There was a huge crowd of people at Congregation Ansche Chesed for Yom Kippur in the deep well of the synagogue and its liturgical sound. Each person was an ocean, full with their own thought, singular and together. So I can only speak for myself. The terrible violence in Israel and Gaza and the West Bank came in and out of mind, also the synagogue shooting that morning at the Sons of Jacob in Ontario, Canada, which I read about that morning before the mile walk to shul down Amsterdam Avenue.
What struck me this year from the Mahzor was not the Ashamnu we’ve been guilty, we betrayed. For all that the confessional is phrased in the collective voice of the first person plural, the Viddui remains deeply personal, even intimate, not a public spectacle conferring a single and imposed moral meaning or communal rebuke. In synch with the overriding sense of death and human frailty that marks a core of the High Holiday liturgy, I was attuned this year less to guilt than to something more akin to grief.
Liberal and progressive Judaism, of course, has always loved the Yom Kippur reading from Isaiah 58. What draws attention to itself is that very spectacle, the searing critique of empty religious ritual and clarion call to social justice. Is this the fast, I desire,?! No, this this is the fast, I desire, etc. etc. In the context of Israel and Palestine, a cynic regarding the politics of Isaiah 58 might add that the prophet reminds us also, “not to ignore your own kin” (58:7).
At this political moment, a moment of terrible trauma and social violence, what does Yom Kippur want for people if not a measure of quiet? What caught my eye instead were these few lines, also from the haftarah and also from Isaiah, which I have never actually noticed. About the wicked and mercy for those who mourn, God says, “I struck them and turned away in My wrath. Though stubborn (they follow the way of their hearts), I saw their paths and will heal them. I will guide them and grant solace to comfort them, and to the mourners among them.” God says, “Peace, peace to the far and to the near.” Human evil, however, remains evil –like “the troubled sea which cannot be quiet, whose waters toss up mire and mud.” “‘There is no peace,’ said my God, ‘for the wicked’” (57: 17-21, Robert Alter trans., altered).
With a constant eye on moral muck and mire, Yom Kippur is a “thing” that thinks about death and suffering through the prism of mercy more than it is one that thinks about justice and judgment or even the Kingdom of God. Most of the English translations, like the ones in the Machzor, miss how this turbulence is juxtaposed with the words “peace” and “comfort.” These are unlike the words or dissonant notes of moral repentance wrapped in pollical rebuke, which might ring false just as often as not –because the ritual is, to one degree, private, not just social.
The world is riddled by death and destruction, the terrible divine decrees, violence and suffering, and full of lies; all of us are responsible and guilty, all of us without exception, myself especially. From the virtual place and power of the U’Netaneh Tokef, the introspective work of Yom Kippur, the entire purpose of it, is to move the Holy One off the Throne of Judgment and onto the Throne of Mercy.
(photo credit: Meg Karalis, Rooster and Chicken at New York State Fair)
Modern Almohads deface an icon with a symbol in Cordoba, Spain. You can read about this assault on Jewish cultural memory and image of human dignity here. According to Ynet, “The monument was created in 1964 by Spanish sculptor Amadeo Ruiz Olmos to mark 760 years since Maimonides’ death. It was inaugurated as part of cultural events dedicated to Spain’s Jewish heritage. The statue underwent restoration and conservation work in 2009.”
Martin Buber was a Viennese philosopher, a theater director, an aesthete, a cat lover, and a Jew. Like many of the fin de siècle set, he had a hunger for immediacy which clashed with an internalized Germanic culture of weight and precision, one sustained by a near-constant ingestion of books. Read from a present where it seems like nobody reads, the fear of the written word that permeated Buber’s world seems quaint, if not delusional. But if we transfer that fear from books to screens it’s more understandable and helps explain why Buber pits dialogue against the world of the grid: the world where everything has its place, whether on a page, in a network, or as part of a model. In rejecting the grid, Buber has lots of company, good and bad, but he stands apart because his work on dialogue and is neither mystifying nor irrational. Buber’s writing can be treacly or fantastical, but his ideas are not. Dialogue is strange, but not irrational; relationships are confusing, but not incoherent, and while we may have grown unaccustomed to reasoning about these matters, that does not make them unreasonable.
