.3)

Sugyaetics is not about source criticism. I am not interested in
“layers of successive Talmudic activity,” but rather narrative strands
of the sugya. Nor am I making a claim about the ma’aseh in general, but
about the narrative strand that is the three ma’asim in this `sugya.’
Beyond this point, Meskin may have misconstrued the relationship between
the ma’asim and the other narrative strand. If one were to pursue a
source critical analysis of the sugya based on attributions, the latter
two ma’asim in the sugya (a certain woman and R. Huna/lines 34-38; and
a certain woman and Rabbah son of R. Huna/lines 39-46) are later than
the “lo shanu” statements which are not stammaitic, but are attributed
to Rab and Shmuel, first generation Babylonian Amoraim. The first
ma’aseh is unattributed and therefore there is no basis for saying that
it is earlier than the Rab and Shmuel “lo shanu” statements. There is no
“doing away with” the “layer of ma’asim,” since there is no layer of
ma’asim either in a sugyaetic reading or in a source critical reading.

A sugyaetic reading is drawn to the textuality/narratology of
the ma’asim, as opposed to their adjudication. Meskin would have been
better served by Jonah Fraenkel’s `Darkhei Midrash Va’agadah,’ than by
Alon’s Jewish Law. As I point out in my reading of the ma’asim, they
are not legal precedents. There is no law learned from them. The latter
two ma’asim posit a certain legal reality (and, to be sure, uphold it),
and the first ma’aseh posits a certain cultural reality. All three
ma’asim are scenes in which the tension between a woman’s assertive
voice and the tradition are enacted, with fatal consequences. In the
first ma’aseh, the fatal consequences are inscribed by an anonymous
third voice (line 17 “They said”). This ascription is part of the
cultural reality that women who swear bury their children, as
articulated in the midrash in the Palestinian Talmud that I quoted. This
interpreted tragedy (“They said”) has less to do with “inexplicable
events” than with the inscription of the danger of a woman’s voice.
The “pastness” of the sugya is a result of the way in which the
narrative strands are interwoven and play off each other in the stam.
The seeming closure reached by Yehudah’s statement (line 47-and see also
Mackler’s reading), is undone by what comes next. However, I do not want
to rehash my whole argument here.

Meskin’s reading of the paper and the sugya is embedded in a
larger and more significant cultural discourse. As Alan Brill points out
in his response, there is no single monolithic tradition which
continues the “significant form of Jewish spirituality” that is Talmud,
to this day. There are many traditions, many readers. A large segment of
the present day Yeshiva movement embodies a certain way of reading
Talmud which finds its spiritual antecedents in Alfasi: this is reading
for the halakhic bottom line. The very premise that Talmud is a
collection of legal rulings, however, is itself questionable. Though
Alfasi thought it should be, many of the medieval commentators disagreed
(for example, the RITB”A, the RASHB”A). The present yeshiva style of
learning as also the current Ashkenazic halakhic tradition is a result
of choices made over the centuries. These choices were not dictated to
Moses at Sinai, but were made by situated, engaged scholars at specific
historic moments. Revisiting these texts, and possibly resisting these
choices, is not “opening an endless quarrel with the past” although it
might be opening a futile, and perhaps irrelevant, quarrel with those
who claim a monopoly on that past. Revisiting these texts is reengaging
in the dialogue with the ground of our present.

This post-modern dialogue must be as wary of a totalizing,
essentialist definition of “fidelity to tradition” as it is of a
totalizing and objectifying academic approach to religion. Giving the
Yeshiva primacy over the academy does not serve to rectify the
imperialistic scholarship of the enlightenment. It merely grants license
and legitimacy to imperialistic scholarship in the Yeshiva (see the
current fascination with “history” in the Orthodox community).

Finally, of course, in response to Meskin’s claim (on p. 14) I must
assume that all of us joined in this dialogue are seriously engaged in
dialogue with Talmud and the halakhic tradition, and that that
engagement itself has compelled us to stand in this liminal space.

Alan Brill’s response raises a significant question that lies at
the heart of what I am trying to do with sugyaetics. He writes:

Aryeh Cohen’s arguments are most politically radical when they are not
historically radical and most anti-historicist when they are not politically
radical. Either the narrative structure of the Talmudic text is non historic
as a weave of concepts… Or it is ahistorically situated text that reveals
its political agenda in its weave. … Which is the more pressing need
within the Jewish community to correct its historicism orits cultural biases?
(I am quoting from an early version of Brill’s response.)

At this point in my thinking I would say that the Talmudic text reveals the
history that it generates in the halakhic and commentary tradition. The
political agenda in its weave flowers over the centuries. It is not a prehistory
that can be recovered, but a moment at which a certain “post history” or
“ground” is forming. As to the question of historicism or cultural biases, I
lean towards correct cultural biases first, although the two cannot
necessarily be easily separated. This is however, a (if not the) significant
question for me, and a continuation of the one raised by Meskin’s response.

