New Perspectives on Freud's Moses and Monotheism [Reprint 2011 ed.] 3484651601, 9783484651609

Table of contents :
New Perspectives on Freud’s Moses and Monotheism, Introduction
The Advance in Intellectuality: Freud's Construction of Judaism
The Triumph of Pure Spirituality. Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism
Sigmund Freud’s Last Testament
The Puzzle of Freud’s Epistemology in Moses and Monotheism
Whose Trauma Is It Anyway? Some Reflections on Freud’s Traumatic History
The Double Death of Moses
Mind the Gap: Some Midrashic Propositions for Moses and Monotheism
Moses, Freud and Frida Kahlo
Freud, Zipporah, and The Bridegroom of Blood: National Ambivalence in the Bible
Freud, Moses and Modern Nationhood
Psychoanalysis and the Music of Charisma in the Moseses of Freud and Schönberg
A Special Case of German-Jewish Literature: Sigmund Freud’s Book on Moses
Myth into Novel: The Late Freud on Early Religion
The Return of Alchemical and Messianic Judaism: A Social Scientific De-Sublimation of Social Psychology in Freud and Durkheim
Der Mann Freud: A Contemporary Perspective on His and Our Jewish and Psychoanalytic Identity
Selected Bibliography
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Index

Citation preview

Conditio Judaica 6 0 Studien und Quellen zur deutsch-jüdischen Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte Herausgegeben von HansBodenheimer, Otto Horch Mark H. Gelber und Jakob Hessing in Verbindung mit Alfred

New Perspectives on Freud's »Moses and Monotheism« Edited by Ruth Ginsburg and liana Pardes

Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 2006

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.ddb.de abrufbar. ISBN 13: 978-3-484-65160-9

ISBN 10: 3-484-65160-1

ISSN 0941-5866

© Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2006 Ein Unternehmen der K. G. Saur Verlag GmbH, München http://www. niemeyer. de Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Printed in Germany. Gedruckt auf alterungsbeständigem Papier. Druck: Laupp & Goebel GmbH, Nehren Einband: Industriebuchbinderei Nadele, Nehren

Contents

New Perspectives on Freud's Moses and Monotheism Introduction

1

Jan Assmann The Advance in Intellectuality: Freud's Construction of Judaism

7

Peter Schäfer The Triumph of Pure Spirituality. Sigmund Freud's Moses and Monotheism

19

Robert S.Wistrich Sigmund Freud's Last Testament

45

Rachel B. Blass The Puzzle of Freud's Epistemology in Moses and Monotheism

65

Ruth Ginsburg Whose Trauma Is It Anyway? Some Reflections on Freud's Traumatic History

77

Betty Rojtman The Double Death of Moses

93

Shuli Barzilai Mind the Gap: Some Midrashic Propositions for Moses and Monotheism

117

Gannit Ankori Moses, Freud and Frida Kahlo

135

liana Pardes Freud, Zipporah, and The Bridegroom of Blood: National Ambivalence in the Bible

149

Alon Confino Freud, Moses and Modern Nationhood

165

VI

Contents

Ruth HaCohen Psychoanalysis and the Music of Charisma in the Moseses of Freud and Schönberg

177

Jakob Hessing A Special Case of German-Jewish Literature: Sigmund Freud's Book on Moses

197

Guy G. Stroumsa Myth into Novel: The Late Freud on Early Religion

203

Philip Wexler The Return of Alchemical and Messianic Judaism: A Social Scientific De-Sublimation of Social Psychology in Freud and Dürkheim

217

Η. Shmuel Erlich Der Mann Freud: A Contemporary Perspective on His and Our Jewish and Psychoanalytic Identity

