Tuesday, January 9, 2018

צמאה נפשי

A post shared by Yaakov Akiva Mascetti (@mascety) on



תפילת האבק 


אני אבק
חלקיקֵי הֵאני שנהיה
מפוזרים על זמן ומרחב.
נקודות של כובד ומשיכה
המכָוונות אותי הֵנָה והֵנָה.

בַכל מָקום
וּבכל ַרגע
אוחז אני בעצמי.
קולי נשמע לי כזר
כשרגליי רוקדות בעדינות
ועיניי נעצמות
וכשבחוץ חשוך וקר.

באותו רגע
ובנקודה אחרת בזמן,
אני טובל במקווה,
נוטל בידיי את העול.
אטול ואפרוק את העול
שוב ושוב
באדיקות סיזיפית:
נימול ונרגש
אצא
מפוזר ומפורק.

ידיים זרות אוספות את האבק
איסוף עדין ואלים למוקדים שונים,
מעצבות ערימות של אבק האני.
כל ערימה היא אני
אדם הנולד מחדש
הנולד ובוהה בי
דוקר אותי עם עיניו
לעתים אף מרגיע אותי
כשעיניי דומעות.

אני לא גוש -
אני אבק.
תחושות כגרגירי חיבוקים,
מילים נטחנות לאבקת פטפטת.
תפילות במעגל סגור,
תחינות נמרצות,
ורוח באה
ומפזרת באכזריות חסרת מידות.

שוועה נפשי המפורקת:
משוך אותי,
פרוק מעליי
את עול הפיזור.
אַחֵד אותי עם עצמי.
שבור, שרוף, כבוש ובנה:
אחד נא,
אסוף נא,
מצא נא.
וכשאפנה לך את גבי,
אֶאַבֵד בתוכךָ
ואמצא את עצמי
מפוזר על כולך.   


21.7.2015

Monday, January 8, 2018

Scabs and “Erev Rav”: a Healthy Response to the Unhealthy Slurs against my being a Convert.

I am a convert. That is a fact. In addition, I have an ill-hidden penchant for disputes. That, alas, is also a fact. In recent times, mostly following political arguments, I have been labeled, by some enlightened representatives of Italian Jewry (in Italy), as both “erev rav” and as “sapachat” or psoriasis, which are the two traditional labels used by the Rabbis of the Gemara to refer to the negative effects of the presence of converts within the social fabric of the Chosen People. I will not hide the deep pain felt upon having being called those two things. But it is also clear to me today that those individuals labeled me thus specifically because of an undeniable “virtue” of converts: they force Israelites to confront themselves, indoors, with intestine criticism.

To begin my response, I wish to bring here two canonical sources in the Talmud, where converts are presented as scabs –

Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 47b:

The Gemara analyzes the baraita. The Master said in the baraita: With regard to a potential convert who comes to a court in order to convert, the judges of the court say to him: What did you see that motivated you to come to convert? And they inform him of some of the lenient mitzvot and some of the stringent mitzvot. The Gemara asks: What is the reason to say this to him? It is so that if he is going to withdraw from the conversion process, let him withdraw already at this stage. He should not be convinced to continue, as Rabbi Ḥelbo said: Converts are as harmful to the Jewish people as a leprous scab [sappaḥat] on the skin, as it is written: “And the convert shall join himself with them, and they shall cleave [venispeḥu] to the house of Jacob” (Isaiah 14:1). This alludes to the fact that the cleaving of the convert to the Jewish people is like a scab.

Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 70b:

The Gemara analyzes the baraita. The Master said in the baraita: With regard to a potential convert who comes to a court in order to convert, the judges of the court say to him: What did you see that motivated you to come to convert? And they inform him of some of the lenient mitzvot and some of the stringent mitzvot. The Gemara asks: What is the reason to say this to him? It is so that if he is going to withdraw from the conversion process, let him withdraw already at this stage. He should not be convinced to continue, as Rabbi Ḥelbo said: Converts are as harmful to the Jewish people as a leprous scab [sappaḥat] on the skin, as it is written: “And the convert shall join himself with them, and they shall cleave [venispeḥu] to the house of Jacob” (Isaiah 14:1). This alludes to the fact that the cleaving of the convert to the Jewish people is like a scab.

