The Jewish Vaccine against Mimetic Desire: A Girardian Exploration of a Sabbath Ritual

In Violence and the Sacred (henceforth, V&S), Rene Girard remarks that when we think of siblings, we often think of affectionate relationships.¹ He then proposes, however, that the stories that have come down to us through mythology and sacred scriptures often tell us otherwise. Warring siblings are embedded deeply in history, religion, and literature: Girard lists Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Eteocles and Polyneices, Romulus and Remus, Richard the Lionheart and John Lackland as just a few examples of the fraternal rivalry in our collective consciousness. We might add the biblical Isaac and Ishmael and Joseph and his brothers to this list. The rivalries are so pervasive that Girard declares: “the theme itself is a form of violence.”² In both V&S and I See Satan Fall like Lightning (I See Satan), Girard demonstrates how the biblical voice is groundbreaking in its exposure of mimesis and the sacrificial mechanism. Alongside this assertion, in Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World (Things Hidden), Girard states:

think it is possible to show that the texts of the Gospels manage to achieve what the Old Testament leaves incomplete. These texts therefore serve as an extension of the Judaic bible, bringing to completion an enterprise that the Judaic bible did not take far enough, as Christian tradition has always maintained.³

The Hebrew Scriptures, however, are the writings of a religious community in their nascent state. They are the ideas and prescriptions that were only later to be formed into what we now call rabbinic Judaism. Jesus and the New Testament writers had the benefit of knowing these scriptures, and it is important to look at the Jewish writings that developed alongside the writing down of the New Testament as both Judaism and Christianity were maturing. The two religions were mutually influencing each other in this nascent stage, and this can be seen in many of the theological ideas that they were generating.⁴ Using both the Tanakh and the early rabbinic midrash, I will demonstrate in this essay that, contra Girard, ancient Judaism did indeed “reveal,” address, and even attempt to provide an antidote for mimetic rivalry. I will demonstrate this specifically through an analysis of Genesis 48, in which Jacob blesses his grandchildren Ephraim and Manasseh, and its corresponding ritual of the Birkat Ha-Banim (“Blessing of the Children”).⁵

Particularly because they are a sibling pair in the Book of Genesis, two sons of Joseph, the brothers Ephraim and Manasseh, are deserving of a Girardian analysis, although Girard does not offer one. These brothers are blessed by their grandfather, Jacob, as 2 of the future 12 tribes of Israel. But despite their historical import, these brothers play a very minor narrative role in Genesis. Indeed, after Jacob blesses them, the book ends (possibly because there is no conflict to drive the tale!). Ephraim and Manasseh are the only peaceful brothers we encounter in Genesis, and it may be no coincidence that they arrive on the scene at the tail end of this book; they do not engage in the mimetic competition of the brothers that came before them. Did Girard overlook this absence of rivalry? This, I assert, is precisely why this story is of Girardian import and needs to be addressed. Perhaps not coincidentally, these brothers also occupy a central role in Jewish ritual: Jews bless their children every week on the Sabbath, asking that God make their sons “like Ephraim and Manasseh.” This ritual, I propose, is the weekly Jewish vaccine used to keep mimetic inclinations in check. The structure of the Book of Genesis invites such a conclusion; the rabbinic explanations of Ephraim and Manasseh and the purpose of the Sabbath underscore it (as I will demonstrate). My ultimate goal is to determine to what extent this text and its ritual can really be effective in releasing humans from the sacrificial mentality. I will examine how it operates, on one hand, as sustenance for Jewish identity in particular; and, on the other hand, how it is intended to operate universally for the transformation of...