3. A Response to the Response to the Responses:
“Sugayetics,The Academic Study of Judaism, and Dialogue: A Further
Response to Aryeh Cohen” Jacob Meskin, Williams College

I would like to thank Aryeh Cohen for continuing our
dialogue in his `response to my response’. Opportunities for this
sort of sustained intellectual give and take present themselves
only rarely, and I am very pleased to be able to learn from, and
enjoy, this one. And Aryeh Cohen is right–there is a big,
terribly important issue at stake here, one that I suspect both
Cohen and I (and a great many others) agonize over. What IS the
relation between modern, Enlightenment rationality–and its
characteristic institutional and social forms–and the religion we
call Judaism? What might TRADITION–whether “talmudic”,
“halakhic”, or more sweepingly “Jewish”–mean as a specifically
RELIGIOUS category in an era characterized by suspicion,
individualism, and the decimating analyses of texts once thought
integral into disparate historical and narrative fragments? These
questions are not only about how scholars ought to think about
texts and rituals–they are, even more pointedly, about how flesh
and blood people living after the Enlightenment are to understand,
practice, and live out the religion we call Judaism.

In point of fact, I believe that Cohen and I turn out to
be quite close in our general approach to these questions.
However, I disagree on how Cohen presents sugyaetics. This is
certainly NOT because I hold a different view of certain
fine-points of the Talmudic text–in this respect, I am clearly and
admittedly the `am ha’aretz.’ Yet I understand enough to be able
to wonder at certain conceptual moves that my colleague the
Talmudist makes in pursuing his sugyaetic agenda. And so let me
clearly state that, even while I commend the intriguing innovation
and bright promise that mark the sugyaetic project, I continue to
worry that Cohen’s manner of presenting sugyaetics remains
entangled in a sort of “us” versus “them” academic disciplinary
mind-set, where Judaism ends up being the object to be studied and
sugyaetics, inter alia, ends up being an objective, scholarly
method used to study it. I will question this subject/object
bifurcation below, and must point out that my original response
used words like DIALOGUE to characterize the relation between
“Jewish tradition” (however we construe that word) and the modern,
secular academy. Let me then raise several red-flags, and finish
with a rather different way of construing the academic study of
Talmud, and Jewish studies more generally.

I begin with a small point. I was very careful to
reproduce faithful citations from Cohen’s original piece, and to
set them off as such. But I find several phrases attributed to me
that in fact belong rather to Cohen, in particular the phrase:
“conservative guardians of the tradition” which does indeed occur
in my response–BUT ONLY as a direct citation from Cohen’s original
piece. I do not advocate any such set of conservative guardians,
and I only mention that apparently so worrisome phrase–“orthodox
yeshivot”–once in passing at the very beginning of my response.
So let me just plead here, Aryeh, that you not truncate my position
too quickly into some sort of binary opposition.

I must however thank Aryeh Cohen for correcting my
conflation regarding source-critical, form-critical, and sugyaetic
outlooks. I stand corrected. Sugyaetics focuses on NARRATOLOGICAL
UNITS. In other words, sugyaetics attempts to identify the
component stories and parts of stories through which larger
narratives–such as e.g. the sugya itself–come into being. Thus
my talk of “layers” of ma’asim must be abandoned, and with it I
must also jettison claims that Cohen wants (as if it were possible)
to “do away with” the “layer” of ma’asim. And indeed, I will now
put Jonah Fraenkel’s Darkhei Midrash Va’agadah on my reading list.

Yet having now arrived at a better understanding of
sugyaetics, the inveterate philosopher in me cannot contain his
various puzzlements. I am unable to avoid the conclusion that the
sugyaeticist wants to have his kugel and eat it too. Let me quote
two separate sentences from the third of the paragraphs that Cohen
devotes to my response:
1) All three ma’asim are scenes in which the tension between a woman’s
assertive voice and the tradition are (sic) enacted, with fatal
consequences.
2) The “pastness” of the sugya is a result of the way in which the
narrative strands are interwoven and play off each other in the stam.
Whatever one may think of the ultimate truth of statement 2), how can
one deny either its conceptual daring, or the intellectual adventure
to which it points? Here is an example of narratological analysis
being used in a suggestive and fecund manner, yielding a sophisticated
instrument for comprehending the powerful effects of stammaitic redaction
of the talmudic text. Things are quite different with statement
1), however, and here I believe that Cohen must tread carefully, for
sugyaetic analysis CANNOT BY ITSELF produce the narrative units described
in statement 1). Let me try to say why.

The general category of “ma’aseh” in sugyaetics is, of course,
PURELY FORMAL–that is, it refers to certain identifiable, and more
or less distinguishable mini-narratives. These relatively discrete
units of narrative significance can, by definition, have all sorts
of different CONTENT, since ma’asim can be about a vast number of
things. But if this elementary observation is true, then I am
puzzled about how Cohen can be so certain that the particular
ma’asim from masekhet Gittin SIMPLY ARE “scenes in which the
tension between a woman’s assertive voice and the tradition (is)
enacted.” What enables the sugyaeticist alone to know the single,
correct characterization of the meaning of the narrative units out
of which the `sugya’ is woven? Is this a matter for debate and
legitimate difference of opinion? Or, rather, does sugyaetics DENY
the basic distinction I drew above, namely that the ma’aseh is a
FORMAL category in sugyaetic analysis, and that determining the
ma’aseh’s CONTENT (and what this content might mean) will differ
dramatically not only from ma’aseh to ma’aseh, but also from one
interpreter of a ma’aseh to another interpreter of that same
ma’aseh? To put this point another way, is Cohen’s statement that
our three ma’asim are about the tension between a woman’s assertive
voice and tradition simply true by definition in sugyaetics? If
this statement is NOT a priori, then these ma’asim might MEAN many
other things, and they would go right on meaning many other things
even though we could precisely fix their exact, identifiable
narrative FORM–just as different interpreters find that one,
single, self-identical parable, fable, or short story can MEAN a
great many things.

