Night Encounters: Theologizing Dialogue

38 SHOFAR Fall 1996 Vol. 15, No. 1 NIGHT ENCOUNTERS: THEOLOGIZING DIALOGUE by Zev Garber Zev Garber is Professor and Chair ofJewish Studies at Los Angeles Valley College and taught as Visiting Professor in Religious Studies at the University of California at Riverside . He has written extensively in the fields ofJudaica and Shoah and is the editor-in-chief of Studies in the Shoah. His Shoah, the Paradigmatic Genocide (1994) has been published in the series. Among his edited publications are: Methodology in the Academic Teaching ofJudaism (1986), Methodology in the Academic Teaching of the Holocaust (1988), Teaching Hebrew Language and Literature at the College Level (1991), and Perspectives on Zionism (1994); he was the consultant editor to What Kind of God? Essays in Honor of Richard L. Rubenstein (1995). He is the associate editor of Shofar and has served as President of the National Association of Professors of Hebrew. This essay presents a Jewish reading ofJacob at Jabbok (Gen. 32:2232 ) and Jesus at Gethsemane (Matt. 26:36-46). The views presented here reflect familiar texts rethought in light of the Shoah. Our inquiry into the two texts will apply the methodology of the Old Rabbis as it was practiced during and shortly after the formative period of rabbinic Judaism. With humility bordering on chutzpah, we venture in to the PaRDeS (paradise): Peshat, meaning of text as received; Remez, scriptural understanding bordering on the allegorical and philosophical; Derash, homiletic approach characterized by reading into the text; and Sod, esoteric inner and mystical meaning, existentially understood and applied, the four approaches to text common to Rabbinic interpretation. Night Encounters: Theologizing Dialogue GENESIS 32:22-32 39 I. By Way of Introduction More than the obedient Abraham and the frail Isaac, the figure of Jacob dominates Jewish ancestral traditions throughout the ages. History and fancy blend together in projecting Jacob as the patriarchal body and soul of the Jewish people, in whose personality and image the failures and successes, the dreams and reality, the curses and blessings of a parochial culture are portrayed in microcosm. To understand the Jewish people at any given juncture is to demythologize Jacob in accordance with the historical process and Zeitgeist of a given age and place. However, the timelessness of Jacob is anchored to personalities and events-sibling rivalry, flight, dream, theophanies, reconciliation, Laban, Esau, etc., which are all part and parcel of imagining the historical Jacob and living his promise. Among the events in Jacob's life that tradition assigns an influential role is the patriarch's wrestle with the "angel" at Peniel. The composite picture of Godwrestle at the ford of Jabbok suggested in Torah and aggadah involves little historical objectivity and much subjectivity. Overwhelmingly, the wrestle is portrayed in mythical categories, the role of which is to allow one to think constructively and imaginatively about what is not spelled out in history. Of course, the mythicization of history is found in all cultures and traditions. The American cowboy is a contemporary case in point.l By demythologizing the divine-human combat, one catches a glimpse ofthe biblical-rabbinical view ofthe Jew as victim-fightersurvivor . The historical imagination, couched for the most part in symbolic allegory and metaphor, can benefit contemporary discussion on the faults and merits of Christian-Jewish memory and responsibility after the Shoah. For it assumes an approach to group and individual feelings suggested in paradigms where the subjective spirit of the interpreter-transmitter is basic to the questions asked and the answers given by historians, theologians, and philosophers. Aggadic sources embellish the theme ofJacob's encounter with man and Other presented in Genesis 32 and 33. The Sages reflect their contemporary history and feelings into the figures ofJacob, Esau, and the 'These words are being written as the 65th annual Academy Awards has voted an American western as the best film of 1992. In the literate, tasteful production of "Unforgiven ," the myth of the American cowboy has passed from being lionized, to being derided, to being revered. 40 SHOFAR Fall 1996 Vol. ·15, No. 1 unnamed combatant, and draw analogies between the biblical texts and current events, which set forth the agenda for Jewish survival after catastrophe. Responding to...