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1 comments about A New Midrashic Reading Of Geoffrey Chaucer His Life And Works (Studies in British Literature).

1. A New Midrashic Reading Of Geoffrey Chaucer His Life And Works by Norman Toby Simms (Studies in British Literature: Edwin Mellen Press) Excerpt: After completing my study of Sir Gawain and the Knight of the Green Chapel, I feel there is a similar context in which Chaucer has to be fitted into if we are to appreciate more fully the uniqueness of his poetry, as well as the way his work relates to the traditions and precedents available to him during the fourteenth century in England and the rest of Western Europe. These other contexts, as I showed in that earlier book, are those of the Jewish heritage left behind after the formal expulsions in the late thirteenth century, as well as the Crypto-Jewish or Marrano context of those persons who remained hidden after 1290 or returned over the next generation or who came from elsewhere in Europe, nor just to flee prosecution but to live a strange new kind of concealed and non-institutional Judaism. Once it is noticed that while organised rabbinical life in England had been abolished and no one could perform all the formal mitzvot required of Talmudic (or rabbinic or halachic) Judaism, the question arises of what else there is: and that question has many answers, some of them to be found in private, public, and courtly literature, including the new religious plays-Mysteries, Moralities and Miracles-many of which deal with Jews in such an ambiguous and complex way that the old argument that there were no Jews in England at that time or that no one knew anything about Judaism other than what was in the Bible as the fathers no longer holds much water. There were Jews about, albeit of a very fuzzy kind, and those fuzzy Jews were there in England as much in the audience as in a creative role. The strongest aspect to the new perspective is therefore that probably most of these fuzzy Jews did not know who they were and, if they did not outright reject the overt implications of their depiction of Jews and Judaism, at least show that they felt very uncomfortable with those developments.
   Does this mean that I believe Geoffrey Chaucer was himself a practicing Jew or at least a self-curious child of such halachic Jews-one or two generations from a forced or voluntary conversion by his parents or grandparents? In a way the answer is yes...but a "yes" with many qualifications. Before we can move towards any answers, and there are many different kinds of answer to be given, we have to move away from the simplistic dichotomy which assumes that either one is or one is not a Jew; and if one is a Jew, since the religion and the institutions of Judaism were outlawed in 1290, then there could have been no Jews in England at all, and so Chaucer could not have been a Jew: tout court. The whole history of the Sephardic persecutions and expulsions from the end of the fourteenth century onwards shows that such dichotomizing cannot work to trace the experiences of individuals and families. After the massacres of 1390 in Spain, a series of mass conversions followed, until almost half, at least, of all Sephardic Jews went into the baptismal fount. Given that at this time, too, the overwhelming majority of all Jews in the world were Sephardim, this was no isolated event, but one of the most profound demographic and cultural events before the twentieth century. Our task, though, is not so much to look at the repercussions of this traumatic transformation of world Jewry in the early modem period, but to see if there were specific antecedent events, small in their scope and impact, but nonetheless significant and paradigmatic of what was to follow.
   Can we, however, justify applying the lessons of this somewhat later period about the New Christians, Marranos, and escaped and returning Jews from Spain and Portugal to the situation in England a century earlier? Not if we are going to be rigid about it, or trip ourselves up on quibbles over the meaning of specific words like converso and Crypto-Jew. I will argue that there are analogies and that, once alerted to kinds of subtle distinctions to be found in the Spanish and Portuguese cases, we can start to find similar evidence in the fourteenth century and in Britain: as long as we keep reminding ourselves that similarities are not exact replicas or foreshadowing. This also means that we risk dealing with essentialist concepts, as though there were something specifically, innately, inalterably Jewish, despite historical and social differences, something that outlasts conscious religious and psychological beliefs about oneself or one's family and friends, in other words, a sort of genetic inalterability that can be sustained for several generations despite conversion and then isolation from, with consequent ignorance of, Jewish ways of thinking, perceiving the world, evaluating experience, and feeling about oneself and one's children. I will not argue simply that "the proof is in the pudding": that because Chaucer looks and sounds like a Jew in some of the postures he assumes and the judgments he makes in the course of his poetry he must be a Jew, whether he likes it or not, and even whether he knows it or not. But I will argue that in a more complex, and I hope a more sophisticated way. I will argue that Geoffrey was not as isolated or as alienated from Jews and Jewishness-although he was very probably alienated completely from Judaism as an organized, institutionalized and coherent religious practice-as would first seem from the usual assumptions made about England in his life time.
