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181 Meaning: The Secret Heart of the Sacred A man sets out to discover a treasure he believes is hidden under a stone; he turns over stone after stone but finds nothing. He grows tired of such futile undertaking but the treasure is too precious for him to give up. So he begins to look for a stone which is too heavy to lift—he places all his hopes in that stone and he will waste all his remaining strength on it. —René Girard, Deceit, Desire and the Novel Rabbi Bunam used to tell young men who came to him for the first time the story of Rabbi Eizik, son of Rabbi Yekel of Cracow. After many years of great poverty which had never shaken his faith in God, he dreamed someone bade him look for a treasure in Prague, under the bridge which leads to the king’s palace. When the dream recurred a third time, Rabbi Eizik prepared for the journey and set out for Prague. But the bridge was guarded day and night and he did not dare to start digging . Nevertheless he went to the bridge every morning and kept walking around it until evening. Finally the captain of the guard, who had been watching him, asked in a kindly way whether he was looking for something or waiting for somebody. Rabbi Eizik told him of the dream which had brought him here from a faraway country. 182 The Head Beneath the Altar The captain laughed: “And so to please the dream, you poor fellow wore out your shoes to come here! As for having faith in dreams, if I had had it, I should have had to get going when a dream once told me to go to Cracow and dig for treasure under the stove in the room of a Jew—Eizik, son of Yekel, that was the name! Eizik, son of Yekel! I can just imagine what it would be like, how I should have to try every house over there where one half of the Jews are named Eizik and the other half Yekel!” And he laughed again. Rabbi Eizik bowed, traveled home, dug up the treasure from under the stove, and built the House of Prayer which is called “Reb Eizik Reb Yekel’s Shul.” —Martin Buber, “The Treasure,” Tales of the Hasidim: The Later Masters Games, Riddles, and Rituals Citing Roger Caillois’s Les jeux et les hommes, Girard identifies the four types of games listed by Caillois with the four stages of ritual (see table 4). First are the games of imitation, corresponding to the advent of acquisitive mimesis, when humans begin to learn by imitating and their imitation gives rise to conflict as models become rivals. Second are the games of competition, corresponding to the struggle of the mimetic doubles, when the mimetic rivalries have intensified to the point that rivals become enemy twins, like Viśvāmitra and Vasiṣṭha. Third come the games of vertigo, corresponding to the sacrificial crisis in which all distinctions are swallowed up in the widening conflict. And finally are the games of chance, corresponding to the spontaneous selection of the sacrificial victim. In the Vedic ritual, these four stages are represented by the enigmatic disputation called the brahmodya, the ceremonial chariot race and cattle raid, the ingestion of soma, and the dicing match. We can observe other types of animals mimicking each other, competing with each other, and spinning themselves into a state of frenzy (like a dog chasing his tail, for instance); it is games of chance alone that are unique to humans. For Girard, the game of chance is an iteration of the primary symbolic process, the process used to pick the victim: the selection of one from many. Girard argues that this first differentiation, which engenders the possibility of language, is born in “sacred terror.” The primal horde that has killed The Secret Heart of the Sacred 183 its first victim to bring peace and unanimity does so again and again when the crisis of mimetic rivalry reaches its peak. As the killing is repeated, it begins to take on a recognizable shape and rhythm. And whether they are actually linked to the killing or not (consider Kafka’s thirsty leopards in the temple), the elements that accompany it (howls of rage from the mob, cries of terror from the victim) soon become associated with the peace bought by the victim’s...

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