235

Selected Bibliography

245

List of Contributors

249

Acknowledgements

253

Index

255

New Perspectives on Freud's Moses and Monotheism Introduction

Moses and Monotheism was regarded for many years as a marginal, strikingly bizarre text within the Freudian corpus. The scandalous assertions that Moses was an Egyptian and that the Hebrews had murdered him in the wilderness during an unrecorded revolt, the fissures in the text, the strange, obsessive repetitions and the recurrent moments of doubt all seemed to perplex readers upon its publication in 1939 and for many decades later. Issued on the eve of the Second World War, it aroused much anger among Jewish readers, who accused Freud of betraying his own people in one of their darkest hours and of exhibiting, to top it all, an outrageous ignorance of Jewish history and religion. But not only Jewish readers were puzzled by the text. Its recklessly speculative method of argumentation was also troubling for Freud's committed advocates and disciples. Many theoreticians of psychoanalysis simply ignored it, and even those who were interested in the biographical insights provided by Moses and Monotheism did not fully acknowledge its theoretical innovation and importance. During the past two decades, however, there has been a radical change in the book's status. It is now defined as one of Freud's finest achievements, a text whose importance to the understanding of cultural phenomena - be it collective identities, collective memory, or national traumas - cannot be exaggerated. Numerous books and articles have been published on Moses and Monotheism, among them, Hayim Yosef Yerushalmi's Freud's Moses. Judaism Terminable and Interminable (1991), Ilse Grubich-Simitis' Freuds Moses-Studie als Tagtraum. Ein bibliographischer Essay (1991), Jacques Derrida's Mal d'Archive. Une impression freudienne (1995), Cathy Caruth's Unclaimed Experience. Trauma, Narrative, History (1996), Jan Assmann's Moses the Egyptian. The Memory of Egypt and Western Monotheism (1997), Richard Bernstein's Freud and the Legacy of Moses (1998), and Edward W. Said's Freud and the Non-European (2003). Yerushalmi's Freud's Moses. Judaism Terminable and Interminable has played a major role in positioning the book at the center of critical discussion. His inspiring insights into the controversy surrounding Freud's feelings toward his own Judaism as well as his discussion of Freud as historian generated a fascinating series of responses and critiques. Derrida challenged Yerushalmi for his lack of attention to the revolutionary conception of archives in psychoanalytic theory, Assmann - with and beyond Yerushalmi - situated Moses/Freud within a wider Western tradition of a Moses/Egypt discourse, Bernstein highlighted the power of Freud's treatment of the psychical phenomena underlying

2

New Perspectives on Freud's Moses and Monotheism

the transmission of traditions contra Yerushalmi's critique of Moses and Monotheism's Lamarckism, and Said called into question Yerushalmi's tendency to define Judaism in clear-cut terms in contradistinction to Freud's refusal to adhere to pure notions of national identities. These are but some of the predominant responses to Yerushalmi's book that have generated, in their turn, additional readings of Freud's text. Another line of responses stemmed from Cathy Caruth's positioning of Moses and Monotheism as essential for the study of trauma. Her suggestive reading of trauma - in relation to Freud's experience in the hazardous time of writing the text and in relation to the wandering Israelites - as an open wound that defies verbal representation, a wound that cannot be narrativized since it is not consciously remembered, stimulated much discussion (Ruth Leys's genealogy of trauma is one such response). The current interest in Moses and Monotheism is distinguished by its interdisciplinary character. The study of this text (and this is true of the Freudian corpus as a whole) is no longer confined within the realm of psychoanalysis. Scholars from highly diverse fields - history, literature, philosophy, Jewish studies, religious studies, Egyptology, and gender studies - have come to regard Moses and Monotheism as a vibrant research topic. New Perspectives on Freud's Moses and Monotheism presents a collection of articles by leading scholars whose work forms part of the recent interdisciplinary reconsideration of Moses and Monotheism. The essays in this volume offer new perspectives on Freud's perception of Judaism, of hermeneutics, gender issues, collective trauma and collective repression, constructions of truth, national fantasies, religious configurations and leadership, adding interdisciplinary lines of inquiry which have hitherto received little scholarly attention: the relevance of Moses and Monotheism to the fields of musicology, art history and sociology. The volume offers a broad range of positions, at times conflicting, with respect to the different questions raised by Moses and Monotheism. We regard such differences as a vital aspect of our project. Jan Assmann's essay, »The Advance in Intellectuality: Freud's Construction of Judaism« explores one of the central concepts in Freud's construction of Mosaic monotheism -»the advance in intellectuality« (Fortschritt in der Geistigkeit). Discussing Freud's precursors - primarily Plato and Paul - Assmann suggests that the turn from sensuality to intellectuality cannot be regarded as a Jewish specialty or invention. And yet, the primary Mosaic prohibition against images, he contends, needs to be construed as a quintessential Jewish project which Freud sets out to continue and surpass. Freud's definition of the monotheistic advance in intellectuality/spirituality is tackled differently in Peter Schäfer's essay, »The Triumph of Pure Spirituality: Sigmund Freud's Moses and Monotheism«. Schäfer sees Freud's conception of Judaism as containing virtually nothing that is true from a religious-historical standpoint. He goes on to suggest that Freud's work has much in common with nineteenth-century Reform Judaism, which located the culmination of every