These are just two examples of sources which present the convert as an allegorical scab on the skin of the People – the comparison is not casual of course and takes us back to Leviticus 13:2:

“When a person has on the skin of his body a swelling, a rash, or a discoloration, and it develops into a scaly affection on the skin of his body, it shall be reported to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons, the priests.”

The swelling and the scab are closely discussed in the Babylonian Talmud Sotah 5b, where they are interpreted allegorically as the physical signs of spiritual or intellectual characteristics:

“And for a sore [se’et] and for a scab [sappaḥat]” (Leviticus 14:56), and se’et means nothing other than elevated, as it is stated: “And upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up [nissaot]” (Isaiah 2:14). And sappaḥat means nothing other than an appendage, as it is stated in the context of the curse given to the descendants of Eli: “Put me [sefaḥeni], I pray of you, into one of the priests’ offices, that I may eat a morsel of bread” (I Samuel 2:36). They will have to be joined with another priestly family to receive their priestly gifts. One can therefore interpret the verses discussing leprosy as teaching that one who initially is arrogant, se’et, will eventually become a sappaḥat, diminished in stature.”

The attitude of the convert is, in this conception, one of arrogance, which is then deflated, forcefully, to the status of a mere scab, an attached source of irritation of the skin – the problem is, therefore, the assumption that, as Rashi interprets on the Gemara in Yevamot 47b, the convert is an external individual who joins the people of Israel and brings with him the impurity of the alien, or of an extraneous culture:

“… converts are as harmful to the Jewish people as a leprous scab, as it is written (Isaiah 14:1) ‘But the LORD will pardon Jacob, and will again choose Israel, and will settle them on their own soil. And strangers shall join them and shall cleave to the House of Jacob.’ They shall join them, like a scab. For they hold on tight to their past conceptions and beliefs, and the Israelites the learn from them.”

There is in the Jewish tradition as strong current which conceives of Jewishness and the bond between the people and the Divine as exclusive: there is a Jewish culture, with its tradition, its borders its limits, its regulations, and its interpretational rules. And then there is the rest of the world, persistently trying to endanger that exclusivity and strenuously trying to challenge or even knock down the cultural uniqueness of Israel. Yet, there is a less prominent current which perceives Jewishness as a constantly developing concept vis-à-vis the presence of “others” – the Torah is filled with references to the importance of those “others” and I have already written on this matter on Pagine Ebraiche International. One of the few commentators who sees things differently is the Rosh (Asher ben Jehiel 1250-1327) providing the reader with a different perspective on the harsh opinions presented by the Tosafot in their commentary to Yevamot 47b: “For they [the converts] are not well formed in the rules and regulations, and eventually the Israelites learn from them their wrong praxis.” 

The Rosh writes in response:

“… some argue that they [the converts] cause the Shechina [Divine Presence] to leave the people of Israel due to their presence within the people, and God places his Divine Providence only upon families with deep roots. This is in no way true: for converts deserve to have Divine Providence placed upon them…” 

The problem, continues the Rosh, is not in the converts, but in the people of Israel themselves – because God provided an overwhelming number of rules and regulations with regard to converts and to the ways in which Jews-from-birth are required to respect them and safeguard them, the latter naturally have a great difficulty in accepting these aliens and thus come to see them as scabs and not as part of the people.


Yes, my fellow Jews, I am a "scab." And I will continue to present you with the uncomfortable perspective of one who is both within and without, both part of and alien. And you will continue to see me as erev rav, as a scab, as a painful infection. Indeed. And as long as you see me as an infection, you will be the infected one, and I will be merely forced to wait a little longer, for a more enlightened group of people who will finally be able to accept the existence of theological, halachic and yes, political ideas different from theirs. Converting is not a process of homologation into a cohesive body, but is, rather, the archetype of Jewish cultural and ethnic variety – a convert brings difference. And if one is unable to accept the challenge of confrontation, that difference will always be a painful and unpleasant scab on its unhealthy ideological skin. 

