Self-reflection, is (or was, in the wake of postmodernism)23 “too fashionable a concept to be endorsed unreflectively.”24 One question that the concept elicits has to do with the scope and range of such reflexivity: Can rabbinic discourse extend beyond its own boundaries? To put it differently, to what extent can one talk about self-reflexivity without the reflected self being incorporated into the reflective gaze?25 David Stern has noted that “any consideration of the relationship between theory and midrash might do well to begin with the self-reflexivity of contemporary theory—thought turned upon its own operations—and that of midrash, in which even theoretical statements about exegesis are couched in the language of scriptural exegesis.”26 Accordingly, the ultimate superiority ascribed to the Torah as the arch-paradigm in the system of interpretation precludes any self-reflective statement that is situated beyond its hermeneutical boundaries.
Daniel Boyarin devotes his book Socrates and the Fat Rabbis, which addresses the notion of rabbinic self-reflexivity, to breaching and ridiculing these same hermeneutical frameworks.27 His book, like this one, stresses instances where epistemological uncertainties are reflected upon in the rabbinic corpus. It also implies, as I am suggesting, the notion that there is a self that is the object of reflection.28 Boyarin offers a provocative thesis that seeks to account for the unique character of the Babylonian Talmud, for its mixing together of what Boyarin sees as the serious and the comic, the holy and the grotesque. He posits that this mixed bag, especially the outlandish biographical narratives of the rabbis, come from the Hellenistic Menippean literary tradition, which combines the lofty with the debased, the spiritual with the physically grotesque. What is of particular interest in the context of our discussion is that this (deliberate) hybridity of subject matter is used to criticize paramount cultural practices. In the Hellenistic context, the object is philosophical discourse, while in the Jewish context it is rabbinic Torah study and legal-exegetical discourse, with its implied claim of truth. In other words, the Menippean aspect of the Babylonian Talmud, as presented by Boyarin, displays self-reflectivity (and self-reflexivity) regarding its own knowledge or lack of knowledge, and it is, as he repeatedly suggests, a critique from “within” that does not delegitimize the foundations of the Babylonian rabbinic enterprise. In this sense, the self-reflexive texts are a form of a carnivalesque expression that is embraced and manipulated by the establishment.
Boyarin, although not addressing the issue explicitly, struggles with the distinction between self-reflexivity and self-reflectivity, between the (meta-) textual, self-reflexive, markers of the Bavli (the Babylonian Talmud) and an equally reflecting (rabbinic) agency to which these markers may attest. The Menippean tradition, with its ridicule of the philosophical pursuit of Truth, as it manifests itself in the Talmud, is ultimately ascribed by Boyarin to an implied author or, more accurately, to two implied authors (to which the different materials correspond). The complex, detailed argument that Boyarin makes to support this assertion is crucial for his understanding of the cultural forces at play and for his explanation of why specific texts were chosen, consciously or unconsciously, for inclusion in the Talmud. Are the texts self-reflexive, and/or are the authors self-reflective? Are the rabbis in control, or are they not? Boyarin concludes that the texts are self-reflexive and that the agency that is implied by the texts is equally self-reflective.29
These two points of Boyarin’s—the boundaries of rabbinic (self-)critique and the relationship between textual self-reflexivity and human self-reflectivity in the Bavli—are crucial for my analysis. Boyarin restricts himself (if “restricts” is indeed the right word) to the Babylonian Talmud, particularly to its final editorial stamp, and to specific outrageous—and, at times, seriocomic—narratives. The biographical legends that serve Boyarin are very different in tone and texture from the narratives that will be the focus of the following chapters. The comic or humoristic component of some of the narratives discussed in this book does not derive from an exaggerated, grotesque style. Clearly, then, Boyarin is addressing a different literary phenomenon of self-reflexivity. In addition, the texts that I read reside in a wide variety of rabbinic compilations. Yet I would argue that the self-reflexivity that Boyarin identifies in the Bavli is but one case of the basic self-reflexivity of rabbinic texts in general. My claim is that the exegetical premise of rabbinic practice (midrash) opened it up, to begin with, to this specific Menippean mode of self-critique. The question of the ability of the self-reflexive text to transcend the reflective gaze in which it is couched becomes a nuanced question when applied to self-reflexive texts that do not bear—by and large—outlandish traits and that cannot be ascribed to one particular milieu (or “editors”). As the following chapters will show, the self-reflexive and self-reflective boundaries are simultaneously breached and maintained, while any implied agencies ascribed to the texts are deemed obscure, even more so than the ghost-like dual figures of Boyarin’s Bavli. However, as mentioned earlier, since the text’s self-reflexivity operates, in my view, as a self that is reflected on in a wider, cultural, sense (but not as a specific social group), I use “reflexive” and “reflective” interchangeably.
Self-Reflexivity and an Imagined Rabbinic Self
Self-reflexivity is applied in this book to a body of texts.30 The object of my observations is not the human psyches of specific characters within the texts. Instead, the self I address is an emergent entity that results from rabbinic discourses and discursive processes. These processes, in turn, explain, argue for, negate, and validate. In short, they produce moments of cultural subjectivity. But there is another aspect of the cultural self that I am interested in, one that is ostensibly “given” rather than constantly constructed and one that is an object of reflection. I have suggested that one central rabbinic discourse, that is, one discursive self, is midrash. Since this pivotal rabbinic discourse implies self-reflexivity in and of itself, it is not surprising to find midrash as an object of relection. In this case, the exegetical rabbinic discourse itself becomes a theme of discourse and is provided with an array of reflective lenses through which it is examined. Indeed, most of the texts examined in this book involve, in some way or another, a reflection on midrash. The last chapter addresses rabbinic discourse in a broader sense, as an institutionally governed enterprise. It, too, should be seen in relation to rabbinic discourse’s overall propensity, triggered by midrash, for self-relexivity.
My claim that there is an imagined rabbinic-discursive self that, in turn, becomes an object of reflection should be viewed in the context of much current work on rabbinic cultures. Recent cultural studies of rabbinic texts have tended to question the pure, clear-cut contours of rabbinic identities. Cultural heterogeneity has been explained, for instance, by the discursive mixture of “folk” and “elite” elements,31 or by the underlying contact between distinct but not entirely separated ethnic and religious groups. Bakhtinian social-literary polyphony and postcolonial theory’s hybridity have provided rich frameworks for discussing rabbinic identities: Galit Hasan-Rokem has demonstrated the polyphony in rabbinic texts,32 and Joshua Levinson has argued for their hybrid identities.33 While their premises ring true and their specific readings convincingly indicate that rabbinic cultures were anything but monolithic, these studies may overlook a crucial aspect of (rabbinic) identity formation: they do not necessarily acknowledge that a sense of an essentialized self is an immanent aspect of identity formation without which an individual—or here, a culture—cannot function. The notion of a unified self, as some have argued, may rest on a misguided, insatiable nostalgic yearning.34 But to deny the experiential components that give rise to such an imagined entity is to overlook a powerful engine of identity formation.35 To dismiss these experiences as individual or cultural fantasies would mean overlooking a central rabbinic force in which a unified self is imagined.36 That is not to say that a unified cultural self is an exclusive rabbinic fantasy; nor is it to say that it ever existed beyond any textual boundaries. Also, quite clearly, religious and ethnic external others played a key role in self-reflexive processes and cultural identity formations of Judaism in late antiquity. Thus, to offer but one example, rabbinic Judaism reflected on and formed itself in relation to Christianity—to an external (or gradually externalized) synchronic other.37 As Christine Hayes notes, external and internal others in rabbinic literature “serve as means by which a group can explore its own internal ambiguities,