This book is about dialogue with entities that don’t use language. In simple terms, it’s about talking-to creatures that don’t speak. Talking-to them, not talking-about them. But what is this “dialogue,” and how much does it differ from the standard definition of the word? Buber’s notion of dialogue (Zwiesprache) is modeled on human conversation but covers much more than discussion. Dialogue is bigger than conversation, but sparser in detail. If we strip dialogue down to the beams we can define it like this: Dialogue is an attentive and reciprocal relationship, a relationship where we are directed toward another creature. Conversation is just one type of dialogue, although it is perhaps the easiest way into the concept. [1]
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Why this word?
The word in question is dialogue, or Zwiesprache. But why stick with this overused term, one worn near to death by human resources departments and wellness clichés? And why use a term that suggests speech, when the goal is to think about beings that don’t speak?
I’ve a few reasons. First, dialogue evokes a common phenomenon, an experience we’ve all (hopefully) had: an intense, reciprocal, back-and-forth conversation. True, by dialogue, I mean something broader—a much larger set of relationships of which conversation is only a part. Dialogue is a type of relationship, and conversation is merely one type of dialogue. Still, for many, the experience of a powerful conversation is the easiest way to access the broader concept of dialogue. Like Buber, I merely extend the term so that it also covers relationships where there is no speech and where our partner is not human. [5]
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Domestic Maintenance
Dialogue requires a maintenance budget—we cannot spend everything on the encounter. While the I-You encounter establishes its own place and time, dialogue veers in and out of the space-time of the absolute encounter, so it needs a place to be contained and protected. It is often best if this place cultivates and supports several kinds of encounters that work together to form dialogues. The same comforts that facilitate human dialogues can also inspire nonhuman encounters. This is why the domestic—however fraught—is a chief place for nonhuman dialogue.
The domestic support systems required by human dialogue are hidden, but nonhuman dialogue exposes them. Human speech, especially between friends, often seems effortless, weightless and placeless, in a word: easy. Dialogue with mute beings is different, it is troublesome, and for this reason the forces which sustain it are more conspicuous. Nowhere are dialogue’s supports more visible than in the home, where the forces which sustain the domestic also create an atmosphere that encourages dialogues. In this book I avoid idealized, withdrawn, or aseptic concepts of the home, or any model where the family lives outside of time and politics. The desire to live outside of history, while perfectly understandable, is a trap. Instead, I use a concept of the home drawn from Jewish political thought and psychoanalysis. Seen as such, the home is set within politics and history, even as it develops a membrane to protect itself from them. Building and protecting this membrane provides dialogue with the space it requires. [12]
HOMES: Domesticity and Conflict
The edifice of twentieth-century Jewish thought has many chambers, and surely one of its most dazzling is the philosophy of relationships. But philosophy untempered by materialism tends to present relationships as placeless: They occur between men of good intention and similar income and seem to float above the world. There is a logic to this placelessness. From the perspective of someone in the midst of an encounter, the background does seem to recede; the location feels less important than the happening. But dialogue takes place over time and needs to be sustained even as we fade in and out of it. When we think about how to sustain dialogue place moves from the margins toward the center of our thinking. Some places are more conducive to dialogue than others; some places contain and shelter dialogues better than others. [14]
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The domestic is often lazily thought of as an unimportant or castrated space, much as the domestic animal is considered an unimportant or castrated wild animal. If we think of the domestic as a substandard or less-real space or consider the term domestication to be as a slur, we impoverish our thinking about dialogue and how to cultivate it. Conversely, to valorize the domestic, as if it were intrinsically good, is to instrumentalize it, to turn it into a faddish weapon of the weak. [15]
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From the avuncular to the paternal, the queer enclave or the hippie commune, what all these domestic spaces share, even the most antiseptic suburban monument to fear, is that countless creatures dwell in them. But of these creatures, only a few really enter our dialogical space. Granted, some of us may speak with spiders, but who has had regular conversations with silverfish? One should not too blithely embrace our involvement with companion species. Yes, my skin is covered with bugs, but I don’t notice or care about them. My house was “home” to many stray children, especially those with artistic inclinations. My mother adopted them, the walls adopted mice, the chimney adopted bats, and so on, but the full members of the household—meaning those able to speak and be heard—were the humans and the pets.
