Table Of ContentPsalms In/On Jerusalem
Perspectives on Jewish Texts
and Contexts
Edited by
Vivian Liska
Editorial Board
Robert Alter, Steven E. Aschheim, Richard I. Cohen, Mark H. Gelber,
Moshe Halbertal, Christine Hayes, Moshe Idel, Samuel Moyn,
Ada Rapoport-Albert, Alvin Rosenfeld, David Ruderman, Bernd Witte
Volume 9
Psalms In/On
Jerusalem
Edited by
Ilana Pardes and Ophir Münz-Manor
ISBN 978-3-11-033691-7
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-046080-3
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-045929-6
ISSN 2199-6962
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018956631
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Preface
Hallelujah.
Sing to the Lord a new song,
His praise in the faithful’s assembly. . .
Let them praise His name in dance,
on the timbrel and lyre let them hymn to Him.
– Psalm 1491
I begin with a quotation from the Book of Psalms – granting the first note to the
grand ancient text around which this volume revolves. Psalm 149 calls for the
creation of an exhilarating “new song” of praise – “Sing to the Lord a new song”
[shir hadash] – thus highlighting the aesthetic project at stake, the psalmist’s
work of art. But the composing of songs in Psalms is not set in a void. The cher-
ished site which serves as inspiration for the psalmist is the Temple of Jerusalem.
Many psalms are presented as liturgical songs sung in processions of pilgrims
ascending to the Temple or as songs sung by the Levites’ choir, with musical
accompaniment, at the Temple.
Psalms In/On Jerusalem sets out to explore the ways in which Jerusalem is
represented in Psalms – from its position in the context of liturgical and pilgrim
songs to its role as metaphor. Jerusalem in the Book of Psalms is multifaceted. It
is the site of scenes of redemption, joy, and celebration of the proximity to God
and the house of the Lord. But it is also the quintessential locus of loss, marked by
cries over the devastating destruction of the Temple. And these two antithetical
poles of Jerusalem are expressed in both personal terms (even confessional at
times) as well as within a collective framework.
Psalms In/On Jerusalem begins with an exploration of the mythical bent in
the representation of Jerusalem in Jonah’s psalm (Ronald Hendel) and moves
on to discuss the authorial voice of God as it is revealed on the Temple Mount
(Ariel Zinder). The bulk of the articles are devoted to questions of reception, to
the ways in which the geographies of the Book of Psalms have travelled across
their native bounds and entered other historical settings, acquiring new forms
and meanings – from the liturgical poetry of late antiquity (Ophir Münz-Manor) to
the early reception of the Septuagint translation of Psalm 119 (Jonathan Stavsky),
the Zoharic perception of David as Psalmist (Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel), the per-
formative role of Psalms in Moses Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem (Yael Sela-Teichler),
1 All translations here are from Robert Alter’s The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Com
mentary (New York: Norton, 2007).
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110460803-201
VI Preface
Rosenzweig’s reading of Psalm 115 (Leora Batnitzky), modern poetic renditions
by Paul Celan (Vivian Liska), and Yehuda Amichai (Sidra Dekoven-Ezrahi).
This book has its beginnings in a conference titled “Psalms in/on Jerusalem:
Aesthetics, Ethics, and Hermeneutics” that was held at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem in June 2015. The conference was part of a collaborative research project
on “Aesthetics, Ethics, and Hermeneutics” between the University of Antwerp,
the Hebrew University, and Princeton University. I am grateful to my fellow
travelers – Vivian Liska and Leora Batnitzky – for their invaluable support. The
conference was supported by the I-CORE Program of the Planning and Budgeting
Committee and the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 1798/12). Special thanks
go to Richard Cohen, the academic director of the I-CORE of Daat HaMakom, for
his generosity, encouragement, and thoughtful suggestions all along, and to Anat
Reches, the administrative director. I am, as always, indebted to my research
assistant, Miri Avissar, for her superb work. This conference was also spon-
sored by the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School for Advanced Studies in
the Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I am delighted that it was
part of the inaugural events of the new Mandel building and am grateful to Israel
Yuval, the Mandel School’s academic director, for his ongoing support and to the
administrative team, Ira Dostov and Shiri Azulai, for their help. I greatly appreci-
ate Ophir Münz-Manor’s willingness to join me as co-editor of this volume. And
on behalf of both of us, I wish to thank Jeremy Schreiber for his much appreciated
editing. Heartfelt thanks go to Vivian Liska, the general editor of Perspectives on
Jewish Texts and Contexts, for the invitation to publish these conference papers in
book form and for her unstinting belief in this project.
