Ishmael on the Border: Rabbinic Portrayals of the First Arab

Notes

135 Notes Introduction 1. M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robbinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 192–93. 2. G. Bruns, Hermeneutics Ancient and Modern (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 4. 3. Ibid. 4. Y. Heinemann, Darkhei haυaggadah ( Jerusalem: Magnes, 1970). 5. J. Kugel, in “Two Introductions to Midrash,” Midrash and Literature, Hartman and Budick, eds. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 91, offers the following definition of midrash: “Suffice it to say that the Hebrew word midrash might be best translated as ‘research,’ a translation that incorporates the word’s root meaning of ‘search out, inquire’. . . . The word has been used to designate both the activity of interpretation and the fruits of that activity. . . . At bottom midrash is not a genre of interpretation but an interpretative stance, a way of reading the sacred text.” For Kugel, then, the term primarily designates an exegetical posture and not “the fruits of that activity.” See also Boyarin, Carnal Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 9, who concisely states that midrash is “the hermeneutic system of rabbinic Judaism.” He also asserts: “‘midrash’ is the type of biblical interpretation which is found in the Jewish biblical commentaries which the Jews call ‘midrash.’” (Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990], ix). Neither Boyarin nor Kugel, however, ignores the multifaceted nature of midrashic literature. I would be remiss not to mention Jonah Fraenkel’s Darkhei haυaggada vehamidrash (Masada: Yad Letalmud, 1991), a groundbreaking work in its systematic and exhaustive attempt to analyze the literary quality of midrash. See Fraenkel’s “Hermeneutic Problems in the Study of the Aggadic Narrative,” Tarbiz 47 (1978): 139–72 (Hebrew), and “Chiasmus in Talmudic-Aggadic Narrative,” in Chiasmus in Antiquity: Structures, Analyses, Exegesis, John W. Welch, ed. (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg , 1981), 183–97. Ofra Meir is also a leading Israeli New Critic scholar of midrash. See Meir, The Poetics of Rabbinic Stories (Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Poυalim, 1993) (Hebrew), The Darshanic Story in Genesis Rabba (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1987) (Hebrew), and “Hasipur Hadarshani Bemidrash Qadum Umeυuchar,” in Sinai 86 (1980). Both authors emphasize the importance of understanding rabbinic stories on the literary level. See, too, the work of Arnold Goldberg, in particular those in Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge (vol. 2 [1974], vol. 5 [1977], vol. 6 [1978], vol. 8 [1980], vol. 9 [1981], vol. 10 [1982], vol. 12 [1984], vol. 13 [1985], vol. 14 [1986], vol. 15 [1987], vol. 16 [1988], vol. 17, [1989], vol. 18 [1990]), where he treats rabbinic literature qua literature and explores the basic forms and functions of literary units. Although he is very much aware of different approaches to the study of rabbinic literature, his own work is marked by a fundamental appreciation of the synchronicity of texts. 6. J. Heinemann, “The Nature of Aggadah,” 49. In stressing this aspect of folkoric midrashim, aggadot, he nonetheless acknowledges two levels of meaning, “one overt, the other covert.” He writes: “The first deals openly with the explication of the biblical text and the clarification of the biblical narrative, while the second deals much more subtly with contemporary problems that engaged the attention of the homilists and their audience. . . . The aggadists do not mean so much to clarify difficult passages in the biblical text as to take a stand on the burning questions of the day, to guide the people and to strengthen their faith” (49). See my discussion in chapter 4 of Heinemann’s interpretation of midrashim in Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, passim. For a discussion of the work of both Y. Heinemann and J. Heinemann, see D. Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash, 1–21, who succinctly summarizes each author’s methodological presuppositions: “I would begin by saying that if the school which I have synecdochically represented by Joseph Heinemann places midrash aggada too firmly in its own historical circumstances and considers it a mere reflection of them, Yizhaq Heinemann removes aggada too extremely from any historical and social meanings. What is common to these theories is that they both assume the opposition between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective,’ one privileging the objective and the other the subjective. The assumption of this distinction forces one view to assume that the rabbis did not intend to interpret at all and the other to suppose a romantic, near mystical understanding of historical interpretation” (11). 7. Heinemann, “The Nature of Aggadah,” 43. 8. S. Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and Its...