This may be good, it may be bad, but it’s how the domestic works: It is a selectively permeable space, not an open one. Slaughtering moths without a thought, we plant flowers for monarchs in our front yards. Culture and location determine which animals are allowed in: Dialogically speaking, “wild” animals are merely animals you don’t usually encounter. A friend of mine grew up in a swarm, surrounded by birds (literally hundreds of them), and had a goat for a pet. I can barely imagine this, and it sounds horrifying to me. One person’s wilderness is another person’s house. We wake in an unseen swarm, but alongside only a few [24]
ANIMALS: Communication and Language
What does Buber mean when he says that we can dialogue with creatures who cannot speak? Typically, dialogue is a certain use of language, a type of talking, so how is it possible without speech? To understand this, we’ll look at our relationships with animals, what Buber calls the “threshold” of language: “Here the relationship vibrates in the dark and remains below language.” It’s a good place to start because many of us already have language-like relationships with animals. After exploring the hopelessly broad notion of animal we will move on to domestic animals and eventually trade them in for the even more specific Felis catus (house cat).
There is a gap between humans and nonhuman animals. This gap and what it means pose a serious difficulty, one that many theorists try to overcome by fiat. Despite our desire to emphasize our overlapping lives, the chasms between humans and nonhumans remain, and no effusive prose can change this. The most noticeable of these gaps is language. Unsupported by language, animal dialogues face complications that rarely affect human relations. When ensuring that both conversants are on the same page, that we are not projecting our thoughts and feelings onto our partner, animal dialogue presents different dilemmas than human conversation does. Although these difficulties may bedevil practice, they are an asset for theory: It’s easier to think about something when its cracks are showing. Spoken language makes dialogue easy, and when things are easy and straightforward, why think about them? The ability to do things with words, to treat words as things, is an extraordinary power. But speech, because it is facile, obscures its own conditions [26]
DOMESTIC CATS: Anxiety and Singularity
Cats are useless, and the history of their domestication reflects this. Cats moved in because they wanted to, and we kept them because we like them. Domestication has changed cats, but they are still very much like their undomesticated cousins. The primary differences between the two are size and sociality. Domestic cats are smaller, more communicative, and more social, whereas Felis silvestris lybica are solitary; domestic cats, even when running wild, enjoy the existence of other cats. Finally, the range and frequency of their sounds increase (such as the meows made when they want attention), and “apart from when they are in heat . . . and when they are angry, adult cats do not usually ‘talk’ to each other. The sounds they make are mostly for our human ears.” Cats communicate with us and for us. The same can be said of our conversations with them. [39]
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The animal—in this case, the cat—is the preeminent bearer of anxiety about becoming because the animal knows anxiety in a way we cannot. Much as speech irrevocably transforms our sense of self, it also eases our nervousness about becoming by hiding it from us. The cat “owns” anxiety because it knows and expresses it better than we can.[44]
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How do you dialogue with a cat? By talking to it, petting it, and—for the two writers’ cats discussed here—looking at it looking at you. Dialogue is a common relationship with uncommon (singular) beings. The move between the general categories of the relation and the singularity of the creatures involved (between cats in general and a specific cat) requires us to mobilize tools and methods both within and outside of dialogue. This book stands outside of dialogue, the moving of a boundary by Derrida’s cat, within it. What we cannot do is pretend these lines have been canceled or that all our conversation partners are the same. Groups and lines, kinds and types, these cannot be overcome by fiat, and if we try to do so, we end up being unjust to the beings we encounter. It would be not only cruel to expect the same kind of dialogue from a baby as from an adult or from a cat as a dog; it would also be stupid. [57]
PLANTS: Dispersion and Surfaces
Animals, especially mammals, are probably the easiest nonhumans to dialogue with. There are various reasons for this—many animals are social, emit sounds, and use sign systems—but movement is central. Animals move in roughly the same way and at the same tempo as humans do; both the tortoise and the hare possess locomotion and gestures on which we can base a folk psychology. With animals, Buber’s belief in nonhuman encounters is easily accepted. This is not the case for things that don’t move or, like plants, that move very differently than we do. The slow movement of plant life can, however, help attune us to the time of dialogue. Where the I-You encounter is fast and takes only an instant—or, at most, a moment— dialogue can be stretched out over days or years, a fact easily missed when we restrict ourselves to human communication. Once more, it is the difficulties of plant dialogues that make them useful for theory. [58]