In my original response to Cohen, I listed four possible
meanings for the ma’asim in masekhet Gittin, noting that Cohen to
his credit had supplied his readers with these alternative meanings
in his own piece. I cannot possibly enter the fray on anything
approaching an equal footing here with my colleague the Talmudist:
he may well be right that these ma’asim do indeed mean what he
takes them to mean, and that the alternative readings must simply
be rejected. But at least let me feel protective about the values
of pluralism, conversation, and the rich multiplicity of meanings
inherent in living textual traditions. Are these liberal values?
Post-modern values? I don’t really know, but you don’t have to
work through all of Derrida’s texts to know that most attempts to
stop the play of meanings once and for all involve the risk of
violence. (Despite the apparent emphasis on getting the “halakhic
bottom line” of which Cohen rightly speaks, room for disagreement
is still maintained within this process, at least in the living
commentarial space of the texts. And even were one, per
impossible, to “get” such a halakhic bottom line, at least
interpretive and halakhic freedom is retained.)

What is really going on here is that each student brings his
or her own assumptions to the reading of the text–which is how it
should be, and how it always has been. It then becomes the task of
the text itself, in conjunction with other readers of that text and
the student herself, to help the student begin to recognize her
assumptions for what they are. She will want to maintain some of
these assumptions; she will want to abandon some, and she will
spend years deliberating over others. But in this
process–especially as it has unfolded in the reading of Jewish
texts–it becomes possible to revise and reconsider one’s initial
starting points. The profusion of commentators on every page, and
the lively conversation among present-day readers engender a
“dangerous dialogue” between reader and textual tradition–as
opposed to the relative “safety” of scholarly analysis, where the
analyst’s own life and commitments almost always remain well out of
play.

Indeed, two alternatives have for a long time dominated the
academic study of Judaism: either one used her intellectual
discipline as an external methodological tool with which to measure
and manipulate the object (Judaism), or one fell helplessly into
some species or another of “apologetics”, with its concomitant
connotations of rigorlessness. But something NEW is beginning to
happen: several recent thinkers are pushing beyond this dichotomous
model, progressively creating a mutual or at least quasi-mutual
INTERACTION between a particular academic discipline–philosophy,
social theory, literary theory, psychology–and the endless
dehiscence that is Jewish tradition. We see this emerging trend
toward real dialogue in several different nexus of contact between
Judaism and particular academic disciplines:
a) in psychology there is, inter alia, Moshe Halevi Spero’s recent
RELIGIOUS OBJECTS AS PSYCHOLOGICAL STRUCTURES: A Critical Investigation
of Object Relations Theory, Psychotherapy, and Judaism, with its attempt
to develop a “halakhic metapsychology”;
b) in literary and textual theory there is the innovative work of Daniel
Boyarin (and possibly also the older work of Andr_ Neher, whose profound
literary meditation on the Tanakh, THE EXILE OF THE WORD, deserves to be
better known);
c) in social and political theory there is the work of Mark Shell, who
has investigated the historical roots of tolerance in Biblical and
Talmudic discussions of the b’nei no’ach, suggesting that the absence of
such an ethics of plurality may be partly responsible for much of
the violence that has taken place in human history;
d) in philosophy there is the work of Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig,
and Emmanuel Levinas.

All of these thinkers are moving forward in the relationship
between Western culture and Judaism, for they all take Jewish
tradition INTO western culture as a full and equal contributor.
Here Judaism has ceased being just another object to be
interrogated and probed according to the standards of particular
academic disciplines. Instead, the many voices which compose the
symphony called Jewish tradition become audible, and this symphonic
tradition gains the right, as partner in a dialogue, to challenge
and question “the” prevailing cultural standards for what
constitutes intellectual inquiry in western culture. Here we are,
finally, beginning to have fruitful CROSS-FERTILIZATION and ongoing
interconnection. How else to describe Levinas’ distinctively
Jewish (and Talmudic) ethical post-phenomenology, or Rosenzweig’s
profoundly Judaic critique of systematicity, or Spero’s “halakhic
metapsychology”, or Hermann Cohen’s Judaic kind of neo-Kantianism,
or Daniel Boyarin’s incisive critique of the documentary hypothesis
from the vantage point of midrash and its generativity? Here,
finally, different aspects of Jewish tradition may begin to
“influence” or “affect” modern, western intellectual disciplines.

