Abstract
In Perceptions of Jewish History, Amos Funkenstein argues that Jews are caught in a continuous loop of telling and retelling Jewish history. Taking medieval reimaginings as a starting point, this essay maps this loop as expressing a resistance to temporal erasure by considering modern historical fiction that reimagines Jewish presence in annus domini temporality. In essence, modern Jewish writers populate history with Jewish characters in order to write Jewish presence into the medieval now of Christian time. This essay explores what is involved in balancing the historical record (where Jews are frequently subalterns and often oppressed victims of establishment authority) with a fictionalized history (where utopian visions of the past imagine a Jew who has agency and voice).
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Notes
The use of the term ‘holocaust’ stretches back to the Middle Ages. See Blurton’s discussion of Agamben on Richard of Devises (2014).
A few examples of texts by modern Jewish historians are: Lipman (1967), Roth ([1941] 1989), Rubin (1999), Bale (2006, 2010) and Mundill (1998, 2010).
These thoughts are informed by Dinshaw (2012, especially xiii–xv, 10–15, 38–39).
As a case in point, consider Christiansen’s observations: ‘Apart from the language, the critic must feel some chilly drafts through the holes in Fried’s splendid historical tapestry. If you want to know about the life and contributions of the Jews in this precocious Age of Reason, you must sing it yourself’ (2015, 49; italics added).
This point is informed by Dinshaw (2012, especially ix–xv, 26–37).
Chakrabarty (2002) inspires these ideas.
For medievalisms about Sepharad (Spain), see Gordon (2000) and Kaplan (2010); these two novels reimagine the lives of Jews around the time of the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (c. 1492) and during the Spanish Inquisition (c. 1460s), respectively.
This latter point is particularly evident in the anxiety about the inevitable proximity of 14 Nisan (the beginning of the Jewish Passover) and the Christian Easter (Bede, 1999a, lxiv–xxi, 151–156).
Dinshaw’s ruminations about her queerness in time very much affect these thoughts (2012, 32). Queerly inned holy days refers to the silenced presence of 14 Nisan (the day when Passover begins) in the Christian calendar because properly calculating Easter depends on the date of 14 Nisan.
This queer temporality was a time outside of and marginalized from civilized (or anno domini) time. Jewish time was always already outside the sacred – in the view of those who had the power to make time. See Fabian (2002) on this topic, as well as Freeman (2010).
Take, for instance, the thirteenth-century Melekh Artus [King Arthur]: the poet opens with the remark, ‘I have translated [Arthur’s story] from the vernacular into Hebrew in the year 39’ (9) – in the Hebrew, ט''ל (8) (Leviant, 2003). In this temporal configuration ט [tet] equals 9; ל (lamed) is 30. This is a shorthand for the Jewish year, 5039.
The number of those dead is argued over by historians: see Mundill (2010, 81–82).
The difference between adjective and noun gestures toward the crisis of privilege: any categorization of this genre favors one aspect (history/fiction) over the/its other (fiction/history). In this letter Reznikoff also adds a parenthetical remark that speaks the touch of a medieval modern: ‘(Did you know that what the Church condemned as “usury” included much that would be just capitalism today?)’ (Reznikoff, 1997; Letter to Albert Lewin, 18 October 1939).
See the study by Krummel, where I discuss this self-vision in regard to the writer Meir b. Elijah of Norwich (2011, 58).
Chazan republished Jewish crusade laments that told of these moments of Kiddush ha-Shem [self-sacrifice to honor God] (1987, 223–297).
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Acknowledgements
This essay was completed while the author was on a research leave from the University of Dayton to participate in a year-long seminar (Sacralization/Secularization) held at the Frankel Institute of Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. Many thanks to Bruce Holsinger and Stephanie Trigg for reading this article so carefully.
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Krummel, M. Fictions of identity: (Re)imagining the stories we tell. Postmedieval 7, 235–246 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/pmed.2016.4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/pmed.2016.4