The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious by Avivah Gottlieb Z

Description: The Murmuring Deep by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg A book that enhances our appreciation of the Bible-"explaining, exploring, and deepening our sense of what it means to be a human being of faith in a world as fractured and fragmentary as ours" (Forward).Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg informs her literary analysis of the biblical text with concepts drawn from Freud, Winnicott, Laplanche, and other psychoanalytic thinkers to make a powerful argument for the idea that the creators of the midrashic commentary, the medieval rabbinic commentators, and the Hassidic commentators were themselves on some level aware of the complex interplay between conscious and unconscious levels of experience and used this knowledge in their interpretations.In her analysis of the stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, Jonah, Abraham, Rebecca, Isaac, Joseph and his brothers, Ruth, and Esther, Zornberg reveals the interaction between consciousness and unconsciousness. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Author Biography AVIVAH GOTTLIEB ZORNBERGis the author of The Murmuring Deep- Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious, The Beginning of Desire- Reflections on Genesis and The Particulars of Rapture- Reflections on Exodus. She lectures widely in Israel, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. She lives in Jerusalem. Review "A book for readers who seek out that rare sensibility capable of explaining, exploring, and deepening our sense of what it means to be a human being of faith in a world as fractured and fragmentary as ours." —Forward "Zornberg tries to lay bare the process by which biblical characters act as they do, and she shows how the Bible employs not just the intelligible, well-ordered language of conscious speech but also the elusive idiom of the unconscious. [The text] becomes in her hands, yet again, a work of mystery." —The Wall Street Journal "Zornbergs breadth of knowledge is awe-inspiring. Because she is steeped in such varied sources of knowledge, she speaks to readers of varied backgrounds and interests. This is a book to be savored. There are gems throughout." —The Jerusalem Report "In Zornbergs brilliant new work, we have a heroic reconstruction of the rabbinic canon in ways that seek to make it relevant to contemporary readers, allowing them to use their education to incorporate Jewish texts into their actual lives. By opening up the midrashic traditions, Zornberg has given us the freedom to open up the book of our own psychological lives and to understand how the ancient traditions illuminate who we are and what we can become. If education is the very core value of Judaism, it is by reading books like The Murmuring Deep that we can fulfill the precept of Torah study. Avivah Zornberg has permitted us to witness the greatness of the Jewish sages in a freshly creative and intensely dynamic way. The path of such understanding is not simply to allow us to be more religious, but also to better assert our human ethicality and our place in this vast and complex universe."—Tikkun"The effect of each chapter is a humble display of quoted erudition. The art of these readings, like that of collage-making or quilting, resides in the unique coherence of the final assemblage. . . . The trusting reader is rewarded with that deeper, more vivid experience of life that comes from confronting the existential, traumatized self and from finding consolation in the Torahs prolific elusive meanings."—Lilith Magazine Review Quote In Praise of The Murmuring Deep "In Zornbergs brilliant new work, we have a heroic reconstruction of the rabbinic canon in ways that seek to make it relevant to contemporary readers, allowing them to use their education to incorporate Jewish texts into their actual lives. By opening up the midrashic traditions, Zornberg has given us the freedom to open up the book of our own psychological lives and to understand how the ancient traditions illuminate who we are and what we can become. If education is the very core value of Judaism, it is by reading books like The Murmuring Deep that we can fulfill the precept of Torah study. Avivah Zornberg has permitted us to witness the greatness of the Jewish sages in a freshly creative and intensely dynamic way. The path of such understanding is not simply to allow us to be more religious, but also to better assert our human ethicality and our place in this vast and complex universe." Tikkun "Avivah Zornberg tries to lay bare the process by which biblical characters act as they do, and she shows the ways in which the bible employs not just the intelligible, well-ordered language of conscious speech but also the elusive idiom of the unconscious. [The text] becomes in Dr. Zornberg s hands, yet again, a work of mystery." The Wall Street Journal "Zornberg renews the biblical texts in ways that make her the foremost scholar of the Hebrew Bible for readers who seek not only intellectual and creative achievement (which her book offers in abundance), but also that rare sensibility capable of explaining, exploring and deepening our sense of what it means to be a human being of faith in a world as fractured and fragmentary as ours. . . . She ranges widely among Jewish sources from the ancient, medieval and modern periods; from classic works of psychoanalysis by Freud and Winnicott to more recent interventions