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Il Cuore Sigillato - di Motty Fogel

Il Cuore Sigillato

Motty Fogel (Yediot Aharonot, 24.7.2017) 

Di nuovo un omicidio, e di nuovo circolano immagini orribili, mi passano davanti e le vedo solo con la coda dell’occhio. Scorro velocemente le pagine internet, cerco di non passare davanti al giornalaio, e spero sempre che nessuno dei miei amici su Facebook decida di condividerle. 

Pubblicizzare le fotografie dalla scena di un massacro è un atto barbaro che porta ad un oscuramento della mente e delle emozioni. Le suddette immagini colpisco in tre modi. In primis, vengono colpite le vittime stesse, i loro parenti, vengono colpiti coloro i quali sono sopravvissuti ad attacchi terroristici del passato, risvegliando in loro traumi e memorie. 

Pubblicizzare quelle foto non colpisce solo noi che le vediamo, ma vanno ad influire anche su coloro i quali decidono di portarle all’attenzione dei propri contatti, va a colpire i fotografi, i grafici, i video editors e gli internet editors, nonché tutti coloro i quali sono costretti per forza di cose, a distaccarsi dalla situazione ritratta nelle foto onde poterle presentare nel modo più efficace. “Che ne pensi? Ci mettiamo una cornice rossa intorno? Oppure ingrandiamo il tutto e mettiamo la foto al centro?”

Tuttavia, le foto vanno a colpire soprattutto voi. La foto agisce sulla psiche di chi la vede come una droga, che viene somministrata in dosi sempre maggiori, allorché la dose non è mai sufficiente. Certo, è ovvio che la foto è orribile: tuttavia ci dobbiamo chiedere quanto possiamo rimanere inorriditi, quante volte possiamo vedere la stessa foto e sentire che qualcosa dentro il nostro cuore trema? C’è un limite all’orrore, oltre il quale il cuore si chiude su se stesso e si oscura. Trasmettere le foto per televisione vuol dire trasformare il massacro in un evento televisivo, non molto diverso dall’ennesimo episodio di “Game of Thrones.” Il massacro viene trasformato in una finzione, un guscio che al suo interno non ha nulla. 

Eppure c’è sempre qualcuno che spinge a pubblicizzarle, affermando ch’esse potranno colpire l’opinione pubblica mondiale. Supponiamo per un momento che ogni mezzo è davvero lecito per raggiungere il proprio fine. Supponiamo solo per un attimo. Rimane da chiederci quale sia questo fine. È forse colpire la sensibilità dell’opinione pubblica e far inorridire il mondo? È forse giustificare la nostra causa? Coloro i quali sono a favore di un pubblicizzare incondizionato di tali foto, portano solitamente come esempio la fotografia fatta al bambino siriano morto e portato a riva dalle correnti del mare. Quella foto in particolare era orribile per il semplice fatto che quel bambino non sembrava morto, ma semplicemente addormentato. Quello che colpì allora il pubblico mondiale fu lo spazio che separava l’apparenza dalla verità, la rappresentazione dalla notizia. Quel che inorridì allora fu la storia che stava dietro alla foto, e non la foto in se. 

Viviamo in un periodo in cui la cultura è prevalentemente visuale, ragione per la quale ogni notizia deve essere forte perché possa far presa sull’opinione pubblica. Ed è proprio questo il problema: l’incapacità di base negli spettatori a distinguere fra un massacro televisivo ed un omicidio vero. In questa folle corsa all’inorridire, la capacità dell’individuo a provare empatia viene sostituita dall’orrore e da un breve schioccare della lingua. Passando di foto in foto, noi, come osservatori, diventiamo sempre più 
Insensibili, mentre il cuore si racchiude su se stesso, sigillando se stesso e lasciando al di fuori l’orrore, lasciandoci incapaci (o forse semplicemente nolenti) a distinguere fra la rappresentazione e la verità. 