3

Introduction

religion in the dynamic interplay between spirituality and morality. But given the fact that R e f o r m Judaism w a s highly influenced b y the Protestant Christianity o f the 19 th century, the demarcation between Jewish and Christian concepts in Freud's text remains tantalizingly blurred. Robert S. Wistrich's »Freud's Last Testament« revolves around two intertwined issues: Freud's perception o f Jewish identity and his concomitant perception o f anti-Semitism. Wistrich suggests that Moses and Monotheism

needs

to be read as a response to the rise o f N a z i anti-Semitism in Austria and Germany in the thirties. He complicates the matter b y showing h o w Freud's struggle against anti-Semitism does not preclude a deeply conflicted relation to Judaism. The paper offers a comprehensive consideration o f the contribution o f Freud's psychoanalytic reading to the understanding o f anti-Semitism. Rachel Blass's »The Puzzle o f Freud's Epistemology in Moses and

Monothe-

ism« focuses on Freud's different uses o f this metaphor, uncovering latent dimensions o f Freud's search for truth in Moses and Monotheism.

A s Freud strug-

gles to discover the psychological and historical sources o f conviction in unjustified belief, Blass argues, he also experiences and struggles with convictions o f this kind that emerge in himself. Despite recurrent doubt regarding the positions that he puts forth and awareness that they cannot be demonstrated according to acceptable standards, Freud continues to believe in their truth. This enactment sheds light on the complex nature o f Freud's concern with truth. Ruth Ginsburg's »Whose Trauma is it A n y w a y ? Some Reflections on Freud's Traumatic History« calls for a reconsideration o f Freud's perception o f traumatic response. Highlighting the ambiguity underlying Freud's concept o f trauma, she points to his oscillation between t w o divergent models o f trauma: the train accident and the Oedipal drama. Freud's oscillation is construed as a reluctance to reach a final definition o f the phenomenon. The paper considers the reasons for Freud's choice ultimately to suppress one model o f trauma in favor o f the other in the course o f re-writing Moses and

Monotheism.

Betty Rojtman opens up the question o f Freud's definition o f »the return o f the repressed« in »The Double Death o f Moses«, highlighting a theoretical problem that has hitherto gone unnoticed. Although Freud's description o f the development o f Jewish monotheism as a progressive »return o f the repressed« seems strong and tempting, she argues, its implications remain vague. If the Mosaic period itself is characterized b y a repression o f drives in favor o f the L a w , should one then understand the »return o f the repressed« as a return o f repression and the underlying drive as the »drive o f repression« itself? The paper tackles these questions b y considering the interpretations o f the Midrash regarding M o s e s ' double death. Shuli Barzilai's »Mind the Gap: Some Midrashic Propositions for and Monotheism« sprechen), Moses

Moses

examines two instances o f a specific type o f parapraxis (Ver-

which may also be classified as »hermeneutic gaps«, in Freud's

and Monotheism.

