In reading the story, I used the term “self-reflectivity,” since it refers to the human—animated—domain where a person becomes the object of his or her own gaze. The reflection of another (Sarai) implies, as I suggested, self-reflection, and it is clearly human reflection that is at play here. There are but few instances of explicit human reflection in rabbinic literature—stories in which characters see their own or someone else’s reflection.5 But, as I will argue in this book, self-reflexivity—a meta-poetic aspect of a text whereby the text refers to itself—operates in, and is central to, rabbinic texts that do not necessarily involve an explicit image of reflection. However, because I address the text as a staged “self” and see it as a cultural animated “self,” I use the terms “self-reflectivity” and “self-reflexivity” interchangeably.
In the chapters that follow, I will point out mirroring moments that serve as pivotal discursive underpinnings of rabbinic textual production. That is, I will suggest that when rabbinic hermeneutical and institutional discourses become the object of reflection, they become central to the formation of rabbinic cultural identities. For us, as readers, they shed light on an underlying process that may otherwise be seen only at its endpoints—be it the identity of the Sage, the hegemony of the rabbinic institution, or the authority of midrash as scriptural interpretation. These apparent endpoints constitute what we recognize as the identity of rabbinic culture(s). Mirroring, self-reflective moments bring us, as it were, backstage in rabbinic theaters, where the participants comment on the play being enacted onstage. These comments not only undermine the unity of the apparent, seemingly coherent, performance but also, paradoxically, facilitate it. Human (or textual) performance is contingent on self-reflexivity, or, as Kenneth Burke put it, it is through “the reflexive capacity to develop highly complex symbol systems about symbol systems that humans act upon themselves and others.”6 Put differently, in the narrative about Abram discussed above, self-reflectivity involves Eros, an animating force that motivates the character and his actions. In this story, Eros determines Abram’s identity and the “identity” of the entire tale. Self-reflexivity, then, when it appears in a text, can be seen as its underlying, facilitating force.
Self-reflexivity is an aspect of any text that comments on itself as a text and as language, or on its own processes of production and reception.7 Self-reflexivity, as I use the term here, refers to those ways by which rabbinic texts look at their own textual and discursive principles. The question of self-reflectivity, of how one sees oneself when one becomes the object of inquiry, has long since expanded beyond the realm of individual psychology.8 Since the notion of identity has become suspect, whether it is the identity of a text, a social identity of a given group, or an identity of an academic discipline, self-reflexivity has become part of any discussion that looks at discourse as culturally constructed. Here, it relates to rabbinic discourse as the object of reflection.
Midrash and Self-Reflexivity
Rabbinic texts offer a particular example of self-reflexivity because of their specific intertextual nature. They constantly, and explicitly, refer to other texts, biblical and rabbinic, and such references expose their means of production as well as the textual and linguistic concepts implicated in such a productive process.9 Midrash is composed of two explicit layers: scripture and rabbinic commentary. The Talmud is likewise built from two layers: Mishnah and Gemara, with those two layers containing, in addition, numerous midrashic expansions. In other words, the seams of the rabbinic cloth are, at least partly, sewn on the outside, making visible the process by which it was made. I suggest that this intertextual quality of rabbinic texts is a marker of self-relexivity.
The most basic form of self-reflexivity in rabbinic texts is their covert awareness of their linguistic constitution. That is, the overall midrashiccitational quality of rabbinic texts evinces, by its very nature, an awareness of the linguistic operations that form the texts. Within that general awareness, there are specific diegetic (that is, the characters or speakers in the text are aware that they are narrating a story or participating in a text) as well as non-diegetic, overtly self-reflective, narratives. These overtly self-reflective narratives will be the focus of this book.10
In addition to the two layers of scripture and rabbinic explications that characterize midrash, its intertextuality is further enhanced by its unique strategy of reading scripture. By linking together different scriptural sources, midrash anchors its authority in scripture. Scripture is taken to contain its own interpretative keys. The Sage, the interpreter—unlike his predecessors of the Second Temple period—does not hear a ministering angel (as does the author of Jubilees), nor does he record a firsthand account of Jacob’s sons (as in the Testaments of the Patriarchs).11 His authority derives from the text itself, which situates him simultaneously inside the text and outside of it.
Midrash, as I have noted, is the cornerstone of rabbinic culture not only as it is found in the practice of direct explications of biblical law and lore but also in the model that such exegesis posits (mutatis mutandis) for subsequent texts, namely, the talmudic explications of the Mishnah. And, as the dominant form in the rabbinic literary poly-system, midrash was also a discursive model to which the rabbis adapted other genres. Such was the case with the Second Temple rewritten Bible, comprising certain apocryphal and pseudo-epigraphical ex-canonical texts that retold biblical stories. When the rabbis engaged in these kinds of retellings, they did so in midrashic fashion, with textual citations and fragmented narrative.12 To be sure, a general characterization of rabbinic culture as a scriptural-exegetical culture may at first seem trivial.13 It also may seem to subsume a multifaceted enterprise under one single practice. Nor is it possible to reduce a corpus of texts that span six hundred years and different geographical and cultural environments to a single rabbinic culture. Yet the importance of the rise of midrash as a central, distinctively rabbinic, hermeneutic method cannot be overstated. For it was “the early rabbinic choice of scriptural commentary as a communicative medium”14 that distinguished the rabbinic exegetical enterprise from earlier traditions.15 That is not to say that midrash was created ex nihilo by the rabbis, but rather that in the rabbinic corpus, it occupies a central nexus that informs the entire rabbinic textual system. As such, it becomes the distinctive hallmark of rabbinic literary creativity in a manner that sets it apart from earlier proto-midrashic practices (for example, Qumranic Pesharim or Philo’s scriptural exegesis).
Midrash is a propagator of reflection in and of itself, as well as being a generative and metonymic model of rabbinic hermeneutical practices in a wider sense. For the Sage, the midrashic stance of being inside and outside the (biblical) text at the same time implies a position of liminality. It is precisely this liminality that is inextricably connected to self-reflection. If we understand self-reflection to be directed at categorical boundaries and at systemic shortcomings, the source of reflexivity should emerge from those very same ambiguous or liminal categories.16 Put differently, it is through liminal states that “we come to know ourselves and our world, to know how we know, and to reflect on our own interpretative process.”17 Rabbinic discourse(s), so heavily saturated with midrash and the liminality it entails, are hence self-reflective by definition, rendering the texts self-reflexive.
Modern scholars have noted the liminal, betwixt-and-between position of midrash. The impetus (and paradox) of early rabbinic hermeneutics has been described as a demand to be both “the same and other than scripture”;18 similarly, the poetics of amoraic (later rabbinic) midrash has been explained as an expression of “a certain type of dialogical consciousness, of being both inside and outside the text at the same time.”19 These characterizations, although they do not say so explicitly, imply that rabbinic midrashic discourse produces a liminal, hence reflective, subject. And, of all rabbinic discourses, scriptural exegesis—midrash—has most frequently elicited discussions of self-reflexivity. Moshe Halbertal, for example, has demonstrated that rabbinic exegetical practice is a self-reflective cultural project;20 Christine Hayes has argued that the rabbis, from a very early stage, reflected on contextual versus non-contextual exegesis;21 and David Stern has instructively characterized the rabbinic exegetical stance as a conscious “belatedness,” implying self-reflexivity.22
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