Why are we allowed, as professional academics, to help our
students to see the power and force of religious texts from other
religious traditions, so that the religious ideas and motifs of,
say, Christian and Buddhist religious texts are permitted to enter
into the western intellectual discourse of our students, while we
remain unable to think of doing this for the Talmud? Why is it
acceptable to explain the vital Christology at work in Hegel, or
the Catholicism which informs Eliot’s FOUR QUARTETS, or the deeply
Christian meditation on time that shapes Bulgakov’s MASTER AND
MARGARITA, or even the Christian mysticism at play in the later
Heidegger, while the study of Judaism struggles to wipe out any
hint of just this creative and mutually enriching intermingling?
If profoundly Christian materials are allowed both to speak in the
academic forum, and even perhaps to shape that forum and its rules,
why must Jewish tradition remain a hapless, long-suffering, and
silent golem in the academy? Academics engaged in the study of
Judaism may not want “to POSKEN by the Rambam”, but he still seems
to serve as a fairly impressive role model for what we might
perhaps want to strive to do. Who knows–it may well be that this
is the only way in which we will ever seriously alter the
anti-semitic historical momentum of western culture, by taking the
next step (one already taken by Maimonides) and introducing Judaic
ideas, critiques, insights, and patterns of living into the heart
of western thought, thereby building up at least something like the
sort of potent intellectual interfecundation that Christianity has
enjoyed with western tradition.
It seems to me that sugyaetics is perfectly poised to nurture
this growing trend toward mutual exchange. I would hope that Aryeh
Cohen will lend his considerable talents to this effort.

NOTE: * I would like to thank Barbara Lerner, Peter Ochs, and Susan
Shapiro for helping me to clarify the ideas expressed in this
piece.

A NEW SECTION: MATERIAL CULTURE AND POSTMODERN JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

Ed. note: From time to time, we will present our members’
readings of various aspects of material culture. Feel free to
submit your relatively brief reviews and commentaries! As for
How we will read such things to the tune of an earthbound
“naaseh v’nishmah,” let’s see what we do, first, and then we
can talk about it!

To start us off with Cooking, we asked Ruth Ochs, for a
postmodern recipe (she is a cooking teacher, and also the
editor’s mother). You may find her Jewish postmodernism
embedded in the taste, as well as introduced in her initial
comments. To start us off on film, we asked Norbert Samuelson
to send a short piece he might already have in house (he
frequently reviews for local papers, etc.). You may find his
Jewish philosophy embedded in the choice of the film, the
details of his recititation and reading, as well as intimated
in his closing comments.

1. Cooking: “Brisket, New Style,” by Ruth Ochs
(Huntington, New York)

A postmodern Jewish recipe may mean one that returns to
traditional Jewish cooking, but now with changes appropriate to our
contemporary sense of how to protect health and, perhaps, ecology.
Jewish cooking reflects the ingredients, dishes, and flavors of the
various places Jews have wandered. It is thus a pluralistic
cooking. You might want to call that “postmodern,” too.

In bringing a traditional family recipe to today’s needs
requires only a few changes. Using many vegetables in the baking of
the meat makes a flavorful, nutritional gravy; adding body, food
value, and very little fat. The presentation of the meal is
balanced with a carbohydrate (potato or noodle), a green vegetable,
and a yellow vegetable or any optional choices to make a wholesome
and appetite awakening picture.

For starters, here is a “Brisket, New Style,” to serve 6.

3 1/2 to 4 lb first cut brisket
2 onions, peeled, coarsely chopped
1/2 green or red pepper – cubed or coarsely chopped
2 carrots – sliced
2 stalks celery – sliced
3 cloves garlic – minced
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp black pepper
pinch of cayenne pepper
2″ slice fresh ginger – grated
OR 1/4 tsp ginger powder
1 sprig parsley – chopped
1 bay leaf – whole
*(if fresh herbs are available, double measurement)

Day before if possible 350 oven

Place all vegetables in baking pan. Combine spices and rub
meat with all except parsley and bay leaf. Place meat over
vegetables. Bake for 11/2 hours or until vegetables are brown and
juices have collected in pan.

Remove from oven. Cool meat slightly, wrap in foil and
refrigerate. Place vegetables and juices in container. Deglaze
pan; add deglazed liquid and particles from pan to container and
refrigerate.
Next Day
Remove all fat from roasted vegetables and juices. Place
vegetables and juices in blender or food processor. Add 1 cup beef
broth and 1/2 cup dry red wine. Blend until pureed and smooth.
Add more broth if gravy is too thick. Optional: add salt to
taste.

Defat cold meat and slice across the grain. Hold to shape, as
much as possible, and place meat (in shape) in Dutch oven. Pour
pureed gravy over meat. Add bay leaf and bring to boil, then
quickly to a simmer. Cook 1 1/2 hours or until meat is fork-tender.
Remove bay leaf.
This can be done on top of stove burners or in 350 oven for
20 minutes, the 325 oven for remainder of time. Potatoes may be
added around the meat 3/4 hour before meat is done. Add parsley
and blend into gravy when meat is done.

