The Star of Redemption

Introduction to Barbara Galli’s Translation of Rosenzweig’s Star

xvii Introduction to Barbara Galli’s Translation of Rosenzweig’s Star Elliot R. Wolfson In deep gratitude, I have accepted the invitation of Barbara Galli to write a brief introduction to her monumental translation of Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption, an offer, I hasten to add, that came with no sense of demand or obligation, but as a pure gift, a request that bestowed upon me the honor of giving in receiving. Readers familiar with the Star are quite aware of the complexity of Rosenzweig’s language as well as the central place that language occupies in his thought. The confluence of these two points renders the task of translating Rosenzweig particularly challenging. Rosenzweig himself taught us that every act of speech thinking is an act of translation, and, conversely, we may assume that every act of translation is an act of speech thinking. Translation, on this accord, exemplifies, embodies, the character of speech thinking, Sprachdenken, Rosenzweig’s deft turnof -phrase to denote the dialogical nature of language. By the latter I assume that, for Rosenzweig, as for Heidegger, Sprache encompasses the written as well as the oral. In the case of Rosenzweig, the juxtaposition is exemplified by the fact that he thought it tenable on phenomenological grounds to heed the voice of revelation from the scriptural text—the confluence of the oral and written well captured in the image of giving voice to the inscripted. We are profoundly indebted to Galli for the wisdom of persisting in the wisdom of her persistence, a feat of conviction illustrated in every line of the translation , truly an act of love dedicated singlemindedly to delivering Rosenzweig to numerous generations of new readers. If I may be allowed to express an opinion that might be considered by some transgressive in its piety, I would contend that it is entirely appropriate to cast Galli’s efforts avodah sheba-lev, “labor in the heart,” a technical rabbinic designation for prayer. The new translation of the Star, simply put, is a gesture of worship, not to be understood as a specimen tied to a particular liturgical community, but rather as the linguistic gesticulation as such, the potentiality for speech, which instantiates the very possibility of prayer in any and all given cultural contexts, the deed of disclosing without-limit by enclosing within limit, expanding the circle by circumscribing the line, carrying over by laying down. For Rosenzweig, and here I note again an affinity to Heidegger, the way of speech—a term, as I remarked above, that denotes the verbal and graphic—is to reveal and to conceal, to uncover and to re-cover, not successively, but concurrently . For both thinkers, moreover, translation is a mode of interpretation, a property that sheds light on the hermeneutic condition of human subjectivity, the always necessarily partial or perspectival grasp of truth, and the consequent inference that untruth is as much a part of the framing of truth as truth itself. For xviii Heidegger, this is most poignantly expressed in his insight concerning the “double concealment” that “belongs to the nature of truth as unconcealedness.” For Rosenzweig, the analogous move is found in his reading of the Song of Songs. Following an exegetical trajectory that can be traced to the formative rabbinic period, Rosenzweig asserts that the literal meaning of the text is figurative, whence he elicits the parabolic understanding of language more generally, that is, in his judgment, human language on the whole—and not just theological discourse—is inherently parabolic. To render this more precisely in Rosenzweig’s idiom, the Song instructs us that truth is mirrored directly in the mirror of appearance, that is, the mirror of the text. Through the agency of this double mirroring— Heidegger’s double concealment—one can discern the inherently metaphorical nature of eros and the inherently erotic nature of metaphor. By way of introduction it would be useful to inquire about the nature of introduction . On the face of it this seems a question hardly worth asking. Structurally, the introductory utterance is placed before the beginning of a treatise, and hence it serves quite obviously as the instigation that affords the reader an opportunity to retrace his or her way back to the beginning. The matter is borne out philologically : “introduce” denotes to lead in, to bring forward, to initiate, to institute, to usher another into the middle of something. At the terminus of the taxonomic delineation, we come to the paradox of beginning: To begin the beginning must have...