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A significant portion of modern Jewish philosophy is concerned with interpretation. The brief flourishings of interest in Jewish thought are almost always driven by this interest in interpretation. It is hermeneutics—not the ethical monotheism industrial complex—that Jewish thought contributes to larger discourses. But Jewish interpretive thought is often concerned exclusively with writing. The fact that most creatures don’t read has led too many Jewish philosophers to ignore the natural world as uncomprehending and uninteresting. This is a mistake. It does not take much imagination to extend the concept of hermeneutics beyond the literate human (even if writing remains the focus of hermeneutics). Indeed, when Freud claims, “Psychoanalysis was above all an art of interpretation,” he shows us a way interpretation can be extended to nontextual material realms (such as sex and shitting). [71] …
It might seem strange to say interpretation is more basic than knowing, but we find instances of interpretation long before we find instances of knowing. At the very least, plant interpretation is more like our interpretation than plant knowing is like our knowing. [72]
BABIES: Noise and the Nursery
Babies are, in a literal sense, prelinguistic, as most of them are on their way to language. Loud and aggressive communicators, babies signal with indexes and icons, screams and cries, not words. Not all babies will develop into language, but (I assume) you and other readers of this book are ex-babies. This embarrassing fact might lead one to expect that baby dialogue would be easy for us, or at least easier than others discussed in this book: Although I have never been a cat or a tree, I have been a baby. But my previous job experience offers me little guidance. I have no recollection of being a baby, and my own infants were as foreign to me as were my cats. Perhaps more so. One of my cats lived with me for twenty-one years, whereas infancy is temporary; once you’re used to it, it’s gone. [77]
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I have known people, real people, who believe you can talk to God, but who do not extend the same courtesy to babies. I understand: Babies are loud, chaotic, and often disgusting. …
The expressive does not thrum and pulse like the divine spheres; rather, it spits and wails. Babies take up inside our walls and pull us into inhuman dialogues through play and feeding. With babies, more than any other being discussed, the domestic sphere is essential to cultivating dialogue; without some form of it, the baby is likely to die. So, we build and reinforce the domus to hold the baby as it moves toward language and locomotion. These little gods of noise can easily destroy a home, and so broader circles (family, neighbors, friends) often come to help maintain the space for the first period after birth. Ideally, we can give these monsters a place of stability, creating a world that does not move apace with the vortex of becoming that rages in the streets. [93]
SENSUALITY: Tools, Crafts, Decoration
I’ve made it easy on myself by sticking to living beings. This is because life can be thought of as engaging in reciprocal, hermeneutic relationships. Even if these relationships are strange, it’s not too difficult to see how we can join them. But nonliving beings? “Dead” matter? Even this latter term is too much—a stone is not even dead. And yet our relationships with nonliving things (or “mere things”—tone matters here) can be dialogical: pianos, knives, chisels, cars, banisters, pens, laptops, and so on. These things, even manufactured things, can enter reciprocal relationships.
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To understand this, we will examine the tools we use to craft things. Tools allow us to see dialogue within instrumental relationships and challenge the cliché that we shouldn’t treat people like things.[95]
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Nowhere is it harder for me to determine whether a relationship is dialogical or merely comforting than with manufactured objects. It’s easier to do so with repairing and maintaining. When I repair a wall, I am trying to maintain a space while also working with it in a manner that sometimes seems reciprocal, if hostile. The tools I use vacillate between being media through which I engage material, and being themselves a kind of conversation partner. With cooking, it is easier to dialogue. With arts, crafts, and decoration, it is easier still. Immersed in material, I can work with it to find and create things. And there is something of a circle here. With decoration, the attempt to maintain a space that encourages dialogue (through its warmth or richness) can easily veer into becoming a dialogue itself. And so on until we die. [110]
Walter Benjamin made the New Angel into an intellectual icon. The Angel Applicant by Paul Klee from 1939 is a different creature with nothing messianic about him. His eyes are downcast and blackened, looking at nothing past his own misery caught in time under the melancholy of a crescent moon. One expects nothing from him. Not blown by the winds of history, he is ugly and dog-faced.
