Black fire on white fire

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Black fire on white fire (אש שחורה על גבי אש לבנה ' eish sheḥorah' al gabei 'eish levanah ) is a metaphor from the Jewish tradition. It says that the sacred text ( Torah ) contains in addition to the literal sense an infinite wealth of meaning. It can therefore be read very differently, and these different meanings are legitimate.

The material Torah: black ink, white parchment.

history

Jewish writings of late antiquity contain the idea that the Torah, now materially available as black ink on white parchment , already existed before creation ( Tora keduma ), namely as black fire on white fire.

“The Torah that the Holy One, blessed be he, gave: the parchment on which it was written was white fire. The letters that were written on it were black fire. She is fire, surrounded by fire, written in fire, and given in fire, [according to Scripture verse Deuteronomy 33: 2:] with flaming fire in his right hand. "( Jerusalem Talmud , tract Sota 8, 3, 37a)

This metaphor was "heavily filled with meaning" in the Middle Ages, right up to the Midrash Aseret haDibrot , who developed the idea that God created the world by tattooing the letters of the Torah with black fire on his arm (the white fire) . Here the interest shifts from the “black fire”, ie the letters, of the Holy Scriptures, to the “white fire”, the mystical body of the deity. In Kabbalah , looking at the patterns that result from the shape of the Hebrew letters on the white background is a meditation technique. Therefore it is important for them that the text is not punctured .

The white spaces, which are fascinating for the mystic, are only present because the black letters, the written Torah, exist (and with it the world of the Mitzvot , which is also valid for the mystic).

reception

The metaphor “black fire on white fire” finds interest today in both the Jewish and the Christian interpretation of the Bible.

It can be understood in such a way that the gaps in the text are creatively filled, invisible persons (e.g. women) are made visible in a biblical narrative and a modern midrash is told ( bibliodrama , bibliolog ). Or the black fire is regarded as the understanding of the text that can be gained through analysis, the white fire as the space for associative, emotional and unconscious reactions of the reader to the text; both approaches complement each other.

Web links

literature

  • Gerhard Langer : Midrasch (UTB 4675), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-8252-4675-4
  • Moshe Idel : "Black fire on white fire", text and reading in the Jewish tradition , in: Aleida Assmann (Ed.): Texts and reading n. Perspektiven in der Literaturwissenschaft, Frankfurt am Main 1996, pp. 62–79.
  • Betty Rojtman: Black Fire on White Fire, an Essay on Jewish Hermeneutics, from Midrash to Kabbalah, University of California Press 1998
  • Nathan Cardozo: The Written and Oral Torah. A Comprehensive Introduction , Rowman & Littlefield 1997

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Midrash Tanchuma, Bereshit 1. Retrieved February 4, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Sotah . In: Jacob Neusner (Ed.): The Talmud of the Land of Israel . tape 27 . Chicago 1982, p. 212 (English).
  3. ↑ Gerhard Langer: Midrash . S. 53 .
  4. ↑ Gerhard Langer: Midrash . S. 54 .
  5. ^ Nathan Cardozo: The Written and Oral Torah . S. 71 .
  6. ↑ Judith Plaskow: And again we are on Sinai . Lucerne 1992, p. 60-61 .