by Julia Kristeva, Adam Phillips and Christopher Bollas; from literary critics Frank Kermode and D.A. Miller to the philosophy of Kierkegaard and Stanley Cavell; from Henry James and Eliot to Paul Celan and Marguerite Duras. The book, however, does not flit between these sources. Zornberg builds a framework from these thinkers and writers, one that gives form and heft to her conceptions of the biblical drama, often illuminating these sources as she goes. . . . A most luminous study." Ilana Blumberg , The Forward "The effect of each chapter is a humble display of quoted erudition. The art of these readings, like that of collage-making or quilting, resides in the unique coherence of the final assemblage. . . Excerpt from Book ONE Seduced into Eden The Beginning of Desire desire: the lapse in sovereignty The official history of desire begins here: "Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you" (Gen. 3:16). With these words, God declares Eves destiny: a melancholy sketch of the relation of power and desire. Desire is associated with vulnerability. To desire is to lose autonomy; the desired other acquires a sovereignty to which one surrenders in spite of the pain that inevitably ensues. Rashis classic commentary only deepens the shadow: with feminine desire comes a speechlessness, a failure of language, that in itself gives power to the other. Our starting point, then, yields a dark image of desire as feminine, helpless, wordless. Strikingly, however, at the opposite end of the spectrum, God, too, experiences the halting impact of desire. At the outset of the Creation narrative, His power in will and word are absolute. The template is "God said, Let there be. . . . And it was so.?" Unhesitatingly, word becomes act. However, when God approaches the creation of the human being, the pattern changes. For the first time, there is a preamble, a proposition, a desire: "And God said: Let us make Adam in our image and after our form. . . . And God created Man in His image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them" (Gen: 1:26-27). Whom is God addressing in this preamble? Is it a soliloquy? To whom does the plural, "Let us make man in our image," refer? Is this the pluralis maiestatis, the royal "we"? Or does it refer to other primal beings, angels perhaps, who are mysteriously included in this final project of creation, the human being? Many midrashic accounts would have it so. But then one cannot avoid the impression that Gods sovereignty has been compromised. Indeed, Rashi specifically addresses this "debasing" effect: he quotes the midrash that tells of Gods humility in consulting with the angels, whose envy and suspicion of the project He attempts to mollify. The risk entailed in such humility is the loss of Gods status as sole Creator. He is willing to risk heretical responses in order to model humility to the reader: the powerful person should solicit the opinion of his inferiors. For such a moral purpose, He is willing to go on record as sharing power with others. The midrashic narrative does not take this lightly: at least at this moment of contemplation before creating Man, God is, imaginably, no longer sovereign, no longer One. Of course, the breath of scandal is neutralized immediately: "And He [singular] created Adam." However, for the first time in the triumphant litany of Gods creations, there has occurred a lapse, a suspension of sovereignty. It is only with the idea of the human being that God is moved to this cryptic humility. It is striking, however, that a parallel moment does occur later, when God decides to create Eve: "Let Me make him a helpmate" (Gen. 2:18) Here, of course, God speaks in the powerful singular form. But here, too, as with the creation of Adam, God reflects on a future act; He expresses an intention. And, as we shall see, His intention is not, in fact, immediately implemented. In the end, it is Adams desire for a mate that enables her creation. This desire arises at the end of a chain of events, a "plot," that separates Gods reflection from its consummation. In these critical moments when God relates to the creation of Adam and of Eve, desire both informs and inhibits divine omnipotence, in the same way as, explicitly, it erodes Eves autonomy. in gods image If we return now to Gods project for man, we are confronted by the most eloquent and mystifying of all Gods creative words: "Let us make man in our image, after our form." This creature is to be, in some essential way, similar to his creator. This resemblance will give him dominion over the earths resources. Clearly, man is to hold a special relationship to God; in a sense, he is to be the symbol of Gods presence on earth. But how is one to understand such a notion of being like God, given that the human being is limited, mortal, and contingent, while God is infinite, eternal, and absolute? One might even say that one of the main needs that man has of God is that He be different, precisely not limited in the ways that man knows himself to be: man requires a God immune to human deficiencies. Moreover, to compound the mystery, the enigmatic notion of man resembling God is picked up, strangely, by the serpent, in his insidious suggestion to Eve that the Tree of Knowledge yields precisely such a gift--and that God resents mans appropriating this gift: "For God knows that on the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3:5). Eating of the Tree will make Adam indeed like God. Thus the serpent. But God, too, speaks again, at