[Klee] covered a sheet of newspaper with black gouache on which he then drew the outlines of the figure and of the crescent moon with a thick, soft graphite pencil. Then he filled in these forms with a thin white wash. It is the black ground peeking through the white pigment that gives this creature its ghostly shimmer.
Netzaḥ Yisrael (1588/1589) by the Maharal of Prague Themed for the fast day of Tisha b’Av is themed on place and time, the world of non-existence, the exile of Israel, and the coming of the Messiah, The title trades off the homology in the Hebrew term between “eternity” and “victory.” We see that homology at work in the introduction, where the Maharal writes, “God has granted Israel eternity, ensuring they will not perish, despite their harsh and heavy exile. It will also be shown that God Himself is eternal, victorious over the fourth kingdom that currently holds dominion” (introduction). After the “glory of Israel” the supernatural Torah that is the topic of his book Tiferet Yisrael, the Maharal turns in this text on the “eternity of Israel,” conceived as a supernatural object.
The World of non-existence: The big world-picture of the Maharal is a baroque composition of connections marked by a metaphysical array of opposites and separation (dark/light, exile/redemption). Chapters 5-10 are long and largely based upon historical legend drawn from rabbinic sources about the destruction of Jerusalem, Tur Malka, and Beitar, and the fate of the evil emperor Titus killed by a virtual mosquito that lodged in his skull. The philosophical frame is founded on the theory that the knowledge of all things stems from opposites and opposition (chapter 1). In this metaphysical cum political construction, there is this world and there is the world to come, Jacob and Esau (chapter 15), the non-existence of total destruction and the miracle of new existence. The level of the Messiah is separate from this natural and physical world; the physical opposes the non-physical and stands in opposition to the Messiah (chapter 28, 34).
Nature and super-nature: This is an early modern book whose visionary place and eschatological time are this world and the future. Nature and the transformation of nature into a super-nature are key to the futurism of the Netzaḥ Yisrael. Nature is pure potential manifesting the power of reception and sustained existence. The true cause of a thing is understood as that which sustains the existence of the created being or entity (chapter 1). Natural is the Land of Israel, whose beauty and vitality is like that of a deer (chapter 6). Fire is associated with Israel (chapter 5). Rome, or rather Christendom, the 4th Kingdom, is associated under the sign of a red sun (chapter?). Natural being or matter is epitomized by the power of animal sensation, something human beings lack; because human beings, due to the importance of their form, are not designated to receive sensation as animals are. Due to their greater simplicity, animals sense more from the higher realms than humans, who are not as simple (chapter 26). The earth is particularly prepared for this, to bring forth beings into actuality, whether fruits or other things (chapter 34). In the messianic era, nature becomes supernatural; the supernatural earth-tree-man producing perfect fruit constantly. Regarding humans and the fruit of the tree, they will produce offspring every day, and regarding the earth, it is said that it will produce complete things (chapter 50).
The world is upside down. The world of nature rests upon a basic inversion, which is ultimately overcome, even in its perfected form. “Man” himself is an inverted tree: the tree’s life comes from the earth, while man’s life, his soul, comes from the heavens (chapter 7). This inversion is essential to understanding the non-existence of exile. The 4th Kingdom (Edom/Rome/Christendom) is monstrous power, huge in size, its cities filled with multitudes of people, sound, and heat that manifest the power of destruction and non-existence itself (chapters 17, 26). The non-existence of the 4th Kingdom is like a peel to the kingdom of Israel. Just as the beginning of the fruit’s growth lies within the peel, when the fruit reaches its perfection, the peel falls off and separates from it (chapter 28).
