Remember the Past or Know What Was: Certainty in Knowing, Witnessing and Remembering in the Bavli.

• In Event: Memory and Rabbinic Literature

Abstract

The presentation's focus is on role of uncertainty in remembering. A well-structured uncertainty becomes the privileged and cultivated orientation as the rabbinic literature shows the pursuit of both just action in court and correct memory of the traditions in the houses of study and in reading the scripture in the Midrash. I proceed by asking comparatively how Aristotelian view of both court-room and philosophical thinking differs from the rabbinic interrogation of the witnesses of both crimes committed and traditions remembered. The guiding distinction to test would be between the past known (for Aristotle) and the past remembered (for the Rabbis.) If in the former, the knowledge of the past is achieved through the more general protocols of knowing of what is/was then, for Rabbis, remembering proceeds through weeding off the witness which is either impossible to refute or is unavoidably (“necessary”) refutable. This argument will bring forth refutation as the foundation of remembering the past, in contradistinction from proofs of knowing of what was.

author

• Sergey Dolgopolski, University at Buffalo, SUNY