2. Film
John Sayles’ “City of Hope”, by Norbert Samuelson,
Temple University

Here are notes that I had written about John Sayles’ “City of
Hope” for a Jewish film festival at the Germantown Jewish Center
two years ago. I think the theme is appropriate, and I would be
interested in hearing responses to my reading of the film. For
those who have not seen it, I first give data about the film (which
is available at most decent video stores for rental), then a plot
summary (which is fairly involved, particularly for a movie), and
finally the relevant commentary.
Film Data:
1991 film by John Sayles (writer, director and editor). Produced by
Sarah Green and Maggie Renzi. Executive Producers: John Sloss and
Harold Welb. Distributed by Samuel Goldwyn Co. Director of
Photography: Robert Richardson. Music by Mason Daring. 125 min.
Cast: Rinaldo family: Nick/Buck (Vincent Spano): Tony’s younger
brother; Joe (Tony lo Banco): Nick’s father, engineer, owner of L
St apartments; Angela (Barbara Williams): Nick’s girlfriend,
Michael Rizzo’s ex-wife; Paulie (Joe Grifensi): Joe’s brother,
assistant to mayor Bacci; Laurie (Gina Gershon): Nick’s sister,
school teacher; Riggs (Chris Cooper): construction worker, friend
of Tony. The Black community: Wynn/Winston (Joe Morton):
Community’s councilman, former teacher at Madison State College;
Jeanette (Gloria Foster): Wynn’s wife, teacher at Madison State;
Franklin (Daryl Edwards): Wynn’s brother-in-law; Levonne Willis
(Frankie Faison): Black Muslim leader; Desmond Price (Jojo
Smallett) & Tito Robins (Edward Jay Townsend Jr.): black children
who mug Les; Malik (Tom Wright): Black Muslim. The Italian
community: Carl (John Sayles): garage owner, arsonist, fence; Bobby
Kraus (Jace Alexander) & Zippo (Todd Graff): musicians & petty
thieves; Vinnie (Scott Tyler): mechanic, waiting for chance to
become a petty thief; Stagros (Charlie Yanko): Drug dealer & lunch
truck owner; Styroczk (Bernard Camepari); Connie (Maggie Renzi) &
Joanne (Marriane Leone): women from the community; security guard
(Blair Shannon). The Hudson City government: Michael Rizzo
(Anthony John Denison): rookie patrolman; Bauer (S.J. Lang): honest
patrolman, Rizzo’s partner; O’Brien (Kevin Tighe): dishonest cop;
Simms (Randle Mell) & Gus (Steven Randizzo): city businessmen
involved in Galaxie Towers; Zimmer (Michael Mantell): assistant to
the district attorney; District Attorney (Bob North); Mayor Bacci
(Louis Zorich); Errol (Ray Aranha)& Kevin (Jon Farris): patrolmen.
Others: Les (Bill Raymond): Mugged professor of Urban Relations at
Madison State College; Mad Anthony (Josh Mostel): owner of
appliance store; Asteroid (David Strathairn): mad sage; Milford
(John DeVries): Dean at Madison State; Roger (Dale Carman):
Homosexual professor at Madison State; Yoyo (Stephen Mandillo):
construction worker; Ramirez (Serafin Jovet): Hispanic drug dealer;
Dawn (Eileen Lynch) waitress who works with Angela; Reesha (Angela
Bassett); Mrs. Ramirez (Miriam Colon); Pina (Rose Gregorio); Paddy
(Jude Ciccolello); Fuentes (Jaime Tirelli); Peter (Mason Daring);
India (Olga Merediz); Thomas (John Griesenger); Suzanne (Ginny
Young); Kerrigan (Lawrence Tierney); Christine (Maive Kinnead).

