| The Wondering Jew |
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| Written by Alicia Oltuski | |||||
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Who Was Walter Benjamin?, What is Gematria? Who was Walter Benjamin? by Alicia Oltuski “The first and last sentences have to be good; the middle doesn’t matter,” Walter Benjamin resolved, regarding journalism. When applied to his own life, however, this pretext reads falsely modest. One of the twentieth century’s most important thinkers–Benjamin was respected as a journalist, literary theorist, philosopher, and critic–his legacy approaches epic proportions. But who was Benjamin? He is known for, among others, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” and “Theses on the Philosophy of HIstory.” He kept up famous correspondences with Bertolt Brecht–who influenced his Marxist leanings–and Theodor Adorno, who inspired his literary criticism. But Benjamin’s works are so versatile that allotting him a single role in the intellectual pantheon betrays the breadth of his contribution. The range of his work places him somewhere between cultural curator and critical powerhouse. Born in Berlin in 1892, the young Benjamin adjusted poorly to the starkness of the gymnasium. But after two years at a progressive country school, he found his niche in the German Youth Movement, a nationalist group that encouraged students to take active roles in shaping their own cultural and political landscape. At the same time, he made his writing debut in a Berlin youth journal. In 1912, Benjamin’s Zionist embers were kindled by his fellow intellectual–and Martin Buber’s future son-in-law–Ludwig Strauss. In his correspondence with Strauss, Benjamin struggled to reconcile his attraction to Zionist thought with his equally strong sense of national pride. Around this time, Benjamin also befriended the soon-to-be Kabbalah scholar, Gershom Scholem. Influenced by Strauss and Scholem, Benjamin drew on biblical, Jewish, and messianic concepts in several written works. “Theologico-Political Fragment” maintains that the messianic age is the inevitable culmination of human history. Benjamin even used Jewish mystical concepts in his linguistic writing: in particular, he postulated that the book of Genesis represents a verbal ideal–a linguistic Eden that humankind has yet to recreate. As the persecution of Jews in Germany began to press financially, Benjamin received support from Jewish organizations. And years later, he hinted at plans to join Scholem in Palestine. But despite his interest in Zionism and Jewish thought, the nature of his identification remains elusive. In fact, the most unequivocal gauge of his Jewish identity may have been the fact that he lived in his parents’ home at the age of 38. Amidst increasing political agitation, Benjamin avoided military service three times but advanced on the romantic front. In 1917, he married Dora Kellner, and soon after their son Stefan was born. But marital bliss evaded Benjamin, and he and Kellner eventually divorced. At the same time, he met a new love, Asja Lacis, a Communist who provided inspiration for his Moscow Diary, as well as providing one potential cause for his failed marriage. Despite the fact that he was increasingly prolific, Benjamin’s later years were stained by fruitless attempts at publishing. But his cultural criticism was everywhere. He gave radio talks and contributed to journals. He wrote on topics ranging from German Fascism to Mickey Mouse, and completed renowned translations of Proust and Baudelaire. As the Nazis gained increasing control in Germany, the deteriorating situation forced frequent flights to Denmark, France, and Italy, where he boarded at the home–and mercy–of his ex-wife. Benjamin eventually settled in Paris, but following the Nazi invasion of France, he fled, abandoning his manuscripts–his life’s work. With a friend and an American visa, he left, intending an illicit journey over the Pyrenees into Spain. But the escape proved ill-fated: on a mountain incline, in a Spanish border town, Benjamin’s party was turned away by border guards who threatened to turn them over to the French. That night, seeing no hope of escape, Benjamin overdosed on morphine pills. The very next day, the party he had traveled with was allowed to continue their journey. Benjamin famously wrote, “There is no document of a civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” He never lived to witness the prescience of his comments in light of the Second World War. But while he did not traverse the Pyrenees, his legacy did–living on as a major influence on political, literary, and philosophical thought. What Is Gematria? by Helen Rosner We were up late in the New Voices offices, building a time machine to get footage for our new film, Back to the Jewish Future 2: New Voices Cleans Up at the Racetrack. In our 4am stupor, we failed to notice the friendly Kabbalist standing there until he told us to put away the popsicle sticks. Apparently, all we need for our Semitic scrying is a convenient copy of the Five Books of Moses. And why, we asked, are Jews so futuristically fortunate? Because we have gematria on our side, replied our mystical friend. We would have jumped for joy, but the crazy glue had spilled. Gematria–in case you haven’t been boning up on Pi and Bee Season–is a system of extracting meaning from Hebrew letters and their numerical equivalents. Because Hebrew characters do double duty, representing both letters and digits, each word can also be read as a number. And according to gematria, a letter’s numeric value is no alphabetic accident. The Torah says that the universe was created through God’s use of language–commanding the world into existence–and adherents of gematria therefore assume that the basic components of language–letters–possess creative powers themselves. Letter combinations produce additional concoctions of creative force: when two words have the same total, gematria gurus infer a mystical connection between them. So because the phrases “and she stood” (Shemot 2:4) and “by their families” (Bereshit 10:5) both stack up to 898, sages inferred that we need patience to deal with our families. A staggering deduction. Gematria is also the key to the “bible code,” the alleged “true” meaning of the Bible hidden within the characters of the Torah. Thirteenth-century Kabbalists invented the first code-cracker, a system that involves replacing words or phrases in the text with their numerical equivalents. For example, “elohim” (one of God’s many monikers) and “hateva”(nature) both make eighty-six…well, we’re planting trees in Israel, aren’t we? In recent centuries, though, the key to the code has been sought more frequently in the order of the Torah’s letters. According to this theory, if you pull out certain letters in the Torah–say, every 23rd–and string them into words, you can predict the future. Since the widespread distribution of the written Bible, scholars, mystics, and the occasional secularist (Isaac Newton was a devotee) have scanned the 305,500-odd characters of the Torah, hoping that numerically significant intervals will reveal truths about the future, the human condition, and the divine. According to its supporters, the “bible code” has predicted everything from the destruction of both Temples to the Wright brothers’ discovery of flight to Bill Clinton’s presidency. If this sounds a bit off from the standard Jewish repertoire, that’s because gematria is part of Kabbalah–not a major element of your daily minyan. Centuries before Madonna got involved, the Zohar–the central text of Jewish mysticism–was guiding adherents in a search for hidden connections in the world, which they found by applying gematria to spiritual literature. Gematria is controversial among the rabbinic set. Some rabbis acknowledge that hidden meanings may exist, but argue that secrets are meant to stay that way. Others advocate it, claiming that God would not have placed codes in the Torah if they weren’t there for the cracking. Still others believe the whole thing is a load of new-age psychobabble. Either way, diluted forms of gematria abound in everyday life. The $18 that is the standard Jewish donation is drawn from the numeric value for chai, whose meaning–life–is the wish contained in the gift. Of course, it’s all still a matter of dispute. It could be that if you read every 230th word of the Torah, you’ll deduce that Al Sharpton will stage a comeback and win the 2004 presidential election. We at New Voices are still crazy-glued to the floor, but we’d appreciate it if you kept us posted.
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