American Talmud: The Cultural Work of Jewish American Fiction

INTRODUCTION

You don’t have to be Jewish to be a compulsive interpreter, but, of course, it helps. —Harold Bloom PARADISE REGAINED? The Babylonian Talmud1 contains two distinct parts: Halacha and Aggadah. Halacha refers to any legal issues and their discussion, while Aggadah comprises anything outside the legal sphere. Aggadah encompasses roughly one quarter of the Talmud as a whole and generally consists of stories and homilies, advice on ethics, biographies of wise men, and midrashim or interpretations of important, as well as confusing and troubling, biblical passages. The following aggadic passage, taken from Tractate Menachot, is a typical example of the genre: Rabbi Judah said in the name of Rab: When Moses ascended on high (to receive the Torah) he found the Holy One, blessed be He, engaged in affixing taggin (crown-like flourishes) to the letters. Moses said: “Lord of the Universe, who stays Thy hand?” He replied: “There will arise a man at the end of many generations Akiba ben Joseph by name, who will expound, upon each little letter, heaps and heaps of the laws.” “Lord of the Universe,” said Moses, “permit me to see him.” He replied: “Turn thee around.” Moses went (into the academy of Rabbi Akiba) and sat down behind eight rows of Akiba’s disciples). Not being able to follow their arguments he was ill at ease, but when they came to a certain subject and the disciples said to the master “Whence do you know it?” and the latter replied, “It is a law given to Moses at Sinai,” he was comforted . (Talmud Bavli: Menahot 29b) This aggadic short story2 might seem peculiar to those not regularly engaged in the study of the Talmud. Although the Talmud is often perceived as being a rigid book comprised of legal maneuverings designed 1 I N T R O D U C T I O N to codify the intricate Mosaic laws, it might more accurately be thought of as a blueprint for modern and postmodern fictional play. Far from being a dry legal document, the Babylonian Talmud, particularly its aggadic sections, revels in the fantastical and the ambiguous. Not merely capable of tolerating dissent, the Talmud (once again, especially its aggadic sections) honors and celebrates a difference of opinion ; time and again the Talmud honors radical rethinking, even about its foundational concepts. In the previous passage, for example, the Talmud tells a seemingly heretical story in which Moses, the greatest leader of the Jewish people, cannot follow the basic logic of even a simple Talmudic argument. This foregoing aggadic passage reveals the storytelling aspects, the cultural work performed by the Babylonian Talmud: through its literary passages the Talmud reinterprets the Torah anew for its own generation .This open-endedness, this celebration of multiple perspectives, is not only a characteristic of the Babylonian Talmud; it is also a hallmark of twentieth-century and contemporary Jewish American fiction. There are so many analogues between the two that Jewish American fiction writers embracing modern and postmodern life are often mistakenly perceived as radically breaking with their traditional past. Yet they are one more link in the great chain of rabbinic thought conveyed to us through the centuries as a means of interpretation designed to ensure that scripture will remain vital and new for each generation. By arguing that twentieth- and twenty-first-century Jewish American fiction writers have been codifying a new Talmud, an American Talmud, I am making a value judgment: I am forcefully suggesting that the literary production of Jews in America be seen as one more stage of rabbinic commentary on the scriptural inheritance of the Jewish people. The defining hallmark of rabbinic literature is its ongoing interpretation of history. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi notes that the rabbis “did not set out to write a history of the biblical period; they already possessed that. Instead they were engrossed in an ongoing exploration of the meaning of the history bequeathed to them, striving to interpret it in living terms for their own and future generations” (Zakhor 20). Although Yerushalmi is speaking about the redactors of the Talmud, I cannot think of a more exact definition for the role of Jewish American fiction writers and the work they have produced. Yet before we get carried away with simplistic comparisons between rabbinic thought patterns and Jewish American literature, there are those who would surely say that while the two literary modes 2 AMERICAN TALMUD share certain...