Toward the Outside: Concepts and Themes in Emmanuel Levinas

20. “AND GOD CREATED WOMAN”

20. “AND GOD CREATED WOMAN”: A TALMUDIC READING (1972) [English: NTR 161–77; French: DSS 122–48] As is the rule in Levinas’s talmudic commentaries, we begin with a text from the Talmud, in this case the Tractate Berakhot (Blessings) 61a. The first problem that the rabbis take up is one of spelling. Why does the word vayitzer (“he formed”) have two yods (Genesis 2:7) instead of the customary one? Levinas’s first remark establishes the relevance of the discussion to contemporary thought. “The pious, proper thought of the right-thinking ones no longer wonders about anything. Let them at least be prodded into thinking by a peculiarity of spelling.” This return to the letter for inspiration, obiter dictum, is consonant with T. S. Eliot’s inversion of 2 Corinthians 3:6: “The spirit killeth, the letter giveth life.” The first interpretation given by Rav Nahman, son of Hisda, is: “The Holy One, Blessed be He, created two inclinations, the good and the bad.” This is indeed the usual interpretation, but Levinas points out that the word yetzer really means creature. The proof is in Isaiah 29:16:1 “The creature (yetzer) said to the Creator he [the Creator] understood nothing.” Though made from clay, the human being is created differently than a clay vessel. “What is the human being? The fact that a being is two while remaining one. A division, a rupture in the depth of his substance or simply consciousness and choice: life at the crossroads. . . . Consciousness and freedom would seem to be the definition of man; 234 in short, reason.”2 We should take note of a certain wavering in Levinas’s text: “would seem to be. . . .” There is a latent question here. Is the rift within the human being “a rupture in the depths of his substance” or “simply consciousness and choice,” i.e. reason? The importance of this question in Levinas’s philosophical works is evident, as is his decision in favor of rupture. Levinas rejects the Aristotelian definition of the human being as animal rationalis. In this talmudic reading there is no sharp division between human rationality and the rational behavior of animals. The distinctively human lies in a dichotomy deep within human subjectivity, more fundamental than consciousness and intentionality : it is the possibility of the substitution of self for other.3 A return to the biblical text carries the inquiry further. “Rav Nahman bar Isaac objected: If this is so, then does this mean that the animal which (he made), vayitzer (Genesis 2:19, where vayitzer is not written with two yods), does not have good and evil inclinations, though we can see that an animal can destroy, bite, and kick?”4 If the initial interpretation of the two yods was correct , and it means that the human being is distinguished from the animal by freedom, consciousness and reason, why does it seem that animals have at least some level of choice and consciousness ? And yet when vayitzer refers to animals, it is written with only one yod. We must conclude that there must be another basis besides consciousness and reason for dividing the human from the rest of creation. Hence a new interpretation of the two yods in Genesis 2:7: “The two yods must be interpreted according to Rav Simeon ben Pazzi; for Rav Simeon ben Pazzi said: woe is me because of my own evil inclination.”5 As Levinas explains, the word vay-yitzer broken down into two elements could be interpreted as “woe to the creature,” since vay is an interjection like alas! in popular Jewish speech. Here the interpretation is, Woe unto the creature, for when I obey my Creator I am unhappy because disrupted by my creaturely nature, and when I follow my “And God Created Woman” 235 creaturely penchant I am rendered unhappy by my knowledge of the Creator, i.e. his Law, which makes me unhappy in sinning. My nature makes me incapable of submitting to the Law without constraint. This view is expressed philosophically in Otherwise than Being: “No one is good voluntarily.” In a broad sense it is true to say that a certain eschatological thought about creation informs his philosophy. “The oneself [soi] is a creature, but an orphan by birth or an atheist no doubt ignorant of his Creator, for if it knew it it would again be taking up its commencement.”6 The...