Abstract
Biblical, and to some extent rabbinic, Hebrew requires six words to connote ‘time’: et, pa’am, mo’ed, olam, ketz, zman.1 This follows from the varied conceptions of time that Jewish thought makes use of and which are not always compatible with each other. But in the rejection of time as inexorable fate and in the acceptance of time as a human construct, susceptible in the human interest, to human manipulation and understanding, there is general agreement. This differentiates any Jewish conception of time from the idolater’ submission to fate, in what Bloch calls ‘the astral-mythic’ religions of paganism.2
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Notes
Cf. E. Lévinas, ‘Dagam shel mahshava hayehudit modernit’, Da’at, No.6, winter 1981, pp.59–69
C. Lévi-Strauss, The savage mind, Engl. trans., London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966, pp.234–5.
C. Lévi-Strauss Myth and meaning, Engl. trans., London, Routledge, 1978, p.43.
M. Stern (ed.), Greek and Latin authors on Jews and Judaism, I, From Herodotus to Plutarch, Jerusalem, Magnes Press 1976, pp.39–40.
For a medieval example, see R. Judah B. Asher, Zikhron Yehudah, Berlin, Daniel Friedländer 1846, No.91.
E. Lévinas, Autrement que l’être ou au-delà de l’essence, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1974, p.6.
‘Epistle to Yemen (1172)’, ibid., p.452. At no level, sophisticated or popular, can it be said that these admonitions and arguments had anything but a limited success. Maimonides is very much an isolated figure. The philosophers (especially the neo-Platonists), astronomers, mathematicians, Biblical commentators, figures of the stature of Abraham ibn Ezra, R. Abraham b. Hiyya, R. Levi b. Gerson (Gersonides) were no more immune to the pull of astrology than their untutored fellow-Jews. In his commentary on Deuteronomy 18:9 ff. — a passage which explicitly manifests an ‘abhorrence’ for augury, soothsaying, and so on. — Nahmanides writes as a self-proclaimed believer in the power of ‘the expert in necromancy’, to exploit in the appropriate manner and for his own benefits a particular constellation of the stars and planets: ‘and therefore it is proper that the Torah prohibit these activities in order to let the world remain in its customary way and in its simple nature which is the desire of its creator’. In short, in the view of Nahmanides, the necromancer practises a nefarious but effective art, with the power to disturb the divinely ordained order of the world. In some cases the élite succumbed with a degree of sophistication. R. Levi b. Gerson maintained that human affairs were indeed subject to the influence of the heavenly bodies; but it was ‘impossible to have the repeated observations required for these empirical principles of astrology, since the zodiacal position of a heavenly body at any given time is only repeated once in many thousand years’; also, God had endowed man with the intellect to counteract any such effect once it had been predicted (See R. Levi b. Gershom, Wars of the Lord, ed. and trans. S. Feldman, Philadelphia/New York, Jewish Publication Society of America, 1987, II, 2
C. Touati, La pensée philosophique et théologique de Gersonide, Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1977, pp.138 ff.).
C. Sirat, La Philosophie juive au moyen âge, Paris, Editions du CNRS, 1983, pp.109 ff.
J. Trachtenberg, Jewish magic and superstition, New York, Harper and Row, 1939
H.-P. Stähli, Antike Synagogenkunst, Stuttgart, Calwer Verlag, 1988, pp.55 ff.
D. Davidowitz, Omanut ve-umanim be-vatei knesset shel Polin, Jerusalem, Ha-Kibbut ha-Meuchad, 1982, pp.20–1.
F. Landsberger, ‘Illuminated marriage contracts’, Hebrew Union College Annual, vol. 36, (1955), pp.502–42.
See also J. Muilenburg, ‘The Biblical view of time’, Harvard Theological Review, LIV (Oct.1961), No.4, pp.225–252.
A. J. Heschel The Sabbath, New York, Harper and Row, 1966, pp.7–8
See M. Shabbat 2:7; also J. Elbogen, ‘Eingang und Ausgang des Sabbats’ in M. Brann and J. Elbogen, Festschrift Israel Lewy, Breslau, M. and H. Marcus Verlag, 1911, pp.173–187.
