The Shabbat Elevator and Other Subterfuges: An Unorthodox Essay on Circumventing Custom and Jewish Character (review)

At a certain point in this strange little book, the noted folklorist Alan Dundes defines foolishness as "the dogged insistence upon interpreting a metaphor in an exclusively literal sense" (132). Although aimed in a backhanded way at the legal "subterfuges" in Orthodox Judaism, this same definition might as well be applied to Dundes's own book. But if Orthodox Jews take their law too literally, Dundes's reductionist Freudianism represents a literalism of a different sort.

Dundes arrived at this study from an encounter with a Shabbat elevator in Jerusalem. A secular Jew himself, he burst into laughter when he heard the explanation for this form of Sabbath circumvention. He then embarked on a wide-ranging research project to assemble the various examples of Sabbath subterfuges in Jewish law and custom. The first half of his book is the result of this research, and it is not a bad survey of the Shabbat and its legal permutations. To be sure, Dundes relies rather promiscuously on both popular Orthodox and scholarly sources without distinguishing between them. Words like melachos and brochus make it evident that some of his sources are Haredi manuals. On the other hand, he only refers in passing to what is probably the definitive study of this subject, Jacob Katz's 1989 work, The "Shabbes Goy:" A Study in Halakhic Flexibility. But, although there are some errors in this section (for example, he thinks that the prohibition on masturbation is the biblical story of Onan, while it is only the Talmud that "invented" this sin), the problem with the book does not lie here.

Instead, it is Dundes's attempt to explain the roots of this culture of circumvention in the second part of the book that renders his whole argument increasingly "foolish." After some hesitations about whether one can speak of a "Jewish national character," Dundes—following Freud and Ferenczi—ventures the following: " . . . can a case be made . . . that the Jews do exhibit personality characteristics that. . . could conceivably be called anal erotic in nature?" (100). The answer, of course, is yes, and Dundes proceeds to assemble every example of excrement in the Bible and Talmud. Feces is his thesis. The alleged Jewish preoccupation with cleanliness and purity "which borders on obsession, would seem to suggest an anal erotic origin . . . " (115). The strange passage in Exodus 33:22-23, where God shows Moses his backside, "is not merely an example of divine 'mooning,' but it is rather an image totally consonant with an anal erotic pattern of behavior and thought" (125).

Jewish legalism is the direct result of this national neurosis. But so is circumvention, since the Jewish people are forever regressing into rebelliousness against God the Father by soiling themselves with their symbolic feces. The only pleasure left when the pleasure principle has been thoroughly repressed is in the violation of the repressive laws. But since outright violation would demolish the system itself, circumvention allows for challenging the laws while at the same time reaffirming them.

Because the key to understanding Judaism is its sexual subtext, Dundes explains the prohibition of lighting a fire on the Shabbat as sexually repressive (fire, of course, stands for sexuality): "The Sabbath is said to be a day of joy . . . but the reality of attempting to suppress most pleasurable activities tends to make it a day of enforced joylessness. No wonder naughty children in the guise of adults do their best to find ways to circumvent repressive custom" (145). But what of the fact that sex on Shabbat is not only permitted but even enjoined on scholars? Wouldn't this stubborn—and unmentioned—datum undermine Dundes's whole theoretical edifice?

But believing that he has unlocked the secret door of Jewish legalism, Dundes is able to explain everything else in Jewish culture. Eating pig is prohibited...