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167 Chapter 4 Being Otherwise “He gazed and there was a bush all aflame. Yet the bush was not consumed . Moses thought, ‘I must draw nearer and look at this great sight, why is the bush not burned away?’ (Exod. 3:3–4).” What amazed Moses was the unity of the soul with the body. After all, by nature the two are opposites. Why doesn’t the divine soul compel the earthly body to do God’s will? And if the body is mightier than the soul, how can the soul survive within it? … In this vision of the burning bush, God showed Moses that whatever God wants to preserve will never be annulled.… “For My preciousness is within it.” The body, God assured Moses, has tremendous worth .… But if the blinding light concealed in the body were revealed, one’s life would be over that moment. “For no one can see Me and live (Exod. 33:20).”1 The secret brilliance of corporeity. In R. Ya‘akov’s readings, throughout his commentary, that difficult truth, so hard to hold onto, is continually discovered and rediscovered. Consistently, often in unexpected contexts, R. Ya‘akov seeks a revisioning of the body-soul relationship. The alternate understanding he offers entails a new valorization, in which a whole group of traditional concepts must be reconsidered. Oppositional forces—containers /contents, outside/inside, peel/fruit, guilt/innocence, darkness/light, female/male—such staples of dialectical thought are rethought and cast in a new perspective. On all these planes, he insists, a different and more authentic order must come to light. In Chapter 1, we looked at some “minor modes” and tried to gain a clearer understanding of their major role in R. Ya‘akov’s worldview . This chapter takes up some of these themes again, to reconsider them in a more comprehensive perspective. Now, I’d like to look at some of the teachings in which contending forces such as these are challenged, deconstructed, and finally led to tell quite a different story. That story, I believe, is an essential and innovative aspect of 168 w i s d o m o f t h e h e a r t R. Ya‘akov’s thought. In the course of our discussion, I hope to show just how far-reaching its implications are. Introduction: Duality Reconsidered R. Ya‘akov develops his approach on the basis of rabbinic precedents. The Talmud, he notes, recounts this scenario: The Sages wanted to exclude [from the biblical canon] the Book of Kohelet [Ecclesiastes], because its words contradict one another. Why did they finally decide not to suppress it? Because its beginning and its end are true Torah.2 R. Ya‘akov explains: “In other words, all of its contents are true and worthy . What seems to be the opposite is due only to our mental limitations, to our inability to understand what it really says.”3 The Book of Kohelet, attributed in Jewish tradition to King Solomon, meditates deeply on human existence. Its verses recount the particulars of everyday life—labor and pleasure, growth and decay, joy and travail with all their ambivalence. The compelling realism of contents like these, the Rabbis apparently felt, voices a confusing or noncohesive message. Such an inherently problematic text should surely be suppressed from the biblical canon of divine, revealed, uncontestable truth. The hesitation of the sages is resolved in a gesture that, in R. Ya‘akov eyes, holds great significance . They acknowledged that the “beginning” and the “end” of that book are flashes of clarity. Its opening and closing verses resonate with commonly held values and ethical principles. The power of that message, they decided, vindicates “everything in the middle”—all the experiences, sensations, desires, and disappointments that regular people live from day to day.4 What R. Ya‘akov seems to be suggesting is that in the normative rabbinic mind, many of the details of living become extraneous or negligible in the larger scheme of things. The gray realm of the “optional” (divrei reshut, as R. Ya‘akov terms it) is thus relegated to secondary status in relation to the defined territory of religious obligation. Prescribed actions and spiritual responsibilities have indisputable importance. Intermediaries—hands, mouths, foods, implements—apparently serve only as a means to achieving the desired end, the fulfillment of outward obligations. Whatever sensual, subjective, individual experience goes along with such actions would surely be less essential. And in fact, rabbinic discourse wastes few words on describing things, tastes...

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