   The first qualification, then, is that, if Chaucer were such an offspring of English Marranos, he was in his beliefs and even in his heart a good Roman Catholic in the same way as the majority of the British men and women of the period, this majority consisting as much the aristocracy and the clergy as the crowds in the streets of towns and villages. The next qualification is that, despite his conscious beliefs as a Christian, he probably had reservations about the demonization and persecution of the Jews, taking a position closer to that of the high church officials who saw Jews as a necessary historical link to the Old Testament and the presence and events of the New Testament. Third, Chaucer-and a few others cosmopolitan intellectuals like himself in England-were aware that real Jews in Europe in the fourteenth century could not be unquestionably equated with either the Hebrews of the Old Testament or, in a somewhat more problematic sense, with the distorted caricatures in the New Testament, except perhaps in a sympathetic way with Jesus and the Holy Family and the band of the original disciples. Fourthly, thanks the journeys to and communications with Spain, Italy, France and other parts of Western Europe, Chaucer would have known at first hand about the real condition of Jews-their intellectual life centered on the Oral Torah and the performance of mitzvot, and the persecution at the hands of uneducated mobs, fanatical minor clergy, and cynical civil and royal officials. Fifth, not only does Chaucer in his poetry show a sympathy and understanding of the social difficulties of real Jews living in Western Europe under increasingly hostile conditions-the expulsion from England was just the beginning of the way cities and kingdom expelled the Jewish communities-but also demonstrates an understanding of peculiarly rabbinic ways of thinking and reading, including a familiarity with the mystical thought of systematic kabbalah being then written in Spain, Southern France, Italy, and parts of the Levant...
   Excerpt: This book is divided into three sections. In the first section, composed of Chapters 1 to 3, which might be called "All To-Tore", from an expression the Canon's Yeoman uses, I will examine the notion of both Chaucer's life and his works being "composed" in a process of fragmentation and disguise, and introduce the idea of midrash as a modem tool of literary exegesis. It might be possible to call this approach a particular kind of rabbinical aesthetic deriving from the kabbalistic notion of the breaking of the vessels, but at this stage in our discussion we can only survey the biography of the man and then, midrashically, find new contexts for him as an individual and as a type of New
   Christian living in England and serving his royal masters on the Continent. It is also important here to survey both the life of the author and the Chaucerian canon, searching for exemplary instances of the breaking apart of the text, the focus on gaps and non sequiturs, and the disappearance or displacement of themes, images, and structural elements within the various verse and prose documents. The primary text to be examined will be The Wyf of Bath's Prologue, Introduction and Tale from the Canterbury Tales, seeing it in relation to the concluding praise-poem to the Good Wife in the Book of Proverbs, credited to Lemuel rather than Solomon, and exploring its treatment of women, whether satirical social types or romantic ideals, or even figures of the biblical Queen Esther, later the precious saint of the Spanish and Portuguese Crypto-Jews, and the mystical figure of the Shekhina, the mystical shadow of God's presence and his consort whom he seeks while she lives with the Children of Israel in their long and painful exile. These first three chapters will also start to deal with a question of deafness, marked into the body and life of the Wyf of Bath as a physical injury, but evident throughout the author's life and throughout his works in several other senses: (1) a low-level defect in interpretation wherein what is heard is presumed to be all there is to know, with everything surrounding it fading into a kind of marginal static normally unperceived and unheard; (2) a higher degree of awareness that begins with a sense of gaps and lapses in the perceived and ordinarily experienced environment accompanied by attempts to fill in those points of silence and invisibility, holes and black-spots, through imaginative-symbolic, allusive and intuitive-insertions, supplements, displacements and recontextualizations; and (3) a very different order of interpretation, in which the earlier surface text, with its deformities and fragmentation, is understood as a texture composed of diverse languages simultaneously being played out and requiring new kinds of attention, intensities of focus, and coordination between logic and fantasy.