Israel: The “eternity of Israel” is changeless because of the bond with God, who owns them, makes them supernatural, Israel the first nation (chapter 10). As such, Israel is an object, the OBJECT of God’s possession (chapter 11).Beyond good and evil, Israel is not suited for this world (chapter 15). The election or covenant of Israel is eternal, involves the klal, is not specific or individual. For that reason, the covenant between and God and Israel does not depend upon morality or ethics, or piety, or mitzvot, or righteousness. Israel is, if anything, predisposed uniquely to the yetzer ha’ra, the evil inclination, precisely because of their high level and Torah (chapter 2). The covenant is made with them not because they are individuals, but only because of the nation, that is, the name of Israel, because Israel is in the image of God. (chapter 11). The Maharal remarks upon the complete adherence of Israel to God, one alongside the other, the two compared to two identical date palms (chapter 12). In the image of God, Israel in exile is a separate form, their bad traits originating from inherent excellence. Their stiff-necked character comes from the fact that Israel possesses a distinct, non-physical soul. As potential, matter is susceptible to influence and is not a stable thing; whereas that which is distinct and dominated by form is not influenced to accept change, but rather stands firm (chapters 14, 25). Israel is associated with fire, the nations with water. When mingled, water consumes fire. When set at a distance, fire dries up water.
Exile is nature out of order, namely non-existence and death which is the most opposite and terrible change. The essence of exile is division and dissension (chapters 1, 25). The ultimate purpose or end is to be nivdal or separate (chapter 42) and simple [chapter 41??]. As viewed in this metaphysics of opposites, “the days of the Messiah will be a new existence that is not of this world.” The Maharal cites the Babylonian sages (Sanhedrin 99a) that the days of the Messiah are a world unto itself” (chapter 46). In what is, indeed, a lachrymose version of Jewish history, the suffering and calamities of the Jews in exile are beyond belief (chapter 49?). In this world of inter-connecting opposites, the greatness of Israel is revealed in the humiliation and dispersion in exile (chapter 49). But rather than put the onus of destruction, on the sins of Israel, the Maharal sets it on God. What is now called a defect in existence is “entirely attributed” to God who was the actor or agent responsible for the damage in the first place and from whose action the defect came. And since the defect which is suffering and non-existence came from God, it is fitting that God completes it so that no defect remains from Him, only complete repair (chapter 61).
Land of Israel: More than time, place occupies the key point in this conceptual world, about which there is a basic contradiction relating to the Land of Israel. There is, to be sure, what is taken by many to be a proto-Zionist assumption that the natural place for Israel is in their Land, that the exile is essentially unnatural (chapter 24). Israel is exiled because the spies despised the Land of Israel (chapter 20). But for the Maharal, the Land of Israel will be blessed in everything when the Messiah comes (chapter 50). What complicates the Zionist reading of the Maharal is the counterpoint, which is that the Land of Israel is not the “natural” place for Israel. If the Land was a natural place for Israel, and if the spies had longed for the Land, then they would have remained eternal. But the generation of the spies wept an empty weeping and did not want to come into the Land. This teaches that the Land is not the natural place for Israel, that everything returns to God, and that is why they would not remain there (chapter 8). The exile is due to the fact that Israel, as a possession of God, is not suited for this world (chapter 15).
Jerusalem is not a natural city. Jerusalem is a divine city; and any Object that already had a divine status will increase in holiness and divine status beyond what it had before. Made of precious stones, the wall and the gate are the form of the place. The archangel Michael, who is in charge of water, said that the form of the holy city should be goodness, clinging to kindness and goodness. Therefore, the wall should be of shoham, the archangel Gabriel, who is judgment, said that the form of the place should be yashpeh, whose color indicates judgment. Because God’s Name includes everything, makesJerusalem a city that includes everything; judgment and kindness. In the future, when a person will be a holy house, and the soul, which is a spark from the Blessed Name, will reside in it, just as there was a spark of His glory in the Temple. The height of a person will be two hundred, corresponding to both matter and form, and neither will be nullified by the other. Cloud is separated from the earth by three parasangs. This explains the supreme holiness of Jerusalem (chapter 51).