Pensate forse che quel sangue sulle pareti rappresenti l’evento stesso? Tre persone sono state trucidate mentre mangiavano insieme il pasto dello Shabbat, e l’orrore vero non è il sangue sul pavimento della cucina, ma le tre vite troncate, nonché le vite dei parenti e degli amici. L’inorridimento per quelle foto del sangue si spegnerà molto in fretta. La domanda che ci dobbiamo fare è: quanto rimarranno i nomi di quelle tre vittime nella coscienza collettiva? Yossi, Chaya e El’ad. Raccontate chi erano quelle tre vittime, raccontate cosa fecero nelle loro vite, raccontate del vuoto lasciato dalla loro morte, raccontate dei loro orfani, delle loro vedove, dei loro fratelli in lutto, del vuoto che questo massacro ha cavato nelle vite dei loro parenti. Grazie a questo raccontare e ripetere delle storie personali di queste vittime, si riuscirà ad ottenere un effetto di gran lunga più duraturo e profondo dell’ennesima foto orribile, dell’ennesima scena. 

Motty Fogel ha perso suo fratello Udi, che con la moglie Ruth e tre dei loro figli sono stati vittime di un attacco terroristico a Itamar.

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Mediocritas



Mediocritas

בין רגע לרגע
מרעה לרעה
מגירוי לגירוי
חלל
אין

אמצעי
בינוני
לא פה ולא שם
מקום של המתנה
תנועה מבולבלת
חיפוש טורדני
השתוקקות בוערת.

הֵיֶה
עצב
הושט ידיך אל החלל
האזן לשקט
הסתובב במעגליות
מצא אינסוף ומרכז
אין וחלל. 

4.6.2015

Monday, February 2, 2015

"Words, Words, Words": Language, Vision and the Semiotic Displacement of Shirat Haazinu.

In a world of useful people and of useful jobs, lost in the craziness of useful projects and necessary actions, I have had to come to terms with being useless, unnecessary, not part of any focused process. Literary scholars, like me for example, deal with the nature of literary fiction and invest a great effort into teaching students how literature reveals the constructed nature of all forms of representation. This may sound a tad post-modern and highfalutin, but I sincerely believe that the study of literary texts may teach us how to free ourselves from the constraints of foundationalisms, irreconcilable ideologies and ultimately to acquire a meta-position from which one may see that beliefs are ultimately arbitrary and not absolutely true. Literature, or in general the study of texts, may lead, I think, to see how things represented in them are always fictional, verbal illusions. In this way, the interpretation of literary texts and their understanding as verbally generated illusions, could offer society a critical perspective on the ideological systems by which beliefs are nourished and enforced as “true” – and it should be clear to my reader that among these systems one should include those that discount the special status of literary forms.

I would like to turn to Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and then use the tragedy's protagonist in order to elucidate my reading of Moses' poetic heritage and to its role in the history of the people of Israel. Hamlet is a play that stages the imperfect capacity of language to represent things, people, and states of mind. Against the background of a world that seems to have gone mad, in the joyful celebration of his mother's second marriage a month after his father's death, the young protagonist declares his incapacity to express in words what he has inside:

Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.  

Facial expressions, clothing, behaviors – all these are but "forms, moods, shapes" of being which can but represent in a ghostly manner that "which passeth show." The true denotation of things, whether they are states of mind or objects or historical events, is, in Hamlet's view, a mere lie. Words are not the natural signs of being, the visual substitutes of their referents, but are simply the "trappings and suits" of being. From this point on, in the life of the protagonist and of the audience, words will be the magical tools for the enactment of a miracle and a mirage – a miracle because the ethereal representation of a text appears to the reader to be frozen into an instant's vision – and a mirage because what the text conveys is nothing but an illusion, an impossible pictorial representation which vanishes the moment we stop reading. A text is a text is a text – and words are but, to use Hamlet's expression, "Words, words, words."