   The next two chapters, 4 and 5, form a second section that confronts head-on the problematic of Chaucer's alleged anti-Jewishness, particularly exemplified in the Prioress's Prologue and Tale also from the Canterbury Tales. I could name section "The Little Clergeon's Song" and sub-title it "What They Heard and Didn't Hear" because of the way the Latin hymn Alma Redemptoris Mater brings to the surface questions related to children, language, ritual murder and retributive collective punishment. Here, too, we must take time to weigh up the evidence for the way in which Jews are thought of, depicted, and perhaps recollected in a supposedly Judenrein England, as well as on the Continent where the Black Plague and other natural disasters provokes wave on wave of persecution and slander against the Jews. Where and how could a Crypto-Jewish presence be found in England at this time, and how would it be related to the communities under pressure and in exile elsewhere in western Europe? The Prioress's Tale, rather than a manifestation of the hate literature common to Spain, France, Italy and elsewhere, appears instead as a very intense and confused statement of faith by the nun who calls herself Eglantine: the setting of her little martyr's legend is displaced to Asia, where both Christians and Jews live as minorities subject to an unnamed Muslim ruler, its vicious slanders against the Jews do not include charges of ritual murder or the blood libel, and it presents a confusion of authorities both within and outside the fictional narrative itself, so much so that there seems to be a rationalization of the crime committed against the poor little Clergeon as he walks through the Jewish quarter of the city. Then, as we fold back this discussion and the Prioress' two texts her confessional Prologue and her pious Tale back over the Wyf of Bath, as another variant of an articulate woman with an ax to grind, the discussion leads us into a deeper exploration of how the midrashic aesthetic functions both as a means of Chaucer's creativity and our own optic of analysis; and further, how it relates the three dimensions of deafness mentioned before can help us understand the various generic categories radiated through the major works of Chaucer : particularly parody, satire, grotesque and cynical diatribe.
   Chapters 6-8 take as their central text is The Book of the Duchess-which may, by kabbalistic letter combinations, be termed the Sepher Chesed, a Book of Grace and Mercy. Thus this third section of the book could be entitled "Dreams and Fantasies". After examining the other dream vision poems and coordinating them towards a deepening understanding of midrashic analysis, we ford this courtly poem to be Chaucer's most kabbalistic enterprise. Long taken as his first major achievement, written as a young man in honour of his patron, John of Gaunt's grief for his beloved bride Blanche of Castile, The Book of the Duchess, I argue by internal and external evidence, is also one of Chaucer's last performative poems, in the sense that it was so popular over decades that it was re-performed and re-written for later memorial services to the Duke of Lancaster's wives and other great ladies of the court at their passing. It is thus a kind of palimpsest of the author's lengthy career as poet and trusted official of the court and state.
   The book may also be approached as a secret document expressing the man Chaucer's concealed and unconscious beliefs and attitudes towards Jewishness and Judaism, insofar as he came to understand them during his travels and readings of rabbinical and kabbalistic texts that came his way in France, Italy and Spain. Finally, in the ninth chapter, we try to draw together some of the threads we have spun and at the same time point to further directions for study.
   This present monograph could also be approached as another kind of secret book, in the sense that, as I went through the final stages of writing and editing, especially when inserting the various head and sub-heading texts, I realized that what was happening went beyond either historical or literary critical boundaries. The book was responding to the realities around me in the last years of the twentieth century and the earliest of the twenty-first, a time when dangers to the Jewish people became increasingly evident in words and actions not seen since the end of World War II. Even more, as I attempted to speak to friends and colleagues about the threats to Israel and the problems facing Jewish academics in the climate of fear and intimidation, many reacted in ways that at first seemed totally irrational and inexplicable-until it started to become clear that many of these erstwhile confidants and associates who drew back, turned away, or openly attacked Jews and Judaism in the contemporary world were behaving in terms that had been cautiously and hesitatingly opened up by this study of Chaucer (as well as the earlier book on Sir Gawain and the Green Chapel). For that reason, the large number of citations of apparently incongruous authors sets out the territory of literary, historical, social, and psychological themes this book actually comes to deal with. To a certain extent, therefore, I am asking my audience to study this book as they would an exegetical text in the midrashic mode. If that is too much to ask of a contemporary student of Chaucer, then I apologize.