In each instance, silence prevails and relevant infor-

mation is permanently missing from the text. The first involves a midrashic

4

New Perspectives on Freud's Moses and Monotheism

story about the infant Moses that Freud retells in such a way that significant cause-effect relations are occluded. The second concerns a failure to credit a colleague, Karl Abraham, and his essay on Amenhotep IV. The paper lays bare the gender issues that are inextricably connected to the two gaps. Gannit Ankori's »Moses, Freud and Frida Kahlo« construes Frida Kahlo's painting, »Moses« or »Nuclear Sun« (1945) as a response to Moses and Monotheism. Kahlo used Freud's Moses, Ankori suggests, as a springboard for her subjective and eclectic thoughts and feelings about heroes, religion, and history, about creation myths and myths of self-creation. Ankori discusses Kahlo's critique of Freud's text, calling attention to the ways in which the Freudian preference of monotheism is undermined in the painting by a vivacious gallery of Egyptian gods and goddesses. The discussion entails a detailed analysis of the interrelations between »Moses/Nuclear Sun« and other works by Kahlo. liana Pardee's »Freud, Zipporah, and the Bridegroom of Blood: National Ambivalence in the Bible« explores Freud's reading of the story of »The Bridegroom of Blood« (Exodus 4:24-26) in Moses and Monotheism. The paper highlights Freud's vital contribution to the understanding of national formation in the Bible in his probing of the hidden psychical phenomena which shape the history and character of ancient Israel behind the scenes. But it also points to the limitations of Freud's account. Pardes regards »The Bridegroom of Blood« as a text in which Egyptian polytheism, rather than Egyptian monotheism, returns from the realm of the repressed, revealing cardinal fissures within the monotheistic framework. The question of Freud's contribution to the understanding of nationhood is central in Alon Confino's »Freud, Moses and Modern Nationhood« as well. Confino, however, focuses on the modern implications of Freud's theories. His essay explores the analogies and ties between the representation of national character in Moses and Monotheism and European configurations of nationhood during Freud's lifetime. But Confino is also interested in the ways in which Freud breaks with the national paradigms of his time, anticipating current constructions of national identities along the axes of crime, guilt, and repentance. Ruth HaCohen leads us into the field of musicology. In her essay, »Psychoanalysis and the Music of Charisma in the Moseses of Freud and Schoenberg«, she regards Freud's Moses and Monotheism and Schoenberg's Moses undAron (composed between 1930-32) as two complementary works. The products of two assimilated Viennese Jews, they bear witness to outer circumstances and inner predicaments that brought both authors, at a late stage in their lives, to rethink their Jewish heritage. Each, unaware of the other's enterprise, produced a work which unknowingly illuminates some of the basic traits of the other work. Jakob Hessing's essay, »A Special Case of German-Jewish Literature« situates Freud's Moses and Monotheism within the context of German-Jewish writings. Although Freud regarded his reading of the Bible as scientific, writes Hessing, his rendering of Moses' story in Moses and Monotheism discloses the cunning of an artist. Not unlike a long line of German-Jewish authors, he goes

Introduction

5

on to argue, Freud strives to deconstruct the biblical text and invent an alternative tradition. Guy G. Stroumsa's »Myth into Novel: Late Freud on Early Religion« examines Freud's view of religion in the context of the prevalent methodologies in the history of religion in the beginning of the 20th century. Stroumsa argues that the main objective of Moses and Monotheism is not to elucidate the question of Jewish identity - important as it may be - but rather to explore the »historical truth« of religion as such. Although Freud initially rejected religion, Stroumsa contends, he ultimately regarded it as an inevitable component of cultural endeavors. From a consideration of Moses and Monotheism against the background of the writings of historians of religion we move to a study of Freud's understanding of religion from the perspective of social theoiy, in Philip Wexler's essay, »The Return of Alchemical and Messianic Judaism. A Social Scientific DeSublimation of Social Psychology in Freud and Dürkheim«. The paper suggests that Freud's analysis of social repression bears resemblance to Durkheim's sociology of religion. Wexler provides an examination of the repression of the alchemical and the messianic in the context of Hasidism, using this case study as a springboard for further exploration of affinities between the two thinkers. The concluding essay, by H. Shmuel Erlich, »Der Mann Freud: A Contemporary Perspective on His and Our Jewish and Psychoanalytic Identity«, focuses on Freud's conception of leadership. Freud's deep interest in Moses' leadership, Erlich suggests, derives from his own concerns about his position as the founding father and leader of psychoanalysis. His questions to himself as well as to his followers are: will his theories survive? Will his legacy be stamped in them for all times, as the Jews have internalized Moses and his teachings? Erlich also reflects on the relevance of Freud's insights regarding group processes in the context of our current dilemmas vis-a-vis Jewish and psychoanalytic identities. Moses and Monotheism is the last of Freud's books to be published in his lifetime. It is in a sense a text of farewell to Vienna and to life, a kind of legacy. This legacy, with its tackling of the darker aspects of collective identities, with its daring call to explore violent impulses not only in other cultures but also in one's own, remains only too relevant to us today. Ruth Ginsburg / liana Pardes

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Jan Assmann

The Advance in Intellectuality: Freud's Construction of Judaism

I

Jacques Derrida asked the question: »Are we Greeks? Are we Jews? But who is >We