Plot Summary:
The story begins with Nick quitting a “no-show” job on a
construction site in the city for no apparent reason other than he
has “f–d up” his life. Gradually the film reveals the reasons why,
and in the process we learn about two almost totally decayed
societies — Nick’s family and Nick’s city. In both cases the decay
resulted from people merely compromising with their environment in
honest attempts to find some meaning to their lives.
THE FAMILY: Tony’s status as family and community hero (as an
all-state basketball guard to Sacred Heart High School) comes to an
end when he, together with his friend Carl, gets drunk, hits a
woman with his car, and flees the scene. (Carl’s leg is permanently
injured in the accident.) Faced with Carl’s confession to the
police (to save himself) that Tony was the driver, Tony’s father,
Joe, makes a deal with the police. To save Tony from arrest and
jail, Joe makes Tony enlist in the marines. Tony is sent to Viet
Nam where he is killed. Tony’s younger brother, Nick, only knows
that his father made his hero brother volunteer against his will.
Nick feels guilty that he (the inferior sibling) is alive and
blames his father for the death. He believes that his father’s
deal-making killed his brother, and he vows that he will not let
his father makes deals for him (which is why Nick quits the
construction job). But everything that Nick does in one way or
another is a “deal.” The only exception is his feelings for Angela,
whom he meets in a bar (on his way to take part in a robbery). He
instantly idealizes her as his long sought-for true love. (When he
meets her he says “I like you,” and she responds “You don’t know
me,” to which he replies “Yes I do; you’re something great.”)
Angela’s life also is a series of tragic deals. Angela
compromised her future when she graduated high school eight years
earlier and married her school boy friend, Pete Rizzo, whom she
knew even then was no good. Rizzo becomes a policeman with a
dangerous pattern, at both home and work, for alcohol abuse and
violence. Angela gets a divorce, and now struggles to support her
seriously ill two year old son, Jesse, working as a waitress at
DeLullo’s. She no longer looks for any happiness or meaning in
life; she only wants to survive. Because of her son, she has no
hope for a future relationship with a man; she only wants to avoid
involvement with another “no good” like Rizzo. When Nick enters her
life, she is afraid to hope again for happiness. Nick persuades her
to hope, and then he dies.
Nick needs $2,000 to pay off a gambling debt with Carl. (He
bet on the L.A. Angels to win. [In this world “angels” are
losers.]) He asks his sister, Laurie, for the money. He pressures
her to make this “deal” with him because he once helped her get an
abortion, so that she wouldn’t have to marry her no-good boy
friend. Laurie can only give him $50. (She says she does it
because”it’s family.”) To raise the rest of the money Nick agrees
to drive the car for Carl’s flunkies, Bobby and Zippo, when they
rob Mad Anthony’s Appliance Store. (Bobby and Zippo do these crimes
in the futile hope of raising enough money to make it as
musicians.) The job is supposed to be easy. Carl gives them a key
to the store, which is supposed to be empty at night. However, it
isn’t. Wynn, the local city councilman, made a deal with Mad
Anthony to hire Wynn’s brother-in-law, Franklin (who has a
conviction record himself for robbery), as a security guard at
minimum wage in exchange for some video equipment for the
councilmn’s planned community center. Unbeknown to Carl, Bobby,
Zippo or Nick, Franklin began work that night. Armed with a water
gun, Franklin captures Zippo and Nick. Nick abandons the
(stolen-by-Carl) car he was driving and gets away. However, Bobby
and Zippo name Carl to Detective O’Brien, and O’Brien gets Carl to
identify Nick as the driver. (O’Brien investigated Nick, not in the
interest of justice, but to ingratiate himself to the DA’s office
in hope of a promotion, which [at least tentatively] he gets as a
special investigator.)
A warrant goes out for Nick’s arrest. However, Joe makes a
deal with the mayor that gets the charges dropped. (Carl and Joe
both do to/for Nick precisely what they did to/for Tony, with the
same final consequence — the death of a son of Joe Rinaldo.) Nick
runs into the drunk, off-duty Rizzo, who shoots Nick (presumably
because he is wanted as a suspect but really because he is sleeping
with Angela). Nick escapes, fatally wounded, and Rizzo is picked up
by two patrolman, Error and Kevin. Refusing to make a “deal,” to
lie to protect a colleague who just shot an unarmed man, they
arrest Rizzo. With one bullet Rizzo has destroyed three families:
The Rinaldo’s, Angela’s, and his own.
THE CITY: Wynn gave up being a teacher at Madison State to
enter city politics to make a difference for his people and his
city. He succeeded in being elected councilman in his
Black/Hispanic community, but he has not succeeded in anything
else. He tries to get Levonne, the leader of Black activist P
Street Community Center, to come to the city council meeting to
fight for more money for schools. Wynn fails both to get Levonne’s
cooperation and to get more money. (The school bill fails in the
council 7-2.) His only success comes from making a deal — he gets
Franklin a job as a security guard for Mad Anthony. That evening
Errol and Kevin hassle two black children, Desmond and Tito, for
wandering into the Italian section of the community. The police
justify their action by saying, “if you can’t get respect, you
settle for fear.” What they get from the two boys is racial anger,
which they take out by attempting to mug Les, a white professor of
Urban Affairs at Madison State, while he is out jogging. Les gets
away, stops a police car, and the police arrest Desmond and Tito.
To protect themselves, Tito lies and says that they beat up Les
because he sexually assaulted them. Desmond agrees to go along with
the lie. The police don’t believe the boys, but their cause is
taken up by Levonne and the other leaders of the community’s black
radicals. Wynn interviews Desmond and Les and concludes that Les
was telling the truth, but he decides that for political reasons he
would have to stand up for his constituents against the white
outsider. In the end he convinces Les to drop the charges, defusing
the issue, becauseto do so would be in everyone’s best interest. In
other words, for the sake of pursuing his higher political goals of
helping his community, he makes a dirty deal with Les.
At the same time, the leaders of the city’s business community
want the buildings owned by Joe Rinaldo on L St. cleared out so
that they, backed by a group of Japanese businessmen, can build the
Galaxie Towers luxury apartments — a project actively opposed by
Wynn, because he realizes that it will contribute to driving his
minority constituents out of their own community. At DeLullo’s
restaurant, with Angela working as their waitress, Simms and Gus,
representing the businessmen, offer Zimmer, representing the
District Attorney’s office, a substantial bribe for both the D.A.
and mayor Bacci’s reelection campaign. The mayor agrees to the deal
and gets his assistant, Paulie Rinaldo, to work on his brother Joe.
Joe, however, refuses, because he knows thatit would make the poor
people who live there homeless. The mayor’s office begins to apply
pressure to make Joe change his mind. Joe, who is constructing the
building of his dreams (with the backing of organized crime money
in exchange for work agreements ith the construction unions
controlled by the Mafia), begins to run up against a series of
violations of city codes and union walk outs, all of which
demonstrates that unless he cooperates on the L St. building, he
will never get to build his new structure. Still, Joe refuses,
until, that is, he learns that his son Nick is wanted by the police
for robbery.
Paulie informed the mayor that his brother would not tear down
the buildings because of its tenants, and suggests to the mayor
that the problem could be overcome by hiring a professional
arsonist, through Carl, to burn the buildings down. Joe wouldn’t
have to do anything himself; all he would have to do is agree not
to rebuild or repair his buildings after they are torched. Joe
finally agrees on two conditions — all charges are dropped against
Nick, and no one is in the building when it is burned. The mayor
and the D.A. agree. Carl hires Bobby and Zippo to torch the
buildings. They succeed in burning them, but they are not empty.
Unbeknown to anyone, a women and her thirteen month old child, who
were living in an already closed off section of the apartments, die
in the fire.
Wynn uses his deal with Les to galvanize his constituents at
a meeting at the P Street Community Center (where Levonne had
planned to crucify Wynn politically for siding with whites against
blacks [which Levonne had counted on because he knew Wynn to be an
“honest” man]) to march on a fundraiser that the mayor was holding
