The Poetics of Ascent. Theories of Language in a Rabbinic Ascent Text (review)

Abstract

Hebrew Studies 32 (1991) 142 Reviews On the other hand, HaNagid was also a military commander who led his troops in wars against the enemies of the kingdom of Granada. His experience in many battles found expression in his war poems which are unique in medieval Hebrew poetry since no other Hebrew poet wrote war poems. Here, too, it appears that HaNagid wrote his poems of war experiences in the style of Arabic war poems. Itzhaki's profound study, however, reveals the unique Jewish character of these poems. Hence, through war poems the true image of HaNagid is discovered-the image of a faithful Jewish leader who trembled for the fate of his people. Another side of his authentic image emerges from the series of elegies that he wrote on the death of his elder brother, Isaac. In these, too, he diverges from the conventional tradition of the lamentation genre in Arabic and Hebrew poetry. Itzhaki is to be thanked for placing, in a clear manner, one of the most important features of medieval Hebrew poetry before the reader. rose! Tobi Haifa University Haifa 31999 Israel THE POETICS OF ASCENT. THEORIES OF LANGUAGE IN A RABBINIC ASCENT TEXT. By Naomi Janowitz. SUNY Series in Judaica: Hermeneutics, Mysticism, and Culture. Pp. xv + 154. Albany: State University of New York, 1989. Cloth. Janowitz offers the first English translation of Mataseh Merkabah, a text associated with the Hekhalot tradition of heavenly ascent, and an analysis of the texes theory of the power of the divine Name. In addition to an annotated translation, the volume provides a rich introduction to and exploration of "pragmatic analysis"-a theory of the ritual use of language associated with the anthropological studies of M. Silverstein and S. J. Tambiah-as well as useful appendices on technical aspects of the text, a bibliography, and an index. Before discussing the substance of this volume, the reviewer must note that the copy-editing has been very careless. In addition to numerous annoying typographical errors, there are many oversights which gravely Hebrew Studies 32 (1991) 143 Reviews compromise the usefulness of the notes to the translation. Among the more egregious examples, a series of notes on pp. 52-61 have been misnumbered: nn. 42-45 are lacking in the text although notes so numbered appear at the bottom of pp. 52-55; n. 46 corresponds to text identified at the bottom of p. 52 as n. 42; n. 52 (p. 56) should be identified as n. 47. Other notes are unaccounted for as well. Thus n. 52 is assigned to three separate lexical items ("tefillin," p.53; "Just Ones:' p. 56; "presence," p. 61) while the actual text of the note on p. 61 clearly refers to only the last term. Finally nn. 13 and 14 (pp. 55-56) appear to have no corresponding text at all. All such errors are obvious to any careful reader and should have been corrected before the volume reached the public. These matters aside, Janowitz's translation confronts and, for the most part, successfully meets a number of important problems facing the translator of rabbinic texts in general and the Hekhalot materials in particular. She offers cogent grounds for translating the edition of Peter Schaefer over that of Scholem, consistently renders Hebrew terms by single English equivalents, and has made uniformly wise judgments about when the text ceases to depict semantically renderable language. My one complaint concerns the tone of the translation. While Ma'aseh Merkabah is no literary masterpiece, it is for the most part composed in a richly evocative mixture of rabbinic Hebrew prose and biblical poetic texts. Janowitz's rendering obscures the intermixture of textual sources and Hebraic forms, and thus flattens the text into a stilted, often awkward, discourse quite unrepresentative of the original. One might also quibble with some particular renderings, but this is the fate of any translation and need not occupy us here. Nevertheless, a translation always serves some purpose; and insofar as the purpose of this one in particular is to ground a study in the text's use and theory of language, one would prefer a translation which more adequately conveyed the tone of the Hebrew. Beyond...