end of May 1978, during the days Confrontation spent " The unanalyzable " , including organized by René Major and bringing together psychoanalysts from different schools, I met Catherine Clement. She listened to a piece of my paper [1], supported in part on what I learned from reading the stories Martin Buber Hasidic - book that I was not concussed just making me discover at once a world "exotic " and captivating with a child of the Mediterranean, I was unaware of the existence - and it is my intention to write an article - short and " readable " - about them for Matin de Paris - daily newspaper (now defunct) near Michel Rocard, founded in 1977 by CEO Perdriel Claude Le Nouvel Observateur, Le Figaro to piece, commonly called Marie Le Patin by " connected " ...
Too happy, worried and conscious of my responsibility [!] - at the time, although few were those who had been exposed to the friendly, demonstrative and somewhat intrusive activism Lubavitch , their presence in places improbable and enthusiasm " missionary " - I sweat blood and water [!] and, after 15 days, Catherine Clement called to tell him that I think is finally reached a satisfactory result. And Catherine Clement, woman of many talents and the pen easy to answer: "You have been too long, I did it myself! " ...
following testimony this clause, found in a drawer during a move, with restoration of many parts then cut to stay in the format, beginning with the notes.
*
come out again, by Editions du Rocher, the Hasidic Stories Martin Buber [2]: what Wholesale book of 742 pages the size of a bestseller but is not really one. Yet a collection of Jewish stories ...
This is a reprint, it is welcome: the book had been missing for nearly 15 years, and it was regrettable. Indeed, Martin Buber (1878-1965), great man, a philosopher at the wrong character, inventive storyteller and folklorist like the brothers Grimm, or Brentano von Arnim, had begun to gather rich and multiple fragments an oral tradition that the Nazis failed annihilate the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe.
Buber's book relates stories (less than 10% of those he has collated over several decades) that circulated in Yiddish in hundreds of Hasidic communities in Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania and Russia on themselves, their masters, ways and beliefs, their opponents and their "neighbors." Hasidism was born around 1740 under the leadership of Israel Ben Eliezer (1700-1760), passed down to posterity under the name "Baal Shem Tov" (which means both "Runaway Jury good name - the name of God - and the master of good name [3]), following (in reaction to?) three major disasters that were slaughtered shortly before the Jewish people: the expulsion from Spain and the Iberian Peninsula between 1492 and 1497 and the persecution that followed the massacres in Ukraine in the hands of the Cossacks of Bogdan Chmelniski between 1648 and 1658, and the fall of Shabtai Tzvi, the false messiah and Kabbalist transgressor who eventually embraced Islam in 1666, not without having created an immense fervor and foolish hopes in the Jewish masses in Europe and East, convinced that the time of redemption had come.
Hasidism ( Hassid = true) is a mystical movement People strongly inspired by Isaac Luria (1534-1572), most famous Kabbalists of Safed (Upper Galilee), and [ Sefer ha ] Zohar ( Book of Splendor), esoteric commentary of the Torah [4], as having "received," piped the post-messianic fervor Sabbatean remained outstanding and temperate messianic impatience she had nurtured. - It will eventually enact that "it is forbidden to hasten the coming of the Messiah" [5]. Movement stated opposition to normative Judaism rabbis mostly concerned about the "coming world" with its insistence on strict compliance with the rules and traditional, mainly on Jewish learning, pushing steadily towards the margins of the multitudes, too busy trying to survive in this world, no longer find the time to learn as much as they should ... This movement, making room for non-scientists, will experience a quick favor and meet with hostility from advocates of strict tradition.
Thus will be born in the race but also the joy (which is a theme of inspiration constant movement) devoted many communities, first time [5] not so much the study of Torah in the text, and the observation and imitation of a master charismatic personality , an exceptional man who knows how to expose them, which in a sense, the "incarnate" grouped around a tzaddik (Wise, Voltaire, who held the Jewish nation for "abhorrent and inimical to mankind, "wrote Zadig, to make the hero of philosophical tales ...), ie a rabbi , disciples limited number (it should be acceptance by the rabbi ) on the curls, beard, black Levites (as the Polish gentry of the time), watching a demonstrative piety willingly oblivious schedules (those of the three daily services, including pending when the concentration , considered necessary for effective prayer, is the highest), piety culminating in ecstasy and dance, while refusing peremptorily mortifications. - Thus, the Hasidim consumed alcohol willingly to support and stimulate the body ... Rehabilitation - up a certain point.