the end of the narrative, of such a resemblance. He is, in fact, moved by this resemblance to expel him from the Garden: And the Lord God said: Behold, man has become as one of Us, knowing good and evil. And now, what if he should stretch out his hand to take also of the Tree of Life, and eat, and live for ever. . . . So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden . . . (Gen. 3:22-23). It seems that the serpent was right: eating of the Tree of Knowledge has indeed made man like God. Even the recurrence of the plural, "one of Us," serves to obscure Gods unique sovereignty. Only mans mortality still differentiates him; he must therefore be expelled, before his resemblance to God becomes total. How does this enigmatic scenario engage with Gods original project of "man in our image"? Is a specific resemblance implied in the divine project? And is mans eventual likeness to God a fulfillment or a subversion of that project? adam in the human image? At this point I would like to modulate to a different set of questions: Does Adam resemble us? Is Adam recognizably human? Do we acknowledge ourselves in the figure portrayed in the Torah? And if Adam does not resemble us, does Adams resemblance to God become irrelevant to human identity as we know it? I want to suggest that, indeed, in his created condition, Adam is not identical with ourselves. Vast areas of the human are alien to him. My project will be to explore some implications of this difference and of the role that the Tree of Knowledge plays in transforming Adam into a recognizable human being. Essential to this difference is the history of desire. According to a provocative Hasidic reading, it is the postlapsarian man and woman who, paradoxically, become godlike. My project will involve further questions about time and language, the unconscious, and the decentered self, as constitutive of the human and--in a specific sense--of God. In the obvious sense, Adam is sui generis: his origin and mode of entry into the world are unlike ours. Gods hands shape him out of earth; Gods breath breathes him to life. Body and soul, substance and energy are generated directly by God. The early history of Adam is sparse. But one essential detail, obscured in the text, is detected by the midrash. Adam did not originate in the Garden of Eden. "And the Lord God took the man and set him down in the Garden of Eden" (Gen. 2:15). Wherever he was first created, it was not in Eden. He is transplanted by God, moved out of his place, to another place. seduced into eden The midrash addresses the word Va-yikach, "God took." In Rashis version: "He took [captivated] him with beautiful words and seduced him to enter the Garden." Rashi often makes a similar comment when the word "take" has a human object, as though taking by force is inappropriate in moving a human being from one place to another. His comment implies that the only way to move a human being is by language, "beautiful words." Here, however, the word pitahu, "He seduced him," is disturbing. This midrashic translation makes seduction the first human experience--seduction by God. Seduction, too, is constitutive of man s entry into language. The word carries connotations of persuasion but also of deception, of heady promises about which it might be wise to be suspicious. In the book of Proverbs, the peti is a simpleton, easily seduced, the opposite of the valued hakham, the wise one. The obvious association is with sexuality, with a manipulation of innocence, in which private purposes are masked in captivating but treacherous language. Why would the midrash, and Rashi in his turn, use this word, which, in both Hebrew and English, has such uneasy associations? We will return to this question of seduction, which, I will suggest, is the essential repressed moment of the narrative. For now, one wonders why Adam needed to be seduced at all. To enter the Garden of Eden would seem to be a prospect of delight, rather than one about which to have reservations. But God apparently has to persuade Adam with glowing rhetoric to make the move. One midrash has Adam anticipate the risks and challenges of Eden: there he will confront and fail a test. In response, God entices him by promising that a future descendant, Abraham, will retroactively redeem the whole apparently woeful narrative. Subtly, the midrash suggests a cautious self-awareness in Adam that God must overcome by non- rational means. In the end, Adam must yield to Gods will. By using the notion of seduction, however, the midrash implies a kind of "unfairness" about Gods influence, which overwhelms Adams judgment. To suggest this is to raise the question of God s credibility. While, ultimatel Details ISBN080521206X Author Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg Short Title MURMURING DEEP Pages 480 Language English ISBN-10 080521206X ISBN-13 9780805212068 Media Book Format Paperback Year 2011 Imprint Schocken Books Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States UK Release Date 2011-10-04 Publication Date 2011-10-04 AU Release Date 2011-10-04 NZ Release Date 2011-10-04 US Release Date 2011-10-04 Subtitle Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious Illustrator Shelley Ann Jackson Birth 1939 Death 1847 Affiliation Professor of Psychiatry, University of Geneva Position Professor of Psychiatry Qualifications PsyD Publisher Schocken Books DEWEY 220.7 Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:160098848;

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