uptown. In front of TV cameras Wynn embarrasses Bacci publicly,
forcing him politically to abandon the Galaxie Towers project. In
the end, despite everyone’s good intentions, no one gets what they
wanted. The business men don’t get their Galaxie Towers, and the
mayor loses the money (and maybe even the election). Joe loses his
son and his buildings, thirteen families become homeless, and two
people die. There are no winners in the game of politics. In some
sense Wynn has won. (Certainly his nemesis, Levonne, has been
defeated.) He has galvanized the support of his community to do
something negative, viz. to stop of Galaxie Towers project. (Wynn
had told the mayor that he and his constituents would “make the L
Street apartments a symbol for everything that’s fucked up in the
city.”) But that victory in itself offers no hope of success to
Wynn’s positive programs — better education and jobs for his
constituents, for while the Galaxie project probably would not have
created work for his people, he has no other project to offer as a
politically viable alternative.
HOPE IN THE TWO SOCIETIES: The film ends with two acts of
reconciliation that together constitute an expression of “hope” for
society. The first is at the level of the city. Desmond’s mother
forces him to tell the truth out of her absolute commitment to
honesty. Desmond (the student) goes to Les’s home to apologize for
what he did, and Les (the teacher) becomes his mentor. The second
is at the level of the family. As Nick lies dying on top of his
father’s unfinished dream building, Joe finds him and the two
reconnect as father and son. However, Sayles’s messages are never
simple. The final vision in the film is Joe shouting for help from
the top of his building in the hope that someone will hear him and
call an ambulance for his son. However, no one is there to hear but
Asteroid — the mad prophet who hears everything said and repeats
indiscriminately whatever he hears, to whom no one ever listens.
Commentary
Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” projected a society of functional
families that came together to form a greater society in a
functional town. In both societies, there were no visible
expressions of external government. The communities worked because
people were loving and carrying. Implicit in Wilder’s fantasy of a
mythical small town America was a condemnation of the then popular
socialist utopian projections of externally imposed governmental
structures that could turn ordinary (even base) people into a
community of secular saints. Underlying Wilder’s counter,
laissez-faire vision of the family and the state was his
fundamental optimism about the nature of humanity. But what if that
optimism is misplaced? What if human beings are inclined by nature,
not towards goodness, but towards evil? What if people left to
their own devices, with the best of intentions, do not reach out to
each other with love and sympathy, but instead blindly use each
other in the pursuit of rationalized greed? The result is Dane’s
inferno in urban America, i.e., Sayles’s “city of hope.”
In one sense, Sayles’s picture of the Hudson City explains the
setting of Spike Lee’s city on the Hudson. In “Do The Right Thing”
both nature (the heat) and society (the government, from the police
to the mayor) conspire to prevent the citizens from doing what is
right. But in Lee’s New York, good people can make a difference.
The mayor saves lives even if he cannot change them, and Mookie can
turn people’s violence from people to property. But in Sayles’s
city there are no good people; there are only people with good
intentions. In fact, the intentions of practically everyone is
good. (Joe’s goal was to build something of his own. Similarly,
Nick says, “I want to be my own boss.” “Like your father?” asks
Angela. “No,” he responds, “not like him.”) But intentions are not
what matters; character is. In other words, the film’s title is
entirely ironic. (Bobby calls prison hell, to which Zippo responds,
“No. If this were hell, my mother would be here. Compared to hell
this is Disneyland.”) Certaily that is what the ending suggests,
for nothing could be more despairing than the futile wails of
Asteroid that turns a call for help (to save Nick’s life) into a
meaningless flow of sounds. For there is no difference between
Asteroid’s mimicking “Why settle for less when you can have it all”
and “Help, we need help over here in the building.” It makes no
difference if you settle for more or less; either way you don’t get
it all; in fact you get nothing that really matters. Similarly, the
prophetic cry for help in the building (= the family = the city =
the state = the world) will not help anyone.
Perhaps this final judgment is too harsh. Sayles himself said
about his film that a “cynical view would be that there absolutely
is no hope, and I don’t mean the title that ironically …” But
what hope is there? The answer is what happens in the penultimate
scene to Desmond. It may be too late for the older Nick; but by no
means is it obviously too late for the youthful Desmond. His
mother’s commitment to the truth on absolute (Kantian?) terms makes
him willing to confess and be honest. Now, he never gets the chance
to confess, because Wynn has already sold him out by convincing Les
that it was in his best (Utilitarian?) interests to drop the
charges. (As Joe [in the false belief that he could make a
difference in his family] sold out his son Tony/Nick by not letting
him face the consequences [bear responsibility] for what he did, so
Wynn [in the false belief that he could make a difference in his
community] sells out his constituent Desmond.). Joe saved Tony/Nick
from prison, and in so doing led Toy/Nick to death. We do not know
what could be the consequences of Wynn saving Desmond now from
juvenile court. In all likelihood it would be that Desmond, like
his friend Tito, has no future except the adult, hard-time prison
to which their elder Italian role models, Bobby and Zippo, are
fated. But Desmond may escape his destiny; there may be “hope.” The
absolute, utterly impractical demand of his mother that Desmond
tell the truth has brought Desmond to Les’s home, and Les, for no
good reason whatsoever, has decided to love his neighbor/enemy as
himself.
On this interpretation, there is hope, but it is not Joe
Rinaldo’s (Spinozistic) effort to become self-sufficient. At the
end of the film, he defends the compromises he made and excuses the
harm that he caused by saying “I did the best I could,” which
probably is true — for himself, his family and his city. (When the
unsuccessful Wynn says “I don’t play anything” [referring to golf
and politics], the golf playing, seemingly successful black
ex-mayor responds “You’ve got a problem.”) But then Joe confesses,
with far more insight and far more honesty, “All my life I thought
that I was the one in control. … Jesus, I’m not in control of a
damn thing.” Mayor Bacci too did the best that he could to turn
around the city’s decline and poverty, to make it a “city of hope,”
which he thought (in his naivete) meant giving people jobs. But, at
the end of the film, that dream too comes to an end as Wynn, his
followers, and the next generation of political wheeler-dealers
march on the mayor’s fund-raiser in front of the TV cameras. But it
also is not Wynn’s political idealism that will bring hope to the
city. The wise, mafia elder reveals to Joe, after he tells him that
he approved the torching of Joe’s building, that after giving most
to those who let you make it, and some to those you said you wanted
to help, you end up with nothing that is your own. Similarly,
Wynn’s black political mentor also found out that he could not
accomplish anything, even as the mayor, except to serve his own
people who gradually, over the course of twelve years, brought him
and themselves down through their corruption. All of these pursuers
of power started out trying to make society better, but they were
all forced into short term compromises that led to their long term
failure. Without politics nothing can be done in the society, but
politics demand compromise, and it is that very compromise that
feeds the society’s decay.
In the spirit of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” Sayles
proclaims that the hope for any society, big or small, is not
politics. Rather, it is private integrity and personal relations.
The examples of hope in this city are Les and Desmond’s mother. It
is the mother’s insistence on absolute honesty that makes Desmond
seek out Les and it is Les’s uncompromising dedication to his craft
as a teacher that enables him to connect with Desmond, despite the
fact that the man Les is white and abused and the boy Desmond is
black and the abuser. Again, in the end there is some hope. Human
beings do not always act naturally; they do not always choose to do
what serves their best interests. Sometimes, in spite of
themselves, i.e. for no good reason whatsoever, they do the right
thing, i.e., they love their neighbor as themselves.

