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WITHIN MEM / RETURNING FORWARD Unlesbarkeit dieser Welt. Alles doppelt. Celan Concerning the beginning, we have learned that it cannot begin if it has not already begun. To speak of the beginning, therefore, is to begin always in the middle, to begin at the beginning that is not beginning. But how do we speak of the middle? Surely from the middle. But what can be spoken from the middle ? By what sign do we mark the spot in the middle where beginnings end and endings begin? The letter mem signifies repetition of difference, re/marking the beginning, for the beginning, we recall, is branded by beit, the letter duplicitous in its singularity : to be itself it must be before that in relation to which it is after. Like beit at the beginning, mem in the middle reverberates in its iteration. Stammering in the middle, however, is not the same as stuttering in the beginning. The latter consists of the retrieval of what has never appeared, the former the return to where one has never been. Accordingly, mem, especially in its final or closed form, which is close in appearance to a square, is typically associated in kabbalistic texts with the divine potency that conveys both the mystery of teshuvah, repentance, literally, re/turn, and the secret of yovel, the jubilee that heralds the messianic redemption. The fusion of these two symbolic meanings yields a paradox that illumines a fundamental tenet of the kabbalistic approach to time: to look ahead one must turn back, a restoration to a past that is always yet to come in the present of the future. Subsequently, we shall have the opportunity to pursue this symbolism in more detail, but su‹ce it to note at this juncture that the salvific import of contrition is linked to the redundancy of mem imprinted in and from the middle. 4 137 Let me turn now to the depiction of mem in Sefer ha-Bahir, the same text that served as the basis for our analysis of alef. Departing, however, from the textual strategy deployed in the previous chapter, it will be necessary here to introduce other kabbalistic sources, including especially passages from zoharic literature, which will assist us in decoding the esoteric significance of mem and by consequence the symbolic status of the middle, which corresponds to the present tense. By heeding the assonance of mem, we attempt to take hold of the moment at hand, to grasp what cannot be grasped except by letting-go, clutching the reiteration of what has yet to be acclaimed. What is the open mem? The open mem is comprised of male and female, and the closed mem is made like the womb from above. Did R. Rehumai not say that the womb is like teit? What he spoke of was from within and what I spoke of was from without. What is mem? Do not read mem but rather mayim. Just as these waters are moist so the womb is always moist. Why is open mem comprised of masculine and feminine and the closed [mem] masculine? To teach you that the essence of mem is masculine. The opening [of mem] is added for the sake of the feminine. Just as the male does not give birth through the opening so the closed mem is not open, and just as the female gives birth and is open so the mem is closed and opened. Why did you include an open and closed mem? For it is said, do not read mem but rather mayim. The woman is cold1 and thus needs to be warmed by the male.2 Appropriately, the letter that corresponds to the middle has not one but two orthographic shapes, open (petuhah) and closed (setumah), varying in accord with the place it occupies in a given word. The sign in/of the middle must be twofold, transferential, liminal, elusive, demarcating the point that divides what recurs before from what persists after, delimiting the unrepresentable present. To speak of that which is in the middle is to seize the intermittent becoming of what has continuously been. Mem, the letter in the middle, imparts this sense of fluency and ephemeral density. This is the meaning of the exegetical injunction “do not read mem but mayim,” which coincidentally, or perhaps intentionally, is repeated twice in the bahiric fragment. Mem, most elementally—that is, when heard at its philological root—denotes “water,”3 which in the present context is associated with...

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