But that does not stop here: these stories are not elements of a great chapter of history of religions, history of religiosity rather, better organization of socius and communication. Buber's book is not a book of theology: he does not speak of God or rite, but there is no edifying. The major figures of Hasidism, the Rebbe legendary and famous Tsaddikim are certainly masters, but they do not "really" what they have and they are authorities, but they do not decide, despite appearances: they tell stories [7], stories of uncertainties, ambiguities, doubts and always feel to come. And their followers respect as they can, no other model than the short-legalistic religious literature they have, but with the conviction that "the divine primordial light is infused with the tzaddik , [that] his person she passes in his works [that] it also happens in stories that relate [8].
precious book, therefore, a testimony to a world, that of the shtetl (same town or small city with a Jewish majority), and a way of life virtually disappeared as a result of persecution, massacres, migration and modernity; lifestyle of Europe generally ignored the West along which he immediately flourished, and many of those who had deserted to join the "advancing civilization", Vienna, Berlin, London or Paris, did not want to know.
Book that also brings in another register, substantially complicate the figure of maître-à-penser/maître-à-vivre and help, among other things, understand how transfer and transfer-cons outside the analytic treatment and better measure how heavy threat of madness, can be a virtual cult of personality except when he is not a master of education dedicated to re- said inspired a tradition thousands of years old but with a who thinks he is an inventor [9], or alternatively, to seize on the emergence of a strong impulse, gradually released from the framework "religious" will, for example, created a dense literature, literature "Jewish" New World (Bashevis Singer Bellow, Malamud, Roth, Richler, West, etc.). S'étaye showing what, how to build Jewish humor (too well known, that is to say, misunderstood) as a set of statements repeatedly shifted "serious" for multiple meanings and travel skeptical.
Stories, denoted, connoted but without fixed referent, producing a common space, a storyteller, "narrated" that only authorized for themselves in the belief being that by which the "first," reported the story, try to be narrators in turn [10]. More than a game on the talented and bitter words, because the world is rough and life as much threatened by poverty than by pogroms, a strictly aesthetic policy.
Freud does not make a mistake in the joke and its relationship with the unconscious (1905), but he did it awkwardly, by the band, because that he could not fail to recognize her parents poor (very poor themselves) - his own father, Jacob, was a former Hasid - at the same time he could not not do it, because it had some difficulty accepting an obvious parentage, while he was busy asserting Viennese is to say, "enlightened" and founder ... Still, Jewish humor has close relationship with a certain dynamic of the Freudian unconscious, and not the least of these interests Hassidic Tales of the show that so often unexpected.
continued ...
Notes:
[1] RZ "Un air de famille" in The unanalyzable , Paris, Editions Confrontations, 1979, pp. 131-140.
[2] Martin Buber, Hasidic stories, translated from German by Armel Guerne, Monaco, Editions du Rocher, 1978.
[3] Many "miracle workers" have worn before or after Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov nickname, which refers to a supposed ability to make use of the "name deployed" the God- tetragrammaton to harness the forces of darkness, Israel ben Eliezer is the only one to be rated as title, piety glowing removing any ambiguity.
[4] book traditionally attributed to attributed to Shimon Bar Yochai (II th century) but would have been written (in Aramaic) by a English rabbi, Moses ben Shem Tov de Leon (1240-1305) or his entourage, between 1270 and 1280.
[5] By the early nineteenth century e, as we know [!], This impatience will overflow the frame, take the Jews, not Jews, infidels and atheists, migrate to western Europe ( but also to the east) and affect the political arena under the name of nationalism but also of Revolution ...
