a crucial aspect of (rabbinic) identity formation: they do not necessarily acknowledge that a sense of an essentialized self is an immanent aspect of identity formation without which an individual—or here, a culture—cannot function. The notion of a unified self, as some have argued, may rest on a misguided, insatiable nostalgic yearning.34 But to deny the experiential components that give rise to such an imagined entity is to overlook a powerful engine of identity formation.35 To dismiss these experiences as individual or cultural fantasies would mean overlooking a central rabbinic force in which a unified self is imagined.36 That is not to say that a unified cultural self is an exclusive rabbinic fantasy; nor is it to say that it ever existed beyond any textual boundaries. Also, quite clearly, religious and ethnic external others played a key role in self-reflexive processes and cultural identity formations of Judaism in late antiquity. Thus, to offer but one example, rabbinic Judaism reflected on and formed itself in relation to Christianity—to an external (or gradually externalized) synchronic other.37 As Christine Hayes notes, external and internal others in rabbinic literature “serve as means by which a group can explore its own internal ambiguities, experiment with alternative possibilities, embrace negativities.”38 In the following chapters, I refer to some of the characters and discourses as “others.” Yet these, I suggest, should be construed within the conceptual framework of possible selves, which accentuates their role in a self-reflective, introspective process.39
Rabbinic Possible Selves
Rabbinic self-reflexivity resides in, and is triggered by, its pivotal practice of midrash. This midrashic capacity is further enhanced by reflective figures that populate rabbinic narratives. The textual mirroring points of the narratives engage a variety of characters who serve as discursive junctions through which the main, however tentative, discourses are reflected upon. Where these figures come from, what they do, what they say, and how they say it constitute their performative persona: they may originate in bygone biblical and Second Temple days, occupy a lowly social position, belong to the female gender, speak in riddles, or think magically. The figures may seem to resemble rabbinic contemporary prototypes or they may be imagined, initially, as their virtual opposites. Embodying an ambivalence of sameness and otherness, their appearance in the rabbinic corpus plays out alternative choices and ideas, constituting what Hillis Miller terms “possible selves.” According to Miller, the characters that operate in a narrative allow the reader to whom it is addressed to “experiment with possible selves and to learn to take … place in the real world, to play … [a] part there.”40 However, for the sake of discussion, I have modified Miller’s insightful term by differentiating between what can be seen as the main self in a given text and other figures that not only represent other possible selves but also comment on that main—however tentative—self. Furthermore, while the concept of a possible self applies to the characters in the text, it can be carried further, beyond the personified principle suggested by Miller, since the rabbinic self—a midrashic self—is a discursive self. Accordingly, discourses that have distinct structural and thematic features but that are not necessarily centered on a character—such as the genre of tall tales (Chapter 3)—might also be seen as an experiment with possible selves, or as ways of reflecting with this genre on the midrashic self of a rabbinic text.41
From a Nazirite to a Maidservant: Five Readings of Self-Reflexivity
This book is composed of five readings of rabbinic texts in which self-reflexivity plays a prominent role. The chapters were written separately, over the course of the last fifteen years. It is only in hindsight that I realized that they addressed similar issues. Their shared themes derive from my idiosyncratic interests. Yet without ignoring the book’s (auto)biographical component (or fallacy), something in the texts themselves has always drawn my attention to their self-reflexive quality. In retrospect, I see that I sought to understand the self-reflexive impetus of rabbinic texts that I, in turn, identified with their midrashic core. As I reflected on essays that I had written in the past and on my ongoing project, it became clear to me that reflexivity is a driving force in rabbinic literature and that the notion of a self is important in the formation of cultural identity.
The readings draw on different methodologies—mainly, literary theory, folklore, semiotics, and anthropology. While following basic philological guidelines concerning matters such as the dating of texts and lexical meanings, my readings at times transcend what may seem indisputable (or seemingly safe) philological grounds. As we have learned from Mikhail Bakhtin, a text—any text—produces meaning via its relation to other texts (what I term in Chapter 2 its “co-texts”).42 It does not stand alone. The reconstruction of possible “echo chambers” that not only form the background to a given text but that determine its meanings is contingent on reading practices. What are the relevant texts that one may consider when reading a given text? The answer is not simple, and it at least partly relates to the space—or abyss (depending on the eye of the beholder)—that lies between strict philological criteria and possible wider semiotics. In this context, we should also bear in mind that rabbinic texts that provide the basis for philological pursuits are only the tip of the iceberg insofar as they are remnants—maybe only partial in and of themselves—of a predominantly oral culture (this largely holds true also for the later texts I discuss). The rabbinic worlds that are both revealed and veiled by the texts stretch beyond any possible philological reconstruction. The readings I propose suggest cultural spaces that, although they sometimes cannot be proved philologically, are nonetheless plausible semiotic frameworks that should be considered. Likewise, the strictly philological premise is supplemented by an alternative hermeneutical model when I (albeit infrequently) use late traditions for elucidating earlier texts: later traditions may tease out potential meanings that are embedded in earlier texts, by making them explicit or by solving earlier textual ambivalences or uncertainties.
The texts are taken from an array of rabbinic compilations, including Palestinian compilations, the Babylonian Talmud, and late midrash. “Late midrash,” a term that refers to a diverse body of works composed after the rabbinic period (dating roughly from the seventh to the tenth or eleventh centuries in different geographical settings), is clearly situated beyond the rabbinic period. Late midrashic works introduce poetic innovations: they offer novel compositional frameworks and themes unknown from earlier rabbinic traditions. Yet they are still quite bound to rabbinic models and especially to the midrashic component that characterizes the classical rabbinic corpus.43 Late midrashic texts are thus still also part of a rabbinic literary tradition and, as such, are generated by—and, to a large extent, still modeled on—rabbinic midrashic narratives. They display the dynamics afforded by earlier rabbinic works, although they are clearly situated within a different literary poly-system and novel historical contexts. While taking into consideration the different historical and cultural backgrounds of the texts, my emphasis nonetheless remains transhistorical in the sense that I address what I recognize to be continuous aspects of an imagined rabbinic self. The heterogeneity of the texts extends beyond their different cultural contexts, for they are also generically varied—a historical legend, a riddling tale, tall tales, and a retold biblical narrative. They all, however, involve the telling of a story, and it is in the telling of a story that reflections of a narrating self emerge. That is not to say that rabbinic self-reflexivity is restricted to narratives (as noted earlier, rabbinic self-reflexivity also comes out in exegetical and legal discussion). Nor does it indicate that all rabbinic narratives are equally self-reflexive. It shows, rather, that these rabbinic narratives—with their intricate dynamics of plot and character—include a self-reflexive aspect that is particularly poignant when the reflective process is thematized in the narratives. Such are the texts that are addressed in this book.
In Chapter 1, I read the rabbinic version of the Narcissus tale. This rabbinic meta-reflective narrative centers on Simon the Just, the high priest, and a Nazirite. The midrashic self reflected on in the story and the meta-poetic aspects of the text are articulated
