Atelier TenouaTalk8 March 2022

Thinking in wartime

Name: Thinking in wartime
Uploaded: 2022-03-08
Duration: 1 h 37 min

1h 37min

On 8 March 2022, two weeks after the invasion of Ukraine, the atelier returns to the MK2 in person and swaps its planned topic for the question of the moment: what does Jewish thought say about changes of era, and about leadership in wartime? The answer comes through the calendar: a year pregnant with a thirteenth month, the Scroll of Esther studied in havruta, Hasidism born on Ukrainian soil, and a former comedian turned war leader. In French.

Highlights

“Who knows whether it is not for a time like this that we were placed here?”
Esther's question, turned toward the room in closing. Translated from the French

“I always wondered whether there was someone, some fellow who woke up one morning, opened the window of his prehistoric cave and said: guys, today is Antiquity. The Stone Age is over. […] It is always long after the fact that the real changes of era are declared.”
Against the proclamations of a "new era" in the war's first days. Translated from the French

“It is like a leap year, which in Hebrew is called Shana meuberet […], a pregnant year, a year that carries within itself. […] There exists a possibility that something be born, that the world give birth to a possibility of renewal.”
5782, a thirteen-month Jewish year. Translated from the French

“There is a holiday, Purim, that one could almost call, etymologically, an atheist holiday, a holiday without God. God, on Purim, is nowhere to be reached, so well hidden that no one can find him anywhere in the story.”
Translated from the French

“Jewish mystical theology, its fundamental belief, is that of human responsibility, which defines the human capacity, no more and no less, to bring God back into the world.”
The allegory of the Lekha Dodi, decoded. Translated from the French

“The true strength of a leader is very often, our sages tell us, an awareness of his limits and of his own exiles, a capacity to laugh at himself, at his flaws, to turn what might be ridiculous into a powerful declaration of war against those who, most virilely, would seize power.”
The clowning of Purim against virile leaderships. Translated from the French

“One can read the emergence of this Ukrainian figure as a somewhat contemporary and unexpected face of Esther, a man to whom the words of the Megillah seem almost addressed.”
On Volodymyr Zelensky, former comedian. Translated from the French

The session

The session opens on the return to a live room after two years of virtual ateliers, and on the images of a war leadership that means to be virile. Against proclamations of a new era, the Jewish calendar offers its own laboratory of time: the year 5782 is embolismic, pregnant with a thirteenth month no verse authorises, the audacity of rabbis inventing a God who places the calendar in human mouths. From there, the architecture of the holidays: Passover and its Hollywood special effects facing Purim, a feast without miracle where the divine name never appears, Esther as eclipse ("I will veil my face"), and the two letters carrying this dialectic, the Bet of the written Torah and the Pe of human speech. The havruta studies four texts: the exchange between Esther and Mordecai through the eunuch Hathach (Megillah 4 and 5), Rashi on the transgression of the paschal lamb, Esther's prayer which is Psalm 22 ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"), and tractate Yoma: the story of Esther as the end of miracles. The room's responses bring up the mouth and the fast, providence against free will, the palace of Susa built from the Temple's materials. Then the Ukrainian detour: land of Bialik, Golda Meir and Sholem Aleichem, birthplace of Hasidism, from the Baal Shem Tov to Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, heir to the kabbalists of Safed whose golden ages are born of exiles. The Lekha Dodi, sung in session and then taken up to a Ukrainian tune by the B'nai Jeshurun synagogue, yields its key: the Shekhinah in exile, and the human responsibility to bring the divine back into the world. The close screens a sketch of Zelensky from before the presidency, a contemporary face of Esther, and leaves the Megillah's question with each of us.

Texts studied

Megillat Esther 4:10-17 and 5:1-4 (the exchange with Mordecai, the golden sceptre)
Rashi on Esther 4:17 (the transgression of the paschal lamb)
Psalm 22, "the doe of the dawn" (Esther's prayer according to the Talmud)
Talmud, Yoma 29 (the story of Esther, the end of miracles)
Along the way: The Scroll of Esther · Rashi · Psalm 22 · Talmud, Yoma 29 · Shana meuberet · Purim and Passover · the Lekha Dodi · the Shekhinah · the Baal Shem Tov · Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav · the kabbalists of Safed · B'nai Jeshurun · Volodymyr Zelensky.

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