[6] The generations that follow that of the Baal Shem Tov will operate a kind of return, while maintaining their interest in Kabbalah, but by limiting its direct study of the "literati" and combining the newly acquired fervor and traditional Jewish study focused on the canonical texts (Talmud, commentaries and reviews of reviews), significantly reducing the gap with the traditionalists.
[7] "... Rabbi Yaakov Yosef was still Rav of Sharigrod [now Shargorod, Ukraine ] - and strongly opposed ... to the Hasidic way - when the city came in one morning, at a time when the herds are pastured, a man whom nobody knew and who descended car in the middle of Market Square. Advising any one who went there with his cows, he called and went straight out to tell him a story so compelling ... that man was unable to leave. A few words from the story being dropped into the ear of another way, while it was decided to move on, not least the fact lent, also, the ear, came and stood there. And soon there was a whole circle of enthusiastic listeners around the storyteller, and the crowd kept growing. In numbers, he also entirely under the spell, was the servant of the House of Prayer, edge on his way when he went in haste to open the doors. Rabbi, in fact, went there about eight hours - it was summer - and it was that the doors were open before ...
At eight o'clock, therefore, Rav coming for prayer ... door was shut ... Man punctual, and very likely away from character, that anger once took [it] went, full of rage, looking for the ... He did not have far to go, having found almost immediately face to face with him in Street. The Baal Shem Tov, in fact - because he was the narrator - had, as he spoke, waved to the attendant and told him he should go, and the man was gone on the run ...
... Rabbi asked him why he had so violently failed in its task, and why there was not anyone of those who were still is usual. The servant replied that all those who went to the house of prayer had been, like him, stopped halfway by the teller, there, and the wonderful story he told ... Rabbi was forced this morning , said only the morning service, and when he had finished, he sent his servant on the Market Square, with orders to bring him overseas. "I will fight for yards!" ...
In the meantime, the Baal Shem Tov, who had finished his story ... he went to the tavern where the servant finally join him, while fulfilling the commission.
The Baal Shem Tov obtempéra on time and, pipe in mouth, went straight to the Rav ... 'What's got into you, he broke with authority ... to stop people who go to prayer?
- Rebbe calmly replied the Baal Shem Tov, it is not healthy for you to take that. Instead, let me tell you a story ... '"Buber, op. cit. , pp. 107-108.
[8] Ibid . , P. 3. Illustration of the singular performative power of this type of story: "One day we asked a Rabbi (whose grandfather had been a disciple of the Baal Shem) to tell a story, he replied: 'A story, he We have to tell it so that it acts and is a relief in itself '. Then he gave this account: "My grandfather was limping severely. As he was asked to tell something of his Lord, he began to recount how the holy Baal Shem, when he prayed, danced and hopped on the spot. And, to show clearly how the Master did, my grandfather, while telling, stood up and carried away by his story, hopped and danced himself. From that hour he was healed '... " Ibid. , P. 4 (translation slightly modified).
[9] book which, incidentally, may shed a new light on the overall functioning of trotzkisme - with his many dissents - after the forced exile of Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein said, but also that some cells Communist Party of atypical at the time of their glory, or that of some seminars in philosophy and psychoanalysis ...
[10] Exit to be roundly scolded for forgetting that the great thing is that the living word, the utterance deploying effects of divestiture here-now and not the statement - always in reserve, still waiting for a certified interpreter who rescue him and, leaving himself, he would restore some strength:
"A disciple of the Baal Chem secretly took his teachings in writing. One day, the Baal Shem, who saw a demon that ran through the house with a book under his arm, asked him: 'What book are you there ... so? " ... And the devil said, 'This is the book that you are the author! "
The Baal Shem and learned that there was someone who secretly wrote down his words. He gathered his disciples and said: 'What is he among you who takes a copy of what I teach you? " The disciple who had taken notes and declared himself brought to the Master what he had recorded. Length, page after page, the Baal Shem took knowledge. Then he said: 'There is not a single word I have spoken! You did not listen for God's sake, the powers of evil have taken over you, and your ears have heard what I did not say, '" Ibid. , P. 120 (amended translation).
Short stories between 'haverim ... Copyright © 1978-2010 Richard Zrehen
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