Ilana Pardes
Jerusalem, 2018
Contents
Preface V
Ronald Hendel
Myth and Mimesis in the Psalm of Jonah 1
Ariel Zinder
His Highness: God’s Voice and the Autoimmune in Two Royal Psalms 11
Ophir Münz-Manor
“Take Pity on Zion, Rebuild the Walls of Jerusalem”: A Late Antique Hebrew
Elegy on the Destruction of Jerusalem 27
Jonathan Stavsky
Oral Tales and Written Truth in the Early Reception History of LXX
Psalm 118(119) 43
Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel
David and Jerusalem: From Psalms to the Zohar 67
Yael Sela
The Voice of the Psalmist: On the Performative Role of Psalms in Moses
Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem 109
Leora Batnitzky
Rosenzweig’s Reading of Psalm 115: The Gruesome “We” 135
Vivian Liska
Paul Celan, the Last Psalmist 143
Sidra Dekoven Ezrahi
“By the Waters of Babylon”: The Amnesia of Memory 153
Appendix: Selected Psalms on Jerusalem (translated by Robert Alter) 165
Notes on Contributors 189
Ronald Hendel
Myth and Mimesis in the Psalm of Jonah
Not all the psalms of Jerusalem are in the book of Psalms. One of the most elo-
quent is a prayer by the wayward prophet Jonah in Jonah 2:3–10. After being swal-
lowed at Yahweh’s command by a “big fish,” Jonah utters a psalm of thanksgiving
from the belly of the beast. By the end of the psalm, however, Jonah seems to
be in Jerusalem, offering a thanksgiving sacrifice at the temple. According to the
rhetoric of the psalm, he is “semiotically” in Jerusalem, even as the fish turns to
vomit him out at Nineveh. The situation of the speaker complicates the tempo-
ral and spatial dynamics (what Bakhtin calls the “chronotope”) of this psalm of
Jerusalem (Bakhtin 1981, 85–258).1
In the following I will explore these complications, beginning with the
mythic resonances of the psalm’s imagery, and then describing how the psalm
translates the myth into a poetic narrative of the individual’s trouble and rescue.
Through the mimetic resources of the psalm of thanksgiving, the myth is refo-
cused from the cosmos to the microcosm and from primeval to present time.
The interplay between myth and mimesis is basic to the expressive power of the
psalm and to the semantics of its “floating” signifiers, which are transferable
from Jerusalem to the belly of a whale, and from everyman (and everywoman)
to Jonah. In the afterlife of this psalm, its signifiers expand to include other
protagonists – notably, Jesus and other messiahs – as the mythic tropes are remy-
thologized. The signifiers of the psalm describe new concepts of apocalyptic
trouble and rescue as its chronotope expands to new configurations of time and
space. The psalm’s Nachleben – and that of other psalms of Jerusalem – mingles
with another kind of afterlife.
The following translation arranges the poem according to its formal struc-
ture, which is based on the poetic line and organized by poetic parallelism.2 Each
line consists of two parallel versets, forming a couplet. The larger sense units
(or stanzas) consist of two poetic lines (viz. two couplets), which have various
kinds of parallelism between them. The sole exception is the middle stanza,
1 Bakhtin emphasizes that chronotopes are “generically typical” and “plot-generating” (251),
both of which are pertinent to Jonah’s psalm, as we will see.
2 On the terminology – line, verset, couplet, triplet, and stanza – I am drawing on Alter (2011, 8);
Harshav (2014, 42–44) and Dobbs-Allsopp (2015, 20–29). Dobbs-Allsopp uses “line” where I use
“verset” (following Alter and Harshav). These are analytical terms, not native terms, so differ-
ences of usage are unremarkable.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110460803-001
2 Ronald Hendel
which has a third parallel verset at its middle, forming a triplet. This stanza for-
mally and rhetorically marks the extremity of the crisis, which thereafter turns
(the peripeteia, reversal of circumstance) towards its resolution, Yahweh’s rescue
and the sufferer’s ceremonial thanksgiving.
2:3 I called out from my trouble
To Yahweh, and He answered me.
From the belly of Sheol I cried out,
You heard my voice.
4 You flung me into the depth in the heart of the sea,
And the river surrounded me.
All your breakers and waves
Streamed over me.
5 And I thought:
I am cast out from before Your eyes.
Yet again will I look
On Your holy temple?3
6 Water lapped about me to the neck,
The deep surrounded me,
Seaweed was bound round my head.
7 To the roots of the mountains I went down –
The underworld’s bolts against me forever.
But you raised my life from the Pit,
O Yahweh my God.
8 As my life-breath grew faint within me,
Yahweh did I remember.
And my prayer came to You,
To Your holy temple.
9 Those who rely on vaporous lies
Will abandon their mercy.4
10 But I, with a voice of thanksgiving,
Let me sacrifice to You.
What I vowed let me pay.
Rescue is Yahweh’s.
3 Although I have translated this line as a question, it could be a declarative or optative sen-
tence, “Yet again I will look / On your holy temple.”
4 This is a difficult line. I assume it refers to the wicked abandoning the favor of Yahweh’s mercy
(דסח); see: Barré (1991, 237–248); Sasoon (1990, 194–199); On the poetic form, see also: Trible
(1994, 160–173); Simon (1999, 15–25).
