Matza, Manna, and Cities of Refuge: De-Contextualization in Hasidic Homily-Texts

• In Event: Reflections on Hasidic Thought

Abstract

An insight into the anatomy of the Hasidic homily might be culled from the late Yitzhak Heinemann’s DARKHE HA'AGGADAH. Heinemann pointed to the contrast between the Greek rational approach to language in which every part of a sentence or unit relates to the overall concept of the sentence (LOGOS) and rabbinic agada which sometimes reads each element independently of the whole. An expansion of such de-contextualization occurs in the Hasidic homily-literature which often interprets not only words and phrases, but even whole passages independently of their larger, evident and intrinsic context and meaning in the Torah-text and substitutes a new context in its place.
Hasidic homily-texts include, for example, explanations of MATZA and MAROR lacking any essential connection with the overall narrative of the Exodus; similarly manna is explained in a manner that transcends its specific context of the wilderness-experience.
Some homilies from MA'OR VA-SHEMESH strikingly illustrate the use of such de-contextualization. In one, the fate of the Egyptian charioteers at YAM-SUF is severed from the biblical context of divine punishment of the pursuers, and is read, instead, in the context of a view of Creation requiring recurrent manifestation of the light of Divine Presence to counteract the force of forgetfulness, a light too powerful for the Egyptians to bear. In another, the same preacher, Kalonymus Kalman Epstein of Crakow, essentially severed the biblical Cities of Refuge from the aim of protecting one who unintentionally caused the death of another person from blood-revenge, viewing it instead as enabling him to engage in long-term introspection, self-understanding and repair of the self. In still another, the accounting of excess materials contributed toward the building of the Tabernacle is severed from the materials themselves and is read, instead, as a measurement of the depth of devotion on the part of those who so contributed.
The expansion of the possibilities of de-contextualization is a key-factor in the anatomy of the Hasidic homily, and the substitution of a more sublime context in the process contributes a impressive artistic quality to the homily.

author

• Aryeh J. Wineman, Independent Scholar