Despite the fact that the Revelation of Divine power immediately following the miraculous redemption of the People of Israel from Egypt certainly provides the latter, and us, with a moment of truth, of univocal meaning, that momentous event vanishes within their memory the moment they step into the labyrinthine meanders of the "desert." Although empowered by a historical event (the giving of the Law on Mt Sinai) conveying the presence, truth and undeniable meaning of Gd's word, the Torah seems then to convey the impossibility for this "truth" to withstand the erosion of time, human understanding and interpretation. Or, as I wish to argue, the latter is exactly the lesson we are called to learn – that truth is not a fixed ideal, immutable and eternal, but rather that it must change, and it must be considered as an ethereal ghost. In a way, when each one of us approaches the understanding of that truth, struggling to hear the voice of Gd on Sinai within the vivid descriptions of the Torah, all that we see is a mirage, an impossible picture that can and will stand only within the words of the text.

So here comes the difficult part now (undermining truth-claims is, I think, rather easy and fun): how do we maintain a tradition based on texts? Meaning: how can we build the foundations of any cultural endeavor? It is quite obvious to me that Moses, upon dying, had the same question on his mind. Like the dead king of Denmark in Shakespeare's play, Moses and his prophetic understanding of truth, his vision and conscious perception of Gd's words, are to us, following his death, nothing but ghostly apparitions, ethereal dreams we are invited to talk to, evoke, and confront.

Deuteronomy 31: "24 After Moses finished writing in a book the words of this law from beginning to end, 25 he gave this command to the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord: 26 “Take this Book of the Law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God. There it will remain as a witness against you. 27 For I know how rebellious and stiff-necked you are. If you have been rebellious against the Lord while I am still alive and with you, how much more will you rebel after I die! 28 Assemble before me all the elders of your tribes and all your officials, so that I can speak these words in their hearing and call the heavens and the earth to testify against them. 29 For I know that after my death you are sure to become utterly corrupt and to turn from the way I have commanded you. In days to come, disaster will fall on you because you will do evil in the sight of the Lord and arouse his anger by what your hands have made.”


The song of Moses is a poem, a lyric expression in which the prophetic author puts into the form of verses his vision of the people's future, and thereby creates a textual conscience for his stiff-necked audience. Let me say that again – the text as a receptacle of conscience. We are not to think, that is, that truth and presence are all we need to deal with history – the message Moses hands to his people upon dying is that we must engage the illusions of linguistic representation in the most creative of ways, in order to keep alive the text as both a miracle and a mirage. True, the words of the text are, ultimately, but "words, words, words" - and they can but create illusory representations of what "passeth show." But maybe, maybe, while lost in the meanders of a desert-like cosmos of conventionally defined signifiers and lost essential signifieds, we will learn to be more humble and accept other opinions as legitimate and necessary. After all, every understanding is the result of an erratic "antic disposition"…  

Thursday, January 15, 2015

A Dialogue is a Monologue of Two

A Dialogue is a Monologue of Two

"There are things in me which cannot be denoted - I am a floating cork on a sea of undetermined signifieds, a token with no type."

"Sir, what are you talking about? I have you all figured out. You're like an open book to me."

"No. I stand here in front of you, and as you trace the contours of my thoughts, I erase them. You cannot, nobody can. Not even I can. When I go about tracing those lines, I follow myself and erase those very lines."

"No. There is right and there is wrong. You cannot erase that line. There is a limit... yeah a line that cannot be trespassed."

"In all sincerity you are the player within the play who isn't even conscious he is a player. Moving on the stage of your memories, of your comforts, your days are spent in doing, saying, looking, staring even, yea gazing. You are both Holbein's Ambassadors and the anamorphotic skull in the middle of your being."

"There are things to be done. Things to be said."

"No. There are eyes to be probed, palms to be held in religious respect and kissed, there is the grammar of the universe to be sketched, there are tiny footprints on the sand to be followed all the way into a sea of unpronounced words. There are dreams to be grabbed, and moments to be lost. Parents to be disrespected. And there is your solitude to be tasted in all its bitterness - I banish you, banish you out of you, banish you into you, bsnish you from you."

"As I cry, allow me to embrace this dialogue, allow me to caress the light of your tribulation. Allow me."

"Voca me cum benedictis."

"Amen"