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Authors: Norman Finkelstein
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individual writers, no matter how "strong," draw their strengths at least partly from manifestly social configurations of power. Nor am I deterred by the fact that this statement could be made by either a "traditional humanist'' or a "deconstructionist": after all, in the course of Bloom's rhetoric, these figures are straw men; they represent the self-imposed intellectual boundaries within which Bloom has chosen to narrate his belated vision of cultural loss, the Fall from canonic authority, the Exile from the homeland of the text.
Raising the Sparks
From our perspective, religion is spilled poetry. 48
When Bloom, thinking of Yerushalmi's Zakhor, states "that all contemporary Jewish intellectuals are compelled to recognize that they are products of a rupture with their tradition, however much they long for continuity," 49 his rather mournful tone masks a certain defiance, if not a madcap glee. At about the same time, he also declares that philosophy "is a stuffed bird on a shelf; so, of course, is religion, and they are equally dead and equally stuffed." 50 Given Bloom's enormous appropriations of Jewish thought, one can only conclude that a certain lingering fascination is to be found around that stuffed bird.
Bloom seems to define Jewishness in terms of negation and loss. Obsessed by the endless permutations of Jewish thought and identity since biblical times, yet resolutely opposed to the orthodox and even normative modes of Judaism found today, Bloom is a vivid example of Scholem's assertion that even in an age of secularization,
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"so many people from opposing camps, such as that of the pious and that of the consciously and emphatically irreligious, nevertheless confess their identity as Jews," making the question of modern Judaism's relation to tradition still one of great moment. 51 For Scholem, and certainly for Bloom, to be Jewish in a modern sense is to problematize Judaismto wander, to question, to agonize, and to appropriate, like a Kafka, a Benjamin, a Freud. David Biale claims that, for Scholem, "the only possible definition of Judaism is the totality of the contradictory principles which make up Judaism." 52 This is even truer for Scholem's ephebe, since Scholem remains a normative believer, while Bloom, the "Jewish Gnostic," repudiates religion as such. Bloom can still lay claim to Jewish identity because, paradoxically, modern Jewish authority, at least by implication, declares that authority in Judaism no longer obtains.
It is deeply ironic then that if Bloom represents the dilemma of modern Judaism's lack of unified authority, he still gravitates, as if by instinct, to the most archaic aspects of Jewish belief, to those fraught with the strongest imperatives. In his Introduction to Olivier Revault d'Allonnes's Musical Variations on Jewish Thought, Bloom reveals his fascination with the book's central vision of Judaism as a nomadic cult moving with the currents of time and opposed to the spatial orientation of state power. This vision accords with Bloom's own understanding of "wandering meaning": his meta-narrative of belated texts parallels the belated condition of diasporic Jewry, and both find their meaning only through nomadic or vagrant existence. Furthermore, Bloom sees the Freudian dynamics as based upon "Jewish myths of Exile" too; thus "psychoanalysis becomes another parable of a people always homeless or at least uneasy in space, who must seek a perpetually deferred fulfillment in time." 53 In short, the social, the psychological, and the literary spheres coalesce around the notion of Exile, as wandering generates meaning and fulfillment is always deferred.
Bloom's most compelling insight in this regard concerns the motivation for literary production within the Jewish tradition of textuality. As he pointedly observes, "In Hebraic tradition, all literary representation partook of transgression, unless it were canonical. But Exile is a profound stimulus to the human anxiety for literary
Raising the Sparks
From our perspective, religion is spilled poetry. 48
When Bloom, thinking of Yerushalmi's Zakhor, states "that all contemporary Jewish intellectuals are compelled to recognize that they are products of a rupture with their tradition, however much they long for continuity," 49 his rather mournful tone masks a certain defiance, if not a madcap glee. At about the same time, he also declares that philosophy "is a stuffed bird on a shelf; so, of course, is religion, and they are equally dead and equally stuffed." 50 Given Bloom's enormous appropriations of Jewish thought, one can only conclude that a certain lingering fascination is to be found around that stuffed bird.
Bloom seems to define Jewishness in terms of negation and loss. Obsessed by the endless permutations of Jewish thought and identity since biblical times, yet resolutely opposed to the orthodox and even normative modes of Judaism found today, Bloom is a vivid example of Scholem's assertion that even in an age of secularization,
Page 42
"so many people from opposing camps, such as that of the pious and that of the consciously and emphatically irreligious, nevertheless confess their identity as Jews," making the question of modern Judaism's relation to tradition still one of great moment. 51 For Scholem, and certainly for Bloom, to be Jewish in a modern sense is to problematize Judaismto wander, to question, to agonize, and to appropriate, like a Kafka, a Benjamin, a Freud. David Biale claims that, for Scholem, "the only possible definition of Judaism is the totality of the contradictory principles which make up Judaism." 52 This is even truer for Scholem's ephebe, since Scholem remains a normative believer, while Bloom, the "Jewish Gnostic," repudiates religion as such. Bloom can still lay claim to Jewish identity because, paradoxically, modern Jewish authority, at least by implication, declares that authority in Judaism no longer obtains.
It is deeply ironic then that if Bloom represents the dilemma of modern Judaism's lack of unified authority, he still gravitates, as if by instinct, to the most archaic aspects of Jewish belief, to those fraught with the strongest imperatives. In his Introduction to Olivier Revault d'Allonnes's Musical Variations on Jewish Thought, Bloom reveals his fascination with the book's central vision of Judaism as a nomadic cult moving with the currents of time and opposed to the spatial orientation of state power. This vision accords with Bloom's own understanding of "wandering meaning": his meta-narrative of belated texts parallels the belated condition of diasporic Jewry, and both find their meaning only through nomadic or vagrant existence. Furthermore, Bloom sees the Freudian dynamics as based upon "Jewish myths of Exile" too; thus "psychoanalysis becomes another parable of a people always homeless or at least uneasy in space, who must seek a perpetually deferred fulfillment in time." 53 In short, the social, the psychological, and the literary spheres coalesce around the notion of Exile, as wandering generates meaning and fulfillment is always deferred.
Bloom's most compelling insight in this regard concerns the motivation for literary production within the Jewish tradition of textuality. As he pointedly observes, "In Hebraic tradition, all literary representation partook of transgression, unless it were canonical. But Exile is a profound stimulus to the human anxiety for literary
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