of Samson in rabbinic discourse on Naziriteship and its emphasis on the key role that sight plays in his destiny.58 Something of the power (and maybe potential hubris) that the rabbis attributed to Samson—and his hair—is echoed in our story.
A David-Like Figure, a Lover, and a Sage
The figurative echo chamber of the Nazirite from the south includes not only a biblical Nazirite, Samson, but also a king. Like the David described in 1 Sam. 16:10, the Nazirite from the south is a comely shepherd with beautiful eyes. The high priest therefore finds himself face-to-face with a King David figure.59 A priestly encounter with a David-like figure in the context of rabbinic and Christian discourse is hardly a trivial matter. After all, Davidic origin, priestly status, and the identity of the messiah are a pivotal triad through which both Judaism and Christianity reflected on themselves vis-à-vis each other.60
Furthermore, the shepherd is described as having a head of curls (qevutsotav taltalim)—an allusion to the famous description of the lover in the Song of Songs (5:11). That the young shepherd should be depicted by Simon the Just in terms of an iconic lover seems hardly surprising, given the overall erotic tone of our story and Simon’s attraction to the boy. Clearly, it is first and foremost the Eros of the biblical lover that is at play here. Yet if we take into account rabbinic associations with the specific scriptural phrase—qevutsotav taltalim—the beautiful lover may take on additional traits. He may even resemble a Sage. Rabbinic traditions of Song of Songs 5:11 replace the lover’s physical beauty with exegetical skills: “‘His locks are curled [Heb., taltalim]’: that [Solomon] used to expound [doresh] ‘curls and curls’ [tille tillim, lit., hills and hills] of laws on each and every portion or verse in the Torah.”61 The lover’s locks (qevutsotav) are the Torah; his curls are his legal-exegetical practice.
The shepherd is the missing referent that provides Simon with an answer, albeit a temporary one, to his scriptural or semiotic crisis; he is also a representation of scripture itself. But the depiction of the Nazirite as a personified Torah is also reminiscent of the depiction of the Sages, who are referred to as a Torah scroll and the ark.62 Again and again, the implied addressee of the text, presumably a rabbi, faces the Nazirite and sees a reflection that is quite familiar. While the story engages priesthood, it introduces “the Sage” as an overriding force. Simon, who is himself “rabbinized,” meets a Nazirite who bears rabbinic traits. The encounter between the high priest and the shepherd is marked, as are all other reflective processes that the text conjures, by fragmented mirroring.
The Nazirite and the Priest: Converging Sanctities
It is by now clear that the reflective process as it manifests itself in the story involves a labyrinth of identity formations as the characters turn out to be entangled in a web of hybrid—or fractured—identities. Furthermore, in addition to the rabbinic component, which Simon and the Nazirite have in common, the Naziriteship-priesthood relationship should be considered. Naziriteship is the highest form of nonpriestly sanctity that the Bible offers,63 and its laws are, in some respects, more severe than priestly restrictions.64 The affinity between the two forms of sanctity does not escape rabbinic eyes—the Mishnah explicitly compares the sanctity of the Nazirite and the priest.65 The relationship between permanent priesthood and its pseudo-metonymy in the guise of a Nazirite might therefore point to the projective quality in Simon’s suspicion of Nazirites in general. Just as the Nazirite’s insight stems from his looking at his own projected image, the source of Simon’s newly acquired knowledge is a Nazirite—a (temporary) priest, an uncanny same/other, who is nevertheless dependent upon him: without a priest, a Nazirite cannot execute his Naziriteship. We should note that with this similarity, reflection is problematized from yet another, complementary, angle. Not only does the dubious unity of a subject stand in the way of reflection; identity itself is held suspect. The encounter of the priest and the Nazirite contrasts natural, genetic identity with one that is voluntary, constructed, and ethereal. While the distinction between the characters is blurred, the premise of identity that is implicated in their encounter is also left uncertain.
The End: The Narrated Rabbinic Self
Simon the Just ends his first-person narrative with a midrash when he says to the Nazirite: “Of you, scripture says: ‘When either a man or a woman shall perform the wonder of vowing a Nazirite vow to separate themselves unto God.’” His final words are not typically priestly. They could just as well—even more likely—have been uttered by a rabbi. What starts off as tale of cultic bygone days ends with the rabbinic discourse par excellence. Midrash is not only (literally) the ultimate defining trait of Simon. It is, as I suggest in the Introduction, a defining feature of the rabbinic self. It is through the story of the making of one specific self, Simon the Just, that we might learn something about the making of a larger cultural self. If Simon’s self is contingent on telling stories (his, as well as the Nazirite’s) and on permeable identity boundaries, the same could be said of the rabbinic self, which he comes to embody: the midrashic climax of the story is a fictionalized point insofar that it depends on, and is produced by, the narrative leading up to it. It is also, in light of the Nazirite’s own implied midrash, not exclusively Simon’s. The discourse of midrash is shown to be shared by different figures or groups.66 Similarly, it is not exclusive in either figures who are, at least initially, motivated by a visual rather than a textual understanding.
Reflecting on itself, the rabbinic midrashic self produces—teleologically, one could argue—a selfsame image: the telos of the narrative is a scriptural-hermeneutical endpoint that defines, retrospectively, the process that generated it. Yet it is the exact narratological nature of this narcissistic story that discloses its fictionality. It tells us that the story of a unified self—a midrashic one, in this case—is the story of several selves and that the supposedly distinctive contours that define those selves are more like ripples in a reflective pool than harsh dividing lines. And it tells us that this form of narrativity—not unlike the yetzer—lays out a narcissistic trap, while preventing rabbinic identity from drowning in its deep waters.
The narrative ends with Simon’s midrash on Numbers, resolving, if only momentarily, the hermeneutic scriptural dilemma with which the tale began. But it does much more than that. It positions midrash as a culminating discourse that subsumes the self-reflected, mirroring aspects that had permeated the narrative all along. The semblance that Simon’s midrash implies, between scripture and a reality to which it refers, is thus granted further discursive qualities. Midrash, as I argued in the Introduction, is a self-reflective practice. By staging midrash as the story’s final discourse, it signals a discursive resolution in the most basic sense. It is the story’s—and Simon’s—last words. But given the intricate and even convoluted dynamics of self-reflexivity that the narrative demonstrates, it cannot but mirror the uncertainty that such dynamics entail.
CHAPTER 2
A King, a Queen, and the Discourse Between: The Riddle of Midrash
King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, and riddles are at the center of the midrashic drama that I examine in this chapter. The narrative addressed here probes the same issues that are at the heart of the story of Simon the Just and the Nazirite: the delineation of a self and its relation to midrash. Here, too, questions of otherness (internal and external) and Eros play a key role. The emphasis, however, is different. In the present story, rabbinic self-reflexivity is staged in the form of a riddling tale. The midrash reflects on itself via the discursive features of riddles and in relation to this tale’s two main characters.
Solomon and the Queen of Sheba are among the most famous couples of Western imagination, in the same league as Anthony and Cleopatra or Napoleon and Josephine. In this case too, Eros is composed