FUTURES
TALMUD AND POSTMODERN JEWISH PHILOSOPHY. We gather to study Gittin
34b-35a and to discuss responses to Aryeh Cohen’s paper at the
annual meeting of the Network . This is scheduled for Sunday night
November 20 9:00pm(to 11pm max.) during the 1994 Annual Meeting of
the American Academy of Religion in Chicago. The meeting place is
Hilton Conference Room 4B. Refreshments will be served, as per our
custom. Please bring printouts of Areyh’s paper and the responses
to the session (that means parts of Network Vols. 3.1, 3.2, 3.3).

1997 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON POSTMODERN JEWISH PHILOSOPHY.
Yes, another reminder to keep this on your calendars for May or
June of 1997. We plan to meet at the AAR convention for an initial
discussion about the Conference. The plan is to gather in front of
the Chicago Hilton Hotel Registration Desk at 6:00 pm on Sunday
Nov. 20, to go out together for dinner. Kindly send us an email if
you’d like to join, or if you want to join the discussion but
cannot make this meeting: to pochs@drew.drew.edu (or call: 201
408-3222).

DIALOGUES IN POSTMODERN JEWISH PHILOSOPHY: Another reminder: we
need more volunteer editor/composers to contribute parts to these
future sections: a) philosophic dialogues culled from the Samuelson
discussion group; b) Talmud and Postmodern Jewish Philosophy; c)
(a new one) Bible and Postmodern Jewish Philosophy.