Embracing, Ambiguities.

Embracing, Ambiguities. EMBRACING, AMBIGIDTIES. by Laura Levitt Laura Levitt works as an Assistant Professor of Religion at Temple University, teaching also in the Women's Studies Program. Her writing attends to feminist theory and contemporary Jewish culture. She is the author of the forthcoming book Ambivalent Embraces: Jewish Feminist Identities as Home (New York: Routledge). 131 Perhaps "embrace" is an odd way to explain a methodological turn in one's work, but it captures well the way I work with texts. According to·The American Heritage Dictionary, to "embrace" means: To clasp or hold with arms, usually as an expression of affection.... To surround; enclose.... To twine around. . .. To include as part of something broader. . . . To take up willingly or eagerly. . . . An act of holding close with the arms, usually as an expression ofaffection; a hug.... An enclosure or encirclement. . . . Eager acceptance.1 Implicit in this definition is a desire, an attraction that calls for a response. An embrace is such a response. But in acting on such a desire, there is already a tension. Although an embrace can be a loving gesture, a tender act of affection, or protection, it has other connotations. To hold is also to assume control over another, even, and perhaps especially, the other who is the object of one's affection. In the American Heritage to "embrace" is to surround or enclose. One may hold on too tight, not allowing the other enough space to breathe and to grow on their own. When I think about being entwined I worry about the damage done by vines like kudzu that take over all that comes into their grasp. These vines kill the trees and bushes within their embrace. lThe American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, (Boston, Houghton, Mimin Company, 1992). 132 SHOFAR Fall 1995 Vol. 14, No.1 Reading is about desire, and about different kinds of embraces. In reading a text, something brings you in, captures your imagination, hooks you. To embrace a text is to give yourself to these desires. This is a joy, but with dangers. One danger is holding on too tightly; the text loses its distinct character and becomes a reflection of the reader. The reader takes the text into herself. It becomes an extension of her. Another danger, an inversion of the first: the reader loses herself in the text. Whereas in the first danger, the text gets swallowed, here the reader's difference dissolves. She is reduced to another instance ofthe text's argument. In becoming the text, she loses her own voice by taking on that of the text. Both of these forms ofreading blur boundaries. Distinctions between reader and text are lost. This blurring of distinctions gets tricky when such reading is accompanied by, and part of, one's writing. In writing we stake out positions and this feels risky. Yet, what goes on in forms of writing-such as academic scholarship-that depend on citations of other writers' texts? Sometimes finding and staking out one's own positions happens in response, while reading texts with similar commitments. Their similarities offer a kind of (em)brace. They hold us up as we attempt to take a stand, especially for the first time. Citations of other people's writing can brace our own argument. They provide weight, authority, and precedent. But sometimes in this process, one of the writers gets lost. As readers who write about other people's writing, we can lose our own voices, holding on too tightly to the authority of other people's writing. And so in writing this essay, I find myself a bit wobbly. There are texts that I want to bring into this discussion, passages I want to cite as proof for what I am saying. For the moment, I will resist the temptation. I will let my words stand alone. I have been able to find my voice as a writer by reading and engaging with the texts of others. The text that speaks to me right now-pushing through the seams of my essay with such force that I can barely keep myself from quoting it at length-is Susan Rubin Suleiman's Risking Who...