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1 comments about Chazon Ish the Life and Ideals of Rabbi Avraham Yeshayah Karelitz: The Life and Ideals of Rabbi Avraham Yeshayah Karelitz (The Artscroll History Series).

1. The Chazon Ish was a literal man (Ish) of miracles. His blessings often brought cures to illnesses. Prayers at his grave have often been effective. Rabbi Shimon Fickelman begins the book with the 13 year old Avraham Yeshayah Karelitz's commitment to study Torah for its own sake. That is for the sake of the Name (G-d). He made this decision at his Bar Mitzvah. Many of the benefits that ones derives from this are listed by Rabbi Meir at the beginning of the sixth chapter of Ethics of the Fathers. Rabbi Finkelman shows that he did acquire these and as Rabbi Meir said "and More." He had the 48 traits listed in The Ethics of the Fathers by which one acquires Torah. He suffered thru The First World War, as many Jews did. He loved his writing and regarded his books "Chazon Ish" as if they were his children. He and his wife moved to pre-state Israel in 1933. He believed that because he lived in the Land of Israel that his writings took on a special quality. He played an important role in getting Rabbi Isaac Herzog the position of the Chief Rabbi Of Israel after the death of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook in 1935. He was very active in encouraging religious settlements to observe that Sabbatical year. He viewed the state of Israel as the last stage of exile for the Jews, rather than the beginning of the redemption. He helped thousands of troubled people. He fought against the drafting of women into the Israeli army. As a result of this, orthodox women are not drafted into the Israeli army-to this day(although non-orthodox women are.) When The Chazon Ish was challenged to cite the Paragraph in Shulchan Aruch which prohibits" the drafting of women, he answered:

   "It is found in the fifth section of Shulchan Aruch, one which is not written and is the province of only true Talmidei Chachamim."

   Rabbi Finkelman reports when the Brisker Rav was asked the same question with regard to the Torah he said, "In the Ten Commandments."

2 comments about The Dark Lady from Belorusse: A Memoir.

1. I loved this little book. I'm now reading the sequal, The Black Swan. I picked them up because they take place in the Bronx, where I grew up, and Charyn is close to my age. I frequented some of the places he did, but we had wildly different experiences. He is obsessed with his beautiful mother as were so many men she knew. He was extraordinary too. Reads a little like Doctorow only this is a memoir not a fantasy--or is it?

   Little Charyn goes from about five years old to seven years old in this book. How he remembers everything so vividly (or is making most of it up} I don't know. But it's great story telling. At about 100 pages a book,though, Charyn seems to be stretching out his stories in order to extract as much money per page as he can. I'm reading library copies.




2. Jerome Charyn's "Dark Lady From Belorusse" is an entertaining little book, however it is practically impossible to believe that even a quarter of the events depicted in this "memoir" are true. Charyn would have us believe that he grasped situations at the age of five that wouldn't be well handled by a 50-year-old. I took the stories he tells about his mother, her interaction with local Bronx gangsters, and his dysfunctional family with a grain of salt. While some of these events may have taken place, there is no way they occurred as the author remembers them in this book. The author's fanciful embellishments can be a little annoying - what exactly does he take his readers for? - especially since he is attempting to pass the book off as a work of nonfiction. Charyn does better by his readers in his sequel to the "Dark Lady" entitled "The Black Swan," where he admits in an endnote that many of the events and characters depicted are fictional.

   Disappointment over blatant fabrication aside, Charyn is a very creative writer with a vivid imagination that makes for interesting reading. His writing style can be a bit disjointed, and he sometimes clouds his descriptions with confusing, non-essential fodder that strays from the main idea. Charyn's anecdotes are entertaining if not believable, and the characters are vivid and fun to read about (although you'd probably not want to actually meet these people!). If poor little Charyn's mother and father are anything in life as they are in the book, the kid should be given a medal for survival. The portrayals are fascinating, and one would hope that there aren't too many parents out there like the one "Baby" has to endure.

   "The Dark Lady..." is only about 100 pages long - you can read it in no time. If you have an afternoon to spare and don't mind the author's inability to discern fact from fiction, give it a read

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