The Temple: The Temple is the holy place of connection between upper and lower. Called mountain, field, house by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Temple is God’s dwelling with the lower beings, while the Temple is elevated above everything. The Temple will sing. The Temple is the completeness of the world and a fulcrum of divine power. The destruction of the Temple, even though it was done by the nations, is attributed to God due to the great power involved in its destruction, which was an act of strict justice, and this act is attributed to the Holy One, blessed be He. “The Temple is called ‘Ariel’ because of its great power. But when the Blessed Name departs from ‘Ariel,’ leaving only ‘Ari,’ the holy power that was in the Temple is lacking, and the power of ‘Arieh’ prevails over ‘Ari,’ destroying ‘Ariel.’” (chapters 52, 55, 61)
The Messiah: The anti-matter of the Messiah is a divine emblem of time and song. Physical things are under the rule of time. It is therefore not difficult that the footsteps of the Messiah are delayed, because the time suitable for him is at the end of time (chapter 27). At the gates of Rome, Messiah can come any day “today” because the Messiah is completely non-natural and non-physical, and what is non-physical is not under time (chapter 28). Though the Messiah tarry, wait and receive reward. Don’t calculate the end lest people despair and stop waiting (chapter 31). The coming of the Messiah is a new existence that will destroy the first existence preceding it (chapter 32). The greatness of the Messiah is opposed by the natural world, and there therefore no end to the sufferings of the Messiah, because the natural world opposes the divine matter. The existence of the Messiah is only in potential, not actual until the future. This future will be a new world, a separate world, and he will no longer have any opposition, and he will no longer suffer (chapter 34). A sign of the coming of the Messiah is total destruction, of all things, natural things, man-made artificial things (which are not as susceptible ordinarily to damage), and intellectual beings (even for scholars) (chapter 39). At the end, no longer physical, the human person and the world become divine, and God is one. Messiah unites and connects everything in the world as one, i.e. including the nations, i.e. the first 3 Kingdoms, except for the 4th Kingdom. Song is essential to the Messiah who comes when the sherakrak bird, indicating mercy and connection, sits on the earth whistles (chapters 41, 43). The world’s perfection beyond nature operates in a supernatural manner. When a person is in complete perfection, he gives a song and praise to the One from whom that perfection comes (chapter 43).
Also regarding the time of the Messiah and the end of exile is the social separation of Israel. The Maharal insists that Israel has to be especially mindful in his own generation of maintaining social barriers. This is because he believed that the end of the exile was now, in his own day, imminent. The Maharal complains that people in “our generation” are lax and emulating gentiles in dress, etc. (chapter 25). Now that we are at the end of our exile, which is harder upon us day by day, it is important to keep distinction from nations even more (chapter 25) This is the secret, that the end is coming, that Israel is adjured not to reveal to the nations lest revealing the secret connects Israel and the nations and delay the end (chapter 24, 25).
One final world about Israel at the end of time: The Maharal is ontologically invested in the separation of Israel, which is an OBJECT in the larger world of separation (olam nivdal) that stands apart from this world of time and non-existence. Until chapter 58 towards the very end of the book. God is going to fight for Israel and put the nations under judgment. These are, perhaps, only words of comfort for a people whose sufferings are, for the Maharal, beyond belief. In the very last chapter, all of the gentile kingdoms, except for the 4th are folded forward into the messianic concern (chapter 63). On this point I would refer to a certain softness to the Netzaḥ Yisrael. We see it with what counts as the loving attention to birds which are counterpoints to the suffering of Israel in exile (chapter 14), and with messianic sound-signs (chapter 42). The Maharal writes with great beauty on the lightness of wild animals and birds (chapter 57). As a figure of thought, the Messiah is, after the suffering of Israel and destructive birth pangs that bring an end to the violence of non-existence, as easy and light as the ascent of a dove (chapter 51).
From 1905, the Hero with the Wing is satire for our time. Now at the Jewish Museum in New York, he is resolute, set to fly, but unable to do so. Bad things are about to happen.
“I cannot be grasped in the here and now. For my dwelling place is as much among the dead as the yet unborn. Slightly closer to the hear of creation than usual. But not nearly close enough”
–Paul Klee, catalogue from a 1920 exhibition
Above is the New Angel framed in red now at the Jewish Museum, and below upside down.
Like many of Klee’s creatures, the New Angel is balanced on a bridge. Not history, and not redemption or messianic twaddle, the New Angel is an emblem of creation suspended over the face of the deep.