J. Katz, ‘Ma’ariv bi-zmano u-shelo bi-zmano’, Zion, Vol.35 (1970), Nos.1–4, pp.35–60.
J. Neusner, ‘Beyond myth, after apocalypse’, Response, Vol.14, No.2, 1984, pp.17–35
See R. Wischnitzer, ‘Jewish pictorial art in the late classical period’, in C. Roth (ed.), Jewish art, Jerusalem, Vallentine Mitchell, 1971, p.86
P. Prigent, Le Judaïsme et l’image, Tübingen, Mohr, 1990, pp.224–5.
For the following, I am deeply indebted to Nissan Rubin, ‘Zman, historiyah u-zman liminair’, Historiyah Yehudit, II, pt.2, 1984, pp.5–22
TB Nazir 7a; see the discussion of this point in M. Grossberg (ed.), Tsfunot Ha’Rogatschever, Jerusalem, 1958, p.4, and in idem, Mishnat Ha’Rogatschever, Jerusalem, 1976, pp.37-8; also in R. Avigdor Amiel, ‘Musag Ha-Zman ba-halakha’, SinaiyvA, Vol.7, 1940–1, pp.292–302
This case is discussed in R. Joseph Henkin, Hemshekh Ha-Zman ba-Mitzvot, St.Louis, Missouri, 1955, pp.75 ff.
Boman, op. cit., p.120; see also L. A. Hoffman, Beyond the text, Indiana UP, 1987, pp.82 ff.; Lévinas, op. cit.... pp.63 ff.; Samson Raphael Hirsch makes an analogy between Ohel Mo’ed (‘tent of meeting’ — cf. Ex.29:30) which, ‘in the spatial sense refers to the locality’ of an appointed place of assembly, and a temporal Mo’ed which’ summons us communally to an appointed... inner activity’ (S. R. Hirsch, Horeb, Engl. trans., London, Soncino Press, 1962, I, p.84).
See also S. Talmon, King, cult and calendar in ancient Israel, Jerusalem, Magnes, 1986, pp.205 ff.
A. Funkenstein, Tadmit ve-Toda’ah historit be-Yahadut, Tel Aviv, Am Oved, 1991, p.105.
Berman, op. cit., p.112; see also A. Funkenstein, ‘Maimonides: Political theory and realistic messianism’, Miscelleanea Medievalia, XI, 1977, p.101.
See H. Atlan, in J. Halpérin and G. Lévitte (eds), Mémoire et Histoire, Paris, Denoël 1986, pp.33 ff.
A. Néher, L’essence du prophétisme, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1972, pp.231 ff.
For examples of such messianic constructions, see L. Kochan, Jews, idols and messiahs, Oxford, Blackwells, 1990, pp.160–191.
W. Benjamin, Illuminationen, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1961, p.279.
B. Z. Wacholder, ‘Chronomessianism’, Hebrew Union College Annual, Vol.46, 1975, pp.201–218.
H. Vaihinger, Die Philosophie des Als Ob, 7–8 edn., Leipzig, Felix Meiner, 1922, pp.39 ff.
S. Atlas, Netivim ba-mishpat ha-ivri, New York, American Academy for Jewish Research, 1978, pp. 267–8
See A. Benjamin, The plural event, London, Routledge 1993, pp.117–118.
As described, for example, in J.-F. Lvotard, L’Inhumain, Paris, Galilée, 1988, pp.76 ff.
It is no doubt the emphasis on purposive action that averts the schizophrenia otherwise characteristic of those who ‘treat concrete things as though they were abstract’ (S. Freud, The Unconscious, Engl. trans., in Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works, London, Hogarth Press, 1953–1974, XIV, p.204).
H. Cohen, Ästhetik des reinen Gefühls, I, Berlin, Cassirer, 1912, p.158
H. Cohen, Jüdische Schriften, I, Berlin, 1924, p.328.
H. Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens, 2nd rev. ed., Berlin, Cassirer, 1907, p.406.
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© 1997 Lionel Kochan
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Kochan, L. (1997). Time, Time and Time Again. In: Beyond the Graven Image. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25545-0_8
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